Political Compass - New Score

Well, I went back to the political compass after a while…  I seem to have moved (back) to the ultra-left on the economic scale and slightly to the right on the social scale.

I’m probably more to the right on the social scale because I marked a conservative-seeming answer for one or two of the sex questions.  That’s because some of the questions in that area were a little too limited and didn’t really allow for qualifications or nuances.  Frankly, I do think there’s too much sex out there in the marketplace, but that’s because sex is being used so much to sell other things.  I have less of a problem with people just selling sex or pornography directly, or just putting it into the content of their artistic  products, than with so many manufacturers of consumer items or  entertainment using sex in their advertising to manipulate us through our genitals.  But all that stuff is kind of a minor issue to me (empasized more than necessary in this particular test).

I guess I had no ambivalence regarding the economic questions.  (Well, I did read about two and half volumes of Capital…)  Last time around, for some reason, my economic left-right score back-pedaled into the -800s.  This time, I’m way over at the end of the -900s, right at the edge of the graph (which was my score the first time I took this quiz, years ago).

Of all the political compass scores that I’ve seen around the Internet, the one who has the closest to mine is anarchist communist named Flint, whose economic left-right score is identical to mine…

Economic Left/Right: -9.88

Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.28

People Who Obsess Over Political Personalities: Why Do They Even Bother, and Why Do They Call It Politics?

Trying to get some inspiration for my more political blog here…and the resources are scarce.  I’ve been thinking lately about how a lot of people who consider themselves to be concerned about politics, and who are talked about as being “political,” spend so much time talking about or targeting some politician or political leader or political leader’s dirty tricks…  This seems to be a particularly favorite pastime of some “political” journalists.  Yet, to me, this stuff gets pretty boring, and it isn’t even really politics.

I’m getting pretty tired of people obsessing over Bush and his corrupt cronies or some evil character in the Bush administration.  (Same goes for lower-level politicians, of course.).  It’s true that we have a particularly nasty and mostly stupid character in the highest office, but it would be more interesting to me, rather than talking about what an evil or stupid bastard he is, to talk about how he got there in the first place, what system we live under that would grant someone such power - or grant anyone such power, for that matter - and what function those in power serve in the bigger scheme of things.

If I’m interested at all in politics (and at times I’ve been told that I was obsessed with politics, of a sort), then it’s not the kind of “politics” which focuses endlessly on this or that crook or murderer and all the sad little scandals surrounding him or her.  If I want to think about a political or social situation in terms of individuals, I’d rather focus on the individuals who don’t have fame and power, who have to struggle from day to day.  And this is not just, solely a product of my political beliefs (I don’t think) or  some idealistic desire to stand up for the “ordinary” person.  Frankly, I just find focusing on that “ordinary” person, somebody who almost nobody knows about, to be much more interesting, especially when I  can start thinking about how that individual’s struggle relates to the bigger social picture.

And if I want to think about making political changes, it’s interesting to me only if I can think about the bigger picture, rather than just targeting some powerful individual as though stamping out that individual is going to change things in the long run; that is, in any truly political sense.

It is true that it can be gratifying to see the demise of this or that evil, stupid bastard.  But in the long run, unless we think about changing the whole system, what’s the point?  Eliminate one petty dictator or crook and another one will come up to replace him (or her, of course) soon enough.  As the saying goes, it’s kind of like stamping out cockroaches - and ultimately, just about as interesting.    

Words By and About Fulerô O Esquema (Two Women in Brazilian Music - With Politics)…in My Other Blog

I’ve been working steadily on the other blog.  Maybe that’s the main place to find my stuff for now.  Anyway, I stumbled upon a fascinating interview with this Brazilian duo (mainly a funk duo) and wrote about it in that other blog.  They talk about sexual politics, Brazilian politics, and baile funk, all in a frank and refreshing way, without received phrases or dogma, etc.  So anybody who wants to see a little more on that, go to my other blog.

Fascinating Discussion about Working Class Revolution from the Democracy and Hip-Hop Project

There are few blogs out there right now that actually manage to combine commentary on a musical or cultural movement with informed discussion of political movements.  But this is something that is being done, with a lot of evident commitment and ambition, over at the Democracy and Hip-Hop Project.  I was very intrigued by a recent post over there, The Working Class is not a Paper Tiger.  This blog starts with a criticism of Grace Lee Boggs (former co-author with CLR James of Facing Reality, etc.) and what DHHP perceives (probably correctly) as her Maoist tendencies, tendencies that still maintain a strong influence on some left-radical groups in the U.S. 

One outstanding paraghraph in this post asserts a position that I would agree with in many ways, that many recent developments in U.S. capitalism - such as the advancement of outsourcing - are generally not a radical departure but a continuation of the same old things - that is, capitalism and imperialism.  Although the advancement of these capitalist tendencies is not necessarily good for capitalism itself - and I think this blogger nicely and succinctly points out that essential contradiction (especially in one sentence - emphasized below).  

The “outsourcing of jobs” is the export of capital, it is imperialism. It is the drive and motive force of capitalism to “[increase] profits by exporting capital abroad to the backward countries.” In this export of capital, the population of the imperialist country becomes isolated from production which is the origin for its own decay. “Post-industrialism”, “post-modernism”, “deindustrialization”, etc. are all modern, exotic terms for a phenomenon that has been in motion for over a hundred years and which has not undermined the presence of the working class, but, in fact, has drawn larger and larger pools of people into its ranks. 

I also especially appreciate the closing paragraphs in this critique, which remind us why many of us gravitated toward a libertarian socialist or a left-communist perspective in the first place:

In a book review from a 1980 issue of Urgent Tasks, an anonymous author wrote, “a distinctive autonomous working class culture will develop as part of a distinctive and autonomous working class.” The values that the working class supposedly lacks, but that I contend exists, though sparsely, cannot fully mature within the confines of the society in which we live. We cannot inject full “socialist” values into capitalist social relations that are necessarily in conflict….

We must dispense with the idea that workers or black people or whomever we consider as “degenerate” need some kind of overhaul in ethics in order to make concrete change. Those values already exist, but are merely fragmented and episodic as they exist in competition with the values of the decaying old society.

People are just as ready now to make revolution as any time. There is no way to anticipate the kind of change that comes in revolutions because they largely happen spontaneously. But this does not preclude sorts of intervention and conscious revolutionary engagement in the daily conflicts of working people that can accelerate the development leading to revolution. Whether we find a place organizing in our workplaces, neighborhoods, schools, etc., we can create the possibilities through decisive, direct action which can bring a different world closer, the kind of world without a ruling class to govern us, the kind of place where full relations and socialist culture can maturate.

I have complicated feelings, though, regarding when and how many of us can really “create the possibilities” simply by finding “a place organizing in our workplaces, neighborhoods, schools, etc.”   How much possibility really exists to make real changes simply by plugging into traditional unions, school boards, etc.?  I’ve gotten quite cynical regarding the idea that we can promote radical changes simply by finding a place in these same old groups.  We also have to keep in mind that groups that spring up in the U.S. specifically to promote and call for revolution (what few that remain) often are not organizations of the most directly exploited proletariat but, rather, groups comprised of people from some relatively privileged and affluent circles, often led by academics or others who have official positions of social or intellectual authority in the old system.  So, the whole process becomes very tricky, maybe especially these days.

Democracy and Hip-Hop seems to take a pretty straightforward left-communist position, which I can sympathize with extensively, especially when it comes to critiquing the capitalist system.  But as I’ve said before, I also favor the tendency of autonomists (whether or not this is contradictory to my sympathies with left communism) to discuss and look for new forms of organization and new ways of thinking about class composition.  Though the advancements (and decay) of present-day capitalism are in many ways a continuation of the same old thing, there are a lot of aspects to the present condition that call out for some new approaches.

This post from DHHP hasn’t really explored such questions, and I don’t know if those questions will fall within the province of the blog.  But this post and the blog overall are still admirable for the depth of discussion and for much of the perspective that they take.  Especially considering that this is supposedly mainly a blog about hip-hop, a musical and cultural movement…