The exploited toilers of the executive suite. If traditions collide: Whose way should be respected?

1. Bashir is a mass murderer who devotedly combats the signs of overpopulation in his realm.  The International Court of Criminal Justice recognized his efforts. As a sign of appreciation of al Bashir’s talent, the court indicted him for trivia such as genocide. Today, (July 21) the Sudanese tyrant has visited Chad. Ironically, it so happens that, the host country is a signatory of the treaty that creates the ICC.

The naïve among us would reckon that the visit must automatically trigger an arrest. Not so. Chad welcomed Bashir and disregarded its obligation to hand him over to the court. The justification of the violation of a contract has a lot to do with “Africa”. Prodded by Libya (Gaddafi again!) the African Union decided not to cooperate with the court. In need of a PC-suited excuse, it is alleged that the Court’s bias is proven. The tribunal hears too many African cases. The conveniently race-based justification for helping al Bashir to avoid what is proclaimed to be “white” justice has an obvious weakness. The indictment rests on the concrete actions of a certain person at a certain time and venue.

The ICC’s docket knows no quota.  Ignoring the indictment suggests a premise is being applied. According to it, the pigments of a person are relevant in establishing guilt. Therefore, without them an individual would be a criminal, while having them in a sufficient amount excuses reprehensible actions. This racist reasoning leaves us with a problem.

What the principle, if taken seriously, does is to reduce the magnitude of “darker” against “lighter” skinned crime’s significance. Protecting the offender for his characteristics implies that his victim’s sufferings are, regardless of sharing the criminal’s traits, overlooked. Now then, the problem is that Chad chooses to ignore is that not only the murderer, but also his victims are “Africans”. Therefore, as so often, the overdose of ethnic “pride” and consciousness produces results that are, even by their own skewed original logic, absurdities. As such, they violate not only people but also the rules of reasoning.

How are we to respond to this example of race –respectively religion, ethnicity, social origins- being used to legitimize arbitrary rule and its crimes? One easy reaction would be to stop all aid to comparable regimes. They violate their treaty obligations and their policies, therefore, undermine the global order.

Such a suggestion will provoke the reaction that this punishes “the people”. (For your enlightening amusement, apply the case to “boycott  Arizona”.) Conveniently, the automated response ignores a fact. Everybody, except those that live off the distribution of aid, know that the more authoritarian a system the greater the ruling elite’s cut. (Just think of North Korea!) Forking over money helps the “system” to survive and personally benefits its managers. Thus
strengthened, the régime will use its shored up power to kill more of “the people”.
 
 
2. How times change! Take the classical definition of capitalism and the explanation of why, due to its nature, it must be inevitably exploitative. Theoretically, the workers, unlike the physical owners of the means of production, have nothing. Destitute, exploited and oppressed, their reaction to the escalating pauperization was to be a predestined revolution. Had everything remained unalterably as it was during the mid 19th century, the prognosis might have become reality.

Developments that evolved during the last two hundred years have created a basket of changes. The main one might be that in that package “unforeseeable conditions” predominate. The surprises from the Pandora’s box apply to the record of the “socialist world” that did not terminate exploitation and suppression, as well as to that of “capitalism”.

At least indirectly - through their membership in retirement funds - in advanced countries everybody is now a stockholder. That makes one a co-owner of enterprises. These are undertakings, in which one does not perform physical work but whose profits the holders of their stocks and bonds share. Concurrently, individual capitalist families have lost their grip over their corporations. The Fords do not run Ford any more. The process separated the power of ownership and the power of disposition.

The discussion regarding bonuses and generally of the control of the managerial class react to a further unanticipated and, indeed unforeseeable condition. Managers are not owners but in classical terms “hired help”. Regardless of that, they command extensive –and to some exaggerated- salaries. A reaction of politics is to protect the stockholders by making manager incomes subject to their approval. Absurdly in terms of the theory, the mass of capitalist owners is to be protected by what are frequently leftist parties, from their “employees”.

Money (salaries, shares of the profit) expresses not only the estimated value of a contribution but also signifies prestige, influence and power. Beyond the enterprise the power yielded by the hired mercenary-manages also extends into society in which “their” firms are embedded. According to Marx, all the above should not be the case. Could he have been right? No. As so many other keen observers of their time, he also became the victim of a general error that likes to predict “inevitable” catastrophes. Some issues that serve as icons of our present might fit the pattern. Extrapolations from the data that is available now, will lead us to logical conclusions. Inevitably, however, the lawfully arising imponderables of the future will render even the best prognosis of the past ridiculous.

 
3. Call the secularism that determines the content of the public-political realm of life a component of our Western “faith”. Islamists claim that the burqa represents their conviction. Let us accept both assertions. Contrary of what some like to imply, the two postulates are not irreconcilable, that is, both can be true at the same time. But not at the same place! Thereby the question we face becomes, which value system should prevail and where. Are standards not to be determined by the indigenous? Or should those adapt that have chosen to settle, after requesting that privilege from those that had not demanded that they come?

The idea behind the unanswered question is that Islamist practices are in order where a -voluntary or coerced- majority endorses them. At the same time, criticism of such practices by those that regard them as harmful is not beyond the pale. It is an implicitly right of Islam’s fundamentalists to condemn western life’s ways beginning with the bikini even if that might be hidden under every burqa. However, the lived coexistence of both attitudes is problematic. It is not because one side regards the burqa as at best retrograde. The origin of the problem stems from the other party of the attempted coexistence. Its nature makes the difference between the burqa and a Shik’s turban to which no one objects. Islamists regard the women that reveal themselves as whores and generally as reprehensible. That makes the order that allows them to live their sin into an enemy of God and man.
 

4. Bans on burqas are becoming a European norm. The issue is not, whether in the abstract this is proper or not. The rulings, along with rejecting the Sharia, polygamy, honor killings, genital mutilation and the like, contain a message. It is directed at those who prefer to immigrate by claiming refugee status, while as residents they demand absolute tolerance for ways that collide with their host’s (openly untolerated) traditions. This conflict comes from the fact that western civilization has its way of life and organic norms that support and express it. Some migrants are unwilling to accept these features and to adjust to them. Burqa bans invite this element to stay away, leave or to adapt. This contradicts what would otherwise be a reasonable position. It is that western societies should not tell what Muslim women should wear. The adage is in need of an addition: “in their own place”. Therefore, native rules apply to uninvited guests that are drawn to the places whose accomplishments and benefits they wish to enjoy.