Life on the left: Part II, "choices" & choices
Complex Praxis 10/6/19
Hello, from the American Midwest.
This edition of CP is a story of the first of two conversations, which happened back to back. The first conversation, which I’ll be getting into in this edition, was rather frustrating. However, the second conversation was very enjoyable for me, because it put me in the process of
Listening (getting some cool ideas that are stimulating)—>
Thinking (putting things together in my head)—>
Talking (refining what I thought, via trying to say it in a way someone who is not me will be able to understand.)
The reason that I’m writing about the first frustrating conversation is because the second conversation came out of the frustration of the first.
How it got started:
A meeting had been canceled, and three people (myself and two others) who had shown up hung around and chatted. One of the things we were talking about was about “choice” and choice, about what things people choose and what things happen to people that they have to react to or face dire consequences.
The ways I remember it, I was making a combo Lacanian Marxist (i.e. a structuralist/materialist) argument that people are subjects, and as such are subjected to (i.e., thrown into) conditions they did not choose and many of the choices individuals make are a set of available reactions to material conditions we can influence a little, but mostly don’t control.
In particular, I was saying many people don’t have health care in America did not choose not to have health care. My argument is that for some people getting health care means going without other very immediate material needs and that in that situation, they “choose” to not have health care, but that “choice” (in quotes) is not a choice (without quotes).
My interlocutor suggested I was shortchanging personal agency [EN1].
I tried to say I don’t think it is as simple as that, and that my interlocutor was shortchanging subjectivity in relation to material conditions [EN2].
(I felt like I was Žižek talking to Peterson.)
We landed it that place called let’s agree to disagree, and my interlocutor left the room to do something else.
If this first conversation would have continued:
I would have said something along the lines of:
You could say, “You don’t choose to live in Europe, Neil. You could choose to live in Europe, but you don’t make that choice. You choose to live in America.”
On some level, this would be correct. But I’d also argue that one can’t treat the choice about residing in America and moving to Europe at treating it like it was as simple as choosing to order ordering a pizza; to do so would be an oversimplification.
The “choice” of where to live V. The choice to order pizza:
If I want to order pizza, I can choose to order it or to hold off on ordering it. I can make that choice right this red-hot-second because the material conditions I’m contained within allow for me to make that choice right now.
I have access to pizza places NOW.
I have a phone that I can use to call them NOW.
I have money I can use to pay for the pizza NOW.
I can order pizza with only expending a minimal amount of time, money, and energy, all of which I have NOW.
If, on the other hand, I want to “choose” to move to Europe
The material conditions are different.
I need to have a valid passport. If I don’t have that, I’ll need to get one. That takes time, money, and energy.
Even if I book the very next flight to Europe, I still need to do several things to get to that flight (I can’t order it and have it show up at my door in 30-60 min).
I need to buy a place or rent I can live in Europe. Finding and setting that up is a process that involves other people doing things that I can’t do for myself.
Comparing these two things is like comparing apples and spaceships. They are not the same thing!
Back to healthcare (what got me mad):
The idea here is that getting health care is more similar to moving to Europe than it is to ordering pizza.
I want to point out for some people getting health care might be rather easy. However, for other people, it is not! It would be foolish to suggest that getting healthcare involves the same level of difficulty for all people.
To suggest that most of the people who go without healthcare choose to go without healthcare is to disavow the material conditions those people are living in. It is also a way of making people who are struggling look like they are dumb, as evidenced by their choice to not have the healthcare they need.
Wrap & up next:
The one other person in the room and I continued to talk about this “choice” vs. choice thing. We got to talking about how contemporary-capitalism [EN4] seems to suggest that it gives people lots and lots of choices, and how markets are rather good at giving people options of different goods and services they can buy/sell/trade for. But, the private sector also works to exclude certain choices from the markets.
For example, the agents who work for private companies have often worked to exclude state-sponsored (i.e. public) options (for health care, for transportation, for utilities, etc.) from the market because governments have an advantage over privately owned businesses [EN3].
This leads us to the question of, “What happens if capitalism breaks down?” For me, this is where things got very interesting…
However, I’m seriously out of time for this week, so I’ll be talking more about that next week’s edition of CP.
Ok. That is it for this week.
Endnotes:
EN1 — Another friend gave me a black shirt that has the words “RELUCTANT CALVINIST” printed in all cap big white block letters. So, clearly, others have accused me of this as well.
EN2 — There was A LOT more to this conversation than what I presented here. We talked about case notes, ethics, civil rights, and many other things. But I think the part about “choice” vs. choice is (for me) what leads to what happened next.
EN3 — The unfair advantage being, unlike a private company, a government has taxpayers who “choose” to pay taxes. (See what I did there with “choose” and choice?) Ergo, the government does not have the same overhead costs that a private company does. Nevermind the tax breaks that these private companies get.
EN4 — Contemporary-capitalism is also sometimes called late-capitalism. I prefer the term contemporary-capitalism because I think that late-capitalism implies that capitalism is near the end of its existence, and I don’t believe that is necessarily the case.