August 10, 2011
Riot of a Time
Very quick thoughts on the recent riots.
1. Clearly it is true that poverty, alienation, deepdisgruntlement with the police and lack of opportunity are important background facts that any serious attempt at understanding will have to take into account.
2. But these alone cannot explain what was clearly, in many cases, opportunistic theft and glee in destruction.
3. So where do we go from there?
4. I take these to be true and important components of any description of modern British politics and society: that it promotes self-interested greed, materialism, the possession of ostensive goods for status, immediate gratification, and a toleration (even encouragement) of ruthless competitiveness with a deep disregard for the welfare of others. (Call this the “no-such-thing-as-society society”, if you like.)
5. Putting 1 and 2 together with 4, and adding in conditions of spontaneity, anticipated impunity and evident opportunity, a basic yet broadly sufficient explanation appears to emerge.
6. Note that the things described in 4 above constitute the core tenets of the political ideology broadly known as ‘Thatcherism’ (or if you want to bring things up to date post-1997, ‘neo-liberalism’).
7. Also note that the conditions described in 1. have been massively and continuously exacerbated by Thatcherism (or ‘neo-liberalism’), especially if enormous inequality and its debilitating effects on individual well-being and self-respect are included too.
8. So actually this may not be such a mystery after all. If you constantly tell people to be selfish, ruthless, competitive, greedy and disregarding of the welfare of others, then you can’t really be surprised when they behave as they are told they fundamentally are and must be (even if they forget about the bits to do with obeying the law).
9. However, if you happen to be the prime minister just invoke some vacuous covering fluff about ‘moral responsibility’. Continue to condemn loudly, and then get back to promoting the elements in 4. on a daily basis. Without wondering about which ways the knife may cut.
June 5, 2011
Telly Don University
So Telly Don University – or the New College of Humanities – has been unveiled. Professor A.C. Grayling is the mastermind, and apparently the head honcho too. “Top” academics have been recruited to the cause. Proper academics, predictably, don’t like it.
Now don’t get me wrong, TDU definitely suggests some unpleasant prospects. As Chris Bertram has pointed out to me, an institution charging £18K a year will give other university Vice Chancellors a pre-text to both bust open the new £9K fee cap, and maybe even privatise in a bid to “compete”.
Personally, however, I see TDU as being – at most – a catalyst. My sense is that the flood gates are open on fees (not least as the maths was done so badly that the Treasury is going to have to fork out loads under the current regime anyway), and that universities not receiving significant state support may opt to privatise anyway. After all, why put up with the constant government interference if you’re not even getting the money any more?
In any case, what’s happening to British higher education looks like part of a much bigger process. Namely, the systematic marketisation of publicly provided services, coupled with a belief that in the brave new world this is the only option. Meaning that assaults on state-provided services are seen as both status quo, and as inevitable developments, by the politicians carrying them out. Thus drastically reducing any room for alternatives to find a voice, or for policies to be reconsidered and reversed.
In sum, I think that British higher education is undergoing a sea change that started (at least) with New Labour when it bought the basically pro-market vision of politics which reduces the state to the fawning provider of safe-habitats for business,whilst abandoning anything that can’t make a profit to die in the cold. I don’t know what will happen to Britain’s university system over the next 20 years, and I’m not optimistic. But I doubt Telly Don University alone is going to make that much of a difference.
Accordingly, we might like to do a spot of pointing and laughing to cheer ourselves up. TDU bills itself as attempting to rival Oxbridge (a boast Mary Beard has already queried). Its main claim to this appears to be two-fold: 1) that Famous People will do some teaching, and 2) students won’t just do arts subjects they will also have “science literacy” and business-type awareness programmes to boot.
Both of these things make me chortle. Let’s first consider some of the Famous People who will allegedly be teaching at TDU:
- Richard Dawkins: loud-mouthed pop-biologist, who writes exceptionally bad books about religion and who would fail any decent undergraduate philosophy first year course.
- Steven Pinker: pop-psychologist, generally not taken seriously by large sections of the psychology research community because he allegedly ignores and manipulates data that doesn’t fit his story-book narratives. [If anyone genuinely qualified on this subject could say one way or the other, it would be good to hear from you - this is just reporting what I've heard from people in the field.]
- Niall Ferguson: telly-don extraordinaire, who will apparently be teaching economics, even though he is not an economist. He is in fact a pop historian (who hasn’t done any serious work for donkey’s years), who has appointed himself a finance expert following his success in the oh-so-tricky world of making money in hedge funds. (Amusingly, rival telly don Tristram Hunt claims that Ferguson’s successful book on the history of money and finance – later a TV series, of course – manages to hardly mention Marx and Engels at all. So a rounded education can no doubt be expected from a man who is certainly anything but a right-wing ideologue.)
- A.C. Grayling: telly-don philosopher, who is mostly famous for writing a lot of books. The reason he writes so many books, so quickly, is of course that none of them are any good.
- Ronald Dworkin: actually a serious academic with an incredibly illustrious publishing history, who had an enormous impact upon both political and legal philosophy over the past 50 years. But still notorious at Oxford – about 30 years after he left – for being the laziest and most unhelpful supervisor imaginable (I was warned not to expect any contact with Dworkin at all if I went to NYU for a masters degree, whatever it said on their website.)
Also a huge hypocrite, given that he spent most of his career writing about egalitarianism, and is now a flagship academic at an institution which is anything but.
You get the picture. Big famous names are not the same as good, serious educators of university minds. If you go to TDU thinking you’ll get a good education just because some famous people are there, you’re a fool. As anyone who’s actually been taught well at university level knows, the best teachers are not the big public names (even if they are famous within the academy). But given that TDU will charge £18K a year, you’re a rich fool if you go there. So more fool you, as at least hopefully this will free up some places for serious young thinkers at Britains’ other, proper, universities. Who can hopefully be drawn from the state sector thanks to some reduction in competition from brats who just want a primer course for the City.
As for the second alleged benefit – science literacy and business awareness – this is highly amusing. If you want “science literacy” you can read Ben Goldacr’s book Bad Science, and then bother with some of Stephen Jay Gould’s wonderful output. If you want more than mere science “literacy”, then you have to do a science degree and become a scientist. Sorry about that, but the human mind is limited and specialization is required if you want to acquire a serious understanding of any contemporary field. TDU can’t undo the complexities and advances of modern day academic divisions of labour, whatever else it may claim.
Regarding “business awareness”, or whatever, this is also silly. You don’t get good at “real world” thinking by “studying the real world”. You get it by training your brain to think sharply and analytically, applying these skills elsewhere as and when it is fit to do so. Some people never learn to transfer these skills, and some people have them without being any good at academia. Either way, it actually turns out that the best education for business is not a business education. (You may be surprised to learn this, but apparently it’s actually philosophy.) So you’d be just fine at normal, proper university.
So overall I’m inclined to laugh at Telly Dons University. It looks like a big con, taking the money of rich people silly enough to think they can buy a proper education, at premium rates, simply because there’s some Famous People on the tin.
But, sadly, that’s not the end of the story. Because TDU is plainly responding to a certain sort of demand, and a wider and ever more entrenched expectation of what universities should be, and what they should provide. And if TDU is successful – which it may very well be – it’s exactly what Vice Chancellors and politicians will point to as the model for the rest to adopt.
Hence, we should laugh and be merry this evening, for in the morrow the hangover is coming. And it’s going to be a nasty one indeed. Even if TDU is only one small part of the bigger mess.
UPDATE: I see that Peter Singer and Simon Blackburn are also members of the Telly Don 14.
Peter Singer: Philosophical charlatan par excellence. A disseminater of complete nonsense, from a man who couldn’t think his way out of a wet paper bag. Even if he did do exceedingly well for himself by generally just being controversial and annoying.
Simon Blackburn: Actually one of the most distinguished and sharp-thinking philosophers of the past 30 years. A seriously impressive mind (even if he’s spent the last decade saying the same thing over and over again). However, by all accounts a close rival to Dworkin for Laziest and Least Helpful Teacher On Offer. At least judging by the reports of his supervisees. Whose testimony can be effectively summarised as: “He doesn’t read your work. Even if you’re his PhD student”.
What a stellar teching line up the TDU has on offer!
April 29, 2011
From Rap Battles to Libertarian Myopia
Following that brilliant first instalment, Keynes versus Hayek Round II is here:
There’s no denying this is greatly entertaining stuff. But as with the first video, I find the pro-Hayek message rather irritating (well I would, wouldn’t I?)
To pick up on one specific thing, however, I’m frustrated by the Hayek character appropriating some words of Adam Smith about human beings not being mere pieces on a chessboard.
The original Smith quote, from his Theory of Moral Sentiments, runs thus:
“The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.”
Smith’s point is simple but extremely important. However ingenious and complex a plan or system may be, it can never match the complexity of the world upon which it is unleashed. Each action sets off incalculable further reactions. Each human agent affected by these actions and reactions will in turn be propelled by his or her own “principle of motion” in ways that cannot be predicted or controlled. No plan or system ever works out the way “the men of system” hope. As Smith, in his typically understated way implies, failing to see this can lead to social, political and economic disaster.
Libertarians (and “classical liberals”, Austrian economists and whoever else is on the wagon this week) are fond of quoting this passage. Over at CafeHayek it is proffered as advice for “would-be czars and other experts to remember”. Yet libertarians (et al) rarely realise that Smith’s reflections apply – with devastating force – to their own state-minimalist politics.
Even in the world of minimal-state libertarian fantasy, there will inevitably be economic recessions.* Eventually, at least one of these will be severe. In recessions people suffer; that’s what unemployment and poverty entail, especially under the minimal state where there is presumably no welfare support. When people suffer, however, they do not sit around idly and wait for the market to fix itself – whenever that might be. They take action to alleviate their sufferings as soon as possible.
Under such circumstances, large-scale collective action will be taken by individuals seeking relief from suffering. Action of this sort is known as “politics”. In this “politics”, human beings mobilise so as to put the levers of power into the hands of those who will (or at least promise to) alleviate their sufferings. In modern societies this is done via the state apparatus. Hence even if (magically) we start out with libertarian state minimalism, we will not stay there. The power of the state will eventually be deployed so as to interfere with the market forces currently failing to alleviate the sufferings of ordinary people.
Two things follow. First, and with especial irony, the libertarian minimal state can only be sustained by coercive state force. When ordinary citizens mobilize to demand state action to alleviate suffering, the politicians they select, and the movements that propel them to power, must be repressed in order to preserve the minimal state which refuses to interfere in the economy or to provide state support. Minimal state libertarianism either organically gives way to state interventionism, or resists this organic development by becoming an anti-democratic tyranny. At a conceptual level, this basically means minimal state libertarianism tears itself apart upon any contact with the constraints of reality.
Secondly, with such considerations in place we can return to the real world and look at the alarming historical record. During the 20th century, when economic situations became sufficiently dire for sufficiently long, it was not mildly interventionist Keynesians who took power. It was murderous Fascist, National Socialist and Bolshevik regimes, who either wrested control of the state by force or were selected by desperate populations via popular vote.
Hayekians (or whatever) are being extremely myopic when they denounce Keynesians and other interventionists who broadly support market-economic systems whilst attempting to actively mitigate their worst failings. For the Hayekians fail to see that Keynesianism and other economic interventionist programmes take place against a complex real world background. A real world in which attempts at basic economic management (i.e the alleviation and prevention of suffering) are a bulwark against disaster. A bulwark against the sorts of regimes that are deeply and murderously antithetical to individual and economic liberty in ways economic-interventionist capitalist democracies have never been, nor ever will be.
Libertarian state-minimalism and attendant Austrian laissez-faire economics are fine for fantasists pining to live in a fantasy world. But for those of us preoccupied with the perils, dangers and constraints of this real world, they and their loud-mouthed proponents are usually little more than a nuisance.
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* The really nutty crowd, of course, claim that without government there would never be any market failure, recession or depression. This piece of deliberately self-serving wishful naivety is best treated by simply being ignored.
March 29, 2011
Disrespect and the Media
Reading Stuart White’s Next Left piece on the media’s disrespectful coverage of minority violence, I’m left unsatisfied. Whilst the article – written with typical intellectual incision, accuracy and the parsimony – has been well received by almost all I know, I just don’t buy it.
I have to be careful here. Whereas I generally don’t care if I annoy people on the internet, Stuart is very much an exception. I greatly respect him not only as a blogger and political activist, but as an intellectual and an extremely talented political philosopher.* But in this instance I think he’s quite seriously off target, and it’s worth spelling out the (rather depressing, though these are hardly Stuart’s fault) reasons why.
Stuart wants to make two central claims, both captured in this paragraph:
“But let’s stop and consider ‘the media’. Nothing forces the media to focus, as much as it does, on the violent behaviour of a tiny minority. This is a choice. And in dealing with the media – for example, in launching a complaint to Sky or the BBC – we need to insist on what a profoundly disrespectful choice it is.”
The first claim is that the media is choosing to focus on activist violence, and moreover (and most importantly) that this choice is relatively free and (by implication) could easily be substituted for a more palatable alternative. The second claim (pursued in the rest of Stuart’s article) is that the media can be induced to switch from its unwelcome focus on minority violence to a more welcome focus on wider peaceful events, and this can be achieved specifically by emphasising how “disrespectful” its behaviour is to non-violent protestors and ordinary people generally.
Unfortunately, Stuart’s first claim is untenable when properly examined. The second claim rests upon the tenability of the first. Insofar as the first claim fails, so must the second. We see this as follows.
Stuart says that “Nothing forces the media to focus, as much as it does, on the violent behaviour of a tiny minority”. In a certain, very narrow, sense, this is true. Nobody holds a gun to “the media’s” head and says “focus on the violence”, or anything of that sort. But to set things up that way is to rule out far too much, far too quickly. Instead we must look at the environment within which the modern media operates, in particular the economic circumstances of the modern news industry.
Mass media organisations are almost all profit-seeking firms in a fiercely competitive industry threatened by obsolescence. The Guardian is a partial exception with its basis in the Scott Trust – but if it doesn’t find a way to make revenue soon, then like its competitors it’s headed for the toaster. The BBC is also a partial exception – but then in order to justify its license fee it must be able to show big numbers. So in a very real sense, it necessarily plays the numbers game too (competing especially with Sky News, who are always happy to scrape the bottom of the barrel).
How does a major media outlet secure numbers? By focusing on and pushing news stories that grab attention. What grabs more attention: thousands of people plodding along listening to some rather dull speeches, or face-covered anarchists smashing windows and lighting fires? QED.
Certainly it would be nice if individual editors took a bold stand. But then their superiors higher up the food chain would quickly come knocking. The same goes for the guys on the ground feeding in reports. “You don’t like it? No problem, the doors over there – somebody else will gladly do it for us. Oh, and how’s your pension fund?”
The media isn’t “forced”, in any simplistic sense, to focus so dogmatically on violent outbursts amidst otherwise peaceful mass demonstration. But to assume it does so for trivial, petty, vindictive or any easily escapable reasons is a mistake.
You really want to know why the mainstream media focuses on violence and unrest so excessively? Look in the mirror, meet your neighbours, and speak to your colleagues, all whilst considering the crisis of news reporting against the backdrop of early 21st century information technology capitalism. This is the media’s iron cage, and your friends and family are some of its bars.
I completely agree with Stuart that what the media does is disrespectful. But when we get clear on why it is so disrespectful it seems to me a hopeless pipedream to suppose that pointing out the fact of disrespect is likely to change anything at all. Respect may be part of the currency of egalitarian justice, but it doesn’t keep copy rolling.**
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* I can honestly remember reading his work as an undergraduate, and feeling proud to be at the same institution he worked at.
** That’s a cynical little joke for Oxford-trained political philosophers.
March 27, 2011
On Violence and Recent Protest
As previously noted, I have no problem per se with political violence. Its use and justification must be assessed on a case-by-case basis, with reference to myriad factors such as likelihood to succeed, ability to justify harm to victims, long-term advantages gained, greater evils averted, and so on. Use and justification of violence – like any other tool of politics – depends on firstly the judgement of those who deploy it, and at a later stage the judgement of those (if different) who must assess it (and quite possibly, sentence it). As a general rule, it is wise to hope for better judgement than worse, and from all concerned.
Some situations allow for more judgement, particularly with regards to strategy, than others. The leaders of the ANC, or the ETA, or Hamas, typically control the means of violence in hierarchical command structures. A few men will decide when and where to use violence, and dictate orders to subordinates. In such cases, judgement (including strategic planning) is in the hands of specific individuals with relatively high degrees of control. In turn, moral judgement by other parties as to the justified or unjustified use of that violence will in large measure focus on the decisions of the commanding individuals. The same, incidentally, goes for the aparatus of the modern state – though for complex and important reasons we tend to shy away from recognising the deeply and necessarily coercive natures of the states we find ourselves in and under.
But certainly not all instances of political violence fit this model. When the so-called “Black Bloc” of anarchist militants attacked stores on Oxford Street yesterday they were not part of a (para)military organised hierarchy with a leadership exercising strategic-tactical judgement – still less the militant wing of the 250,000 peaceful marchers congregating in Hyde Park. When UK Uncut protestors launched their non-violent direct action against Fortnum and Mason, they can hardly be held responsible for the spontaneous vandalism that enthusiasts in the assembled crowd promptly launched.
In these latter cases the problem with considering the use of political violence from the perspective of strategic judgement in particular is that it quite simply doesn’t apply. Before Saturday’s outbursts of violent direct action no hierarchy of command could exercise the sort of command and control upon which strategic judgement is predicated. Yet after the violence talk of strategic judgement seems largely besides the point. Insofar as there was any, it was exercised by individuals or small groups in loosely organised ways, in a situation of mass happenings over which nobody had meaningful control.
In turn, this makes the task of passing retrospective moral judgement over the uses of political violence on Saturday a nuanced affair. For a start, we must distinguish between the actions of opportunistic vandals, committed anarchists, young enthusiasts caught up in the moment, and those goaded and provoked by police tactics (if any of the above indeed turn out to apply).
Nonetheless, it remains possible to assume a third-party perspective in order to analyse yesterday’s events. Specifically, we can adopt a position of hypothetical strategic judgement. It is quite sensible to ask: if I had absolute control over what actions people did and did not take yesterday, which would I permit? Personally, I would have preferred an entirely peaceful protest. Not because I’m opposed to all political violence (I’m not), but because yesterday’s outbursts were unambiguously counter-productive, and predictably so.
By contrast, my strong sense is that if the student movement had remained entirely peaceful at the end of last year, it would certainly have achieved absolutely nothing. The broken windows at Millbank and the riots in Westminster attracted levels of attention that peaceful marching never could have. And importantly, I believe that the student violence did not lead to the same outcomes that purely peaceful protest would have (failed to) achieve.
Certainly, the Parliamentary vote was passed and in that sense the student protests failed. Yet the carnage witnessed in Parliament Square – chronciled by myself, Jeremy Gilbert and others in Fight Back! – will have sent a shiver down many Coalition MPs’ spines. Lib Dems in particular must know that the ferocity of student anger means that particular constituency is lost for the very foreseeable future. Tory MPs must know deep down that if things can get that bad that quickly before the cuts have even started to bite, the next 4 years will contain some very difficult fights. Perhaps this will only make the present Government even more determined and bullish – but my sense is that it will quietly make key decision-makers more wary, and Lib Dems more skittish. And even if all of that is wrong, I still think that the student protests stood a better chance the way they actually happened than any peaceful alternative could have offered.
By contrast, Saturday’s march needed something entirely different. It needed the other face of protest: the face of hundreds of thousands of ordinary, reasonable and respectable people calmly registering their disapproval. As Paul Mason has noted, if you can get your entire workforce out to a Saturday demonstration, this means something. The scale of yesterday’s protest, quite obviously not made up of the “usual suspects”, would have been very powerful just because of its sheer size. If only it had been the main news story.
Instead, much coverage was given over to actions initially started by the “Black Bloc” idiots. I call them idiots because that is exactly what they are. Either they like to smash things just for the thrill (in which case they are Basic Idiots), or they are so politically deluded they think throwing paint bombs at TopShop will light the fuse of revolutionary explosion (in which case they are Advanced level Über-Idiots). Whichever camp of idiots yesterday’s Black Bloc thugs fell into, they did the anti-cuts campaign huge damage. By distracting attention to the loudly spectacular and meaningless away from the quietly awesome and meaningful they ruined it for everyone. Except the Tory Party.
Yet, crucially, there is more to say. For although the actions of the Black Bloc started the trouble – as Ryan Gallagher has noted – it is undeniable that many others quickly joined the violence without premeditation. Likewise the kids who stuck it out in Trafalgar Square, or who angrily confronted police outside Fortnum and Mason, cannot be dismissed as merely extended members of the Black Bloc.
Rather, they were the people who don’t any longer see the point of maintaining peaceful protest if the opportunity to descend into confrontation arises. And at a certain level they have my sympathy, for two reasons. Firstly, my generation learned quite spectacularly in 2003 that even enormous peaceful demonstrations of over a million people can make precisely zero difference. Tony Blair invaded Iraq, and didn’t give a flying damn what any of us thought.
Secondly, anybody who has been on even a handful of protests – especially in London – knows full well that the police do not hesitate to use violence, and frequently instigate aggressive confrontational situations amidst previously jovial and peaceful atmospheres. At the G20 protests in 2009, trouble only started when the police moved in – and it is probably significant that following that experience increasing numbers of protestors are drawing the obvious conclusion: if you know the boys in blue will baton you regardless, why wait around passively for them to do it?
It is significant and telling that so many recent protests have seen flare-ups of violence. The Black Bloc has been around a long while now and they cannot alone explain this. A better explanation is that many people – especially the young – are angry, justifiably untrusting of the police, and contemptuous of the old (failed) channels of political expression. As the cuts really start to bite, their numbers must surely increase.
So whilst I regret yesterday’s violence – if I could have had my way, there would have been none at all – I can understand why these outbursts of wider political violence are happening. And they do not make me optimistic about the future.
March 23, 2011
Deep Pathologies
According to Liberal Conspiracy:
“The TUC held a 60-second ad contest, with a theme of public spending cuts, last month and received a record-breaking 41 entries.
Fourteen entries were shortlisted – many of which will be shown on the big screen in Hyde Park at the March for the Alternative.”
This is the winner:
I hope you will join me in agreeing that it is absolutely terrible.
What, exactly, is the video’s message? That ordinary people are in the position of pre-pubescent infants? If so, that’s hardly a very flattering portrayal. Indeed why exactly is this a father-daughter relationship at all? Are the makers of the video implying that our rulers and masters stand in relation to us as controlling parents – more precisely, exploitative and abusive parents? Come to think of it, who is the father figure supposed to represent, exactly? A banker? The Government? If these are metaphors, they are mixed indeed.
And if that weren’t all bad enough, there’s the bombshell closing slogan: “Don’t burden your kids with a lifetime of debt – Oppose the cuts”.
I had to think for a good few minutes to figure out exactly what this was supposed to mean . For it appeared to make no sense at all. But I now think the reasoning is supposed to be as follows: if we force the next generation to bear the brunt of austerity measures now, that is effectively saddling our children with the effects of debt, manifested through the cuts, and that’s not fair, so we must oppose the cuts, so as to prevent the effects of the debt, as experienced via the impact of cuts.
Which is not exactly snappy. But what is worse, the Coalition response is likely to be far more effective, to wit: we quite agree that we must not burden out children with a lifetime of debt! Indeed that’s precisely why we are making these cuts – to bring down the debt!
On every level this video is a disaster. Yet apparently it will be screened at the end of Saturday’s major anti-cuts march in London. Which very much presses the outstanding question: how is it that such a bad video could not only be dreamed up and filmed, but then selected by the TUC as their prize-winner and flagship piece of propaganda?
It would be nice to explain this away as merely the work of “iPhone-wielding wonks“. That it is merely the product of the mental narrowness exhibited by those who spend a lot of time in Westminster, but very little time meeting real people and their real political concerns.
Yet I strongly suspect there’s a deeper pathology at work here. Namely, that many on the left are frankly uninterested in clarity, accuracy or political efficacy. What they are interested in is lumping all their preoccupations together in one ungainly amalgamation of thinly veiled incoherence, and then shoving it down the throats of passers-by whilst expecting them to happily agree and acquiesce.
So, for example, it doesn’t matter whether the father figure is supposed to represent a greedy banker or the Government. Because in the minds of rather a lot of over-enthusiastic and naive leftists, there’s basically no difference between the two anyway. Similarly, it doesn’t matter if depicting ordinary working people as exploited children is offensive to ordinary people and thus strategically stupid. Because what takes priority is not strategy, but coming up with a (supposedly) funny dig at the powers that be (whoever they might be), regardless of whether it alienates the constituency that needs to be convinced.
In short, the point of the video appears not to be the promotion of a well-thought-out political strategy to fight the cuts. Its point appears to be an enthusiastic thumping of the political drum with unreflective self-assured and self-righteous pride. The pathology runs deep: so deep that people involved in political activism can not only come up with it, but that the TUC can in turn endorse a video which shrieks of an incoherence likely to cash out in practical political suicide.
Welcome to politics on the left. Abandon all hope, ye who enter.
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Indeed what makes it all even more shocking is that there are manifestly better videos on offer, and yet which were passed over for the big prize.
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UPDATE – Here’s how to do it properly (nsfw):
March 9, 2011
That Egypt Thing
During the Egyptian uprising, I didn’t have much to say. Far too much was being said already, and little of it well-informed. I was, of course, struck by the fervent optimism and passionate belief espoused by almost all on the Left. For this uprising – we were assured by many – was a truly democratic revolution, by a people yearning to be free. These were Democrats In Waiting, slaving beneath the Yoke of Tyranny. We had only to wait for The People to cast off Their shackles and a New Age of Democratic Freedom* would dawn.
Amidst the excitement and hubristic proclamation, it seemed to me consistently unwise to pass any judgements during the heat of the moment. For three considerations in particular seemed, if anything, to tell in the direction of pessimism about Egypt’s prospects.
Firstly, that the entire Middle East sits atop a pile of what Flying Rodent so aptly labels “democracy kryptonite”, aka oil. Given this particularly pressing truth, the long arm of America was never likely to withdraw its hand. After half a century of careful investment and planning, the US was hardly going to let things go all Venezuela in a key military and economic hotspot. At least, not if it could help it – and so on into the future.
Secondly, and closely connectedly, even the most cursory glance at the political situation during the Egyptian uprising revealed that the army always held the final balance of power. It was clearly with the support of the army that Mubarak would stand, or fall. In the end he fell. And now the army’s ruling council runs Egypt, following what was technically a military coup d’etat. Of course, it is quite possible that the army will cede power following elections in September. But it’s actually unclear whether there will be any elections in September. And as there has been no effective opposition in Egypt for decades, it’s also unclear whether will be any viable political alternatives on offer even if the ballots go ahead.
Furthermore, a kindergarten knowledge of history reminds us that never, ever, anywhere, has a ruling section of society willingly and freely given up power to those beneath it. Political revolutions – by which I mean proper revolutions, not eventualities which see nasty Mr Mubarak go to Sharm el Sheikh and his generals simply take over the running of affairs – are achieved by the forceful and bloody seizure of power by one group from another. The army is highly unlikely to let power go to any whom it does not approve of. Now at this point, note that democracies tend not to flourish when the military is the primary political power within a state. Now further note that for decades the primary source of American leverage over Egypt has come in the form of military aid. Things, to put it mildly, do not point in the direction of Hope and Change.
Thirdly, given that Egypt has no history or tradition or functioning democratic governance, the transition to any such regime is likely to be precarious. This is a country without democratic norms; a country where ordinary people have not yet had time to adapt to a political system which involves putting enormous amounts of trust and responsibility into the hands of parties whom one did not vote for. (Because the logic of democracy is that nobody’s favoured candidates can win every election, every time.) It is a country in which those who hold the strings of power, patronage and influence have not yet evolved the mechanisms of reciprocal deferred trust when out of power. The arrangements whereby electoral losers amongst the elite abstain from recourse to violence and thuggery, on the guarantee that their interests will not suffer too much in the short term and that they’ll get another meaningful shot at power shortly.
All of which is not to say that Egyptians – or Arabs, or Muslims – “cannot do democracy”. That is a piece of crass racism, against which we recall that less than a century ago respectable British individuals in respectable British newspapers urged the folly of democratic systems. Men who called for the imperative of strong rule; the clarity and good governance provided by Messrs Hitler and Mussolini during times of straightened economic woe. But it is to say that democracy is a difficult, complicated thing. It takes time to emerge, and requires favourable historical, geographical, social, economic and political settings. At present, Egypt appears to have none of these – albeit in significant part thanks to the grubby paws of The Land of the Free.
But then blaming everything on America just won’t do, either. For bound-up in the over-excited and premature rhetoric of Democracy and Freedom for Egypt was often the assumption that here was a democratic people simply yearning to be free. The implicit assumption being that They (what, all of them? young and old? rich and poor? muslim and christian?) were really just like Us. And that when They were given power, They would behave just like Us – a situation happily dovetailing with their new Democratic Freedom.**
But recent reports show that this is all a little too lazy. With dead Coptic Christians following religious clashes with sections of the majority Muslim population, this appears to be a society which hasn’t had the good fortune (and placatory economic development) to get beyond the bloody religious frenzies that our own blessed Isles used to play such sanguinary host to. And then there’s the International Women’s Day march in Tahir Square, which saw angry men charging the marchers, dragging them to the floor, beating and sexually harassing them, as police and army watched from the sidelines.
Certainly, these events are too isolated to tell us anything about “Arab culture” (or if you like, “Muslim mores”). Societies, religions, peoples and cultures are complex (and there’s plenty of violent hatred against women in the UK too, let’s not forget). To infer anything from the above in terms of positive substantive content would, again, be crass racism or outright stupidigy. But these happenings are nontheless enough to put the lie to the naively optimistic (and self-servingly convenient) assumption that They are just like Us, sharing Our Values, the outward political expression of which will necessarily be Democracy and Freedom.***
Those whom this piece is primarily aimed at will likely mistake the above for a sort of petty schadenfreude. They will think that I am indifferent about the sufferings and poor prospects of ordinary Egyptians, in service of some wider self-satisfied political cynicism. But that is wrong. I would genuinely like for it to be the case that Egypt could enjoy the prosperity, security and advantage of a nation like Britain (for all its faults). It sincerely saddens me that so many people’s lives must be made abject by forces beyond their control (such as the profitability of the British arms and oil industries). The point, however, is that just because I would like it to be otherwise, it does not mean that it is otherwise. And I adapt my assessments accordingly. I have this funny idea that other people should do the same.
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*notice the marriage of two complex concepts, introduced unexplained and unsubstantiated as though nothing in the world could be more obvious.
** that conjunction again.
*** in for the third, whatever it actually means.
March 1, 2011
Gew-gaws
For reasons I’m not entirely sure of, I’m subscribed to the emails of the “Yes to Fairer Votes” campaign. I tend to delete messages on sight, because if I want ill thought out tub-thumping, I can just log-on to the Compass website or read something by the nef.
But I’ve been trying to put my finger on what exactly it is about the upcoming referendum on voting reform that at best leaves me cold, and at worst makes me frustrated and angry. And I think I’ve worked out what it is.
A friend who knows about these things assures me that the political science literature indicates that moves towards proportional systems correlate with marginal increases in social democracy. Which, of course, is lovely. At least in and of itself. As a good leftist, I’m all for more social democracy.
But the important word in that paragraph is marginal. Because any improvements to our political system – and to our ever more unequal and unjust society – derived from voting reform are indeed going to be marginal. Especially given the way things appear to be going in terms of long-term political and economic direction. (And don’t forget that AV isn’t actually a proportional system, it’s just a marginally – that word again – less worse system than first-past-the-post).
So excuse me for not giving a fig about whether we get AV or not. Because in case you haven’t noticed, the wolves are at the door.
We live in a world in which national elected governments are increasingly unable – or unwilling (and therefore, in effect, unable) – to set economic and social policies as they would choose. Instead, tax rates, labour laws, redistributive policies, investment decisions, employment levels and decisions regarding national borrowing are increasingly subordinate both to the direct and indirect demands of global economic actors that do not answer either to electorates or their representatives.
What the great crash of 2008 taught multinational capitalist behemoths was that they can do whatever they want, and nation-states will bail them out if they fail. Indeed if they do fail, they can just keep doing whatever they want. Including leaning on national governments (directly or indirectly) to uphold and enforce domestic economic arrangements that benefit ever more detached sections of well-off individuals and private corporate actors.
What the great bail-out of 2008 has revealed is that it is certainly not multi-national corporate entities who will pay for the great mess. It is the little people whose collective will has less and less impact upon the determination of available economic – and thereby, social – futures. So because global financial capitalism collapsed under the weight of its own hubris, the British health service must be destroyed, British education must become a socially exclusive and divisive good, inequality must grow, unemployment must rise, care for the vulnerable must be taken away, the social safety net must be removed and millions of people’s lives must suffer.
Amidst all this destruction, the financial behemoths – in whose name your health service is being taken away, your social settlement renegotiated beyond your control – see fit to pay their privileged and favoured sons and daughters bonuses which could keep some families fed and sheltered for several years. Indeed, the terms of our new economic and social settlement are so unjust, so grotesque ,and so deeply unequal that this unashamed self-aggrandisement is simply the unreflective norm for its perpetrators. And rapidly it is becoming the unreflectinve norm – last gasp editorial outrage aside – for the rest of us, too.
It is usually false when people say that it makes no difference which party is in power. British society tends to be a somewhat fairer and less unjust place under Labour than Tories (recent obsessions with spying on everybody and dropping bombs on brown people not withstanding). But when it comes to caring about whether we have, in five years’ time, FPTP or AV to elect a marginally preferable centre-right Labour leadership to replace a vociferously destructive Coalition of right-wing ideologues, seems to me gloriously irrelevant.
And indeed for many its irrelevance may be precisely its attraction. Focusing on the gewgaws and shiny baubles of polling results, campaign tactics and collective enemy-hating serves as a far more enjoyable political pastime than staring into the abyss of what the present bunch of elected representatives is actually doing. It also puts to one side the frankly terrifying promise of a world in which it is increasingly irrelevant which bunch of bastards are elected to rule, and how they are elected, because their room for manoeuvre is so drastically – and increasingly – limited by the realities and dominant conceptions of the ever more global new economic order.
But having said all that, there is perhaps one reason to care about the AV referendum. Which is that a loss would be a terrible blow to the Lib Dems, and would indeed be a fine poke in the eye for Nick Clegg. Clegg. That scion of immense privilege; that craven political bastard-child. The man who under the guise of a Liberal party has enabled and assisted the reversal of a welfare state the likes of which his political forbearers dreamt of, and fought to make reality.
And suddenly, the AV vote acquires a certain sort of meaning – even if only a human, all-too-human one.
January 23, 2011
Thatcher or Kafka? A Question of Influence
Ignore – if you can – the intellectual incoherence of this Government’s economic policy. On the one hand it endorses free cross-border capital flows, relatively free-trade in goods and services, minimal financial regulation, and floating exchange rates. But it simultaneously seeks enormous restrictions on the supply of labour. When it comes to immigration, market mechanisms are deemed unacceptable.
The latest front in the war on immigrants is actually another attack on overseas students. In this case, eliminating the Tier 1 Post Study Work Visa that allows international students to live and work in the UK for up to 2 years after obtaining their UK degree or qualification.
As well as being particularly unfair on those who pursue professional degrees (Law, MBAs, Accounting) as it deprives them of the opportunity to receive qualifications through their training contracts, this is likely to disincentivise foreign students from coming to the UK.
The official Coalition position is that it only wants to deter students from staying after they’ve completed their degrees, thus reducing net worker migration. But this is very odd. After all, newly qualified graduates are likely to be the most economically productive and highly-skilled immigrants in Britain. Why, exactly, do we want to turn those people out? Especially as very few are likely to be eligible to claim state support if they can’t get work, hence will likely leave of their own accord.
Admitedly, I don’t know the foreign-student elasticity of demand for UK degrees. But unless the government can show that it is highly inelastic, we have to assume that this measure will have a deterrent effect upon foreign nationals planning to study in the UK in the first place.
So as well as losing potentially highly-skilled workers, we may also loose highly skilled students. Students who pay far more in fees than their domestic peers, at a time when sections of UK higher education funding are being cut by up to 80%. Students who – if they are graduates – make significant contributions to the output and performance of their academic departments, boosting UK institutions vis-à-vis the rest of the world.
It seems likely, therefore, that Coalition policy has little to do with economics, and lots to do with politics. Namely, that anti-immigration sentiment runs high (in no small part thanks to the propagandising efforts of both Labour and Conservatives) and this Tory-led government wants to be the anti-immigration party par excellence.
An apparent problem with this “strategy”, however, is that restricting immigration numbers will only assuage angry voters if they come to believe the immigration “problem” is being dealt with. But they will only come to think that if the dominant social and political narrative deems that immigration is no longer a “problem”.
Except, on this front, the national media has a significant ability to set the general tone and mood. But tabloid newspapers – or more precisely, their owners – have no interest in whether immigration is really “out of control”, or whether Britain is really “full”. What they care about is maintaining the perception that Immageddon looms, and pandering to it. Because that mantra shifts a lot of units.
The media has no incentive to change the anti-immigration narrative, regardless of whether or not the Government really does reduce immigration level. It’s worth remembering, after all, that New Labour’s own highly restrictive anti-immigration laws made absolutely no difference on this front.
Thus: the Tory-led government instigates anti-immigration policies which will not appease anti-immigration sentiment, but which may well exacerbate the UK’s dire economic conditions, in turn further fuelling anti-immigration sentiment. A sentiment which the Tories may (but equally, may not) be able to harness in future elections.
You are now forgiven for thinking: “The inspiration for the Coalition isn’t Thatcher at all. It’s Kafka”.
January 7, 2011
The Leviathan vs. The Bankers
Despite lots of tough talk from The Coalition, UK-based banks are planning to pay-out billions in bonuses:
“The government is resigned to UK banks paying out billions of pounds in bonuses this year, despite its calls to curb the payments, the BBC has learned.
The best the coalition can hope for is a declaration from the banks that they will pay out less than they would have without government intervention, said BBC business editor Robert Peston.”
At times like these, I like to sit in a quiet space and ask myself a profound question, seeking guidance from One who once walked amongst us. What Would Hobbes Do?*
The answer, it turns out, is pretty clear:
“Seventhly, is annexed to the sovereignty the whole power of prescribing the rules whereby every man may know what goods he may enjoy, and what actions he may do, without being molested by any of his fellow subjects: and this is it men call propriety. For before constitution of sovereign power, as hath already been shown, all men had right to all things, which necessarily causeth war: and therefore this propriety, being necessary to peace, and depending on sovereign power, is the act of that power, in order to the public peace.”
Which basically means: without an absolute sovereign power, nobody’s stuff is secure from being snatched by others. So the concept of “property” only has meaningful content when there exists an absolute sovereign power. Accordingly, that absolute sovereign power gets to make the rules about who gets what stuff, when they get to keep it, and what they’re allowed to do with it. And that absolute sovereign power’s decisions is final.
From which follows:
“Further, seeing it is not enough to the sustentation of a Commonwealth that every man have a propriety in a portion of land, or in some few commodities, or a natural property in some useful art, and there is no art in the world but is necessary either for the being or well-being almost of every particular man; it is necessary that men distribute that which they can spare, and transfer their propriety therein mutually one to another by exchange and mutual contract. And therefore it belonged to the Commonwealth (that is to say, to the sovereign) to appoint in what manner all kinds of contract between subjects (as buying, selling, exchanging, borrowing, lending, letting, and taking to hire) are to be made, and by what words and words and sign they shall be understood for valid.”
Which basically means: the Leviathan is boss, and the bankers have no special right to go around setting bonuses willy nilly. If the Leviathan says “no bonuses, bankers”, then it’s no bonuses, bankers. And if the bankers decide to pay out bonuses anyway, then the bankers are for the chop. And they have no right of redress or remonstrance. ‘Dems the Leviathan’s rules, and only the Leviathan can say otherwise.
Why am I telling you this? Because in my area of academic interest, a lot of effort is put into showing (I think, rather plausibly), that the modern state is conceptually ordered in a way heavily influenced by Hobbes’s view of an ultimate sovereign power which calls the shots, and above which there is no right of redress in the final instance. (Nice fluffy modern states may institute checks and balances to prevent the worst excesses of power and suffering – but behind those checks and balances nonetheless stands the brooding Leviathan).
But the bankers appear to be challenging this hegemony.
Of coure, it could just be that George, Nick, Vince and Dave don’t want to push the bankers very hard. That they’ve considered extending the long arm of the coercive state – but have decided on balance they’d prefer not to. In which case, the Leviathan is being indulgent. (Perhaps because of cognitive biases – or confusions – about the nature of power on these individuals’ behalf.)
But what if the underlying truth is that the Leviathan can’t enforce its will against the bankers? That if it tries, they will collectively act so as to undermine, counter and possibly overpower the Leviathan. Or alternatively, move their operations elsewhere in such a manner that the economic impact is such that threat of doing so is tantamount to coercion?
Indeed, that the latter possibility is at the very least in the minds of political decision-makers, surely indicates that the terms of trade (excuse the pun) have at the very least changed. The Leviathan is clearly no longer master of all it surveys within its domains – even if only because the people who currently operate its jaws do not believe it to be so.
Which, of course, is another way of putting the oft-heard worry: that global capitalism has bred megacorporations that are bigger – and more powerful – than sovereign nation states. But it’s also a way for me to express that I think there may be a significant (though by no means complete) truth in this worry, and at a serious intellectual level.
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* Or as the bracelet I wear simply states, WWHD? Which of course nicely doubles up for “What Would Hume Do?”, for when I’m in a different frame of mind. I accept this may be funny only to people either religiously schooled, or who were exposed at an impressionable age to the activities of bonkers Christian organisations.
