RATM and Internet Radicalism

Sony is toasting a chart double this weekend. The X Factor's Joe McElderry managed the number two spot in the UK top 40, while Rage Against the Machine hit number one with their anti-corporate anthem, Killing in the Name. One strange feature of the internet and media circus surrounding the contest was communists and anarchists acting as unpaid marketing folk for one of the world's largest record companies. What a lovely irony.

But I'm not interested in being sniffy about the result. Afterall, it's just a bit of festive fun and it raised £60 grand for Shelter. Plus RATM are a great band (I have many happy memories associated with their eponymous debut). But does the victory of RATM in the battle for singles' chart dominance signify anything deeper? Is it the cultural signal of the revolutionary noise to come? Of course not. RATM's Tom Morello is probably right when he says the campaign "tapped into the silent majority of the people in the UK who are tired of being spoon-fed one schmaltzy ballad after another".

Some certainly didn't see it that way. I've seen more than one tweet that portrayed this as a battle in the cultural wars against global capital. As capitalism is an anarchic system of production and cannot meet all its ideological needs no more than it can provide everyone a decent standard of living, it occasionally finds its short term goals of turning a buck conflicting with its systemic preferences for bourgeois ideologies. Over the course of their career, Sony have made a mint out of RATM while simultaneously the latter have added to anti-corporate and counter-cultural trends in popular culture. That is the contradictory nature of the beast - and why "revolutionary" critiques of society that credit the media with all-encompassing brainwashing powers are so far off the mark.

Nevertheless, while this is no Gramscian victory over corporate cultural dominance and has zero bearing on the coming of the New Society, the campaign behind RATM is interesting in its own right. If only because, once again, it demonstrates the power - if it can be called that - of the emergent internet radicalism. We have seen before with the Jan Moir debacle, Twitter vs Trafigura/Carter-Ruck, the storm around Daniel Hannan and the NHS, and the craze for turning your Twitter avatars green in solidarity with Iranian protesters how particular memes can seize hold of the internet-going public's imagination. With very little time and cost, people are able to register their protest/opposition without the rigmarole of standing in the rain, listening to boring speeches, and beating off the desperate efforts of Trot paper sellers. And what is more, in so doing everyone else can see them "making a stand" too.

What these issues have in common is that for those who participate in this form of internet radicalism, their proximity to the media means the actions they are protesting against appear more immediate and "relevant". This is why the Twitterati were outraged by Jan Moir's attack on Stephen Gately, but not so moved when Ian Baynham was beaten to death in a homophobic hate crime. It's not because people don't give a shit - it's that media-saturated societies collapse social distance in online cyberspaces and via TV, managing in some cases to create an illusion of involvement - of having a stake in a programme, celebrity or media event. It's one reason why young folk are more likely to vote in Big Brother and X Factor phone-ins than in local elections, for example.

Seeing as politics and culture in this country are very heavily mediated (with political parties, companies and celebrities utterly obsessed with media management) this kind of radicalism of the spectacle can have a limited impact in the real world. But it is not and can never be a substitute for the real graft of political struggle.

Countering the EDL in Stoke

At the branch meeting of Stoke Socialist Party on Thursday night, we discussed the English Defence League's intention to march in the city on 23rd January. Some of the discussion dwelt on the decisions taken at Monday evening's meeting of the local anti-fascist group, North Staffs Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (NorSCARF), which has decided to hold a vigil "against intolerance" on the 23rd.

Brother A opened our meeting by noting that it was always a matter of time before the EDL came to Stoke, thanks to the electoral support the BNP have in the Potteries. Therefore, as far as our party is concerned we have two key political tasks between now and the EDL's arrival. The first of these is to build as much unity as possible locally among anti-fascists of various persuasions and concentrate those forces at the counter-demonstration. For this reason, he argued against one suggestion made at the NorSCARF meeting that we should mobilise at various points of the city so the EDL does not slip through the net (at the moment, no one knows where they will be congregating - assuming the police grant permission). The second job of the Socialist Party is to introduce our politics into the proceedings, albeit skillfully. He then moved on to outline some of the ways the branch can get stuck into this work.

In the discussion, P talked about his brief encounter with the EDL on the train to Nottingham a couple of Saturdays previous. Throughout the journey the EDL'ers traded stories about fights they'd been involved with, with one of them joking about how he'd slashed another bloke across the face. Coupled with other reports about the EDL's activities elsewhere, far from their being an organisation who wants to demonstrate peacefully about the (relatively negligible) influence Islam has in Britain, they're just a collection of thugs up for a ruck. He also noted that despite Griffin wanting to put much distance between his dapper-suited fascists and the EDL's knuckle draggers, if you consider them together they resemble the classical fascist movement of old - one wing is "legitimate" and deals in politics while the other tries to wrest control of the streets from its opponents. It's therefore unsurprising to find a certain interchangeability among their personnel.

Brother D in his first branch meeting as a party member said he knew some EDL supporters from back home too, and they very much fitted in the footy hooligan mould. To counter them he thought we needed as many out as possible to show the depth of anti-fascism opposition that exists. Brother F agreed and the counter demo/vigil has already got the support of his union branch. A mentioned that trade unions should especially be encouraged to turn up, not least because they have tens of thousands of members across North Staffs - enough alone to dwarf whatever national mobilisation the EDL can muster.

There was some discussion over the likely response of the authorities. In Autumn 2008, when the BNP held an event to mark the death of local fascist Keith Brown (who was stabbed by his Asian neighbour following years of abuse by Brown), the anti-fascist counter-demonstration took place far away at the police's insistence. There was little in the way of trouble apart from some faux jostling with the cops by a handful of SWPs keen to show off their r-r-revolutionary creds. This time will be different. The reason the EDL are marching in Stoke is because the first purpose-built mosque in the Potteries is nearing completion. If they march on it they have to pass through Shelton, which is ethnically diverse and has a large Muslim population. Back in 2001 the very rumour of a BNP/NF march in Hanley was enough to spark off a riot in nearby Cobridge. I'm pretty sure the local plod are very aware an EDL march could have the same result and are likely to police it very heavily, if they allow it to go ahead at all.

Whatever the case, whether the EDL march, are escorted to a scrap of ground somewhere, kettled at the railway station or don't turn up, a strong and united anti-fascist opposition will be mobilised to show their filth is rejected by the majority of Potters.

The Lifespan of Political Blogs

We know all good things come to an end, so how long is the lifespan of a typical politics blog? Since this blog recently passed its third anniversary, I've been thinking more generally about the longevity of blogs.

There are of course a number of hurdles for determining the life span of blogs. One of these is how do you define a dead blog? Obviously deletion is a pretty clear statement of blog death. But what about those that appear abandoned? For example, Walton's Red Star Coven has this year gone eight months without a post before popping up with something in November and (coincidentally) a statement that retirement may be imminent. So, a quiet blog can spring back into life any time. Now, as a general rule, AVPS only links to active blogs, which I've tended to define as those who've posted within the last month and a half. This seems like a good rule of thumb to determine whether a blog is active or abandoned.

But that's only one problem of measurement. The other is who to apply it to. There are hundreds of UK-based political blogs and it would be impossible to track them all down as blog rolls are updated and extinct/inactive blogs are purged - no one archives the folk they used to link to two or three years ago, and dead blogs can very quickly fade from popular blogging memory. Luckily, since the get go I've tried to plug other's blogs where I can. I also now visit new and recent entrants to blogging in regular monthly posts (which are cross-posted to Socialist Unity). This means I can work use the archive here, spread across the blogs and blogging category..

So we have a definition of a dead blog plus an archive to work from. The remaining problem is the archive mainly covers blogs from the centre left to the far left. It's very rare a Tory or a LibDem blogger receives a link from me (though it has happened). That said, I doubt very much party affiliations have an impact on one's ability to blog. Tories and liberals are probably just as likely to lose interest as lefties if they feel they're getting nowhere, or whatever.

As far as this blog is concerned, in 2006-7 55 unique blogs were named and linked to in blog posts. For 2007-8 that figure was 140 and 2008-9, 115. This gives us a grand total of 310 blogs to play with. Of this group deleted, dead and invite-only blogs account for 107 of them, or 34% (all fractions rounded to nearest whole).

It is reasonable to expect the blogs cited in my regular round ups this last year are more likely to be active than those who received a plug two or so years ago. Here are the active/inactive figures by year:

2008/9 - 87/28
2007/8 - 88/52
2006/7 - 28/27

It must be remembered that the blogs here did not necessarily start in the year in which they received a plug.

Interestingly, of this sample 84 of the active blogs cited over the course of this blog's life are three years old or older (41% of active blogs, 27% of total), and 49 are 18 - 35 months old (24% of active blogs, 15% of total). This suggests political blogging is quite stable, with 65% of the active sample taken up by 'long term' bloggers with 18 months or more activity behind them.

But what about the dead blogs themselves? Their length of operation runs the whole gamut of lifespans, from one blog that only posted the once all the way up to another that was regularly updated for over seven years. As no archive data is available for deleted or invite-only blogs, this leaves us with 77 defunct but available blogs.

As you might expect a lot of blogs (but not the majority) failed in the first six months. These account for 22 blogs overall (29%). Blogs in the 7-12 and 13-18 months categories are 13 (17%) and 8 (10%) respectively. Long-lived blogs (older than 18 months) go up to 11 (14%) in the 19-24 months category, before ranging between two and five blogs in every six monthly interval after up to 60 months (20 in total, or 26%). Beyond that there are only three blogs (4%). Here's the distribution:

Age

1-6 months:       22

7-12 months:     13

13-18 months:   8

19-24 months:   11

25-30 months:   5

31-36 months:   3

37-42 months:   2

43-48 months:   4

49-54 months:   4

55-60 months:   2

61+ months:       3

Total blogs: 77

The median lifespan of this sample is in the 13-18 month range, and the average lifespan is 21 months. Both figures appear to confirm that blogging tends not to be a flash in the pan exercise, which dovetails nicely with the observation that most of the active blogs cited are long-term (18 months +) endeavours.

Of course, this is not an unproblematic analysis. For example, I've treated blogging life span as the time between the first post and last post. Under this rule a blog that posted for a couple of months at the start of 2008 and then maintained radio silence until firing off a couple more posts in December is counted as having been operational for all the year rather than just three months. As a significant minority of blogs fall into that category the median and average lifespan figures are distorted by them. But on the other hand, at least defining lifespan from the first post to the last is fairly neat and "precise". Considering the level of activity inbetween can muddy the waters somewhat. For example, is a blog that posts every other day during the course of the year more active than one that posted everyday for nine months and is then abandoned?

There is then the issue of sample size. 310 blogs are only a small cross section of the total number that have existed during the last three years, but on the other hand there are not millions of political blogs out there. The Total Politics blog directory lists 1,942 UK-focused political blogs (does it list inactive blogs?). I might not be au fait with statistics any more, but I'm pretty certain significance test would establish that the longevity patterns in the sample above are not random and very likely to reflect real patterns in not only the TP list, but outside of it too.

But whatever the case, more research needs to be done before a more confident answer than '21 months' can be given as the average lifespan of a blog. And that itself does not to even begin to address why regular/long-term bloggers decide to give up.

Questioning Carbon Capture and Storage

With all eyes turned to the Copenhagen summit, means of reducing Carbon Dioxide emissions and/or storing it will be exercising the minds of policy makers the world over. One technocratic solution that is receiving serious attention among scientists, politicians and environmentalists is carbon capture and storage (CCS). This technology entails either drawing C02 out of the atmosphere or capturing it at point of release, and then storing it so it cannot contribute toward global warming. However, CCS is not an just an engineering challenge that will allegedly solve the problem of climate change mitigation - there are a whole host of political questions bound up with it too. It was some of these issues James Meadowcroft addressed at Keele last Tuesday in his paper 'CCS: Promoting the Transition to Sustainable Energy or Enhanced Carbon Lock-In?' This was to promote his recent co-edited book, Caching the Carbon, which looks at CCS politics and policy in the USA, Australia, Canada, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the wider EU.

The talk began with the state of the technology, which can be divided into three elements. The capture itself, transporting the carbon, and storing it each represent different engineering challenges and the technology itself is uneven - this is to say nothing of integrating them together.

Of the elements of CCS, capture is the most challenging. At present three to four per cent of what comes out of a smoke stack is carbon dioxide, so how to separate it from other emissions? One possible solution is gasifying coal, which would allow for the CO2 to be extracted and burn the remaining hydrogen for fuel. The problem with this is even though being worked on in the commercial sector, the technology has yet to mature to the level of wide scale application. Another big problem with capture is the cost. At present performing carbon capture on a coal-fired power station would require a dedicated chemical plant to be built alongside it, and anywhere in the region of 15-40% of the station's output required to power it. Not surprisingly a lot of research is focusing on getting the capture cost down.

Transportation represents less of a challenge as we already have extensive experience of transporting gas over distances, be it in container ships, by road or rail or through pipelines.

More problematic is the storage. The three main options is storing it underground, pumping it into the ocean or making it react in a particular way to produce "artificial" limestone. The problem with the ocean is that it is not a store as such but rather one means by which CO2 is cycled back into the atmosphere (long-term). Pumping it into deep sea trenches is a possibility, where the pressures would liquify the gas and keep it in place - but this is to say nothing of the damage it could do to deep sea ecology, nor is there a guarantee that it would find its way back into the atmosphere. Geological storage therefore seems more practical, but this is far from problem-free. Already the US oil industry pumps CO2 into oil wells as a means of enhancing production. But thanks to fissures in the ground, one could not fill a well and then cap it - methods would have to be developed to ensure any gas pumped into them stays there. Another possibility is pumping it into deep coal seams or saline aquifers beneath the water table. But these locations have to be stable for a long period of time as it take 50,000 years for the gas to be incorporated into rock (leaving aside the disastrous consequences of a vast store of captured carbon suddenly "bursting").

There are four strategic ways of thinking about CCS, assuming the engineering problems can be resolved. The first would be attached to 'large point source emitters', such as refineries, power stations, big factories and so on. These are responsible for about half of the world's carbon emissions. The second is small and mobile sources, applicable to homes and cars. The third is biomass, which can be carbon neutral provided closed carbon-energy loops can be created. For instance, burning plant matter, growing it, burning it, etc. Lastly is the possibility of artificial trees that could extract carbon directly from the atmosphere and store it on site (eliminating the need for transport).

CCS itself is being driven by the economics of the seven countries the study addresses. Australia is particularly keen because 10% of its GNP is invested in coal, which is also its biggest export and primary source of energy. It has been particularly keen on storing carbon as rock. Norway on the other hand is 100% hydro powered, but would like to build stations so it can burn gas and export energy. Like Australia, for the UK CCS is about utilising its substantial coal reserves while still staying on course to meet its emissions target. Also, for the US, Australia and Canada CCS was offered as an alternative by them to the binding reductions made at Kyoto.

A number of narratives have emerged around CCS. The first is enthusiastic and tends to find most favour among policy makers - that seeing as renewable sources are not ready, and recognising fossil fuels will remain the foundation of energy production at least in the medium term, CCS offers a way of mitigating the effects and easing the transition later on down the line. Plus CCS opens up new business opportunities.

Secondly there is a more equivocal position. It recognises CCS has problems and therefore we shouldn't wait until they have all been sorted out. Right now governments should be prioritising conservation, promoting and investing in renewables. The danger with CCS is it might soak up resources that may be more gainfully employed elsewhere.

Lastly there is the more critical position. This holds CCS as an 'end of pipe' solution that will effectively delay the transition to a post-fossil fuels economy. It is not viable now and may be already 'too late' (whatever that means). Furthermore, even if CCS gives us a form of clean coal, other challenges regarding its polluting effects remain.

For Meadowcroft all of these arguments have some merits, but problems too. For instance the argument it is too late for CCS is a non-starter - seeing as no one knows if there even is a 'tipping point' for the Earth's climate, we should operate with the principle that anything that brings emissions down is useful. But turning to the enthusiast's love-in with carbon trading schemes, he expressed some scepticism over the speed at which markets can generalise an incentive to bring emissions down. Administrative measures and regulatory initiatives by states are much faster.

Assessing the viability of CCS itself, it has acquired a political gravity of its own and, for obvious reasons, the global oil lobby are fully supportive of it. But as it is CCS requires significant state support. He estimated 20-30 plants are needed to test it at scale, but at well over $1bn apiece oil companies are unlikely to stump up all the funds. Furthermore, assuming the technology works who administers and is held responsible for storage over the long term? Not many companies will be keen on indefinite liability.

So what we are left with, in all essentials, is a great deal of hope being invested in an unproven technology that not only has to overcome significant engineering hurdles, but also requires the kind of state financing that would have been hard to secure even during the boom times. However for Meadowcroft, whatever the difficulties the fact so many are addressing CCS will open up other as yet unexplored opportunities for tackling climate change.

Beat the Trafigura Gag on the BBC

Following a call by Left Outside and Liberal Conspiracy for bloggers to thwart the gagging of the BBC by Trafigura over allegations of toxic waste dumping in the Ivory Coast, I thought "that's one bandwagon I'm happy to be part of". If you've got a blog this is what you have to do:

1) Embed this BBC report:



2) Link to this censored report of Trafigura's activities.

On his blog, Don't Get Fooled Again, Richard Wilson writes:

Late last week the BBC chose to delete from its website a damning Newsnight investigation into the Trafigura scandal, following legal threats from the company and its controversial lawyers, Carter-Ruck.

The mainstream UK media has so far assiduously avoided reporting on the BBC’s climbdown. Yet it’s an issue that raises serious questions about the state of press freedom in Britain, at a time of unprecedented attacks on the media.

This brings me to the third thing you can do: spread the word.

Support Stoke Axiom Workers

Once again, Stoke has become the site of another important workers' dispute. Workers at Axiom, a railway maintenance firm in Fenton have been on strike two days a week since mid-November over pay. The background of the dispute from the perspective of our local newspaper, The Sentinel, is here. The article below by Andy Bentley of Stoke Socialist Party is taken from this week's Socialist. It goes into more depth than the mainstream piece above and reports that resolve on the picket line is stiffening. Readers are also urged to send messages of solidarity the strikers, which can be done via Andy's email at AndyBentley3 at hotmail.com.

Stoke Axiom workers escalate the action

The strike action being taken by Axiom Rail workers in Stoke for a pay increase has rocked the management. They thought workers would just accept being treated like second class citizens for ever - being paid £4 an hour less than workers doing the same jobs at other Axiom sites.

Bosses are bringing in scabs in an attempt to break the strike but the first 'casualty' has been a top manager who is now taking voluntary redundancy. The fact that this comes just days after a visit to the Stoke site by top bosses of parent company DB Shenker has got workers asking if he jumped or was he pushed. Striking every Monday and Friday, the action is already into its fifth week with the mood on the picket line becoming even more determined.

The fact that Axiom are paying different wage rates to workers who do the same work at different sites is an attack not just on workers at Stoke but on all Axiom workers.

How long before they try to drive down the wages of higher paid workers to the level of lower paid workers in a 'race to the bottom'? Therefore, it's in the interest of all Axiom workers that pay parity is achieved, taking all workers up to the highest levels.

Axiom bosses have already demonstrated their intention to attack all Axiom Rail workers by imposing a pay freeze this year (in effect a pay cut). Like many other bosses across Britain in both public and private sectors they are trying to use the economic crisis and the fear created by growing mass unemployment as an opportunity to drive down pay and conditions and attack the rights of union reps to represent their members. Management bullying is also on the increase over things like sick pay.

It's for these reasons that the strike at Stoke should not be left isolated and should be fought nationally by their union Unite. This struggle represents a fight for equal pay rates for all Axiom Rail workers doing the same jobs.

In an important step forward, Stoke Axiom workers are now escalating their action by visiting other Axiom sites to build support for their strike.

Axiom is part of DB Schenker Rail (UK) which in turn is part of the state owned German company Deutsche Bahn which operates at over 2,000 sites in about 130 countries, including now running the Tyne and Wear Metro (see above).

In the six months to June 2009 Deutsche Bahn had earnings (before income tax) of $946 million and $1.99 billion over the year-earlier period. Despite these staggering profits, Axiom management claim they can't afford a pay increase!

We say that they should open their books so that union reps and workers can examine where all the profits have gone in recent years and where they are still going. This would show if they can 'afford' a pay increase or not!

New Labour's failure to renationalise our railway network has allowed private firms and even foreign state owned companies like DB Shenker to buy up parts of it to make massive profits for their shareholders and the bosses. This is despite a Mori poll in 2001 which revealed 72% of people in Britain supported the re-nationalisation of the railway system.

We think renationalisation should include all the allied companies like Axiom Rail in a fully integrated rail network that should be run under accountable, democratic committees that include representatives of rail service workers and users.

There are Axiom plants all over the country including in Stafford, Doncaster, Immingham, Cambridge and Nottingham

Open the books - Let's see where the profits are going.
Equal pay for equal work for all Axiom Rail workers up to the highest level - no 'race to the bottom'.
End management bullying in the workplace.
Defend the right of union reps to represent their members.
Renationalise the rail industry to include companies like Axiom.

Regeneration or Pie in the Sky?

Ever since I moved to Stoke-on-Trent in 1995 there has been one word on the lips of local bigwigs: regeneration. But 14 years on it has proceeded at snail's pace. Since the pits closed and pot making was outsourced to China, for many Potters the recession of the early 1980s never ended. Therefore regeneration in terms of prime-pumping the city's economic base and providing thousands of jobs is much-needed. From this perspective yesterday's announcement that a £275million shopping development (pictured) will finally get built in the officially renamed 'Stoke-on-Trent city centre' sounds like a reason to be cheerful.

The council's press release says:

A development agreement for a £275 million regional shopping centre in Stoke-on-Trent city centre has been given the go ahead.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council’s cabinet today approved the contract with developer Realis Estates.

Under the terms of the agreement, Realis Estates will take forward the development of a new department store, a wide range of new shops, cafés, restaurants, vibrant public spaces, a multi-screen cinema, an hotel and improved parking.

Realis Estates and the North Staffordshire Regeneration Partnership (NSRP) will also establish a joint venture arrangement to build a modern bus station and will work together to build the main shopping centre development. The current bus station stands on the East West Centre redevelopment site

...

Designed by internationally renowned architects Benoy, the redeveloped East West Centre will provide 75,000 square metres of floor space, revitalise Stoke-on-Trent city centre and tempt shoppers back from cities such as Manchester and Birmingham. It is forecast that the new development will create thousands of new jobs as well as providing a significant and sustained boost to the local economy.

Realis Estates and Stoke-on-Trent City Council will now work together to assemble all the land needed for the shopping centre. This is likely to include the use of compulsory purchase orders. Realis Estates will also seek detailed planning permission and continue to identify potential tenants. Realis Estates anticipates the redeveloped centre will open in late 2014.

Woohoo! The good times are coming back! Or are they? I can't help being sceptical of the economic claims being made by the project's backers. First though, let me lay my cards on the table. Stoke might be a dreary and depressing place but it is a city I've grown to love, and obviously I hope regeneration projects manage to improve the city's lot. But hope is no substitute for seeing things as they are and once you remove the rose-tinted regeneration spectacles it seems the development is guided by a dollop of wishful thinking.

The big problem is this. When Hanley (for outsiders, the city centre) already has one shopping complex with empty stores, and there are closed shops dotted about how can the city sustain a new shopping development? In the absence of the large manufacturing base that gave the Potteries its name, where are Stokies going to get the money to spend in the new place? New low paid jobs in the cafes of the development will not sustain the new low paid jobs in the clothes shops, and vice versa. There will be no closed virtuous circuit that will fuel economic growth.

Then there's an unintended side effect of regeneration. The new development will pull shops from the existing Potteries Centre and the High Street to the prestige build. It is regeneration that will prettify one end of town at the expense of another. Why would Next and Disney and Lush stay in a functional but 20 year old shopping centre when the fancy one down the way is offering them attractive introductory rents?

Have these issues been addressed? If so they haven't been done so publicly. At a trades council meeting earlier in the year this was put to the then Labour group leader. Let's say the answer was far from reassuring. It looks very much like "build it and they will come" from where I'm sitting.

Porn as Ideology

While we're on the subject ... can porn be considered an ideology? I ask because I've become aware of this site, Make Love, Not Porn (it is safe(ish) for work). It's still at the early build stage, but the idea is simple. Visitors are invited to leave comments juxtaposing 'porn world' sex to real world sex. So for example, in porn world "men love coming on women's faces, and women love having men come on their faces", whereas in the real world "some women like this, some don't. Some guys like to do this, some guys don't. It's entirely up to personal choice". Sounds like a useful project that might tackle some of the myths propagated by porn.

But seeing as it promises an idealised sexual experience (of sorts), is there a case for considering porn as an ideology? In Marxism, ideology is typically thought of in two ways. Firstly as a set of ideas that offer a partial and distorted view of reality, glossing over the power relations and processes that underpin capitalism (this is why you should take any self-described socialist who talks about 'Marxist ideology' for a pseud). Secondly, ideology is a lived relation denoting all the ideas and discourses that mediate our relationships to the wider social world - an understanding elaborated on (but not without its own problems) in Louis Althusser's Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. These two functions or forms of ideology are not mutually exclusive. For example, the world view of seriously religious folk rejects scientific and other secular means of interpreting social life in favour of the theologies of whatever doctrine they subscribe to. But nevertheless, they live this ideology - it guides their relationships with the wider world.

Therefore in the Marxist sense, is porn an ideology? On immediate appearances it would seem not to be. After all, it's just people doing sex acts in front of a camera. And that's all there is to it, innit? True, while some performers and commentators such as Ovidie, Nina Hartley, and Susannah Breslin have written extensively on porn and have provided valuable insights into the commodification of sex, their ideas do not structure the mass production and consumption of porn. Very few people settle down with a copy of the Porn Manifesto before catching up with Ron Jeremy's latest adventures. What goes into product and how it is shot is the preserve of the studios who churn it out.

If we grant that porn in and of itself is not an ideology, it definitely has ideological effects. You don't have to be a conservative or feminist opponent to realise sex in porn is profoundly reductive and objectifying, reducing women to their orifices and breasts and men to their cocks. Sex is entirely mechanical and genital-centric and is focused around the climax of the male performer, which usually entails coming on his partner's face or another part of her body. And this is the norm. Now, I do not subscribe to the discredited hypodermic model of media influence in which an audience passively watches something and then acts it out in real life. But it is clear the staged, "artificial" sex in porn is impacting on contemporary heterosexual masculinities and femininities in significant ways.

In the case of masculinity, the ubiquity of porn has centered the economy of desire around male pleasure. For instance, back in my pre-internet school days me and a mixed group of my mates had a stash of magazines we kept in the ruins of a half-demolished local pottery (we found most of these magazines - the route home from school was a dumping ground for discarded copies of Electric Blue, Men Only, Fiesta etc. for some reason). And, if memory serves, alongside gynaecological spreads of Mary from Barnstaple, the smutty stories they carried celebrated a masculinity that was affirmed in not only screwing as many women as possible, but making sure they climaxed too. Perhaps top shelf publications are still the same today, but the easy availability of porn on the internet has effectively rendered them a niche pursuit. Chances are for adolescent and young men, for whom porn is likely to be their first experience of sex and in the absence of other information about sexual behaviour, the porn "model" can condition and influence their approaches to and expectations of sex.

This is to say nothing about how porn frames women for men. While female porn stars can hardly be said to be passive, their performance is organised around bringing their male co-star(s) to climax and/or by extension, do so for the pleasure of the viewer. They are constructed as objects of heterosexual male desire and serve only to satisfy that - a point reinforced by the titles the studios give their output. This positioning of women has radiated out from porn, informing the aesthetics and preoccupations of low-brow lads' mags like Zoo and Nuts to music videos, to driving the new acceptability of so-called gentlemen's clubs (of course, the objectification of women beyond porn is nothing new but there is more of an overt sexual component to it than was the case 10-20 years ago).

The messages porn sends out for women aren't the most progressive either. Quite apart from extending its particular take on the hegemonic feminine ideal to every nook and cranny of women's bodies (see here and here), it prescribes a particular performance of female sexuality. This suggests that a real woman should not only be happy to accommodate her sexual partner in every way, but would find pleasure in doing so too. Furthermore, this is a sexuality that is always up for it, that can be lit up like a beacon at any time. And ultimately, if she is not satisfied she is at least gratified in pleasuring her man. Her own sexual pleasure is secondary and irrelevant.

Therefore, at least where the Marxist approach to ideology is concerned, porn can legitimately be considered an ideology. It offers a simplistic and distorted view of sex and sexual acts that celebrates and reinforces an arbitrary inequality between male and female performers. And because porn is everywhere, feeding and in turn feeding off mainstream publishing, fashion, music and film, it has colonised contemporary masculinity and femininity in subtle and non-too-subtle ways, colouring and conditioning views of what sex is and how it should be done. In other words, porn is both a distortion of and a "lived relation" to the world, drawing from, plugging into and reinforcing existing gendered relations. But what, if anything, can be done?

Birthday Blog - 3 Today!

It's ridiculous to think that three years ago today I sat down and wrote my first blog post. And how the time has flown. Back then Tony Blair was still on his throne, neoliberal hegemony ruled unchallenged, and the notion there would very shortly be a black bloke in the White House was far fetched. But I'm not going to celebrate the 3rd birthday with a review of political, social and economic developments since December 8, 2006. No, it will be marked in the traditional way - with a smorgasbord of the filthiest hardcore stat porn imaginable! Are you ready?

From December 8th 2008 to yesterday, myself and my occasional mysterious co-blogger, Brother S, managed to publish 250 posts. Of these just five passed without comment - obviously we're doing something right! Furthermore, these 250 posts have elicited 2,574 comments (as of this morning), which gives an average of 10.3 comments per post. The median is seven. Over the blog's life span 4,939 comments have been left, yielding an 8.3 comment average (I can't be arsed to work out the median).

The five most popular posts in terms of comments received are:

Move Over Labour? (82 comments)
Wildcat Strikes: The Media's Silence on the Cost (62 comments)
Populist Politics, the BNP Way (53 comments)
SWP and SP Debate Left Unity (42 comments)
Remembering September 11th (42 comments)

Has that whetted your appetite for more? I hope so.

For the blogging year 2008-9, the blog attracted an average of 504 page loads, 297 visits and 69 returning visitors a day (though it should be noted the page loads are skewed by an irritating zombie computer that visited the blog at 17 second intervals a few hours a day through September and early October). This compares very well with previous years. 2007-8 saw figures of 218, 157, and 44, and 67, 45 and 17 for 2006-7. This gives an all time average of 263 page views, 166 visitors, and 43 returning.

At the moment AVPS is linked to by 193 active blogs and websites, and who knows how many defunct ones. I've had posts plugged by the man who invented blogging, Socialist Unity, Dave Osler, Stumbling and Mumbling, The BritBlog Round-Up, The Carnival of Socialism, Pits 'n' Pots, and dozens of other blogs and twitterers. Cheers for the boost!

And that's it for another year. AVPS will continue to deliver its usual fare over the next 12 months, time and broadband connection permitting. So many thanks for sticking with it.

HIV/AIDS and Male Genital Cutting

I bet that title caught your eye! A few weeks ago when I should have been busy finishing my PhD, I went along to a Keele gender, sexuality and law seminar on 'HIV/AIDS: Male Genital Cutting and the New Discourses of Race and Masculinity'. Presenting were GSL stalwarts, Marie Fox and Michael Thomson.

The cutting the title speaks of is not a niche sexual practice but of course refers to circumcision. Since the 1860s the practice of circumcision has become secularised and medicalised, particularly in the USA. Here it was adopted by the white middle class, who believed it would protect the male body from dirt and disease. There was also the suggestion that it curbed sexual appetite and was therefore an invaluable technology in the war against masturbation. Unsurprisingly circumcision found favour among the "scientific" racists of the day as a way of managing the perceived "dangers" of black male sexuality. As Joane Nagel puts it, black men were seen as "a sexual predator, a threat to White southern womanhood and White male sexual hegemony" (in The Sociological Quarterly (2000) 41(1), p.12).

What has this got to do with HIV/AIDS? In recent years circumcision has found renewed favour in some medical circles because of the role it can allegedly play in HIV prevention. During randomised trials in sub-Saharan Africa over 2007-8, it was discovered that circumcision can reduce the risk of HIV transmission by 51-60 per cent (though these are subject to a degree of dispute). Nevertheless these are being used to justify the establishment of mass circumcision programmes in Africa to combat local epidemics, even though some studies show correlation and others do not.

There is a problem with how circumcision is being "marketed" too. Rather than being a magic bullet that will see off HIV it should be used as part of a package of measures, such as condom use, delayed sexual debut and reduced numbers of partners to better enable prevention. It's also necessary that circumcision's limitations are out there too. For example, in the West where circumcision takes place in clinical settings, there is still a two to ten per cent risk of complications. Replicated in a mass programme where clinical facilities are not so readily available you have the potential for creating another large-scale health problem. Furthermore, there's a possibility circumcision might encourage riskier sexual behaviour - especially if men have unprotected sex while the wound hasn't healed properly.

Returning to race, one question these observations raised is why are circumcision programmes being proposed for an African context? In the West HIV infection rates are declining, except in the USA, and yet no similar programme is proposed here. Plus viewed in the context of the racist history of circumcision in America, doesn't its promotion as a means of managing the sexuality of black African men - even for the laudable aim of tackling the spread of HIV - at least look a little politically suspect?

This isn't to say Marie and Michael are suggesting efforts at HIV prevention in Africa are a neo-colonial conspiracy. After all, the science behind circumcision might eventually prove robust. But it is worth reflecting that there exists something of a circumcision lobby in America and can therefore be seen as a "solution" looking for a problem. This and related questions came up in the subsequent discussion. Who are promoting circumcision? What agencies are working together? Why is it being pushed over other preventative programmes? How is it finding favour among key sponsors, who more often than not are not native to the countries affected?

Whatever the case, this paper demonstrates the difficult political questions that continue to bedevil the fight against HIV/AIDS.