Vision & Illusion

Vision & Illusion

            The goal of this essay is to articulate the reasons I have become fond of an ism. For most of my life I have never felt any synergy with an ism, be it capitalism, communism, socialism etc. In 2008 after the market crash, I was let go by my place of employment, my marriage fell apart, I lost my grandfather to age and a close friend to a drunk driver. The events happened one after the other and left me in a state of disrepair. I was unable to find a job that came anywhere close to the income I had been living with for over 5 years so I decided to go back to school.

            One of the most compelling things about humans is that we all see the same things from different sets of eyes and minds and thus from different perspectives. Moreover we have the ability to share our perspectives through the use of language (primarily). This made the history department a great fit for me because I was able to experience other’s perspectives throughout time. The combination of studying history after being economically, spiritually and socially broken, opened up the existential part of my mind.

Why had the actions of others caused so much disruption in my life? What is happiness? What is money? How are the two related? What is the purpose of life? Why were so many people losing their jobs and homes? Is the current global organization (globalization) really the best we can come up with?  Is there a better way to exist? I began to see ubiquitous institutions like schools, police, banks, marriage etc as suspect in terms of improvement to or maintenance of my personal happiness and growth. All I had ever known is the modern version of western capitalism. With its intense competition, it is a hierarchical system that rewards people who exploit others. Moreover this system favors these individuals over individuals who actually produce something (banker vs. artisan). The financial institutions of western capitalism produce nothing yet earn profit for themselves and create debt for others. But I digress.

            Here I was studying history at my local university and I began to see countless examples of money or ownership causing class division or friction. For example; in Mount Lebanon (prior to 1860) there were three effective class divisions: A ruling class, an elite class and a peasant class. Working on the fields around their dwellings, the peasant class lived within a subsistence economic fabric.[1]

Around 1860 the French began to build silk factories in Lebanon (Mount Lebanon), because Lebanon could grow the trees required for silkworm habitation. Because working in a factory as a male was seen as a sign of weakness a curious thing happened; female peasants who had no steady work from their fields decided to work in the factories. Money was used to compensate their time.  This infusion of money within the peasant class instigated class division.  This subtle division, which started as material separation (ownership of jewelry, dinnerware, trinkets etc), became more pronounced as some members of the peasant class actually bought elite titles and “ascended” out of their peasant status.  When the silk market crashed due to technological advancement about “one third of the population of Mount Lebanon had [emigrated].” Thus capitalism broke apart a tight community and instigated competition.[2]

I had begun to create my own narrative on how this reality came to be; the moneyed interests had created institutions to serve their needs. Maybe not the most original thesis, but I had evidence of it so it was tangible. I had come across this type of perspective in a few of my classes, but they were fleeting and would get lost among the sheer amount of material required for any given course. Then I stumbled into a history of anarchism class.

            In third paragraph of chapter 1 of Demanding the Impossible I read a line that made my eyes water; “[in] anarchist philosophy you generally find a particular view of human nature, a critique of the existing order, a vision of a free society, and a way to achieve it.”[3] I had already begun to critique the existing order because I had begun to study it. Being a musician I have contemplated human nature more times than I care to count.  However, I had little to no vision of a free society; but I was beginning to see an illusion of one being generated by social institutions and the people who ran them.  So within three paragraphs, read on the first day of class, I had found a voice that spoke directly to my existential frustration; a perspective from a different set of eyes that was very close to what I felt I was seeing.

            After only three months of class I had run across a plethora of wonderful ideas and thinkers that were previously unknown to me. For example Proudhon’s famous line “property is theft!” which echoed Winstanely’s (The Diggers) observation that property or ownership was the cause and crime was the effect.[4] Max Stirner’s philosophical theory of individualism; the idea that every individual has a responsibility to reject all forms of external force (law, religion, attitudes of others) in order to reject internal oppression and thus reach true personal freedom.[5] What I identified in the material I was reading was vision. Vision of a better way to organize. Vision of the power of the individual and the power of a group.  Vision of life without a government and without a hierarchical structure. Vision of cooperation placed above competition. When I compared this vision with what the “leaders” of various governments past and present were saying in their books, speeches and declassified documents I found a grand illusion of our current social order.

For example and relating to the Iranian Revolution in 1979, on December 12, 1978 President Carter stated “I fully expect the Shah to remain in power in Iran.”[6]  The Shah fled Iran on January 16, 1979.  In a news conference the day after the Shah fled, President Carter claimed “I think that the rapid change of affairs in Iran has not been predicted by anyone so far as I know.”[7]  In reality there were many reports stemming from the INR that had been predicting the fall of the Shah and revolution for over a decade and I had read them in the basement of my university’s library.  In acknowledgment, President Carter writes in his memoirs that he received “frequent reports from our embassies in Iran, indicating the gravity of the Shah’s troubles.”[8]  Moreover President Carter (with the consent of Brzezinski) had tasked George Ball, a former ambassador to the UN, to conduct an independent study of Iran and make policy recommendations in November, 1978.  In the eighteen page memorandum entitled Issues and Implications of the Iranian Crisis, Ball claimed the Shah’s rule was effectively finished and recommended a transfer of power from the Shah to a representative government.[9]  In response to Ball’s report, which was submitted on December 11, 1978, President Carter did nothing, dismissing the report as unreliable. Why was the President Carter lying if not to maintain an illusion?

There is no lack of vision by various leaders throughout history, but it usually is wrapped in illusion. For example, James Madison (the fourth US president and co-author of the US Constitution) co-authored a series of essays along with Alexander Hamilton and Jon Jay called the Federalist Papers arguing in favor of a US constitution to be written and ratified. The essay were released anonymously.[10] In it he writes:

“The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property”[11]

So Madison had a vision of a government that held as its first priority, the protection of the landed wealth from being acquired by any other socioeconomic class while maintaining class division. The illusion is that the government will protect its citizen’s wealth and the vision is a government that protects the wealth of the elite class from being taken by the classes below it. Thus I felt, prior to studying anarchism, that we live in an illusion of freedom sparked by a vision of institutional exclusion.

You can imagine my surprise when I read in Demanding the Impossible during the first week of class; “It was only when a society was able to produce a surplus which could be appropriated by a few that private property and class relations developed…The State was thus founded on social conflict...not by rational men of goodwill.”[12]  It would seem, at least for the time being, that I have found an ism with which I can relate. However there is an illusion of sorts I am now dealing with…the illusion that anarchism is actually possible. History, Anarchism and Music is my first attempt to tie some threads in my life into a larger fabric in hopes of bringing anarchism back into the discussion, a discussion or any discussion that does not involve chaos or disorder.  As Alexander Berkman wrote; “[Anarchism] means order without government and peace without violence.”[13] I welcome all contributions and or critiques as long as it somehow falls within the relevancy of the topic.  

     

---

[1] Khater, Fouad Akram, Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon 1870-1920. (Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 2001), chapter 1.

[2] Ibid, 48.

[3] Marshall, Peter, Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. (Oakland, California: PM Press, 1992, 2010), 3.

[4] Marshall, Demanding the Impossible, 234 (Chapter 17)

[5] Ibid, 220 (Chapter 16)

[6] James A. Bill, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988), 259.

[7] Ibid

[8] Jimmy Carter, Keeping the Faith: Memoirs of a President. (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), 438.

[9] Bill, The Eagle and the Lion, 252.

[10] Parenti, Michael. Democracy for the Few. (New York, St. Martin’s Press, Inc. 1995), 53.

[11] Madison, James. Federalist No. 10: "The Same Subject Continued: The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection." New York Daily Advertiser, November 22, 1787.

[12] Marshall, Peter. Demanding the Impossible, 17-18.

[13] Berkman, Alexander ED: Fellner, Gene. Life of an Anarchist: The Alexander Berkman Reader. (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1992, 2005), 268.