That E.D. Kain is So Hot Right Now

I've been reading E.D. Kain for quite some time now (aren't I such a great hipster?), and I've had the opportunity to witness his meteoric rise from twelve posts a day at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen to being profiled by Conor Friedersdorf for the Daily Dish during Andrew Sullivan's hibernation (Cause he's a bear, get it?).  I read Kain's posts on Capitalism, Anarchy & War today (I think that's the first time I've ever typed an ampersand.  Seriously, I had to look for it.) and was absolutely floored: it was as though Howard Beale had been crossed with Mikhail Bakunin, cloned by Norman Borlaug, and then grown by Dame Julie Andrews and Jean Valjean with Michel de Montaigne as a private tutor a la Aristotle.

Kain:

When our government wages a war overseas against terror or domestically against drugs (or overseas against drugs and domestically against terror) [extremely pithy, emphasis mine] or when they tell you that they’re trying only to stabilize Afghanistan or resolve the conflict in such a way as to make a graceful exit, etc. these are lies.

When we are told that the mission in Iraq is drawing to a close while tens of thousands of American troops remain, and tens of thousands of international private mercenaries are required to prop up our continued diplomatic presence in that country – this is also a lie. And even if the politicians and bureaucrats who have inherited these wars think they are doing what is right and what is just, well they should know better. They should see the lie more clearly than anyone, because they’ve inherited it, too.

Likewise, it is a lie to call our capitalist economy truly free or to excuse the government from its elaborate collusion in propping up monopolies and crowding out small businesses and entrepreneurs from the marketplace. The military-industrial complex is one of the favorite targets of progressive antipathy, but this sort of incestuous big business/big government relationship is alive and well across the economy.

Kevin Carson had this gem to add:

Re what passes for “privatization” in the AEI/Adam Smith Institute agenda, I don’t think it qualifies as privatization at all. The politically connected firms that buy out the government operations or get the contract may be nominally “private,” true enough. But they are part of the coalition of class forces that control the state, and their operations are taxpayer-funded in exactly the same way as a nominally “public” entity. IMO this makes them part of the government, regardless of their nominal status as “businesses,” just as the great landlords were components of the state under the Old Regime.

I agree that nominal “privatization” is worse than the straightforward performance of functions by avowed state entities. All “privatization” does is add another layer of parasites to the state apparatus, with profits and corporate-scale CEO salaries funded at taxpayer expense.

Carson is talking about "nominal" privatization, i.e. what's going on in Japan with its tetrapod and cement economy.  For why "real" privatization also sucks, read my post from last November.  To be clear, I agree wholeheartedly with Kain/Carson, but I have to admit, Will's ruining of Christmas wins the day from a logical perspective.   

Will:

Defensive wars or wars of plunder? Come on – do you really subscribe to such a simplistic notion? The Crusades were partly inspired by genuine religious fervor – contemporary accounts unanimously agree on this point. Unless you consider promises of eternal salvation “plunder,” your own example doesn’t hold up.

Moreover, Afghanistan clearly started as a defensive response to 9/11. We can argue over the merits of our current strategy, but I’m hard pressed to identify the “plunder motive” behind the 2001 invasion. Or are we now seriously debating the analytical merits of “Fahrenheit 9/11?”

This stuff on wars of plunder smacks of left-wing conspiracism. Wars are started by ideology, religion, nationalism, strategic miscalculations, and a host of other factors. To suggest otherwise is to deny history.

...

Dude, name me one mainstream historian who identifies “plunder” as the sole cause of the Crusades. Some Crusaders were avaricious bastards or penurious second and third sons of the nobility out to make a buck, but other prominent Crusaders GAVE UP estates in Europe to equip their retainers and join the pilgrimage. Outfitting a medieval army for a long journey was expensive. Godfrey of Bouillon – the first King of Jerusalem – actually sold off his estates to pay for the trip. Greed undoubtedly played a role in the Crusades, but it doesn’t come close to explaining the whole story.

As for Afghanistan, do you really think Obama has decided to stay so we can plunder the country? Do you really think principled advocates of our military presence were bought off by the military-industrial complex? Hell, Daniel freaking Larison thinks we should stick it out. It’s not as if there aren’t sound strategic reasons to keep our troops in Afghanistan.

And can’t we just say that Iraq was a mistake driven by strategic miscalculations and a dumb ideology and leave it at that? Attributing everything to “plunder” makes you sound like a high school Marxist.

This whole thing reminds me of Franz Kafka's "An Imperial Message", about political and bureaucratic perfectionist absolutism, or what Marx himself termed "Oriental Despotism".  I'm now flirting with the idea of a distant and cold King actually being the best kind of ruler.

Comments

[Randy]

unrelated to this post but this article seems right up your ally to which to repond!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/opinion/10krugman.html?ref=opinion

[Christopher Carr]

I would love to do a line-by-line dismantling of that, but might not be able to get around to it until next week. At this point though, I think Krugman is little more than a court jester and I've refuted him before for printing blatant ideology-motivated falsehoods, so I'm hesitant this time around. But reading that definitely made my blood boil.