March 30, 2010
Phillip Blond, Communist?
I really ought to leave the Red Tory itch alone. But then, Phillip Blond has launced The Miserabilist Manifesto his new book.
Sunder Katwala has helpfully reproduced the opening paragraph at Next Left. Hold on to your hats (and your tears):
“Something is seriously wrong with Britain. This is an intuition that everybody, whatever their politics, shares. But what is this malaise from which we suffer? We all know the symptoms: increasing fear, lack of trust and abundance of suspicion, long-term increase in violent crime, loneliness, recession, depression, private and public debt, family breakdown, divorce, infidelity, bureaucratic and unresponsive public services, dirty hospitals, powerlessness, the rise of racism, excessive paperwork, longer and longer working hours, children who have no parents, concentrated and seemingly immovable poverty, the permanence of inequality, teenagers with knives, teenagers being knifed, the decline of politeness, aggressive youths, the erosion of our civil liberties and the increase of obsessive surveillance, public authoritarianism, private libertarianism, general pointlessness, political cynicism and a pervading lack of daily joy.”
It’s enough to make you curl up in a little ball and cry. Fortunately Sunder has fact-checked a whole bunch of these claims. They turn out to be complete nonsense. Racism is falling, so are working hours, poverty is becoming less entrenched, social trust has grown higher, and violent crime has fallen.
But even without comparing Blond Britain to the country we actually live in, there’s a quick-fire way to work out whether Blond is telling us anything of substance: the Universal Jibberish Appropriation Test.
It’s simple: we take a piece of text – preferably some political rhetoric – and see whether it could be appropriated by a radically different political outlook. We all know that Blond’s philosophy is based on the wikipedia entry for After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre. But can his words be put to use by a radically different political philosophy?
Let’s find out.
“Something is seriously wrong with Britain. This is an intuition that everybody, whatever their politics, shares. But what is this malaise from which we suffer?” – Comrades, it is the capitalist oppression of the bourgeoisie, pitting the workers against capitalists! Creating irreducible tensions in our society as we move to the last phase of capitalism before the revolution inevitably delivers us to communism!
“We all know the symptoms:” – Though some would attempt to deny them, to protect the privileges of the bourgeoise pigs!
“increasing fear, lack of trust and abundance of suspicion, long-term increase in violent crime, loneliness, recession, depression, private and public debt,” – The hallmarks of capitalism in its death throes, comrades! As Marx probably said, the capitalist will make and sell you the rope you hang him with!
“family breakdown, divorce, infidelity” – corruptions of the bourgeoise morality in its most obvious manifestation!
“bureaucratic and unresponsive public services, dirty hospitals, powerlessness, the rise of racism, excessive paperwork, longer and longer working hours,” – the inevitable outcomes of capitalist production as its wasteful inefficiencies push society towards inevitable revolution!
“children who have no parents” – the unnatural and retrograde order of the bourgeoisie, bringing forth innocent children from the bowls of the earth itself to labour in their factories for profit!
“concentrated and seemingly immovable poverty, the permanence of inequality,” – yes, capitalism in crisis, etc.
“teenagers with knives, teenagers being knifed, the decline of politeness, aggressive youths” – OK. Corrosion of bourgeoise morality. We’ve done this too.
“the erosion of our civil liberties and the increase of obsessive surveillance, public authoritarianism” – civil liberties and an obsession with being surveyed – the hallmarks of the end of the bourgeoise liberal conception of “rights”! In communist society, rights will no longer be necessary as the new modes of production ensure new structures of society doing away with the atomistic individualism of liberalism! Public authoritarianism by the capitalist state will cease, as production is controlled by the proletariat and the state withers away after a period of revolutionary dictatorship!
“private libertarianism” – the directionless drift of the bourgeoise morality, presumably leading to – y’know – the gays and lesbians and people with facial piercings and other yucky stuff. Once production becomes collective, these things will cease!
“general pointlessness, political cynicism and a pervading lack of daily joy.” – Under communism, Pointfulness, Enthusiasm and Daily Joy for everybody!
–
When your political rhetoric can be straightforwardly appropriated by a poorly read student communist, albeit an irritating and imaginary one, this indicates that you’re not saying much of substance. That you’re just babbling untruths and trying to make everyone feel miserable – presumably so they’ll vote Tory. Which is exactly what will cheer them up when the axe starts to fall and all the things Blond erroneously claims have been happening actually will start to happen.
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(Apologies to intelligent Marxists)
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UPDATE: The Guardian has an OpEd on/review of Red Tory. Get this:
‘But what will infuriate many on the left is that he pins as much blame on the welfare state set up by “a middle-class elite partly to relieve poverty but also to deprive the poor of their habits of autonomous organisation”. It was the welfare state that destroyed “vivid communal life of the urbanised working class”. Instead of providing a safety net, it became a ceiling, trapping the working class in a benefits culture. And Blond takes the argument further by accusing the 60s sexual revolution of destroying working-class family life.’
Whisper it quietly, but I’m part of that middle class elite. I sit up late at night devising ways to deprive the poor of their autonomous organisation. Why? Because I’m a cultural relativst, of course.
Ed said,
March 30, 2010 at 10:23 am
I’ll admit that I don’t know much about the new government ‘research excellence framework’ for university’s but I worry that this is the sort of shite political theory (if we can call it that) that will have most “impact” on the outside world.
Disinflation, narrow banking, stuff « Freethinking Economist said,
March 30, 2010 at 10:46 am
[...] cleverly compares Blond to a Communist. He apologises to intelligent Marxists. Now, I think they are all intelligent, Marxists. Just [...]
Paul Sagar said,
March 30, 2010 at 11:07 am
Ed, that’s a very good point.
Maybe we should send copies of “Red Tory” to the RAE idiots with a note saying “Bask in the vision of your nightmare future.”
Tom said,
March 30, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Looking over Blond’s essay in Prospect (which seems to have dropped off the web, but is still available here in the Google cache) there are some fairly substantive ideas. I count:
1) Turn the Post Office into a “local bank”.
2) The creation of “local investment trusts”.
3) The devolution of government procurement.
4) Restore capital to labour.
5) A “considered rejection of social mobility, meritocracy and the statist and neoliberal language of opportunity, education and choice.”
6) A rejection of “big business” by the Conservatives.
I actually agree with him on 5). The complement of meritocracy is always going to be the belief that if you’re not at the top then you don’t have any merit.
As to everything else I don’t agree that there *is* some kind of spiritual crisis in Britain today, so I find it hard to support “radical localism”[1] as a potential solution if I feel he’s misdiagnosed the problem. There are problems but I don’t agree that these cannot be dealt with in the manner they’ve been dealt with hitherto (i.e. solving the problem of child poverty by giving money to poor families).
The other big problem with Blond is that he is arguing for localism when it’s becoming obvious that the real problems facing Britain (and everyone else) are global in scale, and so need global solutions.
[1] Incidentally where does he get off claiming local government is so marvelous? The denizens of my town council are a shower who’re just as crawlingly pro-business as New Labour, and just as smugly incompetent.
Richard said,
March 30, 2010 at 4:13 pm
The Broken Britain narrative is based on police crime figures showing a dramatic rise in crime since the 1950s and the increase in divorce and out of wedlock births as well as the decline of marriage. Whether you agree with the figures for the former or the undesirability of the latter will of course determine whether you think Britain is broken.
rumblegumption said,
March 30, 2010 at 11:45 pm
Hear hear. I was pleased to hear Andrew Adonis refute (i.e. successfully) some of the more ludicrously Golden Age-y expressions of the Broken Britain story on Any Questions a couple of weeks ago.
That said, I think you’re too quick to dismiss the ‘welfare state v. autonomous organisations of the working class’ argument — the suggestion of active malice among middle-class social democrats is plain silly, obviously, but Blond might still be on to something there without knowing it. Maybe I’ll do a post of my own on this when I have more time, but this has been a long running debate within Labour at least from the 40s and the Beveridge Report on, possibly as far back as the first National Insurance Act in 1911. The middle chapters of Marquand & Seldon (eds.) The Ideas that Shaped Post-War Britain (1996) are very good on this debate…
Ste For Sure said,
March 30, 2010 at 11:49 pm
“That said, I think you’re too quick to dismiss the ‘welfare state v. autonomous organisations of the working class’”
Agreed, there is something in this.
Alex said,
March 31, 2010 at 12:14 am
It’s hard to argue against the welfare state by saying it holds back working class autonomous organizations, if your policy is to (quoting above comment) “Restore capital to labour”. Giving labour capital. To help the working class. Sounds like a welfare state to me.
Unless he thinks the autonomous working class organizations would be Robin Hood types, in which case pursuing a policy of more crime doesn’t exactly fit with the Broken Britain narrative.
Ste For Sure said,
March 31, 2010 at 7:45 am
Oh sure, this guy is clearly a douche. And I wouldn’t say that pointing out the differences and potential tensions between autonomous organisations of the working class and the welfare state as vehicles for improving lives is necessarily to ‘argue against the welfare state’.
Tim Worstall said,
March 31, 2010 at 11:11 am
“so are working hours”
Great, so can we all start jeering at those articles which start off with “ever longer working hours”?
Paul Sagar said,
March 31, 2010 at 11:18 am
Rumblegumption/ Nakul,
If you write that article, I’d be interested in posting it here and then maybe writing a response – I’m broadly inclined to follow Alex on this one.
Tim,
Yep. Especially when those articles are written by nef idiots.
Nick said,
March 31, 2010 at 11:49 am
I’m going to adopt the guise of a nonegenarian, steeped in the values and experiences of the golden age before Beveridge ruined the vibrant working-class culture of the 1930s.
7am. Got out of bed which I shared with my three sisters. At least we’ve got a warm bed to share.
7.30am. Washed with a bucket of cold water.
8am. Had breakfast… not entirely sure what it was. But better than having to queue in the bread line.
8.30am. Nancy’s coughing up her lungs again. Can’t afford to take her to the doctor. I suppose she’ll be going the same way as our Sally soon. God works in mysterious ways.
9am. No school, it’s important to contribute. Time to go to work as a maid for that horrible man who keeps trying to touch me.
6pm. Back from work. Time for dinner… thin soup and a bit of bread.
7pm. Put baby to bed. Mum drunk again.
10pm. Hide in room. Listen to dad return drunk from his vibrant community experience down the pub. Try to shut out the sound of mum’s screaming and crying.
11pm. Pray for my own house, tv, electric, free healthcare, pension, fuel allowance, childcare, education etc. Bed.
Seriously, does Blond think everyone lived in The Railway Children??!! As for ‘opposing education, opportunity and choice’… I think I’m too ideologically, morally and philosophically appalled to actually argue coherently against that one.
Priceless! « Bad Conscience said,
March 31, 2010 at 12:06 pm
[...] History, Politics at 12:05 pm by Paul Sagar A chap called Nick has left the most fantastic comment under my last post about Phillip Blond. I’m elevating it to above-the-line status to ensure [...]
Paul Sagar said,
March 31, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Nick, what an amazing comment.
I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve elevated it to above-the-line status as a blog in its own right.
Nick said,
March 31, 2010 at 1:04 pm
Not at all. Thanks for the notice. And thanks for the brilliant spoof. Between Blond’s red tinted-spectacles, Cameron’s incredible capacity to hold an infinite number of philosophical positions simultaneously, and Osbourne’s naivety/cynicism concerning economics (both analysed over at freethinkingeconomist), they may just manage to throw the un-losable election. Have there been any inquiries into unusual betting patterns in the political markets…?
Nigel Stanley said,
March 31, 2010 at 5:11 pm
‘But what will infuriate many on the left is that he (Blond) pins as much blame on the welfare state set up by “a middle-class elite partly to relieve poverty but also to deprive the poor of their habits of autonomous organisation”.
If Blond really thought this he’d be pro-trade union, not just have a misty-eyed nostalgia for 99 tea and co-op crumpets by the fire.
I asked him this at the Fabian fringe at the last Labour conference but he said he didn’t like unions because of the NUM’s failure to take up seats on the NCB in the 1940s.
Personally I think they should have done, but if he wants autonomous organisations he should respect their autonomy.
(Actually you can argue that this government has extended individual rights at work, rather than collective ones – and indeed spent many years resisting the EU’s information and consultation directive – but that’s another argument.)
rumblegumption said,
March 31, 2010 at 7:01 pm
Oh I agree with you (and Alex above). I wasn’t suggesting that the welfare state is somehow fundamentally at odds with autonomous working class organisations, just that the actual post-war welfare state in Britain might have failed to ally itself with them as much as might have been desirable (i.e. a historical, rather than philosophical thesis). Indeed Beveridge himself might have been alive to those dangers. I’m unlikely to get down to writing that post, so I’ll just quote from something I’ve been reading on the subject (Jose Harris, in Beveridge and Social Security: An International Retrospective, p. 31-2):
‘A second characteristic of Beveridge’s social philosophy was that he saw social welfare as fundamentally bound up with ideas about good citizenship … [by which he meant] economic independence, moral virtue, self-discipline and self-policing, active rather than passive participation in a self-governing polity. All these virtues Beveridge saw as quintessentially embodied in the Victorian self-governing friendly societies and benefit-paying trade unions; and both in 1911 and in 1942 one of his central aims as a social reformer was to protect and nurture that ethic of private citizenship — not to replace it by mechanical state provision, but to harness and integrate it into the structure of public life … . The belief in both voluntary and compulsory insurance as a kind of pattern of civic virtue explains … his obsession with the contributory principle as, in Beveridge’s eyes, the structural embodiment of active, concrete citizen-obligation … . It explains his determination to defend flat-rate insurance, and to promote the role of the self-governing friendly society as the philosophical partner of the universalist state.’ Et c.
Blond Babble « Bad Conscience said,
June 21, 2010 at 9:10 am
[...] as men, non-relational feminism”. Yep, you guessed it, this is pure unadulterated Blond Babble. Buzz-words pronounced with gravitas as though no idiot could possibly misunderstand their [...]
How to define Phillip Blond politically « Raincoat Optimism said,
December 7, 2010 at 9:02 am
[...] On twitter this has kickstarted the conversation on where to place Blond on the political map – a task most people will agree is very difficult (unless of course you are Paul Sagar). [...]
How to define Phillip Blond politically « Though Cowards Flinch said,
December 8, 2010 at 5:50 pm
[...] On twitter this has kickstarted the conversation on where to place Blond on the political map – a task most people will agree is very difficult (unless of course you are Paul Sagar). [...]