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

[binka]

True. I heard some minister on QT saying that the national debt thingy is just like running a household budget; you can't go on and on spending more than you have...can you ladeeez? I hadn't thought about it like that before; it all makes sense now. i had no idea that macro-economics was so easy.

its a fair comparison. whenever i run out of money i just print some more - surely thats what everyone does

 

[treelover]

Anyone watching Free Speech?, its incredible that the Adam Smith Inst has been so influential...

 

[Nice one]

It doesn't sound made up for a start.

a more convincing liar then

 

[smokedout]

a more convincing liar then

its hard to know what he could have been doing in his office job with his background in law and economics and left him with new statesman and cif columns three years later, but paid so badly he couldnt get his shit together to get a place for over a year

 

[smokedout]

if I was being really cynical I'd wonder why he didnt just take any old cheap shit he could get or try get a place in a hostel, surely these options wouldnt be beneath him if he was as desperate as he suggests

 

[butchersapron]

you know it's his pitch for an updated withnail an i, don't you.

In terms of CLASS POWER and what he represents, what's the difference?

Do you spot any differences? In terms of CLASS POWER and what he represents?

 

[Nice one]

its hard to know what he could have been doing in his office job with his background in law and economics and left him with new statesman and cif columns three years later, but paid so badly he couldnt get his shit together to get a place for over a year

for 5 months of that year of living without a home he was on tour with the national theatre. He also ran his own theatre company during that time, acted in films.

 

[Nice one]

Do you spot any differences? In terms of CLASS POWER and what he represents?

Gender? A less punchable face?

 

[butchersapron]

So, any serious reply? Or was that it? For such a searching and revealing question? Really?

 

[smokedout]

for 5 months of that year of living without a home he was on tour with the national theatre. He also ran his own theatre company during that time, acted in films.

going on holiday is a little bit homelessness

 

[weepiper]

It's not as if this is the first time he's talked about it. Ok so he wasn't sleeping rough on the street but I think that experience probably gives him far more of a right to talk about this stuff than anything that's happened or is likely to happen to Nick Lezard or Laurie Penny.


https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/149121642243698688

 

[smokedout]

I'm not denying he had a shit time and he writes about it well and with far more integrity than Laurie

But his problems seem as much to be about alienation, lack of contacts/friends/family as poverty, that's not to undermine them, but the tone of his piece is about how poverty is a different country etc - poverty is about having no money. I just can't see why someone working in what sounds like quite a good job would end up in that situation for so long unless they had unrealistic expectations of the type of housing they should have.

And no matter how much someone felt they had to keep up appearances, no-one living in poverty would spend £3.50 on a shower every morning as he says he did.

(I don't think he's the same as Laurie by the way in terms of CLASS POWER, and he's a much more honest writer who has a degree of humility that LP really lacks, but he's still not really an authentic voice of real poverty)

 

[articul8]

It's not as if this is the first time he's talked about it. Ok so he wasn't sleeping rough on the street but I think that experience probably gives him far more of a right to talk about this stuff than anything that's happened or is likely to happen to Nick Lezard or Laurie Penny.


https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/149121642243698688

Call me a grizzeld old cynic but it does come across c. Down and Out in Paris and London - like he was storing up experiences for added liberal press kudos

 

[weepiper]

Call me a grizzeld old cynic but it does come across c. Down and Out in Paris and London - like he was storing up experiences for added liberal press kudos

For more than a year?

 

[weepiper]

(I don't think he's the same as Laurie by the way in terms of CLASS POWER, and he's a much more honest writer who has a degree of humility that LP really lacks, but he's still not really an authentic voice of real poverty)

Agreed. I was just trying to say I don't think he's quite in the same box he's being lumped into.

 

[smokedout]

Call me a grizzeld old cynic but it does come across c. Down and Out in Paris and London - like he was storing up experiences for added liberal press kudos

no it doesnt, it sounds like he was a middle class kid in a strange city who went through a really rough time before he found his feet

 

[Greebo]

Call me a grizzeld old cynic but it does come across c. Down and Out in Paris and London - like he was storing up experiences for added liberal press kudos

If one of your resources is direct experience, why wouldn't you choose to use it at the most profitable or effective time?

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

no it doesnt, it sounds like he was a middle class kid in a strange city who went through a really rough time before he found his feet

So what?
The fact is that his account of his experience sounds true and will resonate with the slightly better paid working class who still think they're not in danger of sliding into poverty and it does chime with the experiences of those who have been through similar.

He is not claiming to be the voice of a generation or owt, just telling a story that shows it could happen to you

 

[ymu]

I know Krugman is still a capitalist pig-dog to some on here but he does take down a Tory who comes out with the "economy is like a household" line here.
From last year.

"Why can't all these young people just become entrepreneurs?"

Umm, because there's not enough money around for many of them to succeed?

2.5 million unemployed, 1 million part-timers looking for more work, 1.5 million parents and disabled people looking for work.

Let's say they need to clear £6k on average to survive with tax credits; they'd need to turn over £12k (as entrepreneurs) to get that kind of income (on average).

£12k x 5 million people is £60bn. Who is going to spend that kind of money? It's being sat on by private companies who won't invest it.

Tories see unemployment as voluntary and think that the way to manage a recession is let wages get low enough for workers to be more attractive to exploit. Already signs that this is happening:

Why more jobs may be bad news for British workers

Recessions are usually job killers, so the way in which the UK economy has created new jobs at a time when growth has been so weak has baffled the experts. Employment is up even though national output has been flat over the past year.

Economists have been searching high and low for an explanation. Is Britain actually doing a lot better than the official data suggests? If so, the double-dip recession will be revised away in due course. Has the UK become less efficient, with more people needed to provide the same quantity of goods and services?

It could be the expansion of part-time work – people working 20 hours week when they would actually like to be working 40. Official data last week showed underemployment in the economy has risen by 1 million since the recession began.

Robin Chater, the secretary-general of the Federation of European Employers has a different explanation: labour is dirt cheap in Britain and that encourages firms to boost output by hiring or retaining workers rather than by investing in new plant and machinery.

Since 2005, Chater says, capital replacement has been falling faster in Britain than in any European country. This is confirmed by official figures for investment as a share of national output, which at 13.9% is the lowest since records began in 1955.

"The UK is turning into an old-style third world country with low pay growth for most workers below managerial level, widening pay differentials and poor levels of capital investment," Chater says.

"This has been partly encouraged by the influx of workers from eastern Europe since 2004 – who have been willing to perform many functions at low wage rates that would have been otherwise automated."

Governments of both left and right have said their aim is to turn Britain into a high-wage, high-productivity economy that competes with countries such as China and India on the basis of quality and technological expertise rather than cost. The opposite appears to be happening.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/dec/02/more-jobs-bad-news-british-workers

 

[Delroy Booth]

that Paul Krugman video is astonishing on so many levels. Really does show the right up for what they're about, couldn't give a fuck about deficits and such, they just see that as a casus belli to continue with the same political project they've been pushing down our throats for the last 35 years - to privatise everything and to fundamentally change the social contract so that the government no longer accepts any obligations toward the welfare of it's citizens. Even when it's pointed out that these austerity measures don't work even in fiscal terms they still cling to the dogma, because what matters much more than fiscal responsibility is an ideological battle they have to win, even if it damages capitalism in the process.

 

[agricola]

that Paul Krugman video is astonishing on so many levels. Really does show the right up for what they're about, couldn't give a fuck about deficits and such, they just see that as a casus belli to continue with the same political project they've been pushing down our throats for the last 35 years - to privatise everything and to fundamentally change the social contract so that the government no longer accepts any obligations toward the welfare of it's citizens. Even when it's pointed out that these austerity measures don't work even in fiscal terms they still cling to the dogma, because what matters much more than fiscal responsibility is an ideological battle they have to win, even if it damages capitalism in the process.

That may be how the naive elements of the right see things, but of course the rest of them know that all the policies of the last thirty-five years have been directed towards enriching themselves at the states expense, and guaranteeing that they will continue to be enriched irrespective of what happens.

 

[butchersapron]

that Paul Krugman video is astonishing on so many levels. Really does show the right up for what they're about, couldn't give a fuck about deficits and such, they just see that as a casus belli to continue with the same political project they've been pushing down our throats for the last 35 years - to privatise everything and to fundamentally change the social contract so that the government no longer accepts any obligations toward the welfare of it's citizens. Even when it's pointed out that these austerity measures don't work even in fiscal terms they still cling to the dogma, because what matters much more than fiscal responsibility is an ideological battle they have to win, even if it damages capitalism in the process.

The dynamics to look at here is the state/capital then both vs labour. The former (i.e state strategists, which is not the same as capital) can only lead to so much much damage to the wider system before it impacts on the balance of forces in the latter - then both of the first are in trouble. It's really important not to see this is terms of correct policies but in more fluid terms.

 

[ymu]

that Paul Krugman video is astonishing on so many levels. Really does show the right up for what they're about, couldn't give a fuck about deficits and such, they just see that as a casus belli to continue with the same political project they've been pushing down our throats for the last 35 years - to privatise everything and to fundamentally change the social contract so that the government no longer accepts any obligations toward the welfare of it's citizens. Even when it's pointed out that these austerity measures don't work even in fiscal terms they still cling to the dogma, because what matters much more than fiscal responsibility is an ideological battle they have to win, even if it damages capitalism in the process.

Except it doesn't damage capitalism. The right believes that recession is a good thing because destruction of capital restores the rate of profit (wages get cheaper relative to elsewhere and enough businesses go bust that competition is reduced).

Yet recessions do happen. Why? In the 1970s the leading freshwater [aka Chicago school -ymu] macroeconomist, the Nobel laureate Robert Lucas, argued that recessions were caused by temporary confusion: workers and companies had trouble distinguishing overall changes in the level of prices because of inflation or deflation from changes in their own particular business situation. And Lucas warned that any attempt to fight the business cycle would be counterproductive: activist policies, he argued, would just add to the confusion.

By the 1980s, however, even this severely limited acceptance of the idea that recessions are bad things had been rejected by many freshwater economists. Instead, the new leaders of the movement, especially Edward Prescott, who was then at the University of Minnesota (you can see where the freshwater moniker comes from), argued that price fluctuations and changes in demand actually had nothing to do with the business cycle. Rather, the business cycle reflects fluctuations in the rate of technological progress, which are amplified by the rational response of workers, who voluntarily work more when the environment is favorable and less when it’s unfavorable. Unemployment is a deliberate decision by workers to take time off.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06Economic-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

That belief about unemployment is clearly reflected in Tory policy, but those pulling their austerian strings actually welcome recession; hence their imperviousness to arguments about how to end it. It does also meet the ideological end of shrinking the state, but it is fully grounded in the economic theory of the right, they just can't afford to express it in those terms.

 

[ViolentPanda]

going on holiday is a little bit homelessness

Only if you're kipping under the sky in all weathers and risking getting pissed on or worse by ignorant fucks.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

Only if you're kipping under the sky in all weathers and risking getting pissed on or worse by ignorant fucks.

Have you ever been to Benidorm?

 

[ViolentPanda]

I'm not denying he had a shit time and he writes about it well and with far more integrity than Laurie

But his problems seem as much to be about alienation, lack of contacts/friends/family as poverty, that's not to undermine them, but the tone of his piece is about how poverty is a different country etc - poverty is about having no money. I just can't see why someone working in what sounds like quite a good job would end up in that situation for so long unless they had unrealistic expectations of the type of housing they should have.

And no matter how much someone felt they had to keep up appearances, no-one living in poverty would spend £3.50 on a shower every morning as he says he did.

Depends on how you've been brought up, in my experience. Some people feel an almost existential need to be clean, others know you can make do with a whore's bath every second day (washing of 'pits and bits).

(I don't think he's the same as Laurie by the way in terms of CLASS POWER, and he's a much more honest writer who has a degree of humility that LP really lacks, but he's still not really an authentic voice of real poverty)

In my own experience, "real" poverty isn't just about having no dosh, it's about having little or no prospect of bettering your situation in the short to medium term, however bright you are, and however hard you try; it's about not having a system of contacts/"friendship network" that can ease your situation; it's about being forced to look into the abyss, and hopefully about gobbing in the eye of whatever looks back at you from the abyss. It's about "getting by" because you have to "get by".

 

[ViolentPanda]

Have you ever been to Benidorm?

Yep, and "worse".

 

[ViolentPanda]

Call me a grizzeld old cynic but it does come across c. Down and Out in Paris and London - like he was storing up experiences for added liberal press kudos

You don't mean to say that he does exactly what most journos and aspiring authors are taught to do, do you?

The horror! The horror!

 

[ViolentPanda]

So what?
The fact is that his account of his experience sounds true and will resonate with the slightly better paid working class who still think they're not in danger of sliding into poverty and it does chime with the experiences of those who have been through similar.

He is not claiming to be the voice of a generation or owt, just telling a story that shows it could happen to you

TBF, for some people, it's never really stopped happening (although he's a reasonable illustration of how easy the slide from comfort to relative hardship can be).
This is why I hate standard historical narratives that set out a "history as progress" story. As long as I can remember there has been an "underclass" of homeless people. The number and social composition changes (most violently between the mid-eighties and mid-nineties), but the situation itself doesn't. If social progress was as real as it is implied to be, then why this ongoing situation (outwith rightwing explanations that attribute such situations to individual fecklessness)?

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

TBF, for some people, it's never really stopped happening (although he's a reasonable illustration of how easy the slide from comfort to relative hardship can be).
This is why I hate standard historical narratives that set out a "history as progress" story. As long as I can remember there has been an "underclass" of homeless people. The number and social composition changes (most violently between the mid-eighties and mid-nineties), but the situation itself doesn't. If social progress was as real as it is implied to be, then why this ongoing situation (outwith rightwing explanations that attribute such situations to individual fecklessness)?

I know but - there is also a need to bring the potentialities of poverty home to the people who don't realise how close they are to it - and there's a lot of people out there who think they're alright but in reality are only a couple of paychecks or a relationship break up away from this