4 OPINION Page 4 Tuesday, January 15, 1985 The Michigan Daily r Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan Wasserman Vol. XCV, No. 86. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 1i1E MARTIN LUTEk KING WJLIWA\IIS A YtW~oL Lj 'A t1 s sA NAEtoNT. RI~ NM1WG ~LWILR~tIONa Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board Student body heat 4 1o1 ALA PM6RtM15 4 A sfar as rental space in Ann Arbor goes, it is a landlord's market. Housing is scarce, and students wishing to live off campus often must compromise rental rates, location, and convenience in order to reserve a place to sleep in the crowded market. This is to be expected. In any business transaction, such as leasing a house or apartment, there is a certain amount of give and take. But with a transient student population working within a market controlled by the lan- dholders, those landlords must be held responsible for the conscientious upkeep of their properties. Tenants who rent for a year at a time should not be held responsible for installing permanent cost-saving measures. A group calling itself Weatherization as Responsible Maintenence (WARM) has petitioned successfully for Proposal A, a weatherization package which will appear on the April Ann Ar- bor ballot. If passed, the proposal will mandate minimum standards for weatherstripping of doors and win- dowframes, caulking, and ceiling in- sulation. Landlords argue that the proposal would be unnecessary regulation and that, because it is in their best interest to spend the estimated $250 to $500 to make their properties more cost- efficient, the free market will sufficien- tly enforce weatherization. But there is no free market for ren- ting a place to live in Ann Arbor. The vacancy rate, the amount of unrented space in relation to the space available, is currently estimated at one percent. Decent housing is scarce and students are likely to take what they can get-with or without weather- stripping. There is no incentive for landlords to do anything beyond what is required of them by law. The fact is, when spring comes and the housing market tightens up, students are in no position to demand that their prospective lan- dlords take measures to lower their heating costs. Two-hundred and fifty dollars is not a lot for a landlord to pay compared to the thousands of dollars of valuable energy that will be saved as a result. Landlords are in the minority on this issue. The community cannot help but benefit from such legislation. The only sound argument posed by the op- position is that the rental industry is already over-regulated. But in a market with no other course of enfor- cement, legislation is necessary. This proposal deserves strong support from student renters. If Proposal A is passed, Ann Arbor will be able to sleep better-at least warmer-in Michigan winters yet to come. , T - 4 A ND ~THAT 6 WKI AM 60\m& To St& ( THIS BILL >14 ____ (T4 di - N, U .. Do OU AVE PECIL? : 7 0z Propaganda A merican-style He had a dream Today marks what would have been the 55th birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. Locally, com- memorations have already begun, most notably at yesterday's rally sponsored by the Second Baptist Chur- ch of Ann Arbor which attracted over 200 participants. King's birthday, which becomes a national holiday next year, is a good time to reevaluate the status of the civil rights movement and recall his dream for a better world. In 1964, King wrote Why We Can't Wait, in which he put forth his dream for a world free of racism. He asked that even as Americans struggled for civil rights at home, they look toward the entire world in hopes of ending in- justices everywhere. He believed that the situation in South Africa, among others, was serious enough that we as citizens of the world would have to work immediately and ceaselessly to insure an end to the atrocities there. Ironically, 20 years later it is ap- parent that Americans believe they can wait. There have been few gains in domestic civil rights and some of those earlier gains have been challenged. The situation in South Africa continues to be one of undistinguished oppression on the basis of race. In Western Africa, poor horticultural planning worsened by religious bigotry is causing coun- tless thousands to die of hunger. Although Americans think they can wait, they must not. On King's birth- day, all should loin with University Political Science Prof. Ernest Wilson, a speaker at the Second Baptist Chur- ch's rally, in calling for continued ac- tions toward greater local, national, and global justice. Aid to the famine-afflicted countries of Western Africa must be continued. For the present, this aid would be used to save the lives of individuals, and in the future, it would be used to bring about improved agricultural con- ditions. Marches and other actions which level public criticism at the Reagan administration's South African policies must be supported. People must be educated to the dangers of the international arms race. Adventurism in the United States troops in Central America and elsewhere must be protested. And Americans once again must familiarize themselves with King's dream: an entire world in which all en- By Brian Leiter In Russia they have Tass; in America, we have Time magazine. Both,hto use a somewhat startling idiom, are propaganda instruments of their respective ruling elites. For the student of history, it is an elementary fact that ruling classes-whether their power derives from political or economic structures-will em- ploy the media to generate beliefs and attitudes favorable to the maintenance of their power. As the elite in America are those who control the private economy-e.g. the wealthiest five percent of the population which owns 67 percent of all corporate stock (National Bureau of Economic Research)-it is to be expected that their propaganda tool would itself be part of this privately owned economy-the Mammoth Time, Inc. (The same of course is true of the other ideological media-all are ultimately the property of large corporations with vested in- terests in the current order.) The recent Man of the Year issue of Time (Jan. 7) is a tour- de-force in American propagan- da. Publisher John Meyers says the Man of the Year is the one who "has most significantly in- fluenced the events of the past twelve months." Peter Ueberroth, who organized the Summer Olympics, clearly was not chosen for that reason; he ran a widely-watched sporting even, and that's all. He was chosen, as the subsequent ar- ticles make clear, because he "most significantly" symbolized Time's ideological picture of events of the past year: a renewed "entrepreneurial" (capitalistic) spirit and the value of such as integral part of patriotism, freedom, goodness, etc. This is old hat for ruling classes in capitalistic society. If the population is to tolerate dramatic inequities in wealth distribution perpetual classes of dispossessed, and the general assault on peace of mind and health of body bred by the uncer- tainties inherent in the free- market game, it must come to believe that the mechanism by which all this is achieved is something of value to all in- dividuals, something desirable and good. In Marxist ter- minology, the interest of the ruling class must be portrayed as universal interest. Propaganda used to this effect necessarily engages in significant distror- tions and simplifications as I shall try to illustrate in what follows. The prime metaphor for' Time's ideological effort is 'summer olympics as microcosm of capitalism': "The Los Angeles Olympics became a spectacular dramatization of a renascent American entreprenourial energy and optimism." The in- tended effect: the transference of our good feelings about olympics to caDitalism in general. The "essence of freedom"?) It mat- ters not that in the whole corpus of Western political philosophy freedom is nowhere defined as "all light and air and flashing motion." Such a definition is a better characterization of a typical T.V. commerical and the commercial hype which surroun- ds material goods (all part of the effort to generate ever-ready markets for capitalist production regardless of real utility or need). To equate commercial hype ("flashing motion") with freedom again serves to transfer the positive value of freedom onto the commerical sphere. Or similarly: "In Reagan's America, the value of freedom (over equality) has reasserted it- self, sometimes at the expense of the gentler instincts. The Olym- pics express the preference per- fectly: the freedom to win-athletics as Darwinian theater." As Marx was the first to comment, what capitalists mean by freedom is the freedom to privately control large amounts of wealth and property (a freedom irrelevant to the 90 per- cent of the population which does not make capital investment decisions). There has certainly been more of this freedom under Reagan. Of course, it isalso patently obvious that substantial redistribution of wealth and regulation of investment-a restriction of this capitalist freedom-would increase freedom for the poor (to name but one group) : they would be free to learn, to pursue cultural activities, hobbies-in short, all the freedoms that require in- come, leisure, etc. The "Darwinian theater" metaphor is, of course, the old Social Darwinism of the robber barons revived. Two questions must be posed: 1. Olympics may be "Darwinian theater," but are Olympics therefore a good model for the functioning of society? Would we apply this model to the operation of our family relations? 2. If capitalism promotes the "survival of the fittest" it is clearly only those who are "fit' to function within capitalism that survive: namely, those with competitive commerical instin- cts. But why is that the criteria for fitness? Is that the ideal human we wish to breed? By and large the outstanding cultural and intellectual figures of history were unfit to be managers in capitalist society. Therefore, what? BLOOM COUNTY On the '84 election: "It was not the Americans disapproved of the goals (justice, compassion for the poor); many simply felt that the old Democratic ways of reaching those goals no longer worked." Of course, the truth or falsity of this "feeling" is beside the point; also never mind that the Reagan "way" (more capitalism) was what created the problems to which the "Democratic ways" were responding in the first place. Who knows what would happen if anyone in the media had ac- tually read Marx? "In its -new and frank acceptance of economic incentives, China took another historic turn away from Marx and Lenin and toward, in a sense, Peter Ueberroth." Of course, the existence of material incentives is not what is distin- ctive of capitalism in the Marxist critique (Marx clearly thought that communism was in the material self-interest of the dispossessed working classes)-rather, it is the private ownership of the means of production and the bulk of capital available. China has not tam- pered with this aspect of their system at all; Marx, himself, says he favors "the right of per- sonally acquiring property as the fruit of a man's own labour." This portrayal of capitalism would not be complete without rationalizing the all-too-apparent defects. So "The nation goes im- perfectly on" (oh well...); "Many Americans have been left out of the economic recovery; on the other hand, it would be utopian, or typically American, to think that all could be included." What a claim! All efforts to really rec- tify social inequities are good- naturedly labelled utopian and implicitly unworthy of serious at- tention (no doubt because real remedies would require tam- pering with the free market). It matters not that with the current abundance of wealth and technology, poverty, et. al. could only exist with mismanagement bordering on idiocy and/or management based on un- mitigated greed of those who con- trol the economy. There is a continuous attack on selflessness: quoting pollster Yankelovich: "There is no moral virtue today attributed to self- denial." One needn't advocate an ascetic ideal to see through this routine. The only "self" catered to in capitalism is the self which craves material goods (27 brands of deodorant, home computers to balance your checkbooks, autos4 with racing stripes, and sun roofs), a self which is brought in- to being in a large part by a barrage of advertising which proclaims our vital need for these goods. A self interested in cultural and intellectual enrich- ment and opportunity, spiritual exploration, increasing leisure and personal time, environments for healthy and honest human relations, would be hard pressed to have its interests served in the1 currentratmosphere of non-stop commerical hype. "The American renewal (of capitalism) is a reassertion of man as shaper of the world rather than... as victim or passive partner"-Time. "The attain- ment of conditions in which man could shape his own life... (require) no longer subori dinating his life to the requirements of profitable production, to an apparatus con- trolled by forces beyond his con- trol"-Herbert Marcuse. There are volumes of historical, philosophical, and sociological literature defending Marcuse's point, yet Time, as in most cases, blithely makes its pronoun- cement as though the making of it settled the issue for good. One needn't have a conspiracy theory to believe that Time is a propaganda instrument com- mitted to the perpetuation of the existing economic order. Since Time, Inc. is part of that order, since publisher John Meyers is a wealthy elite in that order, it is to be expected that they will promulgate views favorable tc the system in which they thrive not, in all likelihood, with intent to deceive, but out of sincere belief that the virtues of a system that serves their interests must be general and apparent virtues for all. That explanation, however, does not change the fact of their narrowness of vision and shallowness of intellect. joy the basic rights equality, and justice. of freedom, i , I ,~-,RFCH®At' Leiter is a graduate student in law and philosophy. by Berke Breathed oil i F . -, t a.: INC. - I 1_ I IMftY AM 1NOT mh R16/fT FELW FOR I11/ ",tA-.561rer1 /5 7w ~ CR/17CAL r 00DH~E.. _ <~ Clasifie Per dsces 1li/h 5ON~Y &77rM A VERY "VANftUA" 1YPE' Of 6VY'. 4NP dc/sTA lWPNEAVO /51 3 CGassifle4 : Persaoals WN FACT AMY1IIN6 ON7VC FRIN6C cOF MAKES5 MY /1/11P5 ANP ClassiFiec4 P'esals 11 ANO7HK N/CE CU~SE ME. BIG AMKA&U5. Z HA~ VE V60 / 17W6C Off MY fXTREMfTIE5. Classified- ,: P'sonals ",.I E5 PW/ 141 I ::ENJOY5 SkVPIVIN(, I 1l1 Lian _2 -,ma all BrU m... N/C-