Grilled Jalapeno Lime Chicken Thighs

I’ve been taking a bit of a break, but here’s a little something I cooked this evening that I wanted to share. I cobbled this together from Steve Raichlen’s book How To Grill, and then added my own twist. Enjoy!

Grilled Jalapeno-Lime Chicken Thighs

4-6 medium boneless, skinless chicken thighs

3 tbs kosher salt

1/4 c honey

1 tsp chipotle chili powder

4 c water

3 cloves of garlic sliced thin

1 lime sliced thin

20 whole peppercorns

1 bunch of cilantro, chopped

1 jalapeno pepper w/seeds, sliced thin

Place the salt, honey, peppercorns and chili powder in a 1 gallon zip top plastic bag. Add the water until the salt is dissolved. Add the other ingredients and toss in the fridge for two to three hours. Cook quickly on a charcoal grill over a high fire.

The Cowboy Way

On July 7, Texas executed another convicted murderer, the seventh execution in the state this year.

One of the common arguments used by opponents of the death penalty is that the punishment is applied unfairly, especially when considering to the race of those sentenced. Texans who support capital punishment disagree.

Well, if the death penalty is applied fairly, and yet Texas has the second highest rate of executions per capita in the U.S., I guess that means that the average Texan is statistically about 20 times worse a person than, say, the average resident of my state of Illinois.

Socialism 2011 – Wrap-Up

9:45 AM

Last day of the conference. Everyone looks like they had a late night. I should probably learn the public transportation system for the city I’ve lived in the last ten years. Every time I’m asked where the train station is, I have to stumble through my iPhone. I’m alone in a conference room waiting for Marxism and the Future Socialist Society, a “beginners” session. Last night I was reading Kolakowski’s Main Currents of Marxism, conveniently a section about historical materialism. He raises one main objection, that if we take the theory literally and believe that every moment of history is determined by the level of development of productive forces, it is invalidated by experience, and if we take it generally by saying that productive forces are but one factor among many that determine merely broad trends, the theory is trivial. Yet he admits that our propensity to analyze historical developments in light of the communities in which they arose is largely due to Marx’s influence. So, a theory that today continues to determine how we view the past is trivial?

11:45 AM

Lively discussion around the future socialist society. I asked some questions, but still don’t feel as though I got answers. There were the usual statistics – the top 20% purchase 76.6% of products, while the bottom 20% account for 1.8% or thereabouts – but I mentioned that it must be remembered that socialism is not simply taking from the rich and giving to the poor. If that were so, then the Tea Party would be on to something about Obama’s socialism. This comment raised some snickers, since Obama hasn’t redistributed wealth to any appreciable degree. However, I stand by my remark, as he has consistently supported raising taxes on the wealthy. Just because he hasn’t been able to implement these policies doesn’t mean he doesn’t think they are the right thing to do.

Final Thoughts

I came to this conference in hopes of having some basic (or so I thought) questions answered. To that end, I don’t feel that my participation was a success. In my view, an ideology that hopes to remake the entire world is a dangerous thing in the hands of those who have a half-baked understanding of it. But I leave these questions here, and if I find the solutions, I’ll be sure to follow up.

1. Socialism tends not to offer a blueprint of the future organization of society. The belief is that working people, once given the chance, are able to democratically choose their own path. In my understanding, this principle is based on Marx’s philosophical theory that, once labor is no longer alienated from the laborer, the desires of the individual and the desires of the community will become one and the same. I stress that this is a philosophical, not a scientific theory. What proof do we have? If we’re trying to convince a majority of workers that by the very act of overthrowing capitalism, they are changing themselves in such a way as to enable that class to rule more effectively than the owners, we better have some evidence that that is the case. One group of workers co-opting a factory in a capitalist society does not a revolution make.

2. Marx seems to have expressly opposed the division of labor. I quote from Kolakowski:

In The German Ideology the root of all evil is the division of labour, private property being once again a secondary phenomenon. It should not be supposed, however, that the ‘division of labour’ is only a more precise formulation of the rather vague term ‘alienation’. Marx’s view is that the division of labour consequent on the the improvement of tools is the first source of the alienating process and, through it, of private property. This happens because the division of labour leads necessarily to commerce, i.e. the transformation of objects produced by man into vehicles of abstract exchange-value.

How is all the technology created under capitalism to be used without relying on the division of labor?

3. Reference is often made to so-called ‘primitive communist societies,’ which predate capitalism and are organized around communal property. Which societies are these? Can it be demonstrated that these societies were not merely oppressive in other ways, for example the rule of the strong?

4. What examples can we provide of true socialist organization (as opposed to social-democratic reformism, for example) that succeeded in the long-term? If we continue to cite as proof of socialist viability the Paris Commune, eliminated after two months, or the Bolshevik Revolution, poisoned within 6 years by Stalin, how is this different from Republican promises that tax cuts create jobs, despite the fact that evidence speaks to the contrary? If every failure of the implementation can be explained away, an argument against the system seems impossible, meaning that an argument for it is meaningless.

5. The dictatorship of the proletariat exists in order to make itself unnecessary. It should protect the interests of the worker until class division is eliminated, at which point it can whither away. This means that, just after the revolution, the dictatorship is necessary. How does the transition occur from believing a state necessary to believing it no longer needed? Many revolutionaries have installed ‘temporary’ regimes that never went away. What is to stop this from happening under socialism?

I want to stress that I am not arguing against socialism with the above questions. I simply think it is important to answer the practical questions before they are raised and we are caught unprepared.

Socialism 2011 – Day 2

9:12 AM

Just arrived and I’m waiting for the beginning of Marxism and Postmodernism.  Seems a bit quieter today, but I am here earlier.

11:02 AM

Marxism and Postmodernism addressed the development of the theory that objective truth doesn’t exist and that any attempt to systematize theory is an oppressive act. The question arose of why these ideas held attraction in academia. I’m a cynic, but it seems to me that people are attracted to ideas that reflect or legitimize their own beliefs. When you tell a college kid that no one knows better than they do, and you wonder why they connect with that? One common thread among participants that I don’t share is the commitment to activism and protest. I’m not sure where that hope comes from. In my experience, people don’t care. If someone is not already inclined towards Marxism, you can argue and tell them why your theories are beneficial to them and why they are hurt by neoliberalism. And they don’t care. They nod and perhaps even agree, then go back to their lives. Am I the only one to have encountered this?

11:13 AM

One of the core objections to postmodernism that has been raised more than once is that by definition it isn’t useful to ideology or applicable to political action. This, of course, doesn’t make it untrue. I’ll have to pick up Eagleton’s Illusions of Postmodernism for something more concrete.

1:10 PM

Lunch break. There was much talk in the previous session, The Legacy of Stalinism, about Stalin’s betrayal of Marxism, abandonment of the working class in favor of the bureaucracy and the Popular Front, and the resulting fracturing of the Communist parties worldwide. I wonder if it is sufficient or helpful to proclaim oneself a Communist, but “one of the good ones,” given the continuing influence of Stalinism around the globe. I’m also perturbed by the apparent fetishization of Islam, clearly a response to overt American Islamophobia. On the other hand, Christianity is mocked without a second thought. I’d argue that the rejection of Christianity was a major obstacle to international Marxism, which essentially rejected a majority of the European population whose loyalties lay with the church. This seems similar in consequence to identity politics, in which those that did not experience oppression firsthand were relegated at best to a supporting role in the revolution, since they were thought unable to fight it themselves as beneficiaries of oppressive systems.

3:48 PM

The last session was Marx’s HIstorical Materialism, a straightforward review of the materialist conception of history and its development, as well as opposition to historical determinism. If it is inevitable that capitalism will lead to its own destruction, and capitalism is the final stage of class conflict, but it is not inevitable that socialism will replace capitalism, what are the other possibilities? Can there be a rolling back of historical progress, and if so, does that contradict the theory of social progress?

5:02 PM

With apologies to the speaker, I wasn’t really able to glean anything from the session on How Do the Workers Become “Fit to Rule?” There was talk in an earlier session about Lenin vs. Mao, specifically about how Maoism calls for a small, dedicated group of middle-class revolutionaries fomenting revolt on behalf of the working class, whereas the Marxist-Leninist formulation involved the intellectuals simply inspiring or guiding the working class, who must seize power for themselves. I wonder, though, how it is that the guiding intellectuals determine when and if to use their influence. What if the workers want reforms that are not in keeping with the Marxist philosophy, or are otherwise contrary to the ideas that the intellectuals feel are in the best interest of those workers? Who wins in these situations?

5:15 PM

I’ve heard a lot of people talking about the wonderful discussions they’ve heard following the speeches. I must be in the wrong rooms. All I’ve heard, with few exceptions, are people name-dropping their recent reads… “Rosa Luxemburg said this,” or “Camus said this.” Most posed questions go unanswered, and most opinions unchallenged.

Blogging the Socialism 2011 Conference – Day 1

As promised, today through Monday I’ll be sending out some notes from the Socialism 2011 conference in Chicago. I refuse to pay a hotel chain for WiFi at a socialism conference, so I’ll be adding my posts each evening from home.

11:50 AM

I showed up this morning on the second day of the conference, having skipped all of the opening ceremonies yesterday. It’s hot, hot, hot! The first session I attended was Marxism and the State, a bit of a misnomer since it was really about Lenin and his book State and Revolution. The speaker covered the various conceptions of the state and its utility in socialist thought, and touched on the Paris Commune and the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was a good introduction to the book, although in the Q&A afterwards people seemed eager to jump to theories of application. There hasn’t been much in the way of debate yet, everyone seeming to be members of or otherwise associated with the sponsoring organization, the ISO.

12:20 PM

Everyone is calling each other “comrade.” I’ve decided to refer to people as “amigo.”

1:38 PM

Every restaurant in the area is closed, discovered after walking a mile in the 90 degree heat. I’ve sequestered myself in the back of the room for the next session, United Front vs. Popular Front: Marxist Strategy and Tactics. This is billed as one of the more advanced sessions, so I look forward to something challenging.

4:00 PM

A full house for United Front vs. Popular Front

United Front vs. Popular Front was a survey of two historical movements, the Trotskyist United Front which sought to group together the various revolutionary and non-revolutionary workers’ organizations against the bourgeoisie, and the Stalinist Popular Front which allowed for subordinating workers’ interests to bourgeois strategies for the fight against fascism. The resulting ideological dilution brought about under the latter may have been instrumental in positioning the decidedly non-revolutionary Democratic Party as the primary holder of the left-liberal mantle in American politics. This deserves a deeper look.

4:05

There is a peculiar affect to the way many people speak here, both during discussion periods and interpersonally, as though they are repeating rehearsed speeches to one another. Is it because they have to say the same things so often and have put such deliberate thought into the phrasing, or because they learn to converse out of books and parrot the same ideas back and forth between themselves? I don’t know any other socialists or communists, and I seem to be the exception here in that sense.

4:15

Decided against attending the Marxism and Morality session due to the heat and crowds. More tomorrow!

The World’s Most Dangerous Bus

You’ve probably seen this Mitsubishi Outlander commercial a few hundred times:

 

 

According to Mitsubishi, since their car can navigate this terrain, it can handle anything you throw at it. Though, if you notice at around the 16 second mark, the shiny Japanese sport-utility-cross-wagons aren’t the only traffic on the road. I wonder what the new sales pitch is going to be?

“The new Outlander. At least as good as a beaten-up, decades-old bus full of children.”

Death Defying Acts

I caught an episode of the new Discovery Channel series Life on a Wire tonight. The show follows Nik Wallenda as he performs various wire walking acts. Think Criss Angel crossed with American Chopper.

As is the case with many of these circus acts, Nik works without a net. The same was true of his great grandfather, for whom it didn’t end well (discretion advised).

Perhaps someone can explain to me the point of forgoing a net. Isn’t the draw of the performance meant to be the skill involved in crossing a tiny wire far above the ground? I understand the thrill of perceived danger but, provided the daredevil doesn’t fall, the presence of a net makes no difference. If he does fall, am I alone in not really wanting to see someone die at the circus?