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Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

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firky said:
What did Paul say last summer, regarding the riots? . Last year is a bit of a blank for me.

A link will do :)
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It was just a superficial lame Newsnight piece I can't find it.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/books-poetry/interviews/kicking-off-the-revolution.16877788

Unless this above is a hatchet job from the Sunday Herald, Paul Mason's approach shares a lot of similarities with Laurie Penny's ideas.


While Twitter and Facebook have changed "the dynamics of protest", the protesters are changing too. The rigidities of the old Left – the seemingly endless marches, the inky newspapers – have given way to a new, mobile, educated generation disillusioned with a system that offers little prospect of stable employment. These "graduates with no future" – point number one on that seminal Newsnight blog – occupy a vanguard role in Mason's analysis: the similarities between the young, secular liberals in Tahrir Square, Cairo, and the occupiers in University College London, he argues, are greater than their differences.

"This generation was already different – they live in a networked world. Their motto is 'information wants to be free'. Now they find that their futures have been dashed, the jobs they were taught to expect aren't there any more." For Mason, the network changes everything: new, decentralised modes of communication allow protesters to directly challenge traditional structures and ideas in new, unexpected ways. Over time the power of the network will, he says, defeat the sclerotic hierarchies of established politics.

"Mainstream politics stands in danger of quite rapidly being dissolved by the new political mood." A lifelong trade unionist with a passionate commitment to social justice that has defined his career, Mason predicts the changing of the political guard more in expectation than trepidation: "The impact on politics of the networked generation is going to be very interesting. Eventually those on the streets will look to parties and to politics – that's when we'll start to see changes."
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If they're mobile it's because they're rich - the occupations in the universities were all in the sub-top tier universities the non-Oxbridge - the nervous elite particularly 'worthless' arts subjects (but note not a single examination boycott - the exams being the product of the university the reason why capitalists invest money into the higher. Apparently this means mainstream politics is in danger of quite rapidly being dissolved? Where?
Mason, whose last book, Meltdown, was subtitled "The end of the age of greed", was preparing to fly to the US, which he contends could be the next country to "kick off". "It will take a lot for the poor of the US to rise up – but if they do, hold on to your hat," he says with the calm assurance of a man who has become an expert in spotting a storm brewing on the global horizon.
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Hold on to whose hat? Where?


Mason says what is happening today is nothing short of a "fundamental change in politics and society". As he writes in the introduction to the book: "We're in the middle of a revolution caused by the near collapse of free-market capitalism combined with an upswing in technical innovation, a surge in desire for individual freedom and a change in consciousness about what freedom means."
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What near collapse? A crisis in profitability is not near collapse. 'Change in consciousness about what freedom means' - sounds all empty to me.

The blog became the catalyst for Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere, Mason's lively, thought-provoking 10-chapter jaunt through a world in tumult. "It's not just a set of musings. It's more like a series of glimpses into what's happening around the world," he remarks of the book, which opens in a garbage collector's house in Cairo and ends among slum protestors in Manila, with our engaging correspondent popping up everywhere from Bakersfield, California, to Syntagma Square, Athens, in between.
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It's plane and hotel hopping in order to breathlessly write from the sidelines, just with more economic input than Laurie Penny.

From Marx and Smith, Mason moved on to the current generation's most obvious antecedents: the thinkers who inspired the 1968 student revolts, most notably the doyen of Situationism, Guy Debord, who argued that capitalism has replaced genuine social life with an inauthentic "spectacle". "I wish mainstream politicians today had a little more exposure to those sorts of ideas. It might allow them to think a little bit more freely through the problems that they are confronting right now," Mason says. With one ear to the street and another to the boardroom, he knows better than most the sheer scale of the challenge facing politicians today. On the day the Sunday Herald spoke to the broadcaster, the latest bailout deal for Greece hung in the balance, with bankers' bonuses dominating the news headlines.
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He wants politicians receive exposure to Debord. Why? So that they can better mould and lop the unnecessary bits off spectacle capitalism.
 
Ronnie Rubashov said:
It's worse than that. Knowing nothing about the Paris Commune, she has none the less pre-decided it provides ample illustration of "a contextual look at how the rage and pride of women is personal, political - and endlessly powerful." Now, whether it does or not, her analysis cannot be objective since she is bound to arrive at a pre-decided outcome. I think this kinda sums up her approach to 'journalism': she simply 'sees' and says something she'd already decided upon...and that simply isn't journalism. At best it's propaganda and at worst 'fiction'. Either way, considering what happened to Hari, she's living a charmed life.

As it goes, I think her 'reading' of women's participation rests upon a highly tendentious and exaggerated entry on Wikipedia and she's gonna find herself rather disappointed when she drills for detail...not that this'll stop her.

Do people pay to attend this lecture?
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I'll lend her my copy of "On the Paris Commune" by K. Marx if she asks nicely. It's a russian hardback edition and everything!
 
DotCommunist said:
I'd pay not to listen to a squeaky toy plate up crowd sourced shit about the paris commune. Mind you, if anyone wants to recc a book on it I''d welcome suggestions. At present I'm only wikeducated on the subject.

the rage will have to wait for another day, I've got too much else on
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"On the Paris Commune" by Karl Marx, my friend.
 
got to hand it to her, if I'm doing a paper I spend a month of full-time research on it, even when I'm familiar with the topic, because I'm scared of looking like a tit if I get an awkward question at the end... bowling up and chatting shit about one of the most studied events in history off the back of max two days investigation via twitter recommendations is certainly... err... brave.
 
cesare said:
Gruel isn't something I particularly associate with the ruling class, tbf.
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They totally love to emulate the proletariat, food-wise. Hence all the "peasant" dishes in the pricey restaurants (and subsidised canteens :mad: ) that they use. Eating gruel for breakfast makes 'em feel like they're "connected" to us.

Only by a rope around their neck, with me pulling on the other end, comrade! :mad:
 
Lo Siento. said:
got to hand it to her, if I'm doing a paper I spend a month of full-time research on it, even when I'm familiar with the topic, because I'm scared of looking like a tit if I get an awkward question at the end... bowling up and chatting shit about one of the most studied events in history off the back of max two days investigation via twitter recommendations is certainly... err... brave.
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If you'd have gone to the right school and college you too could be an over-confident bullshitter - evens the facts of history bow down before the great adventure that is you and your life for the posh!
 
ViolentPanda said:
They totally love to emulate the proletariat, food-wise. Hence all the "peasant" dishes in the pricey restaurants (and subsidised canteens :mad: ) that they use. Eating gruel for breakfast makes 'em feel like they're "connected" to us.

Only by a rope around their neck, with me pulling on the other end, comrade! :mad:
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Is that why brown bread's so expensive? :mad:
 
cesare said:
Is that why brown bread's so expensive? :mad:
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Yep. The guilty desire of the ruling classes to sample the fare of the workers, if not the burden of the workers, makes our daily bread, coarse and brown (and interesting) though it is, more expensive. What better reason to liquidate the bastards! For the workers' Hovis!!! :mad:
 
JimW said:
If you'd have gone to the right school and college you too could be an over-confident bullshitter - evens the facts of history bow down before the great adventure that is you and your life for the posh!
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Yup

comprehensive school & eventual low ranked University as an alternative to joining the army/ long term dole vs being groomed for entry into the elite at a private school does make a big difference to confidence

My mrs does hold the position that if I had gone to private school and used my brains properly, things would have been very different ( not in a good way !) intead of a cynical scowling lefty wanker with a penchant for confrontation.
 
not-bono-ever said:
Yup

comprehensive school & eventual low ranked University as an alternative to joining the army/ long term dole vs being groomed for entry into the elite at a private school does make a big difference to confidence

My mrs does hold the position that if I had gone to private school and used my brains properly, things would have been very different ( not in a good way !) intead of a cynical scowling lefty wanker with a penchant for confrontation.
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She's absolutely right. A lot of our administrators would do the job better than a lot of our academics. We know this because they routinely outperform the supposedly well-educated in the training they take part in (we make it open to everyone).

This is partly because the way we do education damages people's ability to critique sources or admit uncertainty. They're afraid of contradicting a published author or admitting that they might not know something. But a lot of it is simply because there is a mismatch between aptitude and career.

Mechanics who should be surgeons and surgeons who should be mechanics. That will only end when we give mechanics the same respect as we give surgeons. Whilst there are these stark differences in the rewards for different sorts of jobs, those who can give their kids advantages in getting them will.
 
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