Goats, Private Property, Karl Marx, and The American Dream

The other day I was visiting my father, step-mother, and half brother, who live in a rural town in central Maryland. The house they live in is a moderately-sized single family home with a large grassy yard; seemingly quintessential “American Dream” material. However, one only has to walk into the back yard to depart radically from that ideological fantasy scape. This is because, as you round the corner, you're confronted with a small herd of sheep and goats.

I've always found it interesting that the culturally encouraged “ideal life” for a member of the American middle and lower class is to own a house on a small slice of land. Intuitively, this seems to go against the logic of the capitalist system, as interpreted by Karl Marx. Marx put forth the idea that society is divided between two classes: the class that owns (as private property) the means of production (e.g. factories, tools, real estate, etc.), and the class that survives by selling its labor-power to the owners (Wal-Mart clerks, factory workers, and high-paid corporate lawyers would all fall into this category). It would follow from this that it is in the interest of the owning class (bourgeoisie) to discourage the working class (proletariat) from owning any property that has the potential to create value. It would seem that, if the capitalist owns the worker's dwelling, the rent value extracted helps to expand the owner's total accumulated capital; if the worker owns his own dwelling, however, the rent value of the home belongs to him. By owning property that creates value, the worker would need to work less to maintain him or herself, reducing the coercive power that the capitalist can exert over him. A striker who doesn't need to worry about rent or eviction can last longer on the picket lines than a striker who rents.

The answer to this seeming irrationality, I believe, can be found in several factors. First of all, it has been noted that, in terms of making a profit, rental housing is a poor and risky investment. Renters know that they don't own their homes, and so they care very little about maintaining the property beyond what they need to live comfortably in the short term. This can lead to the infrastructure of a house gradually breaking down, causing the value of the property to decline and often leading to eventual expensive remodeling or demolition. Furthermore, even with a well-maintained dwelling, the average return on a house's value (the current credit-bubble induced housing price bubble excepted) is about 0.2% per year. The combination of these factors makes renting in general (excepting certain niche markets) a poor use of capital.

The capitalist system has found a way to circumvents this issue through the use of mortgages, a strategy which brilliantly kills a whole flock of birds with one stone. First of all, it shifts the responsibility for the upkeep of the property onto the debtor, and gives the debtor motivation to invest labor in it on the premise that s/he owns it. In reality, though, it takes the debtor thirty years to actually own the house, and, during that period, the capitalist is guaranteed a much higher rate of return with none of the headaches of being a landlord. Furthermore, this theoretical “home ownership” creates the illusion that the worker is actually the owner of property, and is thus psychologically (and is thus led to believe, materially) invested in the capitalist system of property rights (which, in actuality, allows the surplus value generated by his/her wage labor to be appropriated by capitalists). By following this path, the capitalist accrues all of the political benefits of giving the working-class control over property without having actually done so.

With the nature of the house explained, lets now bring the yard part of the “American Dream” into focus. At first glance, it seems like a trivial afterthought to the house, which contains the potential for $1000+ per month in rent-value. However, the way the lawn is viewed and treated by American homeowners is actually quite telling. In the past, land has always been a source of wealth and subsistence. In premodern Europe, peasants would often support a family off of the produce of an acre (a much smaller area than many suburban yards). Immigrants came to America, lured by the promises of free land in the empty West, and this old idea of land equaling prosperity has been distorted by capitalist ideology to create the lawn. The distortion occurred thusly: originally, land produced value, it was an investment. Therefore, owning land was evidence of prosperity because it was a means of production. Capitalist ideology appropriated the cultural significance of land, and re-packaged it as a consumable good, devoid of value generating capacity. Instead of being a source of wealth, land in the form of lawns have become resource sinks for “homeowners.” They expend resources fertilizing it, and then expend more resources on equipment and gasoline to cut it down, meaning they have to work x-more hours per year to maintain their “property”. This is justified because it supposedly increases the value of the property (while it actually increase the price while reducing the value), which is the justification for coercive rules enacted by homeowner associations to codify this ideology into laws (of sorts) in many communities.

Furthermore, what kinds of animals are acceptable to have running around on a suburban lawn? The simple answer is, pets. By very definition, a pet is an animal kept for sentimental, not economic reasons. The difference between having two dogs and two sheep in your yard is simple: sheep produce income while dogs consume income. That a middle class person would get a lot of strange looks for the sheep, but not a second glance at the dogs, is evidence that generating value independent of wage labor is the anathema of the "American Dream" ideology. All of this is ample evidence that a house, which was, incidentally, the cornerstone of Bush's "Ownership Society" initiative, is a very different kind of property than capitalist property. What capitalist would be willing to pay more for a piece of property after its value-producing capacity has been reduced?

In essence, the house of the working and middle class person is not an investment; it is a culturally sanctioned consumptive activity that is given the illusion of value-generation to convince working-class people to feel invested in capitalist ideology. Owning a home is a way in which working people are encouraged to work more hours so that capitalists can more efficiently extract surplus value from their labor, both directly and in the form of mortgages, lawn care, and many other small things that quickly add up. With all of this in mind, I would assert that my father's family grazing meat-goats and sheep (along with planting a garden) in their back yard is something of a revolutionary act. It has turned a source of consumption in their lives into a source of real value that, even if only marginally, decreases their reliance on selling wage-labor to survive and thrive. Capitalism doesn't only require the exploitation of workers to thrive; it also requires the diversion of their independent creative powers into consumption rather than personal investment. While small, this act is a window into the nature of the system, and one countless small nudges that are hopefully leading us towards a better future.

The Ron Paul Internet Phenomenon and the Return of Public Discourse

Just in case some of you have been living under a rock over the past month, Texas Republican/Libertarian Congressman Ron Paul is running for President, and has gone from being a complete unknown to the toast of the internet in a matter of weeks. Much of this was a result of his performance in the the Republican Presidential Debates, in which he distinguished himself from the crowd by questioning the validity of the Iraq war, by candidly attacked the growing authoritarian power of the Federal government (in the guise of the National ID card and the Department of Homeland Security, both of which he called for the abolition of), and by calling for *gasp* adherence to the Constitution. His performance in the first debate at the Reagan Library turned a few heads, but it was in the South Carolina debate that he truly broke through. In an exchange with Rudy Giuliani, he argued that the hatred that inspired the 9/11 attackers existed as a result of interventionist U.S. foreign policy. Responded Giuliani,

Can I make a comment on that? That's really an extraordinary statement. As someone who lived through the attack of September 11th, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I've heard that before and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th. [ applause ] I would ask the Congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us he didn't really mean that. [applause]

This sophism awarded Rudy many applause points and the praise of FoxNewsChannel (Seig Heil) conservative pundits, and, had the debate occurred even four years ago, would have crushed Paul and rocketed Rudy to the top of the polls. However, we now live in the age of the internet, the blog, and YouTube, and the results were explosive.

The implications of this state of affairs extend far beyond the purview of Ron Paul's campaign; rather, I believe that it signals the beginning of a reversal of the trend that was brilliantly observed and critiqued in Neil Postman's 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. In the book (which is a quick read), Postman bemoans the displacement of in depth political debate and engagement over the course of the 20th century society by shallow, image-based campaigns that led us to the current environment of "sound byte" politics. The source of this downward slide, argues Postman, was the gradual displacement of text based discourse by image based discourse as the dominant source of information about society. The differences between the two forms of communication aren't merely topical; rather, they each effect the consumer of the information in fundamentally different ways.
According to Postman, discourse in the first hundred years of American society was text based; people got their information about the world from newspapers, books, pamphlets, etc. A description of Postman's views on the effects of print based discourse on culture can be found in the Wikipedia entry:

Printed material inherently makes assertions. It is almost impossible to write a meaningful sentence which does not make an assertion; and as such, when reading, the reader is being presented with assertions which they are required to agree with, to suspend judgment upon, or to refute.

A book is essentially a very long set of assertions which build an argument. The reader has to keep track of the assertions, build up an overall picture, and come to a conclusion of his own, which may or may not match or fully match the view of the author.

Postman asserts print as a medium encourages thought and judgment upon arguments and so that when print is the primary means of communication (as it was in the USA, for example, up to the late 1800s) then culture as a whole has a strong, effective public discourse on important issues. People are not only well informed, but have a strong understanding of the issues of the day.

Such a culture is, by its nature, rational, and approaches problems in an intellectually rigorous way. Political positions are analyzed as texts to be proven or refuted, as was aptly demonstrated by the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, in which:

"The first of seven famous debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas took place on August 21, 1858, in Ottowa, Illinois. Their arrangement provided that Douglas would speak first, for one hour; Lincoln would take an hour and a half to reply; Douglas, a half hour to rebut Lincoln's reply. This debate was considerably shorter than those to which the two men were accustomed. In fact, they had tangled several times before, and all of their encounters had been much lengthier and more exhausting. For example, on October 16, 1854, in Peoria, Illinois, Douglas delivered a three-hour address to which Lincoln, by agreement, was to respond. When Lincoln's turn came, he reminded the audience that it was already 5 p.m., the he would probably require as much time as Douglas and that Douglas was still scheduled for a rebuttal. He proposed, therefore, that the audience go home, have dinner, and return refreshed for four more hours of talk. The audience amiably agreed, and matters proceeded as Lincoln had outlined.

"What kind of audience was this? Who were these people who could so cheerfully accommodate themselves to seven hours of oratory?"

In contrast, today, a candidate is given 30-60 seconds to respond to a debate question, which makes it virtually impossible to carry on a meaningful, rational discussion of a topic. Instead, candidates are required to become sophists, relying on rhetorical flourishes and logical fallacies to "score points." In fact, the sports analogy has become explicit and acceptable, as is evinced by this clip of Tim Russert analyzing the third Republican debate.

This state of affairs isn't just an unfortunate deviation from a healthy political culture, argues Postman. Rather, it is inherent to an image-based mass media. Unlike a text, which consists of a series of rationally arranged assertions, an image (in this case, video) can only be interpreted. If this is a bit confusing, an example of advertising will clear things up. Imagine an ad for McDonalds that had to be exclusively text based; it would be absurd for it to follow the format that it's T.V. commercials follow. Imagine being convinced to eat there by the text versions of these ads. It would be ridiculous and people would feel insulted; a good text based ad would lay out the rational reasons for eating a McDonalds, e.g. menu, nutritional value, selection, price, quality of ingredients, etc. Image based advertising, however, allows McDonalds to ignore the substance of their product in favor of developing an image of said product. While this practice isn't terribly harmful to society for restaurants to engage in (besides encouraging obesity), when politicians engage the same logical process, you have our current political nightmare. Candidates hire image consultants, develop catch-phrases and soundbites that are short enough to be mentioned on the evening news (which Postman argued, and John Stewart confirmed, is an entertainment program), and avoid taking clear positions like the plague.

On the last point, a few weeks ago, I decided to check the democratic candidates websites to see what their platforms were (e.g. where they stood on a host of issues). The first site I went to was hillaryclinton.com, and I was shocked to find, despite a good 20 minutes of searching the site, not a single mention of issues. I sent in an email about this, and soon after, an "Issues" section appeared on her site. However, If you actually go through and read what is said (and I've found this to hold true for all of the "first tier" candidates' sites), all the section consists of is generalities that serve to create the image and subjective feeling of a progressive or conservative, while leaving the candidate with infinite practical wiggle room. One doesn't risk breaking campaign promises when one doesn't ever promise anything.

Into this fray came Ron Paul, a (according to the media) second tier candidate who is extremely ideologically consistent and, within the irrational environment of televised debates, attempted to engage in rational discourse. A few years ago, the image based mass-media as described by Postman would have buried him in a short time. Pundits mocked and dismissed him after the first debate, and, in an internet-free world, that would have been the end of things. However, youtubers and bloggers rushed to his defense and fought back, giving his campaign a wave of support from extremely dedicated supporters that continues to rise. The importance of this fact extends far beyond this one campaign; I believe it represents the beginning of the transcendence of the limitations of image-based discourse. The videos released by the television media are no longer one-way transmissions of opinion and feeling into the minds of the public. Internet video now allows for those transmissions to be shared, analyzed, deconstructed, and responded to. Finally, it is possible to engage in RATIONAL image based discourse, which means that the theatrical gig is up on all of the "Frontrunners." The paradigm that they've based their careers upon is unraveling before their eyes, leaving an opening for an honest ideologically consistent, intelligent candidate to surge to the fore and hopefully start correcting the damage done by 40+ years of actor/psychopath rule. I'm sending in whatever measly amount of money I can scrape together and will be campaigning on the street in Burlington. I encourage everyone who feels as I do to do the same. A new age is possible, but the old system won't fall by itself unless we fight. Let's kick ass and take names.