The Institutionalization of the Criminal Mind

The Institutionalization of the Criminal Mind

©Douglas S. Harvey 2012

It is interesting that Adam Smith, the oft-cited codifier of “classical economics,” whose 1776 book The Wealth of Nations continues to be mentioned with great frequency, did not advocate cold, amoral rationalism in all one’s economic affairs.  Smith maintained a moral center in which concepts of justice took precedence over “enlightened self-interest.”  Indeed, Smith even referred to the “beneficent” society which served as an embellishment to a “just” society.  Yet, the concept of “enlightened self-interest" has become a phrase conflated with cold, calculating – even cunning – behavior.  The expansion of economic empire has made this behavior an assumption in capitalist market societies like the U.S. and Britain.  This assumption whispers to us that profit is our proper priority, greed is good, “self-interest” equals capital and material accumulation, and this “self-interest,” when pursued by all, creates an ideal population of virtuous individuals. 

In the so-called “developed” world, this assumption seeps into our pores as we mature into adulthood.  Indeed, we are led to believe that this is the only way to motivate people – without the profit incentive, no one would ever do anything.  This brings to mind the mythos prevalent in western religions that without the threat of eternal damnation, people would succumb to their “base instincts” and the world would deteriorate into pagan barbarism.  Indeed, as many on the political “right” would argue, profit motive is the only legitimate motivation.  Some have gone to great lengths to associate capital accumulation with virtue, and with Christian virtue, at that.  In this mythos, “self-realization” is measured by accumulation – money, houses, cars, clothes, jewels, etc.  Wealth accumulation became the measure of virtue.  As for barbarism, a cleared-eyed body count of the victims of economic expansion might cause us to redefine the concept. 

This is not a process that began with the Industrial Revolution, or even Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.  The search for resources and markets to facilitate the continued accumulation of capital can be traced at least to the thirteenth-century Mediterranean world.  There, for a brief time, connections were established between the Silk Road and the relative backwaters of northwestern Europe that spelled profit for the merchant middle-men.  When the search for resources and markets expanded into the New World after Columbus, unprecedented engines of commerce and accumulation were kick-started that continue to ebb, flow, and expand to this day.  Wealth once enjoyed only by “divine-right” monarchs was now realized by a growing number of individuals who, often, had not even a title before their name.  The liberal economic revolution was in full swing.

It is worth asking, as many have done: where did the wealth actually come from?  Who took the stuff of the earth and transformed it into something of greater value AND did they enjoy the “surplus value” they created?  The answers to the first question is: well, it wasn’t the capitalists.  The correct response to the second question is, no they did not.  Those who hoarded the surplus value were those who were in a position to steer some of that added value their way.  They were in such a position because of influence or access to existing wealth that had been accumulated through, for example, policies deracinating entire communities, redistributing land (resources) to the wealthy, enslaving thousands of people, and creating a large number of itinerant, landless laborers.  This can be seen in Europe, Africa, and the Americas in the early modern period, and it can be seen in Mexico, India, Brazil, China, and elsewhere today. 

Those accumulating this wealth had a deeply-rooted interest in creating the assumption that “wealth = virtue.”  This accumulation of “capital,” the value added to the fruits of the earth by the work of artisans, became the standard rate of measure for “success.”  This was accomplished through books instructing one in the arts of polite society, through various theater plays that depicted accumulation as virtue, and by demonizing or dismissing alternative viewpoints in the public sphere.  For example, the notion of “commonwealth” – that certain aspects of the earth are owned by all as fellow creatures – was downplayed or forgotten.  Holding resources in common was said to be “savage”; simply not the way civilized people behave.  In the 1980s, champion of laissez-faire capitalism Margaret Thatcher announced that “there is no such thing as society.”

One may study the historical record and a pattern emerges: people must be displaced and alienated from the land so that Big Capital, (those who have accumulated the surplus value they themselves did not produce), can control the extraction and production of resources.  “Peace Treaty” meetings held with native peoples in North America were conducted with a veneer of sincerity, but behind the scenes there was a calculation that the indigenous peoples would ultimately be alienated from their land.  One basic way that this can be illustrated is by observing that these “treaties,” which invariably meant more land for whites, less land for Indians, had to be ratified by the colonial authorities be they British or Anglo-American.  Indigenous people, while they often held treaty ratification votes of their own back home, considered all that was said at the treaty meeting to BE the treaty.  For the colonial interests, it was only the markings on the paper that constituted the treaty, regardless of what had been said.  Since the indigenous peoples often could not read English and were in any case an oral culture, this paper was secondary to the words spoken at the meeting.  Here is what an English official told Tanighrisson, the Seneca leader who met with them at Logstown, Pennsylvania colony in 1752 to discuss their presence in the Ohio Valley:

Brethren, be assur’d that the King [George II], our Father, by purchasing your Lands, had never any Intention of taking them from you, but that we might live together as one People . . .

The deceit plainly visible in hindsight is the rule, not the exception.  From the Canary Islanders of the fifteenth century to the Taino peoples of the sixteenth, the Lakotas of the nineteenth, and the farming folk of Mexico, India, China and beyond in the twentieth, the deracination of people from their land by hook, crook, bullet, and bomb has been a feature of this economic empire.  Native “leaders” willing to sign-off on this resource usurpation are bought off, created or, failing those methods, native resistance to economic empire is crushed by a publicly-funded military.

The same pattern continues through to Latin America, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and other regions where there are resources and markets coveted by Big Capital.  The death of innocents who just happen to be in the coveted region can be numbered in the millions.  Yet, those who champion this behavior, from the Donald Trumps to the Dick Cheneys to the Koch Brothers are put forward as exemplars of virtue – “hard workers” who have been “successful.”  In most cases, their “success” is built on deceit and cunning.  They have institutionalized the criminal mind.   

There was a brief time – about two generations' worth of time – labor unions mitigated the leak of surplus value flowing into the coffers of the rich.  This is the American "middle" class of the mid-twentieth century – probably the largest affluent working class in the modern period.  (Note: the "middle" class works, hence they are "working" class.  It doesn't really matter what color your collar is.  If you want to know what "class" you're in, stop making your house payments or paying your rent; this will clarify the issue for you.)  Yet, we are told that the rich are the "job creators" and that they need regulators and government in general "off their backs."  Here's a secret they either don't know themselves or they certainly don't want the rest of us to know: they don't create the jobs.  People with ideas, people with skills, and a large, well-paid working class with money to spend create jobs.  Ultimately, the capital accumulators are superfluous - if they don't know it they may suspect it – hence the burning need to control the discourse and equate wealth with virtue.

The cultural echo chamber that measures success in private wealth accumulation needs to be called out in its deceit again and again and again until the values and mores of the mainstream begin to be called into question not daily but hourly.  A value system that champions values of health – for humans AND their environment – a good quality of life for ALL, and allowing food producers, artisans, craftsmen, and laborers to enjoy the fruits of the wealth they produce needs to replace the institutionalized criminal mind of deceit and cunning. Truly “enlightened” self-interest includes the welfare of our home and all who are in it.  This home is Planet Earth.

Delusional Assumptions

1/1/12

The Delusional Assumptions of Capitalism

One of the more delusional aspects of capitalism is the idea that if one pursues the acquisition of private wealth with abandon, that this is somehow automatically “good” for human society. 

The laissez-faire advocate and novelist Ayn Rand wrote that if one does not support this notion that greed is good and pursuing “enlightened self-interest,” (as Adam Smith characterized it), is the highest virtue then one defaults to supporting a centralized oppressive regime that allows no personal freedom and no private wealth whatsoever.  One supports living in darkness and despair or, in a word, Hell.  This Manichean thinking is in keeping with the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition dating back to the Indus Valley divide between the Vedic traditions and the Zoroastrian belief system of ancient Persia.  The notion that the world is characterized by an ongoing “war” between the forces of light and the forces of darkness is at the base of much of so-called western thought.

In The Three Metamorphoses, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that humans are saddled with a heavy burden as children.  Using the metaphor of a camel, he describes how we then venture into the wilderness with this burden, whereupon we are attacked by a great dragon.  The dragon is covered with hundreds of scales, each scale bearing the words “Thou Shalt.”  The human is then transformed into a lion in order to do battle with the dragon.  If the lion is victorious in the battle – slaying the dragon “Thou Shalt” – the metaphor then turns to that of a child.  The human then becomes what he or she was born to be – “a wheel rolling out of its own center.”  One of the scales on the dragon for most of us growing up in the “developed world” is that “thou shalt believe in the war between light and darkness.”  And, the societal assumption is that one aspect of this war is the capitalist notion of “enlightened self-interest” versus the evil “socialist” notions of public ownership and oppressive altruism that punishes the productive and rewards the unproductive.  This has become conflated with the Judeo-Christian religious structure of “good versus evil” to the point where in some quarters there is no distinction between the secular and religious versions of the myth.  To complete the Nietzschean metaphor in this context, most people do not slay the dragon.  The result is a societal discourse that is largely delusional and controlled by mythic thinking, catch-phrases, and unquestioned assumptions. 

While this is nothing new, the consequences are becoming too great to bear as humans acquire the unprecedented ability to wield cataclysmic power.  What is needed is a strong commitment to reality; i.e., a commitment to jettison ideology and religion for fact-based analysis.  The process begun by the Enlightenment was, by and large, a positive development at least for Europe.  But this process has been interrupted not so much by religion – the antithesis of the Enlightenment – but by a faith-based secular ideology that says the pursuit by individuals of their own private material gain is good for all. 

To dissent against this faith-based secular religion is to be consigned to Purgatory and Hell by the Upholders of the Faith.  When the upholders of such a system see a dissenting opposition that is so threatening it must be condemned, it is probably worth asking, “So what’s the threat?”  This is what makes a study of the writings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and other dissenters from the secular faith so fascinating.  Before “Marxism” was codified into a tool of repression by state capitalists, (Soviet Union, China – regimes that used Marxist rhetoric to repress their own people), it was and still can be a useful critique of the secular religion of capitalism and very revealing in its analysis.  Some have helped bring this nineteenth-century dissent up to date on the basis of a critical scientific analysis of the evolution of the capitalist system, (Paul Sweezy, Howard Parsons, David Harvey, John Bellamy Foster, et al.).

The most valuable critique is the questioning of the “enlightened self-interest as public good” assumption.  This assumption is based on the false premise that humans are separate from their environment; that somehow, we are “above” the normal consequences of action in the field of the life-death continuum of Planet Earth.  A brief perusal of the consequences of this false premise should be sobering to any thinking person.  The pursuit of resources and markets to feed a system that MUST grow to survive has made the planet and all of its inhabitants commodities.  In capitalist mythology, EVERYTHING has a monetary value, including and perhaps especially, people.  The fact that humans are dependent on a healthy environment is not a central consideration – capitalists who acquire financial independence can BUY a healthy environment as one of their private acquisitions, it is assumed.  Everyone else must either enter into the field of competition and buy their own “healthy environment,” or be consigned to a life that Thomas Hobbes called “nasty, brutish, and short” – a self-fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one.

Critics and dissenters such as those mentioned above interrupt this mythic narrative and point out that environmental health, sustainability, and diversity are essential for both human and non-human health.  “Self-fulfillment,” and protection of a “commonwealth” are priorities for these dissenters, which is a thing different from the way Smith’s “enlightened self-interest” has become a societal myth.  The original meaning of the Greek word “oeconomy” had more to do with a well-kept house – be it an individual household, a neighborhood, a city, or an entire region – than it does with private acquisition.  Ultimately, our “house” is the planet – there is NO getting around this fact.  For some time now we have had pictures of Planet Earth taken from space.  The empirical evidence is clear: we are a very small household in a vast sea of time and space.  We MUST cooperate or perish.  As it now stands, our Head of the Household – Capitalism (some would prefer the word “fascism”) – is an alcoholic who runs rampant over all who have something he wants.  The epitome of “self-will run riot,” he ravages entire countries in his search for another “drink” (resources and markets) and will stop at nothing, including self-destruction, to continue his blind, staggering rampage across the face of the earth. 

Once “Thou Shalt” – the dragon telling us that this kind of behavior is the seat of wisdom – is slain, our focus can then move to a more properly “sober” analysis of our situation, allowing long-term, solution-oriented thinking to become part of our daily existence.  Pursuit of personal fulfillment for each individual in a healthy environment – as opposed to strictly material acquisition – can become a central goal of our household economy on Planet Earth.  Happy, fulfilled people do not plunder, rape, maim, and kill others for resources and markets.  The earth is a place of abundance, not scarcity.  People CAN cooperate and live in peace.  But we need to share a commitment to “reality” – the real-life playing out of our interaction with the resources of our household – things that we all need like clean air and water, a healthy diet, expressing our creative powers, loving and being loved, being “part of” something greater than ourselves (Planet Earth comes to mind).  Becoming what we were born to be, a "wheel rolling out of its own center," as the eyes and ears of Planet Earth, is our proper objective.  If the pursuit of individual wealth impoverishes others and the planet as a whole – which empirical evidence indicates -- consigning innocent bystanders to a life “nasty, brutish, and short,” it represents unwarranted and misplaced power.  It is destructive; indeed, it is cancerous.  It is like living with a drunk who is drowning in delusion.  It is time to intervene.

©Figment Zenguitar (AKA Douglas S. Harvey), 12/31/11