Sigma’s Simulacrum of Reality

Finally, after forever, social democracy is barging its way into the US political landscape. Its standard-bearer? Barack Hussein Obama.

The United States of America is the last bastion in the world where social democracy had not had a chance to establish itself. This was because of many reasons, the main being the Red Scare of the Cold War, where the US positioned itself as the anti-thesis of the socialist Europe and USSR. However, I have always maintained that because of this, the US has become irrationally and fanatically afraid of all strands of socialism, including social democracy. A sad side effect of this is that its working class has became one of the most disadvantaged compared to the rest of the developed world.

Barack Obama is at present one of the most social democratic presidential candidate the USA has had in recent history. However, the US media does not use the term ’social democracy’. Like Malaysia, it has an irrational aversion for it. A fear even. So it substitutes it with the term ‘liberal’ instead. I have always been dismissive of US politics, including terms like ‘liberal’, as I feel that it connotes more of social issues than a wider scope of things. I feel there are more important things to debate and argue about than the female reproductive system. Anyway, whatever the term, Obama is really one of the most ‘liberal’ candidate in recent history, despite his platitudes on bi-partisanship and such in his book and his speeches. And that’s totally fine with me.

Unlike Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, it doesn’t seem that Obama is going to go centrist anytime soon. Triangulation is not part of his political strategy. He’s unequivocally for Big Government. That’s right, in capital letters. He’s gonna SOCIALISE the US healthcare (if there’s any funds left, no thanks to the neo-liberalist US financial markets), despite nonsensical howlings from some Americans that it would lead to communism and a suppression of the ‘American spirit’, whatever that means. He’s gonna increase regulation in the financial markets, so that the madness that we are seeing today will never be repeated. And he’s gonna strengthen the unions. Increase taxes for the richest Americans, and cut taxes for the middle-class. He is gonna bring back multilateralism in the US’s dealings with the world.

Barack Obama: A social democrat, and damn proud of it. About time.

Like many pro-Opposition supporters, I have had conflicted feelings the moment Anwar Ibrahim announced he would attempt to gain power through BN defections.

There are two main issues to examine here. The first is whether defections equates to violating the choice of the people in the candidate and party they voted for. We may not agree with the people of Kinabatangan who voted for a racist, sexist and intellectually-dubious MP to represent them, but wasn’t that their prerogative to do so? Some people have resorted to demonising and ridiculing Sabahans and Sarawakians for voting overwhelmingly for BN in the last election, and have justified defections via ‘they don’t know what’s good for them, so we must decide for them’. But this is a dangerous mindset to fall into. This is the mindset of Dr Mahathir, Lee Kuan Yew, Park Chung-Hee and Chiang Ching-kuo. It is basically an advocation of authoritarianism. What determines who gets to be one a part of the elite ‘choice-makers’? A reading of the Animal Farm at this juncture is advisable. Democracy is inherently messy and self-serving. If we say we want democracy, then the negatives that goes with it should be accepted as well.

This point basically can be surmised as the institutionalisation of norms and rules of the game. Have an election every 5 years. Accept the results for the next 5 years. And so on. If one starts breaking these traditions and rules, then what’s stopping BN from trying to do the same to a PR government? Then when will it end? Political stability flies out of the window.

The second issue concerns whether the ends justifies the means. The argument here is that the present political and public institutions are so entrenched in the pro-BN camp, along with corruption and inefficiencies that there is an impetus to overhaul the entire system before bringing it back to ‘business as usual’ mode. This can be done through the abolition of the Printing Presses Act, the Universities and University Colleges Act, the Internal Security Act, the Sedition Act, the Official Secrets Act, etc. Only after these laws are modified or abolished can it be said that there will be a level political playing field in Malaysia to ensure truly fair and democratic elections at all levels. So. Damn. Tempting.

Very difficult choice to make, if you ask me. But as a democrat I would have to say that I marginally choose the former choice, and nervously defend the choice of the people. But unfortunately I do not foresee another ‘political tsunami’ in the next elections, and what I fear most is that Malaysians will prematurely go back to the status quo of BN hegemony. That would be a sad day indeed, when fear and intimidation overcome true aspirations.

Where has the Left gone in Malaysian politics?

Such is the demise of the Left in the past 50 years since Independence that it has hardly had any influence in the Malaysian political sphere. Long harassed, intimidated and censored, the establishment has successfully made the words ‘Left’, ’socialist’ and ’social democracy’ taboo words in polite Malaysian society. Ironic, since in the process the Malaysian public has also been made to believe that racism and ethnic chauvinism was ‘fine’, or at least to be left unchallenged and ‘tolerated’.

This sad state of affairs started during the ‘Red Scare’ of the 1940’s which coincided with the rise of the Communist state of the USSR, along with its affiliates in Eastern Europe and China. The response by the then British overlords in containing the Communist insurgency in Malaysia was alarmingly blunt: Blanket suppression of anything which was a few inches to the left of the political spectrum. As such propaganda was used to subvert political freedom and the socialists, social democrats, trade unions as well as student bodies were all accused as being commie sympathizers and dealt with accordingly. The hypocrisy of this situation was increased a further few notches by the fact that the British allowed a healthy labour movement to thrive in their own backyard while not blinking an eye in ruthlessly crushing leftist movements in its various colonial outposts.

Which brings us to the Left in Malaysia today. After being stillborn for, well, its whole life actually, the Left has finally started to see the day of light in this country. On the 8th of May, the social democratic Democratic Action Party (DAP) finally won real power in the form of the government of Penang. Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), often calling itself a centrist party but with clear left-leaning tendencies won the Selangor government. And the latest political party, Parti Sosialis Malaysia, was finally given permission to be officially formed, with its president, Mohd Nasir Hashim winning a state seat in Selangor while Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj ousted the ‘un-oustable’ Samy Vellu from his Perak parliamentary seat in the last elections.

We should be glad for this development as the Left have a lot to offer to many Malaysians, but especially to the poorer segments of society. The Left is synonymous to the concepts of equality, secularism and multiculturalism. With the rise of the Left, a push for an adequate and responsible minimum wage will obtain much more momentum. I personally disagree with PKR’s RM1500/month minimum as I think it’s too high, but agree more with the MTUC’s figure of about RM900/month. Despite what many neo-liberal economists would have you to believe, studies have shown that countries with the minimum wage do not have significantly higher unemployment rates, provided it is done in a responsible manner.

It is no secret that the conservative government has in the past adopted many of the Left’s ideas on one hand while hypocritically disparaging them on the other. The double-edged sword of the NEP is a form, albeit flawed one, of affirmative action which was another of the Left’s creations. With the death of the ‘old Left’ ala communism and hard socialism and their belief in ‘equality of outcome’, the ‘new Left’ in the form of social democracies have instead rectified this and now champion ‘equality of opportunity’ for all. Following this, they believe that fairness cannot prevail in society if some people are allowed to start much further behind the starting line in life’s race through no fault of their own, such as being born in a poor family or living in rural areas. As such, affirmative action policies seek to rectify these inequalities. The NEP, similar to the black affirmative action policy in the US is, however, flawed because they use race as the selection criteria in who to give assistance to. I am all for an affirmative action policy which is colour-blind and based solely on one’s socio-economic background.

The welfare safety net has also been ridiculously demonised by the establishment for no logical reason. Malaysians who are unemployed due to disability or not through their lack of trying should be assisted by the government financially. I sometimes wonder what those libertarians and conservatives have against a government helping its own people, what with their dogmatic chants for ’small government’. Might as well take that to its logical conclusion and live in an anarchist society where ‘government interference’ is a thing of the past. Then they are free to starve in peace when they fall on hard times.

Another very maligned area at the moment under the current government is the trade union movement. Due to the aforementioned suppression of the authorities on unions, the present union movement is weaker than a keropok. Trade unionism is vital for the preservation of the blue-collar working class as due to their lower skilled status and thus being easier to replace, their only bargaining chip for better pay and working conditions against their employer is through strength in numbers through unionization. Flowing from the general Malaysian public’s aversion to the word ‘leftist’, many also view strikes and demonstrations with fear. This is unfounded as workers have a right as anybody else to safeguard their working conditions. It is indeed laughable to suggest that a low-skilled worker can go into the negotiating room with his employer with any kind of leverage, as what many conservative governments would like for you to believe. A worker has a family to feed too.

Thankfully, things seem to be on the upside now for Malaysia. Hopefully those social democrats elected into public office after the 8th of March elections will continue to push for more social democratic reforms to ensure that Malaysia becomes a fairer, more equitable, and better place to life in.

Best. Browser. Ever.

v3 coming out soon.

Support it.

Being a new Sinophile nowadays, gonna try catching this movie soon. Looks good. Fulfills three of my criterias:

1. Is about Chinese/Mongolian history
2. Is an independent film (ie non-Hollywood)
3. Is in Mongolian

Got this great book serendipitously from my uni’s library when I was trying to find a stupid textbook which were listed as ON SHELF. Put books back in the right places, people!

But I digress. Back to the topic.

The Socialsit Tradition
I’ve read a few chapters in it so far. Pity I couldn’t read more of it now since I’ve got f**kin’ exams soon.

As many people should already be aware, all strands of socialism originated from some core beliefs of Karl Marx. But because Marx only extrapolated a skeletal structure of how capitalism can be overthrown and how a socialist society would look like, he left many practical aspects of it to be fleshed out by subsequent socialism theorists.

As a result 4 widely diverging streams have emerged from Marxism.

1. Orthodox School

Karl Kautsky was the leading theorist of this school. This school is the most closely aligned school to traditional Marxism. It believes that socialism was possible only once the capitalist system reached its most advanced stage, exhausts itself, and breaks down on its own accord. He also pressed for a merger of parliamentary democracy and socialism.

2. Reformist-Evolutionary School

This is the school of socialism which I personally support. It was advocated by Eduard Bernstein and laid the foundations for today’s social democratic parties such as the Labor Party, DAP, German Social-Democratic Party (SPD), Swedish Socialist Party (SAP), etc. Bernstein rejected all forms of extra-parliamentary activities such as mass strikes or popular assemblies. He believed that to be a truly democratic socialist society, bourgeois liberal institutions should not be overturned, but instead be inherited and expanded by social democrats to make it fairer to all classes of the masses, but especially towards the working class. Therefore, this school does not believe nor advocate the imminent collapse of capitalism.

3. Bolshevik School

This is possibly the most explosive school of socialism, or ‘hot socialism’. It was formed by Vladimir Lenin and was the first socialist theory to be put into real world practice after his Bolshevik Party overthrew the Russian Provisional Government and assumed power in Russia in 1917. Based on his experience with the past repressive, pro ruling-class government, Lenin was convinced that bourgeois democracy was but a sham, an illusion to further placate the masses. Illusionary because during stable times it would be manipulate by the ruling class to instill in the masses a false sense of participation, fragile because it was not likely to survive the advance stages of imperialism and war.

It was also Lenin who devised the idea of a vanguard party. A vanguard party is a unified, centralised and flexible revolutionary organisation whose purpose was to lead the working class to overthrow the bourgeois state structure. He did not believe in the effectiveness of fragmented parliamentary parties. The pressing agenda under the Bolshevik school was not socialism - that remained in the future, but the seizure of state power in order to establish the preconditions for socialism. On the question of democracy in this model, because the Bolshevik Party represents the historical mission of the workers in their struggle to free themselves from oppression by the bourgeois elites to working class emancipation, Bolshevik power was by definition democratic.

Obviously this was proven to be mistaken. The real world practice of this model showed that the twin desires of power and wealth by top communist leaders has led them to curtail the very masses they initially relied on to assume power. This was made worse by the lack of an effective mechanism by the masses to oust bad leaders, with the only way being intra-party power struggles by other communist elites.

The truest form of real world application of this model could be seen in the former USSR and East Germany. Other variations of this model which incorporated the central concept of a vanguard party can be seen in China, Vietnam, Nepal, Cuba, North Korea.

4. The Radical-Left School

Personally to me, this is the most ludicrous stream of socialism. But it still doesn’t stop the hordes of hippie, far left-wingers from my unis and others to embrace this utopian model of society. It is basically the most radical of socialist streams and its leading philosopher was Rosa Luxemburg. This school rejected the strategic alternatives offered by Kautsky and Bernstein, and these radicals look to spheres of struggle beyond routine party and union activity. Their vision of democracy, consonant with Marx’s theme of proletarian self-emancipation, emphasised local revolutionary forms and processes transcending the limits of the bourgeois state as well as the Leninist system of ‘proletarian democracy’ in Russia. Luxemburg also did not believe in participating in parliamentary processes, since electoral victories would turn out to be hollow (since the bourgeoisie would manipulate the system to defend their interests) and would only help to stablise the faltering capitalist system. She shared Kautsky and Lenin’s predictions of the imminent collapse of capitalism. Basically, she just wants society to regress back into pre-complex societal structures and live in small, communal based organisations.

Recently I’ve had a disruption of sorts in my life. One of the results of this is my sudden desire to devour as much classic socio-economic and political books as I can before I die.

About 4 months ago I finished the The Communist Manifesto, The Prince (surprisingly very easy to read) and Sun Tzu’s Art of War. Heck, I even threw in half of Analects of Confucius and What The Buddha Thought (a great introduction to Buddhism for beginners) in the mix.

Recently I’ve just borrowed John Locke’s Two Treatise on Government. I started with the second half of it as I’ve heard it’s his masterpiece and laid the foundations for the American Revolution. Just started on it, so can’t give a review yet. But got to say his prose is more of the old school kind and is more difficult to read as a result.

Next I intend to read Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract, which offered an alternative version of government philosophy compared to John Locke. And I’m also gonna start with Adam Smith’s grand piece The Wealth of Nations.

Yes, I’m a political-philosophy tragic. Political theories to me are what drugs are to junkies.

As promised, some acerbic vintage Paul Keating performances. Keating was renowned for his ‘gutter-style’ performances during Question Time and remains one of the Australian Labor Party’s best attack dogs. Sure he totally lacks Blair’s polished pokes, but who needs that when he’s got the terrific ability to bait and rile up his opponents?

Ahh, past Labor glories

Ridiculing Peter Costello who has shown time and time again that he has got no backbone in initiating leadership challenges against John Howard

Epic censure motion by the then Opposition Leader John Howard against PM Paul Keating, and his reply to it

Tony Blair during better days. Great parliamentary performer. Aside from presenting the facts of govt, these sessions are also suppose to be opportunities for both side to up the rhetorics and rally their troops. Blair did exactly that here.

I’ll post some acerbic Paul Keating classics next.

Living in Australia now, I am at present inundated by the full extent of the Australian Press’ backing of Tibetan independence from China.

But my personal opinion on this runs contrary to this nation’s media. I’m not sure what the majority of Malaysians’ stand are on this, but I get the feeling most are pro-China, mainly due to the fact that Malaysians under Dr Mahathir has been indoctrinated with the concept of non-interference in a nation’s internal matters.

My motivation in writing this post also came from replying to the_earthinc’s admirable (but flawed) support for a free Tibet.

Anyway, I think that Tibet is part of China. It was a region that was conquered by the Mongols in the 13th century and was incorporated into the Chinese dynastic line as part of the Yuan Dynasty. First off earthinc said that we must differentiate the Mongol Empire with the Chinese Empire, and that since the Mongols conquered Tibet, and not the Han-Chinese, Tibet cannot be considered to be a part of the present Han-Chinese borders. This is only nominally true, as very early on after his successful conquest of the Chinese Empire, Kublai Khan considered himself to be a ‘Chinese Emperor’ instead of a ‘Mongol Emperor’. Furthermore, the successive dynasties of the Ming, Qing (ok a Manchu group here, but definitely part of the Chinese Dynastic line), Republic of China, and People’s Republic of China governments have all not relinquish sovereignty over Tibet. And as brutal as this sounds, nor has Tibet managed to successfully gained independence, either through bloody wars or through gaining recognition from the UN.

Pro-Tibet people must understand the stubbornness of the Chinese government in not giving an inch in regards to what they perceived as Western interference on its internal matters. To them (and me) it is akin to asking a country to give up one of its states! Here I must make something clear: My support for Tibet being part of China has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with supporting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Notice the attempts by the world (ie Western) media to mesh these two issues together, equating the CCP = brutality = brutalising Tibet = ergo we must help free Tibet from the brutal repression of the CCP. Wait a minute… I know that the CCP supports the ideology of a party-state political structure, but when did the West started doing the same? Hence my emphasis on China’s legitimate claim over Tibet originating far before the CCP regime. Instead, it started during the Chinese Dynastic times.

Also, why did the Western-led international community only started protesting China’s claim towards Tibet after 1949? When Tibet unilaterally declared its independence in 1912, did any other country recognised its claim of independence? No. So why the about-face after 1949? I am inclined to believe that it was more because of the US-led aversion towards China’s new Communist govt than anything else, and thus wanted to destabilise it.

We must then question the motives for the West in their seeming zeal in the Tibetan cause. Nobody does something for nothing. Why does it seem more palatable for the US politicians to engage in wars with Arabic states as oppose to North Korea, for example? Might securing oil supplies play even a small part in their decision? Likewise, the claims that the West has their own agenda in supporting Tibetan independence. Not only is China now a rising super-power, but even more horrifying to the US, it is also a Communist country. Hence having a pro-US independent Tibet right at the doorstep of China will be a great thing to have.

On the brutality that the CCP inflicted on the Tibetan protesters, simple, I condemn it. I also condemn the Tienanmen Square Massacre of ‘86. And every other instances when the CCP brutalised dissidents. I want China to democratise itself. Democratic avenues of elections and referendums are the best way to let out steam and dissent in a country. Once China has been throughly democratise, and if Tibet is still in a state of unrest, I then advocate holding a referendum there to determine the true will of the majority of Tibetans. And not just what might be the noisy minority’s.