An open thread dedicated to discussing books, movies, and tv shows we love. And occasionally some politics.

NOTE: This is the second part of my essay on Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience." It's now become a three-part essay, for reasons I go into below. I'm determined to write about the good part of Thoreau's argument, but when I was reading "Civil Disobedience" in preparation for this week's essay, I found some arguments so egregious I had to deal with them. I *promise* that next week's installment will be the last, and after that I will write about movies and TV shows for a good long while.

I promised to focus on the good stuff in Thoreau this week, but man! there's a lot in his essay I'd forgotten--and I can't really ignore the fact that he's not in favor of democracy. Actually, he's not in favor of any system of majority rule, representative or direct. Nowadays, democracy is out of favor with some people because they've watched it get broken and replaced with a lie. That's not Thoreau's problem. He doesn't believe in majority rule in the first place:

After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But the government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice...

Thoreau's idea that the majority rules because they are physically stronger seems so ahistorical and plain dumb that I hardly know what to say to it. In the first place, history is rife with examples of a minority ruling because they are physically stronger, at least in the sense of being able to hire lots and lots of people with weapons to keep the majority in check. We're living in one of those times right now, although I'll admit the dollar is currently used as much as the gun to keep us in line.

There's nothing about being the majority that guarantees that you will be able to win through physical force, and nothing that denies the minority the ability to win through that same physical force. Look at colonial India, run by a minority of British; South Africa, run by the descendants of Dutch settlers...how many examples do we need?

And whatever you might want to say in criticism of the American experiment and the early Republic, we didn't get majority rule rather than minority rule because the pro-republican forces in the Continental Congress arm-wrestled for it and won.

(HOW I ACTUALLY WISH IT HAD HAPPENED:)

Further, we didn't keep majority rule (of a sort) because the majority threatened to beat the minority's face in if they didn't comply. The closest we came to that, as I understand it, was when we were arguing with American colonists who wanted to remain British subjects. The truth is, we were quite divided on that question. The Tories were more or less strong-armed into accepting the new Republic, because, unfortunately for them, the army they supported lost. But that is war, and Thoreau isn't talking about war; he's talking about the civil society that followed the war. Majority rule (of a sort) was not maintained after the Revolution by constant physical intimidation. In fact, Thoreau is opening a can of worms here, because, since we've never had direct democracy here anyway, it's not exactly majority rule in any straightforward way in any case!

Now let's get into the idea of "justice." Thoreau says that "the government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice." Maybe so. But the government in which the minority rules in all cases cannot be based on justice either--because justice is not a function of whether you have minority or majority rule. Justice is a byproduct of right judgement, motivated by a desire to see right done, or at least a desire for fairness. It can arise from a minority or a majority. I hate to ask "Justice for whom?", but it's a pertinent question. I've been in enough Occupy GAs to know that inclusivity doesn't guarantee justice, fairness, or even common sense. However, if your goal is to attain the greatest level of justice for the greatest number, denying power to the greatest number and placing them under the judgement of a small minority seems a poor way to do it.

Thoreau does not think so:

The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.

Why does the government not cherish its wise minority?

It sounds like the basic idea here is that there's a wise, smart minority of people, of which Thoreau is an example, and the government should listen to them and follow their advice. Now, it's not like I don't hear the siren call of this particular idea. Nobody who has grown up progressive (or even simply a rational person of good faith) in the United States over the past 50 years could fail to respond to it. That's why it's a really good idea to have your friends tie you to the mast before you listen to it--or else plug your ears.

http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=langjean&book=odyssey&story...

Yes, of course, we've all been driven to distraction by the rule of meanness, mercenary greed, and lies, and we've all felt that if only we were the ones ruling the roost, things would go better. There's probably never been a time in our country's history when this siren song has had more force, because at this point, we could probably pick names out of a hat and they'd do a better job than the current crop of powermongering sociopaths. But I don't think I have to explain that putting yet one more minority in charge of all the money and power because they're so smart is the answer.

Tolkien is useful here:

[Sam said,] "But if you'll pardon my speaking out, I think my master was right. I wish you'd take his Ring. You'd put things to rights. You'd stop them digging up the gaffer and turning him adrift. You'd make some folk pay for their dirty work."

"I would," [Galadriel] said. "That is how it would begin. But it would not stop with that, alas!"

It's possible that, living in the Age of Corruption as we do, we cannot take Thoreau's easy attitude toward power (Just find the smart guys and let them make the decisions!), any more than, living after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we could take Theodore Roosevelt's attitude toward war. But his attitude toward power, wealth, and influence illuminates the central problem with his essay: a profound confusion of the individual with society. He confuses the issue of whether laws should exist with the issue of whether the individual should obey them. For example, the question of whether there should be laws to prevent defense contractors from revealing classified information to the world is one thing; the question of whether Edward Snowden should obey those laws under certain specific circumstances in 2013 is quite another.

It's very odd that Thoreau criticizes the law for not creating justice or just men, when he begins his essay saying that the government which governs best, governs least, and that government is most properly a way for men to let each other alone. I would say that the primary function of the law is not to create justice, but to curtail unjust behavior. One can expand one's conception of the law into an instrument to create justice, as did FDR and many others, and great things can happen when human beings conceive of the law in this way. But the primary function of the law is to prevent abuse to person and property. And in any case, from the beginning of the essay, Thoreau clearly places himself with those who do NOT use the law to create a more just society, but with those who use the law sparingly.

I think Thoreau has difficulty distinguishing between the individual and society because, like Maggie Thatcher and countless libertarians, he doesn't want to believe society exists, except as an annoying impediment invented by the weak-minded and overly gregarious.

It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience: but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.

Note how the social organization here has no force whatsoever, no power over the behavior of the individuals within it. I don't think that's true at all. But if it is true, why can it be true of a corporation, yet not of a government?

How does it become a man to behave toward the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.

Yet a man could, eighty years before, be associated with the East India Company with no moral trouble whatsoever?

This reveals one of the fault lines in Thoreau's argument: like many Americans, past and present, he seems incapable of seeing anything associated with commerce, trade, or finance as being a social structure. Or an authoritarian structure. Or a power structure with any impacts on human beings whatsoever except morally neutral ones. To me, a multinational corporation arises from social systems invented by human beings as part of civilization, just as much as a bank, or a government, or an Elks Club, or a school. Commerce and trade and money don't exist on the same level as the law of gravity or the speed of light. They are social constructs, because money is a social construct, no less than governments, courts, and laws. Thoreau's inability to see this is perhaps the reason that he pooh-poohs the justification for the American Revolution:

All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. But almost all say that such is not the case now. But such was the case, they think, in the Revolution of '75. If one were to tell me that this was a bad government because it taxed certain foreign commodities brought to its ports, it is most probable that I should not make an ado about it, for I can do without them. All machines have their friction; and possibly this does enough good to counter-balance the evil. At any rate, it is a great evil to make a stir about it.

This is a profoundly disingenuous description of the colonies' problem with the British government and the East India Company. I'm not a historian, so if anyone has deeper knowledge of our history, please correct me, but as I understand it, the government of Britain gave a sweetheart deal to the world's first multinational corporation as a kind of bailout when they were facing tough financial times, granting them a legal monopoly on tea sales in the colonies, which squeezed out local American merchants. Worse, Britain did this after levying a series of other taxes with which they were trying to recoup some of their massive war debt by milking the colonies for it. The colonists were willing to put up with a lot less than we are, which is interesting, given that they were subjects of an imperial monarchy, and they felt, as Patrick Henry famously said, that governments shouldn't tax those they don't represent. The establishment of a legal monopoly made their ire even worse. Thoreau's breezy statement that he wouldn't make a stink about it, because he could do without those goods, ignores not only these wrongs, but also the fact that the colonists DID do without those goods--as a form of protest. In fact, on the most well-remembered occasion in this struggle, they did without them rather emphatically:

Admittedly, this is not in the same universe of moral wrongness as slavery; but the fact that it is a lesser evil does not make it good. Many of the characteristics of this lesser evil have come back to haunt us: the bailout of large corporate powers, the sacrifice of small business to large, the squeezing of local economies in the service of funding military and corporate imperialist aims.

Thoreau's larger point here stands: if you have a problem with imperialistic monopolies and governments that extract money from subjects without providing political representation, how can you NOT have a problem with slavery or wars of conquest? Certainly the existence of slavery could provide a reasonable justification for revolution, and it's one of the weirdest things about our country that it was those who wanted slavery, rather than those who didn't, that eventually revolted. But Thoreau's ability to point out the major fault line running through the heart of the American Republic does not excuse the fault lines running through his own argument. Especially since he is quick to assert that the "wise minority" has no obligation to make things better for his fellow man or his country. In fact, the desire to make things better is a characteristic that Thoreau rather despises:

The American has dwindled into an Odd Fellow--one who may be known by the development of his organ of gregariousness, and a manifest lack of intellect and cheerful self-reliance; whose first and chief concern, on coming into the world, is to see that the almshouses are in good repair; and, before yet he has lawfully donned the virile garb, to collect a fund to the support of the widows and orphans that may be; who, in short, ventures to live only by the aid of the Mutual Insurance Company, which has promised to bury him decently. It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support.

This quotation lays out Thoreau's sense of what proper moral obligation is, and it's interesting that his sense of moral obligation begins with contempt for do-gooders, those who care for the poor (almshouses) and widows and orphans, who, at the time, would have likely been in economic difficulty. This do-gooder quality seems associated, for Thoreau, with a lack of manliness and self-reliance, and a desire for social intercourse. Given that the purpose of Thoreau's entire essay is to determine what an individual's moral obligation is in relation to the government and the great issues of his day, it's significant that he spends time assuring the reader and himself that the moral individual need not devote himself to the eradication of any wrong, no matter how terrible, because he might have better things to do! It sits oddly in an essay filled with such genuine, and admirable, repugnance toward slavery and conquest, that Thoreau really feels he is under no moral compulsion to be, for instance, an active abolitionist, trying to eradicate slavery. It is enough that he withdraws his support from the government which tolerates it, by withholding his tax payment.

I can't help but see the primary place of money in this moral system. In Thoreau's view, it's not necessary--indeed, it's somewhat contemptible--to try to rearrange financial or economic systems to help those who are in need or want; even charity is contemptible. And Thoreau is quite clear that no man needs to feel obligated to clear up the evils of poverty. You don't need to spend money to make things better. What you need to do is refuse to spend money to make things worse.

I don't want to be unfair to Thoreau, so I will end this week's installment by saying that, while he doesn't think anyone should have to spend money in order to pursue justice, he does, actually, believe that one should be willing to lose money gained in an unjust way. He is not an advocate of maximized profit at any cost. This is Thoreau at his best, and it's a good transition into next week, when I will, at last, come to the good part:

Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians at the South, but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may. I quarrel not with far-off foes, but with those who, near home, co-operate with, and do the bidding of, those far away, and without whom the latter would be harmless...There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves the children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing; who even postpone the question of freedom to the question of free trade, and quietly read the prices-current along with the latest advices from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may be, fall asleep over them both. What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot today?