Human rights is the ethical language of our time; a secular groping for a universality that simply does not exist. As a language through which to express something, a need, a yearning, a struggle, it need not be problematic, but as an expression of something that is somehow ‘out there’, a fact of nature that we have discovered through the application of reason to the world, it is worse than useless. What does it mean to say that the human rights of Palestinians, or the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, are being systematically abused? So the Israelis or the US government have no 'right' to do that - so what? What have we learned? What have we gained? What possible illumination has been cast on the problem that is of any use whatsoever? The problem as ever is, and always will be, a fundamental question of power. At their most political, intelligent proponents of human rights talk would suggest that the language of human rights can be used to oppose power, by providing a standard that those in power at least nominally profess to share by which their behaviour can be held to account. But this is to misunderstand the issue. Where this would work the struggle against power has already yielded some results, for example in the legal systems of the countries of the developed world. This is why in the second example, the legality of what is happening in Guantanamo Bay can, at least theoretically, be questioned in an American court. This is important when we consider the first example; there is simply no mechanism through which the Palestinians can wage their struggle other than through violence. Violence is political expression; it is a language of resistance. Claiming human rights means nothing; creating human rights, that on the other hand is everything.
Thursday, 31 January 2008
Wednesday, 23 January 2008
Utopia has been sanitised
This is the era of transferable skills. Of ambition held for ambitions sake. We train to work; we work to live; we live to change. Groping for substance we meditate, medicate, accumulate and copulate, in accordance with the scriptures. Our ethics a question of consumption, to be bought with coffee beans. Our recycling a metaphor for who we are. Perhaps we are entitled to ask if it was ever any better than this? But surely yes; things were political once. Now multi-coloured wristbands and marches for soundbites (not causes) stand in pathetic parody of history, packaged revolution for the media age (the revolution will in fact be televised). All violence has been evacuated from The Dream. In the era of transferable skills it is only natural the celebrity can replace the intellectual. A moronic and banal generation clothed only in our cynicism. We deserve this.
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
do you know what I hate...?
you and the fucking horse you rode in on.
also heath ledger is dead. didn't see that coming.
also heath ledger is dead. didn't see that coming.
Monday, 21 January 2008
on Israel
Far left media outlets like the BBC and CNN have been broadcasting a sickeningly distorted picture of Israel's battle for survival against the terrorism. Its time for a new course of action - the hola-course; sometimes we gotta hola out for all the Jewz in need. Billions of dollars of military aid and a jokingly one-sided international policy response are not enough; they also need to feel our love.
This then is for Israel. Leave...her...alone...
This then is for Israel. Leave...her...alone...
Tuesday, 15 January 2008
on toilet art
"...life is like a pint of Guinness: 90 % black with 10 % white sitting on top..."
There is a toilet in my workplace, and in that toilet (3rd floor, 1st cubicle, my seat of choice) can be found the subject of this enquiry, something not entirely dissimilar to the above. I spend time there (quality time), but recently these precious moments are losing just a little of their magic. Gradually, what I had assumed originally to be a fairly banal racist joke, the product of some hairy knuckled monkey, once handed a tie and a desk, who might (if he has the capacity for ambition) aspire one day to marry his own cousin and breed a new generation of rebuttals to the critics of eugenics, began to concern me more and more with each subsequent visit.
If it was an attempt at racism, it didn't make any sense (allowing for the kind of mind in which such thoughts ever might make sense). Neither London, nor the UK, nor the planet in general is 90 % dominated by black people, with a 10 % minority white population, so whatever kind of commentary on race relations the half-arsed ejit had meant, their product had its own independent meaning. So slowly, but most surely, it got interesting. At first, still not convinced, I sought an answer within the racial paradigm. Perhaps a cultural angle? In our MTV base generation perhaps (pop-)culture has become 90 % black...but even if this is even mildly true, like the blind kid who just masturbated in the bath, I just couldn't see the white floating on the top. Ultimately the mechanics simply didn't work however I looked at it. I was free to abandon the racism thesis, and cast out in new and exciting directions....what did it mean???
Briefly I considered the idea that it is some sort of sub-Freudian reference to the workings of the human psyche. Like the metaphorical iceberg, the tiny part of the workings of our mind that are apparent (even to ourselves) are but a fraction of its true depths. Below the ten percent of relatively pure (white) operation lies a heavy mass of dark (black) neuroses, base instincts and carnal desires. The white of course is not something separate and of itself, but rather is in essence the very same. Indeed its appearance is a product of the workings of the darker mass, but it remains there, the filter through which everything deeper must pass. But then I realised I was being a twat.
As things stand my working hypothesis is this: life is largely mundane. You spend 8 hours of your day in an office, which is an extremely bizarre environment, doing things that on the whole you wouldn't choose to do. You probably spend a further hour and a half at least traveling to and from work. At times it feels like you barely see the light of day. The pressure that then gets placed on you social time to be 'fun' is immense; the more sparse the supply the greater the need for payoff. But in truth, the time you have to yourself is also largely mundane. So in fact most people's existence is, lets say for argument's sake, about 90 % mundane (mundane at least in comparison to some sort of expectation that I think may resemble an episode of The Real World). But then are those moments, those shining moments, where just for a fleeting time it feels like you really are an interesting person with interesting friends who together do interesting things. That is the magic 10 % of your life. The 10 % of your life that, should it ever have occasion to flash before your eyes will actually have cause to give you at least some small motivation, whatever the mortal danger you find yourself in, to somehow survive to keep on padding that 10 %.
So in short this commodal etching (which inspired hormonal bitching) is art in the truest of senses. Once released it has a life of its own. Or maybe the lesson is simply that I need to find a new cubicle-of-choice. A marriage to Kevin Federline is on balance better for someone's mental health than this kind of thought process when you're taking care of business.
If it was an attempt at racism, it didn't make any sense (allowing for the kind of mind in which such thoughts ever might make sense). Neither London, nor the UK, nor the planet in general is 90 % dominated by black people, with a 10 % minority white population, so whatever kind of commentary on race relations the half-arsed ejit had meant, their product had its own independent meaning. So slowly, but most surely, it got interesting. At first, still not convinced, I sought an answer within the racial paradigm. Perhaps a cultural angle? In our MTV base generation perhaps (pop-)culture has become 90 % black...but even if this is even mildly true, like the blind kid who just masturbated in the bath, I just couldn't see the white floating on the top. Ultimately the mechanics simply didn't work however I looked at it. I was free to abandon the racism thesis, and cast out in new and exciting directions....what did it mean???
Briefly I considered the idea that it is some sort of sub-Freudian reference to the workings of the human psyche. Like the metaphorical iceberg, the tiny part of the workings of our mind that are apparent (even to ourselves) are but a fraction of its true depths. Below the ten percent of relatively pure (white) operation lies a heavy mass of dark (black) neuroses, base instincts and carnal desires. The white of course is not something separate and of itself, but rather is in essence the very same. Indeed its appearance is a product of the workings of the darker mass, but it remains there, the filter through which everything deeper must pass. But then I realised I was being a twat.
As things stand my working hypothesis is this: life is largely mundane. You spend 8 hours of your day in an office, which is an extremely bizarre environment, doing things that on the whole you wouldn't choose to do. You probably spend a further hour and a half at least traveling to and from work. At times it feels like you barely see the light of day. The pressure that then gets placed on you social time to be 'fun' is immense; the more sparse the supply the greater the need for payoff. But in truth, the time you have to yourself is also largely mundane. So in fact most people's existence is, lets say for argument's sake, about 90 % mundane (mundane at least in comparison to some sort of expectation that I think may resemble an episode of The Real World). But then are those moments, those shining moments, where just for a fleeting time it feels like you really are an interesting person with interesting friends who together do interesting things. That is the magic 10 % of your life. The 10 % of your life that, should it ever have occasion to flash before your eyes will actually have cause to give you at least some small motivation, whatever the mortal danger you find yourself in, to somehow survive to keep on padding that 10 %.
So in short this commodal etching (which inspired hormonal bitching) is art in the truest of senses. Once released it has a life of its own. Or maybe the lesson is simply that I need to find a new cubicle-of-choice. A marriage to Kevin Federline is on balance better for someone's mental health than this kind of thought process when you're taking care of business.
Friday, 11 January 2008
Wednesday, 9 January 2008
on Hilary
Hilary Clinton cries; a campaign is reborn. But had Mitt Romney cried in similar circumstances to those of Mrs. C, so closely trailing his rivals in both New Hampshire and the wider contest, what would have been the consequences? Would he have had an electoral bounce? Would there have been suggestions that we had all of a sudden glimpsed his 'human' side? Nope. Instead, while headlines trumpeted his 'cracking' under the pressure, his support would have evaporated, and pretty soon he would have limped backed to console himself with his vast fortune and perfect hair. But because Hilary is female, showing emotion conformed to behavior that was not only acceptable as a woman, but possibly even in her case desirable, since like any successful woman in politics to survive she has to possess traits that make her as a woman seem somehow cold or inhuman, but nevertheless in a man are seen as strengths. Lets be honest it worked on all of us. What we've got to ask ourselves though is, is that ok...?
Saturday, 5 January 2008
So green we go red...?
To borrow (as is always wise) from a man much smarter than I, the role Marx’s work plays today is to inspire that part of the critical left which is not openly Marxist in much the same way that Freud inspires our angst-filled discussions of our emotional lives. That is, based not so much on a reading of any of his work itself, nor even necessarily consciously drawing on his ideas, but simply because the basic critique of capitalism, at least the parts of that have any coherence, filtered into our social worlds via a dozen intermediaries, till we forgot, or even never even came to think, to question from whence they came.
Far from smart and original we’re just regurgitating stuff that entered our consciousness, later to spew back out in our own specific inadequate reinterpretation. Get something that passes for an education, cite him once or twice in an essay, and then move on, secure in the knowledge you more or less have a handle on the whole Marxism thing, because in the final analysis history has proved him wrong on his most fundamental point – that the innate contradictions of capitalism will inevitably lead to its destruction as the dominant mode of production in the global economy. Capitalism is still here, and going strong, whilst those who embarked on the great socialist experiments are either long gone, or are languishing behind the standards of living that are enjoyed by so many in the most developed capitalist countries. What does Marx have to say to those seeking to find some way out of the political mess that constitutes the Arab world? Or to the ‘bottom billion’ for whom capitalism has never even swung by to give them the chance to be exploited to the benefit of capitalist elites? Or a world which many feel we can’t entertain a theory which suggests that utopia can only lie the other side of the wrenching transformation of industrial capitalism? Pick different battles, smaller injustices - free Palestine, stop American aggression, temper market fundamentalism, get Britney some help. Whatever the cause might be there is no outright need to adopt the unfortunate label ‘Marxist’, one of the few social groupings that can make me feel fashionably dressed.
But perhaps its time for all those like me that find themselves in this description to reassess their relationship to a body of work that already informs us, directly or indirectly, but we assume that though useful and incredible analysis for its time, no longer has anything greatly interesting to say that cannot be better expressed within a new idiom, be it talk of multitudes, empires, social constructionism, or neo- or post- or whatever kind of colonialism. What has pushed me to this unpalatably revolutionary point was, of all things, an article that appeared recently in the Financial times, written by Martin Wolf one of capitalism's most consistent attack dogs. My feelings towards the beret-wearing, frequently-leather-clad, coffee-stained-fingernails of the often appalling Marxist left have begun to be reluctantly reassessed by the idea now fixed firmly in my head, that in going green, are we actually in serious danger of going red?
“[I]f there are limits to emissions, there may also be limits to growth. But if there are indeed limits to growth, the political underpinnings of our world fall apart. Intense distributional conflicts must then re-emerge – indeed, they are already emerging – within and among countries.”
For some two hundred years the entire world system has been buttressed on the misleading truism that 'a rising tide raises all boats', during which time the immense dynamism and ‘creative destruction’ of capitalism has delivered unprecedented standards of living even for those at the very fringes of its reach. As such a liberal democratic system has become institutionalised whose leadership has passed peacefully from one hegemon (the UK) to another (the US), whose leadership the majority of the capitalist rest are willing to follow (albeit with frequent tantrums) riding the wave of prosperity that is has brought.
Are we genuinely going to give saving the planet a go, as the most optimistic reading of the recent conference in Bali would suggest? If so a dark cloud (more pertinent than a specter) hovers over the global economy, for this means accepting, as Martin Wolf appears to fear, that the amount of carbon that can be emitted in its functioning has limits. But if we accept that there are limits to what we can emit, then we have also to accept that there are limits to what we can produce. But once you understand capitalism through the prism of Marx's analysis there are very good reasons for believing this to be immensely problematic.
One of capitalism's most enduring laws is that total production must continually rise. In a competitive economy producers must continually find ways to lower their costs if they wish to survive, which in the long-run means investing in new technologies that increase productivity. Hence the trend for goods which begin as expensive items to fall in price over time, bringing them within reach of more and more people, as companies battle to get the largest market share they possibly can.
Unfortunately it is not sufficient to rely on falling prices to bring products within reach of more and more people. Ultimately in order to continue selling all this ever increasing production firms need to find new markets, and hence the relentless expansion of the capitalist economy across the planet by a variety of means. As long as this process has no limits then, contrary to Marx's own analysis, despite continual 'crises' in different parts of the global economy over time, the system itself is not under threat. It is empirically true that on aggregate all have benefited from capitalism's expansion. True enough anyway to distract from the fact that these benefits are very unequally distributed.
But a world with limits on emissions challenges the very process that so characterises the capitalist mode of production; its very strength becomes its greatest, and possibly fatal, weakness. The endless drive to increased productivity, the endless creativity of its destruction, must meet the limits of nature before it ever meets the limits of man's ability to exploit his fellow man. For it is as we approach that moment when the tide can perhaps no longer continue to rise that capitalism as a mode of production's true colours, so artfully hidden in a system that is at once both emancipatory and oppressive, could re-emerge into full view. It is conflict and struggle that are the grinding cogs at the heart of the capitalist machine.
It is time for those of us on the critical left who have learnt suspicion of the grand narrative to reaquaint ourselves with it. This is a generation of unparalleled challenge, but also unparalleled opportunity. However as Marx once wrote:
"[h]istory does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this."
Do we stand a chance?
Far from smart and original we’re just regurgitating stuff that entered our consciousness, later to spew back out in our own specific inadequate reinterpretation. Get something that passes for an education, cite him once or twice in an essay, and then move on, secure in the knowledge you more or less have a handle on the whole Marxism thing, because in the final analysis history has proved him wrong on his most fundamental point – that the innate contradictions of capitalism will inevitably lead to its destruction as the dominant mode of production in the global economy. Capitalism is still here, and going strong, whilst those who embarked on the great socialist experiments are either long gone, or are languishing behind the standards of living that are enjoyed by so many in the most developed capitalist countries. What does Marx have to say to those seeking to find some way out of the political mess that constitutes the Arab world? Or to the ‘bottom billion’ for whom capitalism has never even swung by to give them the chance to be exploited to the benefit of capitalist elites? Or a world which many feel we can’t entertain a theory which suggests that utopia can only lie the other side of the wrenching transformation of industrial capitalism? Pick different battles, smaller injustices - free Palestine, stop American aggression, temper market fundamentalism, get Britney some help. Whatever the cause might be there is no outright need to adopt the unfortunate label ‘Marxist’, one of the few social groupings that can make me feel fashionably dressed.
But perhaps its time for all those like me that find themselves in this description to reassess their relationship to a body of work that already informs us, directly or indirectly, but we assume that though useful and incredible analysis for its time, no longer has anything greatly interesting to say that cannot be better expressed within a new idiom, be it talk of multitudes, empires, social constructionism, or neo- or post- or whatever kind of colonialism. What has pushed me to this unpalatably revolutionary point was, of all things, an article that appeared recently in the Financial times, written by Martin Wolf one of capitalism's most consistent attack dogs. My feelings towards the beret-wearing, frequently-leather-clad, coffee-stained-fingernails of the often appalling Marxist left have begun to be reluctantly reassessed by the idea now fixed firmly in my head, that in going green, are we actually in serious danger of going red?
“[I]f there are limits to emissions, there may also be limits to growth. But if there are indeed limits to growth, the political underpinnings of our world fall apart. Intense distributional conflicts must then re-emerge – indeed, they are already emerging – within and among countries.”
For some two hundred years the entire world system has been buttressed on the misleading truism that 'a rising tide raises all boats', during which time the immense dynamism and ‘creative destruction’ of capitalism has delivered unprecedented standards of living even for those at the very fringes of its reach. As such a liberal democratic system has become institutionalised whose leadership has passed peacefully from one hegemon (the UK) to another (the US), whose leadership the majority of the capitalist rest are willing to follow (albeit with frequent tantrums) riding the wave of prosperity that is has brought.
Are we genuinely going to give saving the planet a go, as the most optimistic reading of the recent conference in Bali would suggest? If so a dark cloud (more pertinent than a specter) hovers over the global economy, for this means accepting, as Martin Wolf appears to fear, that the amount of carbon that can be emitted in its functioning has limits. But if we accept that there are limits to what we can emit, then we have also to accept that there are limits to what we can produce. But once you understand capitalism through the prism of Marx's analysis there are very good reasons for believing this to be immensely problematic.
One of capitalism's most enduring laws is that total production must continually rise. In a competitive economy producers must continually find ways to lower their costs if they wish to survive, which in the long-run means investing in new technologies that increase productivity. Hence the trend for goods which begin as expensive items to fall in price over time, bringing them within reach of more and more people, as companies battle to get the largest market share they possibly can.
Unfortunately it is not sufficient to rely on falling prices to bring products within reach of more and more people. Ultimately in order to continue selling all this ever increasing production firms need to find new markets, and hence the relentless expansion of the capitalist economy across the planet by a variety of means. As long as this process has no limits then, contrary to Marx's own analysis, despite continual 'crises' in different parts of the global economy over time, the system itself is not under threat. It is empirically true that on aggregate all have benefited from capitalism's expansion. True enough anyway to distract from the fact that these benefits are very unequally distributed.
But a world with limits on emissions challenges the very process that so characterises the capitalist mode of production; its very strength becomes its greatest, and possibly fatal, weakness. The endless drive to increased productivity, the endless creativity of its destruction, must meet the limits of nature before it ever meets the limits of man's ability to exploit his fellow man. For it is as we approach that moment when the tide can perhaps no longer continue to rise that capitalism as a mode of production's true colours, so artfully hidden in a system that is at once both emancipatory and oppressive, could re-emerge into full view. It is conflict and struggle that are the grinding cogs at the heart of the capitalist machine.
It is time for those of us on the critical left who have learnt suspicion of the grand narrative to reaquaint ourselves with it. This is a generation of unparalleled challenge, but also unparalleled opportunity. However as Marx once wrote:
"[h]istory does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this."
Do we stand a chance?
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