I have long been intrigued by the distance between principle and practice, how people respond to the distance, and what the consequences are, of the distance and the response. This was my major concern in The Cynical Society. It is central to “the civil society as if” strategy of the democratic opposition that developed around the old Soviet bloc, which I explored in Beyond Glasnost and After the Fall. And it is also central to how I think about the politics of small things and reinventing political culture, including many of my own public engagements: from my support of Barack Obama, to my understanding of my place of work, The New School for Social Research and my understanding of this experiment in publication, Deliberately Considered. I will explain in a series of posts. Today a bit more about Obama and his Nobel Lecture, and the alternative to cynicism.

I think principle is every bit as real as practice. Therefore, in my last post, I interpreted Obama’s lecture as I did. But I fear my position may not be fully understood. A friend on Facebook objected to the fact that I took the lecture seriously. “The Nobel Address marked the Great Turn Downward, back to Cold War policies a la Arthur Schlesinger Jr. et al. A big depressing moment for many of us.”

He sees many of the problems I see in Obama’s foreign policy, I assume, though he wasn’t specific. He is probably quite critical of the way the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have continued, critical of the drone policy, disappointed by the fact that Guantanamo prison is still open, and by Obama’s record on transparency and the way he has allowed concern for national security take priority over human and civil rights, at home and abroad. The clear line between Bush’s foreign policy and Obama’s, which both my friend and I sought, has not been forthcoming. And he draws a logical conclusion: “a great turn downward.”

My friend sees a familiar failure: militarism wrapped in an elegant intellectual package (the reference to Schlesinger). In the distance between perceived principled promise and practice, “the best and the brightest” seem to be at it again: sophisticated rationalization for militarism reminiscent of the Cold War and its ideology, He sees the distance between the ideal and the practice as proof that the professed ideal was a sham. Perhaps he even makes the cynical move that the fancy words are but a mask for narrow self-interest (election and re-election) serving the interest of the powerful (the neo-liberal corporate elite). Is Obama’s advancement just about serving the interests of the hegemonic corporate order? Is their advancement linked directly to his serving their interests. Are the two primary cynical observations I studied in The Cynical Society all there is? It’s not what you know but who you know, and they’re all in it for themselves.

I, when I wrote my book and now, judge the ideal more independently, connected to practice to be sure, but connected not only in a cynical way, but also connected to the possibility of critique, a way to empower critical practice. Cynicism is the opposite of criticism, a major theme of my book. And now I read the Nobel lecture with this starting point. The lecture provides a guide to critically appraise Obama and his policies, and it provides the grounds upon which to critically respond to the shortcomings of the policies. As I put it in the post: “The Nobel Laureate Obama as critic of President Obama.”

I see no reason to take the flawed actions of the Obama administration as being somehow more real than the professed complex ideals expressed in the Nobel lecture. Action and ideal interact in an important and consequential ways that suggest future possibility.

Yesterday I read a piece, “Obama’s Drone Debacle.” It reports that the drone policy has been more determined by career bureaucrats in the national security establishment than by the President and his White House. “It’s clear that the president and the attorney general both want more transparency,” says Matthew Miller, a former senior Justice Department official. “But the bureaucracy has once again thrown sand in the gears and slowed that down.” This does not relieve Obama of the responsibility for his policies, but it suggests an ongoing battle within the administration that may yield a change in direction. The article cynically highlights that Rand Paul outmaneuvered Obama in his filibuster of John Brennan’s nomination to lead the CIA. This is “Obama’s debacle.” The Nobel lecture reveals the thought behind possible change.

Am I again just apologizing for the politician I admire? Perhaps, but I think there is more to it than that. For even as I am critical with my friend of directions Obama has taken, I see a leader trying to move the public and not just making empty gestures of change. I see a complicated ideal being kept alive and shaping foreign policy to a degree, if not enough for my friend and others with similar criticisms. The U.S. surely is disengaging from the disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq more quickly with Obama, than we would have with either McCain or Romney. American foreign policy is moving away from extreme militarism that Obama’s Republican opponents proposed as a matter of principle. Principles matter.

And lastly the general point, without the ideal publicly visible, there is next to no chance that it will be acted upon. I saw and reported how this animated practice in the Polish underground. It explains why I think America is not only “the cynical society” but also a democratic society, simultaneously, with democratic ideals moving action, even as manipulation and cynicism are rampant. And more close to my intellectual home, it is why The New School for Social Research is a very special institution of higher education and scholarship, even when it has faced profound challenges and has been undermined by less than enlightened leadership for long periods of time. That will be the subject of my next “Principle and Practice” post.

Chris Eberhardt was an India China Institute Fellow at the New School in 2008.  He is now conducting his dissertation research in China

A fellow of the India China Institute (ICI) has been arrested. He was privately eating dinner with others in Beijing, celebrating that Liu Xiaobo had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. After hearing that the ICI Fellow had been arrested, I decided to read an article by Liu Xiaobo that was published in 2006 in the journal Social Research titled “Reform in China: The Role of Civil Society.”

The work reminded me of Neither Gods Nor Emperors by sociologist Craig Calhoun, who analyses the student protests of 1989 that culminated in demonstrations on Tiananmen Square and the military response. What I see in both works is an effort by the Chinese people to challenge China to be better at what it claims to be, linking back to movements that emerged when the dynasty system collapsed in the early 1900’s.

While Liu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, China was celebrating the founding of the People’s Republic. During the celebrations I went multiple times to Tiananmen Square. One night I saw a couple posing in front of flashing lights (pictured), behind which was Tiananmen Gate and Chairman Mao’s picture. I imagine that this man was probably wearing similar clothing when Mao was still alive. Every time I see a man wearing the blue hat and suit, it gives me pause. In Beijing, I am most likely to see people dressed like this fresh off the train or lined up by the thousands at 6am (2hrs early) on Tiananmen Square to view Mao’s remains.

I always wonder to myself how these people who line up for hours to view Mao, sleepy-eyed and just off a bus, understand a China where students pay almost as much or more than my rent to buy name brand clothing. It is these people who come from the heartland of China who are still thought of as the backbone of the country, still composing the majority of the population.

Perhaps it is not as well known, but every day the common people struggle to address problems in their life, with annual figures for protests greater than 80,000.  (Against the Law by Ching Kwan Lee and Popular Protest by Kevin O’Brien are two accounts of protests in China.)

I particularly enjoyed Ching’s work, documenting the balance between those in China’s rustbelt that expect China to live up to a social contract that drove the founding of the People’s Republic of China and those in the South, home to the world’s factories, that expect China to live up to a legal contract that links with China’s efforts to create a market economy.

The People’s Republic of China that is celebrated every October 1st had its roots in a small group including Mao who met in a small room in the French Quarter of Shanghai in the early 1900’s who founded the Chinese Communist Party. What Mao and the Chinese Communist Party was able to do in a way that the ruling Kuomintang could not or did not want to do was connect their vanguard struggle with the struggle of the proletariat during the Chinese Revolution. It was Mao and the Chinese Communist Party who victoriously declared the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, having made a bridge with the common people.

Although China does not have elections in the same manner as the United States, changes still take place in response to citizens concerns. While individuals like Liu are awarded prizes by outsiders, I will continue to humbly observe how it is that the common people of China respond to their rapidly changing China, and if bridges are made between the common people and the intellectuals.

As China revealed its repressive nature in its response to the prize, the dignity and critical insight of the dissident was revealed in Liu’s own words, as Liv Ullmann read his “I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement to the Court.”

The same pattern occurred in awarding Michnik’s doctorate, though in his case it was a two part story.

Part One: Michnik was scheduled to receive his degree in a university ceremony in New York on April 25, 1984, commemorating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the University in Exile (what would become the New School’s social science graduate school in which I am a professor) by honoring human rights activists from around the world.  Because Michnik was imprisoned as part of a martial law crackdown on independent thinkers and political and labor activists, Czeslaw Milosz accepted the honorary degree on his behalf and read from his “Letter for General Kiszczak”, in which Michnik declined an offer of exile as the condition for release from prison.

The Polish Nobel Laureate for Literature read the democratic activist’s passionate denunciation of his interior minister jailer and Michnik’s justification of his commitment to human rights: “the value of our struggle lies not in its chances for victory but rather in the values of its cause.”  He explained in the letter how his refusal of a comfortable exile was an affirmation of these values, keeping them alive in Poland.

Part Two of the story actually occurred on International Human Rights Day of 1984.  It suggested and led to much more.

I was in Warsaw for the unofficial ceremony presenting Adam Michnik his honorary degree from The New School after he was released from prison as part of a general amnesty.  I met him the day before the event agreeing upon the logistics.

The ceremony, itself, was moving, not a major international event, but still reported by the New York Times.

“In an apartment across the street from Mokotow Prison where he spent two and a half years, Adam Michnik, the Solidarity adviser and activist, received an honorary doctorate Monday from the New School for Social Reseach.

Mr. Michnik accepted the green and white academic hood presented to him by Jonathan F. Fanton, president of the New School, in the living room of Edward Lipinski, the 98- year-old Polish social activist.

It was in this same apartment that Mr. Michnik and his colleagues formed the now banned Committee to Defend Workers, which was known by its Polish initials KOR and which acted as an intellectual support group for the Solidarity movement.”

The week following the ceremony Adam introduced me to his world.  We spoke around his living room table and the kitchen tables of scholars, intellectuals and artists of Warsaw, and also in a room of a patient, Jan Józef Lipski, at the cardiac hospital on the outskirts of the city.

We went to the hospital the day after the ceremony.  Michnik wanted to share with the respected opposition historian his excitement over the honorary degree (an excitement that really surprised me).  They spoke about Lipski’s recent research on inter war Fascism in Poland.  We spoke about the significance of the Pope for independent minded Poles, workers and intellectuals.  This was one of the many conversations Michnik and I had about contemporary history, politics and political theory.  We shared our fascination in the philosophy and political theory of Hannah Arendt.  We also spoke about common friends in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

Upon leaving the hospital, Michnik turned to me and proposed, a seminar idea, “now that we are New School colleagues.”  Vaclav Havel, in Prague, György Bence, in Budapest, he in Warsaw and I in New York would organize parallel seminars on the topics we had been discussing during my visit.  The starting point of the discussions would be Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism. Each group would read a common assignment, exchange summaries of the proceedings and propose further study.

From 1985 through 1989, the seminar functioned in Budapest, New York and Warsaw.  Political conditions made the seminar impossible in Prague.  The Polish sociologist Jerzy Szacki chaired the Warsaw seminar, because three months after our agreement Michnik was again imprisoned, charged with treason.  There were many twists and turns in the seminar, many interesting discussions and some significant exchanges.  It continued to function into the 90s across the former Soviet bloc.  One of many alternative spaces for free intellectual exchange was established and functioned, a zone of free intellectual life.

Noteworthy from the point of view in December 2010, is that the ceremony on Human Rights Day in 1984, which marked the importance of a human rights commitment as an end in itself, did empower activities that pointed in the direction of 1989, when the repressive regime in Poland and beyond, collapsed.

We know how the Chinese government and other governments have disgraced and distinguished themselves as they responded to Liu’s Prize.  What we don’t know about are the hidden activities, such as my visit with Michnik to the Cardiac Hospital in Warsaw.  Michnik may have been right about the primary value of his actions, but we should note that his actions, along with his colleagues, also led to further quite practical and significant consequences.  In China also?

The air in Johannesburg (Joburg to the locals) is full of discussions on this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.  When I heard about Liu Xiaobo, I thought about events that took place in Poland 30 years ago, and about a message written by workers on strike in the Gdansk Shipyard in August 1980.

One of their most prominent graffiti, written in huge, uneven letters on cardboard and mounted high up on a shipyard crane, was the statement, uncontroversial elsewhere, “A Man is Born and Lives Free.” This year’s Nobel Peace Prize given to a Chinese political prisoner brings the spirit of this graffiti to China, re-inserting it in a landscape “freely” filled with billboards advertising Western luxury brands like Lancôme or Mercedes Benz. Will the Chinese notice the message?

There are those moments in history when the Nobel Prizes turn out to be truly performative.

When Czeslaw Milosz, whose poetry was forbidden in communist Poland, received the Nobel Prize in Literature in October 1980, it seemed to lend further legitimacy to the democratic aspirations of the workers as articulated in the Gdansk shipyard.  The poems of Milosz had only been published underground and the workers had come to know them through their strike bulletins. And now the workers, who had demanded a constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech, press, and publication, won their strike, and the poems — arrested till then in the Office of Censorship — became widely available. I have no doubt that the award given to the poet who wrote about freedom and captivity further encouraged the human rights agenda of the Solidarity movement, and contributed – even if only for the 16 months of Solidarity’s legal existence — to the unprecedented sense of emancipation in the country.

Those 16 months of Solidarity were a time when Poles experienced the dignity of personal freedom. They were months of intensive learning that paid off in 1989 when the society launched a deliberately peaceful process of dismantling the authoritarian system.

But 1989 brought not only the joyous image of the Berlin Wall being taken down, but also horrifying images of the Tiananmen Square massacre, where tanks charged defenseless students demanding democratic reforms.

Would the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to one of the students at Tiananmen Square, Liu Xiaobo, bring new strength to those who sat there with him, those who looked on, and those who are  younger and know little about the students trying to stop tanks?

While I was finishing this note, trying to return to my reflection on performativity, I received an email with a piece on the Nobel Peace Prize written just a moment ago in Warsaw by Adam Michnik, one of the Solidarity movement’s leaders, for today’s Gazeta Wyborcza, the second-biggest newspaper in Poland.  I opened it quickly, as I know that he traveled to China this July, and I’d like to end with a brief excerpt by this seasoned political thinker, lifelong dissident, and former political prisoner:

“I was struck in China by a vast change that is rarely reported on by the world’s media — the newly independent public opinion, and the embryonic civil society emerging there.  Liu Xiaobo, the Laureate of the Peace prize and a political prisoner, was one of the creators of this public opinion and civil society. He paid a high price for this – the price of discrimination, loneliness, and imprisonment. Liu deserves admiration and respect, as he is one of those people who restore a belief in the existence of elementary values.”

I am thinking about this today because of an article I read in The New York Times this morning on the opposition to the possible awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, a heroic advocate of the a democratic reforms in China. Predictably the Chinese government has warned the Nobel committee that the awarding of the prize to Liu would damage governmental relations between China and Norway.

Surprisingly, there is a petition of exiled dissidents opposing the award.

According to a group of strong anti- regime exiles, Liu maligned fellow dissidents, abandoned members of the Falun Gong and was soft on Chinese leaders. “His open praise in the last 20 years for the Chinese Communist Party, which has never stopped trampling on human rights, has been extremely misleading and influential.”

The vehemence of their opposition to Liu despite the fact that at this moment he is serving an eleven year sentence for advocating democratic reforms, reveals  that they view him not as an opponent, who has a more moderate pragmatic approach to democratic reforms than they, but as an enemy.

It suggests that if they were in power, they might not be that different from the regime which they so passionately oppose.  In politics, as Arendt observes in one of her most beautiful books, Between Past and Future, the means are ends.