Edward Snowden/Knowledge (of Metadata) Is Power

posted originally on Alternet


If the expression knowledge is power - attributed to the English Renaissance philosopher Francis Bacon - is true, then it implies, among other things, that its opposite is also true. That is, if knowledge is power, then the lack of knowledge, or ignorance, amounts to a lack of, or exclusion from, power. As such, removing, obscuring, or hiding knowledge - in a word, secrecy - not only creates power, it produces powerlessness, weakness, and vulnerability as well. Indeed, as Elias Canetti phrased it in his Crowds and Power: "Secrecy lies at the very core of power." As the state, then, acquires ever more knowledge/power through such programs as PRISM, 'the people' in general - in spite of the State's dubious claims of enhancing security and safety - are only further weakened, put into an ever more vulnerable, precarious position. In addition to the myriad political, legal, and ethical issues embedded in the debate concerning the whistleblower Edward Snowden's ongoing disclosures of classified information, this nonconsensual, actual precarization of the public (by secretive state and private-sector agencies whose authority to gather this power is by no means clear) constitutes a substantial harm in itself.

As such, those who argue that mass surveillance is wrong because it leads to horrible things at the bottom of a slippery slope entirely miss the point. Notwithstanding the fact that the 'slippery slope' is a logical fallacy, the harm under consideration does not lie in some hypothetical future. Beyond present-day trespasses to people's privacy, this actual disempowerment, which replaces political subjectivity with political subjugation to an unprecedentedly powerful state, is a present, concrete harm. That the disclosure of secrets disrupts this unprecedented aggrandizement of power to some degree explains why whistleblowers like Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden, and others are exposed to such vengeful persecution. Insofar as whistleblowers have exposed this secrecy, along with its contents, they have not only redistributed knowledge, but have redistributed and threatened power as well.

Though US political culture has traditionally (if only nominally) claimed to be suspicious of concentrations of power, in reality order - as opposed to liberty - is predicated on just such concentrations. To be sure, while people like to point to the Constitution's separation of powers schema as evidence of this alleged enmity to tyrannical concentrations of power, it is nothing short of a political-economic fact that that which is subject to separation hardly comprises actual power. For let us not forget that the US is a 'representative democracy.' And the interests represented in local, state and federal government alike are overwhelmingly those of the rich. This should not be too contentious a claim. Not only do the rich bankroll practically every candidate running for public office - and so act as gatekeepers to political office - the Supreme Court's notorious decision in Citizens United (which holds that money is consubstantial with political speech) only amplifies this dynamic; in spite of any rhetoric to the contrary, one's political power is contingent on one's economic power.

When one factors into this the reality that economic power has concentrated to unprecedented levels over the past few decades - to such a degree that the top 1% of the country now controls more than 42% of the country's wealth - it takes willful blindness to fail to see that power is not only notseparated, it is concentrated into what without hyperbole can be described as tyrannical intensities.

So, although Obama may argue that checks and balances are in place and that what the national security state is doing is legal because the three branches of representative government agree that it passes constitutional muster should not be terribly persuasive; let us not forget, Obama claims that due process requirements are satisfied  when officials confer in secret to select who gets placed on secret kill lists. Even the New York Times, in a recent editorial responding to disclosures of mass surveillance, proclaimed that "the [Obama] administration has now lost all credibility on this issue."

With his dystopian Disposition Matrix, his secretive drone strikes, his massive surveillance programs, including PRISM, and his record-breaking prosecutions and persecutions of whistleblowers - not to mention ongoing abuses at Guantanamo, among other places - well into his second term in office it is not difficult to see that Obama's presidency is far from offering a corrective to the excesses of the Bush years. Indeed, although George W. Bush's aggrandizement of the executive branch was exceptional, it pales when compared to Obama's permanentization of what, under Bush, were still temporary powers. And as secrecy confers more and more power, and leaks and disclosures of secrets threaten this power, it is unsurprising that Obama will pursue Snowden, and others, with the tenacity of those zealots whom Obama claims to be the cool, polar opposite of.

While it may sound grandiose, it is nevertheless the case that by disclosing secret information, such as the existence of PRISM, Edward Snowden has to some degree fragmented and dispersed the concentrated power of capital and the state. And as more revelations are said to be on the way, it is interesting to consider the meaning of the word revelation, and to note that revelation is the English word for what in Greek is termed apocalypse. Apocalypse, of course, carries a double meaning. Not only does it connote unconcealment, the revelation of what is hidden and secret; it also denotes the destruction of a world. And perhaps this is what Obama and the class he represents are so terrified of after all: that the injustices that are being revealed will lead to the end of their world of power. Hopefully it will - and will lead to the instantiation of a world in which justice, as opposed to dominating power, is realized.


Elliot Sperber is a writer, attorney, and contributor to hygiecracy.blogspot.com He lives in New York City and can be reached at elliot.sperber@gmail.com

Bradley Manning - the Anti-Eichmann

posted originally on CounterPunch

The year 2013 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Hannah Arendt's controversial critique of the trial of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, and her work remains unambiguously pertinent. Indeed, not only do the ghosts of the past continue to haunt Eichmann in Jerusalem; another ghost - a ghost from the future - is also detectable among her words. As one reads her text, Eichmann's polar opposite, Bradley Manning, arises from Arendt's pages like a photographic negative. Presently on trial for charges that include "communicating national defense information to an unauthorized source," and "aiding the enemy," Manning succeeded in accomplishing what Eichmann was tried and executed for failing to do; Manning refused to participate in the commission of crimes against humanity.

The reader must refrain from inferring that an equivalence is being drawn between the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime and those committed by the US. However shocking the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis may be, one must recognize that those crimes are not at all inconsistent with the genocidal aims that that regime repeatedly and explicitly espoused. To be sure, the US - which is also guilty of launching a war of aggression - never professed any genocidal intentions; However much it fell short, and however disingenuous it may have been, the rhetoric invoked by the US was that of the enlightenment ideal of human freedom. In this light, it should not be too contentious to maintain that the US ought to be held to a standard higher than that reserved for Nazis. No war crimes are acceptable, and the systematic denial of procedural justice, as well as outright torture, and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the US in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, Yemen, Pakistan, and other places over the past decade are beyond reasonable dispute. Acts such as those recorded in the video Collateral Murder (titled and released to the public via Wikileaks), for example, which depict US soldiers killing innocent civilians in clear violation of International Law, not to mention such war crimes as the unabating drone attacks on civilian targets, are among those that Manning intended to stop. That Manning is facing life in prison for his actions is nothing short of a perversion of justice - as perverse as the fact that had Manning meticulously followed the rules, like Eichmann had, Manning would have been more likely to be awarded a medal than a court martial. It is this injustice - the injustice that arises from the collective adherence to unjust laws, acceding to the inertia of injustice - that Arendt referred to as the banality of evil.

Arguably Arendt's most familiar argument - and that which provides the subtitle for her piece on Eichmann - the banality of evil arose from her observation that Eichmann, rather than being some demonic, terrifying creature, one so instrumental in perpetrating monumental acts of horror, was just, as she put it, a "nobody." Describing Eichmann as a habitual "follower," in distinguishing his character from that of the stereotypical evildoer, Arendt wrote that Eichmann "not only obeyed orders, he also obeyed the law." This was, in fact, Eichmann's main defense - the same discredited defense invoked by the Nazi war criminals in 1945 at Nuremberg. Among Arendt's observations regarding Eichmann's "banal evil" was that, rather than scheming and plotting and intending to commit evil, Eichmann didn't really think at all. "His inability to speak" she writes, "was closely connected with an inability to think." The proverbial cog in the machine, a tool more than a human being, Eichmann did not resist the inertial flow of the Nazi war effort. To the extent that this applies to Eichmann, though, the opposite may be said of Manning. In spite of the claims of the prosecution, Manning consistently demonstrated an ability to act according to clearly articulated reasons. Rather than thoughtlessly obeying unjust laws, as Eichmann did, as Manning put it in his testimony before a military court earlier this year, "I believed that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information ... this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general." Manning may have violated unjust laws. However, as Martin Luther King Jr., citing Augustine of Hippo, put it in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, "an unjust law is no law at all." To be sure, should a conflict arise between justice and law, justice ought to prevail.

This is not simply rhetoric. The Law itself recognizes that to the degree that it furthers injustice, a law is invalid. The precedents established by the Nuremberg Trials - now firmly entrenched in such pillars of International Law as Article 85 and Article 17 of the Geneva Convention, not to mention the US Army's very own Field Manual - include the very principle that merely following orders does not exculpate someone from responsibility for war crimes. As Nuremberg Principle VII states, "Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI [which includes the murder of civilians, something which Manning repeatedly witnessed and attempted to obstruct] is a crime under international law." That is, in addition to his conscientious resistance, Manning had a positive legal duty to resist collaborating with war crimes. That the enemy was not at all aided by Manning's disclosure (unlike Bob Woodward's repeated and uncensured disclosures of sensitive national security information) and that no harm came to anyone because of Manning's acts is, though completely relevant, dismissed from consideration by the prosecution.

Of course, like history, "justice" is often determined by those in power. If Nazi-Germany had prevailed over the Allies in the second world war, for example, Eichmann would have most likely lived out the rest of his life in relative peace and obscurity. Likewise, had Bradley Manning followed the rules, as Eichmann meticulously followed those of the Third Reich, he would probably not be facing life in prison. In other words, had he not resisted, Manning would be guilty in fact - and in his heart, if not in a court of law - of some of the very crimes that Eichmann was found guilty of committing - and this is just how the US would have wanted it.

It is no hyperbole to remark that the precedent established in Nuremberg in 1945 is one of the most important and enduring lessons of the Holocaust. And though this lesson seems to have been lost on Barack Obama, and on many others, this lesson was not lost on Bradley Manning. Learning of the regular perpetration of war crimes, and finding himself in a position that demanded that he either do his job, like Eichmann, and become an accessory to these crimes, or resist, Manning made the decision to break this causal chain of injustice, to resist unjust laws and practices, and to act in accordance with justice.

While some of his supporters proclaim their solidarity with Manning by announcing that "we are all Bradley Manning," insofar as his supporters are not in prison - and may be unwilling to go to prison for their beliefs - it is not entirely clear what such a proclamation entails. What is patently clear, however, is that, to the degree that we accede to and conform to the dominating power of capital and the state (as opposed to the liberating power of resistance), we are all, every one of us, Adolf Eichmann.


Elliot Sperber is a writer, attorney, and contributor to hygiecracy.blogspot.com He lives in Brooklyn and can be reached at elliot.sperber@gmail.com

Hey Idiots

posted originally on CounterPunch 

It is interesting to observe that the word idiot derives from the Greek idiotes, which refers to a "private person" - as distinct from a public person, or one who is involved in determining public life. That is, an idiot follows the rules and laws that others draft and sign - irrespective of whether or not it is in the idiot's interest. Some people in society determine how society will be organized - how its economic surpluses are distributed, how its resources are employed, how its energies are directed, how its cities are designed, its transportation systems are routed, etc. - and others simply follow (or are determined by) these rules. Many of these followers (the idiots) don't even seem to mind this state of affairs. Still others live under the delusional understanding that they are, in fact, somehow in charge of determining the course of social life - through their duly elected representatives, of course, or through their reputed "consumer power."

What is of especial interest to those observing political idiocy is how thoroughly inconsistent and incoherent its ideologies can be. Indeed, many idiots justify the status quo (in which they are consigned to the position of idiot) by appealing to the founding documents of the United States, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the Declaration of Independence's main argument is that the only legitimate form of political organization is one in which people govern themselves. It does not take much critical acumen to recognize that self-government - or autonomy - is irreconcilable with the heteronomy that the idiot is subjected to - irrespective of the degree to which the idiot is aware of his or her particular political impotence.

In other words, we are idiots whether we are aware of our political impotence or not. All that it takes to be a political idiot is to be excluded from the actual processes that determine how the world we live in is organized. And how many of us are in any meaningful way able to determine how things are governed? Because public interest polls consistently show majorities of people supporting social policies (such as universal health care, increased environmental protections, access to free education, an end to the wars of aggression committed by the US, etc.) that are not pursued, it does not seem to be much of a stretch to conclude that most people in this country are idiots. In this respect I am a total idiot. And I suspect that I am not alone in being aware of the fact that I suffer from this regrettable condition. Moreover, I suspect that I am not alone in wanting to change this harmful situation. As with other collective problems, however, our collective political and economic idiocy requires a collective solution; the first step of which is recognizing that most of us are these alienated political idiots in the first place. As Obama and the privatizing classes maneuver to eliminate Social Security, contrary to public opinion, we must accept the fact that they have turned us into idiots. How long we remain idiots, though, is another question.

the beatles

they say that love
is all you need 
it's true -
as everything else
is extant in the world -
water, housing, food
abounds -
though it's all tightly held
in a small group of hands -
but love would disperse  
these all - it's true -
love, indeed
is all you need

Drive, Baby, Drive! - Pearl Harbor, Global Warming, and the Apocalypse

On the anniversary of the Japanese attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, with typhoon Bopha having just spread vast carnage throughout the South China Sea, it is interesting to consider the parallels that exist between the Japanese attack and such global warming-caused weather events. Among their other similarities, both the attack on Pearl Harbor and global warming-caused disasters result from the industrial, imperialistic scramble for, and exploitation of natural resources. And though the Japanese bombardment surprised many, but was not unanticipated, likewise the typhoons, hurricanes, and other disasters increasing in intensity and frequency throughout the world might come as something of a surprise, but are not unanticipated in light of what we know about climate change. Furthermore, if the Japanese attack led to an alteration in the world social order, the ravages attending global warming-caused events threaten a change of an even more radical magnitude. 

Remarkable for striking a region that does not usually suffer from such storms, Typhoon Bopha is in this respect similar to Hurricane Sandy - whose destruction has yet to be corrected. Indeed, though it's been nearly six weeks since Superstorm Sandy's landing, and one might think that the situation is returning to normal (whatever 'normal' means these days), in actuality the weather-caused displacements have yet to subside. For the tens of thousands of people who have lost their homes, or are still living without electricity or heat in these days of advancing winter, not only do these conditions persist, recovery may still be months away; there is not even any certainty that former conditions will ever be recovered. 

While it may be attributable to the neo-liberal program that neglects collectively owned resources in order to induce their privatization, it is nevertheless a fact that the State these days is hardly able to maintain even its more mundane infrastructures (like bridges, roads, sewage and public transportation systems, and nuclear power plants) without the additional stresses wrought by "extreme weather" events. As such, it doesn't seem too contentious to suggest that, as these hurricanes and typhoons (as well as tornadoes, floods, fires, droughts, and other harms) deliver their unrelenting combination blows in the months and years ahead, the State's already limited capacities to prepare and respond will become only more circumscribed. Inadequately attended to, the wreckages wreathing Staten Island, Queens, and the Jersey shore, among the other places hit by Sandy - not to mention the places struck by Bopha - will not only fester, but will degenerate further, adding inexorably to the planet's growing slum population.

Though some will no doubt attribute such a conjecture to the unreasonably fearful, or to the unreasonably hopeful (eager for the collapse of the usurious system), the recognition of the advancement of catastrophic environmental conditions by the infamously conservative insurance industry, and the World Bank, ought to do much to deflect charges of well-intentioned, but ultimately misled, alarm. The World Bank's November, 2012 report, Turn Down the Heat, for instance, warns that rising temperatures pose an imminent peril to not only its investments, but to civilization itself. Current trends, their conservative report warns, will likely lead to a temperature increase of four degrees centigrade "as early as the 2060s." Such a rise in temperature would be nothing short of cataclysmic for all but jellyfish. To be sure, most climate scientists maintain that temperature increases above 3°C would precipitate mass die-offs.

In some senses, then, the coming "unprecedented heat waves, severe droughts, and major floods" warned of in the World Bank's report, along with their attendant famines and epidemics, may be likened to some sort of armada of hostile ships approaching the planet. Landing singly for now, dispersed in time as well as space, if drastic action is not taken it won't be long before their masses land constantly, overwhelming efforts to resist. And while the approach of such an armada, or any such assembly of threats, would elicit alarm in any reasonable person, or government, the US government, and the business powers it overwhelmingly represents, repeatedly demonstrate their utter lack of 'reasonableness' by continuing to practice their particularly venal brand of denialism. And though some in power - like the World Bank, and various congresspersons - at least recognize that there is a serious problem, aside from conceding that "serious policy changes" need to be implemented, and that harms indeed need to be "mitigated," such phrasing implies that they don't think their economic system needs to be extirpated. Yet, it does; for capitalist forms of economic and social organization not only obstruct efforts to correct harmful conditions (of all sorts, including global warming), but their normal functioning creates these very conditions in the first place. That is, the armada of hostile ships referred to above is not simply coming to attack us; its materials were mined, and refined, and their parts were designed and built and launched by us as well, in order to reap profits. And though many of these "ships" have already been launched, stopping not only production, but changing the system that compels people to produce unnecessary, harmful things in order to simply survive, would not only limit the multiplication of such disasters, and reduce the severity of those already on their way, it would be a step in the direction of a just world as well.

While in general public opinion is largely supportive of economic models that halve - or even quarter - the length of the workweek, resistance to the notion of abandoning cars, among other things that give rise to ecocide, often elicit apoplectic reactions. Related to outbursts such as these, it deserves mention that while they're predictably quiet regarding his Disposition Matrix, and other actual abuses, the sensationalistic denunciations of Republicans regarding Barack Obama's economic measures (in spite of the latter's deep conservatism) veer into just this type of reaction. Indeed, it is so vitriolic - insisting, among other things, that his tepid health care reform would initiate so-called 'death panels' - that in denouncing him in such a manner one would think that Republicans would have used up their biggest rhetorical weapons. By painting Obama not merely as a wild extremist, but as the Antichrist himself, it is difficult to imagine what they could come up with that's any worse. And should an actual radical political organization come along at some point - with a truly radical platform - it leads one to wonder what Republicans could offer in terms of denunciations that they haven't already. 

Beyond mirroring 'the boy who cried wolf', by pursuing such an extreme type of rhetoric, it seems the Republicans may have created a type of drama around 'No Drama Obama' which has induced a type of Aristotelian catharsis among its audience. By allowing audiences to purge their fears and passions in the safe and abstract realm of fantasy, Aristotle maintained that drama prepared audiences for an encounter with comparable events in reality. As such, by way of just such a cathartic process, the Republicans may have, ironically, to some degree, come to terms with the future arrival of a radical, socialist government.

Democrats, on the other hand, exposed to an entirely different narrative, see a wholly different picture. According to their story, Obama is a reasonable - even wise - leader whose efforts at establishing "a more perfect union" are repeatedly stymied by obstructionist Republicans - even when Democrats held a supermajority in congress. In addition to overlooking the peculiar fact that the two parties share virtually identical world views, this story also fails to consider that reasonable persons would not only not ignore the cataclysmic ecological exigencies confronting us, but would actively pursue energy and economic policies designed to correct these. Yet Obama, who neglects to pursue such an agenda, and actively abets the business community's worst practices, somehow continues to present himself as a reasonable person (just as he misrepresented himself as an agent of change) and somehow manages to be taken seriously. Indeed, his (and the Republicans) neglect of advancing ecological catastrophe is of such severity, and such a breach of responsibility, that it ought to be indictable as a crime against humanity. However, Obama and company no doubt sleep well, aware that the International Criminal Court in The Hague, along with the rest of The Netherlands, will most likely be well under water in no time. In spite of all of this, as it is spelled out over much of the mass media, the Democrats' political fantasy regarding Obama's reasonableness is not so easily dispelled.

So, though Republicans' hyperbole couldn't grow more volatile (what is worse than charges of Hitlerism?), and couldn't impede Obama more than they already do, it seems the actual obstacle to a more progressive Obama - as has been apparent all along - is not the unreasonableness of the Republicans, but the very unreasonableness of Obama and the Democrats. And though the Democrats would rejoin that they are being entirely reasonable, they seem to be unable to comprehend that their particular variety of reasonableness is itself subordinated to the overarching unreasonableness involved in organizing the world according to the priorities of business interests.

To some degree this dynamic may be elucidated through reference to Freud's Reality Principle. Unlike thinkers from Spinoza to the Marquis de Sade, and beyond, who maintained that human behavior is motivated by the pursuit of pleasure (what Freud called the Pleasure Principle), and the avoidance of what causes pain, Freud maintained that something else is involved. Like the Old Stoics of the Hellenistic period, who held that people are not motivated so much by pleasure as by the pursuit of a greater harmony, one in which suffering is sometimes necessary, Freud maintained a similar thing (although his notion of harmony is of a particularly bourgeois cast). Because the unrestricted pursuit of pleasure ultimately leads to pain, he argued, it too had to be limited - by what Freud termed the Reality Principle.

Among other stories, Aesop's fable of the Grasshopper and the Ants illustrates this dynamic. An arguably more sophisticated telling of this, however, is rendered in the story of The Three Little Pigs. Readers may recall that the little pigs who pursued pleasure most - slap-dashedly constructing their homes from straw and sticks - saw their homes destroyed by the predations of the wolf. Meanwhile, the more responsible pig, who had internalized the Reality Principle, who deferred pleasure in order to build a sturdy house of bricks, not only prevailed over, but succeeded in eating the wolf.

While it may be a shortcoming of these stories - which instruct children on the merits of being good ants (workers), and pigs (consumers) - in their ascriptions of reasonableness, or of a Reality Principle, to Obama, his proponents reveal a profound one. For the purported Reality Principle of Obama is in actuality subordinated to the system's incessant drive for growth and consumption - a drive leading not only to the world-wrecking ravages of global warming, but to epidemics of stress, heart-disease, cancer, famine, war, and other ills. That is, while the moderation, and thrift of the historical middle classes may continue to function ideologically (as internalized domination), these are firmly in the service of what Freud would describe not even as the Pleasure Principle, but what in his later writings he termed the Death Drive.

Opposed to survival, and the other creative drives, according to Freud the Death Drive is "an urge in organic life to restore an earlier [inorganic] stage of things." In dominating the natural, as well as the social world, deforming the living and natural world into inorganic commodities and waste, rather than exemplifying the Pleasure Principle, or the Reality Principle, contemporary social organization seems to be manifesting the aggressive destructiveness wrapped up in just this urge.

And though Freud held that the aggressive destructiveness of the Death Drive was an innately human phenomenon, he nevertheless contended that it could be overcome by way of a type of social Reality Principle, one rooted not in the destructive power of Thanatos, but in the generative, healing force of Eros. Indeed, it is interesting to point out that in addition to representing Armageddon, or the end times, the notion of apocalypse also means revelation, or unconcealment. As such, one may argue that the revelation, or unconcealment of the actual, ecocidal harms attending the present socioeconomic system (concealed by the culture industry) would instantiate apocalypse not in the sense of ending the world in general so much as contributing to the end of this particular form of social organization.

As this Death Drive hurtles us toward ecological holocaust, it is interesting to consider that rather than by opposing it by force - which only ever enhances its strength - we can deprive this drive of its power not so much by working (like the dead), but, rather, like Eros, by playing dead. For, though the forces of domination are far more dangerous than, say, a bear, or a bee, by playing dead, by refusing to participate - by removing our bodies from the gas pedal, withdrawing not only our 'moral' support, but our actual physical energy and labor from its reproduction of harms - by not paying our bills, among other things - like a fire deprived of its fuel, this system of death will soon slow and expire. And the armada of disasters advancing toward us - whose attack should not come as any surprise - will by and by dissipate. What do we have to lose, but our diseases?

The Zombie Vampire Industrial Complex

published originally on counterpunch


As Obama celebrates his reelection, and his supporters find themselves in the odd position of planning how to fight the man they helped reelect in the first place, it is worth reflecting on the fact that Obama was able to prevail in the presidential election by receiving a preponderant number of ballots - and that these ballots (a term derived from the word 'balls') in many respects represents the surrender of his supporters' symbolic balls - not only their symbolic heads, and minds, but also their actual autonomy to the ruler whose power they simultaneously support and decry.

What is interesting, as well as relevant, is that this dynamic of surrendering autonomy shares a substantial resemblance with features of the fictitious, yet symbolically loaded, figure of the zombie and its relationship to political power. Appearing in countless books, movies, tv shows, video games, and advertisements, the zombie has arguably attained the high level of popularity it has in recent years on account of the fact that, as a society, we relate to these undead creatures in more ways than we might initially suspect.

Indeed, who doesn't from time to time, when commuting to and from work each day, for example, feel like one of a veritable army of zombies? Or, deprived of energy or power at the end of a day of work, who doesn't find themselves shuffling about like a member of the "living dead"? Among other things, just looking about at the crowds surrounding them, who doesn't ever think of altering the famous words of the late June Jordan and reflect - only half-facetiously - that, in certain respects, "we are the zombies we've been waiting for"?

Yet, if the powerless, half-dead zombie may be said to represent one end of the spectrum of political power, the other extreme is arguably occupied by another popular, undead figure. In contrast to the speechless, decaying slob of the zombie, at the other end of this spectrum of power one may not be too surprised to discover the stylish, aristocratic, and generally articulate, vampire.

While living people occupy the midsection between these two undead extremes - and are under attack at each end by these vampires and zombies - in one sense the zombie may be seen to be the product of vampires. For, among other things, zombies are generally produced by a parasite or some other life-depriving agent; and this is just what the figure of the vampire represents.

Whereas the zombie is a relatively powerless walking corpse, it should be remarked that their lost power does not necessarily merely evaporate. Rather, it may be seen to concentrate in the agent or parasite that so deprived it in the first place - i.e., in the vampire. In this respect, then, we can view the figure of the vampire as - to some degree - symbolic of the owners of the world, and the zombies as their exploited underclass. For just as Marx opined concerning capitalism, it is "vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor and lives the more the more labor it sucks." Zombies, as the nonthinking result of this deprivation by the owners of capital, are for their part the living dead whose life force has been sucked out.

However, as physically (and metaphysically) powerful as the vampire is, with its capacity to fly, and its ability to defy age, among other powers, the vampire is at the same time in certain respects profoundly weak. For like any parasite who dominates its host, yet is at the same time utterly dependent on it, the vampire's power is restricted by this dependency. And the host, strangely, who is depended upon - who in fact is the source of the parasite's power - is the one who is in turn dominated.

To some degree this parasitic relationship of powerless dominator and powerful dominated is formulated by the German idealist philosopher G.W.F. Hegel. As he elaborates it in his Master-Slave Dialectic, in the Self-Consciousness section of  his Phenomenology of Spirit, the host or slave can ultimately come to live without the master, but through their exploitative relationship the master becomes unable to live without the slave.

Dominated by the master and forced to work, the slave, according to Hegel, winds up becoming creative, and consequently attains self-consciousness. The master, meanwhile, becomes ever more dependent on the slaves' output. Yet, as a result of the slaves' emerging self-consciousness, the slave comes to demand independence from the master, and the dialectic continues from there.

So, in spite of its similarities, the so-called Master-Slave dialectic is distinct from the dynamic between the vampire and zombie. For, whereas the master's slave ultimately achieves self-consciousness, and freedom through his or her creative labor, insofar as the vampire deprives people of their blood and energy through mindless work, the vampires (unlike the Master) succeed in creating zombies who, instead of attaining self-consciousness, become a member of the living-dead without seeming to notice or mind much at all.

Insofar as it contributes to an understanding of the speculative relationship under consideration between vampires and zombies, Friedrich Nietzsche's master and slave morality schema - as elaborated in his Genealogy of Morals - deserves consideration alongside Hegel's theory. However, like Hegel's theory, Nietzsche's also ultimately fails to capture the complex dynamic at play.

To be sure, although the vampire possesses a type of nobility (in the aristocratic sense of a nobleman, or noblewoman) and may be said in this respect to embody the morality, or ethos, of the master in Nietzsche's Genealogy, the other aspect, that of slave morality, does not in the end arise.

Among other things, because the zombie is not especially vindictive or resentful, the zombie may be said to lack a slave morality. Unlike Nietzsche's slave, who schemes to destroy the master, zombies don't want to bring the vampire down at all. They are more than happy to simply eat vast quantities of brains and watch American Idol. In spite of this, however, one can attribute a type of cowardice and resentment (which Nietzsche argues characterizes slave morality) to the zombie. This sentiment (or, rather, resentiment), is not directed toward the vampire, however. Rather, it is directed at those who critique the vampire. Zombies seem to truly hate such tiring exercises in critical thought.

Among other characteristics of slave morality, Nietzsche argues that the slave possesses a desire for equality. The contemporary zombie, however, to the degree that s/he considers this notion at all, tends to think of equality in only the most superficial, regressively egalitarian ways. The championing of the elimination of public sector employee benefits, based on the rationale that all are not fairly suffering the effects of an austerity economy - all the while neglecting to consider the excesses enjoyed by the rich (vampires) who created the wretched conditions in the first place - provides just one example of such invertedly resentful zombie "thought."

However, while Nietzsche's theory may not fit the relationship between vampires and zombies very tightly, certain similarities are still worth considering. For instance, like Nietzsche's master, the vampire may be said to be - in Nietzsche's words - "value-creating." This is the case insofar as the vampire creates social norms. However, this value can also be viewed as the "value" that the businessperson creates in degrading the living world to an assortment of lifeless commodities. This "value" of the master, or vampire, and its attendant norms, which Nietzsche's slave emphatically rejects, are, however, uncritically embraced by the zombie.

Moreover, rather than resenting the vampire, the contemporary zombie often aspires to become just like one of them - just as the well-known Joe the Zombie Plumber aspired to become a vampire, a la some Bloomberg. Indeed, unlike the slave, the zombie does not villainize its oppressor at all. Like those afflicted with Stockholm Syndrome, who come to care for their tormentors, or the host possessed and deformed by a parasite, the zombie more or less willfully sacrifices itself to the vampire.

Though Nietzsche is often presumed to support a version of a master morality, a careful reading of his  works leads to the conclusion that Nietzsche in the end rejects slave morality as well as master morality. This position finds considerable support in Nietzsche's consistent, tireless argument for not master morality at all, but for "a revaluation of all values."

Relatedly, the term Value derives from the Latin Valere, which means wellness and health. Considering this fact, it is especially noteworthy that the opposition of class interests, or values, is complemented by the phenomenon that the health of one class in today's world is generally dependent on the diminution of the health of the class they exploit. That is, just as the vampire extracts one form of value (health) from its host, it is significant that it then replaces this with its own (ideological) values. And because the zombie seems to accept the values of the vampire, rather than Hegel's Master-Slave dialectic or Nietzsche's master slave morality, the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci's notion of hegemony may at this point help to elucidate the relationship between the vampire and the zombie.

According to Gramsci, cultural hegemony occurs when one social class successfully imposes their values on another social class - justifying the status quo's contingent constitutions and institutions and distributions of power and resources as inevitable, natural, and just - in spite of the fact that such values are not only contingent, but operate to the detriment of the oppressed classes.

Trained in the masters' schools, raised on the tv shows the masters create, which reflect their cultural norms, reading the newspapers the masters run, and generally swallowing the predominant ethos, culture, and tastes of the ruling classes, it should come as little surprise that the zombified host (who, as living dead, lost his political resistance along with his pathogenic resistances) should come to esteem the enterprising vampires.

(That these parasites should be portrayed as sexy aristocrats, ought to yield little surprise either. Meanwhile, unlike the sexy, aristocratic vampire, the proletarian zombies - sapped of all elan vital - are rarely portrayed as anything aside from the thoroughly repulsive creatures they have been deformed into. Indeed, no one ever wants to touch, let alone sleep with any of these shuffling, rotting corpses.)

But the correspondence between vampires, parasites, and hegemony does not stop there. Insofar as the dominant classes' values tend to produce behavior among the dominated that is to their detriment, there is an interesting - albeit highly problematic - parity between cultural hegemony and the biological, deterministic dynamic inherent in parasitism.

That parasites change their hosts behavior to the detriment of the host, and to the benefit of the parasite, is a well-established neurobiological fact. In the article How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy, which appeared in the February 2012 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, a number of examples of this phenomenon are examined. Among others, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins is quoted discussing a parasitical flatworm that turns its host - an ant - into its slave. Although uninfected members of this particular ant species normally hide underground at the approach of sheep, when infected with the parasitical flatworm the ants exhibit apparently self-destructive behavior. Exposing themselves to the sheep by climbing to the tips of blades of grass, they attach themselves there and are consequently eaten by the sheep. While this behavior may be regarded as harmful for the ant, it is vital for the parasitical flatworm. Swallowed by the sheep, the parasite is thereby able to reproduce and thrive in the sheep's digestive system.

Beyond these examples, parasites and viruses have been shown to alter human behavior as well. As cited in the same article, behavioral biologists and biomedical anthropologists at Colorado State University, and SUNY Binghamton, have discovered social behavior in humans that is influenced by pathogens. When infected with the flu, for instance, and the virus is at its most contagious, otherwise unsociable people have been observed to experience highly increased desires to socialize with others, going so far as to throw parties when they otherwise only rarely hosted such activities. It goes without saying that this type of behavior is not beneficial for the host, who needs rest to recover from his or her illness. However, it is quite advantageous for the parasite to be exposed to new hosts in which to spread. Additionally, people infected with herpes, syphilis, and AIDS have all been found to express an enhanced desire for sex when their respective virus is most contagious.

While there is no evidence to support a correlation, it is intriguing to reflect on the similarities that exist between these biological, parasitical relationships, and the antagonistic relationships that exist between social classes which result in a dominated class exhibiting apparently self-destructive behavior vis-a-vis their exploiters. To be sure, there may even be a biological homology between parasitism and cultural hegemony.

However, though one may be tempted to find a cause for the zombification of people within biological processes, we must nevertheless resist the temptation to attribute contemporary zombie-ism to such environmental, genetic or strictly neurological factors. For as much as biological and subconscious determinants may be at play in the reproduction of ideologies, we must not overlook the fact that for the most part the things which influence our thoughts are, overwhelmingly, things we can control - and things which we are, therefore, responsible for. That is, the things that most influence us are not so much microscopic organisms, but those things which are - more than merely learned - intentionally taught (not least of which are floods of advertisements, ideology, and propaganda). Surrounding and immersing us in so-called consumer culture, this dogma is all around us. And, among other things, it is this dogmatism - and its corresponding lack of skepticism - that ensures that zombie and vampire "thought" is not able to rise much beyond the level of distraction and reflex - i.e., it hardly attains the level of thought at all.

Furthermore, it is vital to stress that everyone has a tendency, at least from time to time, to become a zombie, or a vampire (or, for those for whom being a zombie or a vampire is their primary mode, to from time to time become "human" - that is, to become not undead, but alive). In other words, though we have been distinguishing between the undead monsters and living humans, the zombies and vampires under consideration are still, after all, human beings. And not only is it a constitutive part of being human to at times become a monster, with even the most sensitive among us possessing the potential to at any moment carelessly slip into some monstrous extreme, humans may in fact be the only actual monsters anywhere.

Being sentient, however, and not being some member of the living dead, arguably means being able to catch and preclude this proclivity - just as it also means becoming cognizant of one's ability to disrupt the causal, inertial chain of everyday life and determine our own fate. In spite of this, however, our power and ability to determine ourselves is itself severely limited by the present political-economic system, which concentrates and attenuates power to monstrous degrees, deforming people into zombies and vampires.

In other words, irrespective of one's social role, no one is in essence a monster. However, the monstrous forms of work, among the other relations which possess us, deform us, and destroy our dignity and our health - not to mention the health of the world - is the vampire which reproduces vampires and zombies alike.

While we cannot at present explore all of the implications raised by the attempt to distinguish the vampire and the zombie from the human (such as responsibility, dignity, and many others), we can at least provisionally remark that the vampire and the zombie may be said to represent the extreme concentration, as well as the extreme lack, of social, economic, and political power. Considerations of the zombie and the vampire must lead us, therefore, to recognize the monstrous injustice that inheres in a system whose necessarily inequitable distributions of social, economic, and political power concentrates in one monstrous extreme what it deprives in the other.

That is, the problem of zombies and vampires is ultimately a problem of justice. And like the term value, which is related to health, it bears mentioning that justice - insofar as it is intrinsically related to balance - is also intimately related to the concept of health. Indeed, in many respects the concrete conditions of justice are even articulable as concrete conditions of health. Moreover, like the balance of health, which is not the balance of mere cancellation, justice requires the balance of distribution.

The corrective to the extremes of power that result in vampires and zombies is not, then, humanity (which, since we're all human, is effectively a meaningless term) but the elimination of both of the extremes of the dead, through the equitable distribution of the world of the living. This parasitic relationship of zombies and vampires has its corrective, then, not in the destruction of the parasite or the elimination of the host but, rather, in the replacement of the capitalist system (along with the other relations of domination) with not parasitic relations, but with a symbiotic social arrangement in which all may benefit - and justice, which is always possible, can be made actual.

Superstorm Sandy's Submerged Social Antagonisms

In spite of Barack Obama's prognostication that future generations would look back at his 2008 nomination as the very point in history at which the (industrially-induced) rising levels of the oceans began to slow, as the 2012 presidential election draws near it is difficult to miss the fact that the opposite is happening. Indeed, as economic activity continues to heat the planet, and as polar ice and glaciers continue to melt, the oceans are not only not slowing their rise - as witnessed most dramatically over the past week, they are rising ever higher, swallowing significant portions of New York and New Jersey, among other places. And though his general rhetoric may suggest otherwise, the policies that Obama has pursued since assuming office have led to these very conditions. For, among others, his economic and energy policies, which lead to the drilling and fracking and ceaseless burning of fuels, introduces millions of tons of deadly toxins into the sea and air and soil of the world, raising temperatures, melting polar ice caps and glaciers, and thereby leads to - among other things - flooding and rising sea levels.

As these capitalistic economic policies and practices grow and spread throughout the world, we witness only the rising prevalence of these so-called extreme weather events. Indeed, not only does each summer bring monumental heat waves, wildfires, and droughts, the increased volatility of the weather has also resulted in the greater frequency and destructiveness of tornadoes. In New York City alone, where tornadoes have historically been rare, and were not seen in the city throughout the course of the 20th century, since 2006 one has touched down in the city every year.

To be sure, while this Halloween's hurricane and flooding was unprecedented, New Yorkers will recall that there was an unusually severe storm last Halloween as well. In addition to Hurricane Irene last August, in October a freak snow storm blanketed the region in over a foot of snow, downing trees, and causing power outages. And while this Halloween's storm is certainly more destructive, it is but one more example of the regularity of so-called extreme weather. Like heatwaves in March, and hundred year floods that occur every other year, this has become more or less accepted as the - somewhat paradoxically - strange new normal.

In spite of the more spectacular dimensions that attend such extreme meteorological events, a careful analysis of their full social import must not neglect to consider the more mundane aspects of such events - in particular, that the colorful days leading up to Halloween are followed by the relatively drab ones marking the beginning of November. Along with the fact that the beginning of the month brings with it another job report showing, once again, population growth outpacing job creation (jobs, it should be noted, that are marked by longer hours, less pay, and fewer benefits, among other symptoms of a declining quality of life) the beginning of the month brings other things as well. For example, although public transportation systems are down throughout the region, gas stations are running dry, and people are hard-pressed to get to and from the jobs they precariously hold on to, the monthly rent that tenants must pay to their landlords is still due all the same.

At this point it might be helpful to reflect upon the fact that, in general, socioeconomic conditions that are made more difficult than they could conceivably be for some people are often accompanied by a corresponding diminution in difficulty for other people. In other words, the ease with which some people negotiate the social world is made possible by the destruction of the ease with which others are able to maneuver through the world. When this ease (which also means well-being, and wellness in general) is so obstructed, it takes little insight to observe that a form of dis-ease results. Among other things, it must be pointed out that this disease is antithetical to the health of the people. Because the maxim salus populi suprema lex esto (which is not only a basic, foundational metanorm subtending the US Constitution, but has been cited by jurists throughout history as a primary basis of a social order's legitimacy) holds that the health of the people is the supreme law, it must hold as well that practices that result in the obstruction of the ease of the people - producing the disease of the people - are contrary to the supreme law as well. That is to say, contrary to appearances, such general practices are against the supreme law. As it is based on a dynamic wherein some people (tenants) are compelled to surrender their ease, their energy, and their lives, so that this energy may be concentrated as wealth in the hands of a few (by the landlords, among others), the landlord-tenant relationship provides but one stark example of this relationship of disease. Because everything that is given to the landlord that is in excess of what is required for the maintenance of the property (that is, that which constitutes the landlord's profit) is made possible by an excessive difficulty imposed on tenants, and because this is antithetical to the health of the people, it must be illegal for landlords to collect rents in excess of what is required for building maintenance. Moreover, because obstacles interposed between a person and what s/he requires for optimal health (such as housing) is violative of the health of the people in general, any demand of rent at all may be said to violate the just.

As we recover from the devastation wrought by Superstorm Sandy, considerations of justice ought to lead us to not only abandon the use of the toxic materials and technologies that give rise to environmental degradation and global warming in the first place (which reproduce such destructive weather conditions), it must also lead us to recognize that justice cannot be realized without abandoning the toxic social relationships and institutions that are inseverable from these conditions, of which the institution of rent, with its accompanying concentrations of wealth, comprises just one instance.