Blade Runner: A Post Modern Dystopia?

Blade Runner: A Post Modern Dystopia? Utopias and Dystopias To what extent can Blade Runner be considered to be a prime example of a post-modern dystopia? What is Dystopia? First to define dystopia, you need to know what is utopia. In 1551 Thomas More published the first English description of a fiction based on the ideal society with economic stability and harmonious political system. Mores Utopia was that of a society where no one owned property citizens simply had the right to move wherever they wanted, everyone was to wear the same clothes there was no jealousy or envy of ones social status or wealth. No one lived in poverty, there was no hunger or violence to More and many it was the ideal world. The word Utopia comes from the Greek meaning no place and good place in Latin. Interestingly Mores utopia had slaved labour along with intense social control limiting freedom for individuals. So, what is dystopia and dystopian fiction? Dystopias are the complete opposite of utopia, with societies living imperfect, with extreme surveillance, social control, propaganda and paranoia. The term dystopia first came around in the nineteenth century by English philosopher John Stewart Mill in 1868. But it wasnt until the twentieth century and after world war two that the term became popular in novels and films. Dystopian fiction focuses on political and cultural issues George Orwells 1984 one of the most iconic dystopian novels write after world war two in 1949. This was a time of a totalitarian society such as the Nazi Germany and Soviet Union, Orwell implemented the thought police and big brother gaining complete control over citizens and their thoughts. The frightening element of dystopias is they are almost always relevant to current world affairs highlighting the dangers of what could happen given the circumstances. Dystopian fiction always portrays cultural and political sources such as; totalitarian, growing awarene ss of environmental damage, technology rapidly enhancing, surveillance, television, human engineering. Blade Runner (1982) The highly influential bleak dystopian view on the future the film Blade Runner was realised in 1982 it became one of the most popular dystopian science fiction films, it is based on a 1968 science fiction novel Do Androids dream of electric sheep? by Phillip K. Dick. Blade Runner displays a post-apocalyptic setting after a nuclear war with its focus on the dystopian urban environment. Blade Runner is interlinked with cyberpunk, displaying environmental collapse and technological evolution. The feel is claustrophobic throughout the film its enclosed dark, rainy and gloomy, the multicultural streets are heavily dominated by the Asian culture portraying a scene underclass. Everyone who could afford to the rich have gone to live off world with the rest left to get by economically less fortunate. Most of the films animals are extinct or endangered due to radiation, only the rich can afford to have animals. The plot focuses on the protagonist Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter with the task of eliminating six nexus androids, the androids Rick has to dismiss are almost identical to humans. It is considered to be a neo-noir film with its use of Deckard being antihero, the crime setting and also Rachel the femme fatale. The future of Los Angeles scene of decay and decline, the coming to the end of humanity with synthetic people that feel human striving for an extension to their lifespan. The film also includes aspects of modern urbanisation, globalisation and bio-engineering. Blade Runner didnt do particularly well at the box office on its first release in 1982, but has since become a huge critical success as a classic dystopian science fiction. There is a range of literature on Blade Runner in books and on websites, it is often highlighted as a postmodern film. In the Original Blade Runner, the director realised the film with a noir voice-over with futuristic, dystopian images where is time manipulated as a 1950s film displaced into the future although the shadows and constant rain fit in with the film-noir style. Blade Runner wants the audience to believe it is set in 2019, although evidence suggests its in the past,ÂÂ   with eighties clothes, music and haircuts. The questions the film asks is what is the meaning of humanity in the postmodern age, when the distinction between human and machine is unclear. Can emotions be programmed or humanity manufactured, these are the same questions postmodern philosophers ask; how we come to terms with the world when the image overrides the individual. Blade Runners Los Angeles has been compared to a postmodern city with its huge advertising promoting off world colony with the idea that the rich have fled to a better equivalent. Postmodernism is a period in cultural history, just as romanticism was. Modern culture, modernism in the early twentieth century this was a very powerful movement, before the first world war there was the idea that technology was bringing a better future after the first world war this idea collapsed technology made weapons for war especially during the holocaust the idea was that technology is not the best way to the perfect world. Postmodern culture is typically defined by characteristics; Technology, In particular technological development in relation to genetics, nuclear power and all aspects of information technology. Post modernism is associated with dominant emotions in postmodern cinema, literature and art, there are certain recurrent emotions such as paranoia. There is a sense of disorientation, alienation, disconnect a sense of being in outer space. Characters are emotional cripples, with no authentic emotions, no real feeling, artificial, fake postmodern culture explores the idea of artificial human engineering as more desirable than the real natural being. Film noir has a very strong influenced throughout the film, the constant rain, darkness, shadows and crime that being said the film also interoperates textual varieties a mixture of genres; science fiction, bioengineering, cyber-punk fiction and 1940s noir. Time travel is a big characteristic, travelling back and forwards in time and memory distortion. Post humanism the idea that human beings are technological enhanced and improved these characteristics can be found in Blade Runner. One of the defining movements of post modernism is the hope for a better future, a utopia, that fails and leaves you with a deep sense of pessimism of disorientation, a sense of deep uncertainty. Critics argue whether Blade Runner is a prime example of a postmodern film, Baudrillard states that Another film often cited as postmodern is Ridley Scotts Blade Runner (1982), in which science, technology and progress are all questioned and shown in some way to have failed. The world in Blade Runner is polluted by industry and overcrowding: only the rich escape to the off-worlds. One of the key themes of the film is the blurring of the differences between the real and the artificial, between the humans and the replicants. Increasingly it is no longer possible to be clear about what it means to be human. Nick Lacey, argues that Blade Runner isnt in fact postmodern and that director Ridley Scott shied away from the postmodern view of the world.ÂÂ   Blade Runner a production of mainstream cinema only films with an independent sensibility are able to fully represent the disturbing post human this is because the ideals of romantic love are central to patriarchal societys needs. (Lacey 2005) Lacey believes Blade Runner fails to portray a postmodern view of the human condition with the films scenes of the Tyrell buildings then shots of filthy streets below, it exposes the anger towards the upper class the better off citizens able to live off world. With Blade Runner being set in 2019, but strong evidence of the past is typical of postmodern films warning the audience the dangers of the future. Blade Runner explores future ideas where the fake becomes real, cars fly, scientists plant memories into machines etc. the examples of the fake becoming real and dangerous replicants escaping to earth portray post modernism into the future. Some themes in Blade Runner adhere to the orthodox dystopian cinema genre, the representation of romance conforms to gender stereotypes. Blade Runner uses the symbol of an owl as women, the role of women in the film are played by three lead females. The women are exposed as being products that can be sold or bought, a product, model of pleasure. Douglass E. Williams notes how the noir film elements in Blade Runner follow the same gender hierarchies of the 1940s distinguishing females into two categories, one sexual and treacherous, the other chaste and good. (Williams, 1988 pg390) its an example of modernity transferred into post modernity on the description of women. Blade Runner highlights a message that the future is hopeless. Marking a new age showing its dystopian end postmodernism flows throughout the film the gloomy dark rain and moody atmosphere. Rapidly enhanced technology but appears outdated. The film projects what chaos can be instilled when people reject the modern period. It displays the future as well as holding onto the past creating post industrialism. Begley Varun, wrote an academic journal on Blade Runner as a postmodern, Varun writes of evident criticism in Blade Runner, particularly its problematic encounter with postmodernism.ÂÂ   In hindsight, this encounter testifies to fundamental ambiguities in the postmodern enterprise, ambiguities with significant social and political implications. I will argue that postmodern accounts of Blade Runner depend on a series of strategic exclusions. Such accounts effectively displace not only modernist readings of the film, but also questions of narration, genre, popularity, and the specificity of the film medium. Lost amid the theoretical battlefield of the modern and postmodern are the films material and ideological contexts; Blade Runners cultural intelligibility is blurred by the modern/ postmodern exchange. This critical impasse underscores the troubled politics of postmodernism as if confronts commercial narrative and other forms of popular culture. Roughly speaking, critical responses to Blade Runner fall on either side of a modern/postmodern line. Postmodernist accounts diametrically oppose reading strategies dependant on conventional aesthetic notions (narrative, character, structure, reference, metaphor, symbol, etc.) that collectively we might term modernist. These two approaches entail radically different positions on the nature and function of interpretation. Modernist readings presuppose this films structural and semiotic depth, in stark contrast to the postmodernist emphasis on its surfaces. Some modernist interpretations discern utopian fantasies of redemption and transcendence embedded in the films apocalyptic veneer, A postmodernist approach, by contrast, emphasises the films resistance to the interpretive impulse, its voiding of symbolic, utopian and narrative meaning. The depthless postmodern surface incorporates fragments of once-meaningful codes and conventions that are now blankly cited without context or refere nt. The result is not a coherent aesthetic structure but an opaque and resistant pastiche. (B. Varun 2004) In Blade Runner, the postmodern aesthetic in the plots set design, effects, dialogue and language have been explored by many theorists. Reference List Begley,V (2004) Academic Journal Article Literature/Film Quarterly Blade Runner and the Postmodern: A Reconsideration https://www.questia.com/libary/journal/1p3-699892921/blade-runner-and-the-postmodern-a-reconsideration

Explain and assess Haidt’s ‘moral foundations’ theory

Introduction This essay will explain and assess Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), which was originally developed by Haidt, and which he has since worked on with a number of collaborators. The first part of this essay will outline the philosophical background of the theory, especially its relationship to Continental rationalism and British empiricism. This will be followed by an explanation and description of Haidt’s Social Intuitionist Model (SIM), which provides the essential mechanism by which MFT functions. Next will come an unpacking and explanation of the general claims of MFT, and the specific foundations it postulates. Finally, there will be an assessment of some of the various critiques of the theory, during which its strengths and weaknesses will be considered. It will be concluded that MFT is a strong theory on the whole, which builds on firm philosophical and scientific foundations and provides good descriptive representation of moral systems. MFT rejects the rationalist notion th at morality can be accessed by a priori reason. Put simply, there are four main justifications for this: (1) there are two cognitive processes that occur in humans – reasoning and intuition – the former of which has been overemphasized; (2) reasoning is frequently motivated by other concerns; (3) the reasoning process tends to construct post hoc justifications, even though we experience the illusion of objective reasoning; and (4) moral action covaries with moral emotion more frequently than with moral reasoning. This is the heritage of Continental philosophy, whose champions were figures such as Descartes and Kant. The philosophical forerunners to MFT were the British empiricist philosophers, especially Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith. These men believed, to quote Hume, ‘that Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.’ In philosophy, this position now falls with in the school of intuitionism. This ‘refers to the view that there are moral truths and that when people grasp these truths they do so not by a process of ratiocination and reflection but rather by a process more akin to perception.’ The social element comes in because intuition occurs in relation to other people. As Haidt puts it, ‘when faced with a social demand for a verbal justification, one becomes a lawyer trying to build a case rather than a judge searching for the truth’. Based on this intellectual heritage, Haidt developed the ‘Social Intuitionist Model’ (SIM). It is important to explain this properly because the ‘SIM is the prequel to MFT’, and provides the mechanism by which the latter works. There are a series of links in the SIM that explain how people relate to moral problems. The first is the intuitive judgement link. ‘The model proposes that moral judgments appear in consciousness automatically and effortlessl y as the result of moral intuitions’. The second is post hoc reasoning. This entails moral reasoning (rather than judgement), which is an ‘effortful’ process in which individuals search for support for an existing, intuitive moral judgement. Research has revealed that ‘everyday reasoning is heavily marred by the biased search only for reasons that support one’s already-stated hypothesis.’ The third is the reasoned persuasion link. This is the process by which the individual verbalises their reasoning in an attempt to persuade others of the validity of their already-made position. This reasoning can sometimes affect the views of others, but this rarely happens because moral judgements are not based on logical arguments but on intuition. It has been hypothesised that persuasion, when it occurs, is effective because it elicits new intuitive judgements in the listener. The importance of using affective persuasion to change affectively based attitu des has been demonstrated by Edwards and von Hippel. The fourth is the social persuasion link. Due to the fact that people are so receptive to the development of group norms, ‘the mere fact that friends, allies, and acquaintances have made a moral judgment exerts a direct influence on others, even if no reasoned persuasion is used’. This may indicate only outward conformity on occasion, but researchers have shown that private judgements can often be directly influenced by the views of others. There are two additional links that are hypothesised. One is the ‘reasoned judgment link’ by which people may at times reason their way to a judgment by sheer force of logic, overriding their initial intuition’. This tends to occur, however, when the ‘initial intuition is weak and processing capacity is high’. In other cases, it frequently leads to a kind of dualist way of thinking, where reasoned judgment is revealed verbally but the intuition cont inues to operate. Interestingly, on this point MFT diverges from the moral theory of Hume and the argument from pure intuition. If this link does exists, there is no explanation of how one can reason their way to a set of premises or axioms that can be used to support logic argument – unless, of course, they reason in a circle. The other link is the ‘private reflection link’, through which moral reasoning can have an indirect causal effect on moral judgement by triggering a new intuition. This is said to be why role-taking is so effective in creating new moral judgments. As Haidt puts it, ‘Simply by putting oneself into the shoes of another person, one may instantly feel pain, sympathy, or other vicarious emotional responses.’ MFT makes several broad claims, which will be presented here in no particular order. Firstly, it rejects the assumption of monism that all moral systems are ultimately reducible to a single goal or principle, most commonly gene ralised as forms of ‘justice’, ‘pleasure’ or ‘happiness’. Instead, it is pluralist and contends that there are numerous (but finite) basic values or virtues. As Isaiah Berlin put it, ‘there is a plurality of ideals, as there is a plurality of cultures and of temperaments.’ This is derived from the fact that it is heavily influenced by evolutionary biology, especially the concepts of kin selection and reciprocal altruism. It also builds on more recent work by de Waal (1996), Ridley (1996), among others. As there are a multitude of adaptive challenges faced by human beings, it seems likely that there are also many different mental tools fitted for a variety of purposes. The second claim is intuitionism, which has already been discussed at some length. To reiterate briefly, it is the assertion that ‘moral judgments, like other evaluative judgments, tend to happen quickly’, without any considerable regard for reasoning or drawn out evaluation. This aspect is encapsulated by Haidt’s (2001) SIM. Moral reasoning (as opposed to moral judgment) is generally utilised for strategic purposes in order to ‘to explain, defend and justify our intuitive moral reactions to others’. The third claim is nativism, which is the belief that there is a set of innate predispositions within human beings (‘innate’ in this case means ‘organized in advance of experience’). These are determined by genetic inheritance, but the ‘first draft’ of moral development is malleable and is changed during childhood and to an extent even during adulthood. Graham et al. employ the metaphor of writing a book, distinguishing between nature’s ‘first draft’ and the ‘editing process’ that begins with experience. Morality, therefore, ‘is innate and highly dependent on environmental influences’. The belief that nature has installed a kind of à ¢â‚¬Ëœpreparedness’ in certain species, one of which is humans, is suggested by studies of rhesus monkeys conducted by Mineka and Cook (1988). Graham et al. (2012) ‘think of this innate organization as being implemented by sets of related modules which work together to guide and constrain responses to each particular problem.’ The final claim is that morality is influenced by cultural learning. This takes places through a set of ‘learning modules’, which are innate and can be used to build on one’s genetic inheritance. For example, the tendency to bow in deference or respect is common to many cultures, but this is adapted to locally-specific cultural contexts and by ‘the time a Hindu girl reaches adulthood, she will have developed culturally-specific knowledge that makes her automatically initiate bowing movements when she encounters, say, a respected politician for the first time.’ In an American household, however, this foundati on might be dropped early on. Despite both girls starting off with the ‘same sets of universal learning modules†¦.the universal (and incomplete) first draft of the moral mind gets filled in and revised so that the child can successfully navigate the moral â€Å"matrix† he or she actually experiences.’ Different societies use different foundations to build their moralities, and some use all of them. MFT, therefore, is an intuitionist theory contending that human moral systems are the combination of innate predispositions and cultural learning. Additionally, judgements are made rapidly on the basis of a plurality of in-built mechanisms, which have been ‘hardwired’ into humans over the course of our species’ evolution. The rest of this essay will present, explain, and assess, in no particular order, the specific foundations postulated by MFT. There are supposedly five or six empirically supported ‘foundations’ for moral judgemen ts, but MFT allows for others being discovered in the future. The first is the care/harm foundation. Human offspring ‘are unusually dependent, and for an unusually long time’ and the intuitive reactions of females have been ‘optimized to detect signs of suffering, distress, or neediness’ for the purpose of raising more offspring. ‘The original triggers of the Care/harm foundation are ‘visual and auditory signs of suffering, distress, or neediness expressed by one’s own child’, but they can be activated by other children, baby animals, stuffed toys with childlike qualities, or descriptions of suffering. This foundation leads to the creation of terms such as ‘kind’ and ‘cruel’, which are valued differently by different cultures (e.g., classical Sparta vs. Buddhist societies). The second is the fairness/cheating foundation. Social animals face non-zero-sum games in which it is advantageous to cooperate. Creat ures ‘whose minds are organized in advance of experience to be highly sensitive to evidence of cheating and cooperation, and to react with emotions that compel them to play â€Å"tit for tat†, had an advantage over those who had to figure out their next move using their general intelligence.’ Social partners with reputations for certain types of behaviour are therefore labelled with words such as ‘fair’, ‘just’, and ‘trustworthy’. The third is the loyalty/betrayal foundation. It was advantageous for our ancestors to form cohesive groups when competing for territory and resources. This same behaviour can be seen in troops of chimpanzees. So humans have developed an innate predisposition to form groups. This manifests today in numerous areas, from nationalism to sports and brand loyalty. The fourth is the authority/subversion foundation. Dominance hierarchies are common among many primates, and the ability to recognise and rea ct by forming strategic relationships yielded an evolutionary advantage. Modules of the human mind in this foundation explain why we submit to many useful but constraining societal structures, such as the police force and political leaders. The varied development of this foundation explains why different societies (modern-day China vs. America) or groups (social conservatives vs. liberals) value authority in different ways. The fifth is the sanctity/degradation foundation. Human evolution carried adaptive challenges, such as moving from tree-based to ground-based living, living in larger, denser groups, and eating more meat, some of which was scavenged. This exposed us to a greater number of pathogens and parasites, and we therefore developed a pre-emptory, in-built sensitivity to factors other than the ‘sensory properties of potential foods, friends, and mates.’ ‘Disgust and the behavioral immune system have come to undergird a variety of moral reactions, e.g., t o immigrants and sexual deviants’ There are numerous criticisms of MFT, most of which are directed at one of the four main claims undergirding it: nativism, plurality, cultural learning, and intuitionism. One problem with nativism, for example, is that it is difficult to determine the extent to which the mind is ‘hardwired’. As Graham et al., put it: ‘opinions range widely from minimalist positions, which say that there is hardly any writing on the â€Å"first draft† of the mind, to maximalist positions such as massive modularity’ Indeed, the ambiguity here has led some to criticise MFT, and nativism in general, on the grounds that it lacks empirical neuroscientific evidence for the existence of modules. However, this is not reasonable at present. Given that the field is yet to ‘find a set of genes that, collectively, explains 5% of the variance in how tall people are what chance is there that anyone will find a set of genes that code fo r mental modules (such as loyalty or sanctity) whose expression is far more subject to cultural influence than is height?’ There is also considerable criticism of the emphasis MFT places on intuitionism. For example, some argue ‘that that intuition and reasoning are best seen as partners in a dance, in which either partner can lead and the other will follow.’ However, whatever the prominent role of reason, this seems misleading at the very least. As has been referenced already in this essay, and as Hume showed in his Treatise, it is not clear how reason can establish the first principles from which logical argument follows. Moral axioms cannot be given a logical foundation, and to the extent that they exist in nature and are ‘hardwired’, they cannot be expressed. Therefore, they are beyond realm of reason by their very nature. To say that reasoning can lead when it is necessarily guided by intuitive first principles is therefore unsupportable. Intere sting critiques come from the monists, who disagree with the pluralism hypothesis. Gray et al. believe that the care/harm foundation is the only one that is truly foundational. Graham et al. (2012) call this Procrustean, citing the fact that certain moral judgements, such as disgust, appear not to be accounted for by the care/harm foundation. Their confidence in this matter, however, is arguably misplaced. Disgust over, say, a dirty environment could be seen as a cause of harm. Perhaps those creatures with a predisposition to avoid unclean environments encountered fewer pathogens, for example, or were at less risk of being exposed to small but dangerous creatures such as spiders and snakes. Clearly, emotions, such as disgust, can potentially be explained by the care/harm foundation. The difficulty here arises in attempting to make bold comment about the way our ancestors perceived the links between various phenomena and their effects. While it is possible to argue that matters of di sgust have little to do with harm, perhaps there is link that has not yet been discovered. Some critics suggest that there should also be an oppression/liberty foundation. This is the potential sixth foundation being worked on by Haidt. Others point to the fact that MFT might be missing a waste/inefficiency foundation. These critiques focus on the particular pluralisms chosen for MFT. This is really a matter of fine-tuning, rather than any fundamental. This essay has sought to explain and assess Haidt’s MTF. It has emerged that its central claims are extremely well-founded. The SIM has strong roots that date back to the empirical tradition in Britain and which still have not been successfully overturned. With the developments in psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology, both intuitionism and nativism rest on firm foundations. There are philosophical and other objections that can be targeted at the pluralism element of MFT. This is not to say that it is incorrect but rather that the confidence with which the claim is made is not justified. This essay has not sought to address deontological critiques of the MFT. There are those who would argue that MFT is asking the wrong questions, namely what morality is rather than what it should be. However, given that this problem was so adequately dealt with by Hume in his Treatise, it seems appropriate that scholars building on his legacy should develop a descriptive moral theory instead. Bibliography Berlin, Isaiah, ‘My intellectual path’ in H. Hardy (ed.), The Power of Ideas 1-23, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001 Bruner, Jerome, The process of education, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960 Davis, Jody L.., & Rusbult, Caryl, E. ‘Attitude alignment in close relationships’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81 (2001), pp. 65-84 Edwards, Kari., & von Hippel, William, ‘Hearts and minds: The priority of affective versus cognitive factors in person perception’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21 (1995), pp. 996-1011. Graham, Jesse, Haidt, Jonathan, Koleva, Sena., Motyl, Matt., Iyer, Ravi, Wojcik, Sean P. and Ditto, Peter. H, ‘Moral Foundations Theory: The Pragmatic Validity of Moral Pluralism’, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (2012) Gray, Kurt, Young, Liana, and Waytz, Adam, ‘Mind perception is the essence of morality’, Psychological Inquiry, 23, (2012), pp. 101-124 Greenwald, Anthony. G., and Banaji, Mahzarin. R, ‘Implicit social cognition’, Psychological Review, 102, (1995), pp. 4-27 Haidt, Jonathan, The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. New York: Pantheon, 2012 Haidt, Jonathan, ‘The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment’, Psychological Review, Vol. 108. No. 4 (2001), pp. 814-834 Joyce, Richard, The Evolution of Morality, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2005 Mineka, Susan, & Cook, M., ‘Social learning and the acquisition of snake fear in monkeys’, in Thomas. R. Zentall & John. B. G. Galef (Eds.), Social learning: Psychological and biological perspectives (pp. 51-74). Hillsdale, N. J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1988 Narvaez, Darcia, ‘Moral complexity: The fatal attraction of truthiness and the importance of mature moral functioning’, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5 (2010), pp. 163-181 Perkins, David. N., Farady, Mike., & Bushey, B., ‘Everyday reasoning and the roots of intelligence’ in Voss, James F., Perkins, David N., and J. W. Segal (Eds.), Informal reasoning and education (pp. 83-105). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1991 Skitka, Linda J. ‘The psychological foundations of moral conviction†, in Wright, Jennifer and Sarkissian Ryan H (eds) Advances in Moral Psychology (pp.267-281), Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2010 [Accessed 09/03/2014] http://tigger.uic.edu/~lskitka/Foundations.pdf Suhler, Christopher. L., & Churchland, Patricia, ‘Can innate, modular â€Å"foundations† explain moralityChallenges for Haidt’s moral foundations theory’, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23(9) (2011), pp. 2103-2116 Williams, Bernard, ‘Rationalism’ in P. Edwards (Ed.) The encyclopedia of philosophy (Vols. 7-8, pp. 69-75) New York: Macmillan, 1967

Mis Case Study - 5027 Words

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The Dollar Gap And The Cold War - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 3 Words: 956 Downloads: 9 Date added: 2019/04/04 Category History Essay Level High school Tags: Cold War Essay War Essay Did you like this example? While America did not like Communism from an ideological standpoint and they threat of Soviet atomic nukes played a role in leading to the Cold War. The dollar gap played a much bigger role in the Cold War because the Soviet Union would gain more power if the European economies did not improve. America needed Europe to trade with them to keep their capitalist economy going, and both America and the Soviet Union needed Europe to support their economic plans post World War II. With America promoting capitalism and needing Europe to participate in trades to make their economy work. If the American plan to promote European economies through capitalist ideological plans did not work, there would be a good chance that European countries turn to Communist countries to save themselves. Economic stagnation in Europe might strengthen Communist parties and motivate European governments to form closer ties with the Soviet Union (Kershaw, 2018. Lecture). If the European countries turned away from Americas economic plans and became cooperative to the Soviet Unions economic plan, this would most likely result in cutting off trades with America. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "The Dollar Gap And The Cold War" essay for you Create order During World War II Americas economy was booming. The war raised demand for US exports from $1.6 billion in 1932 to $12.8 billion in 1943 and $14.3 billion in 1944 (Kernshaw, 2018. Lecture). The war also lifted a lot of people in the United States out of unemployment, War industries and the war itself absorbed large number of unemployed workers into either industry or military service (Kernshaw, 2018). However, while America was becoming more assure of a victory for the allies, growing concerns of industries being over-built for what was needed during peacetime. Lowering production would have resulted in mass unemployment, America needed a plan for post-World War II that could serve Americas ability to mass produce and keep their employment levels high. To make sure the United States economy did not slip back into where it was before World War II, the great depression era, Europe needed to buy American products to match the production that the U.S. would be producing. With a fear of going back to economic depression Americas plan was to use foreign aid to seek trade and reforming the world economy to fit the United States needs to achieve economic prosperity (Kolko). The American government plan to give money to countries who did not have a lot of production or money to buy American goods and this plan was called The Marshall plan. Free trade is the basis of capitalism, there must be an exchange of free trade between parties to make the economy work. Having outside entities to purchase American goods that would be just surplus if trade only remained inside the United States was very important to the post World War II economic plans. Americas plan requires that they are at the head of reforming the worlds economy, and they felt that the Soviets as well as communism was a threat to their plan. A Soviet rise to power would put Americas plans of running the world economy at risk. The Soviets saw that America wanted to control the world economy and since Soviets are not capitalists they do not fit into this world economy. A Soviet ambassador said while analyzing the United States policy goals for Post World War II, The foreign policy of the United States, which reflects the imperialist tendencies of American monopolistic capital, is characterized in the post-war period by a striving for world supremacy (Novikov, 1946). The Soviets viewed the United States post-war actions as a plan for world domination through economic policies. Another factor leading to the Cold War was the death of United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Stalin reportedly wrote that he hoped nothing would happen to Roosevelt because they would never do business with somebody like Roosevelt again (Kernshaw, 2018. Lecture). Roosevelts health was declining during World War II so Stalin was obviously worried about him no longer being president and that the person who took over would not be as friendly to Stalins ideas. If Roosevelt had not died, he was much better at dealing with Stalin, even with the differences between the Soviets and United States the Cold War could have been prevented. There was also a possible threat of atomic nuclear war from the Soviets which raised tensions between them and the United States. The U.S. wanted to seek a policy with the U.N. that any country developing nuclear weapons and not submitting to the UN for effective international control is committing an act of war and that by creating this policy would gain the moral support of the world and be able to lead the free world against the soviets (Acheson A Question of Preventive War, Pg. 188-189). This did not play as big of a role as the dollar gap, because the track record for the Soviets not taking risks when it came to war. They were not going to go into warfare with the United States because the risk involved, and it would turn other countries especially in Europe against them. In conclusion, the dollar gap played a significant role in leading to the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. America needed world cooperation into capitalism to make the economic plans work, and the soviets were not pleased and saw it as trying to dominate with economic policy. The passing of then president Franklin D. Roosevelt was also a factor leading to the cold war, as these policies could have been dealt with and better accepted from the Soviets had Roosevelt still been involved. The nuclear threat was not a big factor, as a nuclear war or open warfare would have made dealings with the rest of Europe very difficult for the Soviets.