by Russell Cole

What ever happened to the Green Party?  Remember, the Green Party; the People’s Party; the Party with an egalitarian structure that practiced grass-roots politics and social democracy when deliberating over its own policies and affairs?

The Green Party of old no longer exists in any substantive form; only in a projection of text displayed as a representation of the Green Party’s internal organizational practices.  The Party has installed a hierarchical structure and has developed a culture of suspicion and ideological dogma that is tantamount to a cultural condition that exists under a totalitarian state such as fascism. 

The Green Party still attempts to project an image of itself which reinforces the prejudices developed from impressions of the organization as it first emerged as the premier third party movement in American politics.  However, the rhetoric consists of propositions that describe states-of-affairs that are absent of any reference to the external facts comprising the Party’s practices. 

I speak as a former insider, and I can state with absolute conviction that The Green Party is dominated by a clique of cronies who have successfully consolidated power within the party structure, and quite actively preserve their power through the silencing of dissent and the praxis of exclusionary politics.  They go so far as to banish members under contrived charges of impropriety in order to maintain the cohesion of an organization that is void of deliberative participatory democracy.  There is no democracy left in the Green Party.  There is perhaps a form of republicanism, but one can enjoy this mitigated, marginal form of political participation in the Democratic Party.  So, I ask:  What is the need for the Green Party, other than to act as the spoiler party to the Democrats?  The Green Party promises no democratic reform; no political decentralization that would empower the individuals emotionally attached to one another in local communities; therefore, The Green Party is an entity that is a hindrance to oppositional politics in America, and certainly not a guiding light in the struggle to democratize a society that has slipped into a state of Empire.  ‘Green’ is no longer a signifier of populist reform; it is a symptom of pathology.  The Green Party has been infected by the corrupting elements of petty minded people who aspire to the advancement of their own provincial interests at the expense of a movement that once promised to be the People’s emerging voice in American politics. 

I could list names, but to publicly embarrass people would contrary to the most pragmatic solution to the problem at hand.  At this point in time, attempting to salvage the Green Party is a waste of activist resources.  The Party is starting to implode, due to the tyrannical imposition of the will of a faction that believes it needs to take control of the organization in order to impose structure and coordination to the activities of the minions under its control.  California Greens are nearly in revolt.  They are by far the largest pocket of Greens in the nation, and their disassociation from the Party would render the Green US a mere vestige of what it once was.  The national organization would be politically impotent. 

Let the Green Party die of this infection, and let something new originate from the organic processes associated with grass-roots activism.  It is time for a new voice to be heard from the wilderness, and the most viable organization to assume this role is the Populist Party of America; a party that has yet to succumb to the dynamics of institutionalization, which leads to stasis, rendering the entity inert.  The Populist Party of America is poised to take hold of the reigns of the American third-party, oppositional culture, and the time is coming near to a transition that will be abrupt and definitive.  Those who still value direct, deliberative democracy; grass-roots politics; decentralization of governmental power; and social and economic reform; need to find a new home within Populist America, because it is now the lone voice crying out from the wilderness - the new dynamic of oppositional politics in American culture.

Tags: democracy, grassroots politics, green party, politics, populist, populist party, russell cole, third parties
Categories: Commentary, National, Democracy, liberty, Politics, Third Parties
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In this essay, I conjoin various elements previously explored by Foucault and W Churchill. I make suggestions concerning our conceptualization of the current social and political reality and the dynamics that shape it. I also wish to bring transparency to the disciplines in the Human Sciences and the role they play in the production of productive citizens for purposes of exploitation by American Empire.

Introduction to Bio-power and its Little Eichmann Engineers

There is an obvious association between the ‘Little Eichmann Mentality’ (Ward Churchill) and the practitioners of the Human Sciences that are responsible for the generation of technologies necessary to deploy ‘Bio-power’ (Foucault) in society.

Bio-power is the productive use of power in society to manufacture types of social identities that not only define the ‘normal,’ productive members of society, but also the abnormal, ‘problematic’ identities in society. Medical practitioners and social scientists seek out technologies in order to correct the ‘pathological’ behaviors of these undesirable identities in society, a process referred to, by Foucault, as ‘normalization.’

Practitioners of the Human Sciences are typically under the impression that they are performing value-neutral science, or, as I like to call it, the value of practicing science with no values. They believe that they are simply correcting ailments of individuals and aggregates in society. After all, they belong to institutions in civil society and have no conscious recognition of the political ramifications of their ’scientific’ endeavors.

Nevertheless, the Human Sciences provide the necessary regulatory mechanisms within the systemic structure of society in order to maintain the ongoing replication of elements - social identities - required for the system to persist.  These sciences ensure that the elements of society remain in their correct composition and systemic alignment—what is tantamount to the normalization of bodies—in order for the imposed structure of society to remain in tact. The bodies that revolt from the disciplinary constraints and incentives resume, through the implementation of the regulatory mechanisms, their status as ‘productive’ members working within the processes that configure the social system. In the following I will give some historical elucidation to ‘Bio- power.’

A History of the Present: The Ramifications of Bio-power

Bio-power is an umbrella term that refers to the practitioners of the human sciences whose disciplines proliferated during the Victorian era. Some examples of these disciplines are psychology, psychiatry, demography, and criminology.  They are referred to as Bio-power because they play a restrictive, yet productive, role in society. By normalizing the behaviors of individuals and aggregates of individuals within society, they generate social identities, which are expected to conform to certain behavioral patterns.

This is a productive endeavor on the part of disciplinarians because it gives meaning and purpose to the lives, or subjectivities, of these social identities, through the mechanism of implanting desires, such as living a normal, productive live: entering into a heterosexual union; and having children, whom they raise to embody the same values, such as a good work ethic and a disposition to respect and abide by the normative regulations imposed by society.  The parents are not the only agents in the socialization process.  Additionally, educators and other disciplinarians train, through pedagogy and discipline, the objects of their disciplinarian control to instantiate behavioral dispositions, which make them ‘productive members of Empire.’  In this case, ‘productive’ is intended to signify a willingness on the part of the human body to perform the repetitive tasks involved in assuming the position of a cog in the various modalities of production within American Empire, which allow it to proliferate. 

What is important to remember is that the disciplinarians, to which I originally referred, highly influence the patterns of parenting and teaching that are deployed by the lower-level disciplinarians such as parents and grammar school instructors.  The researchers at Universities, for instance, engender the development of technologies designed to modify the behavioral habits of those who are subjected to the process of socialization consisting of “Discipline and Punishment,” as well as, incentives, which serve as the desires that drive bodies to promulgate their ascribed or assumed identity within the societal matrix.  Bodies, in short, are forged, molded, and pounded into shape by disciplinarians in society, which allows for the social system to replicate the elements involved in its many processes.  

These disciplinarian practices are not disassociated from one another and lacking in any general pattern of actions and consequences.  There is a purpose behind these political practices.  Bio- power permits society to exist in a form that is in accord with the interests - although, perhaps, not the conscious interests - of particular groups in society. This is not to say that there is an reflexive collaboration among the individuals belonging to the groups that benefit from power and discipline in society, but there is most definitely a logic embedded in the unintended consequences of the agents who promote disciplinarian praxis in society.  In the case of American Empire, I would argue that Bio-power serves the purpose of the corporate elites and their henchman politicians, who need a disciplined and technically skilled work force in order to profit from their investments.  To sum, there is a relation between economic interests - a rubric which I use quite broadly to include the accumulation, transfer, and production of any commodity or source of stimulus that incites pleasure or satisfaction - and the implementation of Bio-power in American society.  The corporate elites could not amass the absurd amount of resources that they do without having at their disposal highly disciplined and trained bodies for the purposes of providing labor capacities for the exploitation of the corporate elite’s industrial niche.  With the out-sourcing of jobs, however, this dynamic is probably currently under alteration, but, for the time being, I believe that this description is an apt one. 

I hope one can already see the political implications of these Human Scientific disciplines in civil society. The fact that they are in civil society makes them appear innocuous and politically inert. However, this is an illusory impression, because these Bio-power disciplines serve as the regulatory mechanism for the current configuration of society, which is dominated by political and corporate elites.

The Little Eichmann Component to Bio-power

The Little Eichmann mentality defines the subjectivities of the engineers social reality; the disciplinarians, described in the preceding paragraphs.  Human Science is not a mere recording of ‘objective’ reality. It is more an attempt to manipulate and control the ontological domain that has been delimited by a discipline’s observational activities. The objects that appear present-at- hand were originally given an ontological status by scientists carving out entities from the monist world to use as instruments in the actualization of the objectives that define the teleology of their projects.

Consequently, science should be understood less as a form of an objective rendering of reality than a manifestation of Nietzsche’s Will to Power—the drive or impetus to control and manipulate one’s surroundings. According to Nietzsche, the external environment is far too complex to for humans to ever conceive of a complete, ‘objective’ description of its elements and properties as well as knowledge of its relationships and its processes.  Humans, through the device of language, simplify the world and reduce its complexity, and invent operations, devised by the mechanism of if-then-statements - allowing for causal analysis - and render the world exploitable for their interests.

The language, or the vocabulary, of the disciplines—the jargon—is the repository for the ontological creations of the discipline. To increase its power, its ability to manipulate and control, those who are indoctrinated into the discipline are taught, by exposure to exemplars, the language of the discipline and its habits for problematizing the discipline’s phenomenal domain. Heidegger, through one of his aphorisms, which goes something like this, “Being resides in the House of Language, ” communicated that language, and its lexicon, along with all of the culturally distinct varieties of language and lexicon, shape our perceptions and understandings of the objects and properties that exist within the domain that is defined by our activities in particular modes of Being-in-the-World; or, in other words, the types of projects in which we are engaged.

Indeed, the little worlds that are projected by human sciences are defined by the language that is peculiar to their tribal activities.  The unfortunate thing, however, is that these forms of vocabulary enter into the sphere of bureaucratic and popular culture; thus, creating social identities that become objectified and quite real with respect to social-ontology of social reality.  Identities, such as homosexual and other marginalized identities are the products of the Human Sciences, and have created subspecies of humanity, which are often mistreated or subjected to the corrective medical practices referred to by Foucault as ‘normalization;’ the regulatory technologies produced by disciplinarians. 

Although the deleterious effects of the practices of the preponderance of social-scientists are quite evident to anyone who considers historical research a valid form of knowledge production, the subjectivities of practitioners of the Human Sciences are such that they only tune in to their narrowly defined projection of professional possibilities. It is as if they are race horses wearing blinders, so not to be distracted by any unintended social consequences they might glimpse in their periphery vision. They are driven forward as they jockey for the lead position among their academic competitors in the specialized field that they find themselves….publish…publish… publish…because their only measure of success is in criteria created within the discipline itself, leading to an obsession with performitivity and productivity. They possess the “Little Eichmann” mentality.

They epitomize the administrative role of the compliant yet the partially ignorant. Are they to blame in a personal respect, perhaps.  However, they are most definitely professionally culpable for every technological insight they create to help make the processes and systems of the social structure function more efficiently under the American Empire.  Therefore, the individuals who comprise these disciplines belonging to the social sciences are not really scientists, at all; at least not in a traditional sense.  Rather they are extensions of polity’s bureaucratic apparatus, and they serve as effective agents of those who possess a disproportionate control upon American Polity, such as the corporate elites, by disciplining the population to possess the necessary dispositions rendering them docile, conformitive, and skilled.

Conclusion

The disciplines in society are a necessary component to the continuation of American Empire and its expansion, because they regulate the processes needed to produce the type of person who can contribute to Empire. I have often heard the slogan, ‘think globally but act locally.’ This is all fine and good, but to understand the effects of your efforts when you situate yourself in the larger picture of things, acting nationally as well locally seems quite tempting.

It is time to bring recognition to the functional properties of the disciplinarian Human Sciences and to take a stance on their impact upon the society that we are trying to reform. Populists, they are not necessarily our allies; they are often part of the problem.

Tags: american empire, bio power, democracy, education, empire, Energy, foucault, human sciences, power, russell cole, society, ward churchill
Categories: Commentary, Society, Democracy, Education, foucault, Energy, Empire
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by Russell Cole

Situating Extreme Democracy within a Larger Sociological Context

Sociologists usually consider two dynamics when providing explanations for the social systems that are instantiated by the interactions of the individuals comprising a pocket of humanity; a cultural group; a society: The first consideration is the actual structure of the social system, itself. I shall refer to this as a synchronic description of a social system. The second dimension to be included in the analysis is a description of the processes that lead to social change. I shall refer to this domain of analysis as the diachronic element to the sociological explanations provided for the observable social events occurring within the context of a social group, or aggregate.

Sociologists typically tend to concentrate their efforts on one of the before mentioned elements of analysis or the other, but rarely conceptualize theoretical frameworks that integrate the two dynamics of social interaction.

However, there is an exception to this generalization regarding sociological discourse. It is provided by an anthropologists of the latter half of the previous century. I am referring to Victor Turner, and his conception of communitas, which is the process through which social change occurs while continuing to maintain a social group or body.

Communitas is a liminal state; a state that falls in between two to other states, which possess structural properties. The intermediary state, communitas, however, fails to instantiate structural properties, and is, in fact, defined by its absence of structure. Therefore, communitas is a state of flux; a point of in-determinability; where the next state is decided by unpredictable factors which consist of the agencies of the individuals comprising the social group.

Communitas is a condition where the only aggregate property, which continues to persist, is the pure solidarity between and among the individuals within the culture. It is a state of pure community, void of the structural elements that we often associate with society. This aggregate property can be thought of as the pure emotive attraction between and among the individuals, who are involved in the communitas, and comprise the social group.

I now want to connect the concept of communitas with the concept of Extreme Democracy. Extreme democracy is a form of organization that is also constantly in flux, undergoing revision and change, due to the fact that there is no institutionalized structure. The shape that the organization assumes is always dependent upon the innovation and unpredictable inventiveness of the agents included in this network, who are not constrained by any objectified statuses and roles, connected with those statuses.

There is affiliation but no institutionalization. By extension: there is community, but no society; there is solidarity, but there lacks any structural impositions that are reinforced by the regulatory mechanisms, which maintain the integrity of a social structure. An Extremely Democratic organization is completely voluntary and completely egalitarian in the respect that there are no per-established statuses forming a hierarchical, vertical formation.

Statuses are constantly subject to revision based upon the agency of the individuals who are emotively attached to one another by virtue of the fact that they identify one another with a collective history and a shared teleology, or purpose, with regards to the fact that the agents perceive one another as working in conjunction under the pretense of a shared cause; although that cause can be reinvented by the agents who remain in the organization, in an ongoing basis, but is typically maintained in a form that does not alter its predecessor too abruptly, because such a change would alienate much of the membership. In short, the telos that unites the agents included in the organization is subject to Extreme Democracy. It is shaped and formed through the decisions made by the agents.

Tags: democracy, extreme democracy, midwest populist party, populist party, russell cole
Categories: Commentary, Society, Populist Party, Democracy, Social Change
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by Russell Cole

There is a perception in society that the most efficient and rational method by which to structure an institution is through a hierarchical architecture that possess levels of strata endowing individuals assuming statuses in those strata with certain powers and responsibilities.  This sentiment seems almost self evident; without hierarchy and the delegation of responsibility distributed by an executive source, standing atop a hierarchical structure, there would be no accountability as well as planning, and, for that matter, organization, at all.

This description is applicable to the ordinary corporatist institutional configuration, where there are levels of employees and gradations of management, and power is acquired through ones acquisition of a status that has a specific position in the hierarchical structure that is not in the lowest strata of the vertical grid constituting the organization.  Many political parties subscribe to this conventional wisdom regarding organizational theory, and what results is a hierarchical structure manifested from this archaic philosophy’s implementation into practice.

Currently, third-parties, such as the Green Party, are in the process of arranging vertical positions within the framework of its party’s organization.  The basic Membership is losing a lot of the influence it once had upon the Party’s platform and the specific imperatives, or plans of action, developed in order to actualize the state-of-affairs described by the propositions included in the platform.  I will not even go into a description of the two business parties because their hierarchical structures are so evident that it is ostensible and extraneous to even provide a description of their unegalitarian structures.

I want to introduce a radically new conceptualization of organizations that is becoming quite a popular school of thought in both democratic theory and organizational theory.  I will refer to this paradigm as Extreme Democracy.  This understanding of organizations recognizes that vertical differentiation that is prepared in advance of the organization’s enactment is counter-productive to the organization’s ability to place the best people in the most influential places; by, the best people, I am merely referring to those who are willing to work harder, produce more, and manufacture commodities - intellectual and material - that are qualitatively superior.  These people, due to the dynamics of the organization I am about to describe will naturally ascend to positions of disproportionate influence.

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The type of organization that fosters this meritocratic scheme for determining who will amass the greatest impact upon the organization is a loose network of associations that is entirely egalitarian with respect to the fact that there are no preconceived stratification within the social body.  Here is the dynamic that operates within this network that propels the most productive and effective to positions of influence within the network, or the loose organization:  Those who can produce better results will attract others in the network to form relationships with these individuals, who possess the ability to achieve prodigious tasks.  In other words, naturally, people in the organization are going to want to exchange commodities - in the form of intellectual information or more tangible constructs - with those who provide a more beneficial product.

Therefore, the number of relationships possessed by an outstanding member of the network will proliferate, and through these links within the network the products produced by the talented and hard-working individual will become dispersed more widely throughout the system, and his or her influence will be exacerbated.  He or she will then, through a completely egalitarian process, ascend to a position of power when it comes to shaping the contents and dispositions of the organization.

The theory of Extreme Democracy is somewhat of a by-product of the social phenomenon of social-software projects.  People noticed the trend referred to above taking place within the loose organizations of associates who were involved in the production of the coding necessary to enhance computer products.  Mozilla/Firefox is probably the best example of this type of social activity.  Jon Lebkowsky has been responsible for much of the expansion of the school of thought referenced as Extreme Democracy.  Though I agree with him on many aspects of his theoretical contemplations, there are still numerous problems to be worked out.  Nevertheless, this still appears to be a fruitful avenue to pursue for those who are interested in improving society by institutionalizing improved forms of democratic polity.

Tags: democracy, direct democracy, extreme democracy, federalism, government, localism, National, politics, populist, populist party, russell cole, society, third parties
Categories: Commentary, National, Society, Populist Party, Democracy, government, Politics, Third Parties, Direct Democracy
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