Update 2:
Some anti-Zionist activists, like the ones at Veterans Today, are taking the OW protests seriously, and don’t see the lack of interest in talking about 9-11 as a red flag. I am not sure what to make of this. Again, I should say, at this point it scarcely matters if a national infrastructure program is instituted, since things are so bad. Except, of course, the usual corporate cronies will fatten off the contracts, making them even more powerful. And it will create more dependency, more demands, more constituencies, a bigger political class, distort the market further, postpone and thus prolong the process of correction.
Update:
To be clear, I write from the perspective of an eclectic or syncretic Christian whose views would be rejected by most fundamentalists, evangelicals, Catholics etc.
ORIGINAL POST
David Graeber is one of the mouthpieces of the Occupy Wall Street movement. A Marxist academic and the son of a working class family, his father fought in the Spanish Revolution, Graeber himself is a Yale graduate and a leading light in anthropological theory. His mentor is another Marxist anthropologist Maurice Bloch, of the LSE, who has argued that religion is nothing special, but still central, surely a most revealing assertion. Bloch believes that the development of “imagination” in prehistoric man is what allowed the idea of “god” to emerge in human thought. That is, God was imagined in the same way that nations are imagined.
Is there a hint here that, like nationalism, religious beliefs are now going to be taken down by the powers-that-be, in the interests of universal humanity, world government, and the salvation of non-existent souls?
Bloch’s protege continues in the same vein of adolescent iconoclasm.
He argues – ambitiously, given his age – that all previous histories of money are wrong. Menger and the Austrians, especially, are wrong (Bob Murphy has critiqued this, in his usual modest fashion at the Mises forum).
Barter did not arise first, to be followed by money and credit. Instead, credit and debt arose first.
In the beginning, man lived in a kind of primitive community in which money played no role. Then came war and conquest. Debt and debt bondage arose from the victor’s impositions on the vanquished.
Whatever merit one might detect in such a sweeping starting point is quickly erased when we find that the author’s destination is the all too familiar territory of greenbackism (i.e. debt jubilee and debt-free money).
Next, we are told that modern Anericans are no better than the chattel of by-gone years. Of course, the slaves of old, who were whipped, sold on blocks, manacled and deprived of all rights, might argue the point. But college professors routinely make up in rhetoric what they lack in knowledge and rationality, and we see no need to hold Professor Graeber to standards that have long vanished from academia.
Americans are slaves, and Graeber is Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks combined. Or do I mean, Marx and Lenin combined? For while Graeber somehow feels the need to turn to Christianity for his rhetorical flourishes (forgiveness of debt is sacred in Christianity, quoth he), it’s still communism that is the real force behind his manifesto, as the video above indicates.
Notice the subversion of language in his claims here, and elsewhere.
The sacred essence of Christianity – the salvation of the soul and the resurrection of the body – is eliminated. In its place, he focuses on the mechanism of salvation.… and misconstrues it.
Claiming that both words, debt and sin, have a common origin, Graeber conflates them and discovers in the conflation the means to transform the unique moral act of a particular being (forgive them, father) into a diktat of communism (cancel all debts).
In the Christian world view, Christ’s redemptive substitution for sinful humanity on the cross is a “forgiveness of sin” that only the “sinless one” could accomplish precisely because he was sinless.
Secondly, even if sin and monetary debt are equated, “forgiveness of debt” is enjoined on Christians only because debt itself, like sin, is of such paramount consequence.
Debt is consequential because to take without giving is a form of theft. The Old Testament law, on which Christ’s teachings were based, would not have countenanced borrowing with no intention of repaying, any more than it would have countenanced lending in the hope of default, able-bodied idlers, mass gambling, improvidence, shiftlessness, profligacy, or any of the moral sins endemic in society today.
Not content with mutilating Christian doctrine to suit his communist agenda, Graeber then foists his slogans on economic activity. For him, normal cooperation between human beings is a feature of “communism.”
Thus he can argue that capitalism is a method of organizing “communism” (since, even at work, human interaction proceeds without economic considerations).
From there, he can argue that the economy should be driven by “altruistic” considerations.
The confusion is so enormous that a book would be needed to fully explore the ways in which the man has misunderstood these terms.
In the first place, capitalism – or better, free markets – has never denied altruism or any other psychological trait its place in human life.
Nor has any intelligent free market theorist equated the whole of life with economic interaction. {Although, I’m not entirely sure that we would be worse off if they did. Certainly, there is a great deal to be said for contracts, even within families, witness the rise of prenuptial contracts, living wills, family trusts, guardianships, and so on, which certainly have smoothed many aspects of family life.
Nor does anyone outside academia assume “rational” actors or “economic” men.
Men act from all sorts of reasons. They run companies for all sorts of reasons, and money is often the least of them.
In short, Graeber, after having first assumed a model of capitalism that would be an embarrassment in a freshman essay, devotes his energies to refuting it with anecdotal evidence, which he then mysteriously dubs communist.
Is it not possible to behave decently to another person without being a communist? Who made communism – a theory about economic production and ownership – a system of ethics?
I would be puzzled, except for the leveraging of Christianity in Graeber’s polemic.
Now it is clear.
When you forbid divinity anywhere in the universe but in man’s imagining, it follows that you will restrict paradise to man’s own creations.
Stripped of all obfuscation, Graeber’s language betrays the covergence of the binaries – capitalism and communism – characteristic of the arbiters of the New World Order.
John Stossel, ABC reporter [RP says he’d be in charge of consumer affairs]; Walter Williams, UPenn faculty (neo-conservative, fully on board the Global War on (some) Terror) [ RP would put him in charge of economics]; James Grant, Barron’s financial columnist, hard money columnist [RP wanted him for Secretary of Treasury]; Robert Pape; Michael Scheuer (ex-CIA).
Paul has also given a shout out to constitutional law professor and media expert Jonathan Turley (a favorite of mine) and to judge Andrew Napolitano.
Block, Napolitano, Schiff, and Williams, are staples in libertarian circles. Stossel is a more mainstream libertarian. Grant is a senior figure in the hard money crowd; Turley is a well-known civil libertarian and the only one who has shown any open anti-Zionist leanings.
Of course, these aren’t advisors, but possible picks in a Paul administration, but they do give an idea of the direction of his thinking.
What is interesting is that all of them are media personalities, each in his own right (no women, you’ll notice). They are all established authors and make the lecture/TV or YouTube circuit. In that sense, this list is a very media savvy one, since everyone on it commands name recognition and would bring in their own following.
I am not sure what that means in other ways, though. Perhaps it means that media clout rather than credibility in office is Paul’s main aim. Perhaps it means something else.
What follows now is an assessment of the potential and credibility of Paul’s choices in a libertarian administration. My considerations are limited to two things – Zionism and professional integrity.
(Note: None of this is a personal attack on these figures. I wish them all well)
John Stossel, well-known for his investigations into government corruption, manages to be not too libertarian (remember that thing about force AND FRAUD?) when it comes to the vast bankster-speculator-regulation fraud going on for the last 20 years at least. He ignores it.
A Jewish libertarian, a major mainstream figure, who has never talked about the financiers but has gone on about government corruption?
Verdict – Zionist. Fails smell test for professional integrity. Probably competent.
Walter Williams – Zionist. Supports GWOT.
Fails smell test for professional integrity (Sorry, you don’t get to call yourself libertarian and then sign onto perpetual war. I don’t know enough to assess his professional competence.
Walter Block – Zionist (see above). (more later)
Peter Schiff – Zionist (see above). Wrote “Crash Proof,” warning of inflationary excesses in market.
Passes smell test for professional integrity and competence.
Bruce Fein – Zionist and suspected Israeli agent (see Boiling Frogs Post).
Lobbyist with suspect ties and ethical infractions. Strongly civil libertarian but appears to be opportunistic.
Fails smell test for professional integrity. Passes for competence.
Jim Grant – Doyen of hard-money crowd, columnist for major Wall Street magazine, Barron’s (Barron’s is owned by the hedge-fund crowd and is the home of the criminal short-selling cabal, see Deep Capture), author of adulatory biography of Zionist financier, Bernard Baruch, lives in Brooklyn. None of that sounds too encouraging from the point of view of the average Joe, but, Grant has sounded a consistent note of skepticism about the market and predicted a day of reckoning. So while he is a possible Zionist,he passes the smell test for professional integrity and competence.
Andrew Napolitano – Libertarian constitutional scholar, judge and media personality.
Michael Scheuer – ex-CIA, has written vehemently against the Zionist agenda and neoconservatives (but then, so has Bruce Fein). Scheuer was the man on the job during the biggest intelligence failure in US history. That and his kiss-and-squeal book gives him a “fail” for professional competence.
The jury is out as far as professional integrity goes, but I tend to suspect mainstream figures who spout “anti-Semitic” stuff too glibly. Like all those fake-Jihadi sites.
Oh, and his “OBL did it, did it, did too do it,” subtext suggests “limited hang-out” to some observers.
[Anti-Zionist activist, Maidhc O’ Cathail points out why].
Robert Pape: At least, Pape did a good thing by showing that suicide bombing was not invented by Islamicists and is not peculiar to them. It is in fact uncommon and motivated world-wide by strategic considerations rather than religious fundamentalism.
What is interesting is that the two people RP names both have a professional interest in terrorism. Pape’s research into the subject is considered paradigm shifting. He has done extensive work on the group that invented suicide bombing. the Marxist Tamil Tigers, and Fein has been a lobbyist for the Tigers since 2008, after lobbying against them from 2004 until 2007.
The selection of two people whose professional activities relate to terrorism suggests that even if the US is contemplating withdrawal from the Middle East (after having secured Israeli military domination and destabilized the area), it will be engaging in more intervention in another area (read South Asia), where terrorism is rife.
Non-intervention in Palestine then is just another word for nothing left to gain there and more to come in Pakistan-India (Islamic terrorism, LTT terrorism, Maoist/Naxalite terrorism, Naga terrorism).
Says Pape, who heads up the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism:
“Even if al-Qaeda becomes a thing of the past, that doesn’t mean terrorism will disappear. This field has become a key component of the academic world, and it will continue to contribute to our understanding of world events in the future.”
Pape’s other writing (on the uses of air power and the efficacy of economic sanctions, among others) tends toward a realist and conservative use of force, one that limits itself to sharply circumscribed circumstances and methods. Nothing not to like here.
But, not unexpectedly, his research doesn’t seem to run to the deep structures (drugs, crime, mafias, covert operations) that more and more dominate the actual conduct of politics.
Political sympathies unknown. Passes the smell test for professional integrity and competence.