- Socially Necessary Labor Time (SNLT): The total amount of human labor (abstracted from the specific tasks) embedded in a product, that is necessary to create a commodity (including capital creation, raw material/intermediate goods supply, and administration) in a particular social/technological context. Marx uses an average of all producers, but the average is not the correct statistic (otherwise some producers would operate at a loss). Instead, the marginal time is used: the labor time of the last, least efficiently produced instance of the commodity (amortizing capital and administration over all instances produced), which should equal the marginal demand for that last, least satisfying instance actually consumed.
- Exchange Value: The total amount of Socially Necessary Abstract Labor Time (SNLT) embodied in a commodity. The exchange value includes all the SNLT, including the SNLT necessary to create the capital and create the raw materials.
- Labor Power: The ability to work for a full period (e.g. a day).
- Cost of Labor Power: The SNLT required to create another period (day) of Labor Power, i.e. the SNLT required to supply a worker with the necessary food, shelter, clothing, medical care, leisure, etc. to work another period (day) and to reproduce the labor force. Because workers are human, the Cost of Labor Power may be more than bare subsistence.
- Labor Time: The actual amount of time a worker works in a period when he expends his or her labor power. The Labor Time worked will be less than the SNTL used to purchase his or her Labor Power.
- Profit: The difference between the Labor Time and the Cost of Labor Power employed by a firm
Sunday, March 29, 2015
Definitions
According to Marx's theory then:
Labor and labor power
A question that puzzled Marx's predecessors was, where does profit come from? When a business makes a profit, what precisely are they making? Yes, they can make a money profit, but money does not have intrinsic use-value (by definition: if you actually consume a money-thing, such as salt, it ceases to be money and becomes an ordinary commodity). What does that money represent? If a capitalist pays full value for labor and capital (ignoring land), and exchange value is just the value of the labor and capital, then where does the profit come from? Neither Smith nor Ricardo were happy with their answers to this question.
What Marx does is posit that "labor" is really composed of two things: actual labor, the amount of work that's actually done, and labor power, the amount of work necessary to keep a worker alive, able to work another day, and reproduce the next generation of laborers. So, it might take six hours of labor to grow the food, build the houses, manufacture the clothes, etc. to keep a worker alive, and this cost of labor power will allow the worker to work twelve hours the next day. Thus, the capitalist does not pay full value for labor: he pays only for labor power, which costs "six hours", and receives "twelve hours" of actual labor; his profit is thus "six hours" of labor, i.e. the surplus value of labor. Although the capitalist is obtaining six hours of "free" labor from the worker, this exchange of wages for labor power is, in capitalist terms, a "free" exchange that satisfies the Labor Theory of Value: the worker is exchanging a commodity, his labor power, which costs "six hours" of labor, for wages (representing goods) worth "six hours" of labor.
(Marx makes the point that workers are not mindless objects. A chair cannot object that someone exchanges it for its cost, but workers can and do object, sometimes violently. Therefore, workers can politically demand a price for their labor power, with a lower bound set by bare subsistence, and an upper bound set by their total amount of labor. And different categories of workers can have different political power, so the price of labor power can differ by category or sector.)
This analysis is the point of the Labor Theory of Value. It is not to predict actual market prices on a day to day basis. There are many things that can change market prices in the short term and medium term. If you're interested in price arbitrage, trying to calculate the "true" price (and arbitrage "distorted" prices), the LTV is not a particularly good tool. The LTV is a conceptual tool for understanding what capitalism is all about. Marx notes that Ricardo, Smith, and Benjamin Franklin observed that all human beings have to trade that is our own is labor; the fruits of nature are given to us for "free": we do not have to work to make the sun shine, the rain fall, plants and animals grow. Yes, people can "own" things like land or capital, and while they themselves do nothing directly productive, they can still charge people to work on it. However, what they are obtaining is the surplus labor of the people who are actually productive.
Assume my land can use a certain amount of direct labor (ignoring for the moment labor indirectly embedded in some capital) to produce a certain amount of corn. The cost of labor power, what I must give to the workers, is less than the total amount of corn I can grow. I keep the extra corn. The exchange-value of the corn I have left is precisely the difference between what the labor produces and what the labor costs. (And, in fact, the amount of labor I hire is precisely the amount at which the "last" laborer produces just the cost of labor power.)
I can exchange the extra corn I grow for an equal amount of labor embedded in other goods. If I could trade it for more labor embedded in some other good, then people would stop using labor to make the other good and start growing corn; similarly, if I could trade it only for less labor embedded in other good, then I would stop using labor to grow corn and start making the other good, and trade with other (more foolish or more efficient) producers of corn.
Previous: Marx's project: Introduction and commodities (and Measuring socially necessary abstract labor time
Next: The organic composition of capital
What Marx does is posit that "labor" is really composed of two things: actual labor, the amount of work that's actually done, and labor power, the amount of work necessary to keep a worker alive, able to work another day, and reproduce the next generation of laborers. So, it might take six hours of labor to grow the food, build the houses, manufacture the clothes, etc. to keep a worker alive, and this cost of labor power will allow the worker to work twelve hours the next day. Thus, the capitalist does not pay full value for labor: he pays only for labor power, which costs "six hours", and receives "twelve hours" of actual labor; his profit is thus "six hours" of labor, i.e. the surplus value of labor. Although the capitalist is obtaining six hours of "free" labor from the worker, this exchange of wages for labor power is, in capitalist terms, a "free" exchange that satisfies the Labor Theory of Value: the worker is exchanging a commodity, his labor power, which costs "six hours" of labor, for wages (representing goods) worth "six hours" of labor.
(Marx makes the point that workers are not mindless objects. A chair cannot object that someone exchanges it for its cost, but workers can and do object, sometimes violently. Therefore, workers can politically demand a price for their labor power, with a lower bound set by bare subsistence, and an upper bound set by their total amount of labor. And different categories of workers can have different political power, so the price of labor power can differ by category or sector.)
This analysis is the point of the Labor Theory of Value. It is not to predict actual market prices on a day to day basis. There are many things that can change market prices in the short term and medium term. If you're interested in price arbitrage, trying to calculate the "true" price (and arbitrage "distorted" prices), the LTV is not a particularly good tool. The LTV is a conceptual tool for understanding what capitalism is all about. Marx notes that Ricardo, Smith, and Benjamin Franklin observed that all human beings have to trade that is our own is labor; the fruits of nature are given to us for "free": we do not have to work to make the sun shine, the rain fall, plants and animals grow. Yes, people can "own" things like land or capital, and while they themselves do nothing directly productive, they can still charge people to work on it. However, what they are obtaining is the surplus labor of the people who are actually productive.
Assume my land can use a certain amount of direct labor (ignoring for the moment labor indirectly embedded in some capital) to produce a certain amount of corn. The cost of labor power, what I must give to the workers, is less than the total amount of corn I can grow. I keep the extra corn. The exchange-value of the corn I have left is precisely the difference between what the labor produces and what the labor costs. (And, in fact, the amount of labor I hire is precisely the amount at which the "last" laborer produces just the cost of labor power.)
I can exchange the extra corn I grow for an equal amount of labor embedded in other goods. If I could trade it for more labor embedded in some other good, then people would stop using labor to make the other good and start growing corn; similarly, if I could trade it only for less labor embedded in other good, then I would stop using labor to grow corn and start making the other good, and trade with other (more foolish or more efficient) producers of corn.
Previous: Marx's project: Introduction and commodities (and Measuring socially necessary abstract labor time
Next: The organic composition of capital
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Measuring socially necessary abstract labor time
In his comment (and on his excellent blog, Social Democracy for the 21st Century) LK argues that it's impossible to define, much less measure, socially necessary abstract labor time (SNALT).
First, the "abstract" in SNALT refers to labor abstracted from the specific things that laborers do. Marx argues that because the specific tasks are incommensurable (how do compare sewing a seam to gluing a sole to a shoe?) the specific tasks used to create different commodities cannot be a basis of a consistent exchange value. In this sense, abstract labor time is just the fact that someone has worked for a specific period of time, without regard to the specific tasks that person has performed.
But there are definitely factors other than time that affect productivity. LK asks, "How do you take an average of a heterogeneous factor like labour, when there is so much difference in profession, skill, competence, experience, and skills to be 'averaged'?"
To get average abstract labor time per unit, first count the number of objects produced, count the total number of raw person-hours used to create those products, including the time necessary to create all the capital, all the skill training, and all externalities, and divide by the number of objects. If you want marginal SNALT, find the least efficient producer who is still in business, and do the same thing just for the last unit they produce. Standard economic theory predicts that the marginal cost of the last unit should equal the minimum average total cost and the price. (LK challenges this aspect of standard economic theory, and it might be incorrect, but marginal cost is not exactly a novel economic concept.) Any effects other than time, skill, competence, experience, etc. should all be normally distributed and should cancel out in the aggregate. This is not rocket science.
Of course, the Labor Theory of Value (LTV) is not the only thing affecting actual money prices. You would want to look for shocks (the price of gas just after the beginning of the Iraq war, for example, would probably not reflect SNALT), monopoly and monopolistic competition (SNALT is a valid predictor of prices only under perfect competition), hidden positive and negative externalities, imperfect or asymmetric information, network effects, etc.
Remember, Marx never intends the LTV to be a tool for predicting prices that hedge funds can use to make a lot of money in arbitrage. The LTV is a conceptual tool to explain what it means to say that the capitalist exploits the working class: the capitalist class expropriates labor time without compensation from the working class.
First, the "abstract" in SNALT refers to labor abstracted from the specific things that laborers do. Marx argues that because the specific tasks are incommensurable (how do compare sewing a seam to gluing a sole to a shoe?) the specific tasks used to create different commodities cannot be a basis of a consistent exchange value. In this sense, abstract labor time is just the fact that someone has worked for a specific period of time, without regard to the specific tasks that person has performed.
But there are definitely factors other than time that affect productivity. LK asks, "How do you take an average of a heterogeneous factor like labour, when there is so much difference in profession, skill, competence, experience, and skills to be 'averaged'?"
To get average abstract labor time per unit, first count the number of objects produced, count the total number of raw person-hours used to create those products, including the time necessary to create all the capital, all the skill training, and all externalities, and divide by the number of objects. If you want marginal SNALT, find the least efficient producer who is still in business, and do the same thing just for the last unit they produce. Standard economic theory predicts that the marginal cost of the last unit should equal the minimum average total cost and the price. (LK challenges this aspect of standard economic theory, and it might be incorrect, but marginal cost is not exactly a novel economic concept.) Any effects other than time, skill, competence, experience, etc. should all be normally distributed and should cancel out in the aggregate. This is not rocket science.
Of course, the Labor Theory of Value (LTV) is not the only thing affecting actual money prices. You would want to look for shocks (the price of gas just after the beginning of the Iraq war, for example, would probably not reflect SNALT), monopoly and monopolistic competition (SNALT is a valid predictor of prices only under perfect competition), hidden positive and negative externalities, imperfect or asymmetric information, network effects, etc.
Remember, Marx never intends the LTV to be a tool for predicting prices that hedge funds can use to make a lot of money in arbitrage. The LTV is a conceptual tool to explain what it means to say that the capitalist exploits the working class: the capitalist class expropriates labor time without compensation from the working class.
Friday, March 27, 2015
Marx's project: Introduction and commodities
I think that to understand Marx, it is necessary to understand what his project was. I'm writing quickly, so I'm not going to cite, and this is my personal interpretation of my (rather limited) reading of Marx. As I mention below, all theories are false, but some are useful; I'm describing here why I think Marx's theories about capitalism are useful. I am not a truth relativist; I'm saying only that our theories about the world are always limited and approximate.
Marx starts with two observations: first, by the middle of the 19th century, capitalism had increased the forces of human production by at least a couple of orders of magnitude relative to feudalism; second, most people in industrialized economies were living in abject misery, far worse than under feudalism. Why? Smith (and perhaps Ricardo) were convinced that greater economic activity would lead to increased happiness for everyone, including the working class. By the mid 1800's, almost a century after Smith published The Wealth of Nations in 1776, the condition of the working class had actually declined. Why?
Marx rejected the hypothesis that the rulers of capitalist society are just especially bad people. Indeed, although Marx's seething rage at the suffering of the workers is apparent, in his economic writing, Marx rarely (if ever) employs a moral critique of anyone or anything, even capitalism. (Marx did not exhibit the same reserve in his personal relationships.) Marx was enraged, to be sure, but he knows that the fact that he is enraged is of no value; he wants to understand why he's enraged, and what precisely he's enraged about. Even before writing Capital, Marx was already convinced that not individual "evil" capitalists, but rather the fundamental structure of capitalism was responsible for human misery. Thus, Unlike his predecessors and other economists, Marx was completely uninterested in a descriptive, positivist account of how capitalism works. Instead, Marx's analysis of capitalism was geared towards locating precisely what it is about the structural relations of capitalism that causes the misery of the working class.
Marx was a theoretician, not a scientist, and he was trying to solve a problem, not simply describe the world as it is. It is important to understand that, like every scientific theory, Marx's theory is a model. All models, scientific and economic, cut away, i.e. abstract, important parts of reality. In much the same sense, theories of gravity abstract away things like air resistance. Looking only at gravity will not explain why aircraft fly, but to make an aircraft fly, we still have to understand gravity on its own terms. Because all models abstract away important parts of reality, all models are wrong; some models, however, are useful. Because a theory of gravity, neglecting air resistance, is useful for making aircraft fly, we continue to use it, in addition, of course, to theories of aerodynamics.
So, Marx begins Capital with a theoretical analysis of the commodity. Marx defines a commodity as:
Using this definition, Marx comes to the surprising conclusion: the exchange-value of commodities, i.e. the quantity of a commodity that will be freely exchanged for a quantity of another commodity, depends only on the total quantity of socially necessary abstract labor time (SNLT) used to create the commodity. Marx first argues that for a free exchange to take place, there must be something equivalent in the commodities exchanged. If there were nothing at all equivalent, then exchanges would be arbitrary and highly variable: one person would exchange a coat for ten pairs of shoes, others would exchange ten coats for one pair of shoes, and everywhere in between. But, given competition, even if someone really wanted a coat, and had more shoes than he knew what to do with, if one person with a coat will take two pairs of shoes and another demands ten pairs, he will still buy from the cheaper seller, and vice-versa. There are some price variations, but I don't see a gallon of gas selling for \$0.10 at one station and \$10.00 at another.
Marx rejects the idea that use-value has anything to do with exchange-value. Marx argues that use-values are incommensurable. We cannot quantitatively compare the use-value of keeping one's body dry with the use-value of a good meal. No one, Marx argues, would exchange comparable use-values, i.e. exchange a coat for a coat. Since use-values are incommensurable, they cannot be equal. And this position makes sense, even if we could numerically compare use-value. I need a certain amount of food every day to survive — a hamburger has infinite use-value to me — but I don't sell myself into slavery for a meal. Similarly, my local restaurant has more hamburgers than the owners could possibly eat — they have zero use-value to the owners — but they don't just give them to me for free. Furthermore, my computer is far more useful to me than my car (if you forced me to choose, I would give my car without hesitation), but I paid twenty times more for my car than for my computer. The whole point of trade is that both parties gain more use-value than they give up; there can be nothing directly equivalent about a positive-sum game.
Marx argues that what can be, and is, equal about two commodities is the socially necessary abstract labor time used to create them. If, counting all the labor time, including the labor time necessary to create the physical capital, it takes one hour of labor time to create a pair of shoes and two hours to create a coat, then two pairs of shoes will have the same exchange-value as a coat; in a money economy, then a coat will have double the money price of a pair of shoes. Again, this makes sense: if I someone is selling a coat for three times the price of a pair of shoes, then I will just work and create the coat myself, giving up the time I could use to create only two pairs of shoes. More precisely, if a company can make identical coats for two-thirds the price their competitors charge, they will do so, and sell all the coats they make.
The qualifiers "socially necessary" and "abstract" are important. "Socially necessary" means that inefficient producers relative to the technical and social state of production do not get to charge more for their commodities than efficient producers. "Abstract" means that the details of precisely how some commodity is produced is irrelevant; what matters is only the actual time (and perhaps other factors, such as intensity and agreeableness/disagreeableness of the labor) involved.
Again, I will reiterate: the Labor Theory of (Exchange-)Value is a model. Marx does not argue that if you go out and measure the money price and socially necessary abstract labor time of every product on the market, you will get a nice neat regression line with only random errors. In much the same sense, if you drop a hammer and a feather, the hammer will hit the ground well before the feather. But Marx does say that if there really is free competition, and if labor really can create more of a commodity, then yes, there will be a direct correlation between the prices and socially necessary abstract labor time. Similarly, if there is a substantial discrepancy between prices and socially necessary abstract labor time, then there will be a violation of the assumption of free competition.
Sidebar: Measuring socially necessary abstract labor time
Next: Labor and labor power
Marx starts with two observations: first, by the middle of the 19th century, capitalism had increased the forces of human production by at least a couple of orders of magnitude relative to feudalism; second, most people in industrialized economies were living in abject misery, far worse than under feudalism. Why? Smith (and perhaps Ricardo) were convinced that greater economic activity would lead to increased happiness for everyone, including the working class. By the mid 1800's, almost a century after Smith published The Wealth of Nations in 1776, the condition of the working class had actually declined. Why?
Marx rejected the hypothesis that the rulers of capitalist society are just especially bad people. Indeed, although Marx's seething rage at the suffering of the workers is apparent, in his economic writing, Marx rarely (if ever) employs a moral critique of anyone or anything, even capitalism. (Marx did not exhibit the same reserve in his personal relationships.) Marx was enraged, to be sure, but he knows that the fact that he is enraged is of no value; he wants to understand why he's enraged, and what precisely he's enraged about. Even before writing Capital, Marx was already convinced that not individual "evil" capitalists, but rather the fundamental structure of capitalism was responsible for human misery. Thus, Unlike his predecessors and other economists, Marx was completely uninterested in a descriptive, positivist account of how capitalism works. Instead, Marx's analysis of capitalism was geared towards locating precisely what it is about the structural relations of capitalism that causes the misery of the working class.
Marx was a theoretician, not a scientist, and he was trying to solve a problem, not simply describe the world as it is. It is important to understand that, like every scientific theory, Marx's theory is a model. All models, scientific and economic, cut away, i.e. abstract, important parts of reality. In much the same sense, theories of gravity abstract away things like air resistance. Looking only at gravity will not explain why aircraft fly, but to make an aircraft fly, we still have to understand gravity on its own terms. Because all models abstract away important parts of reality, all models are wrong; some models, however, are useful. Because a theory of gravity, neglecting air resistance, is useful for making aircraft fly, we continue to use it, in addition, of course, to theories of aerodynamics.
So, Marx begins Capital with a theoretical analysis of the commodity. Marx defines a commodity as:
- A physical object that
- by virtue of its physical properties has some use-value (i.e. its consumption satisfies some human want),
- can and must be created using directed, willful human effort (i.e. labor), and
- is created for the purpose of exchanging it for other commodities.
Using this definition, Marx comes to the surprising conclusion: the exchange-value of commodities, i.e. the quantity of a commodity that will be freely exchanged for a quantity of another commodity, depends only on the total quantity of socially necessary abstract labor time (SNLT) used to create the commodity. Marx first argues that for a free exchange to take place, there must be something equivalent in the commodities exchanged. If there were nothing at all equivalent, then exchanges would be arbitrary and highly variable: one person would exchange a coat for ten pairs of shoes, others would exchange ten coats for one pair of shoes, and everywhere in between. But, given competition, even if someone really wanted a coat, and had more shoes than he knew what to do with, if one person with a coat will take two pairs of shoes and another demands ten pairs, he will still buy from the cheaper seller, and vice-versa. There are some price variations, but I don't see a gallon of gas selling for \$0.10 at one station and \$10.00 at another.
Marx rejects the idea that use-value has anything to do with exchange-value. Marx argues that use-values are incommensurable. We cannot quantitatively compare the use-value of keeping one's body dry with the use-value of a good meal. No one, Marx argues, would exchange comparable use-values, i.e. exchange a coat for a coat. Since use-values are incommensurable, they cannot be equal. And this position makes sense, even if we could numerically compare use-value. I need a certain amount of food every day to survive — a hamburger has infinite use-value to me — but I don't sell myself into slavery for a meal. Similarly, my local restaurant has more hamburgers than the owners could possibly eat — they have zero use-value to the owners — but they don't just give them to me for free. Furthermore, my computer is far more useful to me than my car (if you forced me to choose, I would give my car without hesitation), but I paid twenty times more for my car than for my computer. The whole point of trade is that both parties gain more use-value than they give up; there can be nothing directly equivalent about a positive-sum game.
Marx argues that what can be, and is, equal about two commodities is the socially necessary abstract labor time used to create them. If, counting all the labor time, including the labor time necessary to create the physical capital, it takes one hour of labor time to create a pair of shoes and two hours to create a coat, then two pairs of shoes will have the same exchange-value as a coat; in a money economy, then a coat will have double the money price of a pair of shoes. Again, this makes sense: if I someone is selling a coat for three times the price of a pair of shoes, then I will just work and create the coat myself, giving up the time I could use to create only two pairs of shoes. More precisely, if a company can make identical coats for two-thirds the price their competitors charge, they will do so, and sell all the coats they make.
The qualifiers "socially necessary" and "abstract" are important. "Socially necessary" means that inefficient producers relative to the technical and social state of production do not get to charge more for their commodities than efficient producers. "Abstract" means that the details of precisely how some commodity is produced is irrelevant; what matters is only the actual time (and perhaps other factors, such as intensity and agreeableness/disagreeableness of the labor) involved.
Again, I will reiterate: the Labor Theory of (Exchange-)Value is a model. Marx does not argue that if you go out and measure the money price and socially necessary abstract labor time of every product on the market, you will get a nice neat regression line with only random errors. In much the same sense, if you drop a hammer and a feather, the hammer will hit the ground well before the feather. But Marx does say that if there really is free competition, and if labor really can create more of a commodity, then yes, there will be a direct correlation between the prices and socially necessary abstract labor time. Similarly, if there is a substantial discrepancy between prices and socially necessary abstract labor time, then there will be a violation of the assumption of free competition.
Sidebar: Measuring socially necessary abstract labor time
Next: Labor and labor power
Sunday, March 15, 2015
Marx was (mostly) right
Economists! Be more Marxist:
When I say "we", I don't just mean we Marxists. I mean all economists. I suffer no dissonance at all between writing (more or less) conventional economics in my day job and being some kind of Marxist. The important distinction is not between heterodox and orthodox economics, but between good and bad economics - and Marx is often good economics, in the sense of fitting the facts.
Monday, March 09, 2015
The autonomous individual
What does it mean to be an "autonomous" person? This is a riddle, in Adorno's sense.
Briefly, Adorno argues that philosophy is not like science. Philosophy does not ask "questions" with "answers" in the scientific sense of the word. Philosophy does not ask questions like, "What is the charge on an electron?" with answers like, "1.602176565(35)×10−19 coulombs." Philosophy deals in riddles — negations, contradictions — which cannot be "answered" but must be "sublated" or negated again. A riddle is a negation: "When is a door not a door?" The response sublates the riddle, negates the negation: "When it's ajar." The whole system, riddle and response, dissolves the contradiction of the riddle, and, when nontrivial, creates a new level of meaning, or at least destroys a delusion. Adorno does not, however, argue that riddles are in any sense transcendental, that they have nothing to do with science; instead, science (broadly conceived), in addition to answering questions, poses or creates riddles; without science, there would be no riddles for philosophers to untangle.
Every individual's consciousness is constructed by his or her family, society, and culture. A person who develops without any human society does not develop any consciousness at all; consciousness, personality, is not by itself something latent in infants, in the same sense that a plan for their bodily development is latent in their DNA.* We have certain propensities latent in our physical neurology: the development of language, of empathy, of reason, and perhaps some instincts (or perhaps not), but there is not an actual personality latent in an infant mind; there is at most only the propensity to develop some personality.
*Yes, I know that the environment plays a crucial role in the development of the individual phenotype. But the difference between physical development is, I claim, substantively different from mental development. There is nothing at all in mental development even vaguely similar to the phenotype's genetic "latent plan."
Saying that individual consciousness is socially constructed is not, of course, to say that the development of any individual consciousness is predictable, even if it were, at root, deterministic. Development is far too complicated to be predictable in the same sense that the positions of the planets of the Solar System are predictable. But predictability is not the issue: the issue is construction of consciousness from the "outside."
So, if consciousness is constructed, if it is ineluctably social, cultural, what does it mean to be autonomous? If my consciousness is constructed by the prohibitions and compulsions of my society, in what sense am I ever anything other than radically unfree? Given that, how can we ever distinguish between a free and an unfree society? If a slave's psychology could be constructed such that he wanted to be a slave (and why could it not?) would he still be a slave?
There is also the problem of a critique of society and culture: the critic's own consciousness, the fundamental basis of his or her critique, is a construction of society and culture: all criticism is from the "inside"; it can never be from the "outside." Or at least not radically outside; every critique is from the inside of some society and culture. A judgment that a society is good or bad is not the judgment of an individual consciousness; it is the judgment of a society of itself.
Similarly, what about an individual's self-judgment? When I feel pride or guilt, about myself, where does that judgment come from? Whose judgment is it? My own? Society's? Can any judgment of myself be anything but society's domination of the self? Even this post is American capitalist culture, which constructed the consciousness and personality of that possibly fictitious thing called "Larry," questioning itself. Why should any resolution not be simply tautological?
The problem of autonomy is, I think, the true "hard problem" of consciousness. (What passes for the "hard problem" in contemporary philosophy, i.e. how can non-conscious matter form consciousness, seems to me, after years of study, to be a scientific question with an answer, or just a pseudo-problem.)
Briefly, Adorno argues that philosophy is not like science. Philosophy does not ask "questions" with "answers" in the scientific sense of the word. Philosophy does not ask questions like, "What is the charge on an electron?" with answers like, "1.602176565(35)×10−19 coulombs." Philosophy deals in riddles — negations, contradictions — which cannot be "answered" but must be "sublated" or negated again. A riddle is a negation: "When is a door not a door?" The response sublates the riddle, negates the negation: "When it's ajar." The whole system, riddle and response, dissolves the contradiction of the riddle, and, when nontrivial, creates a new level of meaning, or at least destroys a delusion. Adorno does not, however, argue that riddles are in any sense transcendental, that they have nothing to do with science; instead, science (broadly conceived), in addition to answering questions, poses or creates riddles; without science, there would be no riddles for philosophers to untangle.
Every individual's consciousness is constructed by his or her family, society, and culture. A person who develops without any human society does not develop any consciousness at all; consciousness, personality, is not by itself something latent in infants, in the same sense that a plan for their bodily development is latent in their DNA.* We have certain propensities latent in our physical neurology: the development of language, of empathy, of reason, and perhaps some instincts (or perhaps not), but there is not an actual personality latent in an infant mind; there is at most only the propensity to develop some personality.
*Yes, I know that the environment plays a crucial role in the development of the individual phenotype. But the difference between physical development is, I claim, substantively different from mental development. There is nothing at all in mental development even vaguely similar to the phenotype's genetic "latent plan."
Saying that individual consciousness is socially constructed is not, of course, to say that the development of any individual consciousness is predictable, even if it were, at root, deterministic. Development is far too complicated to be predictable in the same sense that the positions of the planets of the Solar System are predictable. But predictability is not the issue: the issue is construction of consciousness from the "outside."
So, if consciousness is constructed, if it is ineluctably social, cultural, what does it mean to be autonomous? If my consciousness is constructed by the prohibitions and compulsions of my society, in what sense am I ever anything other than radically unfree? Given that, how can we ever distinguish between a free and an unfree society? If a slave's psychology could be constructed such that he wanted to be a slave (and why could it not?) would he still be a slave?
There is also the problem of a critique of society and culture: the critic's own consciousness, the fundamental basis of his or her critique, is a construction of society and culture: all criticism is from the "inside"; it can never be from the "outside." Or at least not radically outside; every critique is from the inside of some society and culture. A judgment that a society is good or bad is not the judgment of an individual consciousness; it is the judgment of a society of itself.
Similarly, what about an individual's self-judgment? When I feel pride or guilt, about myself, where does that judgment come from? Whose judgment is it? My own? Society's? Can any judgment of myself be anything but society's domination of the self? Even this post is American capitalist culture, which constructed the consciousness and personality of that possibly fictitious thing called "Larry," questioning itself. Why should any resolution not be simply tautological?
The problem of autonomy is, I think, the true "hard problem" of consciousness. (What passes for the "hard problem" in contemporary philosophy, i.e. how can non-conscious matter form consciousness, seems to me, after years of study, to be a scientific question with an answer, or just a pseudo-problem.)
Saturday, February 21, 2015
Dark Leviathan
Dark Leviathan [link fixed]: The Silk Road might have started as a libertarian experiment, but it was doomed to end as a fiefdom run by pirate kings.
Ulbricht built the Silk Road marketplace from nothing, pursuing both a political dream and his own self-interest. However, in making a market he found himself building a micro-state, with increasing levels of bureaucracy and rule‑enforcement and, eventually, the threat of violence against the most dangerous rule‑breakers. Trying to build Galt’s Gulch, he ended up reconstructing Hobbes’s Leviathan; he became the very thing he was trying to escape. But this should not have been a surprise.
Monday, February 16, 2015
Criticism of religion
The New Atheist project is to criticize religion. We pursue this project by a variety of means: from the driest philosophical analysis (e.g. me) to polemics to mockery gentle (e.g. Jesus and Mo) and savage (e.g. Charlie Hebdo). We have our flaw, but only a minority* of New Atheists support geopolitical violence (and that's because most New Atheists are also citizens of imperialist nations, and Western imperialism is not a project initiated by New Atheists), and I literally know of zero New Atheists who condone, much less advocate, personal violence. Regardless of his motivations, regardless even of his opinion of religion, Craig Hicks' murders are absolutely infantile. Our project is not about our enmity with religious people; our project is our criticism of a way of thinking. We want people to be happier, not dead, and we believe religion makes most people unhappier than they could be. And, unlike for example, Black people, atheists are not generally subject to unjust state violence (and many benefit from unjust white, male, class, heteronormative, and cis-gendered privilege); we have no particular need of armed self-defense.
*That's my sense, without the rigorous statistical analysis I don't have the resources to perform.
There are, I will repeat, right-wing, American exceptionalist New Atheists, e.g. Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but their advocacy for Western imperialism is as much politically motivated as religiously, and they are, with no small hypocrisy, allied with an explicitly Christian government. But if you look at what we actually say, you will find neither passive acceptance nor active advocacy for personal violence against religious people. The worst I think you can find is, as PZ Myers argues, a lack of attention specifically to creating a positive ethical system.* But you will find no New Atheists listing Muslims to kill, you will find no New Atheists glorifying cowardly criminals such as Hicks, you will find no New Atheists saying, "The only good Muslim is a dead Muslim." And if you do find such a site, let me know: I will lead the charge against them, and not just exclude them from the New Atheist community, but make them the object of public ridicule. (And if my charge is unsuccessful, then I would leave the New Atheist community instantly.)
*I don't particularly agree with Myers. Almost all New Atheists take a level of ethical functioning for granted, a level that obviously excludes Hicks, and it's boring to talk about things we all agree about. It's much more interesting to talk about our general ethical lapses, e.g. the rampant sexism and only-slightly-less-rampant racism within the atheist community.
Our project is to criticize religion, to delegitimize religion as political and social power. If you want to go to church on Sunday, that's your own business, but if you put your collar on backwards, study the mythology of early Iron Age slaveowning patriarchal goat... herders, you still have zero special privilege to set the moral, ethical, or political agenda.
Religious people despise our project, and they want us to just shut the fuck up. All religious people want to preserve religious privilege in general, and then argue — or fight — about which religion is better. Even the Infamous Brad would rather excuse the misogyny, homophobia, anti-science propaganda, right-wing authoritarianism, and scriptural support for violence in Islam than admit his own religion is at best a hobby and at worst a delusion.
If the primary cause of religious bigotry, discrimination, oppression, and violence were New Atheists' criticism of all religion, then there might be some case for asking us to rethink our position. But the real primary cause of religious bigotry, discrimination, oppression, and violence is, of course, religion itself. You say that religion had nothing whatsoever to do with the Charlie Hebdo murders? That relgion had nothing whatsoever to do with murders of David Gunn, John Britton, James Barrett, Shannon Lowney, Lee Ann Nichols, Robert Sanderson, Barnett Slepian, and George Tiller? That no one ever religiously justifies the abuse of children? That religion had nothing to do with the Indian Partition and between 200,000 and 1,000,000 deaths? Fair enough; even the New Atheists will admit that there are a lot of political and non-religious cultural reasons going on there. But then you say it's ridiculously obtuse denialism that New Atheists might look for other reasons for Hicks' murders?
I seem to recall something about beams and motes in the Bible.
You religious people want to slaughter each other over your gods. Not all of you, and, lately not even most of you, but a lot of you: even per capita a lot more religious people want to slaughter other religious people than New Atheists want to slaughter anyone. (Sometimes just because of different religions; more often using religion to justify the slaughter.) And most of you no longer want to slaughter each other in no small part because of us, the atheists, secularists and some religious people, all of whom dared subject religious beliefs to rational scrutiny, and to condemn the stupidity and brutality of those beliefs on secular, humanistic grounds.
We're having none of that. We will generally condemn Hicks, he is no longer "one of us" in any sense. He is no longer a New Atheist because we define New Atheism to exclude infantile personal violence: it's our group, and we can define ourselves as we please. Anyone who praises Hicks, anyone who advocates what Hicks did, is right the fuck out. And not just out of our community: we will do what we can to humiliate, delegitimize, and, for such as Hicks, advocate state power to punish, those people in public society.
But we will not shut up. We will not stop criticizing religion. We will not stop pointing out the stupidity, cruelty, and brutality of religion, and we will not stop saying that what you think God does or does not want, good or bad, has nothing whatsoever to do with how reasonable, caring, loving, empathetic and sympathetic human beings behave towards each other.
*That's my sense, without the rigorous statistical analysis I don't have the resources to perform.
There are, I will repeat, right-wing, American exceptionalist New Atheists, e.g. Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but their advocacy for Western imperialism is as much politically motivated as religiously, and they are, with no small hypocrisy, allied with an explicitly Christian government. But if you look at what we actually say, you will find neither passive acceptance nor active advocacy for personal violence against religious people. The worst I think you can find is, as PZ Myers argues, a lack of attention specifically to creating a positive ethical system.* But you will find no New Atheists listing Muslims to kill, you will find no New Atheists glorifying cowardly criminals such as Hicks, you will find no New Atheists saying, "The only good Muslim is a dead Muslim." And if you do find such a site, let me know: I will lead the charge against them, and not just exclude them from the New Atheist community, but make them the object of public ridicule. (And if my charge is unsuccessful, then I would leave the New Atheist community instantly.)
*I don't particularly agree with Myers. Almost all New Atheists take a level of ethical functioning for granted, a level that obviously excludes Hicks, and it's boring to talk about things we all agree about. It's much more interesting to talk about our general ethical lapses, e.g. the rampant sexism and only-slightly-less-rampant racism within the atheist community.
Our project is to criticize religion, to delegitimize religion as political and social power. If you want to go to church on Sunday, that's your own business, but if you put your collar on backwards, study the mythology of early Iron Age slaveowning patriarchal goat... herders, you still have zero special privilege to set the moral, ethical, or political agenda.
Religious people despise our project, and they want us to just shut the fuck up. All religious people want to preserve religious privilege in general, and then argue — or fight — about which religion is better. Even the Infamous Brad would rather excuse the misogyny, homophobia, anti-science propaganda, right-wing authoritarianism, and scriptural support for violence in Islam than admit his own religion is at best a hobby and at worst a delusion.
If the primary cause of religious bigotry, discrimination, oppression, and violence were New Atheists' criticism of all religion, then there might be some case for asking us to rethink our position. But the real primary cause of religious bigotry, discrimination, oppression, and violence is, of course, religion itself. You say that religion had nothing whatsoever to do with the Charlie Hebdo murders? That relgion had nothing whatsoever to do with murders of David Gunn, John Britton, James Barrett, Shannon Lowney, Lee Ann Nichols, Robert Sanderson, Barnett Slepian, and George Tiller? That no one ever religiously justifies the abuse of children? That religion had nothing to do with the Indian Partition and between 200,000 and 1,000,000 deaths? Fair enough; even the New Atheists will admit that there are a lot of political and non-religious cultural reasons going on there. But then you say it's ridiculously obtuse denialism that New Atheists might look for other reasons for Hicks' murders?
I seem to recall something about beams and motes in the Bible.
You religious people want to slaughter each other over your gods. Not all of you, and, lately not even most of you, but a lot of you: even per capita a lot more religious people want to slaughter other religious people than New Atheists want to slaughter anyone. (Sometimes just because of different religions; more often using religion to justify the slaughter.) And most of you no longer want to slaughter each other in no small part because of us, the atheists, secularists and some religious people, all of whom dared subject religious beliefs to rational scrutiny, and to condemn the stupidity and brutality of those beliefs on secular, humanistic grounds.
We're having none of that. We will generally condemn Hicks, he is no longer "one of us" in any sense. He is no longer a New Atheist because we define New Atheism to exclude infantile personal violence: it's our group, and we can define ourselves as we please. Anyone who praises Hicks, anyone who advocates what Hicks did, is right the fuck out. And not just out of our community: we will do what we can to humiliate, delegitimize, and, for such as Hicks, advocate state power to punish, those people in public society.
But we will not shut up. We will not stop criticizing religion. We will not stop pointing out the stupidity, cruelty, and brutality of religion, and we will not stop saying that what you think God does or does not want, good or bad, has nothing whatsoever to do with how reasonable, caring, loving, empathetic and sympathetic human beings behave towards each other.
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Craig, Brad, and the New Atheists
On February 10, 2014, Craig Hicks killed three young people. Hicks actions are abhorrent, criminal, and the deaths of his victims unequivocally tragic. Hicks is not in any way, shape, or form heroic; he is a criminal, a coward, a murderer.* My arguments against our "justice" system notwithstanding, he needs to be punished to the full extent of the law.
*I am not a journalist; I can pre-judge Hicks to my heart's content. I can live with certainly being excluded from sitting on his jury. If I'm wrong, I'll apologize.
Hicks is, among other things, an atheist, and his victims were, among other things, Muslims.
Thus, we do have to ask: did the New Atheist "community," however defined, contribute to this crime? I think the question cannot simply be dismissed; it needs to be asked, and we must answer it carefully and deliberately.
In Muslim Panic, Satanic Panic?, the Infamous Brad, presumably a NeoPagan, whom I've been reading for years, and for whom I have tremendous respect, answers in the affirmative: The New Atheist community is nothing "but an anti-Muslim hate group." If Brad's charge is true, then the New Atheist community definitely would bear substantial responsibility for Hicks' murders, even if it is true that Hicks is legally insane or has a serious medical mental illness.
But, uncharacteristically, Brad's argument is substantially flawed.
Brad first mentions the Washington Post article, "Chapel Hill killings shine light on particular tensions between Islam and atheism," where author Michelle Boorstein explores the possible relationship between New Atheism and Hicks' murders. Boorstein delivers a balanced piece, raising the question of the relationship between "public criticism and violence," in contrast with statements by spokespersons of notable atheist organizations decisively rejecting Hicks' kind of violence. Brad then contrasts Boorstein's article with The Baffler article, The Nuances of Nonbelief. In this article, Stuart Whatley argues that atheism, being simply the absence of belief, has no overarching ideology that could be a legitimate cause of Hicks' crimes.
Brad dismisses Whatley's argument out of hand first as a "No True Scotsman" fallacy, but this dismissal seems completely unfounded. A "No True Scotsman" fallacy is a fallacious move from an empirical claim to a definitional claim. As far as I know, no New Atheist claims empirically that all atheists are nonviolent (or even especially good people). Whatley's argument may be flawed — he ignores, I think, that atheists who speak publicly about atheism, and offer public criticism of religion, have formed at least a loose community, with some socially constructed cultural values — but Whatley does not seem to move from an empirical claim to a definitional claim. At best, we might define a "true" New Atheist is one who renounces senseless, infantile, and socially illegitimate* violence such as Hicks'; since Hicks does not meet the definition, he is not a true New Atheist. In just the same sense, I personally was born in the United States of French/Italian/English parents and have never lived in Scotland; therefore, I am not a True Scotsman. That argument would hardly be fallacious: even though the definition might be arbitrary, I simply do not fulfill any component of the definition.
*One does not have to be an absolute pacifist to be a New Atheist.
Inexplicably, Brad compares the New Atheists vs. Muslims to the #NotAllMen vs. #YesAllWomen controversy. I know absolutely nothing about the details of the latter controversy, but on general principles, there's an obvious context there: the existence of a millennial, socially constructed hegemonic patriarchy, from which all men benefit, whether they like it or not. A man cannot simply use his personal attitudes to excuse himself from patriarchal privilege. But there is no such thing as a socially constructed hegemonic atheism. Furthermore it's not NotAllAtheists, it's exactly one atheist out of millions, who's also apparently a gun nut and an American chauvinist. (And furthermore, an atheist who had, according to Michael Nugent, written extensively on social and religious tolerance.) The comparison is especially inapt because Brad himself admits that "atheists are, in America, the single most hated belief group, with approval ratings on par with or maybe even below religious extremist terrorist groups." Hardly the stuff of hegemonic power.
Brad's main point is to compare the New Atheists to the NeoPagans' shameful participation in the prosecution of alleged "Satanic ritual abuse" in the 1980s and 90s. Again, this comparison seems entirely unfounded. In what sense at all are any New Atheists whatsoever endorsing the legal persecution of innocent people for public relations gain? Has a single even moderately prominent New Atheist said, for example, that we should not challenge the illegal imprisonment of innocent Muslims in Guantanamo Bay just because they are Muslims, because we want to curry favor with the authoritarianneoimperialist United States government? Brad seems to think too that criticism of Islam is somehow insincere, that New Atheists have latched onto Islam just because Muslims are a popular political target. I can assure Brad personally that this is not true: New Atheists criticize Islam because we are genuinely critical. We — or more precisely some authors, notably Harris and Hitchens — might have become more popular because the target of our criticism happened to match United States imperialist policy, but the motive for criticism of Islam rests on genuine disagreement, not simple opportunism.
Brad's main point, however, is not his worst point. His worst point is a paragraph literally libelous hate speech:
But, more importantly, I know what hate speech is: it is saying literally that people are inhuman and deserve death. "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." So... Sam Harris perhaps crossed the line when he said that Islam might, if they acquired long-range nuclear weapons, require a preemptive nuclear strike. Harris has defended this postion as entirely hypothetical, but I still don't like it one bit; it looks way too much like the "ticking time bomb" hypothetical to justify torture. And, of course the late Christopher Hitchens was notably in favor of a global war on Islam. And fine, if Brad wants to criticize Harris and Hitchens, he would have my support, but to generalize this criticism to all New Atheists is a blatant lie. Some New Atheists are also pro-imperialism, some, such as Jerry Coyne, are pro-Israel. — there's a considerable range of opinion in our "community" — but my sense (without a rigorous statistical sampling) is that pro-imperialists are a minority among New Atheists.
Brad asserts that New Atheists talk only about Islam, and refuse to discuss any other religious oppression. This is a flat out lie. We can't discuss everything, but New Atheists talk about a lot of stuff. Just look at the front page, for example, of Planet Atheism. There is a range of opinion and topics. Notably, the front page includes a story critical of the lack of the media coverage and the weak government response to a Christian terrorist intending to blow up mosques in Jerusalem. There's a lot of stuff critical of Christianity there too (duh). New Atheists have written about Irish blasphemy laws, Christian anti-evolutionism, Christian theodicy, etc. We also talk about race relations, anti-vaccination stupidity, and feminism.
All this from a cursory investigation of Planet Atheism and a few prominent New Atheist blogs. PZ Myers, has even written two thoughtful pieces on the responsibility that New Atheists really do have in Hicks' crimes: Own it ("I do not think that atheism compelled [Hicks] to kill Muslims, just as I don’t think Islam compels one to become a suicide bomber, or Christianity compels one to bomb abortion clinics. But I do think that the ideology must accept some responsibility for failing to teach people not to do those things.") and Beliefs have consequences ("I don’t think there’s a significant component of atheism that preaches for violence against believers, but there are a large number of atheists who seriously try to argue that atheism should include no moral component at all."). The New Atheist discourse is a lot richer than Brad would have his readers believe.
The only thing Muslims have to fear from New Atheists are our words: we will criticize Islamic misogyny, authoritarianism, superstition, and, yes, its scriptural and ideological support for political and personal violence, which goes far beyond any violence justified in resisting Western imperialism. The only reason Muslims have to fear imperialism from New Atheists is that, sadly, many New Atheists are embedded in an imperialist capitalist system that we did not create, a system bent on a conquest of the (oil-bearing) Muslim lands we did not begin: the proper criticism should be directed against imperialism, not New Atheism. And the only reason Muslims have to fear personal, individual violence from New Atheists is because writers like Brad and Luke Savage (see also my response) spread bigotry and vicious lies about us. That's hate speech.
*I am not a journalist; I can pre-judge Hicks to my heart's content. I can live with certainly being excluded from sitting on his jury. If I'm wrong, I'll apologize.
Hicks is, among other things, an atheist, and his victims were, among other things, Muslims.
Thus, we do have to ask: did the New Atheist "community," however defined, contribute to this crime? I think the question cannot simply be dismissed; it needs to be asked, and we must answer it carefully and deliberately.
In Muslim Panic, Satanic Panic?, the Infamous Brad, presumably a NeoPagan, whom I've been reading for years, and for whom I have tremendous respect, answers in the affirmative: The New Atheist community is nothing "but an anti-Muslim hate group." If Brad's charge is true, then the New Atheist community definitely would bear substantial responsibility for Hicks' murders, even if it is true that Hicks is legally insane or has a serious medical mental illness.
But, uncharacteristically, Brad's argument is substantially flawed.
Brad first mentions the Washington Post article, "Chapel Hill killings shine light on particular tensions between Islam and atheism," where author Michelle Boorstein explores the possible relationship between New Atheism and Hicks' murders. Boorstein delivers a balanced piece, raising the question of the relationship between "public criticism and violence," in contrast with statements by spokespersons of notable atheist organizations decisively rejecting Hicks' kind of violence. Brad then contrasts Boorstein's article with The Baffler article, The Nuances of Nonbelief. In this article, Stuart Whatley argues that atheism, being simply the absence of belief, has no overarching ideology that could be a legitimate cause of Hicks' crimes.
Brad dismisses Whatley's argument out of hand first as a "No True Scotsman" fallacy, but this dismissal seems completely unfounded. A "No True Scotsman" fallacy is a fallacious move from an empirical claim to a definitional claim. As far as I know, no New Atheist claims empirically that all atheists are nonviolent (or even especially good people). Whatley's argument may be flawed — he ignores, I think, that atheists who speak publicly about atheism, and offer public criticism of religion, have formed at least a loose community, with some socially constructed cultural values — but Whatley does not seem to move from an empirical claim to a definitional claim. At best, we might define a "true" New Atheist is one who renounces senseless, infantile, and socially illegitimate* violence such as Hicks'; since Hicks does not meet the definition, he is not a true New Atheist. In just the same sense, I personally was born in the United States of French/Italian/English parents and have never lived in Scotland; therefore, I am not a True Scotsman. That argument would hardly be fallacious: even though the definition might be arbitrary, I simply do not fulfill any component of the definition.
*One does not have to be an absolute pacifist to be a New Atheist.
Inexplicably, Brad compares the New Atheists vs. Muslims to the #NotAllMen vs. #YesAllWomen controversy. I know absolutely nothing about the details of the latter controversy, but on general principles, there's an obvious context there: the existence of a millennial, socially constructed hegemonic patriarchy, from which all men benefit, whether they like it or not. A man cannot simply use his personal attitudes to excuse himself from patriarchal privilege. But there is no such thing as a socially constructed hegemonic atheism. Furthermore it's not NotAllAtheists, it's exactly one atheist out of millions, who's also apparently a gun nut and an American chauvinist. (And furthermore, an atheist who had, according to Michael Nugent, written extensively on social and religious tolerance.) The comparison is especially inapt because Brad himself admits that "atheists are, in America, the single most hated belief group, with approval ratings on par with or maybe even below religious extremist terrorist groups." Hardly the stuff of hegemonic power.
Brad's main point is to compare the New Atheists to the NeoPagans' shameful participation in the prosecution of alleged "Satanic ritual abuse" in the 1980s and 90s. Again, this comparison seems entirely unfounded. In what sense at all are any New Atheists whatsoever endorsing the legal persecution of innocent people for public relations gain? Has a single even moderately prominent New Atheist said, for example, that we should not challenge the illegal imprisonment of innocent Muslims in Guantanamo Bay just because they are Muslims, because we want to curry favor with the authoritarian
Brad's main point, however, is not his worst point. His worst point is a paragraph literally libelous hate speech:
Not all atheists are bigoted anti-Arab, ant-Islam wannabe hate killers, but yes all Muslims have to fear New Atheists. After the New Atheist communities’ most prominent authors have spent the last half dozen years or so beating this drum, I don’t see how anybody can call the New Atheists anything but an anti-Muslim hate group. These are people who can’t be distracted from their message of anti-Muslim hate by oppression or violence from any other religious community, whether it’s the veto on public policy the Ultra Orthodox hold in Israel or the anti-gay secessionist rhetoric of Alabama’s fundamentalist Chief Justice or terrorist acts by Christian Identity groups or anti-abortion groups or anti-Islam terrorism by Buddhists in Sri Lanka. Nope. Try to bring any of that up, and they change the subject back to, “the Muslims are coming to kill us all!”First, if public criticism of a group is "hate speech," then this paragraph is prima facie hate speech: whether or not his criticism is warranted, Brad is being publicly critical of New Atheists. Could some nutjob read Brad's criticism and that conclude that some New Atheists, whom all Muslims should fear, need killin'? The only alternative to public criticism is that everyone suck everyone else's dick 24/7.
But, more importantly, I know what hate speech is: it is saying literally that people are inhuman and deserve death. "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." So... Sam Harris perhaps crossed the line when he said that Islam might, if they acquired long-range nuclear weapons, require a preemptive nuclear strike. Harris has defended this postion as entirely hypothetical, but I still don't like it one bit; it looks way too much like the "ticking time bomb" hypothetical to justify torture. And, of course the late Christopher Hitchens was notably in favor of a global war on Islam. And fine, if Brad wants to criticize Harris and Hitchens, he would have my support, but to generalize this criticism to all New Atheists is a blatant lie. Some New Atheists are also pro-imperialism, some, such as Jerry Coyne, are pro-Israel. — there's a considerable range of opinion in our "community" — but my sense (without a rigorous statistical sampling) is that pro-imperialists are a minority among New Atheists.
Brad asserts that New Atheists talk only about Islam, and refuse to discuss any other religious oppression. This is a flat out lie. We can't discuss everything, but New Atheists talk about a lot of stuff. Just look at the front page, for example, of Planet Atheism. There is a range of opinion and topics. Notably, the front page includes a story critical of the lack of the media coverage and the weak government response to a Christian terrorist intending to blow up mosques in Jerusalem. There's a lot of stuff critical of Christianity there too (duh). New Atheists have written about Irish blasphemy laws, Christian anti-evolutionism, Christian theodicy, etc. We also talk about race relations, anti-vaccination stupidity, and feminism.
All this from a cursory investigation of Planet Atheism and a few prominent New Atheist blogs. PZ Myers, has even written two thoughtful pieces on the responsibility that New Atheists really do have in Hicks' crimes: Own it ("I do not think that atheism compelled [Hicks] to kill Muslims, just as I don’t think Islam compels one to become a suicide bomber, or Christianity compels one to bomb abortion clinics. But I do think that the ideology must accept some responsibility for failing to teach people not to do those things.") and Beliefs have consequences ("I don’t think there’s a significant component of atheism that preaches for violence against believers, but there are a large number of atheists who seriously try to argue that atheism should include no moral component at all."). The New Atheist discourse is a lot richer than Brad would have his readers believe.
The only thing Muslims have to fear from New Atheists are our words: we will criticize Islamic misogyny, authoritarianism, superstition, and, yes, its scriptural and ideological support for political and personal violence, which goes far beyond any violence justified in resisting Western imperialism. The only reason Muslims have to fear imperialism from New Atheists is that, sadly, many New Atheists are embedded in an imperialist capitalist system that we did not create, a system bent on a conquest of the (oil-bearing) Muslim lands we did not begin: the proper criticism should be directed against imperialism, not New Atheism. And the only reason Muslims have to fear personal, individual violence from New Atheists is because writers like Brad and Luke Savage (see also my response) spread bigotry and vicious lies about us. That's hate speech.
Quotations
I have deeply regretted that I did not proceed far enough at least to understand something of the great leading principles of mathematics, for men thus endowed seem to have an extra sense.
— Charles Darwin, Autobiography.
Freud wrote that love involves the undervaluation of reality and the overvaluation of the desired object. While the correct valuation of a person is an odd, if not impossible idea, we might say Freud meant something like this: for various reasons, many of them masochistic, we become involved with others who cannot possible give what we ask for; we can wait as long as we wish, but they do not have it, and one day, if we can bear to abandon our fantasy and see clearly, we might face reality straight on.
— Hanif Kureishi, "A Theft: My Con Man," qtd by Emran Mian
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