quotes from Two Cheer for Anarchism, Four Five and Six
A collection of highlights from sections Four, Five and Six
of Two Cheers for Anarchism by James C. Scott
from Fragment 18 (The Etiology of Contempt)
- For this reason, the state has nearly always been the implacable enemy of mobile peoplesāGypsies, pastoralists, itinerant traders, shifting cultivators, migrating laborersāas their activities are opaque and mobile, flying below the stateās radar.
- For this reason, the state has nearly always been the implacable enemy of mobile peoplesāGypsies, pastoralists, itinerant traders, shifting cultivators, migrating laborersāas their activities are opaque and mobile, flying below the stateās radar.
from Fragment 22 (Debate and Quality: Against Quantitative Measures of Qualities)
- Here it is worth recalling once again that the modern institution of the school was invented at about the same time as the early textile factory. Each concentrated the workforce under one roof; each created time discipline and task specialization so as to facilitate supervision and evaluation; each aimed at producing a reliable, standardized product.
- Here it is worth recalling once again that the modern institution of the school was invented at about the same time as the early textile factory. Each concentrated the workforce under one roof; each created time discipline and task specialization so as to facilitate supervision and evaluation; each aimed at producing a reliable, standardized product.
from Fragment 23 (What If ā¦ ? An Audit Society Fantasy)
- They are above all a vast and deceptive āantipolitics machineā designed to turn legitimate political questions into neutral, objective administrative exercises governed by experts. It is this depoliticizing sleight-of-hand that masks a deep lack of faith in the possibilities of mutuality and learning in politics so treasured by anarchists and democrats alike.
- They are above all a vast and deceptive āantipolitics machineā designed to turn legitimate political questions into neutral, objective administrative exercises governed by experts. It is this depoliticizing sleight-of-hand that masks a deep lack of faith in the possibilities of mutuality and learning in politics so treasured by anarchists and democrats alike.
from Fragment 24 (Invalid and Inevitably Corrupt)
- Social theorists have been so struck by this colonization that they have attempted to give it a lawlike formulation in Goodhartās law, which holds that āwhen a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure.ā And Matthew Light clarifies: āAn authority sets some quantitative standard to measure a particular achievement; those responsible for meeting that standard, do so, but not in the way which was intended.
- Social theorists have been so struck by this colonization that they have attempted to give it a lawlike formulation in Goodhartās law, which holds that āwhen a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure.ā And Matthew Light clarifies: āAn authority sets some quantitative standard to measure a particular achievement; those responsible for meeting that standard, do so, but not in the way which was intended.
from Fragment 25: Democracy, Merit, and the End of Politics
- The reformist, cerebral Progressives in early twentieth-century American and, oddly enough, Lenin as well believed that objective scientific knowledge would allow the āadministration of thingsā to largely replace politics. Their gospel of efficiency, technical training, and engineering solutions implied a world directed by a trained, rational, and professional managerial elite.
- The reformist, cerebral Progressives in early twentieth-century American and, oddly enough, Lenin as well believed that objective scientific knowledge would allow the āadministration of thingsā to largely replace politics. Their gospel of efficiency, technical training, and engineering solutions implied a world directed by a trained, rational, and professional managerial elite.
from Fragment 26: In Defense of Politics
The real damage of relying mainly on quantitatively measured merit and āobjectiveā numerical audit systems to assess quality arises from taking vital questions that ought to be part of a vigorous democratic debate off the table and placing them in the hands of presumably neutral experts. It is this spurious depoliticization of momentous decisions affecting the life chances of millions of citizens and communities that deprives the public sphere of what legitimately belongs to it.
They are, today, the hallmark of a neoliberal political order in which the techniques of neoclassical economics have, in the name of scientific calculation and objectivity, come to replace other forms of reasoning.[39] Whenever you hear someone say āIām deeply invested in him/herā or refer to social or human ācapitalā or, so help me, refer to the āopportunity costā of a human relationship, youāll know what Iām talking about.
from Fragment 29: The Politics of Historical Misrepresentation
Revolutions and social movements are, then, typically confected by a plurality of actors: actors with wildly divergent objectives mixed with a large dose of rage and indignation, actors with little knowledge of the situation beyond their immediate ken, actors subject to chance occurrences (a rain shower, a rumor, a gunshot)āand yet the vector sum of this cacophony of events may set the stage for what later is seen as a revolution. They are rarely, if ever, the work of coherent organizations directing their ātroopsā to a determined objective, as the Leninist script would have it.
The condensation of history, our desire for clean narratives, and the need for elites and organizations to project an image of control and purpose all conspire to convey a false image of historical causation. They blind us to the fact that most revolutions are not the work of revolutionary parties but the precipitate of spontaneous and improvised action (āadventurism,ā in the Marxist lexicon), that organized social movements are usually the product, not the cause, of uncoordinated protests and demonstrations, and that the great emancipatory gains for human freedom have not been the result of orderly, institutional procedures but of disorderly, unpredictable, spontaneous action cracking open the social order from below.
Reply via email