Author: Ariel

Review of "The Invention of Paris"

Women here look at themselves more than elsewhere, and from this comes the distinctive beauty of the Parisienne.
– Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project

I picked up a copy of Eric Hazan’s new book The Invention of Paris: A History in Footsteps to read before going to Paris hoping that it would be akin to Robert Hughes’ Barcelona. While both provides a wealth of details on the evolution of a city from medieval splendor to modern grandeur, the tone and tenor of the two books are vastly different. Where Hughes gives his attention to the architectural details that make Barcelona such a draw for those studying the applied arts as well as the history behind it, Hazans’ historiography focuses on the class conflict that played such a large role in the development of the city and provides little detail to the large changes of the city.

The first part of the book is itself separated into two sections and provides what might at best be called a micro-history of Paris by neighborhood from the 15th century to the mid 1900’s. Hazan illustrates that many ways the means of transportation available to goods production, land bequeathed to religious orders of variable popularity, health concerns, and the tax walls protecting the city from those that would prowl and predate on those just outside (and inside) the city walls. As a microhistory, the amount of details is amazing, if at times overwhelming.

The erection of a new wall around Paris for easier taxation and the changes that went on within it provides the reason for Hazan to change his discussion from quarters to fauborgs. Tax collectors have never been loved and to the rebellious Parisians this is no exception. The continual push of the intellectuals from the center to the periphery is detailed as is the contrast between various sections of the cities. As the rich would entrench themselves in a given position, they would find themselves afraid to go into certain sections for fear of populations that was known to all that they were exploiting.

One of the endearing parts of The Invention of Paris is it’s focus on specific regions and his explanations as to why it was that certain types of people were attracted there. For instance, salon culture has always attracted me, and the descriptions of Marais during the baroque period, which would have seen Thomas Hobbes, Blaise Pascal, Balzac, Descartes, Moliere and Racine weaving around the streets and entering into ornate drawing rooms to discuss their thoughts late into the night. The proximity to vast, old libraries and a population density of wealthy patrons willing to give some of their money in order to fund or just assist some of the greatest thinkers made Paris the intellectual capital that it was renowned as being. Whereas English is now generally the lingua franca within a meeting of the educated, French was the language of the court as well as anyone who wanted to address the audience of the literate across Europe.

One of the books weaknesses is the manner in which Hazan will jump back and forth throughout different epochs, sometimes by hundreds of years, in a single sections. While each particular quarter or fauborg is detailed in such a way as to show the influence of Royalist or capital imperatives on it, the historiography here lacks a cohesive narrative to draw all of them together and can seem overwhelming. The information provided, thus while interesting, seems to lack a pertinence other than a desire to prevent a particular historical event from being forgotten. Thus while we learn that recurring outbreaks of violence lead to Bellville as this was one of the easiest areas to defend once barricades had been erected.

One of the endearing qualities of the book is the wealth of literature that Hazan quotes illustrating the development of the city over hundreds of years. From journals of Honore de Balzac and Victor Hugo, letters by Daudet and Diderot as well as those closer to modern times like Guy Debord. In this regard the book reads like a love story with the city both from the point of view of Hazan as well as those that he quotes.

The second half of the book, the sections entitled Red Paris, Flaneurs and The Visual Image. The first of these three sections takes the histories of the neighborhoods and starts to show how various sections responded during period of social unrest. And where there are no longer seemingly random stories of transformations of architecture, movements of certain trades and markets and name checking of eminent personages and their relation to Paris, Hazan shines. After having provided all of these extensive details on the various neighborhoods of Paris, their political activism is not just described about but narrated in a series of tense scenes related to the various riots, rebellions, and revolutions of Paris.

“Even if this was not always where things started, even if the first shots were fired on the Pont d’Austerlitz or Boulevard des Capucines, the main fighting always took place in this labyrinth (the streets around Pont Notre-Dame) This constant is not just explained by symbolism, even if it was the capture of the Hotel de Ville that enabled an uprising to call itself a revolution. It also had strategic reasons, derived from the interlacing and narrowness of the streets” (294).

It is this sort of information, which comes after having read histories and reports on the unrest, that makes the at times very slow reading of the rest worth it. While I did not have a map of Paris available as I read it, I was able to use Google Maps to get a somewhat better understanding of the city’s landscape.
The first of the later two sections, Flâneurs gives a historical recounting of the milieu that gave birth to the types of social philosophy produced by Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin. With a specific purpose in mind, outlining the manner in which the need to be seen in French society interacted with the idleness of many a person, though never a true idleness as it was always a resting point before highly productive work, created a notion of spectatorship that is no longer as common as it was once. The desire was both to see a scene that was “mysterious and complex enchantment” that would kindle the imagination through a shocking and unexpected encounter and not be visible as someone witnessing it, as then one’s inclusion in the events would alter things. There is an element wherein the highly cultured would be able to face the dark miseries of life, with some but not great risk. These encounters with the marginalized, as Hazan shows by interspersing quotes from various flâneurs, leads one to a passionate identification with the underclass and can thus account for the leftist tendencies in French literature.

In the closing section, The Visual Image, Hazan gives much attention to Manet and the manner in which the painting scene of Paris once dominated that of the world. Between the brusque manner that states with matter-of-factness that it was the combination of a certain number of ephemeral circumstances that caused this density of highly creative and innovative artists to emerge and migrate, to Paris, there are hints of elegiac sentiments stemming from the manner in which photography soon replaced painting as the means of showing “real life”. In this time the painters turned idyllic and started depicting ruins. The section is short, only 29 pages, and covers a lot of time and topics – Manet, Prout, Dadaism, Surrealism, Man Ray all are mixed together in a flurry of thoughts tangentially connected. And though this is unlikely to be deemed as anything more than a broad background for these highly influential people, there loose connections are exactly what Hazan has been bringing to the forefront throughout the work: Paris is protean and beautiful for it.

Los Indignatos y un Visitante

Today Josselyn and I visited one of the Los Indignatos protests scheduled across Spain in protest of the planned cuts to Government social spending. These types of events have been happening with regularity since we arrived, but the difference between this one and that one was that the ones today were tied to other “manifestacios” happening worldwide. Despite the fact that the politician in me is quick to find fault recoils with the Los Indignatos protestors and their offspring, Occupy Wall Street, the spectator in me enjoys such events.

On the subway ride to Placa Catalunya there were already people clearly dressed for the event. There were also two people wearing stylized Guy Fawkes masks, symbolic of the hacktivist group Anonymous, and the train was unusually full of people for that time period. As the doors opened, a majority of the people got off and went up to enter the already overflowing plaza. Josselyn and I walked around for a while, snaking our way in between the throng of people took us quite some time but we got to get a good view at most of the groups there. The news reports I read immediately after indicated that there were some 60,000 people, which seems accurate.

Odd Collection of Flags

One of the reasons for derision in the American media is that post-Left political movements, which Los Indignatos and Occupy Wall Street, are characterized by their lack of coherence. If I was to judge this based upon not just the uniformity of dress of those attending but the placards that people chose to hold you could see that this was indeed true. If one were judging the gravity of the moment based upon the seriousness of posters slogans and level of handwriting clarity I would estimate that this was all just a farcical carnival. True, there were several pictures of Che Guevara displayed, but I don’t think that any of those actually holding them were advocating his position as they were individuals and not tied to a party. Despite the hegemonic individualness of the protest, there were several groups of partisans distinguished by printed placards and flags. There were several groups of anarchists, including the CNT-FAI. There was, however, no union presence and no political parties encouraging some sort of participation in Spanish politics other than the current protest.

After a while of meandering our way through the people, the march itself started. As we walked with the group down Gran Via, we saw that all of the banks on this street had been vandalized with graffiti and trash. One of the stores that had decided to stay open along the street, Zara, had security officers outside of it that were handling some protestors who had broken off from the main section in order to enter. I’m not sure what they were attempting to do as at the moment that we got closer the people there left.

There is a particular sort of satisfaction to be had in the presence of others, whether it be had seeing and being seen in streets concentrated with shops of conspicuous consumption or in the cultural particularities on display in McCarren Park, Williamsburg. The Hegelian struggle for recognition has a variety of ways of manifesting itself and impacts individuals and groups differently. Yet in this context, though such a manifestacio reaffirms that one is not unique in their distaste of the current, precarious economic state of affairs and the politicians that are handling it – the end result cannot but be dissatisfying for those attending. While it is entirely possible to say that the historical embeddedness of this and other like events could have ramifications that are beyond our ken to prognosticate on and therefore making any sort of valuation on it is premature.

However, we can say thus far the political impact of the Los Indignatos protests across Spain have been negligible policy wise and in fact been a point helping create a center-right coalition. Law and order are powerful mobilizing forces and in a country such as Spain, which is just one generation removed from a military dictatorship, such words bear large loads. While I can’t comment on the whole of Spanish politics, I can talk about the ultra-radicals as I’ve spoken with one of their reluctant to define themselves as such leaders while returning home from a day of writing at CCCB.

Anarchist groups headquartered in the University of Barcelona and run by the students have been propounding a policy of voting abstentionism for the general election. If you are interested in their views of how to alter national problems, such as the enormous unemployment rate of youth, then be prepared for sound and fury against capitalism. This lack is repeated on the international level as well. That such, this lack of platforms illustrates that as a class these students and those they claim to advocate for they are not yet ripe for any major government influence, be it in office or via the adoption of their policies by institutional parties. The anarchic appeals to direct democracy are simply howls of displeasure and helplessness that, seems to be respectable to them as it is argued with the same presumptions that the Spanish and Catalan radicals used in the era of the second republic. That they are unable to recognize this shows just how behind the times they are. With a Socialist Party in power, which in the American context is akin to the Democratic Party, it would be in their interest to act as a leftist influence as then they would be better able to hold said political regime accountable for the ideals they claim to embody. Simply refuting them, and the party itself, leads to political suicide. Such a suicide, of course, will be seen by them as glorious as they did so based upon their virtue.

Altogether, the ramifications of this policy is that in the Spanish General elections the Socialist Party will leave and a center-right or straight rightist party will assume power (Update – the election happened and this is exactly what did occur). This group will speed up the spending cuts and other neoliberal policies now seen as being necessary to bolster the Merkozy’s European Union.

It is through this lens that should lead one to see this sort of global day of protest as simultaneously laudable and laughable. Recognizing that the economic issues affecting so many people requires international co-operation is a key insight, however the sort of co-ordination required is still far off from one that will achieve the aspirations they desire to attain.

While it is only tangentially related, I am amused to report that the day following said protest I attended an “event” that was the polar opposite of such a manifestacio.

A friend of mine, Mark Parolisi, came to visit my fiancé and I in Barcelona on a whim and decided to take us out to dinner to celebrate our recent engagement. Wanting to make it a true culinary extravaganza, we decided to go to Lasarte, the only two Michelin star Spanish restaurant in Barcelona.

Before I go into detail about our experience at this fine restaurant, let me just say that my experiences with Spanish cuisine prior to this meal has not been the most enjoyable. My fiancé and I had gone out to perhaps a dozen other restaurants and each time found that the food was on the whole lacking in quality ingredients or was overly seasoned in such a way that made it lack an all around flavor indicative of a quality restaurants. In our conversations with other ex-pats since moving to Barcelona, I’ve discovered that we don’t simply have bad luck to keep picking places that are fundamentally lacking in some avenue but that this is the case of many of the restaurants in Barcelona. From what I’ve gathered in my observations many of the upper end Spanish restaurants simply rely upon the cache of restaurants like Il Bulli to rub off on them and they know very well the large number of tourists which descend upon the city’s center will not be return customers so don’t feel compelled to have food which matches their prices.

With this fact in mind, I’ll start my review by saying that this meal single handedly made up for the series of less than ideal meals that my fiancé and I had endured.

The meal began when three waiters placed in front of us on large golden plates four single fork sized pieces of food arranged in an eating order so as to maximize the play of flavors on our tongue.

The first portion was a truffle, which brought an earthy, woody taste to my palette that was stronger and more fleeting than usual as the truffles had been ground and compacted together so as to make it quickly disappear upon hitting my tongue.

The next tasting porting made me feel if the chef was inviting us to not only pay attention to flavors of the delicious foods we were eating but to the order as well for following the truffle was the very animal trained to find it – pig. Smiling at this culinary pun, I sipped the delicious cava my fiancé had chose and then put the marble sized Iberian ham croquette in my mouth. I was not able to bite into the croquette as upon putting it into my mouth and putting the slightest amount of pressure on the fried brown breading, the ham quite literally melted and washed over my tongue bringing with it the nutty taste of the Iberian ham.

Follow this was a thin slice of candied watermelon rind. After the sweetness of the rind we each opened individually wrapped coffee beans to cleanse the palette before out next course.

Gazpacho was then served. I was reluctant at first as my previous encounters with the quintessential Spanish dish less had been either too salty or too watery. However this gazpacho had neither of these excesses and also had in it some fresh peach juice, which gave it an exceptionally refreshing flavor. I believe that it also had a few drops of rose water, but whether this came from that or the edible flower in the center of the soup was impossible for me to tell.

Edible Leaf Art

Following these preparatory dishes, our ordered appetizers started to arrive. There are few words that I can use to describe the visually and olfactory beauty of the fresh leaves salad that I had. Its appearance made me think that it was made by the same mad and magical mind that designed Neuschwanstein. However rather than making a magical castle for a king and his bride, this dish was a magical park for their children to play in. The fresh flowers were in a semi-gelatinous base that accented their colors and had a light taste. Mixed in all of this were small pieces of lobster. I ate with some reluctance as destroying such beauty seemed criminal, but the taste was so good that such feelings quickly subsided.

Josselyn ordered the roasted, chopped scallops topped with Iranian caviar and a small side of artichokes, raw and creamy celery salad puree. I managed to obtain a small bite of such a delicacy, then watched it disappear with the only interruption being several sips of cava.

The slices of Iberian ham cured for 36 months Mark ordered covered a large plate and was too much and too heavy for him to eat alone. Josselyn and I happily helped him in this and paired it with fresh bread the wait staff offered.

At this point a second bottle of cava came to the table. We had several minutes to discuss the delicious food and our upcoming wedding plans when our entrée’s arrived. Mark, like myself, orders food based on what is typical to the region or generally unavailable in the United States. As such, he ordered the breast of pigeon with durum gravy, mashed potatoes accented with truffles and a surprise addition of baby carrots. The meat was dark in color from flash roasting that kept in all the succulent juices. It was without any of the gaminess that we thought it would have and a topic for discussion as to the general silliness of food discrimination based upon inherited notions of what is appropriate.

My fiancé, lover of steaks that she is, ordered a filet, potato and bacon mille-feuille with foie gras sauce. I find it hard to go into detail when describing a steak that is cooked to perfection and accompanied with perfectly paired foods as I find that only the taste itself is a sufficient indicator of superb quality. Saying that the center was reddish pink just as she ordered is no substitute for a bite of it. All I shall say is that after three months of living in Barcelona, she finally gave me the notice that she had a steak that was worthy of the name.

I ordered pigs trotters stuffed with Catalan black pudding and a side of mushroom and cheese toast. I thought it a little pricey considering the cut of meat, but I wanted to try a traditional Catalan dish and soon discovered that my adventurous choice well rewarded. At this point in my life there are very few things that I can eat and say the taste, texture or flavor are completely novel to me. My parents served me a wide variety of international cuisine since a baby and I’ve kept this habit since leaving their nest when cooking at home as well as when traveling to the two dozen or so countries that I’ve been. That said, the flavor and taste of these trotters was a completely new to me and something that I enjoyed immensely.

Inside the pork trotters was the “pudding”, a thick gelatanious sauce of a consistency slightly thicker than marrow and filled with pieces of pork. It was somewhat thick, being basically a flavored gelatin shell filled with metal filled gelatin, but the smallest dab of the sauce garnishing the plate cut through it without overwhelming it. It was precisely what I had hoped to get from going to the restaurant, a modern take on classic Catalan cuisine, and I was richly rewarded for my choice.

By this time each of us were so full by the appetizers, the cava and main courses that we foreswore dessert. Yet sure enough shortly after the amazingly prompt and courteous wait staff cleared our plates they placed a tray down in the center of our table that was made from silver forks arranged in such a way as to hold small shot glasses of four different types of deserts. At the sight of this presentation and hearing their description our initial reluctance and treated ourselves to yet another round of delicious indulgences.

Stuffed and awed after such a spectacular meal, we all left feeling as if we had finally had some delicious Spanish cuisine that was worthy of writing about.

Branguli at C.C.C.B

I had never heard of the name Josep Branguli before moving to Barcelona and going to his exhibit at C.C.C.B. This is understandable for as a documentary photographer capturing the urban metamorphosis and social transformations at the beginning of the 20th century he is a single person amongst many. His pictures of small factories employing a handful of people, and the large ones replacing them are done as artfully as the pictures of workers in social setting. Yet these are not unique. What distinguishes Branguli from others is his collection of Spanish Civil War photography.

Branguli was born in 1879 and worked as a photographer in Barcelona from 1909 until his death in 1945. Unlike Capa, Chim and Taro, the photographers most associated with documenting the conflict, Branguli did not have to flee before Franquist troops. This meant that he was not moving around from front to front and was able to document most of the important events of Barcelona. As a well-known resident documenting the conflict but not a member of any of the groups later banned by Franco, Branguli was able to remain in Barcelona and take photos after the Second Republic finally collapsed. In these years Branguli focus shifted from the social and material changes imposed by capitalist logic to the topography of a repressive police state.

One of the events that Branguli captured on cellulose included images from the Tragic Week of 1909. It was during this week that Republicans, Socialists and Anarchists fought against clergy and the army following unrest against pay, working conditions and anti-militarism. It was during this period that many overstated stories that had the intention of delegitimizing the secular parties purportedly initiating the fighting were circulated in the press. One of the news stories circulated to discredit the Republic was that their anarchist allies were digging up the corpses of nuns and priests throughout the region and dancing with them. Branguli’s picture shows that bodies were indeed de-interred, yet subsequent historiography show how this only happened in a few places and was not at all a systematic desecration as was spoken of in Catholic.

This particular picture is interesting not just as it gave validity to the King and Catholic Church’s claims of moral authority but in a way also undermines it. The influence of the Catholic Church in Spain was and still is profound. The peasants at that time, if literate at all, were so only in the teaching of the Bible and the catechism unless they’d been able to be educated in one of Fransisco Ferrer’s handful of modern schools. One of the Catholic articles of faith at the time was that those that who had lived a holy life would decay slower, as evident by the use of holy relics, and thus the picture of the body presents a paradox. To the viewer, the holy body is indeed removed from it’s grave and the body is also not as holy as claimed by the authorities on holiness. What is indeed presented is the same sort of problem as the stinking body of Zosima, something that I doubt would have been lost by Branguli.

Buenaventura Durruti's Funeral Procession

Another important event that Branguli was able to visually preserve for posterity was the funeral procession of Buenavetta Durruti, an Italian anarchist activist and writer inspired like many others to leave their homelands and come to Spain in order to assist the Second Republic from a fascist military coup. He was, however, shot and killed after only a week in Spain. Despite his marginal role in the war, the numbers of people clearly show that he was someone that gave voice to many of those fighting for their lives.

Also captured by Branguli was the arrival of Heinrich Himmler in October in 1940. His presence is not only evidence of the collusion between Fascist Spain and Nazi Germany, but hints at the deeper collaboration between these two nations. This shouldn’t be too surprising considering that Spain did in 1492 part of what Germany was then attempting to accomplish. Thus, with the lessons of the Peninsular War surely at the back of their minds, the Gestapo and Spanish secret police sought to root out the Catalan nationalists and other classes that might rupture their organicist ideals.

While Branguli’s work was published in several Spanish revistas I’ve yet to find evidence that he was published outside of it. After the war in Spain, it was a taboo issue inside the country and the rest of the world now shifted their attention to the conflict building up into a fever pitch around Germany. Thus that he is still somewhat of a hometown secret becomes more understandable, though perhaps with a little bit of luck some sixty plus years after his death he’ll be getting the recognition that he deserves.

Comments on Occupy Wall Street

When the future looks back upon the Occupy Wall Street movement that is quickly spreading due to the profound discontent with the status quo it is important to understand how they will conceive of this moment. While various peoples are sure to conceive of it and whatever results may come in different terms, there are several aspects of it that are worth noting for the fact that they will be indisputable.

The call to Occupy Wall Street on September 17th emerged from Adbusters, a Vancouver based schizovocal magazine that bills itself as the Journal of the Mental Environment and is best known for satirizing commercial advertising from the pages of a glossy magazine. The event date and intent, as well as preliminary co-ordination groups were formed, several months in advance via it’s website. As the initial activists started to set up camp and post their arrival to Zucchoni Park online, they immediately heralded it as a call that “resonates around the world“ and encouraged others to join them or create their own version of this in their own country.

As other commentators have noted, such as Michael Moore, this action hasn’t received the amount of news coverage befitting such an action. Especially so, as this was not a group that was directly funded by financial interests in the way that Tea Party events are. However as of now the media’s choice of news is not my concern. What is worth pointing out is that even despite the lack of video news coverage, the number of people that have turned out to the event is extremely low considering the number of people to which it is addressed – the self-proclaimed 99%.

My general criticism of the Occupy Wall Street movement is in its use of gestural politics, leaderless resistance and intellectual incoherence stemming from an idealist conception of politics. Over the past two decades there has been a growing fetishization of such modes of politics despite the fact that these forms of post-left/post-structuralist movements have yet to achieve any compelling results or continued to function as an organization after minor accomplishments were achieved. It is because of an idealized notion of democracy based on radical and anarchist philosophies was the explicit or unintended organizing principle for such groups they have been reified as organizational ideals supposedly unsullied by the dirtiness of actually existing politics. A recurrent theme through the propaganda released by O.W.S. is that one of its purposes is itself the process. The decentralist urge in America politics is an understandable one given our history of frontier democracy, the advanced state of capitalism we have obtained, the subjectivism encouraged by a high level of cultural, racial and ethnic diversity, a traditional proclivity towards individualism and the history of leftist movements in the United States. Yet however attractive such a reliance upon these mores and modes of political action is, it is an yet another form of American exceptionalism which presents false hopes to the 99% of Americans which Adbusters seeks to represent from achieving true political agency.

To critique this form of organization qua itself is not my argument. Within the realm of imagined relationships this will always be a source for inspiration for those that are affected by social, political and economic disenfranchisement and seek to ameliorate the dearth of agency in the prevailing conditions endemic to prevailing relations. However, it is in this, our current specific historical context that we must determine the inherent limitations of such a form of organization and see that it is not compatible with achieving the social change with it tentatively claims it wants to accomplish. Doing so we must first recognize that this form of politics alludes to a specific form of syndicalist politics that inspires it without giving concern to the historical context or content of that time. We must recognize the context in which we now find ourselves and only after all of this is done is it possible to come to any possible conclusions as to the perennial question – what is to be done?

At the zenith of syndicalism’s effectiveness during the fin de siècle it still represented a minority movement that started in Europe and spread to the United States. This is not to say that it did not have a lasting effect on the politics of the time, but they largely had the effect of speeding up changes that were already in process rather than causing them. Direct action was favored over political integration into the existing order, which was conceived of as imposing myriad prohibitions against party actions and thus weakening efficiency. Given the logics of collective action inherent in relation dependant upon property rights and the state’s inherent conservatism this is and was a just criticism. Yet however many of the prominent personages connected to continuing the prevailing economic and political order died after assassinations, the order still remained, changed only by deteriorating social ties. Additionally, the body count mostly consisted of workers and activists during strikes and sieges. Recognizing that this mode of politics wasn’t getting the support it’s theoreticians thought it would – the European syndicalists, such as Kropotkin, abandoned violent propaganda of the deed with those of spectacular actions.

In the United States, the IWW was the first syndicalist group, besides the Knights of Labor, to eschew political action in favor of militant direct action. While at first it was largely composed of unskilled workers who had been established in America for some time, as they saw their jobs increasingly going to new immigrants for lower wages they left the union other groups as the IWW fought for their rights. Thus the IWW became composed primarily of newly emigrated, unskilled workers disenfranchised by the traditional unions such as the AFL. Their idealized tactic, the One Big Strike, was to unite every worker so that at the called for moment they could bring the American economy to a standstill and usher in an epoch of social democracy.

This eschatological notion of syndicalist origins is the forebear of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. The conceptualization of historical change is that after One Big Moment, there will be a sudden change in American politics that changes the beneficiaries from the current model of politics from the owning class to the working class.

OWS has several primary differences from previous syndicalist organizations. For one – it has not organized itself upon class lines for a long period of protracted, multifaceted conflict. In previous syndicalist and working-class movements it was correctly understood that through the crucible of union and class struggles the future leaders of the sundry legalistic and militant movements would arise. In order to achieve popular legitimacy, group-cohesion and organizational effectiveness, roles proscribed by the existing situation needed to be filled. Those with the needed skills and ambition would ascend to then fill them. Depending upon the political context, there would be an active attempt to have a bureaucracy rotating positions and into and out of the work force to prevent concretization of roles and so that others could learn how to function accordingly in different positions. As such, future leaders would emerge from their engagement with these groups as well as youth groups that were also formed to help instruct the next generation. In addition to this, groups for workers interests and women’s leagues were also formed to help find promising people for the struggle and to simultaneously encourage community and class values.

It was these practices that made the I.W.W. as well as the Populist and Socialist parties from the 1870’s to 1930s effective despite being numerically small. While not able to wield any national power, they were able to influence people in regional elections in areas with large populations and pull enough votes away from the mainstream parties such that they forced their competitors to adjust their rhetoric and policies to incorporate those of these more radical groups. For those not as historically aware of this, a similar trend is now visible with the emergence of the Tea Party, which is causing a rightward turn of the already conservative Republicans.

Now while these groups lack of national significance or continuing power might suggest that it is solely due to their flawed ideology and actions that caused their disappearance from the map of contemporary American politics, this is only one factor. When piecing together the non-Liberal Left’s decline it is important to contextualize it during a period marginal gains provided to the conservative unions following the destruction of much of the foreign manufacturing bases in World War II and of repression and institutional marginalization of these groups which increased in intensity following the Russian Revolution. Thus though over the long term they were ineffective unto themselves, they were able to definitely shape American policy and would have likely to have continued to do so have not the various Red Scares given cause to delegitimize such tendencies. And as this influence gradually vanished following a cultural campaign against the USSR, the threat of war and revelations about the true state of Soviet affairs, so did the Democratic parties attempts to appeal to the liberal and non-liberal left. Taking for granted that these groups would continue to support them, the Democrats turned rightwards in order to have a greater opportunity for corporate and conservative donations and single-issue NGO’s started to multiply. Yet whatever relief one may feel by blaming this or that party as the sole cause of the current economic crisis is to overlook the role of the American public, which has been pliant, undeservedly content and willfully ignorant and is only just paying attention now.

Many of those associating themselves with Occupy Wall Street criticize this current incarnation of the American political process and are very insightful into diagnosing its problems. This however it not new nor are they are not alone in disseminating such an interpretation of American Political economy. What is new is the spectacular embrace of rejecting traditional political practices.

Their form of individualizing political practice does not maintain that prolonged engagement with political institutions is the way to achieve social change. It is quixotic in the worst possible way as it presumes a historically false model of social change. Furthermore the skill sets created by engagement with Adbusters form of political practice include only Agent Provocateur identification, buying less material goods and how to Twitter petition for Pizza. While going to the barricades is indeed one aspect of political conflict, Adbusters practically endorses this one aspect as THE means that will lead to the type of social change they will EVENTUALLY describe as desirable.

That said, it is hard to deny the mobilizing power of Occupy Wall Street and those that are popping up in other areas. It is able to represent everything to everyone. Think GMO foods are destroying the earth? Go to the park or organize something in your area! Think the death penalty is cruel? Think that all student loans should be forgiven? Think the minimum wage needs to be raised? Think there should be more government accountability? Think there should be less government so that business can regulate itself? Think that Glass-Steagall should be brought back and everything will return to normal? Go to the park or organize something in your area!!

However it is this ability to mean everything to everyone that it also it’s weakness. Occupy Wall Street will continue to garnish followers in other cities, more drums will be hit, more signs will be made, more marches commence and more mayors will continue to have their police departments use kids gloves to avoid bad press. Occupy Wall Street is a the public announcement of what many within the non- liberal left have been saying for sometime: that the tactics and structures of the working class interest groups are fetid and in need of replacement. Unions predate on other unions members rather than on non-unionized workers as it’s easier to accomplish. The election of Democratic presidents has turned into a ritual wherein candidates promise Leftist reforms and then turn right. However merely occupying space which can only be held precariously doesn’t achieve these changes – merely presents a space wherein they can be discussed.

In many ways Occupy Wall Street will be most successful as a failure despite a full-fledged effort waged on behalf of those involved. It will function as a crash course in political education needed by those still unclear as to the vast diversity and interconnection of problems in an advanced capitalist society as well as deracinating the idea that spontaneity alone is a sufficient political practice. They will soon learn that concerted organization with a wide division of functions is necessary. These positions are not new, and it is to those that have been advocating this position that those at Zuccotti Park or those generally sympathetic to Occupy Wall Street will turn.

Toiling for decades to spread this very knowledge of how bad things were becoming for American workers and how to change it are the various Socialist parties. So much sound and fury has been spent classifying Obama as a Socialist that people, especially the youth that comes to question the still prevailing Cold War narrative. As people come to realize that complexities of these historical problems facing the various models (Soviet, Cuban, Chinese, etc.) bespoke of by talking heads, they will come to see more and more that they do not in any way represent Socialism. They will see that these are bugbears bandied about by demagogues to muzzle those that criticize the current state of affairs and at this point an important fact comes to light – that it is not until Soviet “socialism” collapsed can it possibly rise in America.

While the American socialist groups may now have less interference to pursue their paths of political action today – they still bear the imprint from which they were born. The coat of paranoia, cultish devotion to key leaders, catechistic responses to outsiders and an understandable yet off-putting fixation on specific historical epochs during which heroic actions happened, which, while valuable, matter little to the issues of Americans, has yet to be shed. It is of little surprise that such an option doesn’t seem desirable now, however romantic sentiments doesn’t achieve political change. Disciplined parties do. One need not refer to any great Marxist revolutionary to see that this is the truth, but simply look at the historical record.

Review of "Nature's Metropolis – Chicago and the Great West"

The history of capitalism is the history of the relation between town and country, and Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West by William Cronon shows the epic scale of this relationship in Chicago’s inception and growth into the second largest city in America. Using a Hegelian-Marxist conceptual framework and a wealth of financial reports, invoices, federal bankruptcy data, census data, newspaper subscription records, and court rulings, Cronon expounds on how technological development related to production, transportation, housing, marketing and distribution mediated the economic relations between town and country.

Cronon opens by illustrating how Chicago grew to enormous proportions due to its relationship to a series of frontier and natural environments and how massive public projects were able to remove the natural physical limitations to trade. The mesh of physical contingencies that Cronon describes in the development of Chicago’s industry highlights the social and economic logic that is eventually sublated by subsequent development.

Cronon then surveys different historians’ approaches to understanding the development of the 19th century American West. He turns against Turner’s frontier thesis, and shows how agricultural development in the less developed region led to commercial expansion in the city. This critical point is then tied to an exegesis of Von Thunen’s Isolated State. This state is conceived of as such: The central zone is the city and is able to obtain the highest rents as it is the most population dense. Outside of this are five zones that, due to their capital investment and transportation costs to the city determines their proximal relation to it. First there is the zone of intensive agriculture (dairy and market gardens), following that is extensive agriculture (unrotated wheat) or intensive forestry, then open range livestock raising, a zone for trapping, hunting and trade with the hinterlands and finally the “wilderness”.

After explicating the weaknesses of this ahistorical concept, Cronon moves into a Marxian geography wherein capital enters and exits regions of increased profitability and is constantly changing these zone and the relationships of those in them. In his chapters regarding the conflict between small lumber stores and direct sellers as well as between local butchers and the Chicago meat processing plants we see this most clearly. However it would be a mistake to conceive of Cronon’s work as a social or labor history of Chicago, while these human concerns are intimately connected to his narrative, he is primarily concerned with explicating commodity market relationships, developments and their effects on the physical composition of Chicago. Though this may seem to be a disavowal of the very human element that created the wealth of the city, it functions more to delineate the competitive limits for both labor and capital based upon technological and regional development and the sundry effects this had on human relationships involved in the struggle for control of such processes. Examples of this include but are not limited to the standardization of packaging to handle greater volumes of wheat than any previously amassed, their grading of grain and lumber based upon variable qualities to simplify pricing, the purchasing power given to the grain barons, the creation of the first futures markets, attempts at regulation, etc.

In addition to the commodity history of grain, Cronon also focuses on meat, lumber, railways and capital investments. Each historically situates the conceptual/physical transformations brought about by centralization process as well as how many of these very aspects which gave Chicago a competitive advantage over nearby cities and helped it to rise also lead to its decline. One example of this is the large number of trains that turned Chicago into an entrepot. As the city grew, housing and commercial real estate development along with safety concerns sapped the train’s efficiency, thus forcing shippers to circumvent the city altogether and capital intense industries, such as Hormel, to decentralize. This dialectical perspective is evident throughout.

In the closing section Cronon outlines Chicago’s moral economy as conceptualized at the time, thus highlighting the oft-cited divide between town and country. The White City becomes a point for discussion on capitalist relationships in general and how symbiotic but unequal relationships were conceptualized and navigated. As generally ebulliant I am about this intricate work, there are also some glaring omissions that must be calculated within the historiography of Chicago’s commodity markets. The proximity of iron ore and coal is are two important aspects overlooked, as is the massive number of immigrants constantly entering into the city and putting constant downward pressure on wages. Cronon cannot be overly criticized for this, but at least some discussion of regulating industries and capital competition as it relates to the changes so artfully described would add yet another layer to the developments Cronon described.

P.O.U.M. Exhibit

Today I went to the Catalyunya National History Museum to see an exhibition on the 75th anniversary of formation of the P.O.U.M. (Partido Obreador Unido Marxist) and was rather underwhelmed by the small room made in their memory. Though their time on the world stage was small, the role they played was large. It is not just Ken Loach and George Orwell who use this group as a way for explaining the conflicts going on within Spain’s Republican Government and the country as a whole during the period of Civil War, but the many International Brigadeers who came to fight on the Republican side voluntarily and were so taken by their experience they made efforts equal to their time on the battlefield to make sure that it would be truthfully recorded for posterity. In fact, this conflict is the first historical occurrence of a concerted, international effort on the part of the defeated to lay out their mistakes, weaknesses and try to arrive at an after the fact assessment of what they should have done differently.

Heroic, unique and thoroughly documented in narrative though their actions may have been, history has not been kind to the P.O.U.M. The dearth of materials curators were able to display is understandable given the P.O.U.M. was a vehicle of the Trotskyist Opposition. Members were under attack from Fascist and Stalinist elements prior to General Franco taking control of Spain. After Franco’s victory physical items indicating membership or sympathy became cause for arrest or disappearance. The slanderous or true accusation by someone to the authorities also meant that you could become one of the hundreds of thousands of Spaniards killed in political purges against the socialists, anarchists, communists, pacifists, militant progressives, anti-clericalists and unionists. As such, the display cases consisted only of red cards indicating membership with the group, several books, pamphlets and newspapers published by the party. It is likely that other artifacts were destroyed out of a sense of self-preservation.

What was the most compelling aspect of this exhibit were the few dozen pictures showing group members not simply fighting on the front lines, but relaxing together on the beach and smiling for the camera in a moment of joy, or sitting at a cafe. These pictures showed a human side that appreciated pleasant distraction and social gatherings in a way that so often gets ignored in discussions of political mobilization and conflict. It showed that those fighting on the battlefields were not doing so simply because they were ideologues who craved conflict or automatons following orders but as they sincerely sought to gain for themselves a manner of living that would allow them to extract more pleasure from life through a better standard of living and working less. Though they recognized that they would need to take a militant stance as the only way they could possibly achieve their desires given the social conditions they inherited, their motivation for doing to was the very opposite of the military ideal, specifically the desire for joy and play. And it is in this humanization of forces that the CNHM did a great job in presenting the P.O.U.M. to those who made it to their 75th anniversary exhibit.

Review of "Left Out: Pragmatism, Exceptionalism, and the Poverty of American Marxism, 1890-1922"

Brian Lloyd’s book Left Out: Pragmatism, Exceptionalism, and the Poverty of American Marxism, 1890-1922 gives an intellectual history of the early socialist thought in America. He claims that too much of the historical writings on this period has taken for granted the Marxist nature of American Socialists by simply categorizing the two major tendencies into Reform and Revolutionary Socialism (ex: Ira Kipnis), and then begins with careful consideration of the thoughts developed within socialist journals such as the Masses, the New Republic as well as the “socialist” books published at the time.

From here the book begins with an exposition of pragmatism as conceived by William James and Dewey. Lloyd shows the differences between these two thinkers that have often been conflated into a singular “pragmatist school,” largely due to the work of the former to create a unique “American” philosophy, and how it is vastly different from the Marxist holism. These thinkers, defined as they are by empiricist epistemologies, focus on biological and cultural dispositions, functionalist psychologizing, positivism and, in the case of James, dualism. If this seems like a strange opening for a Marxist intellectual history of early American socialist parties, it is done so in order to show the heterodox and unstable nature of socialist ideology at the time.
These two liberal are shown to have greatly influence the intellectuals writing for the socialist press and Lloyd further demonstrates the authority upon which Spencerian notions of social/cultural development, Veblenian economic stages, Nietzschean and Bergsonian concepts of the Will/interest and Darwinian determinism affected the “scientific” theories emerged in Progressive and socialistic discourses. In addition to these divergences form Marxist thought, the various socialist parties would at times rely upon small-producer ideologies – as evidenced in the Granger movement and the farmers faction of the Socialist Party – in order to act as an organizing principle.

Several intellectuals prominent within the socialist discourses of the time are then brought under scrutiny to show how the intellectual framework they used was more inspired by pragmatist notions than Marxist ones. The explanatory concepts used by of Eastman, Fraina, Hillquist, Boudin, Seligman and others are shown to be amalgams of naturalistic science and bourgeiouse thought. Several of these supposed socialists actively seek to discredit Marx, either because he is “foreign” and thus unfamiliar with the U.S.’s unique conditions, or as he has been discredited by Bernsteinian notions of evolutionary socialism, or simply because he wrote in a time so far removed that his concepts no longer apply to the non-competitive capitalism of the time. There were even those that claimed that Marx was really a pragmatist and a positivist, and would cloak their language with the terminology of Marx in a ceremonial fashion but really then would combine empirical data and the highly subjectivist new psychology within a framework of economic determinism that has naught to do with Marx.
It is from this exegesis that Lloyd pulls out how it should have been no surprise how all of the aforementioned socialist intellectuals were pulled into the nationalistic and xenophobic discourses justifying repressive social measures under the auspices of liberal values and crypto-imperial aspirations at the beginning of World War I. By exhaustingly limning the conceptual limits of hayseed empiricism, practical idealism, inchoate liberalism, “great men” theories, economic monism, etc. that characterized American “Marxism” and the Second International, their policies of exceptionalism become more understandable. As can readily be understood from the above, not only is their understanding of the path towards socialism completely divergent from the epistemological-ontological philosophy of Marx and instead steeped in exceptionalism, but the ramifications of such a position are then shown after the October Revolution. Many of the above thinkers go from Socialists to Anti-Communists, some of who became employed within various levels of government as political advisors to Woodrow Wilson.

The last 50 pages of the book outlines in broad detail the Marxist-Leninst position on a Socialist movement and provides a philosophical counterfactual to the projects of the various socialist groups. Lloyd is careful to state that he does not claim that were these American “revolutionary” organizations to adopt a dialectical and historically materialist ideology they would have been successful. He does, however, describe a clear contrast to the various pseudo-Marxisms and their myriad blind-spots. While this is done throughout the book as well, here we see a systematic presentation of the poverty of American Marxist thought.

Viva Barcelona!

It’s been a little over a month since moving to Barcelona. While getting accustomed to the time change and daily rhythm which is so vastly different from the of New York hasn’t been difficult per se, but it has exacted from me my ability to write. The amount of bureaucracy here is indeed mind-blowing and probably a reason why the black market is so prevalent throughout the country. However, now that I consider myself mostly adjusted, I wanted to take the time to write in some detail about some of my thoughts since arriving.

First I must admit that since arriving I have found myself consistently gratified for having taken the time to read Robert Hughes book Barcelona, a comprehensive account of the history of my new home cities development from Roman colony to empire to unwilling appendage of Castillian influence to war zone to home of the 1992 summer Olympics. Hughes also introduces the eminent personages that helped construct the city and bring it renown, catalogs many of the distinctly Catalan cultural traditions, traces it’s political and economic developments as well as give detailed examination of the city’s famous architecture. Poets, revolutionaries of the Right and Left, Kings, colonialists all have their place, but it is the artisans which designed the city that he devotes most of his attention. This is unsurprising given Hughes background as an art critic, but his exegesis of wood, marble stone and cement is no mere formalism but informed by the historical contexts and conflicts of the time.

Hughes gives the history behind the Teatro de Liceu, a work of epic beauty constructed during the beginning of the Golden Age of the Catalan bourgeoise which could not cope with the industrialism which helped bring it into being. The strange placement of Monjuic, a castle at the edge rather than the center of the city, is explained, as well as the large statue of Christopher Colombus pointing to the New World close to Barcelona’s docks. The reasoning that so many of the cities street names are of foreign origin are brought to light, as are many other aspects of the city that I have since encountered.

While the two thousand years of history and development that are gone over in this 567 page book have an impressive amount of detail, it is the final chapters on Gaudi which are by far the most in depth. Given Gaudi’s impact on notions of Barcelonans Catalan identity and subsequent use in advertising matrerial this is unsurprising. However, this section is no more paean to genius, the capacity of architects to bring an aesthetic pleasure to the banal and incorporate local craft traditions into work in a time of increasing standardization and deskilling. Additionally, the book ends with a masterful deconstruction of La Sagrada Familia, the building probably associated with Barcelona in the same way that the Eiffel Tower is with Paris.

And speaking of Paris, I must admit that after having read this I have a fervent desire to return to Paris after having read Eric Hazan’s The Invention of Paris: A History in Footsteps. While I visited many of the literary sites made famous by the long history of Parisian intellectuals and writers, the Lost Generation and Henry Miller, this text, I’m sure as Hughes does, presents a type of history shows just how embedded the past is into the present.

Whilst on the subject of the past embedded in the present, and one of the reasons why I wanted to write this blog, was that one of the things which have taken me by surprise since arriving is the living memory apparent within the public places of Barcelona. While visiting the library closest to my house I noticed several Republican political posters from the Spanish Civil War. Whilst walking around the Montjuic park I came across a statue of Fernando Ferrer – a secular educator that was sentanced to death for a falsely attributed role in an assassination plot. In a bookstore by the Liceu metro line, off Passeig de Gracia, I entered a bookstore which contained a large display of books related to the Spanish Civil War at the front of the store, the area which is considered most valuable to attracting customers. There are posters and graffiti, heavily concentrated in the Gracia area, for the CNT, CGT and COO and whilst walking in the Old City there was a large rally composed of these groups protesting cut in social spending.

I see this and in light of the fact that all of these public acknowledgments of previous and still existing social conflict stems from the death of Franco and the relaxation of strictures preventing remberence I find stunning. The various conceptual and historical frameworks offered by G. W. F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Reinhart Koselleck, Benedict Andersen sets my mind running in various directions, especially when considering the manner in which such history is deployed amidst the current Spanish economic crisis. This is a topic that I’m sure I will meditate on more as time goes on and I find myself exposed to more experiences – however one such topic that I think worthy of attention is how there are certain historical periods which some regions/countries get stuck in.

For Spain it is clearly the Spanish Civil War which is historical moment that is constantly returned to it as a source of inspiration, reflection and criticism. During the time immediately preceding, during and following the war there was a flourishing of literature which was describing the events. The two books most widely acclaimed about the events, Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls and George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, are truly great but should also be paired with a Spanish work of similar greatness, Lorca’s Three Tragedies. Additionally, it wasn’t just the literary arts that was affected. Perhaps the most famous work related to this was Picasso’s Guernica. While the ideological foment embedded in this period wasn’t atypical and had several echoes in other national literatures and arts – however that this continues to be a guiding source of inspiration is.

Recent films such as Pan’s Labyrinth, Last Circus, There Be Dragons also center on or have these events play a major role in plot and character development. Even Javier Bardem’s recent film Biutiful, set in modern day Barcelona, focuses on a character haunted by his father who died while fleeing Franco’s death squads. Such a history is not surprisingly disavowed in Woody Allen’s omphaloskeptical film Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

This is not so unsurprising as such events allow for dramatic tension that rarely emerges. Inter-natinonal war is one thing, but prolonged civil war with entrenched positions based upon class/ideological differences is. My own interest in the dynamic provided by nationalistic and ideological tension contained within the context stems from a period of convalescence where I devoured The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years 1868-1936, The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939, The Spanish Civil War: Revised Edition, The Spanish Civil War, Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women in a period of a few weeks. I bring this as just as many of the conflicts within the Civil War are still relevant to contemporary issues and not just to Autonomous communities in Spain.

To cite a specific example, last Thursday I unwittingly walked into my first major Spanish demonstration protesting the neo-liberal policies mandated by Germany to support the EU (pictures). Spain still has credibility where Greece and now Italy do not, but this doesn’t mean that there still isn’t rampant unemployment, social unrest and problems that are lying underneath the semi-peaceful veneer. This is, however, unlikely to change. As the moral hazard created by Greece and now Italy spreads it is likely to create increased tension amidst those and other member nation states as incentives to fail become available. While the battles for the future control over resource management and government policy will now be directed by politicians rather than princes or fuhrers, thus taking the heroic element out of politics with bureaucracy, what economists should consider is not the increasing perfectibility of Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium models – but how it is that historical traditions inform economic responses.

That said, I’m going out to see more of the city.

Review of "Diplomacy"

One cannot possibly come to terms with an understanding of the State if one doesn’t factor in the many bureaucrats with varying degrees of intelligence and skill that are tasked with incarnating it to other nations. Whether it is to provide warnings should certain conduct continue, apologies or explanations for a certain occurrence, actionable information to assist an ally or any of a hundred other possibilities – the role of the diplomat to collective security in peace and war is the utmost importance. In this regard, and for many other reasons, Henry Kissinger’s book Diplomacy is a key reading for those concerned with the factors and forces that have composed the current system of international relations and continues to do so.

Kissinger’s opening outlines a metaphysical divergence between two approaches to international relations embodied in two different presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Denoting them respectively as a realist and an idealist, Kissinger limns the valences of each position and leads this discussion of different philosophical approaches to international relations into a broad reaching history of the European continent and the role that diplomacy and war had in forming the nation states of modern Europe.

In the following sections one reads not only the tactics and plans of great statesman such as Metternich, Gladstone, Disraeli, Palmerston, Richelieu, and Bismark but also the ones who played into the hands of their opponents and hobbled themselves as a result and/or were simply inept, such as Napoleon III. This period covers from the 18th century onwards and gives insight into the various war, agreements, alliances, histories and desires of the European nations. These are not just an account of what happens, but also paeans to those practitioners of Realpolitik that Kissinger respects with expressions of commiseration for some given the situation that they have inherited or must now face given the growing role of private citizens in government. Such elite disdain for those which seek some control in government is first couched in German nationalistic reactions and later in the conception of the anti-Vietnam War movement in America as a fifth column for Ho Chi-Minh.

One of the recurring themes of these praises couched in policy analysis is that the weight of uncontrollable circumstances, oftentimes in the form diplomacy not actualized with the proper considerations of audience and history, causes the collapse of the temporarily brokered peace and leads to war. In the chapter entitled “A Political Doomsday Machine,” Kissinger describes the string of bad policy decisions made on behalf of the Prussian Kaiser that caused the First World War to break out with most of the countries against them. Their emotionalism, inability to define long-range projections, bellicose paternalism towards their ostensible ally Great Britain and dogged determination to prove their superior capacity even at the cost of making repeated mistakes.

This tendency for conflict whose ends is spoils of land and waterways, natural resources and productive population is something that we see not only in the diplomatic history Kissinger outlines, but as a metaphysical composition of states themselves. In this it is interesting the manner in which Kissinger focuses on the theater of Europe and elides much of the United States own interventions from the 19th century onwards in order to frame his adopted country as a self-less, disinterested isolationist.

Kissinger excels in formulating his exegesis on the needs of various states as essentially geo-political with ideology and religion as mere masks to this. Britain wants to prevent the emergence of a great European power that could threaten to invade it so will forgive all previous misdeeds done against it in order to ally with the enemy of their enemy. Russia seeks the route to Constantinople and the Straits so it could control the Eastern Mediterranean. France wants to prevent the unification of the Germans so that a united front of once small kingdoms against it is impossible. This constant movement from different levels of abstraction, state to person to industry, shows just how much the Hegelian mode of historiography and dialectic comprehension has influenced Kissinger.

Interspersed throughout the books are pithy statements that give insight into statecraft such as: “A leader who confines his role to his people’s experience dooms himself to stagnation; a leader who outstrips his people’s experience runs the risk of not being understood” (43). In this we see that Kissinger, a noted Harvard academic, writes not just as a historian, but as a formative part of history. This is one of the aspects which makes Diplomacy such a wonderful book is not only for all of the above reasons but as Kissinger was, and at the time of my writing this still is, a major figure amongst the circle of actors directing American foreign policy. This is the reason for so much ire directed at him by those with some kind of moralizing lens. As such, it is no mistake to say that midway through the book, around the period that Kissinger himself is writing about his experiences in conducting statecraft, that these writings can be seen as important to the writings of Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War, Xenephon’s Persian Expedition or even Caesar’s The Conquest of Gaul .

In the period immediately preceding his ascent, with the collapse of European hegemony in the third world and the rise of the bi-polar system, Kissinger lays out the arguments of the others playing important roles in the formation of international policy. He states the policies of Winston Churchill, Walter Lippman, and Henry Wallace as regards the threat of possible confrontation with Soviet Russia and shows the underlying presuppositions in the policy of each. While most view Kissinger as a hawk, in the exegesis of his own positions it becomes clear that he was not so and always sought to avoid direct confrontation. One of the noteworthy aspects of these sections detailing U.S.-Soviet relations is the manner in which Kissinger states that despite their tendency towards soaring rhetoric of impending war, the Soviets were afraid of potential combat with America troops in the period prior to their obtaining nuclear weaponry and even after they had achieved parity for plans were either for Mutually Assured Destruction or a conventional war they were unlikely to win.

After limning how the rationale for the Marshall Plan was a form of Soviet containment and giving extensive details about the origins and reasons for continuance of various conflicts in Asia, Kissinger devotes a the last part of the book to recounting his time in the Nixon administration and detailing the quagmire known as Vietnam. He doesn’t shy away from addressing the various criticisms leveled at him in the period during and following the war, and his explanations why it was that tactical considerations trumped humanitarian ones seem valid due to the books theme showing that raison d’etat is the guiding principle of international relations and will likely continue to be so as those that act otherwise tend to become IR losers. As such, the influence of game theory on Kissinger’s approach to politics comes to the foreground as well as his tendency towards using the “realist” approach by justifying it in terms of “idealist” politics. Such an approach to policy making, never needed to be used by his aristocratic idols, stems from the populist character of modern politics. This presents an alternative from the Roosevelt-Wilson split in orientation outlined in the beginning and is a situation that Kissinger displays a soft contempt for given his belief that only specialists should control policy.