Paul Mason has written an insightful piece for Channel 4 and the New Statesman in which he does two things. First he more than justifies his moving on from Newsnight. Secondly, he reviews the furore over Russell Brand's interview with Paxman last week. The analysis makes this whole article well worth reading.
In the article he makes clear there is an inter-generational divide, pivoting around the age of 40 or so. As he says:
In Jeremy's [older] world, all legitimacy comes from the parliamentary process and the monarchy. In Russell's, things are different. In Russell's world, people are so fed up with capitalism that there is a high likelihood of revolution. When he made this point, Jeremy's eyebrow went crazy.
I'm very clearly partly in Jeremy's world by this definition: my faith in democracy is not without limit, but considerable despite its manifest failings. And then there is Russell's world:
Russell stands up in front of thousands of young people who've paid a serious dollop of their wages to hear him make them laugh. Though he looks like a survivor from Altamont, his audience does not. They are young, professional people: nurses, bank clerks, call-centre operatives. And what Russell has picked up is that they hate, if not the concept of capitalism, then what it's doing to them. They hate the corruption manifest in politics and the media; the rampant criminality of a global elite whose wealth nestles beyond taxation and accountability; the gross and growing inequality; and what it's doing to their own lives.
Russell's audience get pay cheques, but their real spending power is falling. They don't just need help to buy, they need help to pay the mortgage; help to get out of relationships that are collapsing under economic stress; help to pay the legal loan shark and meet the minimum credit-card payment. Above all, they need help to understand what kind of good life capitalism is going to offer their generation. Because since Lehman Brothers that has not been obvious.
That puts me firmly in Russell's world too except I had that doubt long before Lehman came along to prove how misplaced faith in capitalism of this sort was.
In fairness, Russell Brand does not claim he is saying something original. As he writes in the Guardian this morning:
The people who liked the interview said it was because I'd articulated what they were thinking. I recognise this. God knows I'd love to think the attention was about me but I said nothing new or original, it was the expression of the knowledge that democracy is irrelevant that resonated. As long as the priorities of those in government remain the interests of big business, rather than the people they were elected to serve, the impact of voting is negligible and it is our responsibility to be more active if we want real change.
With this I have, I realise, a real agreement. Despite invitations to consider doing so I will not put myself up for public office. Those on the back benches tell me that I have more impact where I am. A junior ministerial post in agriculture does not appeal. As Brand says, that won't create real change.
And Brand and those under 40 are right to say that the current system is corrupt and is intended to deliver to big corporations: it is, and does. Wjat ius surprising is that it has taken so long for anger about this to surface. As Paul Mason says:
To people of my generation, the absence of outright anger, rage and aggression sometimes makes it seem as if young people don't care about any of this. But anger and rage are behaviourally impossible in our society: raise your voice, and the official responses range from “being asked to leave” to tasering. All the repression of the various protests — Sol, Syntagma, Taksim, Occupy — has done is to force the anger and rejection inwards. The revolution that's under way is more about mental and cultural rejection of the story on offer: to leave college with a heap of debt, to work as a near-slave in your early twenties in the name of a “work placement” or “internship”.
I think that's right. As mason also says, the revolution, if it happens, will not be socialist. As conventionally understood that's also a materialist ideology of power and that is not what is needed now. Rather the change will be one of the narrative, of what life is literally all about.
Capitalism has no answer to that question. All it can offer is abuse of many for the few. That is, and will remain, unacceptable because there is within it no hope - the demand for which is what always drives political change in the end. Younger people want to know, as Mason puts it:
where will the jobs come from if automation takes over our lives? Where will high wages come from if workers' bargaining power is repeatedly stamped down by the process of globalisation? How will this generation be secure in old age, if the pension system is shattered and we face half a century of boom-bust?
Capitalism cannot offer any of those things: all we can say for sure is that it will deliver greater insecurity.
Labour has been wedded to the same basic economic theory as the right for so long it still has no alternative narrative.
And that is what is being demanded. The tax gap story, the story of tax justice and the story that tackling corporate abuse that I have been involved in telling are an alternative narrative. I am proud to have been part of that telling, even if I will be candid and say I did not know that was what I was doing when I started. Those narratives have worked: they became the theme of Occupy in the end.
But I will also say they are not enough. They highlight that government is partly powerless, but at least partly by choice: they choose not to collect tax that would make a difference to so many lives. But more than that is needed.
We need a narrative that focusses the anger Brand has highlighted. He's right when he says:
It's easy to attack me, I'm a right twerp, I'm a junkie and a cheeky monkey, I accept it, but that doesn't detract from the incontrovertible fact that we are living in a time of huge economic disparity and confronting ecological disaster. This disparity has always been, in cultures since expired, a warning sign of end of days.
I still don't fancy the idea of 'end days'. Dark ages follow and they are uncomfortable. That is why a compelling narrative is needed now. That is one reason why I am not keen on the old capitalist narrative trying to populate comments on this blog. And in the Green New Deal group we have tried to imagine that narrative - but I do not pretend we have found it yet.
Nor has Brand but he shares the understanding that it is hope that matters. He concludes his Guardian article saying:
I believe in change. I don't mind getting my hands dirty because my hands are dirty already. I don't mind giving my life to this because I'm only alive because of the compassion and love of others. Men and women strong enough to defy this system and live according to higher laws. This is a journey we can all go on together, all of us. We can include everyone and fear no one. A system that serves the planet and the people. I'd vote for that.
So would I.
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There are options out there but too many people – even those who are against capitalism – continue to fuel capitalism. OK, not everyone can grow their own food or source their own fuel, but almost everyone can make their own bread and beer, walk more, cut down on consumption generally. Everyone can use libraries and share more with neighbours. The internet can be a great resource for building the community rather then simply buying from big business: after all, you don’t need a ladder every day and your neighbour doesn’t need his drill, so by pooling resources everyone benefits, except the people trying to sell you stuff.
But you cannot have change without change. By which I mean if the idea is people living the same way as they currently do only getting others to pay for it, it won’t work. If people want to buy a capuccino every day, upgrade their mobile phone every year and have a sky subscription then they will have to pay for it. But in the end, none of those things are essential. And if people focus on what is essential then there is the chance for meaningful change, because what is needed is a change to the way we live, not simply to how we fund it.
Roger
There is a ready-made movement out there which is doing all of these things – it’s called Transition. The biggest innovation they have is an independent currency operating in Bristol (and the last I heard they had well over £B150,000 in circulation). Imagine that: a currency which the banks do not own, which cannot be used for financial speculation, which draws its value from real goods and services provided by real people.
The problem is that we now have people at both ends of the game (the political and the grass-roots activists) who together could almost tip the system over. But the two are not willing to work together – each regards itself as more important, and until the two do start to pull together the banksters will continue to hold sway.
I think that the problem we have now is that, as happened at Worgl when its currency grew popular, the banks will insist that local currencies are shut down. I still can’t see a peaceful way out of this. Look at the behaviour of the losers in Iraq, they set fire to the oil wells rather than surrender them. The Establishment too would rather scorch the earth than surrender it. It’s going to be bloody 🙁
I am not sure at all why self imposed austerity is better than externally imposed austerity. But that seems to me to be what you are proposing here. I see it a little differently, I suppose.
If what you are arguing is that we need to move to a “greener” way of doing things, that I accept. But there are two separate arguments here, and I honestly do not think that self-sufficiency is a goal I can subscribe to. Yet that seems to be the implication of your first paragraph, if I am reading it right. Solutions cannot and should not be predicated on the atomisation of our society. To me that is part of the problem, rather, and we need to act collectively. It is always a question of who is “us”.
We have a very rich country and there is a first order problem in how we distribute that wealth within that country: magnified and mirrored in how we distribute wealth across the globe. Globalisation, as it is called, has worsened that situation, as it is intended to do. We have food banks and there is no excuse for them. At. All. It is a black burning shame for any country which tolerates such a thing; for a world which does.
I do not accept the proposition that goods are scarce and must be rationed by money, if the goods you are talking about are food and shelter and clean water and warmth and the basic necessities of life. You seem to believe that such things are in short supply, but I do not see the evidence that this is a brute fact of nature. I suspect it never has been. Certainly not since industrialisation. It may be that making enough of those things is impossible, but I would like to see the proof. It may be that making enough of those things is impossible if I choose to buy a cappuccino every day, but again, I would like to see the proof. Because I think that we have enough resource and technology to ensure that everybody can have the basic necessities AND a cappuccino every day if that is what we choose to do. I may be wrong. But I am damn sure that my decision and your decision and everybody in the western world’s decision not to buy a cappuccino every day will make not one whit of difference to those who have not got enough to eat. That just is not the problem, as I see it
There is a second argument about what our current way of living is doing to the planet. That is important too. But I do not think that cappuccino is important in that context either.
There is a whiff of calvinism in your post: as the song said – give us bread but give us roses.
Good points Fiona-I don’t think goods need to be rationed by money because that doesn’t work as the rapacious 1% have most of it and operate without conscience. However we DO need to be sensible stewards of what we use. This probably means slowing down processes to ensure equity, for example, where extractive industries leave populations in poverty while taking the ore/diamonds from under their feet. Their would need to be a great deal of open dialogue and VERY good will in all of this. Humans are no where near this point psychologically and are still like children without adult guidance. NOT buying things does make a difference – we could bankrupt the Sun/Daily Mail overnight by not buying -people have great power in their volition but don’t see it most of the time-freedom is a very subtle thing which is why it so easily lost and abused.
“Because I think that we have enough resource and technology to ensure that everybody can have the basic necessities AND a cappuccino every day if that is what we choose to do.”
So who directs that system? Who tells me, “No you are out of a job because we want someone in Asia to do it…..”
If you’re on the receiving end of job losses, it doesn’t really matter who the ‘directing system’ is.
Paul Mason hits one nail on the head: “where will the jobs come from if automation takes over?”
I am coming to the view that “developed” nations just don’t need a huge army of workers in order to be very productive. Farms that used to employ 10 labourers now employ maybe one. A crane driver can unload a container ship that would have needed a battalion of stevedores 40 years ago.
We urgently need to make the transition to a way of life that consumes less and throws less away. If we abandoned consumerism we could work 20 hours per week and retire early. But to make this work we need a citizens’ income to distribute the fruits of all that automated labour. If we abandoned consumerism we could also stop trashing the beauty of our own countryside. We could even deal with climate change.
But revolutions nearly always come to grief, they are not democratic and usually end in violence. Change must be democratic and non-violent.
I believe that the only people in the UK who can find a way out of the mess we’re in is the Green Party. So I will continue to get my hands dirty working for the Greens. It’s a source of continual sadness and frustration to me that we languish on around 3% in the polls. We struggle on.
Why do we need jobs if automation takes over? I do not understand your argument at all. I absolutely agree that we do not need a big army of workers but I do not see any logic in what follows in your post. Because if we can make the same amount of stuff with fewer workers, there is absolutely nothing in that to suggest we should consume less stuff: we can have the same amount of stuff and more leisure as well. That is obvious, surely?
If you want less consumption for green reasons that is a separate argument: and a very respectable one. But let us not confuse the issues. First ensure that the stuff is better distributed; then address the question of what stuff we need. People will engage far more willingly with the latter when we have dealt with the former, I think
In current society where work is linked to reward and not working is deemed ‘scrounging’ your ideal view is unlikely to be realised
It would require what is being called a revolution to happen
I am happy if there is a revolution in our thinking: I don’t see this as ideal, I see it as sane
This isn’t capitalism, as we’ve observed here before. It isn’t democracy either, it’s a monarchy, which is different. I note mortgages get a mention above, perhaps we should examine them more closely. We know from banking heavyweights like King, Adair and before them McKenna that banks don’t lend money, they create new money instead. This means that the average chap spends much of his life working not in his own interests but to pay compound interest to the banks on money they never had in the first place. This reveals what we think of as our society to be no more than a series of milking stalls, run by the banks for their own benefit. This is a scandal and a scam. It’s a huge scam and it’s bleeding us dry. The situation should be addressed as a matter of urgency. I suggest we refuse more mortgages from the privately-owned banks unless they’re offered on a full reserve basis. We have a central bank which could provide the money to build new properties. They could be gifted to those who need them. The money to facilitate this can be created from thin air by the central bank or its branches. Since it would be backed by proportionate wealth creation, there’d be no devaluation of the currency involved. I’m still not sure what to do about recompensing people who have paid their mortgage already though. I have a feeling this is because the answer is so blindingly simple I’m overlooking it 🙂 It’s difficult thinking outside the fraudulent financial paradigm we’re all brainwashed into accepting as normal.
Bill-why do we need house ownership at all? Couldn’t we operate housing on a Trust basis where we are ‘stewards’ of the housing until it passes to future generations -making money out of housing is a ghastly pathological force and crushes our human potential and creativity in life. This, in my view, should be the fundamental revolution – the ending of the real estate scam.
Bill-how to create a transition with regard to those who already paid for their houses that will no longer have the market value they hoped for will need to be thought out – house values will collapse again anyway-the hedge funds are, no doubt, factoring this in as we ‘speak.’
Without property rights and no market, who allocates land and buildings? A committee?
How would hedge funds cause this to happen??
I’m not sure. Who allocates social housing now? Councils? I don’t know.
Carol -the housing market is corrupt as hell-it’s about time we became stewards rather than owners, look at the mess obsession with house ownership has created.
Housing as investment wrecks economies and wrecks lives, hopes and dreams -the time has come for something different.
Social housing, what’s left of it, can allocate on the basis of family and work connections and is done by housing associations in conjunction with councils. The Trust model means rents go BACK into housing and not to banks, we need to deprive banks of their real estate scams.
My take on socialism is that the only people who should own land and capital are those who use them. I cannot see what is wrong with owning the house you live in – someone has to. If labour received its rightful share of production everyone should be able to afford the basic necessities of food and shelter and lots more. Natural monopolies should be under democratic state ownership. Housing is not a natural monopoly, but land is. Nationalise the land rent (as Marx prescribed) and the market will work to allocate housing to best use. The Road to Serfdom was not a trivial treatise – Hayek just couldn’t imagine a state where markets could operate under democratic control when externalities are addressed.
“Couldn’t we operate housing on a Trust basis where we are ‘stewards’ of the housing until it passes to future generations…”
Who gets to decide where you live? Presumably everyone will want a nice place with a garden…..or a very nice flat with all the mod cons….but who decides who gets to live where?
Why is it a problem that some people have already paid their mortgages? They have a house to live in and that was the aim, I presume. Oh…it wasn’t. They considered it an “investment”, and in the absence of any other way of getting financial security it became important in those terms. Therein lies the problem. “Financial” security is nothing at all: it is all about stuff like shelter and food and the like. What we choose to provide as of right determines how much “income” we require: children don’t need much at all. There is a lot to be said for a “parental state” because for most of us there is no financial security to be had: it is chasing the dragon. We break the contract for pensions at will: we crash the value of assets and savings at will: we refuse to ensure there are jobs for all, then cut up rough against the unemployed. And on and on. In short there is nothing at all one can do to ensure the means of life under the current system. We have chosen to put ourselves at the mercy of plutocrats: and they are not very merciful creatures.
I have paid a mortgage and I have a house. I lose absolutely nothing if someone else is given a house. That is the reality
But you will ‘lose’ if the situation changes and house prices plummet because others are ‘given’ houses! We need a different model for housing -full stop-because the ‘market’ will always bring abuse. Trusts would involve collective stewardship-owning a business is one thing but i still see house ownership as an utter absurdity for the vast majority of non ‘rentier’ minded people.
The point of a mortgage is wealth extraction, nothing more. See? I’m getting it 🙂 It further occurs to me that we shouldn’t be applying and never should have been applying the same kind of accounting rules to banks as we do to other businesses as banks (and countries) create money and other businesses don’t. They need to be in a category of their own, this suggests. I recall reading in Niall Ferguspon’s nearly infrmative book The Ascent of Money how accounting principles were developed in the Lombardy region of Italy at around the same time as the Medicis (bankers), just over the way, were getting rich and fostering the Rennaissance. This suggests to me accountancy as we know it was developed to legitimise the scam that is banking more than anything else. Cleverly done too. Time that ended and new rules were applied to banking accounts, rules which don’t apply double-entry, IIRC. I should probably look that up 🙁 I’m still trying to find a way to recompense people who’ve paid a mortgage (and been scammed, basically) without devaluing the currency.
You are right about accountancy
It need not be this way though as Prem Sikka argues, often
Simon what people would lose is financial value which we tend to interpret as money. We confuse money with something rare that must be striven to gain, to earn. That’s a nonsense, money’s just stuff thst’s made up, trading tokens. You’re thinking in the old way to a degree there. Don’t forget, they still have the important thing, the roof over their heads. That’s wealth, and it’s not to be confused with money. Time I head breakfast now, I’ve thought up my six impossible things or thereabouts 🙂
@Simon.
No, I won’t lose. I will still have a house, and that is what I bought. I didn’t invest. I didn’t have any right to make money on it: no more than on a car or any other big purchase.
Agreed bill! You make a good point.Houses need to be valued as shelter in itself -the real value in life is relationship to others and we are losing this to atomisation and keeping one’s own corner going.
I remember krishnamurti (remember him?!) saying: people operate according to the dictum: ‘ I don’t care if the world goes bust as long as I’ve got my corner.’ When will joined up thinking begin? The house as asset attitude, I feel, is at the heart of this.
Fiona-good on you! I think that most people would not be able to take this perspective, though-if their houses lose money they will feel as if meaning has drained out of their lives -it’s as bad as that!
I’m 47 and I kindof semi with Russell.
I don’t think he understands revolution. Revolution isn’t about trashing the system (or if that’s all it is, all it does is create a power-vacuum that will be filled by despotism), revolution is about transitioning to a new system, that (hopefully) works better. And I don’t think he’s thought that far ahead.
I have… a bit. A lot of other people have thought a lot further ahead than I have. The best I can do is offer a smattering of key-words, key-thoughts and fundamentals. ie:
– we’ve got to get rid of debt-based currency.
– radical abundance needs to be embraced; artificial scarcity stopped
– liquid democracy / liquid feedback (search for it on youtube for a primer)
– the purpose of democracy is to control power. Wherever it resides, including corporations
– land reform. We’ve got to end the commodification of “things we can’t live without”
– the best successes come from creating environments/ecosystems, then letting the inhabitants do what they will
and so on.
I’m as angry as anyone – I feel like we should start killing the executives of major corporations, who by their actions are enslaving us, are causing wars, are causing gratuitous suffering. I think it’s that serious. I think that there’s a moral justification for this becoming a shooting war.
But there’s not a strategic or tactical justification – as someone, somewhere else said “the benefits of violence are temporary, the costs permanent”. Activism resolves to two basic instincts: Kill or Build. Kill only really works for hierarchy – the old world. We at the bottom – from the network, can only succeed by building.
And I think we can do it – this site for example is built on a stack of technologies – linux, php, mysql, apache, html, css, js, wordpress – all open-source, all relatively new, all world-changingly successful. They are of the world of radical abundance – we just need to learn to apply it to everything else.
I have to say that I was moved when I watched the Paxman/Brand interview, Richard, as was my wife and pretty much everyone I know whose watched the interview since. When it ended I wanted to cheer him – despite feeling uncomfortable with his statement that he’d never voted.
I’m a little older than you and so also fall into Paxman’s world. But I have children who are in their late 20s and who are therefore solidly in Brand’s world, and so I know first hand from them and their friends how desperate and disillusioned they are. I was in no doubt that Brand spoke for them, and his anger reflected their anger, but the most profound aspect of the interview was the powerful but moving way on which he was able to articulate so many of the core features of that world.
One such example from my son’s circle of friends serves to illustrate just how dire this world is for so many. A friend has worked for a major bingo house for getting on for six years. He’s still on minimum wage and also a zero hours contract. Given the nature of bingo he works late morning to early evening. Then has no work for two hours but is required to return to work from 7pm till after 11pm. As he is too poor to afford a car he doesn’t have enough time to get from his work to home and back in two hours, so he has to stay in town, or at work. Time for which, of course, he doesn’t get paid. This means he doesn’t see his children from when they leave for school in the morning until the following morning. And he has to work six days a week – whenever this is on offer – to make ends meet, although because he’s on a zero hours contract he never knows until the end of one week what days and times he’s required to work the next. As you might imagine this is not particularly good for maintaining a relationship with his partner and children, so I wasn’t surprised to learn from my son that his marriage is going down hill fast.
This is, of course, a snapshot of the experience of the life that many, many, younger (and older) people in the UK now “enjoy”. As a parent, and as a member of Paxman’s world, I’ll admit that when my children ask me for my views about how the politics and institutions of my world will fix this I’m nowadays at a complete loss to offer anything positive. Indeed, as a realist my assessment of where we are heading is more of the same, but worse. Sadly, that means I now avoid talking politics with my children. It’s simply too depressing.
We can debate whether the anger of Brand’s world – or indeed ours – will ever boil over. But one thing is for sure: if or when it does the corporately captured state in which we live, and the elite in whose interests they govern, have all the means they need to ensure it’s controlled and constrained.
There’s not the space to outline all the various measures here, except to say that for the increasing number of people involved in industrial action (myself included), the contrast between the rights and protections we enjoyed as workers back in the world in which the politics, practices and institutions of Paxman’s world held sway and what we “enjoy” now comes as a shock. Unfortunately too many of us still think and act – and maintain a faith in a world – that assumes they haven’t (as Paxman does in his interview with Brand).
Like representative democracy itself, that world has been gradually and stealthily hollowed out by the servants of the neo-liberal project. We are left with a facade which is routinely and conveniently wheeled out by the political servants of our corporate masters and the elite to maintain the charade that we live in a country where exercising our democratic rights still makes a difference. As painful as it might be to hear this to those of Paxman’s world and generation – they don’t. They simply legitimate a system which is designed to exploit and pillage the majority, for the benefit of the few.
Your comments are interesting Ivan and reveal some of the despair we all feel.
I think the riots are on their way-I cannot believe, given our history, that the people of this country will tolerate this debt peonage to the financial world. I feel we are living in a culture that has exceeded its sell-by date and we are really desperately dragging on a cigarette burnt down to the filter. We have reached peak prosperity and the model needs to change. On an individual level when change is needed but we carry on the same way we can experience a breakdown; this may be what is necessary for our society; it will be messy but unavoidable. Cultural renewal could follow. In the bankrupt city of Detroit, people are finding all sorts of ways to co-operate in producing their own food -life can renew itself.
The oligarchs will not give up and will take us all to the wall, they are that stupid. The water cannons will come out when protests begin. Many people (perhaps the young man you mention) are feeling the utter vacuity of our culture and are aware of the moronic, gutless politicians that hold sway. Interestingly, I hear interviews with veterans of WW2 who are dismayed that so many of the things they fought for are in retreat. My son is 13 and I’m scared at times that he will find it hard to cope in a world that is becoming viscously indifferent to human values, how do I prepare him? Do I try to make him as hard as nails or do I try to get him to question power and bogus authority? It will no doubt be the latter.
I stood with my sons at Norwich Castle last weekend and talked about Robert Kett http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kett's_Rebellion
It’s part of the education
Gove may miss it out
I won’t
Mason is too kind to Paxman who, in my view, is an apparatchik of a tired and virtually intellectually extinct BBC. Paxman’s contrived, world weary cynicism is of a man drowning in his own media image and wealth -he needs to retire and be put out to graze. Mason was hardly challenging anything while at the BBC despite the leather jackets, pugnacious chin thrusts and northern accent. His financial analysis rarely rocked any boats or clarified the horrendous nature of the financialised world and what it is doing to society – in short, he was poor at his job, if he had been better at it people like Russell Brand (whose heart is in the right place)would be better informed about the oligarchy that rules and take the rise out of us all. WE need a more vociferous approach, perhaps a Max Keiser, in your face attitude.
The way the financial world works is very hard for people to grasp and it is this opacity that keeps saving it. Our education system still uses old economics text books, Universities do the same, so what hope is their in the present generation of young people making sense of this? Our whole culture has saturated our young with dreams of bizarre levels of so-called wealth so that they dream of being investment bankers to avoid ending up in the growing underclass.
The anger will rise at some point and might well be unfocused and include looting -our neo-liberal masters are providing the conditions for this, so stupid and unintelligent are they. I’m 53 and feel ashamed that my generation bought the Thatcher crap and the ‘greed is good’ bullshit that created a culture of utter vacuity. The previous baby Boomer generation (now hitting their 70’s) did not give a toss as they benefitted from the post-war growth that has ransacked the environment that now leaves us in the creek with a balsa wood paddle. can Brands generation do better. I’m not hopeful- many live in solopsistic computer game worlds or are still living in the benighted mortgage dream; others are on drugs to keep the vacuity and misery at bay or are zombified by a culture that has left them with nothing to hope for.
I recently read Chomsky’s definition of revolution which wrote as part of a series of definitions offered to a journalist:
Noam Chomsky
Linguist and philosopher
I cannot improve on Rosa Luxemburg’s eloquent critique of Leninist doctrine: a true social revolution requires a “spiritual transformation in the masses degraded by centuries of bourgeois class rule . . . it is only by extirpating the habits of obedience and servility to the last root that the working class (sic) can acquire the understanding of a new form of discipline, self-discipline arising from free consent”. And as part of this “spiritual transformation”, a true social revolution will, furthermore, create — by the spontaneous activity of the mass of the population — the social forms that enable people to act as free creative individuals, with social bonds replacing social fetters, controlling their own destiny in freedom and solidarity.
I have to say I disagree re Paul Mason
And I do not come near to endorsing Leninist doctrine
Richard -yes, I don’t like the word ‘doctrine’ but “self-discipline arising from free consent” – pretty close to Quaker business method perhaps?
As you didn’t add a reply button to your response to my comment, Richard, I’ll add it here. I don’t want you to misunderstand what I’m saying. As you might imagine, when my children were the age that your son is now they heard – and we discussed – plenty of topics of similar ilk to your discussion of Kett. And I’d be the last person to suggest that that wasn’t valuable for them and me, not least because there’s so much about the world that they are not going to hear about otherwise. But in many ways that only makes the situation that pertains now they are adults – and that I touch on in my comment – all the sadder: that the social democratic institutions and apparatus that I once told them would continue to deliver a better life for the citizens of this country has instead been corrupted into a system of oppression, exploitation and anguish. In my defence I’d add that even ten year ago I never imagined in my worst nightmares that we’d ever have a government more right wing, ruthless and despising of anyone not of the elite than the one we have now. I suspect I’m not alone in being guilty of that.
Not sure why that happened Ivan – something did go wrong when I posted – but entirely out of my control
And I am as guilty as you of not imagining how bad things could get
Although John Christensen and I discussed a very real fascist threat a decade ago, I’m sure
This potential abuse of over-centralised power is one of the reasons I’ve never voted. Something too powerful’s created when you instigate central government – what if it’s taken over by bad guys, like now? I’m stuck for an alternative too but we have to remember there’s nothing normal or natural about what we’re encouraged to think of as our society as it’s really only a wealth-extraction mechanism for the banks, others too now. Telling us it’s ours to keep us passive is an old trick, witness Tacitus writing of the newly-conquered Britons, “In their naievety they call it civilisation, when really it’s but servitude”. That was right 2000 years ago and it’s right again now. What was covert is now overt. I’m stuck for ready answers too but I’m convinced we’ll get there if we keep hacking away at it.
So the revolution will not be socialist but a change of narrative?
That road leads to people turning in on themselves. Nihilism. Increase in suicide rates. Instead of political protest we will have riots like August 2011.
In that case the revolution is already lost and they have won.
I suggest a change from representative democracy to direct democracy, even if only because the polos’ will hate it. Almost as much as local councils hate the referendum lock on council tax.
You assume that crowds get things right
Do they?
Crowds, in the context of Mill’s example of the angry mob outside the Corn dealer’s house, probably do not work. Crowds in the context of Rousseau’s ‘General Will’ would.
One of the biggest problem’s for our democracy is that it is so often reduced to a blunt instrument, a cross on a piece of paper does not really say much! Politicians call for public debate but it never happens. How do we organise full and informed participation?
The other assumption is that the people we elect at the moment represent our wishes in government.
Plenty of evidence exists that shows they represent only their own wishes, and that of whoever is bankrolling them.
A change to those elected, locally and nationally, requiring them to seek “approval” for their expenditure and taxation at intervals more frequent than five years is overdue.
I believe that Russell Brand may have hit on something very important: the ability to communicate with the ordinary punter who doesn’t have the specialist knowledge of economics and taxation, just the sense that something, lots of things, just aren’t right. And, while some may well have good reason to be a bit sniffy about Comment is Free, the fact that his piece today has attracted over 3,400 mostly supportive comments tends to reinforce my perception.
It’s all very well that well-researched and informative comments and blogs such as yours Richard meet with great approval from those who have some understanding of economics and taxation, and a social conscience, but, until those comments and blogs can be translated into simple language that the majority can understand, the carefully crafted propaganda that apologists for the current state of play employ, appealing only to peoples’ worst, rather than best, instincts, will, I believe, continue to hold sway.
I’ll repeat what I’ve said before, that the battle, although political, is NOT about the existing parties; it’s all about fighting the worst that neo-liberalism continues to throw against the majority of the population and motivating widespread support for a democracy that works for that same majority instead of a tiny elite. That’s exactly how I interpret what Russell Brand has said and written.
Why cannot a battle for the soul of real democracy begin with a simple statement of intent, an overarching principle that a real democracy runs for the benefit of the majority and that a principled and civilised democracy will always be judged by how well it looks after its weakest and most disadvantaged members. Why cannot all that any government of any hue does be judged against those standards?
If I may just add, nothing in my comment was intended to denigrate the brilliant work you and others do.
Fascinating comment
Thanks
Gartner is predicting social unrest next year but puts the cause down to new technology de-skilling jobs leading to people becoming locked out of the economic system:-
“By 2020, the labor reduction effect of digitization will cause social unrest and a quest for new economic models in several mature economies. Near Term Flag: A larger scale version of an “Occupy Wall Street”-type movement will begin by the end of 2014, indicating that social unrest will start to foster political debate.
Digitization is reducing labor content of services and products in an unprecedented way, thus fundamentally changing the way remuneration is allocated across labor and capital. Long term, this makes it impossible for increasingly large groups to participate in the traditional economic system – even at lower prices – leading them to look for alternatives such as a bartering-based (sub)society, urging a return to protectionism or resurrecting initiatives like Occupy Wall Street, but on a much larger scale. Mature economies will suffer most as they don’t have the population growth to increase autonomous demand nor powerful enough labor unions or political parties to (re-)allocate gains in what continues to be a global economy.”
Click here for link
My fear is the right is trying to take us back to a feudal society where the majority exist to simply meet the needs of the rich (England circa 1500).
Many of us share that concern
neil – we are far advanced along this road already! It is very disturbing because the populace is narcoleptic and can’t see what is happening – I’m not optimistic about resistance, people are too burnt out, tired and stressed and numb from our dumbed down culture-exactly the material the Oligarchs need -it’s sad.