Free Market Stalinism

[arendt]

Sharashka ( Russian: шара́ шка ) was an informal name for secret research and development laboratories in the Soviet Gulag labor camp system. Etymologically, the word sharashka is derived from a Russian slang expression sharashkina kontora ("Sharashka's office", possibly from the radical meaning "to beat about"), an ironic, derogatory term to denote a poorly organized, impromptu, or bluffing organization.

The scientists and engineers at a sharashka were prisoners picked from various camps and prisons and assigned to work on scientific and technological problems for the state. Living conditions were usually much better than in an average taiga camp, especially bearing in mind the absence of hard labor.

The results of the research in sharashkas were usually published under the names of prominent Soviet scientists without credit given to the real authors, whose names frequently have been forgotten. Some sharashka inmates, brilliant scientists and engineers released during and after World War II, continued independent careers and became world-famous.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashkadefinition

The First Circle (В круге первом ) is a novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn released in 1968. The novel details three days in the life of the occupants of a gulag prison camp located in the Moscow suburbs, the Marfino sharashka.

The title is an allusion to Dante's first circle of Hell in The Divine Comedy, wherein the philosophers of Greece live in a walled green garden. They are unable to enter Heaven, but enjoy a small space of relative freedom in the heart of Hell.

The prisoners work on technical projects to assist state security agencies and generally pander to Stalin's increasing paranoia. While most are aware of how much better off they are than "regular" Gulag prisoners, some are also conscious of the overwhelming moral dilemma of working to aid a system that is the cause of so much suffering.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_First_Circle

As one of the few people left in America with a real middle-class job, with decent salary and benefits, I have been wondering just how long it will be until my job gets "outsourced" - assuming Great Depression 2 doesn't get here first. So, I tried to figure out what is supporting the part of the economy that pays my salary - high-tech.

Lest you think its been a walk in the park in high-tech lately, I was unemployed for almost two years after the dot-com crash. I managed to catch on in biotech now that it has gotten highly computer-driven (genomics, structural biology, structure-based drug design, etc.). But, even biotech is being eroded: chemists have watched their jobs get outsourced to China, the big pharmas have decided they suck at research (or that its not profitable enough), and they are outsourcing that core function - laying off thousands of scientists. Of course, that is like deliberately cutting out your kidneys and putting yourself on dialysis in order to save money taking care of your body parts.

What, then, is keeping the middle-class professional community in arugula and sushi these days? I have come to the conclusion that, in our post-911, locked down, security-mad country, the only middle class professional jobs left are the equivalent of Stalin's scientific prisons - the sharashkas. (Leaving out the basic professional functions of any modern society: doctors, teachers, accountants.)

Item: the fastest-growing part of biotech is defense.

Scientists are complaining loudly about the withdrawal of funds from classic public health issues in favor of funding anti-biowarfare efforts of dubious effectiveness in a real crisis (see the Anthrax vaccine debacle). I have personally seen a half dozen companies busy competing for defense contracts for portable sensors for biowarfare agents.

Item: the majority of cutting edge domestic electronics is military-driven.

What American scientists and engineers actually design and make in America are, predominantly, radars, UAVs, military radios, intelligence-intercept gear, vast farms of computers and databases for mass telephone surveillance, and various other police state gear, like tasers. Consumer electronics are predominantly designed and made in Asia (China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan) - with a few exceptions like Intel CPUs.

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Bottom line: it is valid to compare our (scientific) professional class to the zeks of the gulag. Namely, we:

"...work on technical projects to assist state security agencies and generally pander to Stalin's (Cheney's) increasing paranoia."

If Cheney's "One Percent Doctrine" is not pure paranoia, I have no idea what is. Saturday Night Live should run a skit called "¿quién es más paranoico?". Contestants would be Stalin, Cheney, and Kim Jong Il.

In addition to being paranoid, our dictators don't care about science at all. America's dictators are busy promoting crackpot science, for the same reason that Stalin promoted the charlatan biologist, Lysenko - because he was momentarily in sync with the Party Line. However, by ignoring modern genetics for political reasons, Soviet crop yields suffered for decades. Because Mother Nature doesn't need to be a party member. Cheney will get the same result as Stalin. By ignoring climate change, America will suffer massive infrastructure damage and crop failure, not to mention falling behind the rest of the world technically.

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Based on these similarities I venture to suggest that I live in The First Circle of our new American hell. I have good food, and I don't do forced labor. I don't (yet) live in a gated community (our version of Dante's walled garden). But, when the economic crunch hits, I wonder how safe my house, car, and life will be if I don't move to one.

Moreover, the professional mileau in which I work is increasingly being disrupted by the intrusion of ludicrously inappropriate business metrics into the middle of science and engineering research. Its all about Intellectual Property (IP). We spend as much effort on patents and NDAs (don't ask) and non-compete agreements and deals with university technology-transfer offices and milestone payment structures as we spend doing science and engineering. The environment increasingly resembles a sharaksha:

" ...a poorly organized, impromptu, or bluffing organization..."

where every manager and every company is busy bullshitting every other manager and company about the true value of what is for sale, where its all about "the deal" instead of the technology.

If you are willing to look reality here in the face, we live in a locked down country. If you step out of line politically, you can lose your job. If you get upset at being shafted by an insurance company, you are more likely to become uninsurable than you are to get recompense. The whole country is run as a resource extraction enterprise to make the weapons the paranoid thugs on the top need to conquer more victims. And, scientists are only of value if they are making weapons.

I would venture to say that America's political organization is approaching "Free Market Stalinism".

[Hardrada]

1. One of my college friends got through grad school on some kind

of Air Force grant doing math (code stuff I suppose) for an unnamed project. But once he got his doctorate he decamped for Canada (this was in the Sixties) and became a professor there. My point is that even in the Sixties state university research was militarized.

[arendt]

6. Its true that there was a lot of military research in the 60s, but there was also a lot...

of non-military research then, too. A lot of good research on pollution, safety, longevity, etc.

Today, that non-military research is either gone or funded by corporations (effectively privatized).

Universities today are just another money-making machine, ripping off students with outrageous fees while stiffing junior faculty and sweatshopping the day labor. You see more of the crap like Cal Poly setting up a "no women allowed" medical school in ?Kuwait?. Anything to make a buck. To hell with the tradition of standing up to the powers that be and telling the truth.

arendt

[fascisthunter]

2. I Often Thought About This But Much More Simplistically

Since we know money is being extracted from our Treasury and directly from the tax payer to pay for the war and occupation, who gets that money, is probably who supports this president the most. That who are those working for defense, defense contractors, oil investment and the military industrial complex itself.

You did your homework.... good post BTW.

[arendt]

7. The problem is that our tax money goes ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY to war/police state...

so the MIC just keeps branching out. It has added prisons, media/propaganda, private mercenaries, outsourced army logistics, and god knows what else.

We will do tax giveaways, but we won't let the government fund public works. Its all about killing the non-military US economy. Its practically impossible to find someone who makes something non-military here anymore. Most people are just middlemen or transport people.

The gangsters running this country want it to have no choice but to make its living in the world by robbing the rest of the world at gunpoint, since guns are all we make. We will go the way of Rome, only much, much faster.

arendt

[Joe Chi Minh]

3. Wow! What an absolutely fascinating article. I already have such a low

opinion of insurance companies, as a result of what I have read about them, that I was surprised and kind of tickled that they were into further, if anything, even more sinister villainy. Not that I would ever buy insurance, ON PRINCIPLE - other than obligatory car insurance. I should have realised they'd think up that kind of stunt when their villainy was challenged.

On a lighter note, a wonderful book that (The) First Circle, Arendt. Imo, it had everything, even side-splitting humour. Remember Pryanchikev's colloquy with the Minister?

[nashville_brook]

4. "like deliberately cutting out your kidneys and putting yourself on dialysis..." -- spot on.

i've been looking for work for...oh...years now. partly because i'm being choosy, trying to avoid another "resource extraction" situation. partly because when you're not willing to be an extracted resource, your choices become slim.

i love your analogy, it's all spot on.

[arendt]

8. Extractor is just a polite name for predator.

We, collectively, as a country have become a predator; and a cannabalistic one at that.

I remember what is was like ignoring all the military jobs on offer and trying to find an honest living. And it just keeps getting worse.

Its fortunate that you can still afford to be choosy.

arendt

[nashville_brook]

10. that time is quickly running out!

i have leads, but it's really difficult to get serious attention when you have as much experience as i have. i need to basically go into business for myself (design firm, ad agency-type stuff). when you have 13+ years in my profession, you're competing with agency principals for their jobs. sucks.

[arendt]

15. I would think the Internet offers you some "long tails" business opportunities...

unless your work is so anti-establishment that you would get shut down by your ISP.

arendt

[nashville_brook]

23. here's a link

to my stuff -- it's only marginally not-boring. financial services, healthcare co's, not-for profits and small businesses.

what i really love to do is re-vision and re-brand companies that are ready, willing and able to do fun, effective marketing. i'm pursuing some leads right now doing downtown revitalization work, as i have experience in that kind of thing and studied city management in grad school.

[scarletwoman]

5. Beautiful! k&r (nt)

[varelse]

9. "The whole country is run as a resource extraction enterprise

to make the weapons the paranoid thugs on the top need to conquer more victims."

I don't think I've ever seen a more apt description of this country. Sad, but true.

[arendt]

11. Bedtime kick n/t

[appal_jack]

12. k&r

Excellent analysis arendt. Wish the writing on the wall was a little different though... doing what I can to help.

-app

[Karenina]

13. K&R!!!

[arendt]

14. One more similarity - gulags

In Stalin's Russia, general life offered so few comforts or distractions that only the actual incarceration of millions of people could keep the lid on. Not because all those people were bad; but like today, to demonstrate the power of the state to crush entire groups. The same way we have crushed the black community with massive incarceration.

Stalin needed to put millions in Gulags. But, through the miracle of modern media, we only need to put a few hundred foreigners in Gitmo and put one Democratic Governor through the wringer in order to get the message out to the dominant ethnic group (i.e., white males): consume and reproduce, oh and STFU. We are more efficient than Stalin at initimidation, and we offer many more distractions: mainly celebrity worship and violent spectacles.

I will have to get the Cliff Notes for Dante's Inferno to see what else can be added to this analogy.

arendt

[knitter4democracy]

18. I've been thinking this for awhile, too.

Make it hard for people to eke out a daily living, and they stop being able to stand up to power and demand their rights. Add in "disappearing" people and whisking them away in the middle of the night, and that takes care of anyone who has the money and time to stand up to power. I keep saying that we learned the freakin' wrong lessons of the Cold War.

[arendt]

19. Years ago I said...

how is it that people who could smell a "communist conspiracy to destroy America" from a mile away, who could see Reds under every bed, seemed to have missed the twenty year long, slow-motion, "CIA-led corporate conspiracy" that has destroyed America?

It just gets harder and harder to reach the people who live in the delusional world of the Corporate Media, especially when the American Gulag/Homeland Security creeps are busy sizing them up for a waterboard.

As for the Cold War, some wag said in the 90s: "The Cold War is over. Germany and Japan won."

arendt

[knitter4democracy]

22. You're right--they used our fear to keep us down.

They kept us scared of the Reds, the Commies, the Soviet Army, but then they stole our freedoms, set up gulags, and took away our power.

[northernsoul]

16. Dammit, Arendt, write a full-blown book, will ya?

Your erudition and spot-on analysis never fail to amaze me. Have you considered working in a longer format than the occasional DU post? Seriously, if you publish a book, I will buy copies for myself and every literate adult I know (well, okay, maybe not every... but I'll buy a helluva lot of them).

[arendt]

17. Thanks. But, I have "Michener-itis". I begin at the dawn of time...

its only in these "short" essays that I can force myself to focus. One topic at a time. (Just for non-bibliophiles, James Michener wrote very long novels, some of which actually went back to "the dawn of time" in the introduction. The Wikipedia article on him says:

Because his books tend to be fairly long, it is sometimes said that "Michener tends to write by the pound."

When someone at DU wants to flame my essays, all they have to say is "too long". That is the kiss of death here; and I'm probably just guilty as charged. I'm a right-brained thinker; so my writing tends to ramble.

If I were to try a book, it would never get finished. In fact, I had an outline of one ten years ago; and the outline just kept getting longer and longer. And then the writing that I had started, became outdated - because I try to work current events into my writing.

I suppose, if I could generate a list of topics, and stick to that list, I could do the book Charles Dickens'-style - an installment a week.

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I do appreciate your approval.

arendt

[arendt]

20. afternoon kick n/t

[northernsoul]

21. Seconded

n/t