Jeremy Seabrook: A Pretense of Progress (NI)
Aloha All, Re: what happened to the Left - and why is it so impotent? Well, here are some cues. Enjoy (?) p+2D! original to: https://newint.org/features/2017/03/01/a-pretence-of-progress/ A pretence of progress Jeremy Seabrook, New Internationalist, March 01, 2017 The marriage of welfare with prosperity seemed like a permanent settlement between capital and labour after the Second World War. So what went wrong? Jeremy Seabrook considers the past, present and future implications of a growing inequality. The welfare state – in Britain and all the Western world – was after 1945 an incarnation of the politics of repentance for an ideology that had reduced a continent to ruin. Racism, for centuries the animating principle of European empires, had been returned in the mid-20th century to the continent that had been pleased to call itself the cradle, not simply of one civilization, but of Civilization itself. After the time of bones and ashes, Europe needed to cleanse itself of the taint of racism, and present itself as the supreme model of humanitarian values. Never Again: the welfare state was a pledge that the malignant fantasy that had laid waste much of Europe would be vanquished for ever; wild flowers would burst through the concrete sites of grief and desolation that scarred the continent. The living would no longer be left to make their own individual accommodation with the forces of wealth and power; they would be sheltered by universal welfare, available at the point of need, for which no justification would be required. On the welfare state the whole structure of post-War society depended. Since economic breakdown had caused ruin in Germany, it was in the economic arena that redemption was sought; economic miracles duly appeared. Of all institutions for human salvation, it might have been thought the economic was the least promising. But there it was: ‘the economy’, euphemism for capitalism, became the arena where rehabilitation from European barbarism would occur. First came the security of the people: defence against the economic cycle – unemployment, poverty wages and debt – and against the vicissitudes of life – sickness, ageing and loss. The 1948 National Assistance Act began: ‘The Poor Law shall cease to exist…’ – words that lifted from millions the shadow of the workhouse, humiliation, fear of destitution. It was indeed a liberation; and if sensitive ears detected a grumble of discontent that the working classes would have all their teeth pulled for the sake of free dentures, these were noises-off in the restrained jubilation of the age of true austerity. Tolerance and greater diversity offered new experiences to a dour, monochrome, patriarchal Britain; social liberation was in the air On this foundation the ‘affluent society’, in the words of J K Galbraith, was constructed. This brought within reach of a majority a modest prosperity and small items of undreamed-of luxury. That such a benign development might take on a life of its own and become florid consumerism did not disturb the comfort of people newly enfranchised by more than mere electoral freedoms. The marriage of welfare with prosperity appeared a permanent settlement between capital and labour. That settlements in human affairs are rarely permanent occurred to few in the euphoria of the time. Tolerance and greater diversity offered new experiences to a dour, monochrome, patriarchal Britain; social liberation was in the air. Spreading inequality Continuously rising income seemed, for a season, unstoppable. The 1960s marked the zenith of optimism. The great carnival of youth, the mobility, leisure and entertainment industries were accompanied by increased public expenditure on higher education, public administration, slum clearance and social work; partly to assist the laggards of progress to join a mainstream which foresaw a future of perpetual economic growth. A more socially liberal regime decriminalized homosexuality and attempted suicide, eased divorce laws, facilitated contraception and abolished capital punishment. There were setbacks in this march of progress. In the 1970s, the rise in oil prices and assertiveness of organized labour, which culminated in the ‘winter of discontent’ in 1978-79, called into question a settlement which those who disputed it believed could be undone by a good dose of unemployment or another war. With the coming of Margaret Thatcher, they got both. Her devotion to dissolving the more equal partnership between workers and employers led not only to an attack upon the trade unions but also to the demolition of the very industrial base out of which their strength had grown. Defeat of the miners in 1984 gave any ‘settlement’ its quietus. The Labour Party seemed a dwindling force, as its ghost-army of workers, redundant or retired, melted away. But Labour, resilient and tenacious, re-invented itself. New Labour renewed
Re: The alt-right and the death of counterculture
Felix Stalder wrote.. > > Looking back, the shortcomings of the approaches "emanating out of > Amsterdam", say tactical media in particular and, but the cultural/media > left more generally, seem to be twofold, in my view. > > First, while the intuition about the necessity to interrupt the normal > flows of communication was correct and has proofed to be very powerful > since, there was no idea what do in the space that would thus be opened > up. We could have used the time when the system was relatively stable to > think about this, but we didn't. Now, the the system is falling apart, > the far right is capable of imposing an even darker version of disaster > capitalism. > There has been very little interest in offering points of translation, > that is, to think about how people who are not in the same circuit could > appropriate and transform for their own use, the insights they find in > the theoretical perspective one offers. I am trying to get a sense of what is really at stake in these discussions.. what the underlying continuities as well as big changes that make these questions of counter-cultures and the new autonomous zones of message boards and meme wars seem important rather than a trivial side show. The big change from the 1990s is the way internet and digital cultures (in large areas of the world) are now fully inserted into and thus inseparable from daily life. The full impact of the web 2.0 revolution and the rise of the platform era is quite simply the -mainstreaming- of digital cultures. In this context it is nonsense to see work on the political, cultural and epistemic impact of these changes as a marginal obsession of -a self-selecting group geeks.. the continued development of earlier agendas of the cypher punks around anonymity, surveillance, autonomy, and agency as a necessity for creating wider progressive change has increased not decreased in urgency. Digital cultures have become quite simply a -Total Social Fact- [Noortje Maares-Digital Sociology]. This -insertiability- of the digital cultures into all aspects of life is the foundation for both the success of these platforms and devices as well as the basis of monopolistically inclined business models that Nick Srnicek has called platform capitalism in active combination with the surveillance state. Coming to grips with this problem is more subtle than it is sometimes portrayed. The tricky point lies in understanding that what constitutes actual participation and what differentiates these cultures from all that preceded it. Participation is not as it is sometimes portrayed -the difference between -the passive audience and the active engaged participants or users-. No, a traditional audience (or public) can be as active and highly engaged as anyone else. The key point of difference is that engagement in the case of an -audience- is invisible. The engagement of an audience is invisible because it is not -traceable-. And without traceability there can be no -feedback-. No feedback means no participation. This was de Certeau’s observation long ago and why he saw consumption as invisible co-creation with an asymmetric balance of power. And observed the presence of silent invisible networks of resistance that he called tactical. It is this necessary traceability on which participation depends that has been opportunistically seized upon as the business models and the new forms of exploitation and value extraction we know as platform capitalism which when combined with state surveillance squats like a toad atop of what could still become a post capitalist culture of contribution. The -insertion- of this model of digital cultures into the everyday life accounts for both its success and also sub-cultural resistance that demands the right to anonymity and the need for unregulated spaces. It is the need for these spaces that accounts for the huge popularity of message bodes like 4chan where registration is not required and anonymity is an expedient that morphed into an ethos and then into a movement whose potential has only begun. Back in 2012 Gabriella Coleman wrote a journal article reflecting on the research she had been doing since 2008 on the formative role of 4chan's random page in the emergence of Anonymous in which she asks -how has the anarchic hate machine of (Fox News’s epithet for Anonymous) been transformed into one of the most adroit and effective political operations of recent times ? - Now in 2017 we need to invert the question and ask how did the platform that gave rise to -the most adroit and effective political operation- spawned the even more adroit and effective operation Alt.right ? And more pertinently why was this once progressive domain ceded so much to the right.. why was there not a more effective fightback. why no equally powerful alt.left? The white supremacist trolls and nazi meme warriors may have had an exaggerated belief
The alt-right and the death of counterculture
Excellent postings, Brian and Keith, as always! Could a Freudian-Marxist approach a la The Frankfurt School be the way forward for critical theory here? I'm working with Jan Söderqvist on a re-reading of Freud's "Civilisation and its Discontents" for the digital age for release in 2018 myself. And I guess the approach then is a Marxist-Libertarian critique based on the assumption that Keith's fundamental question "What does it mean to be human?" could be replied in a Freudian and timeless manner as "The Journey from Childhood to Adulthood". Where Adulthood includes the originally tribal commitment to contribute (it is not about "having a job" as the lowest common denominator for the social, "having a job" is merely the capitalist imperative standing in for the proper "desire to contribute to the tribe"). So a leftist critique would have to start with the assumption that contemprary society in various ways denies its citizen the completion of the journey from childhood to adulthood, it infantilises its citizens on a massive scale by indirectly forstering them into the belief that "they have nothing to contribute" besides possibly "the job they have been rewarded". Even jobs are no longer contributions, "jobs are rewarded" these days to the loyal voters of the extreme right, this is after all both Trump's and Le Pen's most basic appeal, they claim to be "the job-rewarders". Please note that this critique would involve the education system since the education system is completely focused on "adaption to the job market" and not on "citizens getting help to self-help towards adulthood, contribution and autonomy". But it would also include a massive critique against the consumption society (check hamburger obesity etc) and from a libertarian angle an attack on the current structure of the welfare-state (anything that infantilises people would be a deserving target for critique). I believe any serious discussion on the introduction of Universal Basic Income (the left's main topic these days besides the fundamental struggle against climate change) would have to start by addressing this issue too. If UBI infantilises large parts of the population, it would amount to an anti-Freudian disaster (a dramatic surge in alcoholism, drug abuse, media additiction etc) .But if it is designed to foster the contributive impulse (way beyond any job market ideals) it would make perfect sense as the leftist rallying call for the next few decades. Could this then begin to answer the leftist utopian call of "what it could mean to be human"? Does this make sense? Or do you already include this Freudian critical perspective in your analysis? We are after all fighting the alt-right's and other extremism's "fake phalluses" wherever we look these days. But what kind of state power do we reply with? What would be the ultimate aim of our state power? Just individual autonomy through financial redistribution? Really? Or the support towards an adultisation of society, away from our current mailaise, its mass infantilisation? Best intentions Alexander Bard 2017-07-10 8:27 GMT+02:00 Brian Holmes : > Keith Hart wrote: > > >> What does it mean to be human? To be self-reliant and to belong to others. >> > > It sounds like such a simple statement. But it spans left and right, > society and autonomy, the whole and radical difference. Having lived among > the French intellectuals, I have enormous respect for the left-leaning > approach to the social whole. Having lived in the US (but not so close to > the US intellectuals, ha ha ha!) I have also developed quite a bit of > respect for the governing philosophy that mediates the relations between > individuals. > > In the past, the US won a war that allowed it to institute an > individualist framework that came to permeate international law and > diplomacy, decisively shaping the postwar world order up till now. The > "golden age of the individual" (generally known as the age of human rights) > was vitiated by the abuse of larger sovereignties, whether the > corporations, the national states, or the regional blocs, all of which > arrogated to themselves the rights that were supposedly those of flesh and > blood humans. Sovereign power gave individualism a bad name, for sure: > that's why those French intellectuals complain, and they are right to do > so. Despite the abuses, the anthropologist Rene Dumont held that in the > last instance the demands of holism had to be interpreted within the > individualist framework. He believed that, because in his day (40s through > 90s) individualism was undeniably the dominant form: the one that could > resolve the most contradictions. Private ownership of currency, and the > modicum of individual control that it offered over the quintessentially > social construct of transnational money, was the linchpin of the > individualist order, as Keith Hart (perhaps in the wake of Dumont?) has > consistently pointed out. > > I don't think any country, least of all the US
