AltSci Cell

by Javantea
Dec 10, 2008

Che is a movie about a prolific revolutionary. Not his early years like Motorcycle Diaries. It's a huge story so it involves a 4.5 hour investment with an intermission. If you don't know whether you'll like it, let me answer for you: no. If you're looking for a long movie and you don't know whether you'll like it, you might like it. It's long and it doesn't mince words until the end. The first part is very glorious, heroic at times, and heavy on ideals. It explains what happened, why they did it, what role he and Castro had to play. If you know the story a tiny bit, you might not waste your time watching it, it's the details about city to city stuff. The second part explains the struggle in Bolivia. If you know a bit about Che, you probably understand that to compare the two parts of the movie is lame. A failed revolution is never going to be heroic or wonderful. And so Che is going to get a lot of flak from people who didn't really want to watch the second part. It's important for me to watch the second part because it shows that Che was mortal, died in a blaze of gunfire, and lived his ideals. Che has been symbolic for those who wish to shrug off the shackles of imperialism, tyranny, and dishonest governments. His life was powerfully lived as well as he probably could. A revolutionary who fails once or a hundred times has done what he or she can.

Am I trying to glorify Che? No, he probably gets as much credit as he deserves. It's the movie that I'm trying to redeem. People probably expect too much from the movie because there really isn't a revolutionary who can be glorified a lot more than Che and yet the second part of the "roadshow" was about him failing. If the directors had decided to stop at the end of part 1 and done the same as Motorcycle Diaries and printed the text saying: "Ernesto 'Che' Guevara went on to organized failed revolutions in the Congo, Venezuela, and Bolivia. He died in a hail of gunfire," it would certainly be a disservice to him. People would exit the movie and say: "and look at Cuba now, I bet they wish they were like Bolivia*." Describing what happened in Bolivia explains the duality of revolution, armed and unarmed conflict. Che partially led a successful armed revolution in Cuba because the support was far surpassing the enemy's number. In Bolivia, the lack of support and the overwhelming enemy military force was easily enough to defeat Che and the Bolivian rebels. What's this I talk about duality then? If revolution is just about numerical superiority, then no duality exists, does it? The duality of revolution is that numerical superiority comes from popular support, and popular support has nothing to do with violence. Popular support comes from ideals. If a revolution has better ideals and can sway the popular opinion, it will have the support it needs to win a war against an oppressive government. But here is where it gets tricky because if you have popular opinion, is armed revolution necessary? Che obviously thought it was and he has evidence. Evidence to the contrary is quite difficult to obtain. Pacifists may never obtain enough evidence that non-violence is the solution. So far we have India and possibly Tibet (which is in progress). Other evidence may possibly exist, but I'm not going to get into it. What people most certainly know is that when faced with a dictator who murders people, violent revolution has done the trick quite a few times.

* In 2005, Bolivia held elections and their new president Evo Morales is the leader of Movimiento al Socialismo, MAS, who plans to nationalize the hydrocarbon resources of Bolivia.

The movie is designed to and probably should spark conversation about civil unrest, socialism, revolution, military conflict, democracy, and so forth. But when you try to relate two or more of the above topics (to save time maybe because most of your day has been shot by the movie) you may be making a mistake. For example, socialism and democracy are two forms of government but are hardly comparable. If you say for example "I like Democracy more than Socialism," you're making a mistake thinking that Socialism and Democracy are mutually exclusive. Most countries that people consider socialist have elected officials. Secondly, Democracy is not a form of government enjoyed (or not enjoyed) by anyone here on Earth. To discuss democracy is fine, but comparison is ridiculous, tyranny vs democracy, socialism vs capitalism, let us keep our apples and oranges, p's and q's straight, lest we make orange pie or drink ourselves silly.

Another example of a mistaken argument is to say: "I love revolution because it results in democracy." Although we all love to think that the lives lost in war are for a good purpose, we fool ourselves to think that tyranny does not also grasp its power through the same method. How indeed have tyrants gained their power? Military coup, occupation, election, and yes, revolution. To connect revolution, civil unrest, and democracy unfaithfully is a folly I wish that millions of people had not made. When Americans look at Fidel Castro and Cuba, many think of poverty, tyranny, and communism together. It is difficult for a person to think of these things separately, but the prudent philosopher must think not of democracy, capitalism, and wealth to be one in the same. Wealth involves natural resources, ownership, and utility**. A country without these will not gain them by embracing capitalism. One of the best arguments that Noam Chomsky has is that communism can possibly turn a developing nation into a developed nation in one generation, which explains why Cuba was able to develop a higher quality of life than many other Central American democracies who have huge debt to the IMF/WB. Democracy is a system of government where voters are enabled to make decisions about government. It does not dictate wealth or guarantee freedom. Tyranny can be exercised by a dictator or by the masses. A representative democracy such as we have in the US is certainly preferable to us than a dictatorship, but as we have seen in the past 8 years, it doesn't take much to bring us to the brink of tyranny. I hope no one reading will berate me for saying that the last 8 years was as close to tyranny as I ever hope to come. Certainly our country is not an obvious dictatorship like Cuba since we have a new president who promises change and transparency, but our political stability can be attributed to wealth, apathy, and resistance to change much more than our sensibility and validity of our ideals.

** I bundle economic capacity, education, technology and so forth into utility, apologies to those who consider that a mistake.

And now for my anti-socialist rant (I'm sure you're all shocked to hear): socialism is bad news. Communism and socialism are two political ideas that I would like to rail against for hours and hours just like Ayn Rand. Here's a go. Communism in it's pure form allows ownership of capital by the laborers which is fine except that it assumes there are laborers who want to work every job that exists. Without any incentive, what reason does a person have to be a plumber, a farmer, or an IT manager? "Communal democratic planning" is an obvious explanation of coercion and tyranny. Well, you have plenty of scientists because there are plenty of people who want to be those and they have a perfect plan to decide who is a plumber, who is a farmer, and who is an IT manager. It's scientific and democratic, how could it not work? Democracy is not an individual choice, it's the choice of a committee. People like choice even the illusion of choice. To give up your choice to the wisdom of your peers is undeniably wrong. Why? A committee is incapable of making an informed choice. No group of people can decide your job because they are bound to get it wrong. Choice is the only way to do it. Want proof? When there are plenty of jobs in the US, perfectly sane people choose to be transient (while many more are not exactly sane and many more are having trouble finding work and plenty wish they could kick a habit or two). Choice and purpose drive us, so communism lacks incentives to drive us toward our career. Looking at it from this perspective, you can obviously see that capitalism has a trick up its sleeve: the almighty dollar, the carrot that attracts the donkey that pulls the cart. Given the chose of being a pauper as a scientist or being a millionaire farmer, which would you choose? It's a difficult decision, but that's choice even if it's horrifically swayed towards not being a choice at all. Can communism do the same? Alas, no.

Let's roll back to communism for a moment. Let's say that a group of like minded individuals decides to form a community where the resources are pooled and the individuals are given an incentive to work: medicine and education. Let's say that without a farmer there'll be no food, so there are farmers. Then without a carpenter, there are no houses, so there are carpenters. Those who are not working at this point are made available the resources made by the farmers and carpenters. They fill the jobs that need doing to build a school, a hospital, and a post office. When they're done, there are enough industry jobs to keep them working as much as the farmers and carpenters. So at this point, we've got 100% employment, high morale, and plenty of industry. So what's wrong with this communist utopia? What happens when a few farmers want desk jobs instead of farm jobs? Again we're back to square one without incentive no one works jobs that are less desirable. If there isn't a vacancy, you are stuck working the less desirable job. Assuming that you have enough people who desire jobs enough to make a valid society, you're in luck.

The anime Kino had an episode where Kino enters a town where everything of value, every technology was available for free. Yet people still worked stressful jobs because they desired work. I don't think that everyone values this in the same way. Many people in our society value work, but Generation X has a pretty funny attribute: the desire to be lazy. It doesn't affect all of us, but to expect to build a society expecting the necessary jobs to be done out of charity seems like madness. I would certainly like to try it but I certainly would not want to take responsibility for it.

Back to the rant, communism relies upon a very weak principle: jobs can be meted out by communal democratic planning without individual choice. And so I move on to socialism, which is a much more immediate threat. Socialism is not based so much on a weak principle as it is an unjust one. Public ownership of property is a common thread with communism. Removing the incentive to work less desirable jobs is also an issue, which is why socialism removes the choice in the most well known case, China. In one of my fouled up debates on socialism, I used the argument that nationalization of infrastructure made people lazy, which is an incorrect assumption. Laziness is not a given when a person has a chance at a slightly higher wage, which socialism allows. Laziness occurs when there is no incentive to work harder. Socialism may remove most of the incentive, but there is enough anecdotal evidence to the contrary that the argument is fairly mild. The proper argument is that corruption is rife in socialism because a person can much more easily bribe or lie to the government to obtain more money for less work. Corruption occurs quite regularly in our own non-socialist government because of the same reason, but the problem with socialism is that it gives more money to those who are more likely to be corrupt than anyone else: the government. Competition in capitalism is ugly and counterproductive in many ways, but socialism beats it in every way imaginable. Socialism rewards those who are the most corrupt, and so it is a competition for who can steal the most money from the government.

But ranting about socialism is not productive. Communism has failed for the most part and socialism seems like it's on the move. I hate to say it but we Libertarians are in a truly sticky mess here. Deregulation has been blamed for the recent economic fiasco and even Bush towed the line of socialism, bailing out the auto industry at the end of his awful administration. How can the Cato Institute continue to champion deregulation and economic sensibility in the state our economy and government is in? For a full year we have backed Obama because our conscience required us to end the war in Iraq. We have our new president and now we must take our medicine. Certainly, we Libertarians must be cautious of how strongly we talk these days for fear of being proven wrong in a year or two. But allow me to speak strongly despite the fact that I am likely to eat my words. I've been right for long enough, so I will gladly eat my words if they are proven untrue. A mandatory national healthcare system will increase the burden on individuals and families, reducing their earnings which will decrease the quality of life for all Americans. Those who currently pay too much for healthcare should not look towards socialism for the cure to their ailments. Proper solutions exist and I would seriously encourage impassioned debate on the issue. It certainly cannot be solved by one man. Our aging populace is certainly going to take more money to care for, but as time progresses, they will also be getting healthier. Medicine has not stagnated in the past 100 years and it certainly will not fail us so long as we take our medicine figuratively speaking.

I hate to add the below paragraph about idiocy to a blog about ideals and philosophy, but I thought I'd add it just so that the reader would have something else to think about.

I was at the Seattle Mardi Gras Riots and I must protest that it was not a riot at all. People were injured during the violence and a person lost his life quite randomly but to be compared to WTO protests or the Seattle Riot of 1886 is rather disingenuous. I attended the Mardi Gras celebration in Seattle Pioneer Square because I was confident that the police would be arresting a peaceful crowd for no reason other than the complete lack of respect for civil rights. Boy oh boy was I ever wrong. Much like any Mardi Gras before or since where people have not been living under a police state, there was a bunch of people crowded into a space with a bunch of women flashing their breasts. It was not the type of civil disobedience that I had become accustomed to, but I didn't worry too much about it. There was no violence that I could tell until the police line came in. People threw various non-threatening objects at the well-protected police. I was waiting for the police to start clearing us out or tear gassing us like they have done before, but it never happened. I kinda thought that the police order had once again broken down and that they were refusing their orders to disperse us this time. They never moved. It took a while, but the crowd became a bit more rowdy and before I knew it people were screaming and stuff. It was obvious that something was going on but I was completely oblivious. It was definitely not my type of crowd. I was sober while most people there were drunk. A small crowd formed around a single person and people were saying he was dead, I never saw him since the crowd was so thick. I'm sure plenty of people were trying to help, but crowds don't help much. Some people went to get an ambulance which took a while to come. In the list of riots on Wikipedia, I feel that if there are weaker riots listed, they should get their own page: idiocy in crowds of people. Alas, I don't think I'll get my wish. Historians are sticklers about names and I'm sure the idiots in local government would rather not diminish their status of anti-riot protectors.

Javantea out.