The time is right for a palace revolution

December 15, 2010 by Leave a comment

Picture of the month, if not the year, has to be this one. Normally I would be aghast at the sight of an elderly couple being menaced by an angry mob, but this is one of those iconic images that seem to capture a moment in history, in this case the instant when the bubble around the privileged elite burst, and hard reality forcefully intruded.

Whether this will turn out to be just a fleeting breakdown of deference, or a more serious breach in the established order, only time will tell. There do seem to be a lot of angry people around at the moment; the last time I remember it being quite like this was in the heady days of the Poll Tax protests. I’d like to say that I was in the thick of it back then, but I’ve always been more of a make-sure-the-bus-is-booked-get-the-flyers-printed sort of revolutionary, rather than a street fighting man. I worry sometimes that everyone these days is so busy rioting, and tweeting and blogging about it, that no one will be interested in the boring organisational work that actually gets things done. There are always plenty of would-be bureaucrats (like me) around though, so I probably shouldn’t be too concerned.

Filed under Culture, Politics Tagged with , , , ,

In support of Wikileaks

December 10, 2010 by 2 Comments

Last month I posted a piece about the Twitter-related travails of Paul Chambers, and commenter LarryE rightly pulled me up for my apparently unsympathetic tone. The point I was trying (and failing) to make wasn’t that I was unsupportive of Chambers, but rather that his case was small beer compared to things like the latest developments in the Wikileaks story.

My position is one of complete support for what Wikileaks are doing. I don’t have any sympathy with the notion that governments and diplomats need to operate in secrecy; it just buys into the idea that the business of running society should be reserved for the ruling elite, with the rest of us left in the dark. A lack of transparency favours the status quo; anybody who claims to be interested in progressive change has to believe in maximum openness. As Trotsky said, apropos of the Bolsheviks’ decision to publish secret Tsarist diplomatic papers, “Secret diplomacy is a necessary tool for a propertied minority which is compelled to deceive the majority in order to subject it to its interests … The abolition of secret diplomacy is the primary condition for an honest, popular, truly democratic foreign policy.”

The issue of government secrecy shouldn’t be confused with that of personal privacy; it’s perfectly consistent to believe that we should know what they are doing while maintaining the confidentiality of our own activities. Our rulers certainly see the distinction; while they scramble to keep their own secrets intact they are building up the infrastructure needed for a surveillance state.

Now Julian Assange finds himself in prison, and on charges that leftist types like myself will feel uncomfortable about dismissing as trumped-up, no matter how much we feel the timing of the case is very convenient for the authorities. It is of course possible to approve of what Assange has done with Wikileaks without endorsing every aspect of his character, and the allegations against him shouldn’t distract us from the substance of the issues that have been exposed.

It’s heartening to see the Anonymous response to the attacks on Wikileaks, though, as we’ve noted before, it seems unlikely to be sustained enough to really damage ruling-class interests.

Still, this feels like an early battle in what is going to be a protracted war. Even if Wikileaks doesn’t survive this skirmish in its present form, there is now an established community of radicalised internet activists ready to keep the fight going. With a bit more organisation the virtual class struggle might yet get the bourgeoisie on the run.

Filed under Politics Tagged with , , ,

Everybody’s got a bomb

December 5, 2010 by Leave a comment

I’ve had a bad cough for the last week or so, what with all the cold weather, and it’s been keeping me awake at night. Consequently I’ve been watching more late-night TV, mostly junk like CSI reruns or televised poker, but also a couple of semi-good movies, including Cold War drama-doc Thirteen Days.

Actually “semi-good” is being generous; the heavily-fictionalised account of the Cuban missile crisis is rather melodramatic, as it portrays the heroic Kennedy brothers (aided by a brooding Kevin Costner) facing down the evil communists, while simultaneously restraining their own gung-ho generals, who are itching to launch a full-scale war. The story is inherently gripping though, and, even though obviously I knew there was going to be a happy ending, I enjoyed the building tension as it looked like the two sides had boxed themselves into an inevitable conflict. (My favourite film about the crisis, which deals with the themes much less earnestly, but rather more effectively, is Joe Dante’s Matinee.)

Watching Thirteen Days reminded me a little of the 1980s, when, after years of relative détente, it looked like Ronald Reagan was determined to start World War Three. I was never one of those kids who got all neurotic about the prospect of nuclear armageddon, but I was a bit freaked out by watching things like The War Game (made and suppressed back in the 60s, but still a favourite at leftist meetings 20 years later) and The Day After, though I wasn’t ever concerned enough to do much beyond going on a couple of CND marches. (Central American solidarity was my main political interest at that time, as I recall).

Then the Soviet Union collapsed, and we all enjoyed the 90s, free, we thought, from the shadow of complete destruction. There was still plenty of war to go around, of course, and not a little millennial angst, but it was probably the safest decade since the end of the Second World War (for those of us in the West anyhow).

Fast-forward to today, and we’re all supposed to be worried about The Bomb again, though this time round it’s not the Reds we’re told we should be scared of, but North Korea, Pakistan and Iran, or al-Qaeda, or just “terrorists” in general. I can’t say that I lose too much sleep over those last three, but North Korea and Pakistan (and to a lesser degree Israel and India) are more concerning. While these countries don’t have the capacity to nuke the whole world (or, hopefully, provoke anyone else into nuking the whole world), that just means they are less restrained by the logic of mutually assured destruction, and might use their weapons for local strategic reasons. At least with the old East/West standoff one had the idea that Washington and Moscow knew that once they started fighting it was going to end badly for everyone, but one can’t be so confident that the smaller nuclear states will never convince themselves that a first-strike strategy might be successful.

There’s not much to be done about it I guess, except to keep on working away at building the sort of progressive international movement that will eventually bring the people of the world together and abolish war altogether.

That, and partying of course.

Filed under Culture, Politics Tagged with , , , , , ,

God Save The Queen

November 17, 2010 by Leave a comment

The papers today are full of the joyous news that the country is to be lifted form its collective gloom by a Royal Wedding. Times may be hard, but we are sure to be cheered by the sight of our future King and his radiant bride walking happily down the aisle.

Our are we? The obvious parallel is the 1981 wedding of William’s parents, Charles and Di, which also took place in the midst of a recession, and has gone down in history as an event that united the nation in rejoicing. I do remember the media-orchestrated mood of generalised hysteria that accompanied those nuptials, but I also recall that a substantial number of people didn’t buy into it.

The three decades that have passed since that day have not been kind to the idea of deference to Royalty, and I suspect there will be more than few of Will and Kate’s future subjects wondering why exactly we should be getting excited about the union of two members of the country’s privileged elite, let alone be paying for it.

There are months to go yet of course, plenty of time for the press to whip up some patriotic fervour, but also time for the left to do some anti-monarchy agitation. It may be wishful thinking on my part, but this wedding might just be the event that gets a serious republican movement going in this country.

Even if that doesn’t work out, we might at least see some anti-establishment sentiment back in the music charts.

Filed under Culture, Politics Tagged with , , ,

California Über Alles

November 3, 2010 by Leave a comment

Sadly, Proposition 19 didn’t make it over the victory line yesterday, causing intense disappointment to weed aficionados worldwide. The Federal Government had promised to vigorously enforce the US anti-dope statutes in the event of Prop 19 passing (the DEA built its power during the marijuana scares of the 30’s), so victory would probably have been more symbolic than immediately practical, but it would have moved the issue a few more steps towards a rational solution. The problem seems to have been the inexplicable failure of the stoner youth vote to turn out. Let’s hope they get their act together for 2012.

The night in general turned out just about as well for the right as had been predicted, with big Republican gains across the nation, though they narrowly missed out on gaining control of the Senate, thanks to the failure of Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell to win in Nevada and Delaware respectively.

The defeat of the Tea Party candidates in these races is obviously cheering, but in the long term it may prove to be a mixed blessing for the Obama administration. The 21st-century Know-Nothings may be on a roll at the moment, but I wonder if 2010 may turn out to be the high-water mark of the Tea Party, as GOP strategists assimilate the lessons of the debacle in Delaware especially, and conclude that they need to steer more to the centre if they want to win the big prize in 2012. A lot depends on how the economy goes, but Obama’s best shot at a second term must lie with the Republicans going with a wing-nut candidate rather than the sort of fiscally conservative but socially liberal mix that worked so well for the Tories here.

Meanwhile, back in California, Jerry Brown is heading for the Governor’s mansion once again, which gives me an excuse to spin this classic number by the Dead Kennedys.

Filed under Culture, Politics Tagged with , ,

A Message for the Voting Public of California

November 1, 2010 by Leave a comment

I don’t know how many of you, my dear readers, are registered to vote in the Golden State, and I would imagine that those of you who are are already thinking along these lines anyway, but if you are still undecided, can I ask you to please, please, please vote in favour of Proposition 19? As well as making life much better for yourselves, the example of your fine state taking a rational stance on the marijuana question would be a much-needed injection of sanity into the debate, and would surely hasten progressive change worldwide.

As for the rest of the ballot, again you’ve undoubtedly worked this out already, but if I were eligible I’d be voting against Proposition 23. For Governor, and the US Senate seat I favour the Peace and Freedom Party candidates Carlos Alvarez and Marsha Feinland.

There are lots of other good socialist candidates standing nationwide; a partial list can be found here. In general, if you’ll excuse my presumption, I’ll just repeat my plea from two years ago, which is still sadly relevant.

Filed under Politics Tagged with

Red Ties

October 26, 2010 by Leave a comment

Back at the start of this month I posted a piece about the limitations of social media as tools for political action. It has subsequently come to my attention that Malcolm Gladwell had published an article in the New Yorker the previous month which makes substantially the same points, though much more eloquently of course. We even used the same Gil Scott-Heron reference as a tagline.

Unsurprisingly, Gladwell’s piece generated rather more response than mine, from, among others, Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic, David Dobbs at Wired and Zeynep Tufekci at technosociology. All make good points, mostly focusing on Gladwell’s juxtaposition of weak and strong social ties, but I don’t think that any of them really address the central strand of his (and my) argument; effecting meaningful social change is a difficult thing to do, because it requires directed activity sustained over a long period of time, something that calls for a centralised and hierarchical organisation of the kind which social media is ill-suited to foster.

Having thought about this a bit more, I’m starting to wonder if scepticism about the revolutionary potential of social media is a generational thing. All my political experience has been in movements based around the sort of strong ties that are implied by the word “comrade”, with people, some of whom I have known for decades, that I have worked, lived, studied and socialised with, and who I would trust with my life. Of course these days we communicate by email, Twitter and especially SMS, and conduct our agitation through the web as much as on the street, but our relationships are still founded on those personal bonds. I can’t imagine the same thing developing from contacts that are exclusively internet-based, but maybe that’s just because I haven’t grown up in a landscape where electronically-mediated communication has become the dominant form of social discourse.

Perhaps for future generations “Facebook Friend” will have the same resonance as “Comrade” has for us old Bolsheviks, but I doubt I’ll ever come round to that way of thinking.

Filed under Culture, Politics Tagged with , ,

Subterranean Hope

October 16, 2010 by Leave a comment

I’m sure I’m not the only one for whom the story of the trapped Chilean copper miners has called to mind the classic novel Germinal.

A vividly-drawn tale of the struggle for survival in the coalfields of northern France in the mid-nineteenth century, Zola’s naturalistic masterpiece is one of my favourite books, but it is rather grim. I had to stop reading it for a day or two at several points, to take a break from the relentless tide of misfortune that befalls the central characters, who are pictured so realistically that it is impossible not to empathise with their suffering. It does end on a note of optimism though, with one of the most rousing passages in literature:

“Beneath the blazing of the sun, in that morning of new growth, the countryside rang with song, as its belly swelled with a black and avenging army of men, germinating slowly in its furrows, growing upwards in readiness for harvests to come, until one day soon their ripening would burst open the earth itself.”

Nearly two centuries have passed since the period portrayed in Germinal, but it’s worth remembering that mining remains one of the most hazardous professions in the world, with more than twelve thousand workers losing their lives every year. Even in safety-conscious Switzerland eight men died during the construction of the Gotthard tunnel.

Let’s hope the discipline and solidarity shown by the 33 miners of San Jose inspires workers the world over to unite, organise and demand an improvement in their conditions.

Filed under Culture, Politics Tagged with , ,

Give Peace a Tweet

October 10, 2010 by Leave a comment

The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded this week; it went to Chinese human-rights activist Liu Xiaobo, who is currently languishing in jail for his efforts. It’s hard to argue with the committee’s decision (unlike last year), but part of me was rooting for one of the other nominees, the Internet.

Riccardo Luna, editor-in-chief of the Italian edition of Wired, is one of the proponents of the Internet for Peace Manifesto, and writes persuasively of the Net as “the first weapon of mass construction … day after day, search after search, tweet after tweet, it is laying the foundation of a new era where sharing, common knowledge and mutual respect will prevail”.

Regular readers will know that we have previously noted the Internet’s capacity to bring out the worst in human nature, and it’s hard to see the network as an unimpeachable force for good when one reads about things like this. We’ve also been sceptical about the Net’s much-touted ability to galvanise social and political movements, and pointed out that it is just as likely to further ignorance and division by allowing people to receive only the information that they want to hear.

Despite all this, I do think that the Internet can live up to the vision that Luna outlines. The key thing to recognise is that the Net, like any other medium of communication, does not exist in isolation from the social relations that produce it. As long as we live in a system that is based on the exploitation of the masses by a ruling elite the Internet will reflect the power imbalances, along lines of class, gender and race, that exist in our society, with all the ills that accompany them.

Once we reach a form of social organisation that eliminates all these injustices – in other words, once we have world communism – then the Internet, like humanity itself, will be able to attain its true potential. Until then I think the accolades will have to wait.

Filed under Culture, Politics Tagged with , , ,

Universal Gloom

October 5, 2010 by Leave a comment

The Tory Party Conference is under way, and the headline news today is George Osborne’s plan to abolish child benefit payments to higher rate taxpayers.

This is a smart political move, as the fuss the cut will generate among the middle classes will dominate the media, and provide cover for the even harsher cuts he has in store for poorer sections of society (the full horror of which we probably won’t know until the conclusion of the spending review at the end of this month), promoting the fallacy that “We are all in this together”.

The attack on child benefit isn’t just about saving money though, it is a strike at one of the central pillars of the Welfare State, the concept of Universality. The idea that all children have the same entitlement, whatever their background, is a powerful statement of social equality, and eroding it is part of the Tories’ plan to turn back the last 60 years of progress and return us to the divided society of the pre-war era.

There is already a two-tier education system, which will be extended by the plans to allow Universities to charge what they like for tuition, effectively reserving higher learning, and the economic advantages it bestows, for the rich. The NHS in England is going to be dismantled in favour of a patchwork of privatised provision, and the general benefits system is threatened with huge cuts. All this while a double-dip recession looms, and millions face joblessness. The wealth gap may have grown massively over the last decade, but it looks like it may get mediaeval in the years ahead.

Grim times. It would be nice to think that things were looking brighter on the other side of the Atlantic, but it seems that the right is set for an unlikely resurgence there too. This month’s Rolling Stone has an excellent article on the Tea Party, their regressive politics (summed up succinctly by writer Matt Taibbi; “After lengthy study of the phenomenon, I’ve concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They’re full of shit”), and how, ironically, their incoherent populist anger is being co-opted by the Republican Party to serve the interests of the financial elites that the TP-ers supposedly despise. The Democrats, meanwhile, seem to have been stunned into inaction by the disappointment that has been the Obama administration.

Grim, grim times. We can only keep working away, and hope that the cold winds of change blow some life into the embers of revolt.

Filed under Economics, Politics Tagged with ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →