--- tfast <tfast at yorku.ca> wrote:
> The point is Mr Timberlake,
Are you deliberately trying to be annoying? The name is Andie, please. You may not agree with my attempt to maintain some anonymity here, but you may not be aware of the circumstances that lead me to operate under a pen name.
that I have always read
> both Chris and Yoshie to
> be saying, both in the case of Russia and Iran
> respectively, that life in
> both countries has improved for the citizens in
> those countries.
Why are you interested in Chris exegesis? I like Chris and he's a smart and knowledgeable guy, but rather than focus narrowly on whether I am responding to him -- if he thinks not he can say so, and he hasn't complained -- we can just discuss issues. The one you raise is one, the one I raise another.
It doesn't settle the issue of whether the current Russian or Iranian government are Good Things even if it is established, and with regard to Russia I do not dispute that it is true (with regard to Iran I do not know) that materially the citizens are better off than they were, say, ten years ago.
Note: I am
> even in less of a position to argue about Iran
> because I have no information
> about what actually matters (that is how the courts
> are run, oversight over
> local officials etc etc.) And this is key. In
> order to have any kind of
> meaningful discussion about the state of life in
> either country we need to
> know what day to day life looks like for the average
> citizen trying to get
> on with their life. What both Chris and Yoshie it
> seems have been reacting
> to is the constant barrage of sensational instances
> being presented as the
> norm. When they then respond and say no that is not
> the normal state of
> affairs they get charged with uttering apologia
> (this is particularly so in
> Yoshies case).
I do know something about Russia.
Yoshie is an apologist for a repressive theocracy.
The average life of the ordinary citizen in Stalin's Russia, or indeed until later in the war in Hitler's Germany, was an improvement over the past. Purges, deportations, torture, mass murder, affected a minority. That is part of why those regimes were popular. These facts are relevant to an assessment of the regimes, but they do not even begin to show that those regimes are within a million miles of legitimacy.
I repeat that I do not say and do not think that either post-Communist Russia or Islamic Iran are anything like as awful as Stalinist Russia or, worse, Nazi Germany. My point is that your criterion of legitimacy or supportability, or the one you attribute to Yoshie and Chris, is inadequate, because it would let those far worse regimes pass muster.
>
> I read Chris as saying that although Putin has
> weakened the rule of law when
> it comes to political opposition he nonetheless has
> increased the rule of
> law when it comes to most other forms of interaction
> with the Russian state.
More Chris exegesis. Authoritarianism is often better than anarchy; at least it is predictable. Neither of us were discussing "the rule of law," a term with no application in Russia. It was an aspiration of Gorbachev, and both the man and his ideals have long been abandoned.
> Further I read Chris as saying that this was the
> basis of Putin's support.
In part it is, and I said so. Our discussion has also been about the basis and nature of Russia's economic recovery.
> If such, then consent has been achieved not through
> subjugation but through
> a relative liberation from both official and
> unofficial thuggery in the
> conduct of ones daily affairs
Does not follow (see above).
Note I can neither
> confirm or deny this as I
> do not have the information.
Well, I do to some degree, and Chris and I don't really differ on the facts but on their interpretation. He thinks that as socialists we should give a hearty endorsement to a repressive bureaucracy that has presided over a considerable increase in material welfare (coming up from a very low baseline) and a moderate increase in the predictability of everyday life. I say that's not enough. We can recognize the achievements of the regime without lending it our approval.
However, it does seem
> that answering this
> question is warranted before moving up the ladder of
> abstraction to "happy
> slaves." We first need to establish that we are, or
> are not, dealing with
> slaves.
"Slaves" is a figure of speech taken from the classic book Happy Slaves by Don Herzog (one of my dissertation advisers) that frames the debates about consent theory. Don chose the extreme and provocative title to get people's attention and to frame the issue in a striking way. My question in invoking that book is, how much does consent legitimate? Don asks, could it legitimate literal slavery if the slaves consented? If not, does it legitimate other lesser forms of oppression to which people consent?
No one thinks that the Russians are literally slaves. They are not chattel property. Likewise the Iranians -- men, anyway. Women is a harder call in Iran. But Chris and I agree that Putin's regime is oppressive. He does not dispute that Putin is a classic Russian strongman with no interest in democracy beyond a PR facade. The difference we have is how to appraise that regime as socialists.
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