I was fascinated to have this drawn to my attention yesterday:
The new magazine that has published this looks to have an appalling range of authors working for it, but it is best to know your enemy.
More importantly, given the work that I am doing publishing a glossary is the particular article that is highlighted.
The language within the article is fevered, and almost paranoid. This is typical:
Eventually, we need to dictate the terms of debate. If we only ever use the language of the left, we are fighting on their terms, on their ground and in their territory. We are charging up the hill. It does not matter that we are disagreeing with the left, but that we are being drawn into talking about issues they have decided are important, rather than issues that the right values.
Perversely, and amusingly, Gramsci is the apparent inspiration for this idea, of which this is also said:
Forging a new language will take effort, time and energy — of that, I am fully aware. The work is necessary; otherwise the Right cannot even know itself, never mind what it is fighting for. For instance, the Right needs to stop saying it is for “equality of opportunity” — equality is a left-wing or liberal principle; it is not a principle of the Right.
Delightfully, this was added:
The Right does not stand for equality of opportunity. It actually believes in inequality and should be unapologetic about that. Inequality is a productive force, largely because it lies both at the end and beginning of competition.
As I noted above, knowing one's enemy is wise.
Knowing what they are quite specifically up to is wiser still.
Being ready is best of all. I certainly feel that working on a glossary is the right thing to do right now, as will be the work on neoliberal myths that will follow on from it.
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The Right already owns the language. Free trade is not free trade. The National Debt is not a debt that needs repaying. Whoever owns the language owns the idea. Recommended article:
Framing Modern Monetary Theory by Louisa Connors and & William Mitchell
Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Volume 40, 2017 – Issue 2
Pre-print available online at https://ogma.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/services/Download/uon:15082/ATTACHMENT01
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2JwUKEUdPY
Spot on Ian. The work of Prof. George Lakoff and others on the concepts of framing/reframing and their relevance to politics is still, in my opinion, underrated despite being fundamental to the whole process.
Hmmm – interesting.
So they don’t like ‘levelling up’ or language like ‘well paid jobs’?
At least they do not lie like so many Tories have, eh Boris?
Refreshingly honest – but so easier to take down. Mind you, they will be well funded.
It’s always amazed me that the more pressure these extremists are exposed too, the more they reveal themselves like the inside of rotten onion that has just been peeled.
The higher the monkey climbs, the more it shows it tail.
There is quite a right-wing lexicon that exists already – Tufton Street “think” tanks, Daily Mail, Telegraph Times, Spectator…. Interesting that The Critic is using Gramscian theories of hegemony to get their poisonous ideas accepted. I once suggested at a local ad-hoc progressive/radical group that was asking what we could study and I suggested Gramsci to be answered by “who is he?”
🙂
I suggest we might accurately call that movement “new feudalism” and the proponents “new feudalists” because (and this is true, IMO, as much of my country as yours) the logical outcome is the creation of a new class of serfs whose only purpose will be to serve the new upper class of lords and ladies.
Yes, the left also needs new language. I would suggest in particular:
An alternative to “taxpayer” that does not suggest the people who pay taxes are responsible for funding government spending.
National Debt/deficit, that does not suggest it needs repaying.
Interesting
I will muse on that
One option is to launch a competition. It might not come up with a solution, but it would get people thinking about it. Could we fund-raise a £1000 prize?
Interesting thought
Other’s reaction?
Just an idea (and not new words as there should be enough already) … for National Debt/deficit, how about National Accounts?
All in the list
Some in draft too
You might have thought that if you believe in competition you must believe in equality of opportunity; because if there is not symmetry of opportunity among the competitors; there is no competition. What you then are more likely to produce is a rigged outcome, or perhaps a cartel or monopoly; which is what “Inequality is a productive force, largely because it lies both at the end and beginning of competition” actually means, not in a left-wing world, but the real observable world. This is the way to stifle innovation; or make it easier for the monopolist, or those rentiers with the biggest, oldest patents to protect*. Notice that is not a new lexicon “we believe in monopoly and cartels”, can easily be understood whatever your politics and that is what they really mean; but in spite of trying to claim the word “competition” (which is clearly too left-wing for them). That is the best excuse for them; more likely, they are just deeply confused, and not very accomplished thinkers.
* Samuel Morse blocked the invention of the fax machine in the US in the 1840s, by using his rights to his invention, and the most expensive lawyers money could buy successfully to block the fax machine, created by a brilliant, penurious inventor (a completely different technological innovation) in the US Courts. Rinse and repeat through commercial history. I am sure there are lots of great ideas crushed at birth or bought off cheap by monopolists; because the truth is business doesn’t much care for competitition, if it can find an easier way. Adam Smith understood that very well.
Amusing analysis John, and very appropriate
…………………which is how we’ve let the oil industry and car industries dominate transport and degrade our environment along with the road and road haulage lobbies.
Can you point to details of that 1840s fax machine. How did it achieve a higher data rate than morse code that would be needed to get even a crude image?
I agree with comments, the ‘right’ already monopolize political and economic discourse. They already frame all the debates that most people hear.
The principle of the fax machine was invented by Alexander Bain in 1842-3. Bain had given Henry O’Reilly the rights to his invention in the US, but Morse brought lawsuits, and and eventually won what seems to have been a war of attrition (at least so far as it seems O’Reilly interests were eventually folded into Morse’s),raising major issues about monopoly. This went far beyond Bain’s invention, and it became a long drawn out morass with multiple litigants, for multiple reasons.
In Bain v. Morse itself (I have relied on the US legal expert Adam Mossoff, ‘O’Reilly v. Morse’, George Mason University Law School Research paper), although the decision was adverse, the Judge William Cranch made clear that, “both Morse’s and Bain’s respective inventions were sufficiently distinct in their respective technical details and processes that they did not cover the same invention; thus there was no interference”.
Mossoff goes on to explain of this legal minefield that:
“Morse knew that Bain’s telegraph was not covered by his original patent on the electro-magnetic telegraph, and that if he was going to claim property rights in this form of telegraphic communication, he would need a whole new patent. Even more revealing is that Morse never sued Bain for patent infringement, even after the
resolution of Bain v. Morse.”
And points out that:
“The technical features of Bain’s telegraph were in fact investigated by Morse in the 1830s, but he did not include them in his 1840 patent, because he felt at that time that they were insufficiently”.
I hope that is helpful.
The author of that article seems to be Jake Scott, a researcher and postgrad teaching assistant in politics at Birmingham University. He isn’t listed as a doctor yet on the Birmingham Uni website but seems to like the title. He is listed as editor of an online publication called The Mallard and also as a freelance consultant on business rates. Seems that Julia Hartley-Brewer likes his thinking and has interviewed him. Judging by this article and YouTube clips, I am no fan at all of what he says.
Agreed
I found the fax machine details. Look up Alexander Bain’s fax machine transmitter.
“The first fax machine was invented by Scottish mechanic and inventor Alexander Bain. In 1843, Alexander Bain received a British patent for improvements in producing and regulating electric currents and improvements in timepieces and in electric printing and signal telegraphs”.
Clever folks those Scots, would do well as an independent country.
On the subject of reclaiming language, Starmer has now said that a victory in a GE for Labour, “must run through Scotland”. We can leave the SNP out of this, they are not, and never have been the alpha and omega of Scotland’s interests.
Whether a Scottish elector is Unionist or not, almost all have a real sense that Scotland has its own identifiable and proectable priorities, institutions and interests that are particular to Scotland (whether on immigration, given Scotland’s demography; or on Brexit, given Scotland’s economic interets; or on energy, given its high level of renewable energy production that is simply removed as a benefit for Scots, and domestic energy costs in Britain dictated by international marginal pricing – for gas, in order to subsidise a fake energy market; or Scotland’s social democratic preferences over the ideological application of neoliberalism; to name just a few).
Labour, and Starmer so far as I have seen is offering precisely nothing to meet Scotland’s real particular interests. This is trite;,bereft of real substance; a lazy exercise in cheap and shoddy PR.
Agreed
“equality is a left-wing or liberal principle; it is not a principle of the Right.”
In “!the Dawn of Everything”, Graeber and Wengrow show that “equality” as a concept rolled into what passed for “17th centutry Western Civilisation” from the East Coast of North America. The natives understood “equality” understood the concept of “freedom” (they regarded the French and English as little better than slaves) all reported to Rome by the Jesuits, who were dismayed to find themselves out argued by “savages”. That was the 17th century, by the 18th the concept of “equality” (absent in the Western Political Lexicon until that date) had made its way into the elightnement & even the American constitution (written whilst the “Americans” were busy slaughtering … the natives – fate has a funny sense of humour).
Anyway, equality is no more left wing than fish fingers. That said, one can see how the right would have supported the slaughter of native Americans – since for the most part, the right whingers are poor at argument (witness the extracts) and when losing the argument, have a propensity to violence (witness Jan 6th).
If their example of “equality of opportunity” as an undesirable trait in competition is typical of their quest for a right-wing lexicon much tying of themselves in linguistic, logical and legislative(?) knots seems highly likely. Their hostility to the “15-minute city” as a socialist conspiracy is another example. Entertainment worth watching closely!