The "bitter" controversy shows little sign of dying down

The controversy over Barack Obama's comments about "bitter" Pennsylvanians is showing little sign of dying down. The press continued its drumbeat and the Clinton campaign continued to deploy an army of surrogates to make its case that Obama is a disaster-in-waiting for the general election. Via Politico's Ben Smith, the issue is getting a large amount of attention in Pennsylvania, with Sunday papers coming out with talk of it on their front-page.

Obama's comments contain two distinct elements that have sparked controversy: (1) the use of the word "bitter" and (2) the suggestion that the social values (religion, anti-immigration and guns) of the jobless are only symptoms of their economic difficulties (this is not necessarily what Obama meant, but it is the interpretation of his words that Obama's critics are responding to).

Surprisingly to me, a lot of battle is being waged on the first issue. Clinton's North Carolina campaign distributed stickers that read "I'm not bitter." What does it mean exactly to say that the loss of a job in these economically depressed areas should not make one feel bitter? Should everyone remain joyous and grateful no matter what one's economic conditions?

The defense of the Obama camp here is equally puzzling. A comment made by Bill Clinton in 1992 is now being circulated, supposedly to show that the former President had said something very similar to what Obama said in San Fransisco: "The reason [George H. W. Bush's tactic] works so well now is that you have all these economically insecure white people who are scared to death." I am not sure how this is the equivalent of the comments that are sparking debate today; Bill Clinton's quote contains nothing about economic fears determining social values. Has it become that controversial to suggest that the lower-class is "economically insecure" and even "bitter"? Answering in the affirmative, it seems to me, would be denying the very existence of classes in this country.

This, of course, is the point the Obama campaign is making in circulating Bill Clinton's quotes; saying that people are "bitter" is not controversial, they are arguing. But this certainly does not represent a push-back on the "cling to" part of Obama's comments, the part that, to me, seems like the more interesting one.

Two questions at hand, then: (1) Was Obama suggesting that economic fears determine social values? (2) If he was, is that such a scandal?

I am not going to try and answer the first question. This is where the Obama campaign is trying to work its way out of trouble: Obama almost immediately defended himself by saying that his point was that economic fears determine political behaviors, not their social values. It makes people vote on values like guns and god rather than on their economic conditions; it does not give them those values in the first place. This "What's the Matter with Kansas"-ian argument is also the point Bill Clinton was making in the comments I quoted above: The reason people are voting their fear rather than their economic interests is that they have become insecure.

But let's assume that Obama did mean what his original comments sounded like, namely that economic fears determined people's social values, their attachment to gun and gods. Is this a condescending/elitist argument? This is the most interesting question, of course. To answer it, it is important to distinguish between a Marxist belief in economic determinism and what a liberal would say. Roughly put, Marxism argues that economic conditions determines the socio-cultural superstructure, people's values and beliefs -- everything that would determine class identity. But (1) the determinism touches everyone, meaning that the values (and social capital) of the wealthy are grounded in their position at the top of the economic hierarchy; and thus this has little to do with one's subjective feelings towards one's economic condition (bitterness, insecurity) but rather with their objective position in the chain of production.

On the other hand (and once again roughly sketched) the liberal argument does not allow that everyone is being over-determined; rather, the suggestion is that those who are economically oppressed have to be brought up to the level of those who are economically secure. By granting more social rights and economic assistance to the lower-class, this development will also extend to the cultural arena, with a better socio-economic position being accompanied by increased ability to autonomously self-determine one's lives, untroubled by economic fears and concerns. This view remains committed to the need of finding a more economically just order, but it has nothing to do with the Marxist view in that it is only economic oppression that determines social values -- not any economic condition. And with the disappearance of systemic determinism, it becomes up to those in a comfortable position to "help" the less privileged.

This liberal position is characterized by some as condescending (the same criticism is voiced at the liberal language of development); others, obviously, will characterize the Marxist view as radical and embrace the idea of progress inherent in the latter. I am going to leave the last word to Slavoj Zizek's description of the difference as he writes it in his essay "Carl Schmitt in the Age of Post-Politics," published in The Challenge of Carl Schmitt:

Today, the very terrain of the struggle has change: the post-political liberal establishment not only fully acknowledges the gap between mere formal equality and its actualization/implementation, it not only acknowledges the exclusionary logic of ‘false’ ideological universality, it even actively fights this logic… What such a tolerant procedure prevents, however, is the gesture of politicization proper: although the difficulties of being an African-American single unemployed lesbian mother are adequately catalogued down to their most specific features, the concerned subject none the less somehow ‘feels’ that there is something ‘wrong’ and ‘frustrating’ in this very effort to do justice to her specific predicament – what she is deprived of is the possibility of a ‘metaphorical’ elevation of her specific ‘wrong’ into a stand-in for the universal wrong... the fact that I, precisely, am not merely that specific individual exposed to a set of specific injustices...

Assuming that Obama did mean that economic fears determine social values (and, as I said, this is a point that is up for debate), the Illinois Senator's comments clearly took the latter form -- which is what is making people call it condescending. And it would be hard for him to wish that he had taken the less condescending and more leftist route. This is America after all; it's probably better to be labeled condescending than Marxist.