Karl Marxâs Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature. And the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy, by Kohei Saito

Philosophy

no abstract

SCIENCE & SOCIETY Karl Marx's Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy, by Kohei Saito. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2017. $29.00. Pp. 308. Amid the rising tide of books on Marx and ecology, this book stands out. Much of this work has been about whether Marx's analysis of capitalism was a blind commitment to industrial society that has ignored natural circumstances and ecological crisis. Kohei Saito brings Marx's ecological notebooks into the debate, rediscovers Marx's environmental concerns and their relevance to the critique of political economy, and reinforces the argument that Marx saw environmental crisis embedded in capitalism. The book can be read as an objection to the widely circulated contention that Marx's ecological concerns are extremely limited and incomplete, of doubtful relevance for today, as some socialist thinkers like André Gorz, James O'Connor, and Alain Lipietz would assert. Saito is rather a supporter, if not a follower, of the Monthly Review circle pioneered by John B. Foster and Paul Burkett, who emphasize the methodological significance of Marx's ecological critique of capitalism. Saito's study, however, adds to this an extremely precise reconstruction of the developmental stages in Marx's ecological thinking. It describes how Marx came to be what is called today an "ecosocialist." The book's basic message is that Marx was concerned with ecology much more than is commonly believed. Unlike most of the scholars in this debate, Saito takes into account published and unpublished excerpts, private notes and records of Marx; traces the text and context of any specific uses of ecological terms; and identifies the influential figures from the natural and agricultural sciences that appear in Marx's ecological writing. Marx famously speaks in Capital of a metabolic exchange (Stoffwechsel ) between nature and society. Human labor confronts materials of nature as natural forces, appropriates and transforms them, and when changing external nature also changes itself. This reciprocity, however, takes a destructive form in the capitalist mode of production: capital exploits nature to the extent of disturbing the metabolic exchange between man and earth, preventing the return of constituent elements consumed by man to the soil and hindering the operation of natural conditions that are vital to lasting fertility of the soil. Saito traces the origins and use of the term "metabolic exchange" in Marx, and examines some previous accounts in this regard. Alfred Schmidt, for instance, claims that the term comes from Jacob Moleschott. In a letter to his wife Jenny of June 21, 1856, Marx mentions the term "Moleschottian metabolic exchange." Since the publication of his Life Circle (1852), Moleschott has been a pioneering figure in the popularization of metabolic G4685.indd 130 12/12/2018 10:16:04 AM REVIEWS 131 exchange. Some of Marx's early letters give reason to believe that the Marx family even had this book in their library. Alternatively, one might take Roland Daniels, Justus von Liebig and James Johnston into account. Daniels, who was a close friend and comrade of Marx and Engels in the 1840s, seems to be the initial source of the term. He wrote a manuscript titled "Microcosmos" and asked for Marx's opinion in 1851. In the summer of 1851, Marx starts studying and excerpting from Liebig and Johnston, who were famous for their elaborated approach to metabolic exchange. The latter figure is also known for his natural scientific concept of metamorphosis, a concept that Marx employs in Capital many times. Saito conceives of such views as one sided, for Moleschott's use of the term has a metaphysical content and it is too abstract to have been a source for Marx. The early exchange of letters between Daniels and Marx, on the other hand, is well known. Nevertheless, this is overshadowed by Marx and Engels' criticism of Daniels' naturalistic enterprise, documented in an exchange between them in April 1851. With all his merits and flaws, Liebig seems to be the consistent source for Marx in this regard. This is evident from Marx's later writings in the 1860s. In Capital, he famously notes: "To have developed from the point of view of natural science the negative, i.e., destructive side of modern agriculture is one of Liebig's immortal merits." One of the central concerns of the book, about which the reader is repeatedly reminded, is the impact of Liebig's agricultural chemistry on the formation of Marx's concept of metabolic interaction between nature and society. The excerpt record in the fourth section of MEGA shows that Marx read Liebig's Agricultural Chemistry in 1851. But a clear and systematic study of Liebig is not present until the first manuscript of the third volume of Capital (1865). This indicates that Marx did not develop a critical account of ecological crisis when he first read Liebig. The guiding thread of Marx's early study of Liebig is rather Liebig's optimism about the possibility of overcoming ecological destruction by scientific management and systematic use of synthetic fertilizers. Saito speculates that an additional factor in Marx's interest in Liebig's optimism might be his 1845 studies on James Anderson in the Manchester Notebooks. Anderson investigates the possibility of advancing the natural fertility of soils and the positive effects of using drainage and manure to improve the productivity and price of crops. Marx's 1851 study of another book by Anderson on agriculture in Europe shows that Marx continued to follow the same optimistic line of thinking. Anderson seems to have led Marx to read additional works by Liebig and Johnston in the following years. Unlike the 4th edition of Liebig's optimistic work Agricultural Chemistry (1842), which Marx studied in the 1850s, Liebig introduces a rather pessimistic argument in the 7th edition of the same book (1862), which Marx G4685.indd 131 12/12/2018 10:16:04 AM 132 SCIENCE & SOCIETY studied in the 1860s. Liebig here uses the term "robbery culture" (Raubbau), referring to the metabolic rift and ecological disasters caused by the agricultural– chemical practices of capitalist production. Saito points out that Marx introduces another ecologically critical term, "irreparable rift" (unheilbarer Riss), in the first manuscript of the third book of Capital (1865) in the chapter on ground rent. The term is borrowed from Liebig, and Marx seems to share Liebig's new pessimism when he writes that "the vitality of the soil is squandered, and this prodigality is carried by commerce far beyond the borders of a particular state (Liebig)." A more detailed inquiry into the term was originally postponed until the preparation of the third volume of Capital. Marx, however, changes his mind, and starts working it out in the first book of Capital (1866–1867). The sources and development of Marx's ecological thinking are investigated here in more detail than anything written before on this topic. The book also demonstrates that Marx's largely ignored private records, published in MEGA, can shed new light on the stages of his intellectual journey. Perhaps it is no exaggeration to say that contemporary Marx research, as well as Marxist ecosocialist theory, enter onto new terrain with this book. Kaan Kangal Center for Studies of Marxist Social Theory Nanjing University Xianlin Campus, Qixia District, 38 Jiangsu, Nanjing, 210046 China email@example.com Marxism and Criminology: A History of Criminal Selectivity, by Valeria Vegh Weis. Leiden, The Netherlands/Boston, Massachusetts: Brill, 2017. $166.00. Pp. 348. Marxist scholars have for decades shown how the apparent neutrality of the rule of law in bourgeois societies is indeed a pro-capitalist way of re-framing social inequalities. Those who are not equal under real life conditions are treated before the law as if they were equal. This appearance of equality covers structural inequalities. Echoing this tradition highly critical of liberal conceptions of law and order, Valeria Vegh Weis, Professor of Criminology at Buenos Aires University, demonstrates how the criminal justice system operates to control the social unrest emanating from structural inequalities G4685.indd 132 12/12/2018 10:16:04 AM


Paul Forster, "Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism"

Philosophy

Access Provided by University of Waikato Library at 02/06/13 3:09AM GMT 137bo o k rev i ews (1) says that we are creatures such that if I experience a pleasure, it does not follow that anyone else experiences it. The question is why this gives me a special reason to care about my own pleasure. Phillips's thought is that since it is a state of me (and not you), it must give me a special reason. But this seems awfully close to simply asserting the conclusion that I have a special reason to care about states of myself. At best, (1) seems a necessary preliminary to giving examples in which our intuitions would favor my favoring myself. Phillips reconstructs Sidgwick as giving a deductive argument for egoism. Sidgwick intends something weaker. After noting (2), Sidgwick writes, "I do not see how it can be proved that this distinction is not to be taken as fundamental" (Methods, 498). The point seems to be that if someone thought that the distinction between one individual and another did matter to choosing between egoism and utilitarianism, it is hard to see how to show that he is wrong. Elsewhere, Sidgwick writes, "[E]ven if the reality and essentiality of the distinction between one individual and another be granted, I do not see how to show its fundamental practical importance to anyone [such as a utilitarian] who refuses to admit it" ("Some Fundamental Ethical Controversies," 485). Sidgwick's view is that the distinction between individuals is something to which more than one response is permitted. R o b e r t S h a v e r University of Manitoba Paul Forster. Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. xii + 259. Cloth, $82.00. Charles Peirce believed keenly in the reality of laws and universals. He claimed that despite modern naturalistic philosophy's self-conception as triumphing over a dessicated Aristotelianism, a view of universals closest to that of Duns Scotus was "the philosophy which is best to harmonize with physical science" (1). Much high-quality scholarship outlining this aspect of Peirce's thought already exists. However, this fine book lucidly systematizes it in a new synthetic approach to the problem that revives natural links between realism and a general theory of inquiry. For all modern realism's claims to be ontologically committed to mind-independent entities, it has largely severed itself from a philosophical account of how to determine independent existence in particular cases, instead relying on natural science or "intuition." Forster argues that this philosophical lacuna itself constitutes a form of nominalism; thus, realism in its deepest sense may be understood as explanatory ambition. The book begins by outlining why Peirce saw nominalism as such a threat. It "limits the scope and authority of reason and ... yields far too much to scepticism in science, ethics and religion" (7). By contrast, Peirce ambitiously seeks "an ultimate impartial and binding basis for the organization of human life" (12). A great interest of this book is in tackling head-on what many contemporary philosophers have filed in the too-hard basket. The main argument begins with an account of "the science of inquiry." Forster outlines five requirements: it must be a priori, formal, universal, necessary, and normative, and must license metaphysical conclusions (20). This obviously means that it cannot be a natural science. But neither can it be grounded in appeals to pure reason, as these amount to reliance on intuition, which cannot "distinguish principles that are truly self-evident from those that only seem to be" (25). But natural or a priori science-what other option could there be? One of the great excitements of Peirce's thought is how it frequently breaks timeworn dichotomies with a third alternative. As a new foundation for the science of inquiry, Forster offers diagrammatic reasoning. Such reasoning is experimental, and thus more than intuition-mongering, yet there can be no mismatch between the way things are and the way they are represented to be, since the relations among elements of diagrams are the very objects of study. 138 journal of the history of philosophy 51 :1 january 2013 In chapter 3, Forster uses diagrammatic reasoning to argue that nominalism cannot give an adequate account of continuity, for general concepts do not refer to collections of individuals but manifolds of actual and possible entities "welded together" (this issue is arguably insufficiently studied by metaphysicians). Next, Forster notes that the nominalist might claim that true continuity is a coherent hypothesis that cannot be verified, as the world consists solely of individuals. But he argues that Peirce's pragmatic maxim challenges this, teaching that the meaning of a term is a general pattern of effects, expressed in hypothetical conditionals. But why should we use the pragmatic maxim? Peirce worked long and inconclusively in his later years on a "proof of pragmatism," which Forster claims can be reconstructed from his theory of symbols. It holds, roughly, that insofar as symbols are interpretable they require the interpreter to gauge their implications, which must be empirically accessible effects. This argument has many steps and I am not convinced Forster has nailed down every possible counterargument, but it is a worthy attempt. The nominalist will protest that this epistemological story does not yet require metaphysically real universals. In his mature work Peirce argued that universals may be directly perceived. Appreciating this requires an analysis of perception considerably more sophisticated than today's British empiricist legacy. Whereas for Hume the percept (impression) is directly copied into the sign (idea), for Peirce this approach "overlooks enormous differences between the feeling of, say, a yellow quale and the term 'yellow' as it occurs in a judgment," whose meaning "is dependent on the object it represents and its effects on interpreters" (114). Incorporating such judgments turns the meaning of a given perception from prior causes to future epistemic consequences.This account of perception is unknown to mainstream philosophy, and could be of great interest. Chapter 7 moves from perception to inquiry, arguing that the hypothesis of real universals is intelligible, and implied by the truth of any symbol. Chapter 8 argues for this hypothesis via an elegant reconciliation of correspondence, coherence, consensus, and instrumental theories of truth. Finally, chapters 9 and 10 explore Peirce's argument for the reality of laws and his evolutionary cosmology, in which lawfulness itself evolves out of pure chance. The book ends with a discussion of the pursuit of truth as a moral ideal, arguing that "the nominalist is wrong to view human nature as a metaphysical fiction," and the Good as purely "goods for this or that individual" (232). Rather, humans are capable of great selflessness in "the active realization of intelligent ideals" (245). The writing in the book is careful and clear, with helpful chapter summaries. It will offer Peirce scholars new insights, as well as being a useful resource for advanced undergraduates. One possible drawback is that it advances on so many philosophical fronts. It is hard to craft a definitive argument across mathematics, logic, epistemology, and metaphysics. But having said that, pursuing synthetic philosophy with real implications for human life is hard work, and Forster should be applauded for taking it on. If you are a contemporary realist in the analytic tradition, please read this book! Such a combination of difference (from accepted philosophical wisdom) and depth is rare, and whether you agree or disagree with the position argued for, it will challenge your thinking in productive ways. C a t h e r i n e L e g g University of Waikato Jessica N. Berry. Nietzsche and the Ancient Skeptical Tradition. Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. xi + 230. Cloth, $65.00. Jessica Berry provides the first detailed analysis of whether, and in what sense, Nietzsche was a skeptic (5). Exploring the affinity between Nietzsche's work and Pyrrhonism in six main chapters, Berry differentiates between modern skepticism, understood as epistemological pessimism or nihilism (33), and Pyrrhonian skepticism as a commitment to continuing


Philosophy

on_education Journal for Research and Debate _ISSN 2571-7855 _DOI 10.17899/on_ed.2021.11.2 _vol.4_issue # 11 1 Is Faith in School Integration Bad Faith? Michael S. Merry (University of Amsterdam) Abstract: Many profess a belief in the importance of school integration. In this essay I argue that the evidence tells against the sincerity of this belief. 1 Keywords: bad faith; collective action; integration; segregation; virtue signaling [It] is sentimental and romantic to assume that any education or any example will ever completely destroy the inclination of human nature to seek special advantages at the expense of, or in indifference to, the needs and interests of others. Reinhold Niebuhr Integration is an idea that refuses to die. In Europe, it is a perennial political obsession. Noteworthy in most discussions is how imprecise the notion of 'integration' is, let alone what its demands actually are. Conservatives and liberals alike employ the term to mean different things, though in political discourse it is safe to say that 'integration' is meant to signify a favorable orientation toward the dominant language or religion, educational success, labor market participation, endorsement of mainstream cultural values (e.g., equality between the sexes), and even attitudes and dispositions with respect to various institutional norms. Call this the civic variant of integration, one generally favored by political conservatives. Yet while there always will be some groups that are unduly inward-looking (e.g., Antwerp's Haredi), the evidence will show that worries about segregation of this sort are greatly exaggerated; indeed, the bigger threat is one of social exclusion (Gradstein & Schiff, 2006; Merry, 2005; Spear et al., 2018). But there is another sense in which the term is used. Here we find the belief that integration – for which the minimal prerequisite entails the spatial mixing of persons from different backgrounds – is an instrument for tackling inequality by bringing the less fortunate into contact with the more fortunate; opportunities for mixing, most especially in schools, will grant the former access to the cultural and social capital of the latter. The result will be greater upward mobility for the less fortunate by gaining access to the relevant social networks and resources that the privileged enjoy. In other words, integration is believed to be a catalyst-for-justice. The privileged, for their part, will ostensibly acquire greater tolerance and understanding by virtue of their exposure to how the other – less fortunate – half lives. Call this the paternalist variant of integration, one generally favored by political liberals. Given its (arguably) greater relevance to educational inequality, in this essay I devote most of my attention to this variant. Segregation Integration presupposes segregation. Spatial geographers and demographers tell us that segregation occurs whenever the proportions of two or more populations are not homogenous throughout a defined space. Plant and animals species are therefore usually – but not always – segregated; people, too, in societies throughout the world, are usually – but not always – segregated according to language, cultural difference, religion, nationality, educational background, political allegiance and socioeconomic status. To be sure, none of this means that demographic patterns are fixed. Empirical evidence (Hall & Lee, 2010) shows, for example, that American suburbs are more diverse than ever; recent evidence from England and Wales, too, suggests that ethnic 'mixing' in neighborhoods and schools is increasing rather than decreasing (Harris & Johnston, 2020). Rates of mixed marriages and crosscultural exchanges, too, have everywhere increased. Yet one can acknowledge these demographic developments and still plainly observe that spatial configurations of segregation are everywhere recognizable; school segregation indices in many countries, too, remain consistently high, whether between or within schools (Boterman et al., 2019; Francis & Darrity, 2021; Jamil, 2017; Johnston et al., 2004; Krüger, 2014; Raman & Tan, 2010; Treviño et al., 2018; Windle, 2021). Even where we find 'super-diversity' in neighborhoods and schools, we on_education Journal for Research and Debate _ISSN 2571-7855 _DOI 10.17899/on_ed.2021.11.2 _vol.4_issue # 11 2 still observe patterns of segregation, i.e., keeping to one's own. In other words, segregation is the norm. Not necessarily hostility, just homophily. This is not, however, how most sociologists2 – who tend to focus on its structural features – use the term; nor is it how the concept is understood among the general public. Indeed segregation is such an emotionally freighted idea – not unlike, say, patriarchy – that it simply goes without saying that we should want less of it. I do not dispute the historical and sociological evidence concerning pogroms, caste, Jim Crow, internment, apartheid or indeed any other kind of involuntary segregation whose design was – and in many countries, still is – to contain poor and usually stigmatized minority groups within specific geographic boundaries, thereby depriving them access to crucial resources and opportunities. Redlining in Rotterdam (Aalbers, 2007), the fenced containment and criminalization of Roma in Italy (Sigona, 2011), and 'ghetto planning' in Copenhagen3 each represent contemporary European examples. Yet one can oppose compulsory segregation, as Bernard Boxill (1992, p. 184) has argued, and still not believe that integration is required in all life domains, or even most of the time. Given the value everyone ascribes to voluntary association, most of us can imagine a society in which persons can enjoy a variety of 'segregated experiences' in their private lives – being with others of one's choosing – so long as their loyalties are at least partially orientated toward the dominant culture, or so long as persons 'integrate themselves' in at least one major life domain, such as the labor market or military service. Segregation of this sort describes the copious ways in which persons usually prefer more homogenous company – in the sense of 'people like us' – even if, occasionally, they may enjoy an 'exotic' experience into a segregated enclave of another sort. Such is the allure of foreign travel. Furthermore, one can oppose compulsory segregation and still be honest in one's assessment of the evidence concerning the terms of 'integration' as devised by majority groups and their respective governments, where time and again the aims – if not also the results – have approximated assimilation, and moreover where the burdens for achieving this so-called 'integration' are placed squarely on the backs of the most despised members of society, who – in many times and places – have been forcibly taken from their own communities into hostile environments where their language was forbidden, culture denied, and permanent subordination ensured. These are not realities banished to the dustbin of history, but rather ongoing, daily experiences of trauma and catastrophe for stigmatized minority groups numbering in the tens of millions around the world: the Cree, Rohingya, Sinti, Dalit, Uighur and so on. If those examples seem too far removed or extreme, there are plenty of more pedestrian ones across Europe and around the world (Diop, 2017; Judge, 2014; Li, 2020; Rafferty, 2020; Thijssen et al., 2019; Valfort, 2020). School Choice, Competition and Entitlement Disparity in the ability or opportunity to exercise the freedom of movement is one root of the problem of segregation, prompting some to push for restrictive school choice policies, or quotas. In some European countries, for instance, proposals annually circulate calling for school registration times that would give less privileged parents a chance to enroll in the school of their choice. Yet attempts to restrict parental choice for the privileged generally have had little effect. Not only do parents enjoy the constitutional right to choose an education they think is best, when push comes to shove nothing prevents determined parents from changing their address or navigating the system in other ways advantageous to their interests. Competition in education has become so absurd in many European cities, for instance, that white, middleclass parents frantically place their newborn child on waiting lists for daycare centers, and the same occurs for the more 'desirable' primary schools – desirable, one does not need to be told, by virtue of how visibly white and middle-class the concentration of the school is. Years later, these same parents become panic-stricken at the thought that their child might not make the cut to the secondary school of their choice. Many resort to expensive test coaching to ensure higher test results with the aim of their child attending what they believe to be a 'good' school, which in a country like the Netherlands, everyone continues to unashamedly label a 'white' school. Similar jockeying for position occurs around the world, much of it via shadow education, i.e., private tutoring, and not only on the affluent Pacific Rim – encompassing Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan – but also in places as diverse as India, Egypt and Bangladesh (Bray & Kwo, 2013). Even if 'coerced integration' were politically or legally feasible, this kind of social engineering would do little to impede other structural factors from maintaining or increasing current levels of residential segregation. These include: transportation issues; limited seats available at the most desirable schools; selection criteria at the point of entry that set quotas on the types of pupils to be admitted; grouping and tracking mechanisms inside of schools that – with the teacher's crucial assistance – sort and select pupils in ways often consistent with social class and ethnic/racial background; parental advocacy behaviors that ensure various types of preferential treatment; and peer group effects that may or may not be conducive to academic achievement. Nor can we ignore either the macro-level economic forces related to our global neoliberal regime that exacerbate inequalities and drive competition between schools, gentrification, ghettoization and rural impoverishment, among other segregating social on_education Journal for Research and Debate _ISSN 2571-7855 _DOI 10.17899/on_ed.2021.11.2 _vol.4_issue # 11 3 phenomena. Indeed, given existing levels of residential segregation on all continents – urban, suburban, and rural – it is also not practically possible (and almost always politically impossible) to redraw the lines that determine attendance in ways that would produce more 'integration'. And efforts to mix schools are not even feasible in many cities – from Brooklyn to Berlin to Brisbane – where the school population in many catchment areas either is overwhelmingly middle-class and 'white', or poor and 'non-white'. That is to say, integration – assuming, again, that it requires some degree of spatial mixing – is not even an option. Even when a neighborhood does happen to be mixed, local schools typically are not, as indeed is the case in my own hyper-diverse neighborhood in Amsterdam, where each and every morning the white parents ferry their own children away from the brown and Muslim kids who attend the school immediately behind my building. Similar segregation-producing avoidance occurs elsewhere around the globe. All of this happens, of course, because parents avail themselves of their legal rights to select a school that conforms to their preferences for their own child, preferences that happen to correspond to racial and class homogeneity. Moreover, exercising their choice is in keeping with guarantees to be found in various international treaties and nearly all national constitutions. Yet in opting for a homogeneous school or classroom environment, parents need not overtly base their choices on an eagerness to avoid children unlike their own. If asked, they need only offer the socially acceptable (and often empirically verifiable) reason that their child will have better educational chances at the school they have chosen – very often a school recommended to them by a close friend or colleague. And if school alternatives are not available or local options are restricted, nothing in principle can prevent determined parents from changing residence in order to access a school that satisfies theirs, or their child's, interests. The willingness to relocate on the promise of 'better schools' is not limited to parents of means: families in poverty will often take heroic measures to gain what they perceive to be opportunities for their child's advancement. This is, after all, a primary push factor for immigration. Fanciful Proposals Given the political inexpedience of re-organizing school districts and municipalities, or expecting parents to move, many believe that transporting pupils from segregated to more mixed settings might offer a solution. Whether through transfer programs, magnet schools, open access policies or other desegregation schemes, transportation does get some disadvantaged children redistributed to better schools. Integration advocates often point to the successes of these alternatives, even, as I have already noted, when the school environments into which visible and stigmatized minorities are placed are often inhospitable, and when intractable structural problems persist – structural problems that integration advocates, too, reluctantly concede. But there are many other problems with 'transfers'. First, the traffic is almost exclusively in one direction: disadvantaged children (the few who are permitted to attend without raising the ire of the school administrators or parents concerned about a 'bad element' compromising their school quality) going to higher quality majority schools. Majority-minority schools, meanwhile, remain mostly segregated, but without some of their best pupils, who have taken advantage of the opportunity to attend higher status schools, often far from home and at great emotional cost to themselves. Not a few report feeling isolated, friendless, or in the better cases, simply being the token whose very presence serves as validation for how anti-racist everyone else in the school is. Yet once a school has reached a 'tipping point' of visible 'others, in no time at all most schools will begin sorting the 'disadvantaged' pupils for separate instruction – sometimes deploying inventive and counterintuitive strategies (Saatcioglu & Skrtic, 2019) – or else risk losing their 'most involved' (read: resource-hoarding) parents (Calarco, 2018). Where integration 'successes' actually occur – and, like solar eclipses, they do occur – they are legitimized by the dubious premise, related to the paternalist variant of integration, that what minority pupils need most is access to majority institutions and majority peers. And here we arrive at the second problem with 'transfers', viz., there is powerful evidence to impugn the salvific effects of integration for the stigmatized without a variety of other enabling conditions being present. The preponderance of evidence, which elsewhere I examine in meticulous detail, reveals time and again that those conditions are generally absent (Merry, 2013, 2020). In other words, school integration is not a proxy for justice. The third problem with the transfer idea is the tendency to ignore the habit of segregating among privileged groups, and it is the privileged, after all, whose communities and schools – often deemed 'progressive'4 – are the most segregated of all. It therefore does not really matter which variant of integration one prefers, as the privileged remain the standard bearers. Hence as it concerns the civic variant, there is a strong implicit belief that one already embodies the virtues of 'good citizenship'; it is the 'others' whose ignorance about politics, but also whose cultural and religious attachments – not to mention one's linguistic and class 'deficits' – raise concern. Similarly, as it concerns the paternalist variant, the privileged embrace the comforting fiction that they already possess the requisite social and cultural capital that the 'others' purportedly need, and perhaps even envy. on_education Journal for Research and Debate _ISSN 2571-7855 _DOI 10.17899/on_ed.2021.11.2 _vol.4_issue # 11 4 Virtue Signaling These paternalist sentiments go hand-in-hand with unanimous support for school integration in liberal, welleducated circles. But here is the rub. Parents, administrators, and professors of racial/ethnic or class privilege are likely to accept 'integration' only if there is no perceived cost in terms of the academic opportunities for their own child and others like them. Indeed, it has long been my observation that most white liberals publicly campaign for school integration, while privately acting as if this same inclusion represented a threat to academic 'excellence', that is, as a threat to the quality of their own child's educational opportunity. Thus even as one extols the virtues of 'integration', and even when one is apprised of the excellent reputation of the local school containing all the diversity one could ever want, the most unimpeachable leftist credentials in the world cannot persuade the average privileged parent to send their child to a school in which they believe their child's advantages will be even slightly compromised. A similar phenomenon was noted by George Orwell (1937/1962, p. 143) 90 years ago: "The middle-class I.L.P.'er and the bearded fruit-juice drinker are all for a classless society so long as they see the proletariat through the wrong end of the telescope." To publicly endorse 'integration', then, becomes the beneficent gesture that hesitatingly welcomes pupils who many believe are underprepared and whose presence – in sufficient numbers – might well compromise school quality. And hence the few privileged parents who actually opt for 'integration' – though rarely without first consulting with the school principal to ensure that there either are accelerated tracks or gifted classes – can even be constructed as making a 'sacrifice' because privileged parents have the freedom to choose alternate settings that they feel would better satisfy their child's interests. Parents of means who enroll their child in so-called integrated schools, when they have other choices, even seem to feel that they have thus contributed something important to educational justice, and this belief may be socially reinforced by other parents who share the same conviction. After all, they, too, believe in the importance of having 'more diversity' in their child's education. Accordingly, the unceasing push for school integration might be understood as a way to feel better about oneself and one's choices. This is not to say that privileged parents do not sincerely agonize over inequality or wish to do something about it. Nor does it mean that there are not very real priority conflicts one must confront, including trade-offs that favor partial treatment of one's own children over a political ideal. It does mean, however, that privileged parents – and here we must include a large number of scholars whose work focuses on educational inequality – appear to be particularly susceptible to virtue signaling where school integration is concerned. Whatever anguish one may have about segregation, it rarely suffices to influence the day-to-day decisions most make concerning residence, friendship or choice of school. Even if one's child attends a highly diverse school, beyond the earliest grades the internal tracking system of that school ensures minimal contact with others of different cultural and social class background, and, given the homophily effect on friendships, life outside of school is often just as predictably homogenous. The child's parents, too, devote their social lives to being with similar others, both in terms of social class background and political persuasion. And in the final analysis one's motives are neither here nor there, for homophily invariably produces these outcomes, even if historical injustice and economic inequality cement – and exacerbate – these patterns. Collective Action One response to the unyieldingness of school segregation – or segregation simpliciter – might be to say that there is a problem of 'collective action', whereby the failure to act on one's faith in integration stems not from a disingenuous belief, but rather from the fact that so few others are willing to make the relevant 'sacrifice'. Thus it is not the faith in integration that is the problem, but rather the unavoidable trade-off that comes with having to choose between that which serves one's short term interests (the education of one's own child) versus some greater good (an 'integrated society') that requires buy-in from more people with privilege. But the collective action argument is problematic on multiple levels. First, unlike other common examples of collective action – such as using solar energy or public transportation – many educated parents believe 'integrated schooling' threatens their child's positional advantage, which renders dubious their belief in integration in the first place. Second, as we have seen, the liberal paternalist belief that 'integration' will level the playing field rests both on a deficit view of minority others and their schools, and a corresponding missionary-like attitude concerning what needs to happen to correct it. Moreover, though social desirability bias does not permit these things to be said aloud, the attitudes among the privileged concerning schools with 'too many minorities' insinuate racist beliefs about the children in these schools. Third, the dogged belief that low SES and stigmatized minority children will get a 'boost' from being allowed to attend schools with higher SES children is belied by the myriad facts concerning how school systems around the world are designed to discourage 'integration', let alone equitable treatment, from happening (Bell, 1980, 2005; Carter & Merry, 2021; Darity, 2005; Shavit & Blossfeld, 1993; Van de Werfhorst, 2019).5 In any case, there is abundant evidence to show that on_education Journal for Research and Debate _ISSN 2571-7855 _DOI 10.17899/on_ed.2021.11.2 _vol.4_issue # 11 5 privileged parents game the system to their own child's advantage, no matter how 'integrated' the school is.6 Indeed, privileged parents can always rationalize their behaviour by conveniently invoking a trump: either a constitutional right to choose an education to one's satisfaction, or else a moral right of parental partiality, which permits – and arguably even requires – preferential treatment of one's own child. Importantly, non-privileged parents, too, possess these same prerogatives, including the right to reject an 'integrated' education premised on the soft bigotry of low expectations where one's child is simultaneously viewed as both hapless victim and fortunate beneficiary. Doubtless many readers will be unhappy both with this analysis and with this outcome. But if one wishes to insist on integration no matter what, then it seems to me that one must be willing to repudiate more than historical injustice and structural inequality; one must also repudiate the value of voluntary association, both for oneself and others, including the right to live where one wishes and to socialize as one prefers. One must also reject constitutional rights whose purpose is to maximize liberal pluralism in educational provision both for one's own children and the children of others, which incidentally would entail rejecting not a small number of highly successful majorityminority schools, where de facto segregation has been turned to advantage (e.g., Chenoweth, 2007; Dobbie & Fryer, 2011; Driessen et al., 2016; McGuire & Tokunaga, 2020; Merry, 2013). This also would include a wide variety of tertiary institutions whose purpose is to better serve marginalized groups, e.g., Tribal colleges, Gallaudet University (for the deaf and hard-of-hearing) and historically Black colleges and universities (HCBUs), to name but a few. All of this leaves the ardent supporter of school integration in a quandary, for it is doubtful whether even the most doctrinaire advocate will oppose these rights and liberties, let alone surrender one's own privileges. But then liberal faith-in-school-integration will strike many as hollow indeed. For when rationalization unfailingly supplies one with reasons not to act upon his or her purported beliefs, beliefs that are observably and consistently contradicted by one's behaviour, then the evidence points away from ordinary moral failure, and instead suggests self-deception. And if that is right, then faith-in-integration manifests all of the disingenuous qualities of bad faith. References Aalbers, M. B. (2007). What types of neighbourhoods are redlined? Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 22(2), 177–198. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-007-9074-9 Bell, D. (1980). Brown v. Board of Education and the interest-convergence dilemma. Harvard Law Review, 93, 518–533. https://doi.org/10.2307/1340546 Bell, D. (2005). The unintended lessons in Brown v. Board of Education. NYLS Law Review, 49(4), 1053–1067. Boterman, W., Musterd, S., Pacchi, C., & Ranchi, C. (2019). 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American Journal of Education, 126(1), 65–99. https://doi.org/10.1086/705500 Windle, J. (2021). School segregation in Rio de Janeiro: Geographical, racial and historical dimensions of a centre-periphery dynamic. Comparative Education. [Online publication.] https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2021.1894868 Recommended Citation Merry, M. (2021). Is faith in school integration bad faith? On Education. Journal for Research and Debate, 4(11). https://doi.org/10.17899/on_ed.2021.11.2 About the Author Michael S. Merry is professor of philosophy in the department of Child Development and Education at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. 1 A different version of this essay was published earlier this year under the title 'The Permanence of Segregation." Available at: https://quillette.com/2021/04/16/the-permanence-of-segregation/ 2 The literature is vast, but for a recent example see Korver-Glenn (2021). 3 https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/1/15/denmarks-ghetto-plan-and-the-communities-it-targets 4 In Europe these are often labeled 'free schools', e.g., Dalton, Jenaplan, Montessori and Steiner. 5 In several European countries, including Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands, selection begins at a very early age, channeling children into rigid higher and lower secondary school tracks; these are highly segmented by design and segregated by both class and ethnicity/race. For recent evidence from the Netherlands, see Merry & Boterman (2020). In the United States, and using a stratification economics model, Diette et al. (2021) find that Blacks face more discrimination in racially-balanced schools than if they attend either predominately black or predominately white schools. Their study confirms DuBois' (1935) own hypothesis, which states that white peers, "as a result of their ability to influence the distribution of resources and opportunities within a school and their desire for preferred educational and economic outcomes, have a negative effect on educational attainment of black students" (2021, p. 170). 6 The literature, again, is immense, but for recent evidence from Germany see: Dumont et al. (2019).