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Acts of Resistance: Against the Tyranny of the Market

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This book is not for those who desire an in-depth account of Bourdieu's sociological theory, but it does offer an interesting series of observations of and provocative challenges to the way we perceive our own perceptions. Bourdieu attempts to explain and militate against a tendency to allow power to legitimate itself--exposing a dangerous habit of seeing the world of power economics as a natural state rather than the product of an incredibly (and at times, unconciously) manipulative ruling class. Reading "Acts of Resistance" helps one understand the machinations of our political, economic, and social leaders who tell us that their interest is "our" interest.

Having read Bourdieu's book, and then the comments here, I find the most revealing response is the one by Brad Delong. Indeed, Delong's comments are almost a textbook case of everything that's wrong with the neoliberal paradigm of economic rationalism that Bourdieu's book so powerfully decries. It's helpful, though, to take Delong's points one by one --- albeit in no particular order --- and contrast them with what Bourdieu actually says.

First, the notion that "Acts" is a "mosaic" and, as such, omits "large and important pieces of the picture" (Delong later claims that Bourdieu's "position" is less than "coherent"). That the book is an incomplete "mosaic" is true enough, but the implication that this amounts to a flawed set of arguments is unsupported by Delong. Though some of Bourdieu's mini-essays and speeches appear occasionally to wander from his main thesis, in reality, of the sixteen items in this book, all but two are concerned, directly or indirectly, with Bourdieu's "resistance" to the ideas and policies subsumed under the doctrine of "neoliberalism." In fact, it's all summed up in the second part of his title: "Against the Tyranny of the Market."

Neoliberalism is the most pervasive economic doctrine today bolstering the "tyranny of the market" in its advocacy of privatization, exportation of capital to foreign countries (for the exploitation of cheap resources and low-wage workers), the bailing out of Wall Street investors with middle-class tax money, and the removal of legal restraints upon capital which, along with depredations on the working class, allows corporations to pollute the environment with near impunity. It's almost laughable, in fact, to see Delong list among his "credentials" his former tutelage under Lawrence Summers, among whose famous statements are the following from 1991:

"I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.... I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly under polluted; their air quality is vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City."

Summers, of course, later defended these statements as "ironic," but nearly everything else he's advocated proves the opposite.

Ergo, it's hardly surprising that a fervent apostle of neoliberal economics like Delong should have problems with Bourdieu. He attempts an affable rejoinder, granting Bourdieu's "excellent" points, but this sort of amiability seems oddly similar to the kind of bonhomie extended at business conferences to token liberals like Jesse Jackson. In other words, it's easy to be amiable when you're one of the main beneficiaries of the doctrines being denounced, especially when there's no foreseeable danger that said doctrines will be supplanted by "mere" verbal renunciation.

Delong's main points are two. First, after characterizing Bourdieu as a "friend," then backtracking to an "ally," he resigns himself ultimately to "someone who would be [i.e., an ally or friend] if he pushed his analysis just a little bit deeper, and made his position a little more coherent."

Actually, Bourdieu's position is about as "coherent" as one could hope for, especially given the varied circumstances under which these articles were written, and they are also as "deep" as anything spewed up by the neoliberal camp. But this "position" is more than a distrust of "intellectuals": it's a critique of a particular form of "mathematical" rationalism appropriated by the economics profession which, in its provinciality, attempts to reduce policy to formulae, and to simultaneously divorce these mathematical calculations from social consequences. In other words, what Bourdieu is denouncing is a prevailing economic policy that takes place in a moral vacuum, perhaps best summed up by the famous claim of Milton Friedman that companies have no "responsibility" other than those to their shareholders for the maximization of profit. Starting from this major premise of economic isolationism, myriad evils follow.

Delong's claim that Bourdieu needs to go "deeper" (implicitly, to see the error of his ways) is also a familiar tactic of right-wing sciolists. It's an easy tactic to see through, especially when the tactician fails to present any evidence to back himself up. If Delong has gone "deeper" than Bourdieu into these matters, the obvious questions is why he fails to share the benefit of his depth. An old trick, and here again former examples come to mind, like the one the media orchestrated in the mid-90's, when pollsters were claiming that people disliked the "Contract With America" until it was "explained" to them (we can pretty well guess who the "explainers" were), at which point they seemed magically converted to the church of Mammon.

Delong's other point relates to Bourdieu's classification of representatives of the welfare state (presumably as nothing more than a "trace"). "That the main business of the late-twentieth century state is social insurance is an important fact," counters Delong, in the process failing to note (1) that he's uttering a tautology, (2) that Bourdieu is not defending the welfare state against leftwingers, but against rightwingers, and (3) that Bourdieu's use of "trace" in this context is a commentary on the fact that in all the advanced industrial economies, the welfare state is, as a direct result of neoliberal policies, no more than a "trace" of what it was during the bulk of the post-war period.

In other words, from what little I can see of Delong's "intellectual position," he needs to go "deeper" into Bourdieu.

While some high-minded dilettantes from Cambridge, Mass and elsewhere might reject this book because it does not directly reference the high priests of continental philosophy, it is in fact an incisive critique of the dominant political and economic fictions of our time. The author composed many of these pieces for workers' rallies and political events. This sort of principled activism is refreshing and sadly all too rare for most academics in this country, whose lives are often all too removed from the very real struggles Bourdieu so astutely analyzes. And to top it off, his commentaries are often quite witty -- who else would have the gumption to blame increasing numbers of traffic accidents on "the scourge of neo-liberalism"? Essential reading for anyone -- academic or not -- who is interested in developing a progressive understanding of politics today.

Straight from the sociologist's mouth, as it were, this book is a little gem which demonstrates that Bourdieu - far from being the pessimistic unveiler of rigid social structure which works such as 'La Distinction' hint at - is, in fact, as 'hip', contemporary and aware of the possibilities for individual political action as Foucault or Chomsky. Anyone who has followed M. Bourdieu's political life in relation to his theories might have previously been suprised by this apparent incongruity, but I was delighted to find that this little book contains enough thoughtful application of theory to fan the flames of dissidence and keep alive the hopes for a more accountable, 'rational' society. Bourdieu is not always right (naturally) and he does have a clear sense of his own importance in the French intellectual field, but to be perfectly honest, when the speaker is this informed and capable a little leeway can be granted. An excellent book, very readable and up-to-date, but not - it is perhaps worth noting - any sort of introduction to Bourdieu's dense theories, more a treasure trove of his shoot-from-the-hip polemics.

I wholeheartedly endorse Kesler's response to Delong's criticism of Bourdieu, to which I add the following observation: there is no mystery as to why Delong wants to make Bourdieu his "hoped-for ally". As Bourdieu writes, his role as an intellectual is to "critique...the [false] representations continuously produced and propagated by the dominant groups and their lackeys in the media" (pg. 66) in order to expose the restorative nature (ie laissez-faire economics) of the neoliberal agenda. On the other hand, it is the role of the neoliberal pseudo-intellectual to "contribute to the maintenance of the symbolic order which is the condition of the functioning of the economic order" (pg. 82).

Knowing full well that "a 'turncoat' activist does more harm than ten opponents" (pg. 6), Delong would like nothing better than to coopt Bourdieu to further the neoliberal agenda.

But of course Bourdieu will have none of that. Bourdieu's reasoned arguments for dignity and human rights in "Acts of Resistance" will necessarilly stand in the way of the "accountant's view of the world" (pg. 105) that Delong subscribes to.

In a world where corporate media favors conservative views, it is refreshing to read Bourdieu's intelligent yet sometimes bare-knuckled defense of people and society. Understanding both the value of high human cultural achievement and the threat of unchecked greed, Bourdieu spares no quarters when exposing those who aim to fill their pockets at the expense of the greater good.

"Acts of Resistance" will help fix your moral compass and remind you that, in the end, it is people that matter most. Highly recommended.

Readers ought to be beware of this book. I bought it because people I respect (Noam Chomsky, Robert Bellah) gave it tremendous blurbs. It has a good title and a subtitle ("Against the Tyranny of the Market") suggesting serious theoretical content. It has a great cover. But it is just vacuous: the Bourdieu of "Distinction" -- the reigning mediocrity of Marxisante sociology in France -- cleaning out his desk drawer of old "opinion" pieces written for various French publications. It's all here: infantile leftism of an elsewhere-outmoded French academic variety, the depressingly "earnest" pontificating of a sociologist who's never had better than a C+ mind, cheap shots at serious thinkers (Ricoeur) whose pencil case Bourdieu is not worthy to carry. Reading it is uncannily like listening to those empty-headed American movie actors and actresses who insist on having "political opinions": Barbra Streisand or Kevin Kostner on, say, population policy or the World Bank. The real "tyranny of the market" is a system that can inveigle readers into buying this kind of tiny-minded moralizing as a "book."

This is a collection of recent op-eds, short lectures and speeches, and an essay or two by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. It is a very short collection. None of the sixteen texts included in the book takes up more than twelve pages. The book runs to 108 text pages, printed on 8" x 5" paper. It offered for sale (in paperback) by the New Press for $12.95. Since two pages would fit on one 8 1/2" x 11" sheet without reduction, the cost of xeroxing the text would be about $2.70, 21% of the price of the book--which is quite a low value for this relative-cost-of-xeroxing statistic.

As the book is a collection of sixteen texts, written (or in some cases delivered) for different audiences under different conditions, it does not make a sustained argument. Think of it, rather, as a mosaic. Some pieces of the mosaic are truly excellent. Others are rather dull and commonplace. And--as often happens with mosaics--some large and important pieces of the picture the individual bits of glass would make are missing altogether.

It is also a very political book. It is not a collection of academic lectures, or of reviews of monographs. Instead, it is a collection of short (in some cases very short) interventions into the politics of the French welfare state at the end of the twentieth century. And at this point it is necessary for me to make a disclaimer. For when Pierre Bourdieu looks for his intellectual and political enemy he sees... me.

Bourdieu praises what he calls "the left hand of the state... the so-called spending ministries which are the trace, within the state, of the social struggles of the past" and condemns the "right hand [of the state] that no longer knows... what the left hand does... [and] does not want to pay for it" (p. 2). I am the right hand of the state. I stood in the back of the room--as one of U.S. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen's aides' aides, as the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy--and listened to Secretary Bentsen tell U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich (the left hand of the U.S. state) that the potential tax-law changes which Secretary Reich had hoped to use to fund his labor-policy initiatives were reserved for other purposes.

Bourdieu condemns the "half-wise economists" "[l]ocked in the narrow, short-term economism of the IMF worldview which is also causing havoc... fail[ing], of course, to take account of the real costs, in the short and especially the long term, of the material and psychological wretchedness which is the only certain outcome of their economically legitimate Realpolitik: delinquency, alcoholism, road accidents, etc." (p. 7). I am a neoclassical economist; the chairman of my dissertation committee was the arch-neoliberal Lawrence Summers, now Deputy Secretary of the [U.S.] Treasury; I have been an advocate of NAFTA and of the Uruguay Round of GATT; a defender of the broad outlines (though not of all the details) of IMF policy toward Mexico, Brazil, and East Asia; an advocate of deficit reduction; a believer that we can properly manage "globalization" to make its benefits outweigh its costs; I have been called a "banner-waving proponent" of international capital mobility in the pages of Foreign Affairs.

Bourdieu has no respect for the "'intellectuals' of the political-administrative establishment, polymorphous polygraphs who polish their annual essays between two meetings of boards of directors, three publishers' parties, and miscellaneous television appearances" (p. 9). I have not been on TV (though I was quoted yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, and TV producers please call me at home any time of day or night at 925-283-2709) or attended publishers' parties (though I hope to someday) or served on boards of directors, but I have moved back and forth between academia, politics, and public administration--and I very much hope to continue to do so. And I very much want to be an intellectual (although I suspect that Bourdieu would see me as an 'intellectual').

Bourdieu denounces the "rationalism of the mathematical models which inspire the policy of the IMF or the World Bank... that of rational-action theories, etc." (p. 19). I have estimated econometric models and written technical arguments in economic theory for the Journal of Political Economy--although the one of which I am proudest is not a rational but an irrational-action theory ("Noise Trader Risk in Financial Markets," Journal of Political Economy, October 1990). But there is no doubt that when Bourdieu thinks of his intellectual and political foes, he thinks of me (or, rather, he would think of me if he knew who I was).

I look at Pierre Bourdieu, and I see... my friend. Well, perhaps not my friend but my... ally. Well, perhaps not my friend or my ally, but in any event someone who would be if he pushed his analyses just a little bit deeper, and made his intellectual position a little more coherent.

He is my hoped-for ally because there is a lot in Bourdieu's mosaic that I like already. And I find myself hopeful that as Bourdieu thinks more deeply about politics, he will find himself filling in the missing pieces of the mosaic in ways that I will agree with.

But let me start with what is excellent in the mosaic that is Acts of Resistance: Against the Tyranny of the Market. It contains splendid denunciations of the media-driven gossip-filled politics of celebrity that makes politics much less a process of collective decision-making about our common future and much more an arena for symbolic posturing in which most of us become not citizens but spectators. It contains eloquent attempts to recall France to its better nature, and adopt a humane and humanist policy toward immigrants.

I read with pleasure the attacks on Bundesbank head Hans Tietmeyer, whose overly-restrictive monetary policies have been (according to an excellent study by Johns Hopkins economist Larry Ball) a principal cause of high unemployment and slow growth in Europe. Bourdieu's reflections on how the permanent crisis of high unemployment and job insecurity is altering European culture and power relations are very fine, as are his arguments that there is no unmasterable process of "globalization" that requires the dismantling of the French welfare state.

It contains admirable defenses of the achievements of post-World War II social democracy--much of the work of the so-called "spending ministries" in modern European governments--and calls to rally to the continued defense of the social insurance or welfare state.

I have but two quarrels with Pierre Bourdieu's defense of the welfare state. The first is that he is fond of defending the achievements of the social welfare state against leftwing nihilist know-nothings by saying that they are "the trace, within the state, of the social struggles of the past." Perhaps it sounds better in French. But in English it sounds bad. Those who provide public social welfare services-- "counsellors, youth leaders... magistrates... teachers" (p. 2)--and the programs that fund them and that they carry out are not the mere trace but the substantive conquests of the social and political struggles of the past. To defund public education, public health, family services, disability and unemployment insurance, and so on is to strike at the heart of what the political and social struggles of the twentieth century won. That the main business of the late-twentieth century state is social insurance is an important fact--a fact that is minimized by referring to the spending ministries as "trace" (whether meant in the sense of trace--i.e., rare--elements or the trace outline of a now absent figure).

My second quarrel with Bourdieu's defense of the welfare state... but let me save that for later, for it belongs in the discussion of the large missing portions of Bourdieu's mosaic.

But not all of the mosaic is dazzling. There are duller pieces. Some are simply incomprehensible. I read the short "Sollers tel quel" and I get the message that Bourdieu disapproves of Balladur and Sollers--but I would have had to live in Paris for the whole first half of the 1990s for it to mean much to me.

And some pieces seem to me to be not just incomprehensible but reprehensible. When Bourdieu writes of "conservative revolutions, that in Germany in the 1930s, those of Thatcher, Reagan and others" (p. 35) I find myself thinking how Bourdieu wrote more truly than he knew when he wrote of how "at present, it is often the logic of political life, that of denunciation and slander, 'sloganization' and falsification of the adversary's thought, which extends into intellectual life" (p. 9). I loathe Ronald Reagan, but he was no Nazi. And the parallels between the return-to-an-imagined-classical-liberalism ideology of Reagan and Thatcher and the, in Jeff Herf's phrase, "reactionary modernism" of Nazi ideology is too strained and too remote for me to believe that Bourdieu did not intend the implication.

When Bourdieu writes that "the quest