I offer this form the front page of the Guardian web site this morning. My headline says it all:
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Machiavelli would have warned the prince about the dangers of annoying the people too much. The prince has to, at least, pretend to be concerned for them.
🙂
Not if the majority of media outlets are claiming the existence of a large number of workshy feckless poor
The supine English will respond (if you can call it that) with the usual supine, cringing, slave mentality combined with Media induced narcolepsy. It all comes across as a huge piss take of a population that has been drugged by years of dumbed -down debate.
How do you respond to this- despair/cosmic laughter?
It was suggested by the chair of the committee that I presented to in the EU this week that the British are noted for the subtlety of their expression of their opinion
He noted I seemed to be an exception to the rule
We cannot be subtle in the face of the promotion of such desperate inequality, form wherever it comes
Absolutely – the nuanced speech of the public school is what they expect (forked-tongue!). The time has come for the verbal equivalent of ‘instant enlightenment.’
Maybe that is why he bestowed upon you the title of professor – which seemingly you were delighted to accept.
Maybe he knows something you don’t
Labour’s failure in allowing anti-progressive politicians and media to frame and shape the story about who was to blame for the financial crisis and why (Labour handing out welfare cheques to the feckless poor that the country could not afford) will probably see it out of power for a generation, or possibly out of existence as an effective opposition to vested interests forever.
It starts by not being too frightened to argue for your own policies. To actually argue your position when the evidence objectively favours your side. Labour challenged the idea it was their overspending on welfare at about 1 minute to midnight before the election. Too late to sway most minds who may have been open to persuasion. Whilst at the same time arguing for a policy (deficit elimination and surpluses) that ran counter to what they were saying about how they behaved in government.
So i cannot see leadership coming from the Labour movement that will break the narcoleptic spell you illustrate. I hope i’m wrong.
I think it will have to come from the ground up, it will have to come from smaller insurgent groups or political parties.
Things can change fast, so temper your despair.
In 2005 the SNP had just 4 MP’s.
10 years later they have 56, just 3 short of a full house.
I am not, and have never been a Marxist. I do not even call myself a “socialist” (the term, like “capitalist” seems to pack more emotional power than information). I do not want class war, because I reject all war.
But it certainly seems to me that Osborne is trying to start a class war.
Sadly, it does
Not start – pursue and intensify the war started in the Thatcher-Reagan “axis of evil” era.
Remember it’s at least 5, probably 10, years since the American billionaire, Warren Buffet said: “There’s a class war going on alright, and my class is winning”.
What I will grant you is that our current rip-off merchant Government is so complacently sure of itself, it thinks it can get away with anything.
And, alas, with our dumbed-down populace, I fear that’s the case. Like the deluded players against someone doing the three shell, or three card, trick, we keep on betting against the card sharp, giving him more and more money, and even shake him by the hand when we’re left without a bean, because he seems like (or at least tells us) he’s such a nice sort. Pah! We’re co-conspirators in our own impoverishment!
I would be so rude as to contradict you: Osborne isn’t “Trying to start a class war”.
He’s winning one.
The question for reasonable men is: how do we push back against this -effectively – without destroying the society we live in?
I have a preference for civility, and an abhorrence of violence: but all ‘direct action’, however peaceful, is now reported as violent disorder and suppressed with a level of intimidation – surveillance, banning orders, blacklisting and black propaganda – and a level of violence that is simply not compatible with a civil society under rule of law ‘in peacetime’.
…Which leaves us with politics, in a country with no Parliamentary opposition against neoliberal economics, no access to mass media, and the most effective propaganda system that has ever existed – so effective, that there may even be a popular majority supporting an economic consensus that has succeeded in leaving half a million working households reliant on charitable donations of food.
I woukd suggest that neither you nor I are ‘Marxists’ or ‘Socialists’ nor any other label; we are what we can, in a society where politics has moved on from our familiar civilities, and we have entered the end stages of a class war which we are losing.
It’s a war we have to keep fighting for as long as it takes
The vast majority of people need that it be won
‘The question for reasonable men is: how do we push back against this -effectively — without destroying the society we live in?’
I assume it is also a question for reasonable women and that you are talking about confronting ‘false consciousness’.
In 1962, Thomas Kuhn wrote ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ in which he proposed that “Successive transition from one paradigm to another via revolution is the usual developmental pattern of mature science.” This seems to me to be a general pattern, including in politics and economics. As time goes on, the contradictions within the prevailing paradigm mount up until the paradigm/’false consciousness’ falls apart and is replaced by another which is not reconcilable with the first.
Yanis Varoufakis wrote a Guardian piece some months ago, which I understood to mean that he expected to expose the reality of EU governance and ideology, with his eminently workable alternative proposals for dealing with the Greek crisis. In effect, he intended to confront the ‘false consciousness’ of the peoples of Europe, by exposing the fanatical, anti-democratic and unnecessary neoliberalism/ordoliberalism of the EU elite. Essentially, giving them rope to hang themselves.
I am troubled by the somewhat cynical (not to mention narcissistic) nature of YF’s intention but I suppose that it would be one way to reconcile the fact that 75% of Greeks want to keep the euro, with Syriza’s anti-austerity platform. However, it has been surprisingly successful. I have personally lost count of the number of people who have said that they used to be enthusiastic europhiles but now have considerable doubts about voting yes because of the way the Troika has behaved over Greece… so arguably, YF’s plan is working, at least to some extent.
Clearly, having an effective opposition and less partisan media would be helpful but I suspect that the real thing that creates an a-ha moment is personal experience.
YF succeeds in part by not being a politician
A long time ago my mentor when I was a teenager, appreciating my interest in politics, told me something I have not fogotten, which was that it was poets and not politicians who change the world. He was thinking, I believe, of Ireland and its fight for independence.
He was right
It is not politicians who will solve the crisis we face
It may be poets
It may be social media
It will be us
Interesting reading the comments section of the Guardian article where the myth of the ‘deserving’ well off having worked SO HARD for their money should be ‘rewarded’ for their ‘ambition’. This distortion of language and meaning is quite incredible as if there is some fixed , logarithmic scale linking hard work and remuneration! sadly we’ll need years of myth busting to counter this crap.
Agreed
All together now, “Lloyd George knew my father, my father knew Lloyd George……” How we forget.
“Cambridge right to buy scandal as almost half sold to council tenants now rented out”
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Cambridge-right-buy-scandal-half-sold-council/story-26831176-detail/story.html#ixzz3evOFP2fe
Quelle surprise!!
Its hard to think of a more naked example of the transfer of wealth from to the ‘haves’ to the ‘have-nots’. And I speak as a ‘have’ relatively speaking. Despicable and depressing
In the UK, we now lack both a meaningful opposition and a coherent social, environmental, and economic narrative, widely promoted and understood, to counter the destructive narrative that dominates
Whatever its faults, Syriza has at least engaged the Greek public with an alternative narrative, even if its imperfect. I’m not suggesting that we need a Syriza or to adopt its narrative, but we certainly need an alternative to whats on offer in the UK at the moment. Rehashed, rearranged versions of old formula are no longer either convincing or relevant.
Yes its hard when the conventional media are so beholden to one interest group, but social media offers huge potential, of which Richard’s good work is an example. We need the narrative and some policy thinking to back it up – and ideally some credible public figures to help promote it. And that needs a critical mass of people who are prepared to work together rather than squabble over semantics – a traditional pastime of the old left. The Judean People’s Front syndrome…
As Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world”
That would be a club I could sign up to…
Welcome!
Looks like “he” may force social housing groups to charge market rents for over £30,000/yr families…
And, offered with no comment:
http://wolfstreet.com/2015/07/02/leaked-how-megabanks-are-conspiring-to-rip-up-financial-regulations-around-the-world-tisa-tpp-ttip/