{"id":10832,"date":"2009-04-05T03:39:15","date_gmt":"2009-04-05T00:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=10832"},"modified":"2013-10-12T22:45:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-12T19:45:00","slug":"interview-zygmunt-bauman-sociologist-and-philosopher-on-socialism-america-and-the-future-of-humanity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2009\/04\/05\/interview-zygmunt-bauman-sociologist-and-philosopher-on-socialism-america-and-the-future-of-humanity\/","title":{"rendered":"America, and the future of humanity"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Matt Kennard<\/span> \u2022 \t\t\tMarch 13, 2009<\/p>\n

\"\"\"baumanzygmunt\"MK: Why did you choose to come to Leeds?<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: I don\u2019t know, I have no idea. I was a refugee \u2013 I was kicked out of my country and there was an invitation from Leeds. I got a telegram \u2013 \u201cWould you like to speak to the university?\u201d \u2013 do you know what\"\" a telegram is?<\/p>\n

MK: I\u2019ve never used one!<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: Before you were born. So I said, \u201cYes, I will come,\u201d and I came and they offered me a job and I took and\u2026<\/p>\n

MK: the rest is history<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: That was 35 years ago \u2013 quite a long time!<\/p>\n

MK: You call yourself a socialist, is that right?<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: Yes, I believe so. I would like to believe so that I am Socialist.<\/p>\n

MK: What does that mean to you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: I don\u2019t understand socialism as a type of society or social formation. I don\u2019t believe there is such thing as a socialist society. Socialism is postulating a point of view where you are looking at things \u2013 I very often use the metaphor of a knife pressed with its edge against the existing society. Socialism is believing that no society is just enough \u2013 that there is always some injustice which ought to be fought against. To give you another comparison: if you take a bridge and try to establish what is its carrying power, you don\u2019t take the carrying power of every pillar add them together and then divide by the number of pillars \u2013 you don\u2019t take the average carrying power of an average pillar. But you measure the carrying power of the bridge by the carrying power of the weakest pillar. And unfortunately in our societies, you measure the well-being of a society by G.N.P and G.N.P. is precisely like measuring the carrying power of the bridge according to the average carrying power, the medium pillar. It is wrong because the quality \u2013 and this is socialist belief and my own \u2013 that you judge a society by is the decency of living of the weakest.<\/p>\n

MK: Are we talking about economics, specifically?<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: What economics?<\/p>\n

MK: Well you talked about the weakest pillar \u2013 are we talking the weakest economically?<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: The weakest \u2013 the most humiliated, deprived and outcast kind of life. That\u2019s roughly the issue. G.N.P. is roughly the measure of the amount of money which changes hands so if there are many invalids in the country which require a lot of medical care then the G.N.P is rising, and for every crash on the motorway the G.N.P goes up because there is plenty of removal business and rebuilding and rebuying and exchanging and so on and so forth. And that\u2019s a misleading picture \u2013 that\u2019s how we live actually. We watch what is happening in society but we apply the wrong yardsticks to establish whether it is all the way up or down or whatever. That\u2019s what\u2019s happening also at the moment in quite a few \u2013 you haven\u2019t been to South America?<\/p>\n

MK: I\u2019ve been to Guatemala<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: You have been?<\/p>\n

MK: Guatemala, Mexico and Honduras.<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: Well that\u2019s a very interesting place because you see there what I am talking about being played on the stage. The lack of connection \u2013 not just difference between \u2013 but lack of connection between the economic growth on the one hand and the wellbeing of the nation on the other. You may have rapidly rising volume of trade, which will be immediately reflected in the figures of GNP; on the other hand people are living in poverty and actually sinking lower and lower. So that\u2019s roughly I understand about socialism \u2013 it\u2019s a different point of view. It is a clinical attitude towards reality focusing on the injustices which are there.<\/p>\n

MK: Some people have said that since the Cold War that socialism is dead \u2013 or in the sense of how it was known to people growing up in your generation. Would you agree with that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: Well, you see, I\u2019m very suspicious when a society prides itself that \u201cWe are the democracy implemented\u201d; \u201cWe are perfectly just\u201d; \u201cWe are a socialist society\u201d, or whatever. These terms in their nature postulate demands \u2013 when they are used as the names of existing reality then there is some fraud involved \u2013 always. My definition of just society is that society is just if it thinks of itself as not just enough. By definition democratic society is a society which thinks that it is not democratic enough. So if you consider these postulates as a instruction, injunction or command for the future, for doing something then it is OK. But once you say the job has been done and there is nothing to be and whoever didn\u2019t get benefit out of it it\u2019s his own fault, then there is something wrong with it.<\/p>\n

Socialism in the sense of the idea that simply by nationalizing industry can create a new end or a new movement, that by removing a certain kind of class culture that you can remove all unhappiness and all disasters and all troubles and all worries \u2013 that\u2019s has something wrong with it. So in this sense the idea of the possibility of building here on Earth a perfect society \u2013 that is dead. That is dead to me as well. I don\u2019t believe that there is such a thing as perfect society. But look at what perfection means: A state in which every further change will be a change for the worse \u2013 you can\u2019t improve on it. I don\u2019t agree with this; I believe that there is always something outstanding, not yet done, which needs a human dedication, effort and very often self-sacrifice in order to achieve it.<\/p>\n

So if you want to call it Socialism, that\u2019s up to you. I call it Socialism but I wouldn\u2019t quarrel if you disagree. But Socialism in the sense of a given, pre-designed model of a society \u2013 that\u2019s dead.<\/p>\n

MK: Now do you feel like we are regressing? You talked about creating a society where we always push to make things better rather than having a utopian idea of where we will end. The logic of capitalism is basically being played out \u2013 it\u2019s hard for people to fight that in the same way. Some people say that capitalism will follow its logic until something comes to replace it. There\u2019s the quote from Michel Houllebecq\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: You\u2019ve met him as well?<\/p>\n

MK: No I haven\u2019t met him but I read his book Atomized. He says that \u201cfor a metaphysical transformation to happen, something has to replace it.\u201d So something has to replace capitalism and if it doesn\u2019t happen it will carry on. American capitalism is now spreading its tentacles everywhere which means I can\u2019t really see much hope for the society me and you want\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: Every society has its chances and its threats. I\u2019ve lived a long time, 80 years, and I went through many different kinds of societies and I have first-hand experience of living in different types of social settings. My conclusion is that each one has its advantages and its disadvantages only they are differently distributed in various situations. I don\u2019t believe that you can strike the right balance between two equally important values which are basic, essential for decent human life and that is: freedom and security. People need freedom and people need security. Freedom without security is hell really because it paralyzes, it\u2019s disables from action \u2013 if you feel very, very insecure you are not able to make the proper human use of your freedom.<\/p>\n

And of security without freedom is slavery. So on two extremes \u2013 the poles of the continuum \u2013 it\u2019s hell. We are not moving between heaven and hell, we are moving between two hells. And all human societies are plotted along this line somewhere closer to one extreme or the other. Seventy years ago another Sigmund \u2013 Sigmund Freud \u2013 wrote a book called, in the English translation \u2013 \u201cCivilization and It\u2019s Discontents\u201d and there he said that civilization means a trade-off \u2013 you just exchange one value for the other. And according to him \u2013 I repeat it was seventy years ago \u2013 civilization trades part of freedom for greater security. And what was wrong with civilization \u2013 I repeat for the second time 70 years ago \u2013 was that we have lost quite a lot of our individual freedom \u2013 freedom of expression, of going by our instinct, by our predalictions, by our preferences. We lost it for the sake of acquiring more security and my point is that if Sigmund Freud was sitting with you instead of me and explaining what kind of trade off civilization is, he would probably say that it is a trade off but the trouble with civilization is that it traded off too much security for more freedom and that is the situation today. That is the situation today because freedom comes only together with enormous risks and in order to be able to fight them back or to act under the circumstances you need quite a lot of resources.<\/p>\n

There are a very many \u2013 perhaps a majority of many societies \u2013 don\u2019t have these resources. It\u2019s very much like being thrown into the waters of a sea or ocean \u2013 people who are very good swimmers actually enjoy it \u2013 \u201cAh, great, vast expanse of water and now I can really show my muscles!\u201d \u2013 but very many go down. Even a better example is Titanic where it crashed against the iceberg, as you remember \u2013 it suddenly transpired that all the passengers on the top deck have the boats to save them. The other decks didn\u2019t have them \u2013 so some went down.<\/p>\n

It is a far example but take New Orleans after Katrina \u2013 it\u2019s exactly the same story, another Titanic. There was a voice on the loudspeakers: \u201cPlease evacuate, Katrina is coming, danger is coming!\u201d. Well, people who could jumped into their cars and went off \u2013 they stopped at the nearest motel or hotel, they didn\u2019t worry about leaving behind their properties because the properties wre heavily insured, they knew that they would be repaid for the losses. But something like 75% of the population of New Orleans stayed behind because either they didn\u2019t have cars or they didn\u2019t have money for motels or hotels or they didn\u2019t have their very meager possession insured. They knew that if they leaved these shacks behind them they would be completely without means of living so why do you have to look for the Titanic example, we have a very fresh example that nothing has happened for 100 years \u2013 nothing has changed.<\/p>\n

MK: I\u2019m interested in the idea of the trade-off between security and freedom, especially having come from America\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: You come from America?<\/p>\n

MK: I\u2019m not American but I studied there for a year. And Libertarians there believe that society can\u2019t have individual freedom with economic justice because a state that intervenes in the economy is necessarily restricting the freedom of its subject. Or the other argument it will naturally lead to tyranny \u2013 Hayek\u2019s idea that as soon as you start interfering in the economy you will begin interfering in every sphere of human life. That\u2019s something that has always troubled me because obviously we want to find a way to organize society where we have individual freedom and economic justice. Do you think that is possible?<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: It\u2019s tremendously difficult. I told you a moment ago that I don\u2019t believe that you can strike the perfect balance between freedom and security \u2013 we are always seeking it, all societies are always seeking it. But each one goes too close to one extreme in order to escape from the horrors of the other extreme and where to stop? Where is the perfect solution? It\u2019s damn difficult to say, really. It\u2019s like \u2013 you know this old ancient Greek notion of Scylla and Charybdis \u2013 two under water rocks \u2013 and the navigator has tremendous difficulty to go between them. Why? Because he when he wasnts to avoid Scylla he comes close to Charybdis.<\/p>\n

So this is the kind of debate between Libertarians and the promoters and followers of the idea of the caring state will go forever. I don\u2019t think it will ever come to an end. But, what\u2019s encouraging is what I\u2019ve found \u2013 I travel quite a lot around Europe, to America I stopped going because I\u2019m too old and it\u2019s very tiring \u2013 but in Europe there is the Scandinavian example which is working and the right-wingers who were against the constraining of freedom tried several times to break the wall and they never succeeded actually \u2013 it always returned to the same concept. I don\u2019t think that they are the perfect solution, but they came as close as imaginable \u2013 so far anyway \u2013 to this balancing between these two things. Take Norway, for example: Norway, like Britain, had several dozens of years ago had this stroke of luck \u2013 God\u2019s gift of North Sea Oil, enormous amount of income extra. What Margaret Thatcher did \u2013 and no-one has changed it \u2013 was to actually use it to lower the taxes and get the people are better off, more clever and so on to enrich themselves. As a result we have several thousands of new millionaires and several hundred new billionaires and so on.<\/p>\n

What did Norway do with the same boon? They didn\u2019t cut taxes, at all. What they did was invest this extra income from North Sea Oil into very long-term plans of providing what\u2019s called \u201cWelfare State\u201d \u2013 I don\u2019t like this term, I prefer \u201cSocial State\u201d \u2013 to provide the Social State with funds for three generations for come. Which means that whoever happens to be a grandfather today in Norway can be pretty sure that his grandchildren already have a secure old age pension \u2013 not him, but his grandchildren! And that created some basic outcomes, really. I traveled to Norway several times and in different periods, with interruptions of several years and each time you go it is a more and more thriving country \u2013 amazing because there was no cutting taxes so no-one got more income. But the fact that people felt suddenly secure and provided for \u2013 that in case they slip, in case they\u2019re suffering defeat, in case things don\u2019t work as properly as they should they will be taken care of. That gave them enormous courage to dare, courage to experiment, courage to invent. And you have this feeling \u2013 it\u2019s very difficult to describe it, you have to go through it and experience it and stay there and talk to people and look around \u2013 there is no ostentatious wealth in Norway, of course there is a difference in income but much, much less than in Britain but nevertheless there is disparity between the rich man and the relatively less rich people.<\/p>\n

But you feel equality in the street. They go to the same shops, the same entertainment halls, to the same pubs and this sort of thing. And it is a country in which you feel everybody cares about public spaces \u2013 houses are repainted, there are not run-down areas, there are no rough districts etc. So you can try at least to balance these two things of freedom and security \u2013 I don\u2019t think it will be 100% successful \u2013 it still may happen in Norway that a Party will come to power that will decide: \u201cWhy should we care about our great grandchildren, what about the state of the nation now?\u201d You know Max Weber \u2013 he defined the beginning of modernity as the \u201ctriumph of the principle of \u2018delay of gratification\u2019\u201d. Sacrifice in the name of some distant goal, some distant end. That is a very unfashionable slogan today, delay of gratification. Slogan today is: \u201cNow, I want happiness now!\u201d<\/p>\n

MK: That\u2019s what Keynes said isn\u2019t it: \u201cIn the long-term, I\u2019ll be dead!\u201d. Anyway, how far do you think the play between individual freedom and security has got to do with capitalism itself. Do you think it is a balance that only has been drawn within capitalism? Outside of capitalism, can an economic system be created where you don\u2019t have them in a dialectical relationship?<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: I\u2019 not if it is a matter of capitalism in general because capitalism has stages. I\u2019m fond of talking of \u201cSolid Modernity\u201d and \u201cLiquid Modernity\u201d. There was a solid phase of capitalism \u2013 capitalism created a society of producers and actually Karl Marx was part of it: he imagined future society as a huge factory in which everybody would be employed. It was a period of the time when space mattered and territory mattered \u2013 the slogan of the time was \u201cBig is beautiful\u201d and all the progress was measured by the amount of body able people who were prepared to serve in the army because there was universal conscription \u2013 everybody was a soldier. So in 1902 during the Boer War when the military medical condition rejected most of the prospective recruits because they were bodily weak and under fed, unhealthy and so on, there was a panic in Britain because you measure the might of the country by the amount of prospective soldiers. On the other hand, you measure the life success of a person by the amount of people whom he employed in his factory \u2013 big factories, dozens of thousands of workers working under one roof. Huge bulky, heavy equipment; they were staying there forever.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve heard about Richard Sennett probably. Richard Sennett wrote a wonderful book about a new spirit of capitalism. What he suggests is that if you take the two symbols of capitalism \u2013 of capitalist prosperity, capital style, capitalist advantages \u2013 in two eras on the one hand you have Rockerfeller and Ford; on the other hand you have Bill Gates. Rockerfeller and Ford were proud of having these big, huge factories miles long, surrounded by walls \u2013 thousands of people working for them. They were proud of their oil rigs, they were proud of their railways. Everything tied to the ground, immovable \u2013 they couldn\u2019t actually pack it up, they could not send it by the internet to Thailand and Asia. There workers were tied to them \u2013 they were fixed to the ground; but they were also fixed to the ground \u2013 that was the solid capitalist. It was a society of producers. We don\u2019t have it any longer. We have a liquid modernity now, and liquid modernity arrived with differentiating very essentially the conditions of these two sides of the conflict. In solid modernity workers were dependent on Ford for their livelihood and Ford depended on his workers for his worth, and his prestige, and his position. So they were both interdependent \u2013 they were in equal situation. Which, of course, created a lot of conflicts \u2013 in every marriage you have a lot of conflicts because people stay together all the time so there is friction. Also, both sides understood that they would meet again together again and again and again \u2013 now up to 10 years up to 20 years. Therefore, they have to elaborate some modus vivendi \u2013 a way of cohabiting which is roughly agreeable to both. And so you had conflict and you have negotiations and on both sides you had long-term planning.<\/p>\n

Daliacoigne, the famous French economist, points out that when a young person who went to a factory of Renault or Ford at the age of seventeen, eighteen, he could reasonably suppose that he would retire from the same place at the end of his working life. He could plan his life in a sense. Now, even the most favored youngsters who go to Silicon Valley or work for Bill Gates and earn an enormous amount of money \u2013 they have absolutely no idea what will happen to them next month, let along mention next year \u2013 so it is fluid, liquid.<\/p>\n

So the relations are asymmetrical. On the one hand there are people who are resourceful and well-off and so on. They are not dependent on the workers here \u2013 if the workers here are too hard-nosed, too stubborn, they just imagine that they can fight \u2013 then there is a very simple thing to do: you can transfer the capital elsewhere where the grass is greener. But the other side is not in such a position. Tebbitt, once minister in Margaret Thatcher\u2019s government, used to say \u201cOn yer bike\u201d \u2013 it\u2019s not so simple because you have your family, you have your children, you have an unpaid mortgage for your house. You can\u2019t get on yer bike and go \u2013 it\u2019s a fantasy, it\u2019s a lie. So when one side is fixed to the ground and has no mobility then the context of liquid modern life is of very little use for them. So that situation differentiates very considerably the life situation, life prospects, life chances, of different kinds of pleasure \u2013 it is polarizing.<\/p>\n

MK: Which one do you think is preferable for a human?<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: I don\u2019t know. This question is wrongly put because people who lived in solid modernity don\u2019t live in liquid modernity. People in liquid modernity didn\u2019t experience first-hand solid modernity. So it\u2019s all too easy to idealize the other thing in which you haven\u2019t been because it was untried. People in solid modernity suffered because, after all, being fixed to the ground isn\u2019t a very pleasurable situation \u2013 now I am 30 but when I am 60 I will be still there standing at the same machine. It\u2019s cutting my wings in a sense. So it\u2019s oppression, depression \u2013 whatever \u2013 there\u2019s something inhuman in it. But once that disappears \u2013 this solid ground under your feet \u2013 and you feel suspended in the air, it\u2019s not pleasurable either. I repeat what I said before: Each society has its advantages and disadvantages. The one disadvantage of this society we have now which is unheard of in as sense \u2013 which is completely normal, it\u2019s not just shuffling around of advantages and disadvantages \u2013 but it\u2019s a new real difficulty, it that in a highly individualized in which everybody is on his or her own and there are less and less communally provided safety-nets. In this kind of environment there is very little inducement for human solidarity and very little inducement in terms of thinking of common goals \u2013 matching together, fighting together for some general purpose. If all forms of togetherness in contemporary society tend to become simply a collection of individuals, they don\u2019t create new quality; they just reaffirm, reconfirm the individuals in that the realization, the acceptance that whatever you want to achieve has to be done by you \u2013 by alone and if you fail it will be your fault and nobody else.<\/p>\n

I will give you an example. Typical meetings, very popular meetings in solid modernity and now. In solid modernity there were trade union meetings \u2013 now by and large forgotten but once they were very heavily attended. People came there and one worker came with his own complaint: \u201cOh my foreman is an awful person, he bullies me and he doesn\u2019t allow me to stop for a moment to stop for a cigarette or a cup of tea.\u201d They are sad about unsocial hours: \u201cI lose touch with my family.\u201d Another says, \u201cWell I am working here for five years and my wages haven\u2019t gone up and I am left behind,\u201d and so on. They are talking and talking and then they come to the realization, \u201cWe are all in the same damn plight and let\u2019s stick together, let\u2019s refuse our work, let\u2019s go on strike and perhaps we acquire some sort of an influence on our condition by sticking together; individually we can do nothing but together we can do something\u201d. So in the course of such long, boring meetings, perhaps in the end a new quality will appear \u2013 instead of simply the aggregate of personal complaints, you have a common code. Instead of individuals struggling hopelessly without the prospect of winning alone, there will be some solidarity.<\/p>\n

Now, if you juxtapose with that with now \u2013 I think the most popular regular meetings today in Britain is Weight Watchers. No really, I mean it! Weight Watchers is a very powerful organization \u2013 a lot of people are fighting their fat. They come to meetings \u2013 several dozens of thousands come to the meeting every Friday \u2013 what for? They are publicly put on scales \u2013 their weight is announced; if it\u2019s 1 pound more than last week they are booed; if they are 1 pound less than last week they are applauded. Now they are coming to this meeting as individuals and they are leaving reinforced in their individuality because they know damn well that by marching together not a single inch will disappear from their waste. Whatever happens depends entirely on them; whether they observe the diet or they neglect the diet: it\u2019s all up to them. So no new quality is emerging \u2013 it\u2019s still a collection of individuals \u2013 separate unions, uncollected unions and I call the communities we have here in liquid modern time \u201cPeg Communities\u201d. Why Peg? It\u2019s like people come to a performance in the theatre \u2013 they hang their anoraks on pegs for the duration, 2 and half hours, and then they pick them and up and each one goes in different directions. It\u2019s exactly like the type of community here. No lasting bonds<\/p>\n

MK: I agree with you. But we can sit here talking about this but the world isn\u2019t static \u2013 there are ways to change it. Where is the hope of fighting this individualized, atomized society?<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: It\u2019s very difficult to say. I repeat all the time: I am not a Prophet.<\/p>\n

MK: But there must be forces working\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: I agree with you. But look all the great departures in modern history \u2013 every one of them came completely unexpected and from the areas, from the corners of the globe which were least attended to. I have been a sociologist for 60 years \u2013 I have learnt a lot of sociology and I am quite sure that we sociologists have wonderful apparatus or wonderful tools and stratagems to explain everything which happens. We can say: Why did it happen? Not only that we can say that it had to happen like that retrospectively. But we don\u2019t have any tools to predict the future. We are not prophets, we are not soothsayers, we are not Oracles. I don\u2019t think I have a single tool which puts me in a better position to predict the future as everyman layman has, every ordinary person without any sociological education. So I am quite sure that somewhere something is growing which will probably make a change. One commandment which I think is completely binding for anyone claiming to be doing some kind of scholarship is to be responsible for their words, not to say things irresponsibly when we have no idea about it.<\/p>\n

But responsibly the only thing I can say is what are the present tendencies \u2013 which one of them will prevail, that I am unable to say responsibly.<\/p>\n

MK: But as a layman are you hopeful?<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: I am hopeful because there was such a very, very intelligent regional thinker in France \u2013 a Greek called Castoriadis who became one of the most interesting social philosophers in France \u2013 and he was asked a very similar question to the one you are asking and the interviewer was even more insistent than you are. And the interviewer said: \u201cMr. Castoriadis do you want to change humanity?\u201d And he said: \u201cGod forbid: it never occurred to me to change society; what I want is for humanity to change itself and it has done so many times in the past.\u201d That\u2019s the hope. If you trace the development of human kind then you will see that there were many quite amazing departures which no-one predicted.<\/p>\n

When the Bolsheviks in St. Petersburg in 1917 in the Times there was a little note on the 5th or 6th page in small print: no-one knew or understood what was happening. No-one believed that Hitler would come to power. So the two greatest disasters of the 20th century came completely unexpected. No-one really, seriously feared that they would make an impact, that they would last. So beware of predicting the future. One of my teachers about half a century ago \u2013 a very, very wise professor \u2013 told me \u201cZygmunt never predict and in particular never predict the future\u201d.<\/p>\n

MK: When I interviewed Noam Chomsky he said that there is a stark choice: he said that if an alien came to Earth now they wouldn\u2019t put very high odds on human survival with the environmental situations and the proliferation of weapons.<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: Well sometimes you can be apocalyptic when you look at the situation you mention because what is most disquieting in the contemporary position of the globe with America and the hegemonic power \u2013 what is most disquieting to me is that every great power tries to create a world, a planet, in such a way as to make it hospitable for the kind of strengths which it possesses. Every country wants political power \u2013 not only the States. You can explain divisions of good society which were penned down by intellectuals in modern times by their deliberate, unspoken or tacit, latent wish to make society hospitable for the kind of intellectual work they were doing. Everybody going to Opera, everybody going to concerts, everybody reading thick books, the classics and going to exhibitions. I can understand that. A good society for intellectuals is a society which is kind to intellectuals, in which intellectuals are held in very high esteem and so on. It has its advantages. But in the case of America as a world power it has a tremendous dangers because America is clearly the greatest military power in the world \u2013 military only. Not any longer economically, not any longer intellectually \u2013 just in this one field.<\/p>\n

There is no question that America is the highest placed military power \u2013 America spends on armaments as much money annually as the 25 countries next to America taken together. So there is no competition in arms, there is no question about that. But if that is the case then America wants to make the world in its image; namely, that what decides in this world is application of force: who has more bombs, who has more smart missiles and things like that, the more mobile army and so on. And that\u2019s a danger. Economically the power has shifted already. If you take China \u2013 China is amazing really; on the one hand it is the most rapidly growing economic power in the world, getting richer by the day, probably by the end of our interview they will have several hundred billion dollars. On the other hand it a most peaceful power because they don\u2019t see any need in fighting the rest of the world in terms of military confrontation.<\/p>\n

MK: What about Taiwain?<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: You know economically they will do it. China is not interested in territorial conquest really because it can go its way without it. What China would like everybody doing is trading. There is a difference between America\u2019s actions and China. China tries to introduce cars into China \u2013 so far the Chinese have traveled on bicycles; they don\u2019t want everybody to have a car, which is disastrous \u2013 first of all there is not enough oil in the world to supply two billion Chinese with cars. But anyway that\u2019s what they want to do but they need oil. America when it needs oil sends missiles against Iraq and Afghanistan and garrisons all around the Middle East \u2013 not accidently because in 50 years time according to all statistics the Middle East oil supplies will be the only working in the whole planet, all the rest will be toasted. The idea is that if we militarily capture these oil sources then we can dictate the conditions to the rest of the world.<\/p>\n

But China works differently. I read in the French newspapers about the Chinese buyers who went to Venezuela and other places in South America and other places they produce oil in Africa \u2013 Nigeria and so on and buying oil fields \u2013 buying! They have a lot of money. Not sending armies to conquer but buying. So it is up and go but I started saying that that is the most disquieting consequence of the US emerging as the greatest by far superpower in the world \u2013 because of its weakness. A skewed balance in a sense. It\u2019s an Empire which is strong only in one respect \u2013 in coerncion. And all the other legs of Empire are rather weak so that is troubling.<\/p>\n

MK: Have you spent time in America before?<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: Yes, I\u2019ve been there several times.<\/p>\n

MK: What do you make of the culture there? Is it the extreme of what you were talking about as the individualized culture?<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: I have gone to America several times and each times I have entered at different points, stayed in different parts. I have failed to link them together \u2013 I find it very different to generalize about California and New York and Middle America and the outskirts along the coast. It\u2019s a very disjointed country which has a festival of patriotism but daily it is a very divided and scattered place. Besides, I was in this redneck Bible-belt for example, which suddenly emerged as a tremendously important part of America because it votes Presidents in \u2013 it had never happened before, it was the first time it happened. I don\u2019t know, generalizing is very hard.<\/p>\n

MK: Have you read the essay by Baudrillard on America which is very scathing about the fake smiles and the superficiality\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: It has a long history behind it. There were so many \u2013 in every generation \u2013 European intellectuals who went and were appalled \u2013 the incarnation of hell for them \u2013 everything they were afraid by. Another of my teachers, Theodore Adorno, his idea of mass culture was formed when he spent time in America \u2013 the replacement of high culture by base culture, vulgarization, commercialization and all this kind of stuff. That was how the idea of mass culture was born \u2013 the derogative idea of mass culture was born.<\/p>\n

Long, long before that Alexis de Tocqueville went to America and wrote \u201cDemocracy in America\u201d and he expected exactly the same: that there would be the tyranny of the material majority in that sense \u2013 stifling of the individual daring and there is something like that. The impression of what is the current standard, or the current objection of attention is tremendously American and to deviate from this current obligobatory standard is to take a tremendous risk.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, you have a very differentiated society in America \u2013 you can always find a niche where you can feel at home because it is such a big country, because the distances are so great and so long. Allegedly if the whole of Europe was transferred to America and settled there \u2013 still the density of America would be about 5 times lower than today in Holland. So it\u2019s a tremendously big country and that probably allows people to manage somehow \u2013 some of them do it voluntarily: they buy themselves, in a sense, into the areas, the surroundings which are more to their taste and some others are condemned to be in surroundings which are not necessarily to their taste but they can\u2019t afford anything else. You have urban ghettoes in America, which are more or less the dispose of Europe.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s a very complex picture. I think all generalizations are misleading\u2026<\/p>\n

MK: Some leftists came out during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in support of the neo-conservative policies. In the Observer Nick Cohen, in America Christopher Hitchens \u2013 people like that said that sometimes the views of the American government will coincide with the wishes of progressives\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: It\u2019s silly because America does support a lot of dictators and it was never very provident for saying to co-operate with tyrants \u2013 it works in the interests of America. Why Afghanistan? Why did with they not co-operate with the Taliban or Saddam Hussein? Because they were reluctant to co-operate they had to be removed they were obstacles. But if the tyrant is willing to co-operate there is no problem. After all, who supplied Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons and all the beginnings of WMD\u2019s which was the pretext for the war? It was when Iraq was at war with Iran which was supported by the US \u2013 Rumsfeld, the Secretary for Defense, went there and actually made the deal with Saddam and supplied him with the same murderous gases which were used later to poison the Kurds.<\/p>\n

MK: But Hitchens argument would be that you now have even more responsibility to take him out now\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: Well he thinks America is against anti-democratic regimes \u2013 but in order to be anti-democratic and arouse the wrath of America they also need to be anti-American and not co-operate. There is the legendary meeting of President Rooseveldt who was a liberal, not a conservative, not a redneck, a very progressive man and so on. Rooseveldt met with the Saudi King on the deck of an American warship and promised him solemnly that America will support the Saudi regime in Saudi Arabia which is an awful regime \u2013 a Wahhabi regime, you know, the most extreme wing of the Islamic world and really very intolerant, very anti-feminist, very unpleasant sort of regime. But America will support and defend it providing that in exchange Saudi Arabia will regularly supply oil to America. So you see let\u2019s not take the world at face value. Of course it is easy to say that we went to Afghanistan and Iraq to defend democracy. Let\u2019s wait and see now because the democracy that is emerging now in Iraq will be very unpleasant for the US \u2013 it will be fundamentalist Islamic regime probably which will be much less human, much less tolerant even than Saddam Hussein was.<\/p>\n

MK: Their support of Israel\u2019s expansionist policies is another example of what your saying. It\u2019s a complete double standard.<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: The propaganda is one thing but the facts are fundamentally different. America doesn\u2019t have a good record of defending democracy \u2013 that\u2019s the problem. It co-operated very wholeheartedly with the most awful regimes. Remember who was the democratically elected president of Chile?<\/p>\n

MK: Salvador Allende.<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: America actually organized the killing of Salvador Allende. Democratically elected president was killed by a CIA-organized coup.<\/p>\n

MK: Have you heard of Andrew Roberts? He\u2019s a conservative historian. I interviewed him the other day and he was telling me about how the neo-cons were idealists who wanted to spread democracy around the world. I mentioned Allende and Chile and Guatemala, Nicaragua etc. He said that what you need to understand is that during the Cold War that the stakes were so high that you couldn\u2019t mess around. I said that he was democratically elected! He said that every communist gets democratically elected once \u2013 they just don\u2019t hold another election.<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: Bush is unusually frank and sincere because he\u2019s said it openly: \u201cWho is not with us, is with the terrorists\u201d. There is no third place in the world \u2013 either you are a terrorist or you are for sending bombs and occupation forces to Iraq. There is no third solution. And if you think in these terms then of course we are democratic so whoever co-operates with us is a democrat and whoever does not is an anti-democratic. That\u2019s unfortunately the problem.<\/p>\n

MK: How do you combat the threat of Islamic terrorism, then?<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: Take the glossy magazine of the last Saturday Guardian. There is a confession of one of the pushers who actually was employed by the American government to blackmail the democratically elected presidents in Latin America. The formula was here is $200 million in one hand in the other hand is a shooter with bullets with your name on it. You choose.<\/p>\n

MK: Was that with Allende?<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: This wasn\u2019t only Allende. It was an interview with Gary Younge interview. So if you can get it still it\u2019s a very important document.<\/p>\n

MK: I wanted to quickly ask about the fact that young people now are so depoliticised at a time when there is so much carnage in the world. What are the sociological reasons for that? Especially in America \u2013 we can sit here now talking about how it is doing such terrible things in the world, but they don\u2019t know anything about it. What are the reasons for having a population of such uninterested people who have no conception of the world outside of their own borders?<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB:: Well one part of the answer is related to the question before. We live in a time of a very acute crisis of the long term idea \u2013 the idea of long term, uncertainty of the future, life in fragments \u2013 from one episode to another, one project to another. It\u2019s virtually impossible to plan in the long-term. There are no career tracks that end in the grave which you can follow. So the result is that people are \u2013 one could use the phrase which was recently coined by one sociologist \u201cliving in the tyranny of the moment\u201d. We are so engrossed in the present \u2013 in the task nearest to hand \u2013 that we can\u2019t think in the long-term. And if you can\u2019t think in the long-term then you can\u2019t think of the state of the world in 20 years because that is something that is beyond your understanding.<\/p>\n

The other thing is, well in Britian for the first time in history, the art of living in debt is part of the national cirriculam because all students are obliged to live in debt officially \u2013 by the decree of government \u2013 and living on credit is a very powerful tool to stop people thinking about more global affairs and the taking of risks and so on. If you are in debt then your hands are tied down. The thing which I observed already before I had left Poland \u2013 actually when the Communist regime was already collapsing and there was no ideological grip any along with the population \u2013 one needed alternative means of exacting discipline and obedience and so on. And one of the inventions which was introduced in a late stage of Communism in Poland was the idea that there was no free-market of lodgings \u2013 lodging was part of social service \u2013 but, say, the family had children growing up and they wanted to be on their own and so on. So the condition of that was that you need to keep for 10 years a saving book for which you need to save \u2013 it was not living on credit but it was the civilization of saving books and credit cards \u2013 you have to put aside the same amount every month and if you lose your job \u2013 if you are removed because you are, I don\u2019t know, too courageous or if you are against the managers or whatever \u2013 then you lose this continuity and you lose your chances. And that had a tremendous disciplining impact \u2013 people were afraid: \u201cWhat will happen to me? I need this flat tremendously. I need my own home. I want a wife and children and so on. So I can\u2019t take risks.\u201d I think there\u2019s some sort of an impact of this kind on student populations. Before they get their diplomas, their degrees they are already above their ears in debt \u2013 what if I lose my place in university and be left with all this debt and unable to repay it. Even if people don\u2019t think clearly in these terms I think somewhere in the subconscious there is a feeling that they are not free.<\/p>\n

When I was a professor at Leeds University \u2013 different eras ago \u2013 everybody had scholarships and grants and you could make student revolution. The state is obliged to pay for my studies! It doesn\u2019t matter \u2013 I don\u2019t lose anything. I came to Leeds in 1971 \u2013 after 1968 already but it was still brewing, this independence of students and they were demanding \u2013 if they didn\u2019t like something then they protested and so on. It was a very interesting time \u2013 not particularly comfortable for the Head of Department like myself. But interesting and now students are \u2013 as my colleagues tell me \u2013 they are mostly interested in passing exams easily. They don\u2019t demand but they don\u2019t want demands to be made of them \u2013 they want to be left alone.<\/p>\n

MK: How conscious a tactic of control is the building up of debt?<\/strong><\/p>\n

ZB: That is a general impression today \u2013 that is a generality that one can risk. Humanly produced things are hitting us today in the style of natural disasters. There is very little to distinguish between terrorist assault on the towers in Manhattan, the havoc which resulted from the American invasion of Iraq, and Tsunami and Katrina. They all, you know, came completely unexpectedly \u2013 they couldn\u2019t be predicted and took everybody by surprise. They were completely contrary to the intentions. And the general impression that people get probably is that there is very little people can do to countervail, to counteract, let alone to prevent and pre-empt the sudden disasters. Whether they are man-made or whether they are natural disasters doesn\u2019t matter. In 1755, in the era when the Enlightenment started and modern thinking started and so on, there was an awful disaster in Lisbon, Portugal \u2013 first there was an earthquake which caused the equivalent of the contemporary Tsunami \u2013 sea waves which hit the city and then there was fires \u2013 Lisbon was destroyed and 20,000 people were dead, owners lost their property and so on. And that was the beginning of secularization \u2013 the idea that God doesn\u2019t do his job properly because we would understand if He penalized and punished the sinners but in Lisbon there were very decent people, there were some sinners, but the great majority were decent and he just blindly hit them. So there is something wrong with divine creation \u2013 nature must be tamed, must mastered. We will take the world under human management guided by reason we will do the better job out of it. Well 250 years passed and we are very much at a starting point because it is not that the behavior of nature became more guided by reason. On the contrary: the outcomes of reason dictating actions meant behaving more like natural disasters.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the problem; that\u2019s why there is a general impression that eventually it is beyond human power to do something about bringing order into the world. The ambition, the optimistic, the belief in progress which was typical of late 18th and 19th century and part of the 20th century has gone. And if you hear today the word \u201cprogress\u201d it often means the hopeful vision of the future, but it is a sort of grip over your head: If you don\u2019t hard enough, you don\u2019t compete strongly, then you\u2019ll be left behind, you\u2019ll be kicked out, you\u2019ll fall over the boat from the accelerating vehical of progress and so on. So it is a frightening prospect progress, not any longer encouraging.<\/p>\n

And that is one of aspects of what I told you before: I think that this is a most unpleasant aspect of the contemporary situation. We have lost our ability to do long term thinking \u2013 to be daring, to be imaginative. We don\u2019t see how we can go about improving things. When I was your age the major question then to be itself was \u201cWhat is to be done?\u201d Today, I don\u2019t think that is a question because most of use know, roughly, what is to be done. If you took a planetary poll of opinions, 99% would say to you that there should be no war, there should be no overheating of the planet, there should be no pollution. We know what is to be done but the big question today is \u201cWho is going to do it?\u201d That\u2019s the question today \u2013 where are the institutions, where is the social force, where is a category of the population who is likely to do it?<\/p>\n

100 years ago some people thought that the category would be the business and entrepreneurs who were paying their way to a happy world all over. Other thought it is the working-class: they will revolt and they will bring the just system. Some other people were state-orientated and said \u201cWise government! Wait till the next elections and we will elect a powerful government who will do the things right.\u201d All these answers sound ridiculous today.<\/p>\n

Source: www.thecommentfactory.com<\/span>, March 13, 2009<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Matt Kennard \u2022 March 13, 2009 MK: Why did you choose to come to Leeds? ZB: I don\u2019t know, I have no idea. I was a refugee \u2013 I was kicked out of my country and there was an invitation from Leeds. I got a telegram \u2013 \u201cWould you like to speak to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":782328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94,34,922],"tags":[1332,1562],"class_list":["post-10832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uk","category-usa","category-world","tag-political-philosophy","tag-zygmunt-bauman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}