MentalPolyphonics » critical theory

Where is My People’s History?

Jared — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 00:08:19 +0000

Jack and The Tyee have both criticized the latest edition of How to Be a Canadian by the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration. It made me think about the book A People’s History of the United States (which I haven’t read and don’t plan to because I don’t care about the US). It’s a history of oppression in the US that looks at major national events and oppressive episodes from the point of view of the least powerful.

Apparently A People’s History is an invaluable teaching tool for critical American History. But from what I’ve read, none of the spin-offs (A People’s History of the World, in particular) are as good.

What do you get when you Google “A People’s History of Canada”? The historical TV series published by the government. It’s a nice project for teaching people the framework of Canadian history, but even a sometimes-rogue Crown corporation like the CBC can’t be expected to produce truly critical history.

Does a popular critical history of Canada exist? If not, why doesn’t someone make one?

The Government Needs Critical Accounting

Jared — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:41:37 +0000

The CCPA tried to measure how much we benefit from public service. But they noted that the biggest problem with their study is that actually the only data available is to measure the cost of public services consumed by households. Government cannot use the market theory of value because the things government produces (mostly as a monopoly) are not traded in markets; instead, government accountants use the cost-of-production theory of value.

Cost theories of value have been rejected by neoclassical economics. Not having any way of measuring the value besides the cost means that cost-benefit analysis is meaningless. So when business people look at government services they see them as at most zero net benefit.

This is similar to the problem of measuring government’s success by changes in gross domestic product (GDP). Government needs critical accounting more desperately than the private sector does.

Postmodernism vs Neo-Marxism

Jared — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:21:31 +0000

My friend Tara recently wrote an excellent summary of what a neo-Marxist revolutionary does. My summary is that neo-Marxists believe that the majority of us live under a false meta-narrative, believing that our alienation is either desirable or has no alternative. (This sounds a lot more like The Matrix than Baudrillard does, eh?) The neo-Marxists (and Tara uses the Situationist flavour of neo-Marxist jargon) attempt to raise our consciousness by doing stuff like avant-garde art.

I don’t really get neo-Marxism, while I do dig postmodernism, so I see the situation through a postmodern lens: The neo-Marxists are incredulous to the dominant meta-narrative (ie: work is good) but see their own meta-narrative (ie: wacky stuff is good) as more authentic. Postmodernism says that all meta-narratives are not credible and the craving for the authentic is part of the late-modern meta-narrative, so the neo-Marxists are part of the system they’re attempting to overthrow. (The highly accessible text that introduced me to this idea is The Rebel Sell.)