OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBINGS

ALL RED FEATHER MATERIALS ARE ALWAYS FREE TO STUDENTS AND TO THOSE WHO TEACH THEM....T R Young

Pre-theoretical Politics

Revenge, Retaliation, Resistance and Rebellion

THE BOMBINGS IN OKLAHOMA CITY
No. 23 in the Series.


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SOCGRAD MINI-LECTURES

by

T. R. Young
The Red Feather Institute


 

INTRODUCTION. Those of you who teach will have students who want to know how to understand the bombing in Oklahoma City. It occurred to me that it might be a good idea to shift off the postmodern series and give you some ideas about political sociology which might be helpful to you Monday, next.

PRE-THEORETICAL POLITICS. The term, pre-theoretical comes from the marxian critique of those political movements which do not identify the sources of alienation and exploitation; and which as a result do more harm than good in the effort to gain remedy. Historical examples might be the Crusades [inspired by the belief that God was angry with Christians for leaving the Holy Land in the hands of Muslims and, in that anger, sent death, disease, poverty and affliction to people in England, France, Germany and such.

Then too, the destruction of weaving machines by the Luddites might be such a politics. More recently, the rise of racism as a scapegoat for the real problems of dis-employed white workers or domestic violence by the dis-employed worker might be read as pre-theoretical violence. Beating one's own children will not change the objective conditions in the larger economy which result in 'down-sizing,' 'capital flight' or 'give-backs' experienced by workers all over the world.

In the case at hand, the bombing of Federal Buildings in Oklahoma City will not 'get the government off our backs.' Nor would assassinations of Presidents, Congress-persons, Judges or other officials change the political economy of the nation or the world. It might be argued that assassination of Hitler would have been effective thus, at least partially theoretically informed. It might be argued that stealing from the rich rich and giving to the poor might be, partially, theoretically informed crime...but killing children and agriculture department workers in Oklahoma City could not be much more than pre-theoretical revenge and retaliation for...it is said...the death of the Branch Davidians in Waco two years to the day of the bombing.

THEORIES OF THE STATE. There are several theories of the State which are part and parcel of the critique of the far Right which bear on the events in Oklahoma City. In setting these out, I do not want to be read as endorsing such ideas...nor do I want to be dis-respectful to the memory of those who died in the bombing...the point is to understand the reasoning; not to applaud it.

Natural Law [with a capital N...]. There are many who believe that there is a Natural Law ordained by their God under which all political life must work. They believe that Natural Law takes precedence over the laws passed by Congresses, State and Municipalities. There is a lot of evidence that the various Militias around the country take that position. Indeed, the reason that Mr. McVey was detained by police was that he did not have a driver's license and he was carrying a gun...many in the Michigan Militia and/or the Patriots, claim that the State has no right to license those who drive private vehicles...that the ability to drive is a god-given ability. And the right to bear arms is justified by both the Constitution [given to State Militias...not private persons per se; thus the name, Michigan Militia...or Montana or any of the other 10 states in which they are currently organized].

Natural Law has a powerful appeal to a great many who do not share the view that violence is justifiable...the good and gentle Jehovah Witnesses went to jail rather than violate their views of Natural Law in World War I. They attained the right of 'conscientious objectors' in WWII. You may recall that Clarence Thomas spoke much of Natural Law in his confirmation hearings...this was a side-bar to the larger issue of sexist harassment levied at him. Both liberal and conservatives in the Republican party liked to hear that...for liberal capitalists, it means that the State should not interfere in private business; for conservative Christians, it means the State should not interfere in patriarchal gender relations, family, church, or educational practices.

MODERN THEORIES OF THE STATE. Against the pre-modern view that the State should embody Natural Law or at least defer to it, there is a distinctly modern view that the State embodies what little 'rationality' possible to the human estate. Although Hobbes took the position that the State was a 'mortal god' and while Hegel viewed the State as 'the March of God in the World,' the larger point is that, with the advent of modern science, pre- modern theories of the State were set aside in favor of one in which science could discover natural [small 'n'] and social laws, inform the State and, thus via the State, move toward a more perfect society. While the intention might be admirable, the result was benevolent despotism or, as some now put it, friendly fascism.

Given the view that economists, sociologists, political scientists, psychologists and other scientists should discover those laws and advise the State about policy, there was little room for either democracy or theocracy in these modernist/scientific theories of the State. Remember that it was Comte who took this position...he wanted to call sociology social physics at first and took the view that sociologists should dis- place the priesthood as the engineers of social policy.

One can see why modern political theory, informed by the logic of modern science, should be despised and desprized by those who think that political agency should be vested in God or in the body politic. In order to 'ratio- nalize society; in order to control social life, the state must go every- where, enquire into everything, watch everyone and police everyone. The quest for order and for control is part and parcel of modernist philosophies of science [fortunately, there is a postmodern philosophy of science which forestalls Leviathan [Hobbes term; I will conclude the series on post- modernity with some work I am doing on pomo/phil/science].

The result of modernist theories of the state is a proliferation of laws [there are over 5 million statutes on the books in the USA; there are over 1800 law making bodies; the various policing systems expand daily; the number of people in jail, on probation or under surveillance grows logarithmically] and an increasing allocation of national resources to the control of those who do not follow the linear logic of crime and punishment [Foucault describes the efforts of the State to 'inscribe' rationality upon criminals with torture and brutality in his 'Discipline and Punish]. The thought is, from Bentham, that people are/should be rational...they should weight the costs/benefits of an act and decide to maximize reward; minimize cost [read pleasure/pain for cost/benefit]. Modern criminologists advocate increasing pain and decreasing pleasure from the acts which are forbidden by law...so the State expands and comes to be seen as the purveyor of pain; the preventor of pleasure.

LIBERAL/DEMOCRATIC THEORIES OF THE STATE. John Stuart Mill whose essays on freedom argued for a lively debate in the public sphere. Mills accepted the idea of Representative forms of governance [rather than direct democracy] since, he thought, the people were, for the most part, incapable of Enlightened Self government. But Mills views were a giant step toward full democracy; as was most of the Constitution of the United States as first adopted.

In modern liberal representative government, there is to be a 'market place' of ideas in which the best ideas [those which are the best reasoned] are put into law.

MARXIAN THEORY OF THE STATE. For Marx, the State was an instrument of the ruling classes. In Slavery, Feudalism and in Capitalism, laws passed by the State were 'ambushes behind which lurked the interests of the Ruling Classes.' Marx spoke of the 'withering away' of the State as communism enhanced human agency and make for direct democracy. Among the points in the Manifesto was a call for political franchise for everyone. In his life Marx wavered about the transitional role of the State...deeply suspicious of the State as the 'alienation' of human agency [one should not give over to the State their own powers to do good or evil], the current reading of Marx is that he favored socialism [state ownership of the means of production; state extraction of surplus value; state allocation of surplus value to common needs; and above all, state control of counter-revolution].

The Stalinist version of State agency [also known as vanguardism...the Party should rule since the people are still 'infected' by bourgeois ideas and/or the remnants of feudal/slave mentality] did much to dis-credit the hopes of working class people that the State could be a transitional form and that social justice would result by this temporary role of the State. Instead, Stalinist seemed to validate the aphorism of Lord Acton, 'Power corrupts; absolute Power corrupts absolutely.'

The dis-enchantment with the State and its promise to deliver social justice to workers, to the poor and to the oppressed has a wide social base today. The popularity of Rush Limbaugh [I like to listen to him as I drive across this great country of ours...he fills the lonely night with outrageous claims which greatly amuse and bemuse me] resonates with this dis-enchantment. The renewal of religious sensibility in New Age religion and in Liberation Theology is informed by dis-enchantment with the state; on both the Left and the Right there is a more privatized settlement of human agency. Much of that is to be admired and sustained. The base communities of Liberation Theology are, in my opinion, wonderful embodiments of the best in Christ- ianity and in Marxist social theory.

Liberation Theology argues that there is private sin which can be redeemed by acceptance of Christ in one's life; and there is structural sin, [the sin of previous generations institutionalized into racist, sexist, and class oppression] which can be dis-mantled by extricating the liberative message in both the old and the new testament.

UNDERGROUND STRUCTURES IN THE DEMOCRATIC STATE. Somewhere I published an article explaining why there were so many underground political, economic and sexual structures in the USA. In brief, I said that in openly exploitative societies, the State does the dirty work of the ruling class with little ceremony and less apology. The more democratic becomes a State, [ i.e., the more state functionaries respond to various constituencies], the more likely are those who benefit from racism, sexism or class privilege to go underground. In the USA, the State has abandoned its historic role in supporting racist policies. Jefferson began it when he wrote a gradual withdrawal from slavery into the Constitution. Trade in slavery was to end 10 years after the adoption of the Constitution; it became unconstitutional in 1810.

The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 moved the federal state much farther from endorsement of slavery...although a presidential order is not law nor is it constitution...it did lead to the 13th and 14th Amendments which did make slavery unconstitutional. Still what is Constitutional and what is legal are two very different things. The Missouri Compromise gave effective control to states over the law while the Constitution retained its distance from slavery. The Civil Rights movement in the 50's and 60's renewed the role of the state in opposing racism and, now if one wants to claim racial superiority for those who think they are 'white,' they have be circumspect; if they want to act on those beliefs, they have to go underground. The most active underground structures in the USA are those which are informed by pre-modern ideas about race, gender and religion. They tell themselves that they are the agents of God; that they are on a sacred crusade to forestall the 'evil plans' of Jews, the UN, radical separatists feminists, liberals of every stripe [including those such as William Buckley who also inveighs against the State] as well as Anti-Christs. The concept of the Anti-Christ is limited only by the poetic genius of those who write and preach in this most unholy crusade.

POSTMODERN POLITICS. There is a negative, nihilist postmodernity in which since there is no God and no legitimate 'authority' to forbid/demand any thing, then all is permitted. The name of this is a privatized anarchy in which, for capitalists, the rough work of the marketplace leads to the greatest good of the greatest number of people over successive waves of growth, competition and recession. In moral terms, since there is no grounds from either science or theology for setting the standards of behavior, all is permitted; all is a contract between 'freely consenting' persons.

There is a more affirmative postmodernity which says, that while is it is impossible to ground ethical and moral behavior in either Natural or natural law, still human beings can ground morality on mutually agreeable principles; principles which take the form of general guidelines for behavior rather than Iron Laws. In this politics reason should trump rationality [see the Horkheimer/Adorno essay on Reason and Rationality]. In this politics, something like the UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights should guide policy...but not determine it. Steve White, at Virginia Tech, has a book on pomo politics which might be useful to those of you in political sociology. My copy is at home in Michigan or I would give you the full citation.

In all of this, some of your students will be most distressed. They will bring a lot of rumors, half-truths, home truths, and distorted reports to class...be gentle, be helpful, be patient and be willing to by-pass your syllabus to deal with their real concern...one teaches best when the students are ready to learn. Give them something useful to do on the topic and they will be your students for the rest of their lives....such response makes teaching a most rewarding profession. As the Clerk said in the Canterbury Tales,

'...gladly wold I lern; and gladly teche.'

T. R. Young