w w w w w w W- w w w r 0 a - . S -. - .. . .. S. Wedesay Sptmbr 2,200S -Th Mchga Dil 46 A BARBER TALKS SHOP Bo Schembechler was his client, but not Lloyd Carr, so he must be doing something right. SB THE PITFALLS OF POW- ERPOINT Is the dominance of Pow- erPoint in Univesrity class- rooms making us dumber? Y 6B WHAT'S IN A NAME? When a donor whose name is on a campus building commits a crime, what does that say about the University? 8B ROUGHNG IT Why your apartment might be worse than a panhandlers' 12B GOING UNDERGROUND How a Midwesterner braved the New York City Subways I THE EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK with GARY GRACA A look at the big news events this week and how important they really are. Conveniently ranked from one to10. A DOG-EAT-DOG WORLD DEBATING IN DEARBORN Michael Vick isn't the country's only dog- Under the pretense that the selection was fighter. The Detroit Free Press reported last made because Metro Detroit is an impor- week that the U.S. Huwane Society consid- tant center for industry and manufactunine. 10 ers Detroit "a hotbed for dogfighting" with 0 10 a network-televised Republican debate will 6 more than 200 complaints a year in Oak- 8 be held in Dearborn on Oct. 9. Really, the land county. If only people cared about the selection is a way to exploit Dearborn's millions dead in Iraq as much as they care large Arab American and Muslim popula- about puppies. tion in front of a national audience - typi- cal Republican stuff, S WHERE'S THE REVOLUTION? For about two months, owners of Apple's new Phone defined cool. After a $200 price cut though, the hipsters who stood for hours in line to buy it are looking a lot more 10 like chumps who got played by Steve Jobs. 0 Time to tell your rich friends to find new ways to get attention. DONALD'S DEMENTIA Inan interview with GQ Magazine, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, ignoring the resurging Taliban, described the war in Afghanistan as "one big suc- is cess." Just like the war in Iraq and his ten- ure as Secretary of Defense. v>, 0 PERSON OF THE WEEK MIKE BISHOP With the state facing a possible shutdown over a budget defi- cit and a timid Democratic governor disinclined to take her opposition to task, State Senate Majority leader Mike Bishop has found himself in the position of being one of the most powerful figures in state politics. The 41-year-old University alum who is known for his pin-striped suits and slicked back hair has steadfastly refused to agree to any budget deals with Gov. Granholm that involve tax hikes. The Rochester Republican's tactics have driven the state to near shutdown, a situation that only wors- ened last week after Bishop canceled Friday's . budget talks with the speaker of the house and the governor to go on a golf outing. Cont'd: The real legacy of Karl Marx A STUDENT BAND-AID Finally making good on their campaign promises, congressional Democrats passed an overhaul of federal student aid, increasing Pell Grants and slashing sub- 10 sidies to loan companies. Now only book 9 stores, universities and textbook publishers are getting rich off of students. SELLING V!@GRA Many AOL subscribers will miss out on the secret way to "grow three more inches" or "take part in a sexual marathon," because Adam Vitale, responsible for millions of spam e-mails, was caught breakingfederal 3 ospam laws. If he practices what his mailings preached, at least he'll be popular in prison. rule 37: The only thing worse than wearing a T- shirt out at night is wear- ing a graphic T-shirt. rule 38: When you're late you look like an asshole. rule 39: Go to office hours. Your grade really will go up. - E-mail rule submissions to thestatement@umich.edu. MARX From page 2B radical Islamic movements of the present. A Green Menace replaced the Red! People still ask me, on occa- sion, "Are you a Marxist?" My answer now is different. "We're not allowed to tell." When the Soviet Union set itself up as the guardian of the faith, Marxism and socialism were identified by liberals, conserva- tives, and Stalinists alike as being consonant with the practices and achievements of the USSR. Stalin defanged Marx, eliminated the critical power of Marxism and turned it into a legitimizing ide- ology. Russia was conceivably the worst place to attempt to build the kind of socialism that Marx envi- sioned coming after capitalism had exhausted all its potential. This is a country that is still today trying to get capitalism right. Actually, many historians claim, this is a country that could not get feudal- ism right. My own sense is that Marx would have been the most fervent critic, from the Left, of the disempowering of the working class and the exploitative character of the Soviet regime, as were many Western and Soviet Marxists of the time. He would have been appalled at Marxism becoming a religion dressed in scientific drag. In my view, what is most impor- tant in Marx are his questions, critiques, his values and his moral vision - all part of a legacy that remains a powerful specter that still haunts global capitalism and (what Marxists call) bourgeois democracy at the beginning of the 21st century. Those values contin- ue to inspire people in many parts of the world who without them would be even more disempowered before the onslaught of global capi- talism and American hegemony. For Marx, history did not end with capitalism. He did not legiti- mize the present as the best of all possible worlds, even as he appre- ciated the power and productiv- ity of capitalism. Socialists aimed to subvert and supercede bour- geois society in the interest of a more egalitarian, socially just and democratic form of society. This vision certainly contains within it a utopia, as does any politics except conservative acceptance of the way the world exists at the moment. That utopia - that dif- ferent and better future which the overwhelming one-dimensional- ity of current political imagination makes appear ridiculous, retains enormous power as an immanent critique of the limits, mystifica- tions, apologetics, and deceptions of bourgeois democracy and mar- ket capitalism. Utopia, in other, 1 words, might be thought of, not in ing large sums of money, buy pri- the usual sense of an impossible vate media and use it to create or dream, but rather a far off goal limit popular opinion; where the toward which one directs one's wealthier members of society had politics, even if the ultimate goal easier access to courts and lawyers might not be reached. My personal than poor people, and money spent goal, for instance, might be per- in elections would be equated with fect health and immortality; even freedom of speech. Such a perfect bourgeois democracy, of course, would be viewed by its pundits and preachers not as serving only The Bolsheviks the rich and powerful but by the talking classes as well as the bulk are gone. Did of the population as working in the interests of the whole people for Marxism o with the common good. g What Marx's message has lost, th mat least for the time being, is the means to make the changes that its system of values and preferences would maintain is so necessary for human well-being and, increas- though I know neither is possible, ingly, survival. There is no prole- that does not stop me from going tariat anymore, at least not in the to the gym for a workout. sense of a unified historical subject; Socialism was, and remains, an there is no coherent material force alternative imaginary modernity positioned as the gravedigger of and not an alternative to moderni- and alternative to capitalism. That ty. It might be thought of today as a modernist belief in a unified, con- classic "empty signifier," a concept scious class that embodies progress without specific content, the con- has had to give way to a greater tent to be filled by actual practices appreciation of the scattered, dis- within the ongoing movement of jointed elements of dissent and history. From its origins, socialism refusal - working people, the Latin has been a movement with the goal American Left, environmentalists, of extending the power of ordinary those who struggle for their identi- people, that is, of extending as far ty and dignity and engage in a day- as possible the limits of democracy by-day struggle which often fails to - not only in the realm of politics constrain the seemingly inevitable (which was the goal of democratic expansion of global capitalism. radicals and left liberals), but also At its best moments, from its in the economy as well. Because origins to its present dismal state, the power implicit in property and the struggle for socialism has been wealth, they believe, would mevi- fundamentally about a struggle tably distort and corrupt the demo- for democracy - the extension cratic political sphere, socialists of empowerment to the greatest have searched for mechanisms of number of people. The commit- social control over or social own- ment to democracy, however, was ership of the means of production. repeatedly compromised by politi- In addition, socialism - in contrast cal expediencies, the imperatives to liberalism but closer to some of gaining and holding state power, forms of conservatism, religion and and the usurpation of socialism's nationalism - seeks a restoration aspirations by self-serving poli- of social solidarity fractured by the ticians. Yet democracy, greater individualizing effects of competi- social justice, the promotion of tive market relations. That remains equality and popular control over their utopia, a telos for their poli- the economic as well as the politi- tics. cal sphere remain the program of Marx presents a radical critique those who would take Marx seri- of the injustices that derive from ously and on his own terms. private property in the means of Democracy, however, as Ameri- production, and the power such cans must now be most acutely possession implies over all kinds of aware, does not come easily and economic and political decisions. cannot be exported on the tips He argues in favor of establishing of bayonets. Its gains even in the real democracy in place of bour- most stable of polities can be easily geois democracy, which Marx from reversed. The United States, simul- his earliest writing understood to taneously one of the most progres- be a colossal fraud. Great wealth sive and the most reactionary and property when unchecked by countries on the globe, bestrides countervailing institutions, their the world like a colossus thatstands power justified by the dominant in the way of any movementor idea discourses, inevitably distort dem- that would curb its dominance, ocratic choices. If one imagined and for the current administration a perfect bourgeois democracy, (those I refer to as the Busheviks), it would be one in which the rich that dominance entails the freest could influence elections by spend- of free market economics and the greatest freedom for the U.S. to have its way in the world. So what is left of Marxism? It is still about expanding democracy, which is stillso fragile in much of the world. The utopian aspect of think- ing beyond the present - for all of the dangers associated with attempt- ing to impose utopias - at least arms us with a way to think critically about what needs to be changed. Marx makes us think about alterna- tives, even when his own theory fails any longer to give us either a clear vision of that alternative or a means to achieve it. Granted, this might not be enough, especially for pragmatic Americans. Without vision though, politics circles endlessly around its present conceptions. In the absence at the moment of a material force to assist us in a pro- gressive direction, Marx's historicity helps us out: change happens, per- haps not in determined, predictable ways as he might have thought. But it happens, and humans still make their own history even if not.under circumstances chosen bythemselves. But to make history, you had better know history, and the world. That is where scholars come in - not just as closeted observers but as interpret- ers, explainers - and in their noble, necessary work of critique and anal- ysis, they contribute to those exalted goals of Marx himself, enlighten- ment and emancipation. - Ronald Suny is the Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor of Social and Political History at the Univer- sity. He has written several books on the history of the Soviet Union. MagazineEditor:AnneVanderMey Cover Art: Sam Butler PhotoEditor:Emma Nolan-Abra- hamian Designer:Bridget O'Donnell EditorinChief: Karl Stampfl ManagingEditor:Jeffrey Bloomer What's left of Marx? hen I was a young pro- fessor at Oberlin Col- lege, that liberal oasis in northeastern Ohio, a senior profes- sor of religion came into my mod- est office, past the larger-than-life size poster of Lenin on the door, and asked me, "Is it true that you are a Marxist?" In those days, con- fident in my radicalism, I assured him I was. "How quaint!" he said. "You know," he continued, "you on the Left believe in the goodness of man and therefore are always dis- appointed, while we who believe in Original Sin expect the worst and are never disappointed by what happens." For the Left, in so far as a Left actually exists in the United States, and for liberals as well, certainly the next few decades were ones of disappointment, even disenchant- ment. The last spasm of hope for many of us came with Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the ex-Soviet Union, who led an exper- iment in radical reform from above, but that ended only too quickly in the catastrophic collapse, not only of Soviet Communism, but of any real "third way" alternatives to The term third party doesn't have to mean the Greens. the triumph of neoliberal econom- ics and eventually neoconservative politics. The end of Communism and the Soviet empire in East Central Europe appeared to confirm the perversity of Marxism as political practice and as a view of history. The principal critical analysis of capitalism and imperialism, the major opponent of Western capi- talism in both Western socialist parties and in Soviet support of national liberation movements and Communist parties, Marx- ism was swept from the field, driven underground. Or at least driven into the academy, the uni- versities, where it is occasionally taught to freshmen. In the absence of significant secular revolution- ary or reformist alternatives to the "new world order" of West- ern capitalism and democracy, unanticipated new forces, much more conservative and religious, appeared, first in Iran in the revo- lution of the ayatollahs in 1979, in the Muslim Brotherhood move- ments in Egypt and elsewhere, in the mujaheddin resistance to the See MARX, page 11B