sunnysidedown
caput mortuum
The old using a turd to wipe your arse trick.
BBC - Owen Jones
- Thread starter Zabo
- Start date
The old using a turd to wipe your arse trick.
sunnysidedown
caput mortuum
sunnysidedown
Can't quote you for some reason, it's still there and has had a lick of paint recently. I haven't been in since my old man took bad though
Sorry to hear about your old man.
I think the last time I was there was about 88, certainly needed a lick of paint back then.
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
That is a shit analogy
Some nostalgia for you!
http://www.mikcritchlow.com/photo_9178955.html#photos_id=9178955
Ashington in 88:
http://www.mikcritchlow.com/section284514_470038.html
I can still remember the smell of the pit and all the coal fires, sulphurous smell and the air was thick and yellow. Looking at the photos now it feels like a different world altogether. I have boxes and boxes of 35mm slides of Pegswood and Ashington from way back. Come to think about it, they're at my brothers.
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
I've only flicked through it in a bookshop, so I can't say for certain, but Chavs: The Demonisation of the working-class appeared like a request to the middle-class "to play nicely with the working-class" they're not as bad as you think. It seemed a weak history of the past 30 years, with some very sloppy cultural analysis.
It also has a long chapter about Parliament being shorn of working-class MPs and this being terrible and it points out how many MPs are former researchers meaning they come from a particular sector of university-educated society. So as some have suggested here, he believes there are working-class MPs and that their numbers should be increased.
I think that's a bit of a harsh assessment. My biggest problem with it is that it's padded out with lots of pretty pointless quotes from celebrity interviewee's, there's a lot of instances where he says "and I asked my buddy Polly Toynbee who recalled - whatever" when he could've just made the same point himself without having to call up someone to validate it with a quote. It'd have saved a lot of unnecessary repetition that starts to wear you down towards the end if he had. That's partially a stylistic criticism, but I also think it was written with an audience in mind and for a certain type of arsehole who judges the merit of an argument by how many guardian journalist or Labour MP opinions you can get to back you up that sort of style of quoting helps.
But the chapters at the beginning talking about how people view their own class are good, and I think a proper class awareness is a crucially important thing to assert after years of post-class end of history neo-liberal hegemony, the bits that deal with the slide of Labour party toward New Labour were good but could've been more scathing, and there's a load of other bits that I liked too that I can't be arsed listing. And I'm grateful that someone's actually addressing these class-based issues in a way that reaches more people that the incredibly narrow confines of the radical media, because it's sorely needed, even if they are a Labour party hack and a careerist and so on.
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
I may change my view if I get the chance to read it in full.
Question to Delroy: Do you think it's a book aimed at middle-class people or working-class people?
Middle-class people, 100%. A book with this many quotes from Polly Toynbee and Simon Heffer is not for the working class. It did feel like reading one massive guardian editorial at times though. Although it's been a bigger success than I suppose they anticipated and it's probably reached working class people, I certainly reckon a lot of the stuff he's documenting will strike a chord with working class people, even if he's not writing it pariticularly well in some cases. I reckon the demonisation of working class people is one of the central features of political life in this country and that it's a crucially important issue. He's picked a vital topic to write a book about.
I reckon it could've been done without all the quotes from the middle-class media circus, and all the same substantive points made, in a more concise 120 pages or something, and sold at a cheap price maybe, perhaps that would've been better.
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
It has - it's on the reading material for FBU's rep training courses, and Unison's U magazine had it as a prize some months back.
Some of those he quotes from are outright absurd. He quotes approvingly from Fiona Millar, adviser to Cherie Blair, and basically a Blairist but an anti-private school one that once private schools are nationalised "all that demonization of poor children, or children from different races, is broken down"
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
The book is fundamentally dishonest. Owen visits working class communities and concludes that the Tories and new Labour are bad. A statist lefty top down labour government is the solution and that 30 years of neo liberalism has failed the even dent the values and confidence of the proles he bumps into.
It's dishonesty is because it's selective though rather than being an outright fabrication imo.
I swear to god I'm not uncritically trying to kiss his arse, it's just it seems like people are tripping over themselves desperately reaching for anything possible to give him shit, and I think in a lot of cases that's unwarranted. And I think that's to do with posturing for a small group of people on the internet, like there's a perpetual arms race on to see who can hate well known left-wing writers the most, as by doing this it somehow proves how much more ahead of the curve, more intelligent, and so on, they are. It's like being 16 and listening to a load of middle-class moshers trying out-do each other by only liking incredibly obscure bands and anything that's not unknown is by definition is automatically shit(hur hur you like tool, don't you even know tool are shit, lol what an idiot). In fact in some instances it borders on the ridiculous - like for instance you giving him a hard time for using a phrase "council house associated vermin" as if he genuinely was claiming that's where the word Chav derives from, which he wasn't btw, or like he'd invented the acronym. You do realise there's a chunk of the book actually dedicated to unravelling the etymology of the word chav? It's not as perfect and comprehensive as it could be, but it's a good introduction for a leyman.
It's criticising the book not coz it's bad, or coz you've even read it, but beacuse of who is he. There's plenty of scope for critique but I think a lot of this is fucking ridiculous.
I agree that the solutions he offers aren't enough, some sort of Bennite Labourism in this day and age isn't going to suffice imo there needs to be some new idea's that can go beyond this nostaligic Labourism, but that's a difference in opinion - I still think his book is a good polemnic account of anti working class bigotry in the media in Britain. I also think his media appearances are good because he goes out there and pushes class politics, and it might not be the exact type of class politics I believe in but fuck me I'm happy enough to see him do it. I also think that his comments attacking the Tories for the welfare stuff they're doing are very good, even if he does (as someone on here has already rightly pointed out) always use the "most people are on benefits are in work" line which validate the argument that those out of work deserve to have their benefits cut. My auntie who's an elderly, blind, disabled, widow was going on and on at me for weeks asking me about Owen Jones after his comments to IDS, and scorn all you like but those comments have given hope to people in my family who are suffering as a result of this government. And he should get some credit for that, which reluctantly some do, but the default position is just total animosity. And after 30 years of neo-liberalism I'm genuinely relieved that there's people pushing class politics in the media who exist outside the ever decreasing circles of the radical left discourse, which is totally fucking moribund and irrelevant.
Tbh I'm not an anarchist and I'm not scared of "statist lefty top down Labour government" coz my entire life has been a world where socialism is dead and we've known nothing but thatcherism and rampant narcissistic individualism and bigotry in our political culture. I'd much much rather have a "statist lefty top down Labour government" of a mildly social democratic or bennite complexion than to continue indefinitely with the current state of affairs, with the neo-liberal right hegemonic and in control of both parties and the far-left utterly irrelevant, moribund and powerless. I don't think that would solve all our problems, but I think the most pressing political task facing us is to be dismantling the post-1979 neo-liberal consensus that has so comprehensively wiped out left wing politics as a major force in this country.
My problem and where I differ from Owen Jones is that I don't think the Labour party will ever allow politics of that sort to be promoted as policy, and even if they did captal woudn't allow it to function (see my posts further up the thread with shihhi) I think the historical moment for that struggle came and went in the 80's, and I don't think it's feasible today. It's a nice idea, but it's not likely to happen.
Speaking of nice ideas that aren't likely to happen I don't think any anti-statist or libertarian political tendency is ever going attract enough popular support in this country to make a discernable impact on British politics. Infact I think class-struggle anarchism will die out alongside the trots in my lifetime, and anarchism perhaps in 20 years or so will mean privilige-checking liberal identity politics, and be quite hostile to class politics. It might be good fun to be part of, no doubt there are some individual campaigns and issues here and there that they might take up and that could be very helpful, and more power to them, but for actually challenging the sovereignty of the british state? No, there's more chance Laurie Penny would have me as her boyfriend than that ever happening.
Thing is I'd love to be less cynical and I'd love to be able to participate in far-left groups with some vague notion of it actually having a practical influence on the politics of the country I live in, but this is just the world as I found it, I can't help the fact I was born into a generation where left-wing politics has declined to this extent. In this sort of environment we should be grateful for every owen jones we can get.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
I'm not an anarchist either Delroy. And whilst you and Jones might pine for the election of a 'radical' Labour Government when given the choice the working class has rejected it. One of the reasons for this is that the model has been an abject failure whenever it has been implemented over the last 100 years or so. One of the reasons it's been an abject failure is that it's normally implemented by people like Jones, who despite being middle class, know what's best for us.
I agree that the left is dying (in fact it may already be dead and we haven't noticed yet). One of the key reasons for this is that people like Jones (a high profile figure in relative terms) continue to flog the dead horse. And anyone casually interested in hearing alternatives to the current system hears Jones setting out the case for the cobweb left and moves on.
The left urgently needs new ideas, it's needs to get competitive, it needs, for once, to orientate to the class it espouses to lead and to reflect its ideas and demands and interests. It needs to decide what's its even in the game for. Jones contributes nothing to this. He uses his position to bolster the rejected ideas of a small self serving group of professional lefts remote from the class.
As someone once said its socialism or barbarism. If Jones and his ilk is really the best we have to offer its barbarism here we come.
I agree that the left is dying (in fact it may already be dead and we haven't noticed yet). One of the key reasons for this is that people like Jones (a high profile figure in relative terms) continue to flog the dead horse. And anyone casually interested in hearing alternatives to the current system hears Jones setting out the case for the cobweb left and moves on.
The left urgently needs new ideas, it's needs to get competitive, it needs, for once, to orientate to the class it espouses to lead and to reflect its ideas and demands and interests. It needs to decide what's its even in the game for. Jones contributes nothing to this. He uses his position to bolster the rejected ideas of a small self serving group of professional lefts remote from the class.
As someone once said its socialism or barbarism. If Jones and his ilk is really the best we have to offer its barbarism here we come.
Quite a few of us have noticed it to be fair
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Why and how has he managed to get into the positions that he has? (And i don't mean the usual elite contacts here - i'm talking about the content of what he writes and argues). I think it's because the powerful should feel challenged (at least on an intellectual level) by the sort of class analysis that you say he puts across. I think they're not for a number of reasons, chiefly:
a) they know the soft-bennite stuff that you talk about and that he does is historically dead as both a response to capital and as an organising point around which to rally - there is no body in a position that will argue for try or to implement it on national level and that global conditions will not allow it to happen and
b) his favoured path for achieving soft-bennism is one that they are very comfortable with for various reasons - labour being a party of the rich and super-rich (leaving aside wider questions about parties and so on) being entirely committed to the policies that the powerful support and want (albeit with different public emphasis) and that he and his politics represents nothing whatsoever in the centres of power in the labour party, and as such he can play a useful role in maintaining the appearance but not the content of a left-party open to all.
c) the struggle for soft-bennism necessarily reduces peoples vision down to a certain ways of doing things, it argues that this is the only possible and legitimate way things can ever really change - despite any sort of verbal commitment to supporting individual direct action (which aren't really direct actions as they are aimed to pressure change through and at the state level) - much the same way that Obama and that madness helped shut down much left-wing activity and organising in the US. Once you're onto that territory you might as well be just be solely making the argument (as someone said recently) but the tories...
Now, given that it's the powerful (Alexander Lebedev!) who have given him these jobs what does that say? I'll stand by what i said months ago, he's genuine and that's the problem.
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
But you're writing as if no one here or in the wider world would prefer Bennism to Cameron/Clegg - on a theoretical level give everyone the option and probably 95% on these boards and in the wider working-class would choose the former.
I don't want to open all cylinders on you, but it feels like a smart ugly trick to describe "a post-1979 neoliberal consensus" as if Benn wasn't part of that consensus while in government pre-1979.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Good point, and i'd ask Delroy - whose consensus? At what level?
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
Benn was opposed to the IMF spending cuts and the monetarist turn - although he chose to argue it out in cabinet rather than resign. But it's entirely true to say that neoliberalism didn't begin with Maggie.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
What does 'argue it out' mean? And what does it mean when the exemplar of popular labour-leftism, the example to follow today 'argues it out' rather than resign or effect a break? Is this merely a personal failing or something that is inherent to labourism? Something that it develops through it's very functioning? And where does that leave modern day benns suchb as yourself who start from an much much worse position, benns who are already isolated and ineffectual before you even start?
I appreciate that, I wrongly interpreted what smokeandsteam said about anti-statist to mean something else, and anyone in their right mind would clearly prefer bennite paradise over what we have now. But I accept that it's not going to happen, I only put it out there hypothetically. That nostaglic bennism is something Labour quite cynically use as a bit of left cover as they've gone about their business invading countries, PFI hospitals, academy schools, etc and I don't like that, but at the same time it's always been a bit like that, the Labour left (and Militant too) were always apologists for this setup.
Again I totally accept that, Benn was part of the consensus the test came when he had to pass cuts or leave the cabinet and challenge the leadership, but he stayed in. and I don't buy that stuff in his diaries about how he humbly put his career in the hands of his constituents in Bristol at a meeting, that's just abdication.
and butchers I'll reply in a minute, but get it right it's militant bennism, not soft bennism
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Pretty sure i have it right 
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
and butchers I'll reply in a minute, but get it right it's militant bennism, not soft bennism
Militant Bennism would be attacking Lebedev and organising for nationalising the press and mass media. That was Scargill's approach - a respectable militant, ultimately Bennist approach.
Soft Bennism is something closer to Owen Jones: calling for a people's honours system and encouraging those people to do the fighting against the system.
Pretty sure i have it right
Stalinist means for Bennite ends.
Random
Ethnic nalgocrat
Beanns
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
There are no Benns today - he's trajectory was only possible because of a very different scale of w/c organisation and militancy. But you ask a good question, what are the conditions where a break from labourism can be made effective? I'm still thinking that through.
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
Didn't you willingly enter Labourism after being outside it? Now you're wondering how to break from it?
Random
Ethnic nalgocrat
It's like someone who willingly entered the bed and snuggled under the quilt, under historical conditions under which a warm bed offered the only realistic hope in modern Britain of sheltering the productive energies from the attacks of entropy. Now hours later, under worsening attacks from both the forces of want breakfast, and the forces of full bladder, the bed entryist is reconsidering his position, wondering what will be the right time to leave the refuge of the warm bed, to attempt to reestablish a warm refuge based on a united front of trousers and woolly jumper.Didn't you willingly enter Labourism after being outside it? Now you're wondering how to break from it?
Ok I don't dispute this, you know I don't coz we've surely discussed this before. The moment passed for that years ago. It's one thing to be a trotskyite 1917 re-enactment society but I'd rather be that than a 1983 general election one.
Owen Jones has opinions that are just about on the right side of respectable enough to be palatable to the Lebedevs and Sky News and co - and at the same time because it isn't linked to an actual movement, unlike say Tony Benn or Arthur Scargill, those views can be tolerated a small opening in the respectable debate. It's a concession, partly down to how class has become more of an public issue as a result of recession and austerity, I think that's also probably a factor in why his book sold so well, that and the riots. By comparison Tony Benn in the early 1980's was never indulged like Owen Jones is today, not because of his wild views but because at that time he had manouvered himself into being the de facto figurehead for a substantial "power centre" in the party. That power centre doesn't exist now. Jones is a writer and not a politician, although I wouldn't rule out that he does become an MP at some point, he doesn't have that clout. On top of that, unless a million people suddenly join the Labour party or something, that power centre isn't going to come back.
Owen Jones does get quite a lot of flak compared to some, that "braying jackal" clip is wonderful, but the mere fact he's actually able maintain the profile that he has shows just how confident powerful people are that soft bennism poses no threat, not even in it's ability to shift the Labour party marginally to the left. But on the other hand are you trying to argue that the left, the specifically class orientated radical left, doesn't benefit in any way from having a half-decent pundit with a platform in the mainstream media, who's competent enough to actually challenge the overwhelming tide of right-wing bullshit we're subject too without ritually embarassing themselves (see Laurie Penny thread)? I don't accept that at all, whether or not his position is an example of tendencies and power structures, that I know you're dead keen on showing us and I'm very grateful for, that are malign and that socialist should be working against I still think there's scope for him to say things in the media that are critical and good for him for actually doing it.
Well that's an institutional feature of British politics. First past the post, an historically unique anachronistic constitutional setup that's deliberately vague, all these things give us a system that it does not really function like most other multi-party liberal democracies do, and Labour is integral part of that, no different to how the Whigs were once part of that*. Miliband et al. Verbal commitments to supporting individual direct action aren't really what I'm looking for in Owen Jones, got to tell you the truth, and I couldn't care a bit whether he does give me permission to riot or not. The danger lies in the fact because Owen Jones is tribally Labour, that whatever class consciousness his media work and writing can help stimulate it'll all end up being funnelled back into the Labour party, where it can be safely contained until sterile then diffused.
And the comparison with Obama is interesting. Owen Jones is Obama-like
steady on lad. I do think that the US ruling class were actually very fortunate to have a charismatic candidate like Obama that neutralise any populist, left-ish response to the big crisis. Can you imagine how things would've panned out if McCain had won in 2008 and Palin in 2012? 
It'd probably be like Greece by now if the ruling class hadn't financially and politcally backed Obama the last two elections.That's absolutely right. I am very wary of this - my parents are the sort of people who vote Labour at every single election regardless of how outraged they are at what they do because they're scared to death of the Tories. A lot of that generation who lived through the sharp end of Thatcher still think like that. And it is really damaging. I don't like how much of the Labour left is reduced down to Bennite platitudes because truthfully I do feel more affinity to that tradition than any trot stuff, and furthermore I reckon even the corniest and most insincere Old Labour shtick still has more support amongst working class people in this country than any derivation of Marxism or Leninism. There's a good working class political tradition in this country that's culturally, ideologically and intellectually monopolised by a neo-liberal Labour party, which is a shame to be honest.
I reckon he's utterly sincere, that's probably one of the reasons why I'm inclined to defend him. And I think that all these problems go way beyond Owen Jones tbh I don't feel any need at all to attack him.
*well, obvioulsy not exactly like the Whigs, that'd be stupid...
As an after-thought I think all this will play out post 2015 in a really interesting way. If there's scope for a wider left re-groupment it'll be then, one that's away from the Labour party, not committed to exclusively parliamentary means, classed based and so on. I think Labour is going to continue to keep an electoral stranglehold on anything left wing up until the Tories are out, then there'll be crippling disappointment as Labour make cuts and behave like Tories the whole time they're in power. Like the Lib Dems over tuition fee's only a million times worse, especially because the pretense of soft bennism that Owen Jones likes to keep up will be ripped to shreds.
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