While the words are getting tougher over Trump's bombardment of an air strip that, um, didn't actually take said strip out of action, the usual jockeying among senior government figures here is taking place in the background. Take the news this morning that Boris Johnson, our most over-hyped but under-powered of politicians has cancelled long scheduled talks with his counterpart, Russian foreign secretary Sergey Lavrov. Apparently Johnson instead prefers to potter around the G7 to come up with a united response, though none of that is stopping Rex Tillerson of Trump Tower from flying to Moscow later this week. Unsurprisingly, Labour, the SNP and LibDems attacked him for his reticence on this Sunday morning's reduced schedule of political programming. On Sophy Ridge, John McDonnell slated him for passing up an opportunity of holding Putin's government to account. Tim Farron accused Johnson of having his diary managed by Washington, and Alex Salmond on Andrew Marr mocked him for not having the full confidence of his boss. No disagreements with those assessments here. From day one of the Trump era, Theresa May has clung to the feet of the new administration, partly to mitigate the train wreck of Brexit. And so if the Americans want the limelight, May is happy to give it to them. Less an order cabled to Downing Street, and more a 'working towards the Fuhrer'-style approach. When that figure the Prime Minister is working towards is the man destined to be the worst president in American history, it's a concern. You might also recall how, in an act of pettiness that is quintessentially Tory, how May appointed the "Three Brexiteers" - the hapless Johnson, David Davis, and disgraced former (now serving) minister Liam Fox - to the key Brexit portfolios. There was a great deal of comment about making them "own" the miserable situation they created while the man ultimately responsible enjoys retirement. Yet there were a paucity of views on whether any of them can do actually their jobs. That Johnson has been removed from the equation of a potentially serious crisis in relations with Russia. After all, it's not supposed to be the job of "Handbags" Fallon to issue sternly-worded rebukes to the Kremlin. His lot is to oversee the bean counting at the MoD and attend military parades. Foreign affairs, funnily enough, belong at the Foreign Office. Salmond is right to call Theresa May's faith in Johnson's competence into question. It wasn't long ago that May was beholden to two deeply average but posh hoorays who treated government like cramming for an exam. She, like pretty much anyone else not dazzled by the buffoon celebrity knows Johnson is cut exactly from the same cloth. Lazy, opportunist, cynical, he is definitely not a man to turn to in a crisis. Yet what is worse is he is a perfect fit for a section of the foreign policy establishment who, for the last 25 years, have grown indolent thanks to not having to face up to a geopolitical challenge to the global supremacy of the United States. Egged on by blowhards nostalgic for the them and us certainties of a cold war, Johnson, like them, has absolutely no interest in understanding the Russian government's point of view. Indeed, while Johnson might not be guilty of this, there are plenty who write on foreign affairs always surprised to learn other states have interests too, and are quite prepared to pursue them as they see fit. Walking in your opponents' shoes, which should be an ABC of of domestic and international politics, is entirely absent not only from the Conservatives, but across the parties here and is the default setting for other western foreign policy establishments. It happens that Johnson offers a distillation of it. And so May will carry on letting him play foreign secretary as long as no harm is done, which will mean removing him time and again from crisis and near-crisis situations. The question is how long can Johnson survive without the spotlight on him?
"Something has to be done!" goes up the cry every time an abominable war crime surges over the newswires, but the question has to be what and how. Throughout yesterday, following Donald Trump's bombardment of the Syrian government airfield apparently used for the chemical attack on Idlib province, we saw implacable foes of the White House freak show rush to back up the US administration. "Today was the day Trump became the president" went one egregiously arse licking headline, and all of a sudden the investigation of the dodgy links to Russia, and the awful domestic programme are compartmentalised and held in abeyance. Colour me surprised? Not in the slightest. Let's get one thing out of the way with first. The attack on Khan Sheikhoun in which at least 80 people were killed did happen. It's not some fakery cooked up by the bureau for dirty tricks at the State Department (which, under Trump, barely has budget enough for staples let alone elaborate ruses). Just because it might be convenient as it directs the media spotlight away from Trump and his troubles doesn't mean it must be a US conspiracy. If you look at any Western government during the last seven years and the difficulties besetting them, the distraction of air and missile strikes has and always will appear to be convenient. Nor is it a hoax perpetuated on the ground by rebel factions, most of which are now little more than ragtag and bobtail outfits with Kalashnikovs. The mode of delivery and the multiple sources for the story point to its being true. So let's knock the conspiracy theorising on the head now. The key question in time like these is how to enforce "accountability". We know that the White House and 10 Downing Street are compromised as enforcers of international law. That no one has been sacked, let alone charged for supplying weapons to Israel and Saudi Arabia as the former engages in chemical attacks of its own and the other presides over famine in Yemen is disgusting. How governments with great ugly question marks hanging over their repeat and unaccounted-for interventions in the Middle East are expected to apply the law always cruises under the radar of sundry Officially Concerned politicians and pundits. This matters because why it might not concern the people who matter here, hypocritical rhetoric and action certainly does matter to those who live there. Worried about winning hearts and minds? A dose of introspection would be most welcome. Even if we put that out of our minds, we have to consider whether Trump's missile strikes are the means for enforcing the chemical weapons "red line". If he was genuinely moved by this outrage and wanted to help, then why not rescind his ridiculous attempts to enforce a travel ban? If this was about degrading the capacity of the Syrian air force, then why does the Shayrat airfield runway remain undamaged? And, while it might have been essential to notify Putin to get Russian personnel out of dodge (who after all wants a wider war?), it's naive to assume that the courtesy call's information wasn't passed on to the regime, which was then able to quickly shift some of its assets. The regime says nine people were killed, but these were civilians hit by missiles that fell short of the target or went awry - though these claims come with the necessary caveats. What then was the purpose of this escapade? A punishment that has done nothing to curb the military capacity of the Assad air force, but put on a show of liberal interventionism that has won Trump new friends. It's almost as if the response to Thursday's outrage was contrived this way. And it's reasonable to conclude that Assad and Putin are of like mind. Meanwhile, the bloody grind and morass that Syria has become carries on. "Doing something", which is how this is being justified, should not be an excuse for doing anything.
I once attended a demonstration called by the local PCS branch that attracted a mammoth 14 people. Not great, but it was enough to get a hack from the local rag to run a story about their grievances. But have you seen this nonsense about the protest outside the New Statesman offices this evening? Sparsely attended and completely messed up, this just makes Corbyn supporters look mad and brittle. But, as with all things, there is a logic. Having previously piddled in the puddle of far left politics, I know doing something about setting realistic and achievable goals. For a small group of activists, this can help develop camaraderie and deepen solidarity among those taking part in an action. Selling 100 newspapers in a week, filling a coach, getting a fair few to a rally, delivering 5,000 leaflets in super quick time, no doubt some would sneer at such things but it's these myriad actions that have kept the far left going long past their use by date. If you break out the microscope and focus in on the foundations of the Labour Party, the trade unions, and the cooperative movement, you'll espy pretty much the same thing going on there too. And so, the protesters' demand that the New Statesman hands 30 of its pages over to pro-Corbyn voices probably won't succeed. But in a sense, it has. Political Editor/Generalissimo George Eaton came down to see what the fuss was about and was followed around by a man with a placard (protest pro tip: use oven gloves). Buzzfeed were there and threw something together about it and, most importantly, it attracted the attention of the early evening Twitterati. In the age of trend or it didn't happen, I think the organisers will be pleased with the outcome, even though it makes them and Jeremy supporters look like a box of tools. What this underlines, again, is the political weakness of the left. Over 18 months on from the Corbyn surge, there is little sign of a deeper politicisation of the newly activated. There has been a slow burn involvement of new comrades getting drifting into party structures and big campaigns, but there has been no concerted effort to develop them further. The recent Momentum conference sounded more like a management away day than a group interested in equipping its support politically for the struggles in the Labour Party and wider society. Likewise the web-based media that have grown influential off the back of the Corbyn movement - The Canary, Evolve Politics, SKWAWKBOX - merely reflect back to the reader what they know or already suspect. There's little attempt at analysing things, understanding things. I haven't the foggiest why the excellent Left Futures blog isn't heavily promoted via Momentum's extensive social media networks, which does deal in the weightier stuff and might help shift things along. The longer the political gap goes unaddressed, the more pointless and counterproductive stunts there will be.
"Ken Livingstone is a massive dickhead. It's high time he acted like a member of the Labour Party, not the Ken Livingstone Party. I and many thousands of activists, including plenty on the left, are fed up with his frequent foot-in-mouth moments that damage his own reputation, that of Labour's new leadership, and the standing of the party as a whole." That was me, just shy of a year ago and nothing has changed as anti-semitism in the Labour Party makes the headlines again. Of course, anyone with a shred of honesty knows Labour isn't anti-semitic. It is not a safe space for racists to thrive, nor are Jewish members threatened or discriminated against by the party. That isn't to say the membership doesn't contain anti-semites. It has some of those. As well as racists of other persuasions, as well as your cretinous sexists and homophobes. That doesn't make the party institutionally racist, sexist or what have you. If anything, the party is institutionally anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic. Views that are characterised as such will attract sanction and expulsion the party makes efforts to put people from these backgrounds forward. Labour does so not because it's enlightened, but because it has been pushed to do so by women, black and minority ethnicity, and LGBT members and their allies. Unfortunately, eternal vigilance is required because Labour represents a significant cross section of people numbering in the millions. If there are unpleasant views existent in wider society, they will be reproduced inside all of the parties that serve it. How progressive a party is depends on how the ingress of rancid views are dealt with. That said, there is a sliver of political space, unfortunately, for "left" anti-semitism. As we saw last summer, it tends to come in naive/careless, hardened, and cynical varieties. The hardened kind is straight up racism that latches on to the language of radical critiques of Israel and Zionism to try and give their anti-semitism a leftist veneer. There are those who fake anti-semitism and, via social media, pose as supporters of the leadership as a means of discrediting-by-association. And there are careless folks who lazily lapse into tropes and language that is grotesquely offensive but just about skirt the fine line between critique and prejudice. For some, it's a genuine mistake, but for others who've been around the block they should know better. Here lies Ken Livingstone. Yes, he has an excellent record as a campaigner against racism. Yes, five Jewish members of the party went to his hearing as character witnesses for the defence, including the sainted Walter Wolfgang. But time and again, when it comes to matters concerning Israel Ken goes straight up to the fine line and dances all along it. Why? The historical record doesn't support his contention that Hitler supported Zionism before "he went mad", and Ken knows full well that most Jewish people in Britain find the mentioning of Israel in one breath and the Nazis in the next upsetting and disrespectful. So, again, why? I don't believe Ken is anti-semitic, but when you're consistently provocative and unrepentant about it to the extent you damage yourself, the faction of the party you're aligned with to the point of aiding the leadership's opponents, and the standing of the Labour Party itself, it's easy to see why many people aren't so forgiving. The National Constitutional Committee therefore were right to find Ken guilty of bringing the party into disrepute but wrong to to give him a slapped wrist. His behaviour should have made the ultimate sanction a foregone conclusion.
Is capitalism coming to an end? Perhaps not its end, but it is facing a number of difficulties. These aren't episodic issues that can simply be reformed away by enlightened politicians or ironed out by a spot of Keynesian demand management here and there. They are structural, fundamental, and would require a political struggle and defeat of whole sections of capital for them to be sorted out. This, however, is not a counsel for despair. The development of capitalism has brought forth new relationships and technologies that give a glimpse into a future beyond the market, beyond wage labour, beyond the despoliation of the environment. At least this is the image Paul Mason provides us in his well received book, Postcapitalism. That capitalism allows for the possibility for a different, freer society is hardly a new or original observation. It's the key premise of Marx's analysis and critique of political economy. Individual capitals, or businesses in everyday language, are compelled to innovate and develop to survive. For one, it's bound up with the class relationships underpinning the system. Capital employs labour power to make commodities, be they material, like the laptop I'm writing this blog post on, or immaterial, like knowledge or a service. The worker, or proletarian, receives a wage or salary for their time doing whatever their employer asks of them - an experience, ultimately, not without serious consequences. However, from the point of view of the worker a great deal of time spent in the workplace is completely unnecessary. Say in a five day week, our worker produces £2,500 worth of commodities and receives £500/week in wages, the value of their labour power has been generated on day one. Effectively, for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday they're undertaking surplus labour. Labour, that is surplus to their requirements. When these commodities are sold, that extra value, surplus value, accrues to the employer. Some of it is advanced to cover the next round of wages. Other bits pay off loans, rent, etc. Some is put aside for reinvestment, and what is left is squirreled away as profit. For Marxism the struggle over the disposal of this socially produced but privately appropriated wealth is the stuff of class struggle. Workers have a clear interest in receiving more of the value they generate but, more often than not, employers are the ones who succeed in drive down the workers' share so they can have an even bigger slice of the surplus. This is not because of greed, though there are plenty of business owners who fit that archetype, but because a business ultimately is compelled to do so. Returns on investments depends on the selling of one's wares. If there is a warehouse filled up with goods, then the capital is effectively frozen. The surplus value a business depends on is stuck and cannot be realised until they're sold off, and that depends on the variables of the market a business sells to. It depends on the competition coming from other capitals. Unless a business is a monopoly and can corner a market, all it can do in response is to extract as much surplus as possible either by lengthening the working day or cutting wages and other liabilities (such as pensions). That route is potentially costly as it runs the risk of stoking a dispute with the workforce. Or by more intensive methods, such as the development and introduction of new production techniques and technologies. Instead of £2,500 worth being produced over five days, the application of new machinery sees the run double. Even if the workers are granted a modest pay rise, the amount of surplus value up for grabs increases. Which means when those goods reach the market they will return more if they are sold at their value, or, to compete, the price is lowered more quantities of surplus value can be realised at the expense of a firm's competitors. The relationship between production and consumption is the circuit of capital. There can be and are more complex permutations, but the basic outline here will do. It follows then for Marxists that capital constantly revolutionises the means of production, that class struggle and competition enforces an innovate or die imperative. And so capitalism taken as a global, self-expanding social system tends to develop the productive forces, which are the techniques, technologies, the social capacities and knowledges of human beings. This is where the key plank of Mason's argument comes in. He argues this history comes in waves. Drawing on the work of Nikolai Kondratiev, a brilliant Soviet economist who fell victim to Stalin's purges, he makes the case for capitalist development to be periodised. Each of these waves unleash a tide of innovation, and are comprised by the cumulative effects of new business models, new knowledge, new technology and, crucially, new markets. As Mason puts it,
... a long wave takes off because large amounts of cheap capital have been accumulated, centralised and mobilised in the financial system, usually accompanied by a rise in the supply of money, which is needed to fund the investment boom. Grandiose investments are begun - canals and factories in the late 18th century, railways and urban infrastructures in the mid-nineteenth century. New technology is deployed and new business models created, leading to a struggle for new markets - which stimulates the intensification of wars as rivalries over colonial settlements increase. New social groups associated with the rising industries and technologies clash with the old elites, producing social unrest. (2015, pp 37-8)
Following Kondratiev's work, Mason suggests that, as a rule of thumb, each wave or cycle lasts for about 50 years. In the most dynamic upswing phase, recessions tend to be short and shallow as the most productive sectors of the economy attract the most capital. This doesn't last forever, a saturation point is reach and the wave starts winding down. The new markets are saturated, the opportunities for profit are fewer, the quick returns offered by financial alchemy prove attractive, leading to short-lived credit booms, and recessions grow long and deep before a whole range of capital, physical and financial, is liquidated in a slump. Mason believes there have been four such waves since the advent of industrial capitalism. The most recent, the fourth, was uncharacteristically long, its durability preserved by state management of economies and its active intervention to create new markets. The upswing phase of the fourth wave began at the end of the Second World War and comprised Keynesian demand management, the foundation of the welfare state and, in most of the developed countries, some form of historic compromise in which the state, business, and organised labour collaborated. As the wave crested in the 1970s, so crisis set in followed by the downswing. This was still marked by the revolutionising of technique, knowledge, and technology, but ultimately the wave ate itself as capital increasingly parasited off the structures put in place by the post-war boom. For example, mass privatisations and the colonisation of public services by markets, driven through everywhere by states in the teeth of opposition, increasingly saw capital drain away from productive investment in favour of the short term gains of the money and property markets. That is, until, the stock markets crashed. Mason's key argument is that with the close of the fourth wave, we should be looking to a fifth wave to lift capitalism out of the doldrums and deliver another 50 year cycle of growth, development and crisis. But where is it? The first part has a great deal to do with the character of the late period of the last cycle. Neoliberalism regardless of variant is congenitally hostile to labour movements and does all it can to undermine the collective strength and potential resistance of workers. Where Labour and social democratic governments have dropped payloads of neoliberal policies, without exception they're punished by electorates, sometimes severely. The result in too many key advanced countries is that workers are atomised, insecure, and not strong enough to force capital to innovate. Remember, the struggle for capital to accrue ever more of the social surplus is limited by the capacity of labour to resist. Where labour is strong, as per the post-war period with its huge union battalions of combative, at least on bread and butter issues, workers, militancy exerted its own pressure on the transformation of the productive forces. Capital had to innovate not just because of competition, but so it could exert more control over the labour process. And this meant displacing living labour by dead labour, the replacement of human toil by machines. With weak labour movements, that pressure is absent from the dynamics of development. And so we have the situation we have now where large chunks of British business prefer to employ record numbers of part-time, casualised workers. And because the market place is stock full of businesses doing the same, innovation has slowed. The second and more controversial feature of Mason's argument is the changed character of commodities. The central importance of the knowledge economy for capitalism has been generally acknowledged since the 1970s. The spread of information technology and computing power married to the internet and the complex of networks it has facilitated has reconfigured the economy. The production of knowledge and knowledge-related commodities (such as professional services) are increasingly the, for want of a better phrase, hegemonic commodity form. Consider software, music, film, all these these can be downloaded and filed away. They no longer require physical media beyond a device that can play them. These, like the masses of corporate and state documents regularly dumped on the internet, are no longer qualitatively different from one another. It's all machine code. As such, it resists containment because each is infinitely reproducible with virtually no labour time required. And this presents capital with a problem. How can the circuit of capital be completed if, at the end, a good chunk of value stays unrealised because the resultant information commodity is copied and passed it on. If someone sends me a naughty pdf of a book I want to read, I'm not then going to go out and buy it. Hence the pay walls, the crackdowns on pirate sites, the rising cultural clamour of "support your favourite band/author/software house!". And with the strides being made regarding 3D printing, it's only a matter of time before producers of material goods are similarly affected. The fifth wave of capitalism is stuck, but the first wave of a new system might be appearing. The mercurial ontology of information surges through the circuits the internet built. Innovation then is shifting away from capital and toward the commons, reversing a key feature of capitalist development: its tendency to concentrate knowledge in cadres of managers and other specialists. Once centralised, it's becoming socially diffuse. Effectively our times are caught at the crossroads of two possible futures, between stagnant capitalism and the emerging power of peer-to-peer networks. And this itself is radically configuring the relationship between capital and labour. Drawing on the work of Moulier Boutang's Cognitive Capitalism, which itself is heavily influenced by Hardt and Negri's Empire (a bit more here), increasingly the capacities and skills of labour are self-generating thanks to the ceaseless circulation of social knowledge, and so capital active in the tech and professional service sectors have to go cap in hand to try and ponce off that expertise. Think firms utterly reliant on bedroom coders and hackers, for instance. Mason suggests that Boutang, Hardt and Negri overemphasise this point but does nevertheless point toward a coming irreversible tilt in the relation of capital to labour. Labour as a collective has always been a force of production, but the networks allow for the possibility of it becoming conscious and a potential for its rewiring the social. The only options available for capital to stave this off would be increasing monopolisation (Mason notes the social media and IT giants are only profitable because they have cornered their respective markets. There cannot be multiple Facebooks, YouTubes, Googles and the rest), and/or finding more markets, which would entail an even greater commercialisation of social life. This would be difficult at the best of times, but centuries of capitalism have stored up a series of problems that are now starting to bite. How inopportune for us. The mass migration of peoples, ageing populations, climate change, and energy source depletion are building up to crisis levels that require concerted action and the overcoming of sectional interest, but the old apparatuses and parties are dimly aware of their urgency, or uninterested in doing what needs to be done. By not having answers to these crucial questions, a political opportunity is offered. Here, Mason offers a number of prescriptions for condensing the consciousness of the networks and encourage discussion (and experimentation) when it comes to the resolution of these problems. And there are a number of political struggles vis a vis the state that includes the defeat and reversal of neoliberal policies, the reshaping of markets around environmentally and socially just outcomes, the production of an economic plan (which owes a bit more to a digital Keynes than a cyber Stalin), and a plan to deal with the mountain of debt piling up against countries, banks, business, and individuals' current accounts. Simple! In his transition from mainstream to campaigning journalist, Mason has attracted exasperated comment from his peers ensconced in the established (and establishment) outlets. And unless one understands the theoretical infrastructure underpinning his politics, his positions can appear idiosyncratic and a bit strange. But this, ultimately, is because despite capitalism's internal problems and the difficult, possibly existential crises lying in wait, his view has that rarest of qualities in contemporary radicalism: optimism. Reading the tendencies, he has produced a compelling Marxist, yes, Marxist, narrative that locates the current impasse in the long-run structures and contradictions of our social system. Whatever one thinks of Kondratiev's waves, and there are decades of debate about them, his diagnosis of what is happening now is persuasive and fits the facts much better than the nonsense produced by mainstream economics. His explanation of capital's ongoing investment strike fills in the gaps a view that relies on the dearth of profit-making opportunities cannot. His caveated appropriation of Negri et al also seems sensible, but underplaying it runs the risk of ignoring how the bulk of networked workers actually reproduce themselves and their families in jobs to which the network is tangential or not at all present, and how this is changing their cognitive apprehension and appreciation of the world. The warehouse worker is as likely to be on social media as the IT worker. The big problem, however, is one of agency. Mason spent a great deal of his media career reporting from the front line of global capital, of where the system met its limits and was contested by a wide array of social movements. Power begets resistance, as Foucault often noted, and capitalism is doomed to struggle with the nightmare of its obsolete future as it breaks up labour movements, drives down wages, and vainly seeks to capture the value of peer-to-peer production. But Mason's counterpower, if you like, the network itself is diffuse and incoherent. While on paper the balance is tilting from capital to labour, and in time the consciousness of labour will be conditioned by that social fact, the crises he identifies do not allow for the luxury of slow development. In the mean time, those networked workers have all kinds of views, and while individuated and atomised at the same time as they're linked with others, their politics are all over the place. Opposing networked humanity to capital is all very well, but networked humanity doesn't make for a coherent political project. But there is a potential vehicle. The labour movement with its strange rituals and out-of-time practices is an unlikely condenser, but its rootedness in the realities of work at the sharp end of the changes described in this book make it ideal as the focus. But the exploration of that relationship is going to have to wait for another time. In sum, Paul Mason's Postcapitalism is an essential work that deserves to be widely read. To reverse a cliche, while the point is to change the world you cannot hope to succeed without understanding it.
A spring day redolent of the summer to come, lovely. And a long blog post is in the works, so here's a lazy sunshiney tune to settle you down before bed.
I got into table top role playing games before my trusty MegaDrive came along, and so was attracted to them as RPGs drip-dripped onto the system in the early part of its life. The problem was as larger games with battery back up, they tended to weigh in with a heftier asking price. Seeing the second and third installments of the Phantasy Star series come with £60 and £50 price tags respectively (in early 90s money!) meant I mostly got my gaming jollies in other genres, though I did eventually pick up Phantasy Star III. When Shining in the Darkness arrived on these shores, it certainly looked good. Though my favourite magazine gave it short shrift, it was well received elsewhere. The screenshots were beguiling with some beautiful-looking visuals and, you would assume, quite a hefty adventure packed into the cartridge. Alas, I didn't partake because of the price tag. Ho hum. And now, 25 years later? To be honest, I'm glad my much younger self saved his money. Shining in the Darkness is an important game because it kicked off the Shining franchise of Japanese RPGs for Sega, but that doesn't excuse it for what is and was at the time quite a shallow role playing experience. Don't get me wrong, the presentation and graphics are totally superb. The art style is consistently excellent and imaginative. There is some humour hidden here too and it doesn't take itself terribly seriously. The story is standard meh - rescue the princess and your dad who've been whisked away into a nearby dungeon, and slay the evil Dark Sol while you're at it. But it's the game. The game.
It starts off alright. You meet with the King, learn about the very basics of your quest, buy some rudimentary weapons and armour from in-town and off into the first person dungeon you go. Very soon you brush up against your first random monster encounter. Like most stats-based RPGs, combat is not a matter of skill but random number generation in relation to your attributes and those of the beastie. The menu icons for attack, casting a spell, using an item, or running away are animated, and is different but reminiscent of the Phantasy Star series. If you win, you pick up experience points and gold. If you fail, then you're transported back to the shrine in town and are resurrected sans a wadge of cash, Sword of Vermilion stylee. As per games of this type, experience means advancing through the levels with a resultant increase in your attributes. The mechanics themselves cannot be knocked, the system works well. Combined with the front end presentation, it actually plays well. Then what's the problem? Unfortunately, it's the grinding. The first encounter will probably knock off half your hit points and drop you between three experience points and three gold pieces. That means an awful lot of running back and forth to the village tavern for healing until you're tough enough. And that, I'm afraid, is the game. The entire game. Even boss monsters work on the same principle. Yes, there are elements of this in nearly all turn-based JRPGs, but it's present here in extremis. Other examples of the genre have the good sense to alternate environments or character perspectives, but here it's just the replacement of one dungeon wall texture by another. You go in the dungeon, fetch something, come out the dungeon. In the dungeon, out the dungeon. New monsters are occasionally interesting, but the promise of a bit more dialogue at the tavern or in audience with his majesty is not enough to sustain 40 or so hours worth of interest. Perhaps as a teenager with nothing better to do I would have persevered, but definitely not now. Do bear that in mind should you fancy giving this game a whirl. Nevertheless, it does raise interesting issues from the standpoint of social theory and video games. A number of papers in the edited collection, Dungeons, Dragons, and Denizens: The Digital Role-Playing Game link the character attribute/levelling system to neoliberal subjectivity. It's easy to see why. In all RPGs, characters are acquisitive. Progress in Shining in the Darkness or something more up to date like Dragon Age III is contingent upon gaining experience and finding/buying better kit so you stand more of a chance next time you go out into the wild. The analogy with the self-expansion of capital is obvious. Enemies aren't obstacles, they are resources (albeit hazardous ones) that are utterly necessary for you to transform into the stuff that makes you more powerful.
While true, there are limits on neoliberal sensibilities in the case of Shining in the Darkness. To be acquisitive in some way is a necessary condition of neoliberal subjects, but is not sufficient by itself. Otherwise we're getting into the territory of claiming the Spanish Conquistadors as prototypical, as directs forebears to our contemporary ways of individual being. Bound up with neoliberal sensibilities is entrepreneurship. And here, in this game there is next to no scope for that. As a grind quest of kill monsters, heal, kill monsters, heal, there is little opportunity to take risks. By that, I mean doing something other than dawdle about dungeons and opening every chest you find. There is some experimentation when Pyra, the Elven magic user joins your party. You are invited to try out her different spells in battle, and any new ones that come along as she starts levelling up, but that it is. There is no opportunity for entrepreneurship, of testing out new things in which reward might end up outweighing the risk. For Western and Japanese cultures now habituated to and exhorted to "do" entrepreneurship, it's small wonder that most people approaching Shining in the Darkness for the first time will find the game a complete chore. Engaging in never ending battles as you (very) slowly accumulate XP and money is too much like work because it's pretty much exactly the same as work for the vast majority of people. It's dull, it's demanding, it's repetitive, it's the trudge of having to accumulate to survive rather than thrive. At least for most of the game. In so doing, its plodding qualities stand much closer to the lived realities of the neoliberal workplace than the neoliberal designs for life disseminated by our institutions, discourses, and cultural artefacts. And in so doing, it suggests that a bit more care should be taken if folks interested in the sociological investigation and interpretation of video games are keen to draw analogies between digital game subjectivity and that abroad in real life.
Local media outlets in Stoke, including me have been called to a hastily arranged press conference at midday with Council Leader Dave Conway. While other "proper" reporters might be scratching their heads at what's going on (council activity on a Saturday, really?), my spies at the Civic Centre have given me the inside track. Cllr Conway is going to announce that Stoke-on-Trent is exiting the EU early on its own terms. I know councillors on the opposition benches have wondered about the absence of several City Independent representatives for some time. There are councillors who never collect their post, never respond to their emails, but mysteriously reappear for the full council meeting. After all, lack of appetite for work is never matched by a reluctance to draw one's allowance. It is true some City Independent councillors aren't happy. They're fed up with their coalition Conservative partners hogging the media and getting positive Sentinel coverage for all the regeneration plans coming to fruition - plans put into place by Labour and opportunistically attacked by both parties when they were in opposition. While the Tories are getting the glory, they're the ones taking the flak for cuts to SureStart, the closure and demolition of Hanley's Crown Bank loos, and the £70-per-roll wallpaper debacle. It's almost as if the Tories contrived this to happen. My understanding is last Autumn a number of councillors secretly met Dave Conway at Baddeley Green Working Men's Club angry at the division of responsibility at the council. After, what I've been told, was a "clearing of the air", from his capacious hard drive Cllr Lee Wanger produced a surprise document, a plan for Stoke's independent negotiations with the European Union. Titled Stoke's Bespoke Brexit, Cllr Wanger put it to the meeting that the City Independents can seize the political initiative in the city by sending its own delegation to Brussels to negotiate an EU exit separate from the UK government. Observing that two thirds of Stoke-on-Trent voters opted to leave, he not unreasonably suggested that by delivering Brexit for the city in time for the 2019 elections, the CIndies could sweep the board. Except probably not in Hanley Park and Shelton as, in the words of the 2015 Manifesto, only the "genuine people of Stoke-on-Trent" voted to leave. The meeting appointed its negotiating team to deal with Donald Tusk and the Commission. It was felt Cllr Alan Dutton with his innumerable connections to the high born and well-placed, Cllr Jackie Barnes with her charisma and networking skills, and Cllr Wanger himself would go. They also had the power to co-opt members to the delegation as they saw fit, which accounts for several absences. Well, for the last six months at least. Of the terms, it was my understanding their only red line was the power to control Stoke's borders to prevent the outside world from coming in and, of course, anyone ever leaving. I can only assume that Cllr Conway is going to announce the result of Stoke's exit negotiations today. Having caught sight of his words, I can exclusively reveal that his statement is going to go big on the Brexit dividend. While the Leave campaign made play of the £350m a week we could spend on the NHS, the CIndies in what I can only describe as a politburo meeting without the Tories present have earmarked funds for a package tour of Stoke (replete with North Korean-style "guides") and the Staffordshire Hoard tea set. There was some debate whether monies could be put toward the tram system, but in a rare display of, well, speaking, Cllr Sabrina Bowers emphasised the need for "quick wins". After all, manifesto promises are manifesto promises. What the Tories are going to think of their cheeky, sneaky coalition partners is anyone's guess. They had them down for fools and incompetents, and yet as they gazed upon the photo of Margaret Thatcher hanging in Cllr Jack Brereton's office and imagined themselves the kings of the hill, the CIndies are about to severely, and irreversibly upstage them. It's going to be an interesting press conference!
What were the most viewed posts last month? 1. Owen Jones and Naive Cynicism 2. The Collapse of the Labour Right 3. Dutch Lessons for the Centre Left 4. Daniel Hannan, Marxism, and Dishonesty 5. Nicola Sturgeon's Independence Ambush To be honest, I thought this blog had peaked. As the London-based media collapsed into lazy cliches about a land outwith the M25 when it came to Stoke-on-Trent and its famous by-election, this blog filled the gap. And it showed as the audience soared to, for me, dizzying heights. From there, I expected an orderly decline to more modest but still respectable figures. The fates, however, had other ideas. March was my best month ever with just shy of 151,000 page views to brag about, an average of over 4,800 page views per day. Credit has to go to the Owen Jones piece which, thanks to a plug by Owen himself, resulted in this place receiving 31,000 extra page views in a single day, an all-time record. What if that was every day, eh? Perhaps more people would start listening. In addition, the underlying viewer totals are nice and healthy too. It might be a while before we beat this, but volatile times married to a hunger to understand what the hell is going on could lead to more boosts in the future. As always, there is the odd post that gets overlooked. On this occasion, may your attention be directed to some advice for new Labour MPs. If you're one of the folks who end up in Parliament in future, you might want to keep this in mind.
