Marx, Abi Titmuss and sensuous existence
I happened to re-read the bit in the Communist Manifesto about the bourgeoisie holding wives in common. It gives you good reason to think, anyway, that Marx would have enjoyed Celebrity Love Island. So Rod Liddle here is just showing his ignorance, as Infinite Thought says.
I was looking at Marx to try and find a line I vaguely remember about materialists starting by considering people in their real, sensuous existence. I suppose I was thinking of this from the German Ideology, although it doesn’t match up exactly with what I remember:
> The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises
> from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals,
> their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they
> find already existing and those produced by their activity.
Meanwhile, I was watching Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. It’s a bit hyperactive, particularly the attempt by Joel to ‘hide’ his memories as they are being erased, which seems like evidence of the incorrect assumption that the film needed to have some sort of plot. My dad objected that we never find out anything but the most superficial generalities about the central relationship of the film. I think that’s true, and a better film would have shown us the specifics of a relationship which nonetheless remained genuinely universal (that would have been a good use of the time taken up by chase scenes). Still, it’s not a fatal flaw, because the film is about relationships in general (the form rather than the content, if you like), or, even more generally, the idea that k-punk has mentioned a few times recently, that the fundamental structure of belief is not simply belief without evidence, but belief _in spite of_ evidence.
A too-quick subordination of the rational to the empirical is a surrender in favour of how things are, not how they could be. In that sense, what appears to be the most arbitrary plot convenience in the film turns out to be a representation, simply, of the general form of love: starting a new relationship depends on the conviction that, though we are still the same people as we always were, _this_ time it’s going to be different.
This is, not coincidentally, analogous to the form of political practice, a reminder of Žižek’s point about anti-communism as objective pro-fascism, and a sufficient rejoinder to harrumphing like Liddle’s about continuing affection for Marx. The true defence of Marxism is not to deny that Mao, or Stalin, or Lenin, where Marxists — of course they were. The point, though, is to deny the relevance of this. Yes, yes, we know about the purges and the gulags. But this time, things will be different.
Hey!
I’ve not been keeping track of Popjustice!, so I hadn’t realised there was a new Girls Aloud single until I saw it on CD:UK yesterday. I’m not sure what I think of the song; I guess I’m just going to have to accept the fact that they’re never going to do anything else as good as ‘The Show’. Like the video for ‘The Show’, they’re at work (this time as car mechanics), but unfortunately unlike ‘The Show’, they’re not visibly bored by capitalism. This makes the video a bit lads-mag-photoshoot, all cars and boiler suits and cleavage. It maybe redeems itself by having them take off their boiler suits to reveal a variety of spangly dresses, an act which causes the garage to vanish, in a kind of glam assault on capitalism (possibly).
Meanwhile, PopJustice is also claiming that Fierce Girl’s forthcoming single is a “‘No Good Advice’ for boys in hoodies,” which I look forward to eagerly. Oh, and isn’t the new Coldplay single, ‘Talk’, terrible even by their standards?
Third prize
… in the ‘Nature’ category at Burneston and Carthorpe Village Show:
Being in the countryside for a while means I got a chance to enter this picture in the afformentioned village show. It does, though, mean I’ve mostly been doing nothing and so, as a consequence, haven’t had anything to post about here. I have been reading Being and Nothingness, which I’m enjoying a great deal, but I’m not really sure what I want to say about it yet.
I’ve also been re-reading Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon. It’s mostly just confirmed my original impressions of the book: that the central idea (that matter is data, and vice-versa) is very well drawn throughout the book, but it’s way too fucking long. Some of the length can be excused, as the incidental details which stuff the book are interesting minatures of the overall idea. Not all of them, though: did a section in which a character demonstrates the ability to read a computer screen by radio surveillance, and ends up accidentally spying on a a friend of his writing a soft-porn story have to be illustrated with _all six pages_ of the story? I would have thought not.
I did notice something else, though, which probably explains some of my irritation with the book, and understanding that makes me think slightly higher of Stephenson’s skills. The annoying thing is that the book is told almost entirely from a nerd’s point-of-view. What’s interesting, though, is that in the three main strands of the book we inhabit the consciousness of three different _sorts_ of nerd: there’s the science-fiction/fantasy geek, hacker Randy; stunted adolescent, US Marine Bobby Shaftoe; and borderline-autistic maths genius Lawrence. Clearly, then, the towering nerdiness of the book is an intentional effect carefully orchestrated by the author. Over the course of 800 or so pages, though, it’s a lot like being trapped with a bunch of Chemistry students.
The book is apparently the prequel to a trilogy about the origins of capitalism. I’m not sure it’s encouraging, then, that it seems to end with some kind of nonsense about re-establishing the gold standard.
Unplaced in the ‘Water’ category:
We will not be free until the last imperialist is hanged with the guts of the last theocrat
A common exhortation, repeated after the bombings in London, is that we should not try and make political points in response to a tragedy. Leaving aside the hypocrisy which usually accompanies these calls, they say something interesting about the exhorter’s attitude to politics: politics is seen as extrinsic from actual life, that is, as something that could not be affected by the murder of 54 people. But if you think of politics as immanent to human existence, the idea of not having a political response to something like the London bombings is just nonsense: politics _is_, fundamentally, the attempt to prevent this kind of suffering.
All of which is a preliminary to quoting this piece, which a few of us wrote in the Edinburgh Indymedia Centre on that Thursday two and a bit weeks ago:
As the sun sets on the day of the London transport bombings, the
mainstream media are already reporting the bombings as though the G8
policies are part of the solution to the problem of terrorism rather
than one of the root causes of it. They ignore the fact that the G8 is
made up of the main perpetrators of political, military and economic
violence in the world today.
The victims of today’s London bombings and the victims of attacks in
Iraq exist in a shared condition: they are the civilian casualties of a
war between neo-liberal market fundamentalists and religious fanatics.
So are the everyday victims of poverty. Neither side in the war has the
least interest in the casualties created. One side recruits its troops
from the slums of Atlanta, Manchester and Detroit; the other recruits
from the slums of Riyadh and Karachi. The troops and cheerleaders on
both sides serve only their masters, never themselves.
The mainstream media has already started to project itself as though it
is our collective voice: as always, this voice has an immediately
emotive, nationalist, and even racist impact. It sells papers and
commercial time, but does little to advance understanding about what has
happened. If these events appear to have come out of nowhere, it is
because the media has totally failed to anticipate the consequences of
British attacks on the Muslim world, or to dwell on the likely response,
preferring instead to wrap itself in the flag, or act as “embedded
journalists” for the military.
What goes largely unreported is the violence used in occupying foreign
countries and managing the global economy. This violence supports the
pursuit of profit through exploitation rather than social justice
through self-management. Violence against the citizens of London is
denounced hysterically; violence against the citizens of Iraq is a
problem only when not perpetrated by British or American forces. The
violence that maintains the sweatshops producing our consumer goods and
privatizes natural resources passes without comment. Violence against
anti-G8 demonstrators and the many who resist its policies around the
world is praised.
We know that the walls created by anti-terror legislation are
ineffective in protecting anyone from terrorist attacks; we also know
that this legislation can be very effective when used against social
movements fighting against this system of violence. This has has been
illustrated by the use of “anti-terrorism” powers to stop and search
demonstrators, to criminalize minority communities, and in the massive
show of force to prevent people protesting against the G8. The media
and the pigs react to our movements for justice and democracy as if we
were terrorists, when it is the case that our movements are the ones
trying to effectively counter systemic economic, political, and military
violence.
We will continue building alternatives as a movement to this endless
system of violence and, as Indymedia, we will continue to help the
voiceless find their voice.
There’s also a good statement from some Greek anarchists, and the CNT statement on the Madrid bombings is still just as relevant.
Four legs good, world-wide revolution of the proletariat better
For some time, I’ve been maintianing something that it is pretty patently untrue, namely that 1984 isn’t about the USSR so much as it is about the totalitarian dangers of capitalist liberal democracies. As I say, probably not really true, but an interesting way of looking at the book. Particularly the later parts of the book where the action moves to questions of objectivity seem uneccesarily sophisticated as a critique of the blunt propoganda of Stalinism, but perhaps more appropriate to what Badiou calls the ‘regime of opinion’.
Yesterday, I found an old school book of mine from when we read Animal Farm, clearly an even worse book on the USSR, never rising above the stupidest propoganda. My 16-year old self wrote this summary:
> Although Napolean [the pig-Stalin] is now as bad as Jones [the farmer-Tsar], he has
> manipulated the animals so they don’t rebel. There is also a feeling that it is their own fault,
> and that Napoleon is still ‘one of them’, so is better than Jones.
Isn’t this just what k-punk has noted, that the supposed revolutionaries of the ’60s are, because they can still trade on their position as an ‘alternative’, now a much stronger establishment than the old guard they once fought? Animal Farm, too, works better as an attack on capitalist democracy, and shows us that the problem is not just that the ex-New Left have _given up_ on socialism. Depressingly, Blair’s soft neo-liberalism is in part the success of ’60s leftism, as well as its betrayal. What we need, then, is not a revitalised New Left, but an other left that opposes the new forms capitalism has learnt from the struggles of the ’60s.
Talking of ex-New Leftists, this piece by Nick Cohen is an excellent example of the authoritarianism of the regime of opinion, supported, as Badiou says, by a consensual definition of evil. Actually, it’s such a perfect, ludicrous example I’m slightly worried I’m misreading it. He does say, right, that BBC reporters would be _more_ credible if they started referring to people as ‘enemies of all humanity’?
television
I spent the evening (well from when I finished work, which was about 10.30) watching TV, which is something I haven’t done much recently, owing to the lack of a TV at university (back home for the summer at the moment). I watched Sugar Rush, which I think Tim is completely wrong about. It was great, although the ending was somewhat unsatisfying. I then watched two episodes of Sex and the City. Until now I hadn’t realised how irritating Carrie is.
Also: read k-punk and Lenin on the bombings.
Means and beginnings
> Summits are our summits! What happens at them? On the face of it,
> they’re about protesting, about being against things. But in fact
> what we do is far more positive: we spend time together, we
> demonstrate together, maybe riot a little; we talk together, we
> argue together; we dance together, we drink together, some lucky
> ones even fall in love…
>
>
— Summits and plateaus
Which all sounds like a good description of the protests in Scotland last week. They were pretty succesful, I think. Not that we achieved any ‘ultimate’ ends: capitalism still stands, the G8 summit went ahead. But it’s a mistake to cast these things in terms of ends anyway; any end we can articulate in the terms available to us right now is _already_ recuperated. Remember that William Morris quote at the beginning of Empire: “Men fight … and the thing they fought for comes about … and then it turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name.” Which is not to say we shouldn’t have concrete demands, but these demands are always just the latest name for something that will have to be fought for again under another name.
Instead of demands, what are important are our concrete means. Take the blockades on Wednesday, the first day of the summit. Their importance doesn’t lie in the fact that they shut down the summit (they didn’t). What’s important is that groups that formed over the course of a few days, following plans they’d made themselves during those days, were able to materially disrupt the summit. Capitalism is based on the illusion that organisation outside of its regime is impossible: on Wednesday, that illusion had to be directly materially enforced by the groups of riot cops being ferried up and down the A9. Before capitalism can be defeated, it first needs to be identified as a specific enemy rather than an inescapable condition. That’s what these actions are about: forcing capitalism to reveal itself as something that we can challenge, rather than leaving it in its preferred position of measureless power.
Other actions are about measuring our own power. The Indymedia centre in Edinburgh provided free, self-organised reporting facilities (text, photos, video, radio) for hundreds of people over the week, staffed by media activists who had come from all over the world (or, sometimes, people who had just wandered in off the street to see what was happening). The Glasgow convergence centre transformed a disused factory into a working living and meeting space. The Stirling Eco-village, although I didn’t get a chance to go there, apparently had a lot of success as a space for people to come together to plan actions, as well as being an example of a self-organised and environmentally sustainable living space. It’s important not to underestimate the effects of all this — the almost physical blast of freedom that hits you as you walk into a liberated space crystalises anti-authoritarian politics in a way I suspect is hard to imagine if you haven’t experienced it. That’s why these events, as opportunities for engineering these affects, are so important.
Not everything went perfectly. The geographic dispersal caused problems, with no self-organised space in Edinburgh and a great convergence space in Glasgow where there were no actions. The Make Poverty History march was enormous but also, of course, enormously liberal, and the anti-capitalist block didn’t last very long, thanks to police who don’t know the difference between a group of people some of whom happpen to be wearing black, and an anarchist Black Block. And we probably could have done more to get in touch with the communities around where we were staying; although the march through Niddrie on Saturday morning went well, as did, apparently, the Black Block in Stirling on Wednesday. The kids I talked to around the Glasgow convergence centre seemed pretty well-disposed to the protesters, but I’m not sure we got across the subtleties of our anti-capitalist critique, at least not to the young boy who greeted me with a clenched fist and a shout of “Fuck George Bush, he’s gay.”
But hey, preguntando caminamos, as they say. This was, after all, the first mobilisation of this sort in the UK. The point of these is, always, to learn, to expand our own powers while and through confronting capital’s. It’s odd to come to the end of a week or longer of hard work and exhilirating freedom and think, “well, it’s a start.” But that’s what it is, and that’s what anti-capitalism desparately needs: not a hypostasized end, a revolution; but, simply, a start.
The price of freedom?
I am a bit tired hearing, after the attacks in London, that the invasion of our civil liberties (in the form of retention of traffic data) is the “price of freedom”. Surelly the true price of freedom, even from the point of view of liberal ideology is to just accept that, in a liberal democracy, there are limits to how easily the state can catch terrorists. At the end of the day the true price of “freedom” is to take the risk of living in such a context, even if the price could be high. As Zizek, points out in “Welcome to the desert of the real” (written a year after 9/11):
What makes life ‘worth living’ is the very excess of life: the awareness that there is something for which one is ready to risk one’s life (we may call this excess ‘freedom’, ‘honour’, ‘dignity’, ‘autonomy’, etc.). Only when we are ready to take this risk we are really alive.
Homeopathy works!
I couldn’t find a chemist, so I went in to some ridiculous herbalist shop to buy some vitamin C tablets this morning. I’ve got a cold, and don’t really have time to eat the necessary number of oranges. I got talking to the woman in the shop, who pointed me to a list of homeopathic cold remedies. I didn’t buy any of them. My cold is now much better — the homeopaths are obviously right about the less of the active ingredient, the more good it does you.
True story
So, a guy comes into the media centre and says to manos, “I’m looking for a Marxist, maybe kind of a Maoist, or a Negrian?” So manos points him in my direction, and I get into a conversation with a very enthusiastic, slightly drunk Scottish theory junkie about Badiou, the day’s events and the possibilities for liberatory practice. This was terminated by the arrival of a line of cops outside the IMC and my running downstairs to help man the front desk.
Meanwhile, Make Poverty History at k-punk and at DRL.