Abbey Green

Abbey Green ward in Stoke occasionally crops up as a topic of discussion over at the UKLN, not least because in 2006 Paul Sutton, a Labour councillor, left that party to become the Socialist Party candidate in the year's council election. Since we were unable to retain the seat he and his brother, Dave (a sitting councillor in Tunstall) dropped out and left. Recently a thread on Urban 75 has been speculating around Dave Sutton's passage from the SP into the LibDem Alliance grouping, and also some have taken the opportunity to make sectarian capital from Stoke SP's failure to stand in Abbey Green this year. In this post I'm interested in setting the record straight about both, but more importantly what lessons socialists can draw from the episode with the Sutton brothers.

I'm not going to dwell on the 2006 election campaign - the prospects and results can be viewed here and here respectively.

Stoke comrades knew it would be more of a challenge to retain the Suttons if Paul lost his seat. Unfortunately the pair of them couldn't get away quick enough. After the ballot last May the brothers attended one party social event and one meeting of the NHS SOS campaign in the week immediately after. And then, nothing. This was despite phone calls, emails, and one visit. Next we heard was a letter of resignation received at the national office in November. Unfortunately I missed the branch where it was discussed but from what I can gather it accused leading comrades of dictatorial behaviour and believed Stoke branch were responsible for the loss of Paul's seat. Not once were these perceived grievances were taken up in the branch prior to the election nor did they make any attempt to address them afterwards. Neither did they take the opportunity to reflect on their own performances during the campaign. Small wonder a large number of comrades feel used by the branch's experience with the Suttons.

The chief problem was one of very different political cultures. They come from that proud Labour tradition where political differences are an outcome of personal differences; of the absence of an active and critical party membership and little feeling of responsibility toward it; and a politics where socialism is about state control and not the democratic self-organisation of working class people. Some comrades may ask that if this was the case, why were they accepted as SP members? Quite simply they appeared to be moving left at the time. They were having regular discussions with leading comrades in the branch, buying and reading a lot of party publications, and were visibly shaken by the lengths to which the Labour party machine went to make their life difficult in the council chamber. I can remember one such occasion where you could almost see the Labourite scales falling from Paul Sutton's eyes. Also (and despite the added weight they brought to our organisation) they were treated as any other potential SP member. Comrades coming into the organisation do not have to pass a revolutionary litmus test. They needn't know every aspect of Grant-Taaffe Thought. We do not set them an entry exam. The party would rather educate and train activists "in-house" than have them waiting outside until all the Marxist boxes have been ticked.

What could have been done differently? The pace of the electoral work meant the weekly meetings with the leading comrades fell by the wayside. In my opinion these by themselves could not have prevented their departure but would have provided a useful corrective to their continued Labourite prejudices. Another problem was integrating them into party work. They were quite happy to do stalls in Hanley and the Abbey, but it was a nightmare to get them out canvassing - itself another hold over from the do-nothing culture of the local Labour party. They were good at addressing their ward caseloads but not once did they take to the doorsteps to argue politics.

Ultimately we could only do so much. As any agony aunt will tell you, it takes two to make a relationship work. I think we did the best we could at the time. If Labour representatives do turn to the revolutionary left in the future, sensitively challenging their politics while involving them in party activity isthe common sense approach to integration. It would be interesting for instance to hear how the SWP have integrated the councillors they've managed to recruit from Respect.

Since the election Dave Sutton has sat on the council with a grouping of independents, which itself has gone into alliance with the LibDems. Hence the confusion over Dave's political affiliations. He remains one of the better sitting councillors and is regularly in the local press speaking up against cuts, closures, and mayoral cronyism. He is seeking re-election as a self-titled 'independent community councillor', as is Paul on a vague left anti-cuts platform. Personally speaking if I lived in either ward I would probably vote for them in the absence of a socialist candidate.

On the topic of a socialist candidate, the failure to stand this time round in Abbey Green is not evidence of a collapse in the branch, a fear to make plain our politics, or of a move not to split the so-called anti-fascist vote. Sectarians will be disappointed to learn that it came down to problems with the paper work. While Stoke comrades are disappointed that we're not standing this year it has meant we've been able to concentrate on solidarity work with the Burslem posties, which could potentially be more significant.

Branch Meeting: The CPGB and the Trade Unions

No, we were not spending our valuable time talking about our Weekly Worker friends. The topic of tonight's talk was the implantation the old Communist Party had in the trade unions, what they did with it, and how the Socialist Party and the rest of the left can avoid the mistakes they made.

Comrade S went back to the CPGB's pre-history in the grass roots militancy that gestated in the industrial hothouse of the First World War. Committees of shop stewards had mushroomed across unions, and importantly a number of its militants (organised by the then Socialist Labour Party) fed into the infant CP. This union strength was the basis for the emergence of the Minority Movement in the early-mid 20s - a powerful trend in the labour movement that claimed one million trade unionists. Baring in mind the MM was affiliated to the CPGB, this was a colossal achievement for an organisation numbering only 6,000!

But what did this amount to? Looking at the historical record, its power was only latent. S argued it managed to get people voted into TUC positions but that was about it. While undoubtedly MM supporters were active in the 1926 General Strike it did not act in a concerted fashion, and was put on the back foot after the class suffered a strategic defeat. Part of the reason was the lack of a clear lead coming from the CPGB itself. As a young, militant organisation composed for the most part by grass roots activists, it saw the trade unions as corrupt and corrupting institutions. But for the most part its practice was to win positions within it, which of course was at odds with the analysis it was professing.

With the coming of the infamous 'Third Period' over 1929-33, the union influence further declined. Whereas in the past the CP was prepared to work with other lefts, this was now officially frowned upon. Labour party trade unionists and others were branded 'social fascists', and the effect was to flush a lot of previously accumulated political capital down the loo. The party's ultra-leftism did not rally the masses to its banner, instead it isolated itself from the class. In my opinion one can lambast the Communist International for officially promoting this stupid behaviour, but its sectarian seeds had to fall on fertile ground for them to be taken up enthusiastically by so many CPs. For example, in Germany the KPD did not unite with the Social Democrats against the Nazis simply because Stalin told them not to. They genuinely detested the SPD for the way it had beheaded the German revolution and crapped on workers' struggles throughout the Weimar years. But I digress.

With the destruction of the German workers' movement and partially because of workers' unity in the face of fascist provocations in France, the Comintern line started favouring a cross-class alliance of all anti-fascist forces. In Britain this meant the CP in the trade unions had to rebuild the relationships it had previously sqaundered. This was complicated later on with the outbreak of war and a zig-zagging of the party's position (from anti-fascist conflict to inter-imperialist war to anti-fascist conflict again). Though much has been made of the CPGB as an agent of industrial peace during the war years, it nevertheless managed to retain trade union credibility through an involvement in small scale, workplace-centred strikes. It was this base and not really any prestige the USSR had won that forms the starting point of its trade union strength in the post-war period. Its trade unionism assumed economistic forms. CPGB comrades were elected to union positions on the basis of their being model trade unionists who could win battles over pay and conditions - their politics were more or less inconsequential. And given the CPGB moved more to workplace-based branches after the war, this exacerbated the submerging of its politics into routine trade unionism.

In a sense this approach paid off. It was able to punch way above its weight in the labour movement and was an extremely significant trade union actor by the 1960s. But again, it was what was done with this influence that was the key criterion by which the party should be judged. Moving away from the idea unions were institutionally corrupt, they were now seen as neutral apparatuses that could play a significant role in socialist advance. But significantly workers' activity now played a walk-on role. The rank and file were fodder to be mobilised to push the TU tops into taking official action, and thereby move the country along that British road to socialism. There was no place in this strategy for unsanctioned and spontaneous workplace activity. Socialism would be delivered from on high, by the bureaucrats and a CP-backed Labour government.

Despite the paucity of strategic vision the party played key roles when our class went on the offensive in the late 60s and early 70s. Its front group, the Liason Committee to Defend Trade Unions contributed to the defeat of Labour's In Place of Strife and was responsible for hundreds of thousands of strike days against the Tory Industrial Relations Act. But this was a proud exception to much of what its trade union work had become. In the T&GWU it was effectively an election machine for the soft left but designated 'fellow traveller', Jack Jones. Elsewhere such as in the building industry, in the NUT and NALGO, its activists were bureaucratised and were effectively part of the apparatus while the Trotskyists assumed the mantle of standing up for the rank and file.

S finished the lead off at the end of the 70s, before the onset of the awful 80s and the party's final liquidation in 1991. In sum the comrade suggested three key lessons the SP and the left today can draw from ithe CPGB's 70 years of experience.

1) Organising in workplaces should not come at the expense of excluding other forms of party work. S flagged up the existence of part-time CPGB'ers who were only really party members during the hours they worked. If activists are more rounded out, so will the party.

2) It is important to get comrades into elected positions, but not neglect the shopfloor.

3) Making alliances with other forces in the unions and labour movement is necessary, but to bury political identites or attempt to hide differences would be a mistake. A false unity is no unity at all.

This was followed by a wide ranging discussion, traversing the roots of Stalinism and how it informed CPGB trade union practice, the party's social life, Chavez(!), and the need for working class political independence in all our work. Undoubtedly this was helped by the presence of a couple of Burslem posties and it usefully prefaced a later discussion on the latest developments in their workplace, the role of the CWU, and the problems of working class organisation.

In my opinion this was a timely discussion, and not just because of Stoke branch's solidarity work. Our party in many ways is beginning to resemble the CPGB in miniature with regards to union implantation, and so the danger to repeat past mistakes is always there. Though in my opinion our politics are superior to those of the CPGB in all phases of its development, these by themselves will not innoculate trade union comrades from workplace routinism and the other "attractions" of TU work. We need to thoroughly examine our practice and that of others to ensure we attract as many existing activists as possible, that we continue to rebuild the labour movement, and work toward the offensive organisation our class.

A Very Bad Man Writes ...

I must apologise for keeping my audience on tenterhooks. Yes, all 15 of you. I haven't really joined the Tories. This transcribing/working lark has left me with scant time to devote to this here blog. I hope I'll be able to resume something approaching normal service shortly.

I might as well take the opportunity to plug the newest blog on the block. Some SP comrades have got their heads together and launched Militant - The Marxist blog for labour and youth on an unsuspecting public. Expect cutting commentary and analysis from blogland's Marxists, and also the odd piece from yours truly.

I haven't forgotten those Virilio, Foucault, and GDH Cole pieces either. They're still simmering away in the back of my brain.

Goodbye to the Left

I first became interested in politics 20 years ago, when our school held a mock election to run in parallel with the 1987 general election. Being only 10 years of age I asked my Mum and Nana who I should vote for. They advised I should support the Conservatives. They told me Margaret Thatcher had helped make Britain a strong country again after it had gone to the dogs under Labour. Bullying unions would no longer make life hell for people who just wanted to get on with their lives. The working class would reap the benefit from being able to invest their hard earned savings in the privatised schemes the Tories were planning. Others were being offered the opportunity to own their own homes and living standards were being raised right across the board. Labour would, I was told, scrap our nuclear weapons meaning there was nothing stopping the Russians invading. But what stayed with me most was the belief that hard work would be rewarded – all Labour wanted to do was tax us to the high heavens.

I duly marked my cross against the Tories and quite happily urged my class mates to do likewise. I’ve long cherished the memories of sitting in the dinner hall, transformers sandwich box on knee, holding my own against 9 and 10 year old Kinnockites. And in the end the blue team won out. I think the Tories romped home with 220 votes, Labour with a hundred fewer and the Alliance with a pathetic 30-something.

This is where I date my political life from. I was proud to call myself a Conservative until the aftermath of the 1992 general election. Then I became increasingly disenchanted with the society that the Tories had created, one where the much-vaunted conservative values of community and mutual respect had been brushed aside by dog eat dog greed and an I’m alright Jack philosophy. The victims of the Tory years, the unemployed and those on low incomes, had in the twisted parlance of the times become the cause of the ills that bedevilled Britain. I found myself moving to the left. My experiences of the workplace and introduction to the ideas of Marx at FE college changed my thinking completely. Between 1992-5 I went from an enthusiastic true blue Tory boy to the deepest red, seething with anger at the appalling destruction capitalism visited on people’s lives.

I’ve now been on the left for 12 years, the overwhelming majority of that time in or associated with various left groups. And what a state our movement has become in that time. Four promising left unity initiatives (Socialist Labour Party, Socialist Alliance, Respect, Scottish Socialist Party) have come and gone, their potential pissed up the wall through petty sectarianism, Jupiter-sized egos, a hopelessly undemocratic culture, and a failure to connect with the working class it claims to be the vanguard of. The sad fact is even the useless hatemongers of the BNP have a better handle on what working class people are thinking than the left's self-selected leaders and tribunes.

I’ve just had enough of all this petty crap. I’ve been thinking a lot about my politics. The revolutionary left offers nothing. Similarly the soft left of the Labour party are completely useless – if they had a spine they might be dangerous. Instead I’ve come to the conclusion that the Tories under David Cameron are the only ones with the modern, forward-looking politics Britain needs. After years in the wilderness here’s a party oozing with confidence and free from the sleaze and cronyism that has bedevilled it in the past. This is a party going places. Tory associations have filled up with the young dynamic professionals and entrepreneurs that can get this country back on its feet after a decade of Blairite mismanagement. And the Tories are far from being a party of the middle and upper classes. The work Cameron’s team are putting into poverty reduction will put an end to the gross inequalities that continue to blight the nation. And on the Green agenda the Conservatives are leading the way. It’s all very well the left bleating about capitalism being the fault of global warming, but in fact the problem’s more mundane than that – people’s unsustainable life styles are the root cause. Cameron’s thinking on carbon off-setting, sustainable development and recycling offer the best way out of the environmental crisis. There’s certainly more chance of them making a difference instead of the left’s pie in the sky “solutions”.

I have resigned all my left and labour movement affiliations. I’m turning the responsibility of the UKLN over to the other mods. Obviously they disagree with the conclusions I’ve drawn but can see why I’ve drawn them, and respect my position for all that. I will however be continuing with my blog.

I would wish all the friends I’ve made on the British left all the success, but unfortunately I can’t now we’re on what you would call the opposite sides of the barricades. You’re all barking up the wrong tree. David Cameron’s Conservatives is now the natural home for genuine radicalism, and I call on all of you to join me in the new Tory party.

Foucault, Power, and Sex

Just a few words on Michel Foucault’s understanding of power and his first volume of the History of Sexuality before I write a post on the second, The Use of Pleasure (1984).

According to his celebrated Two Lectures (1976) political theory has traditionally concerned itself with questions of sovereignty, power, and rights. In this model the sovereign-state has been treated as the source and repository of power. As it has the monopoly over the means of (legitimate) violence, in the final analysis its subjects obey under the threat of the use of officially sanctioned coercion. Here, the rights of the citizen are conceived as checks on the power of the sovereign, to prevent it from arbitrarily exercising its power.

Foucault however thinks this is too rigid, too narrow. His microphysics of power is very different because his concern is with a politics of how masses of human bodies are regulated, leading him to ask radical questions about the conventional model of power.

There are manifold relations of power which permeate, characterise, and constitute the social body and these relations of power cannot themselves be established, consolidated or implemented without the production, accumulation, circulation and functioning of a discourse. There can be no exercise of power without a certain economy of discourses of truth which operates through and on the basis of this association. We are subjected to the production of truth through power and we cannot exercise power except through the production of truth. (Power/Knowledge (1980), p.93)

Take the contemporary understanding of sexuality for example. Whether we’re gay, straight or bi, sexuality is something that defines who we are. This isn’t because it’s an expression of an essential nature. It just so happens to be an effect of how human bodies have come to be regulated over the last couple of centuries. As we’ll see in a future post, an ancient Greek freeman who preferred sex with young men didn’t have any conception of being different to other freemen who preferred sex with women, and neither was he seen as different. Set this against our modern understanding of sex. Who we are attracted to and who we sleep with defines our being in ways incomprehensible to the ancient Greeks.

Power for Foucault is bound up with “knowing” its object so it can be transformed into its subject. It is complex in its scope and specific in its operation. Because of its fluid-like character and ability to generate so many different kinds of subjects, power cannot reflect the will of the state, the operation of the economy, or any idea of human nature. In fact Foucault reaches a radically opposed conclusion: notions of an essential nature, rights, or bourgeois interests are effects of power.

Foucault’s method (what he, following Nietzsche calls a genealogical approach) is to study power from the bottom up, to trace the lines of descent of political technologies of the body to illustrate the emergence of particular kinds of subjects and the passing of others.

This is Foucault’s concern in his unfinished project, The History of Sexuality (1976-84). In the first volume his objective is

to define the regime of power-knowledge-pleasure that sustains the discourse on human sexuality in our part of the world. The central issue is … to account for the fact that it is spoken about, to discover who does the speaking, the positions and viewpoints from which they speak, the institutions which prompt people to speak about it and which store and distribute the things that are said. (History of Sexuality: An Introduction, p.11)

Foucault’s discussion begins with the immediate pre-modern era. He argues that the regulation of sexual practices were the responsibility of ecclesiastical and legislative discourses and institutions. The married couple was located as the primary site of sexual behaviour. Sex was about procreation and marriage functioned as a reproductive pact between allied families. Sex outside of marriage was outside the purview of sexual regulation in the case of infants, and punished if it took place between men. This pattern of regulation underwent a significant mutation at the beginning of the 18th century, linked to the emergence of ‘population’ as an economic and political problem that had to be managed. It was in the interest of emerging nation-states had to know about sex in terms of its citizen’s capacity to reproduce and ability to be disciplined in all matters sexual.

As the problematic of population management grew, the 19th century saw an explosion of discourses around sex. The centrality of the married couple in the old discursive regime was repositioned as the unspoken norm of sexual behaviour. In contrast all other behaviours that didn’t conform became marked by the discourses of sexuality. The ‘margins’ of sex were labelled and regulated by seizing hold of the body and learning (constructing) its sexual truths. For example the discovery of ‘the homosexual’ was the same moment of its invention. Prior to this moment, familial, legislative and religious practices proscribed same-sex relations, but it was only in the Victorian era when the person who engaged in such acts was positioned as a homosexual subject.

In this move from sex acts to sexuality-as-identity, the metaphor of ‘the confessional’ as a technology to extract/produce the truth of bodies assumes central importance. This “scientific” practice was characterised by five devices.

1. The confession was wedded to scientific methods of data collection and psychological techniques.

2. The belief that sex is the root of all psychological maladies and that talking over one’s sexual behaviour to an expert was essential if the problems were to be overcome.

3. Every act committed and each sentence uttered is potentially symptomatic, rendering the interpretation of the confession problematic and decipherable only by especially trained experts.

4. The aim of providing useful knowledge that could fit the received paradigm shaped the discourse between analyst and analysand. Together they produce a truth.

5. To provide raw material for knowledge. Any cathartic effects are ultimately secondary.

In sum, these devices produce sexuality as a viable object for scientific investigation, and feed the object and its associated knowledges back into the ensemble of power. Truth is not uncovered by the operation of knowledge; it is an effect of power.

As socialists this understanding of power has a number of implications for our political practice, but that will have to be left for another time. What does come out from Foucault’s genealogies, (including Discipline and Punish (1975), his immediately preceding work on the birth of the prison) is the utterly powerless position of the subject. In both these books the body is subjected to so many disciplining technologies that it appears to passively accept them. This is strange because Foucault makes it quite clear that power begets resistance. Without resistance or the potential for resistance, we cannot speak of power. Unfortunately resistance is merely asserted as an essential property of his approach and is not explored with reference to either punishment or sexuality. Perhaps this lacuna in his thought partially explains why there was an eight year gap between the publishing of the first and second volume, because the change in emphasis is striking. The passive bodies of the Introduction give way to matters of individual ethics and management of self in The Use of Pleasure. A post discussing the main aspects and emphases of the latter will appear in the next few days.

Early Morning Barbecue

I awoke in the early hours of Saturday morning to find the bedroom bathed in pulsating blue light. Cat leaped from the sack to peer out the window - it was a fire engine! How exciting! We both hurried to the back bedroom and was greeted by a crappy old van happily blazing away. How we oooed as the front tyres exploded, and aaahed as the flames yielded to the smothering embrace of foam. After a short scuffle with the firefighters the fire flickered and died and the good people of my block of terraces could retire to their mushrooms to resume their nocturnal forays into dream land. But eager to record the aftermath for posterity (and to prove I have a real existence outside the internet), atop this post you will find one of my photos.

Frequent visitors will notice a few subtle changes to AVPS in the links department. First up are various sociology blogs I've managed to turn up in my internet wanderings. This list of links will I hope bolster AVPS's tenuous claim to be a sociology blog.

I've also taken time out to compile a list of establishment blogs, comprising sundry Blairites, Tories, LibDems and other fellow travellers of the bourgeoisie. Here you'll find people like Iain Dale, apparently the left's pet Tory; the increasingly unhinged Guido; David Miliband - one of the few Blairites I actually like; the freaks of Harry's Place and much else besides.

Counter-hegemonies have had some attention lavished upon them too. I welcome John Angliss, Labour of Love, Leanne Wood, Leftwing Criminologist, Mike Marqusee, Never Trust a Hippy, Red Squirrel's Lair, Renegade Eye, The Pleasures of the Popular, and The Soul of Man Under Capitalism to the AVPS blog roll. Also, applying the Norman Geras rule of bumping off blogs that have remained quiet for a couple of months, it's goodbye to Bolshevichka and JJB Fightback (the latter having ceased trading completely). I hereby serve warning to Air Pollution and The Revolution Decides - you're for the chop if you don't post soon!

Lastly on the links front, I've added the new site of the CWI Scotland to the socialist websites section.

And that's your lot! This week you can expect posts on Michel Foucault, the Third Way, and Paul Virilio along with the usual supply of incisive commentary, reportage and polemic ;)

PS Forgot to add the Obsolete blog to the above roll call. Sorry comrade!

"Fighting" the BNP

Ever felt like you've been wasting your time? Earlier today I spent a knackering couple of hours pounding the streets of Fenton and Longton delivering Unite Against Fascism leaflets.

Just a bit of background about Longton North. This was the BNP's breakthrough ward in 2003 when Steve Batkin got himself elected to the council. He was joined the following year by Mark Leat, and in 2006 the ward was the BNP's primary target in the council election. Nick Griffin himself turned up at the count to oversee what would be the first ward in the country to have total BNP representation. Unfortunately for them it was not to be and Labour's hapless Denver Tolley managed to retain his seat.

So now it's Batkin's turn again. Since being elected he's become known as something of a dullard in the council chamber, barely turning up to votes or committees, and only speaking twice in chambers since his election! Nevertheless he retains his popularity in his Longton stronghold for his frequent populist gestures. Inbetween putting out leaflets blaming foreigners and Marxists for the woes of Stoke, he's been known go litter picking, lawn mowing, and helping out locals with their problems. That he's dismissively known as 'bin bag Batkin' for being seen about the ward says more about his mainstream critics inability to connect with voters than Batkin's.

You would think that anti-fascist literature targeting Batkin would have to be right on the money. Perhaps attacking his abysmal record on the council would be a good place to begin, which sits rather uneasily with the community councillor image he's attempted to cultivate. Or attack the BNP on their claims to represent the white working class when their pro-cuts position on the council, such as withdrawal of funds from the city's Citizens Advice Bureau, is a kick in the teeth. Sadly not.

The UAF leaflet attacks Batkin on three counts:

1) Batkin's holocaust denial. 
2) The BNP's hate-mongering over plans for Stoke's only purpose-built mosque. 
3) Batkin not paying his council tax.

That is it! Given everyone in Longton is well aware of Batkin's far right lunacy (not least because his ward has been plastered with UAF and Searchlight material in the past) and his support remains undiminished, highlighting his and the BNP's racism and Islamophobia just won't cut it. And as for not paying his council tax, given its relentless rise to pay for council mismanagement, is a failure to pay likely to count against him?

But the introductory blurb was even worse:

The BNP is a fascist organisation. Fascists stand for the total annihilation of sections of society. When fascists came to power in Nazi Germany a total of 15 million people were murdered in the 1930s.

A more politically illiterate statement is seldom seen. When were fascists not in power in Nazi Germany? And were 15 million people killed by the Nazis before 1940? Hmmm, I think not.

Would the BNP have any trouble batting away these attacks? Of course not. Do these leaflets challenge the BNP's ideas in any meaningful way? They come nowhere near.

What I find really depressing is this approach to anti-fascism hasn't moved on since the height of the National Front in the late 70s. Whereas pointing out the Nazi connection may have done the trick in conjunction with concerted labour movement action against them then, it is woefully inadequate now, especially without the backing of the latter. But then this liberal approach to anti-fascism is more about mobilising the non-BNP vote rather than tackling the reasons why people support the fascists in the first place, and even on these terms it fails to get out the 'anti-fascist' vote, as the low turn out figures consistently testify.

UAF, its Anti-Nazi League predecessor and the rest have got their heads in the sand. Whatever the result of the local elections in May, the same old literature will be churned out next year and the year after that while the BNP continues its steady advance.

Time for a serious rethink.

Culture as Conspiracy

No, this is not a post about the reptilean-illuminati shadow government. This is about the culture industry, or rather what a clutch of Keele academics at a reading group had to say about Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's influential piece, The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.

For those of you not familiar with these Frankfurt School theorists, their thesis on culture was simple but deeply pessimistic:

Culture now impresses the same stamp on everything. Films, radio and magazines make up a system which is uniform as a whole and in every part (Dialectic Of Enlightenment, p.120).

Popular culture in all its manifestations is qualitatively the same thing, there is an undifferentiated unity that sinks into the consciousness of the consuming masses and ties them to capitalist production.

The consumers are the workers and employees, the farmers and the lower middle class. Capitalist production so confines them, body and soul, that they fall helpless victims to what is offered them. As naturally as the ruled always took the morality imposed upon them more seriously than did the rulers themselves, the deceived masses are today captivated by the myth of success even more than the successful are. Immovably, they insist on the very ideology which enslaves them (p.133-4).

The cultural bonds of capitalism hold the working class firmly in place. There can be no opposition because the media brainwashes and seduces the class into believing there is nothing wrong. Instead of nurturing a desire for capitalism's violent overthrow, workers are far more likely to be worrying about Dot and Jim from EastEnders.

The discussion revolved around a number of themes. The most obvious of observations is how Adorno and Horkheimer believed mass culture left no room for liberatory potential. This begs the question of how seemingly everyone is deceived by the system, and yet they themselves are able to take a critical stance from the outside. What makes this doubly difficult is not just the question of their unique position vis a vis the rest of the population, but how they are able to use Marxism - that theoretical condensation of working class experience - to critique the culture industry, but apparently the working class itself cannot.

An answer is implied in their reflections on bourgeois art. In a number of passages they wax lyrical about the style of Beethoven, and how artists were able to take their suffering and give it form. This was not just an existential statement, it is a way of transgressing bourgeois society by manifesting its structural violence through paints and scores. Unlike the samey safe fare of mass culture, high art is the stuff of anti-capitalist critique.

How useful is this position today? The temptation is to dismiss it out of hand. People are not (and never were) simple dupes that capitalism can push around by filling our heads with on-message culture. For instance how can one explain the explosion of youth culture from the 60s onwards without any impulse from below. Was punk just a cynical marketing ploy by the culture industry? Adorno and Horkheimer massively underestimate the dialectical interplay that mediates and mutually constitutes audiences and industries.

Another problem is with their totalitarian view of the culture industry. They assume a perfect fit between capitalism's drive for profit and a mass culture with no room for critique or alternatives. But this is not how capitalism works. Just as capitalism is only capable of meeting market requirements, leaving vast swathes of our class condemned to poverty and privation; so it is true of culture. Because the culture industry produces commodities to be consumed on a market, capitalism can never fully meet its own ideological needs. For example, the works of Marx remain in print because of the market for them. Capital as such is indifferent to the weapons they contain as long as there is money to be made. I think it was Lenin who said a capitalist would be quite happy to sell you the rope you hang them with.

Is there anything of value left in this essay? Yes. Though they overegged the cultural industry pudding, popular culture is for the most part pre-packaged and standardised. Boy and girl bands roll off well established production lines, soaps regurgitate the same universal story lines over and over, Hollywood blockbusters tend to adhere to a standard set of formulas. Where they fall down is that despite standardisation, the content can and often is more complex than they ever supposed.

The second insight concerns commodification. Radical ideas, modes of dress, lifestyles can all be commodified regardless of how explicitly anti-capitalist they are, and with it comes the danger of decontextualisation by the market and being sold on as any other commodity. The iconic image of Che Guevara being the ultimate in empty revolutionary signifiers.

Ultimately what Adorno and Horkheimer have shown us is that despite their shortcomings, an effective challenge to commodity production cannot proceed solely from the domain of cultural production. They may have favoured the radical potential of high art, but they overlooked the grim realities of everyday life faced by our class. This is our most powerful resource for socialist change.

Morality Wars in the USA

It was a sunny afternoon in March when a group of lecturers, postgrads and ne'er-do-wells descended upon the David Bruce Centre at Keele Uni. The occasion? A paper punctuating the myth of the US morality wars.

Like many on the revolutionary left I did not support John Kerry's bid for the presidency. Nevertheless when election day went and left George W. in power, I was pretty depressed by the result. Like many others sucked into the media maelstrom surrounding the contest, I bought the line that this was a civil war at the ballot box. Progressives and anyone with common sense would be voting Democrat to get Bush out. On the other hand the evangelicals, the fundamentalists, the gun nuts and the rest were hell bent on rolling back women's rights, gay rights and transforming the USA into some sort of theocracy. It follows that Bush's victory was a victory for the loony right. It implied their reactionary agenda had mass support and that America stood at the threshold of a new medievalist dark age.

According to Prof Chris Bailey, this was not the case. The first question he asked was how abortion and homosexuality specifically came to be regarded as major issues? Bailey pointed to two broad processes: the trajectory of post-war social change has made identity a salient issue for nearly everyone, and as such has spilled over into debates around values; and second, the change in the structures of the two parties have favoured a more participatory democracy where movements can use party platforms to get over their message.

Turning first to social processes, post-war USA (like much of the western world) has seen the frequency of the nuclear family give way to a variety of family forms. The number of marriages fell by half over the 1970-2004 period. The birth rate went into decline, divorces increased, pre-marital cohabitation became more common place and the figures for female-headed households rose. For the traditionalists of the religious right these changes signalled the USA's slide into depravity and hedonism. For progressives they reflected the increasing empowerment of women and US citizens more generally making use of their rights. With such polarised perceptions of change, small wonder the conflict between the camps has been so bitter.

For Bailey the religious right broke with its splendid isolation from politics after the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment gathered momentum after 1971, and particularly the enshrining of abortion as a constitutional right in 1973 in the aftermath of Roe vs Wade. As the evangelicals and fundamentalists believed life begins at conception, to abort a fetus is to kill an innocent. However direct legal challenges on the supreme court decision went no where, so the anti-abortionists changed tack and pursued their objectives through state legislatures. Here their struggle has succeeded in restricting access to abortion by cutting off public funding to clinics, introducing compulsory "counselling", and the requirement to obtain parental or spousal consent, across a number of states. The most ludicrous examples of bureaucratic harassment cited by Bailey is the specification of what chemicals can be used on lawns outside clinics, on pain of closure! Throughout the 80s more states withdrew their funding and at the federal level access was nibbled away by Reagan's appointees to the courts. As it stands today organisations "promoting" abortions overseas were denied federal money in 2001, a federal law against partial birth abortion (an extreme and seldom-practiced method) enacted in 2003, and the passing of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (where the unborn are legally identified as a US citizen from conception and therefore counted as a muder victim if the mother is murdered), and 32 states refuse to fund abortions. The religious right's guerilla struggle has made some serious advances.

On homosexuality the fundamentalists initially hailed AIDS as divine retribution, and some, including Jerry Falwell, notoriously blamed the attacks of Sept. 11th on lesbians and gays, as well as other familiar targets of the traditionalists. But what really mobilised them were the movement to recognise same sex partnerships, which broke through in 1993 after the Hawaii supreme court decided homosexual couples were entitled to the same protection as heterosexual married couples. The religious right branded the move anti-family and have since been pursuing their attack on gay and lesbian couples through the courts. Again their actions have paid off. The Defense of Marriage Act passed in 1996 defines marriage as a union between a man and woman, and allows states not to recognise same sex unions that have taken place in other states. Also, the federal government may not recognise any same sex union. As of 2006 only Massachusetts allows for same sex marriage and five others recognise forms of union short of marriage whereas 12 ban any kind of recognition. Furthermore 26 states have accepted amendments to their constitutions that defines marriage according to the heterosexual norm.

Undoubtedly these issues generate enormous controversy and can lead to heightened passions. But, argues Bailey, in reality this is only the case for a minority. Despite their prominence in the media and the time devoted to them by mainstream and not-so-mainstream political figures, the morality war is only really between activists and elites from either side. Polling evidence shows that this battle for the soul of America is very much a minority concern. According to his research, only 4% of the sample thought moral questions were the most pressing issues facing the USA today. This is congruent with annual polls produced by Gallup, where the saliency of abortion ranges between 1-8%. This is further backed by a Washington Post poll from last May, where 2% of respondants reportedly voted according to a candidate's views on abortion. Again, a Gallup poll from January 2006 found only 26% of Americans were for overturning Roe vs Wade. Meanwhile, Bailey showed 87% believed LGBT people should have equal employment rights and a plurality favoured adoption by gay and lesbian couples.

These figures demonstrate a lack of polarisation among Americans at large, if anything taken over time Bailey's figures show a growing consensus in the middle ground. Ultimately political elite's concerns with these issues, especially in the Republican party, is a response to the colonisation of the apparatuses by pressure groups. That they are more pliable to the agenda of a tiny minority of Americans underlines how out of touch politicians are with the mainstream.

Perhaps the USA isn't the vast reservoir of reaction we were led to believe it was. Nevertheless, the ease with which the religious right have been able to play the system to attack women's rights and the rights of LGBT people shows how far America has to go before it truly becomes the land of the free.

Thirty

I awoke yesterday morning to find my life had changed forever.

Gone are the days when I could describe myself as being a dashing young fellow in his mid to late 20s, for this was the day I entered my 30s.

Yes, 30.

Thirty, thirty, THIRTY.

OMG, I'm thirty.

What kind of age is thirty? What the hell does it mean to be thirty? Am I in the decade where I'm supposed to make good the promise I showed as a fresh-faced youth? Will it mean the debauchery I left behind at the start of my twenties will come back as the big four-zero approaches? Are my boyish good looks going to melt away? How much longer will my hair remain?

And what about my views? Seeking older and wiser counsel last week from people who have two more decades on me, they said the person you are at 30 is who you will be from here on in. Okay, I guess I'll be a revolutionary socialist into my 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond. What that unfortunately means is if I ever do sell out, I can look forward to an eternity of torment at the hands of my guilty conscience.

Whatever my thirties have in store for the good ship Phil BC I'll take it on the chin, and then run to my blog to winge about it.

And lastly many happy returns for yesterday for my fellow SP comrade and British Fash pin-up, Duncan Money. It pains me to know he's 11 years younger than me, sob!