For me at least, I don't think it's possible to comment on this without a bit of self-reflection. When I started this blog I initially thought it would be somewhere to let steam off about my PhD, sociology and other academic stuff. But almost immediately I began commenting on political stuff. So AVPS is both a sociology blog and a far left blog, it fulfills a dual purpose. Benjamin says he sees his blogging as a means of developing himself as a revolutionary socialist. Not only is the discipline of regularly writing and commenting on current affairs a useful habit for any socialist to adopt, it can contribute toward developing the critically minded activists our class needs. Hacks who allow their central committee to do their thinking for them might be fine and dandy for a paper sale, but they're not much use for anything else. I would like to think my blogging is of this developmental character. I've forced myself to write about complex issues and things I don't know much about. I hope I've managed to avoid the haughty tones of the theoretician/guru who must be seen to be all-knowing. I also try to develop my own knowledge, and hopefully introduce new ideas to the AVPS audience, by looking at research coming out of the social sciences and think tanks. If Marxism has nothing to fear from the reality it seeks to explain, there's no reason why we should fight shy of the latest developments in social and political theory/research outside of the revolutionary left and the labour movement.
Then there is the contradiction between the collective political traditions of the left and the individual position and agency of the solitary blogger. Mick talks through some of the problems well and I won't repeat them. But I would suggest the archetypal left blogger isn't as solitary as appearances suggest. This blog, like all the other blogs on the AVPS counter-hegemonic blogroll, are part of a vibrant, interconnected network of activists, leftists and militants. Far from existing in isolation we link to and comment on each other's efforts. We polemicise and engage in blog wars (thankfully, not too frequently!). We have our cliques of friends and allies and define ourselves in terms of what we see as the opposition, be that rival left blogs or the commentariat to our right. In short we are all part of a certain inchoate location, whether we like it or not. But more about this in a moment.
Where the contradiction between the individual and collective can rear its head is one independent socialists do not have to face: the relationship between the blogger and the party they are a member of. This might help explain why so comparatively few bloggers are paid up members of revolutionary left groups. I don't believe it's because Leninist groupings are genetically predisposed to churning out mindless activists. Instead it is about the culture of activism they engender among socialists. Unlike say, for example, the Greens or Labour, where party activity may just be one type of activism among several different kinds, for us the party is the centre of our activity. The purpose of the party is to organise a collectivity of activists in pursuit of its objectives, which all Leninist groups manage to do to greater or lesser extents. This impulse of directing everything through the party applies to all political activities, including those that are internet based. I've been asked on more than one occasion why I don't write more for party publications instead of blogging, and there's no easy answer to this question. Beyond, in my opinion, the unsuitability of much of this blog's material for The Socialist and Socialism Today, both of which address themselves to very different audiences than the small clutch of people who regularly read this blog.
Because of this, blogging should not be seen as a substitute for writing for party publications. Instead, it can complement them. For example, on the whole, I think Lenin's Tomb does a good job promoting the politics of the SWP. Likewise, I think the various pieces I've written about Socialist Party politics, be they branch discussions, regional and national gatherings, public meetings, activist life and the work of my branch in Stoke reflects well on the party as a whole. I hope it works to undermine a few myths that have accumulated around Militant, the SP and the CWI over the years too.
Now you could say revolutionary left blogs are pointless because for most "mid-table" blogs (pulling in 100-300 hits a day), like AVPS, the audience is more or less made up of other left bloggers and activists, not "ordinary" working class people. Plus most of this audience's politics are pretty much set. A regular comment-leaver like Louise from the Labour left or Roobin of the SWP aren't likely to up sticks and start clamouring to be let into the SP. And vice versa. But what it does do is to allow for the building up of a rapport. Exchanges may occasionally concern themselves with the "crimes" of opposing groups, but over time, the general rule is relationships of varying degrees are built up. Most of them are weak, but they can be beneficial. They offer a ready-made outlet to assist real world mobilisations. And blog relationships can be the starting point for working relationships. If the left is forced by events to work together, say in an intensive campaign akin to the anti-Poll Tax struggle or the building of a new political formation, blogs can help overcome the misunderstandings and distrust that exist between groups.
There is another point I'd like to address, and that is the character of political blogging as a whole. Very soon Iain Dale's list of the top 100 political blogs will be released. Chances are it will be dominated by right wing bloggers because a) right wingers are more likely to vote in the contest, because its compiler is a Tory; and b) some on the left, notably Bloggerheads and Liberal Conspiracy called for a boycott. Nevertheless, though the left's 'star' blogs like LibCon, Lenin's Tomb and Socialist Unity out perform the majority of what the right have to offer in terms of audience, there is a general sense the left lag behind to an extent. This is partly because we're swimming against the current, partly because the left have been slower on the blogging uptake, and partly because the issues we choose to write about are removed from the minutiae of Westminster politics. Iain Dale and Guido get a lot of attention because they're plugged into the village and regularly deal in gossip and breaking politics news. This maybe the stuff of the anorak brigade, but their popularity proves there's a big audience for it.
Though there's no reason why a left blogger with a penchant for parliamentary shenanigans couldn't exploit a similar niche, provided they have the breadth of contacts. But this is not the route to the big time for left blogging. What we've got to understand is that our strength does not rely on a handful of influential blogs, but in the overall left blogging collective. By virtue of the homology between socialist values and many blogs who define themselves as anti-racist, or feminist, or LGBT, or environmentalist, or community-minded, it is probable the left side of political blogging globally has a greater audience than the right. But of course, the right are augmented by the mainstream media, giving them an incomparable advantage over us.
There are ways we can seek to overcome this disadvantage. We talk about what the right tends to avoid - social justice issues, the experience of those on the bottom of the pile, oppositional movements of varying kinds, activist life, fat cattery, the capitalist system itself, etc. As the economic slow down in the West starts to bite, it's reasonable to suppose this kind of commentary will find a wider audience. Second, we need to use the vast network of blogs we already have to grow our share of the audience. This requires we engage in blogging behaviour that encourages us to behave as if we are part of an actual, rather than potential collective. For example, a less aggressive style of polemic; mutual promotion of other left blogs; more attempts to build bridges with those whose natural home is on the left, but see themselves apart from it; and a greater number of collective endeavours - like the Carnival of Socialism, big blogs offering small blogs guest posts, and so on.
To get the left blogging collective to act more collectively is no easy task. But if we can, a greater audience for socialist ideas is the prize. And that is in all our interests.
When you can sit enraptured through the first half hour of a film without any dialogue, you know you're watching something a bit special. And WALL-E is certainly that. The quality of the animation is simply superb, containing some of the best computer-generated imagery yet seen in a movie (perhaps the Beijing Olympics organising committee ought to have enlisted Pixar's services).
In the 22nd century, one single corporate entity, Buy n Large, completely dominates the globe. But it is a company that presides over a world drowning in trash. As a quick fix BnL hatches a plan to evacuate humans to the Axiom, BnL's flagship luxury resort/starship. It pledges its robots left behind on Earth to clean up the mess within five years, allowing enough time for the biosphere recovers from the toxic shock.
Go forward 700 years and all that is left is WALL-E, a robot whose activity consists of compressing trash and stacking it in towers that loom over abandoned office blocks. This is a desolate world of flickering BnL adverts, dust storms, and decaying cities. Life consists of WALL-E's cockroach friend and a single plant he finds when he's out trash compacting. Centuries of isolation has allowed WALL-E to break his programming and become sentient. He occasionally finds interesting trinkets among the mountains of rubbish, which he takes back to his home. Among his most treasured possessions is a tape of Hello, Dolly!, which teaches him emotion, body language and social skills.
The one day when he is out foraging a spaceship lands, disgorging a new robot, EVE. Both are initially wary of the other but very soon they develop a close bond. But EVE is a probe sent from the Axiom to determine if the biosphere has recovered. When she scans a plant discovered earlier by WALL-E she stores it and deactivates until her mother ship returns. WALL-E is all alone again. He tries various means of reactivating her but to no avail, and slowly, sadly, he returns to his old routines. Then one day while compacting trash he realises her ship is back. He makes a mad dash back and reaches it just in time to see the ship's robotic arms retrieve EVE. He jumps on to the ship and hangs on for dear life as it blasts off. And so the adventure proper begins.
There's very little point recapping the entire plot - those who want to know the ins and outs can read an overview here.
WALL-E is a lovely film for all ages. But unsurprisingly, as a Disney production it spins a conservative tale. The message WALL-E ends up pushing, despite the intentions of its creators, is more than a gentle green warning. I would argue the film is a meditation on the human condition in industrial (not capitalist) society. In WALL-E's future the total corporate dominance of BnL has resulted in the smoothing out of all contradictions Marxists associates with capitalism. Society has evolved into an advanced communist system. Its human members have entered a permanent state of recline. They spend their days floating about on loungers. They communicate with others via holographic interfaces that hover just in front of their faces. And they are all obese. 700 years of BnL's benevolent direction has rendered them incapable of walking and pretty much doing anything for themselves. Robots have completely taken over the running of society, eliminating the need for human labour. Even the most high-ranking human, the Axiom's captain, is little more than a glorified tannoy announcer.
Basically, the human race has gone soft. Their complete dependence on machines for virtutally everything has infantilised them. Life on a lilo is inauthentic. It is only WALL-E and EVE's struggles against the Axiom's autopilot's attempt to suppress evidence of the plant that sets the human race back on to the path of authenticity. When they return to Earth their first steps on the home world are literally their first steps as functioning human beings. They plant WALL-E's sapling and set about reclaiming the Earth from its polluted state. The credits continue the story through a set of "drawings". We see humans and robots working together to plant seeds, rear crops and animals, drill wells and reconstructing buildings. Gradually the humans in these scenes start losing weight. And the Axiom itself, the symbol of BnL's hypermodernity, comes to be overtaken by vines and creepers as it is left to go derelict, symbolising the turning of humanity's back on its high tech past. People have found themselves again, through the simplicity of going back to the land.
This doesn't prevent WALL-E from being an enjoyable film. But a critical eye is required to see past the soft environmentalism.
Phew! That last post was heavy going. To mark an interlude before posting recommences I'd like to share this gem with the blogging public.
Who remembers the KLF? You know, the anarcho-dance terrorist collective who released the all time classics Last Train to Transcentral and 3am Eternal in the early 90s? Well, in between their spoof hit, Doctorin' the Tardis and their later chart success, they put out a rather super sexy swingin' slice of bop-tastic loveliness that more or less went straight into the Woolies' bargain bins upon release. Since then it has lain dormant and generally unknown ... until the magic of youtube has brought it back from musical hell. And here it is, my old tune of the week, the KLF with Kylie Said to Jason.
Georg Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness was a seminal moment in 20th century Marxist philosophy. It contains a series of interlinked essays on dialectics, the distinctive character of the Marxist method, Rosa Luxemburg, and the development of class consciousness. At the centre of the book is Lukacs' reconstruction of Marx's theory of alienation, a remarkable achievement considering this was written a decade before Marx's own writings on alienation were published! Lukacs' work proved to be immensely influential. History stimulated scholarly interest in the relationship between Hegel and Marx and the emerging programme of so-called Western Marxism. It was this Hegelian reintroduction that was the target of Louis Althusser's polemics and purging of Marxism on an anti-Hegelian, "anti-humanist" basis. (NB the complete list of postings in this series on Lukacs are at the foot of this post).
So for anyone interested in the development of Marxism, History is a key work that deserves to be read and understood. This is what I'm attempting to do at the moment. As I work through the book I plan to write a series of posts about each of the essays. These will hopefully bring Lukacs' ideas to an audience that have neither the time nor inclination to wade through such a weighty tome. I also hope they will clarify my own thoughts about the Marxist method, whether I've understood Lukacs' arguments properly and any critical comments I may have.
'What is Orthodox Marxism?', the first essay in the volume, was written in early 1919. Lukacs begins almost immediately with this bold claim:
Let us assume for the sake of argument that recent research had disproved once and for all every one of Marx's individual theses. Even if this were to be proved, every serious ‘orthodox’ Marxist would still be able to accept all such modern findings without reservation and hence dismiss all of Marx’s theses in toto – without having to renounce his orthodoxy for a single moment. Orthodox Marxism, therefore, does not imply the uncritical acceptance of the results of Marx’s investigations. It is not the ‘belief’ in this or that thesis, nor the exegesis of a ‘sacred’ book. On the contrary, orthodoxy refers exclusively to method. It is the scientific conviction that dialectical materialism is the road to truth and that its methods can be developed, expanded and deepened only along the lines laid down by its founders. (1968: 1)
If this method is the road to truth, it stands to reason that materialist dialectics are revolutionary. But what is its unique revolutionary quality? Why does it become a material force for revolution when it has seized the minds of the mass of working class people, when other theories and ideas do not? For Lukacs, part of the answer lies in the relation between theory and practice. For a revolution to take place, theory and practice has to be fused together on a mass scale. This fusion depends on the elaboration of revolutionary theory - this is a necessary condition, but not sufficient in and of itself. It requires the emergence of the proletariat, the class of propertyless wage labourers who depend on the sale of their labour power to materially and culturally reproduce themselves. Revolutionary theory is the expression in philosophy of the role this class of proletarians can play, and this role is their potential to act as agents for dissolving capitalism and laying the basis of the new socialist society. Therefore there is an intimate relation between the class and the philosophy that expresses its interests in the realm of theory.
However, the relationship between class and theory is not immediately apparent. In an attack on the social democratic revisionists of the day, namely Eduard Bernstein, the Austro-Marxists and sundry Menshevik exiles, and mainstream sociological thinking, Lukacs argued their theoretical understandings of the social world rested on 'facts', which were unique, discrete, self-contained and isolated. The obviousness of these facts were reinforced continually through everyday individual experience. Take my typical week day for example. I hop on two buses every morning to get me to university. I spend my time on there either with my nose in a book or chatting to people I know who happen to be taking the same journey. When I reach the office, I settle down with a cup of coffee and spend the day flicking between my PhD, admin work, news sites, blogs and what have you. And most days this is punctuated by chats with office mates, the cleaner and green teas with Brother S. At four or five I usually catch the bus to the nearby supermarket, get some shopping done, and walk via the canal back home. The evening is then spent doing some Socialist Party-related activity, or in domestic bliss. It therefore appears my average day can be divided up into a series of episodes, each of which involve certain types of activity, different people and so on. The only thing joining them together, from my individual standpoint is my presence in them.
For Lukacs, bourgeois social theory takes a similar, albeit more abstract position. It takes this at face value, it only describes what it can see. But for Marxists this is not enough. Lukacs argues we need to go beyond these surface layers and grasp the inner core underlying and constructing these appearances. There is a crucial distinction between what appears to be going on and what is actually going on. And the only way we can strip the essence of things of their appearance is by understanding that apparently independent and discrete phenomena are aspects of the same whole, as part of what he calls totality.
To illustrate Lukacs suggests we look at contending and contradictory theories drawn from bourgeois social science. For argument's sake, let us pick rational choice theory and postmodern approaches to subjectivity. Rational choice starts from the premise that individuals are instrumental resource maximisers that rationally seek ways of acquiring goods, money or advantage at least possible cost to their own resources. Postmodern writings on subjectivity however note the differences between infinite plays of blending identities, cultural practices, behaviours etc. means there is no one overarching social theory that can describe what's going on. Therefore, one theory claims to have the master key to all individual behaviour, while the other holds that endless contingency rules out the very possibility of unlocking social complexity in this way. Here, Lukacs would argue the tension in the theories arises from their reflection of very real contradictions within the capitalist system itself. The material basis of rational choice speaks of the experience of those employed by capitalism to make strategic decisions on behalf of capital, those who buy and sell for companies, those whose primary experience of the social world is tied up in some way with capitalism's exchange relationships. Postmodernism captures the collective experience of individual consumption, of capitalism's marketing machine addressing us as unique people and flattering the consumer choices we make. The variegated character of postmodern individualism is a reflection of its burial beneath the crushing burden of consumer choice.
Only by taking a step back from scrutinising individual phenomena can the whole picture emerge. Capitalism is a system where workers are separated from the control and fruits of their work, where the total sum of social labour in a given society is chopped up into a tightly specialised and quite rigid division of labour, where each action within the labour process is subject to reformation by the introduction of new technologies, and where the vast array of commodities produced by this process - industrial goods, food, jewellery, information, are reduced to expressions of a single exchange equivalent. This means two things. First, because all of these contradictory features are part of the same capitalist social totality they are not essentially similar or interchangeable with one another. You can no more swap around production, distribution and exchange than you can substitute the heart for the kidneys. Secondly, an individual can only experience one aspect of this vast interconnected system. To be parcelled up in one corner of a profoundly alienating division of labour militates against the ability to understand the system in its totality. And because bourgeois social thought proceeds from the starting point of the individual, it is small wonder its theories are partial, disconnected and mutually contradictory.
But if the philosophical standpoint of the individual is inadequate to the task of conceptualising totality, how was it possible for Marx, Engels, Lukacs and any other Marxist you care to mention to do so? They could do so because they proceed from a different starting point:
... the discovery of the class-outlook of the proletariat provided a vantage point from which to survey the whole of society. With the emergence of historical materialism there arose the theory of the “conditions for the liberation of the proletariat” and the doctrine of reality understood as the total process of social evolution. This was only possible because for the proletariat the total knowledge of its class-situation was a vital necessity, a matter of life and death; because its class situation becomes comprehensible only if the whole of society can be understood; and because this understanding is the inescapable precondition of its actions. Thus the unity of theory and practice is only the reverse side of the social and historical position of the proletariat. From its own point of view self-knowledge coincides with knowledge of the whole so that the proletariat is at one and the same time the subject and object of its own knowledge. (1968: 20)
There is the reflection in theory of proletarian experience. As the class is dispersed among the division of labour its collective experience drawn from across the system as a whole constantly enriches and forces further elaboration of revolutionary theory. As the knowledge of its position in capitalist society grows, so does the awareness of its potential as capitalism's gravedigger - the greater the understanding of its objective position, the greater the potential the class has for acting as a revolutionary subject. This is the starting point for Marxism - its philosophical standpoint and that of the class are identical. It is a collective standpoint.
All that said, it does not mean the working class spontaneously draws historical materialist conclusions from its lived experience. Like the bourgeoisie before it whose unconscious actions called it into being, class consciousness, the growth of workers' organisations, its historical fortunes and knowledge of its potential arises through the course of historical development, understood as the incessant struggle between it and the class whose power rests on the exploitation of its surplus labour. Lukacs argues the emergence of historical materialism at a certain point in time reflected the extent of the proletariat's historical evolution (historical materialism did not emerge just from the brains of Marx and Engels', it was the result of an encounter between radical Hegelianism, other currents in German philosophy, the impact of workers' struggles and the two men's experience of those conflicts). And now it has emerged, the mass movement for socialism, the prospect of the proletariat going from being a class "in itself" to a class "for itself" is a real historical possibility.
But the path, as history has shown, from the emergence of historical materialism to its consummation in a socialist society is not a smooth development. As the proletariat becomes increasingly conscious, capitalism's contradictions intensify as does the struggle with the boss class. This also requires constant elaboration on the part of revolutionary theory. Among his closing words, Lukacs writes "Marxist orthodoxy is no guardian of traditions, it is the eternally vigilant prophet proclaiming the relation between the tasks of the immediate present and the totality of the historical process" (1968: 24).
In case there are any Lukacs experts reading, I hope I've more or less got the gist of his arguments correct. But there are some problems. First is his bold claim about the character of Marxist orthodoxy resting solely on the question of method. If we accept his arguments about totality and theory being the philosophical sum of the total experience of the proletariat, it means the conceptual arsenals of Marxist thought are organically related to this experience. Take Marx's theory of surplus value. Marx argues capital exploits the labour power of workers by not paying them the full value of their labour. This ultimately is the source of the surplus in capitalist social formations that enables the payment of taxes, rents, liabilities, and of course, profit. This theory is an abstraction of the work relationships two and a half billion proletarians enter into every day. If it and the other Marxist concepts were disproved, either the working class were engaged in entirely different forms of economic behaviour or the method is somehow at fault. The relationship between the dialectical method Marxism rests on and the concepts it generates is tighter than Lukacs supposes. They stand and fall together.
Second is totality. While it is true alienation and the division of labour continues to atomise and work against the generalisation of class consciousness, and life is still experienced in a fragmentary way without direct experience of the interconnections and relationships that bind us all together, mainstream sociology has positively embraced totality, albeit in a distorted fashion. We are constantly reminded of the global economy in which we live, of how decisions taken thousands of miles away can affect peoples' livelihoods here, how "global competition" justifies wage restraint, deteriorating conditions and job losses. The bosses are more than capable of evoking 'totality' to aid their quest in naturalising capitalist social relations. So in itself, though totality is an important component of the Marxist method, it is only one component. Contradiction and change (or, if you want the old phrases, the transformation of quantity into quality, the interpenetration of opposites and the negation of the negation) are just as important as totality for grasping the social world surrounding us.
The third point is historical destiny of the proletariat. Throughout this commentary I've tried to make it clear that the socialist destiny of the proletariat is by no means guaranteed. As Marx noted, the outcome, or rather irresolution of the class struggle could lead to the mutual ruination of the contending classes. Because the proletariat was unable to take power in the cold war period and disarm the bourgeoisie of the west and the bureaucrats of the east, the threat civilisation could disappear underneath a mushroom cloud was ever present. Today unless class struggle positively resolves itself within the next few decades, it is likely climate change and environmental despoliation will lead to the death and impoverishment of millions. The socialist outcome of class struggle is by no means guaranteed. I'm sure Lukacs didn't think so either, but its inevitability is implied time and again when he speaks of the proletariat's historical destiny.
Finally, what is the repository of revolutionary theory? What agency is capable of transforming the collective experience of the proletariat into theory? A few Marx-like geniuses? Or something more inclusive? This gap in Lukacs' account will be looked at in the next post on his essay on Rosa Luxemburg.
The complete list of postings on History and Class Consciousness is below:
Welcome comrades, friends and readers to the 26th Carnival of Socialism! Plenty of blogging lefties have been at their Stakhanovite labours in front of their keyboards of late, so it's unsurprising a bumper harvest of bloggage is here and ready for shipping. Revolutionaries, are you comfortable in your armchairs? Then I shall begin.
Most topical of course is the unfolding conflict between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia. This has understandably excited a good deal of left commentary. Thankfully most blogs have avoided cheer leading one side or the other, with the exception of Neil Clark, who more or less argues the war should be seen as some sort of national liberation struggle. Other blogs prefer to offer a bit of background (Paul Smith for instance). Given Georgia isn't far from the strategically important Caspian Sea oil reserves, we shouldn't be surprised to see the US government's hand in stirring up tensions. Back Towards the Locus, Boffy, and Andy all acknowledge its behind-the-scenes machinations. Lenin also exposes the truth about the casualty figures.
While we're on the topic of conflict, the potential for an attack by Israel on Iranian nuclear facilities has locked a small section of leftyblogland into a series of bad tempered exchanges. The AWL's chief theoretician, Sean Matgamna, openly pondered the possibility of whether socialists can condemn a pre-emptive attack by Israel on Iran if it would prevent the latter from acquiring nuclear capability and threatening Israel with those weapons in the future. Their traditional sparring partner on the left, the cpgb responded by saying pre-emptive strikes would have to be nuclear given the level of protection surrounding Iranian enrichment facilities. Cue a polemical shit storm. Shiraz Socialist has been prominently defending Matgamna's position here, here and here, complete with "robust" exchanges in their comment boxes. Replies are by Whatever Happened to Leon Trotsky?, Serge's Fist and Infantile and Disorderly. Tami of Unknown Conscience fame has also replied on Shiraz to a related AWL attack on the Hands Off the People of Iran.
Okay, let's put the polemics away and talk activism shall we? The big protest event of the last week was the climate camp against Kingsnorth power station. Derek Wall and Scribo Ergo Sum have a thing or two to say about policing of the event. Jim has a round up of some of commentary surrounding the camp, and there's debate and eyewitness accounts in the comments on this post on Socialist Unity. And bringing up the contrarian rear, Jack Ray wonders what the point of it all was.
The main British political story of late continues to be the (boring) rumblings and grumblings around the leadership of the Labour party. Susan Press notes how two fair weather commentariat friends of Gordon Brown have gone all doe-eyed over David Miliband. Paul Anderson reckons there isn't much chance of Brown getting ousted because of the labyrinthine party rules designed to protect incumbent leaders from Young Turks. That said, he's cautiously supportive of Miliband. I can't think why. It's not as though he has a programme derived from his dad's excellent Socialism for a Sceptical Age stuffed in his back pocket. Lastly Charlie Marks draws attention to the WRP's world-historic intervention into the Labour leadership debate ... the solution is a workers' government, of course!
While we're talking bourgeois politics, the Tories new moral agenda has come in for some blogging flak. Homo Ludens has a go at David Cameron for blaming the dangerous poor for the recent spate of high profile knife attacks, albeit dressed up in his fluffy liberal Tory language. He argues the left's response to questions of crime would do well to look at the experience of the Paris Commune. Dave Osler has a piece examining Nudge, the latest political "big idea" to hit the streets. David Cameron and George Osborn are reportedly fans. This week also saw Michael Gove attacking lad mags for discouraging responsibility and treating women as sexually available pieces of meat. Septic Isle takes apart some of the assumptions of Gove's argument.
This would be a good time to mention some contributions on gender politics. Penny Red notes that because our culture is commodified along rigidly gendered and sexist norms, women are constantly on display, conscious or not. She says "When you're a pretty woman, it's easy to feel like your sexuality is not your own, like your body is not your own. It's taken from you, and then sold back to you, every day, by the eyes of a thousand strangers. It makes you feel alien within your own skin. It makes you dissasociate from what you're told is your own sexuality. Since I sharpened up for work and learned to walk in high heels, I don't 'feel' sexy. I just feel angry." A different take on women's bodies comes from Laura Woodhouse. Written partly as a polemic against a school of thought in radical feminism that, there's no other word for it, is transphobic, she argues there are enough shared experiences among women as a sexual underclass, regardless of their individual experiences of womanhood, for women to unite against the discrimination. If some feminists are uncomfortable with the inclusion of trans women, then they ought to have a serious rethink about their politics. It needs to be done too. Violence toward trans women is all too common, as this depressing case featured on TransGriot shows. What kind of feminist would be comfortable lining up with sadistic homophobes in denying trans women the right to define themselves as they choose? On a lighter note, Sadie expertly takes down idiotic comments left in the wake of a Femail article that argues girls should be taught feminism in the class room. You know, stuff like the equal worth of girls and other such dangerous notions.
I suppose it wouldn't be the done thing if I failed to mention the Olympics in the week it spectacularly opened. Snowball, Militant Worker and Harpymarx say some interesting things about it, sport and capitalism.
There's some miscellany that caught my eye while this was being compiled. In what must be a first, Enemies of Reason dissects a sympathetic article about immigrants ... in The Daily Mail! Hold your horses though. It hasn't got a lump in its throat about asylum seekers living in vermin infested housing or East Europeans working below the minimum wage. No, it's not happy that a white middle class British family's had a spot of bother emigrating to Canada. It seems appropriate while we're at the reactionary end of the political spectrum to take comfort from the predicament our fascist friends in the BNP find themselves in. Lancaster Unity have been over the accounts, and they make entertaining reading - if that's your kind of thing.
Harpymarx (again!) documents the government's attack on legal aid. No prizes for guessing what sections of the population will lose out. Louis Proyect reviews two books - one looking at the political economy of the neoliberal attacks on higher education, and the other on organising against university management. They may be written for the US market but there's plenty of interest in the post for anyone involved campaigning against similar "reforms" elsewhere.
When I volunteered for this carnival I asked for contributions on the politics of left blogging. Unfortunately the piece I intended to write has been caught on the horns of blogger's block and will have to wait for another time. Thankfully some comrades stepped up to the plate. Benjamin Solah says that blogging for him is primarily a personal thing, to help him develop politically as a revolutionary. Mick from Organised Rage looks at the contradiction between the collective political project of the left and the individual position of the socialist blogger, who must effectively promote themselves to get noticed. Slightly related, as Mick touches on it, Leftwing Criminologist note the under-representation of left blogging by students. Just where are all the student lefties? If there are large numbers of them blogging (and there are as I can think of a handful off the top of my head) they're not talking about student issues. All worthwhile stuff that will give my future post on the topic something to digest.
Last but not least Spaces of Hope has an appeal (featured widely across the interwebs) against South Korean moves to paralyse the country's trade union movement.
And that comrades marks the end of the 26th Carnival of Socialism. But there's no need to be disappointed. There's still plenty of stuff to see in my archives and on all the other blogs featured in this compilation. Plus the next carnival is merely 14 days away! It will hit the streets around the 22nd August at Jim's place. Red salute!
As American culture settled down to the country's role as international arbiter in the decade-long interregnum between the final collapse of the Soviet Union and the attacks of September 11th, it was a culture coming to terms with having had a key principle of its fixity knocked away. The world could no longer simply be divided into black and white. The evil empire had lost and the free world had won. With the passing of the USSR and the emergence of a world order dominated by American power, the paranoia once directed against a clear identifiable enemy turned in and against itself. America knew something out there was going to get it, but what would it be? Could its friends possibly its enemies? And what motives could possibly drive their hostility? Are they misguided or do they have a firm agenda?
This anxiety was reflected time and again in the leading science fiction cult shows of the period. On the surface Babylon 5 and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine were traditional-style conflicts of goodies vs baddies, but picking through the shows' narratives reveals a more complex picture. The Shadows of Babylon 5 were not interested in conquest and domination. They were extreme social Darwinists, believing that war and conflict between alien races wheedled the weak out from the strong and boosted the quality of the galaxy's biological stock. Deep Space Nine eventually got a story arc going about subversion, invasion and war between the Federation and its allies and the shape-shifting Dominion. But the latter weren't in the game for a simple power grab. Theirs was a "defensive" offensive war against "the solids" they believed would persecute them. Both shows had bucket loads of subterfuge, enemy agents, shifting alliances and a dose of paranoia. The space stations they drew their titles from were the rocks of the shows. The waves of great events broke against them but they remained eternal and unchanging. No matter what happened they would win through in the end, just like Uncle Sam. Warning: Spoilers
In this regard The X-Files is the archetypal 1990s cult show. FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigate a bizarre world of unexplained Forteana and alien-related conspiranoia. Adversaries come and go, switching allegiances, disappearing and reappearing. Conspiracies are found to have conspiracies within them. There are no fixed points in the X-Files universe, apart from the bond Mulder and Scully establish between themselves.
It is perhaps because The X-Files cuts against the grain of the contemporary cultural zeitgeist that explains the relatively poor box office receipts for the new film, The X-Files: I Want To Believe. That, and it not being a particularly fantastic picture. Unlike the previous film, which indulged the show's black oil/little grey aliens conspiracy, this is a stand alone addition to the X-Files canon akin to the monster-of-the-week staple of the series.
Scully, now working as a medical doctor at a Catholic hospital is approached by the FBI desperate to get back in touch with Mulder. The agent in charge of the investigation, Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet), requires his "expertise" in solving what would have been classed as an x file. One of their agents has gone missing from her home, and the only lead they have are the visions of a convicted paedophile priest, Father Joseph (Billy Connolly, himself a survivor of child abuse). His visions lead the FBI to a severed arm in the snow and he tells them the agent is still alive. True to form, Mulder embraces Joseph as evidence of psychic powers whereas Scully is far more sceptical (as well as being repulsed by his crimes). Very shortly another woman is abducted and Father Joseph experiences more visions. He leads them to a grisly burial ground of severed limbs from multiple victims. Analysis of the remains gives them a lead to Janke Dacyshyn (Callum Keith Rennie) of an organ courier firm. They learn his civil partner, Franz Tomczeszyn, was one of the boys abused by Father Joseph.
The agents move in to arrest Dacyshyn at his company's offices, but manages to escape, killing agent Whitney in the process. He also leaves behind a grisly package - the frozen severed head of the abducted FBI agent. But the trail picks up again thanks to the animal tranquiliser found in the body parts. Mulder is able to trace it to a store in small town, Virginia and goes along to check the lead. By coincidence, as Mulder is questioning the proprietor Dacyshyn rolls up. Mulder is able to follow him back to his compound (after a brush with Dacyshyn's snow plough, being bulldozed off a rocky outcrop and hypothermia) where he discovers this macabre scheme: Tomczeszyn is dying from lung cancer. Dacyshyn and a team of Russian Doctor Frankensteins are attempting to "cure" this by transplanting Tomczeszyn's head to a succession of (female) bodies. Mulder is overpowered and taken outside to be chopped up, but is rescued by Scully and his old boss at the FBI, Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi). It all ends rather abruptly as the scene moves back to Mulder's house, where he tells Scully that if she were to check the medical records, Father Joseph succumbed to his cancer at the very same moment the blood supply was cut off to Tomczeszyn's disembodied head.
One of the formulas that made The X-Files interesting was Mulder's belief in any old lizard theory that came his way, whereas Scully was always more critical. The irony was Scully's scientific rationality was always tempered by her devout Catholicism, while Mulder was seemingly uninterested in religion, beyond his supernatural peccadilloes. In this film, the subtitle, 'I Want to Believe' is not about Mulder's relationship to the paranormal, it is about Scully's faith. While he does the action Scully gets the character scenes. Her sub-plot sees her as the lead doctor for Christian, a young boy diagnosed with the degenerative and difficult-to-treat brain illness, Sandhoff disease. Despite being a Catholic hospital, the chief administrator, Father Ybarra, believes Christian is beyond help and should be transferred to a hospice. Scully argues there is hope in new complex stem cell-based techniques, but which would be very uncomfortable and may not work. Scully is plagued with indecision. Should she fight for the treatment, even if God (in the shape of Ybarra) has given up on the boy? She puts aside her scepticism and revulsion for Father Joseph and repeatedly asks him for guidance. He blurts out 'don't give up' during one of his psychic trances. She takes this advice and obtains consent from Christian's parents, and the film ends as his final operation is to begin. Scully wants to believe she's doing the right thing but cannot find enough confirmation in her faith. It takes a bland utterance of seemingly supernatural origin for her to continue.
I try not to end on a low note, but some things cannot be passed over without comment. The X-Files comes with some pretty reactionary baggage. To begin with, Scully comes across as the more complex and satisfying character in this story because she is the foil for the conflicts, irresolutions and self-doubts that afflict us all throughout our lives. But is it entirely coincidental that she - a woman - is the one who is tortured by indecision? Especially when Mulder, a man, has no hesitation pursuing his x-file quarry? Her dilemma is only resolved when she turns to Father Joseph, another man. There is also the relationship between Mulder, agent Whitney, and Whitney's partner. As lead investigator Whitney cannot function effectively without being supervised by a man. Her partner, agent Mosley Drummy (Xzibit) is very sceptical of Father Joseph's psychic abilities and would like to see the investigation unfold conventionally. However, it takes Mulder to prevent Whitney being led astray by this black man to put the search for the missing agent on its proper footing.
But by far the worst is the treatment of the homosexual villains at the heart of the plot. If the implication that Father Joseph's sexual abuse was what turned the young Tomczeszyn gay wasn't bad enough, Dacyshyn is committing unspeakable and morally repugnant acts to his partner. I'm sure that is entirely coincidental, of course. But then why are they committed to procuring female bodies to graft Tomczeszyn's head on to? Was Dacyshyn questioning his sexuality? Were the script writers trying to "heterosexualise" their relationship? Or worse, is this a nod toward 19th and 20th century discourses that positioned gay men as women in male bodies? Whatever, this kind of juvenile homophobic rubbish has no place in the cinema of 2008.
Well, I was planning for a "proper" post to appear today but haven't had the time. Now, I don't like to be a hostage to fortune but there is a good chance posts will appear this week on the new X-Files film, Richard Dawkins' Channel 4 celebration of Darwin and the first of a series on Georg Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness. While we're on the topic here's a taster from what I've read so far:
The fetishistic illusions enveloping all phenomena of capitalist society succeed in concealing reality, but more is concealed than the historical, i.e. transitory, ephemeral nature of phenomena. This concealment is made possible by the fact that in capitalist society man's environment, and especially the categories of economics, appear to him immediately and necessarily in forms of objectivity which conceal the fact that they are the categories of the relations of men with each other. Instead they appear as things and the relations of things with each other (p.14).
A nice little primer for his seminal essay on alienation and reification that appears later in the same book, if you ask me.
Also reminder time. This weekend sees the Carnival of Socialism swing by this blog. If you want something included let me know either via comments or my email, which you can find in my profile.
Edited to add: Don't forget voting closes soon for the top 100 political blogs, organised by Iain Dale. Details are here.
Here at AVPS we rarely pay attention to the vacuous exchanges between mainstream politicians. We're more interested in real politics than the nonsense that passes for establishment political discourse. But I couldn't really let the main Westminster village story of the week pass without my two pennies worth. Readers will recall the media storm surrounding David Miliband's piece for The Graun last week, where he set out a substance-free "vision" for New Labour. In it he states " ... we don't need a summer of introspection. The starting point is not debating personalities but winning the argument about our record, our vision for the future and how we achieve it." That it was widely seen as a leadership challenge is a touch ironic, with Bob Marshall-Andrews and Geraldine Andrews going on telly to demand "orf with his head!"
And so we are treated to an official "reply" from the Brown camp in today's Times, authored by no less a personage as John Denham (pictured), the minister for innovations, universities and skills (who comes up with these ludicrous titles?) Ostensibly about putting the boot into Cameron (as was Miliband's article), it is very clearly a "get your hands off my man!" piece. But aside from that it offers an insight into how the leading layers of government think, or rather, delude themselves.
Take Denham's opening claim. "The history of the past 11 years is pretty clear. On virtually every big argument that divided Britain in 1997 Labour has been proved right and the Tories wrong." What an incredible claim to make. What big issues? Aside from ID cards and 42 days detention, it's very difficult to get a cigarette paper between them when it comes to matters of principle. Both are united on the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Both are united in denying workers in this country the few crumbs that fall off the European Union table in terms of working hours and employment protection. The Tories are cheering on government plans to force the unemployed to work for their dole. And neither have any problem with divesting the state of its social responsibilities and handing public services over to the private sector. Denham's claims are pure hyperbole.
More vacuities pile up until we reach this astonishing claim: "the next election ... will be fought in a world where British families can’t buy or sell a home because US bankers lent money to impoverished Americans." That's right, blame the yanks for their lack of prudence. It is interesting to see how quickly this has become the government's stock response to every problem. Lost an ultra-safe Labour seat? Blame the credit crunch. Poll ratings down in the dumps? Blame the credit crunch. Troops getting killed in Afghanistan? Blame the credit crunch (probably). When you think about it, it is incredible the government and its backbench sock puppets can spin this rubbish with a straight face.
But it serves two very definite functions. In the first place it allows New Labour to delude itself into thinking its record of government is pretty spotless. As we know, Blair and Brown didn't do a thing to rein in the bubble of cheap credit during the "good times". They did nothing to pacify spiralling house prices. They green lighted the sale of Britain's family silver, opening the economy up to the penetration of foreign capital unrivalled in the advanced capitalist world. Because of the credit crunch, millions face the prospect of crippling indebtedness, negative equity and homelessness, and more lay offs as overseas capital scuttles off back home. The credit crunch and the galloping price of oil may not be New Labour's doing, but they are directly responsible for much of the misery it will cause.
Second, because all this is beyond the power of government it justifies business as usual politics. They cannot acknowledge, let alone understand that their policies are deeply, deeply unpopular. No one voted for the government's henchmen, Adam Crozier and Allan Leighton, to take the axe to Royal Mail - perhaps the one issue that has done more to alienate the Middle England it assiduously courts than anything else. Another is the 10p tax band issue, which exposed New Labour as a party intent on antagonising its working class base. This was reinforced by their retreat on taxing filthy rich non-domiciles. As a general rule voters may not be up in arms about privatisation, PFI rip-offs and welfare cuts, but when it affects them in a direct way that's a drip, drip of voters alienated from the New Labour project.
There's no reason to carry on reading what Denham has to say. His "critique" of the Conservatives is a case of pots and kettles - it takes some gumption for a New Labour minister to accuse David Cameron of superficiality!
Denham's piece is a coded paean to unify behind Brown's crumbling leadership. But ultimately, whether it is Brown, Miliband, Harman, or Straw at the helm it doesn't matter. It is policies that matter, not the (non) personalities of a series of grey blurs. This could change if either John McDonnell for the left, or Jon Cruddas for the non-Blairite/Brownite mainstream formally announce their intentions, but neither looks very likely at present.
I think something nice, calm and unpolitical was needed after the shenanigans I midwifed into the world at Socialist Unity. And what better way to relax than indulging a meme that shows off the literary capital you've accumulated through the ages. This came to me by way of Lib Dem blogger, Alix Mortimer and is apparently based on an updated version of Britain's 100 best books that saw the light of day in the BBC's 2003 Big Read (how the new list below was compiled is anyone's guess).
But anyway. This is the blurb that comes with the meme.
“The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. 1) Look at the list and bold those you have read. 2) Italicize those you intend to read. 3) Underline the books you love. 4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated. 5) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them
I would add that 'read' means read, not flicked through or given up half way to the end. It's cover to cover or nothing.
Here goes:
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6 The Bible 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald 23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis 34 Emma - Jane Austen 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel 52 Dune - Frank Herbert 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding 69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson 75 Ulysses - James Joyce 76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome 78 Germinal - Emile Zola 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray 80 Possession - AS Byatt 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry 87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery 93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole 96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Gone with the Wind (painful childhood nightmares of utter boredom) and Dune (aristocrats in space? Please) thoroughly deserve to be struck off this list, but more or less everything else can stay.
