The question for political philosophy posed by the Greek crisis and Syrizas victory is also a question of ethics, because in pitting democracy against capitalism it pits both the right to criticism and the right to a good life (which the left claims as a right to realize and not just pursue or hope for) against the obligation to keep your promises. One reason you cannot criticize anyone is that no only is it assumed that criticism belongs to a mirror relationship such that what you say, as Jesus suggested, is really true of yourself; but also that everyone is held down and in their place by obligation or indebtedness (as Foucault pointed out, it creates identity by tying you to yourself with a responsibility so that you must answer for being who or where you are). Everywhere capitalism and its government are sustained by outworn ideas of moral obligation and responsibility, which quite obviously derive from an idea of indebtedness that antedates the actual indebtedness of the Greek nation as a result of the international communitys neoliberal handling of the crisis. Nietzsche was never more timely. Capitalism with its credit and debt markets causes people to receive without paying on day 1 and pay without being entitled to anything on day 2. It creates thereby an unprecedented liberalism and anti-traditional modernism that is inevitably succeeded by a wave of repression when there is a crisis. Then the only alternative is to redistribute wealth. They will not do that, of course. So they bring out the troops. Repression by any means necessary. The left should push capitalism beyond capitalism. Ultimately this means nations and peoples that have been subjugated into a debt economy should refuse what morality demands in favor of what politics offers. Or else we need a new morality or rather ethics. For while morality is about obligation, ethics is about a form of life. The commodity and spectacle society has freed many of us, and in principle everyone, for enjoyment. And there is no going back. The Internet is largely a demonetarized market of ideas and information, a public sphere with no barriers to entry. The world is closer than ever to where it needs to be, while its management is mired in the past. When they want you to do something, they first try to make it attractive and desirable; then they try to make it your obligation; and then blatant coercion is close behind.
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 00:52:25 +0000
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