[Peace-discuss] More on Ron Paul, now from Juan Cole

[C. G. Estabrook]

[This is a rather hasty and sloppy comment from Juan Cole's often 
informative blog, Informed Comment.  Unfortunately, it's informed here 
by such things as Karl Wittfogel's Oriental Despotism (New Haven 1957), 
where Cole gets "government was invented by irrigation-based societies 
like Egypt and Iraq." (Wittfogel's work is termed by a good historian, 
Perry Anderson, a "vulgar charivari, devoid of any historical sense" 
Lineages of the Absolutist State [London 1974] p. 487n4.)  It's also 
remarkably obtuse to say that "abuse of government by W. and his 
administration ... has ... done wonders for leftwing anarchism ...: 
witness the reemergence of Noam Chomsky as a major voice after he had 
been marginalized for decades."  Chomsky's little book of interviews, 
9-11, published in October of 2001, was a best-seller even before "W. 
and his administration" had much time for "abuse of government"; from 
book sales to rock bands, Chomsky had hardly been "marginalized for 
decades" before 2001.  Cole's also wrong about Social Security's needing 
a "fix," and, more importantly, wrong to suggest that the abuses of 
government began with Bush. He must have slept through the '90s to say 
that Clinton made government "relatively effective and popular."  And 
what can he possibly mean by saying that "The opposite of fascism is not 
democracy but anarchy"? That you must choose one?  And a professor of 
history must understand the marxist notion of the state better than he 
seems to. (For openers, Marx insisted on state power over against his 
critics from the Left, like Bakunin.) But, in spite of all this, Cole is 
right about what "almost single-handedly" explains Paul's appeal -- and 
it's not what we call (only in this country) Libertarianism. --CGE]

	Saturday, November 10, 2007
	Did W. Create Ron Paul?

Gordon Robison argues that his stance on the Iraq War almost 
single-handedly explains Rep. Ron Paul's amazing fundraising ability 
(which recently outstripped that of Sen. John McCain, the last 
unreconstructed hawk on the Iraq War.)

I'm not sure it is just Iraq that drives Ron Paul's popularity, though 
of course that is part of it. I suspect that it is in some important 
part the abuse of government by W. and his administration that has made 
rightwing anarchism so popular. (It has done wonders for leftwing 
anarchism too: witness the reemergence of Noam Chomsky as a major voice 
after he had been marginalized for decades).

Government is a set of bargains, a 'moral economy.' We let the 
government take a certain proportion of our money, and we expect it to 
organize services for us that would otherwise be difficult to arrange. 
Anyone who has studied any history and economics knows that the market 
is going to leave some people destitute, and you need government to 
correct for that imbalance. It is no accident that government was 
invented by irrigation-based societies like Egypt and Iraq, where if 
someone did not organize the peasants to do the irrigation work and keep 
it up, everybody would starve.

Bush has broken the US government. The US military was there to protect 
us. Bush has used it to fight a fascist-style aggressive war of choice. 
FEMA is there for emergency aid. Bush did not deploy it effectively for 
New Orleans. Social security lifted the elderly out of the poverty that 
had often been their fate before the 1930s. Bush declined to use 
Clinton's surplus to fix the system, and has essentially borrowed 
against the pensions of us all to pay for his wars. Government is there 
to ensure our security. Bush has used it to spy on us, to prosecute 
patently innocent persons, to manipulate the media and instill us with 
lies and propaganda.

If government is to be conducted on Bushist principles, then who would 
not like to see the damn thing abolished?

I don't think Ron Paul would have run well in 2000, after Bill Clinton 
had demonstrated the ways in which government could contribute to our 
prosperity and well-being. Indeed, it was so important for the Right to 
destroy Clinton precisely because he did make government relatively 
effective and popular.

Ron Paul's popularity does not derive only from his opposition to the 
Iraq War. It derives from the sanity of the American people, who love 
liberty and reject Bushism. The opposite of fascism is not democracy but 
anarchy.

Given how horribly corporations like Walmart treat their employees, 
denying them the right to unionize and cleverly avoiding paying anything 
toward their health insurance, I have never understood why Libertarians 
think corporations would be nicer to us if we could not organize 
government protections from them. It is the government of the state of 
Maryland that protected workers from Walmart's exploitation of them. 
Libertarian faith in the utopia that comes from the withering of the 
state strikes me as just as impractical as the similar Marxist theory.

But after 7 years of Bush, I don't find it at all astonishing that large 
numbers of internet contributors would give Ron Paul money to campaign 
on getting rid of the Frankenstein's Monster of a government that George 
W. Bush has been constructing in his macabre basement of a mind.

posted by Juan Cole @ 11/10/2007 06:40:00 AM 24 comments