Buckaroo
Donkey piss and tractors
Poundshop Jimmy? For a new generation? Nah, that's outrageous, how dare you!
Russell Brand on Revolution
- Thread starter Jean-Luc
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Poundshop Jimmy? For a new generation? Nah, that's outrageous, how dare you!
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
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I enjoyed Russell Brand vs Nigel Farage on Question Time the other night.
Brand was right to say it's the bankers and tax-dodging rich individuals and companies which are the main cause of our recession, not immigration like a lot of right-wing politicians and the right-wing media would have us believe.
However, it has to be acknowledged that immigration has its problems in some areas which are noticing the effects of it on public services, GP appointments, housing, schools and general integration.
It's not racist to flag up these concerns and want to deal with them, but it's frustrating how politicians like Farage are left to misrepresent, exaggerate and paint an inaccurate picture of the pros and cons of immigration. We don't hear enough about the positives and what the true cause of our financial mess is.
Brand was right to say it's the bankers and tax-dodging rich individuals and companies which are the main cause of our recession, not immigration like a lot of right-wing politicians and the right-wing media would have us believe.
However, it has to be acknowledged that immigration has its problems in some areas which are noticing the effects of it on public services, GP appointments, housing, schools and general integration.
It's not racist to flag up these concerns and want to deal with them, but it's frustrating how politicians like Farage are left to misrepresent, exaggerate and paint an inaccurate picture of the pros and cons of immigration. We don't hear enough about the positives and what the true cause of our financial mess is.
Jean-Luc
Well-Known Member
I thought you'd never ask
.Well, this is what he writes on page 237 of his book after saying about General Motors that "we could collectivise it as a worker-owned cooperative":
He also writes, on page 165 that
and (page 189-190) about
I think these will be aims shared by even some of his severest critics here as well as by classic federalist anarchism.
He also agrees with the anarchist view that the way to get improvements under capitalism is through direct action rather than elections. And "utopian" because he envisages the sort of society he wants coming about not through class struggle (which he repudiates) but through convincing enough people of good will.
PS If you turn to page 165 of your copy of his book you will see that his definition of "liquid democracy" is not what you assumed.
DownwardDog
Riding a Brompton with a power meter.
So, are we saying he's a Poundshop Julian Assange?
Iceland Icke.
BigTom
Well-Known Member
If he doesn't see class struggle as the way to socialism, he's not anarchist, communist or socialist. If he thinks it comes about through everyone being better people, he's pushing liberalism, radical liberalism is pretty common these days, intersectionalism fits right in there as does the media stunt "direct action" as a tactic (the tactic actually). Ukuncut probably the best example of a group following this general path.I thought you'd never ask
Well, this is what he writes on page 237 of his book after saying about General Motors that "we could collectivise it as a worker-owned cooperative":
He also writes, on page 165 that
and (page 189-190) about I think these will be aims shared by even some of his severest critics here as well as by classic federalist anarchism.
He also agrees with the anarchist view that the way to get improvements under capitalism is through direct action rather than elections. And "utopian" because he envisages the sort of society he wants coming about not through class struggle (which he repudiates) but through convincing enough people of good will.
PS If you turn to page 165 of your copy of his book you will see that his definition of "liquid democracy" is not what you assumed.
Not sure it's utopian either, as he's laying out practical methods of the syndicalist type.
Is William Morris utopian anarchism? That's who I thought of when I saw the phrase.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
lidl loopy
Jean-Luc
Well-Known Member
I don't agree with your definitions of "anarchism" and "liberalism". Most anarchists accept that there have been and are people who want an anarchist (= no government) society but who reject the class struggle to get there. Tolstoy would be one example. But only some such people could be called "liberals" in wanting a free market economy with no government to intervene in it (eg the mutualists and the anarcho-capitalists). Brand does not stand for a free market economy but (reflecting the views of the people who have influenced him) for the same sort of anarcho-communist society advocated by Kropotkin or Murray Bookchin and by the AF in Britain. It is just that, unlike the AF, he doesn't see the revolution to bring this about as coming through a class struggle of the working class but through the struggle of all people of good will. Which is not the same as thinking "it comes about through everyone be(com)ing better people" though there is a element of this in his thinking. He's not just preaching "love" but also struggle (even if not class struggle).
To a certain extent he is, but I think his emphasis is rather on community than workplace struggles (not that he rejects these).
Even though he stood for a no-state society Morris was not an anarchist. In fact he specifically repudiated the anarchists of his day. He was in fact a Marxian socialist and openly said so. This is why the title of the current exhibition of his works in London is misleading. He can only be called "utopian" in the sense that he wrote a utopian novel about an ideal future socialist society (which he envisages as coming about through class struggle and involving violence).
It baffles me that anyone thinks it could be achieved through any other method.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
I thought you'd never ask
Well, this is what he writes on page 237 of his book after saying about General Motors that "we could collectivise it as a worker-owned cooperative":
He also writes, on page 165 that
and (page 189-190) about I think these will be aims shared by even some of his severest critics here as well as by classic federalist anarchism.
He also agrees with the anarchist view that the way to get improvements under capitalism is through direct action rather than elections. And "utopian" because he envisages the sort of society he wants coming about not through class struggle (which he repudiates) but through convincing enough people of good will.
PS If you turn to page 165 of your copy of his book you will see that his definition of "liquid democracy" is not what you assumed.
Ah you see, when you said 'utopian anarchist' ideas i thought you meant anarchist ideas. None of those you've quoted are actually specifically anarchist ideas - the first one for example assumes a market economy based on wage-labour - a capitalist economy, one democratised to some extent within single enterprises but still nothing anarchist there. The second one happens right now under capital and classic bourgeois democracy - it, in effect is know as lobbying. The third one is transparently not anarchist given its emphasis on authoritative centralisation and a compelling over arching and unquestionable central dictate that all other forms of social or political organisation must comply with. I note also that for the third example the way this 'federation autonomous, interconnected collectivities led by elected jurors from the community that followed a central edict built on respecting the way of life of others and ecological responsibility' is to come about is by Obama standing down and asking Brand to be president then Brand dissolving the union.
This is not anarchism as understood by Kropotkin, Bookchin and certainly not the AF.
It might well fit in with the SPGB's long standing liberal misinterpretations of what anarchism actually is - you lot still think it's Sir Herbert read and the nice rather decent types of the maturing period of your parties development.
Utopian doesn't mean what you seem to think it does when used politically like this either ("convincing enough people of good will.") - it means people who build ideal societies of the future today rather than concentrating on the seeds of the new world in the shell of the old - i.e ongoing political activity dealing with current problems whose solution points to moving beyond current conditions rather than drawing up plans for lemonade seas. And this is why Morris was actually partially a utopianist too - given his many decades work on precisely such plans.
As for liquid democracy - the way Brand specifically uses it even more reactionary than bog standard classic democracy. It involves giving your vote (and he doesn't note the whole current electoral and economic system would have to largely remain in place) to someone that you trust more than yourself - i.e you can give/sell your vote to those more powerful than you:
That's really quite sickening.
All these things are simply listings of organisational answers to what are political questions - and the political questions are ignored. Hence him going on about referenda in Switzerland rather than the highly developed capitalism that is really rather quite important.
Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
That really is horrible stuff. His delivery is witty and fast, there's some predictable 'irony' in there if he wants to defend himself from accusations - but the bottom line is just plain, crude misogyny. Politically, there's a bit of me that isn't too worried that he's now focused on revolution, but at a personal level he's just a common or garden shit.
Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
Mungy
i haz boobz
i must be sicker than i thought i was. it made me laugh. having not seen much of rb's comedy i don't know if that is a big part of his material. he was funnier in that small clip than any of michael mcintyre's material i have seen. though, in fairness, this thread is about his political persona, not his comic one.
BigTom
Well-Known Member
Fair, although personally I see class struggle as an inherent part of anarchism (= no heirarchy, rather than no govt, imo). I've never read Tolstoy and tbh can't think of Anarchists who don't see anarchism coming about through class struggle (Except maybe those who see it coming about through complete collapse of society due to environment or war), but that's no doubt down to my limited reading of anarchists, rather than any reality.
I don't think that liberalism is neccessarily in favour of free market, though it usually is and certainly lends itself to that way of thinking. To me liberalism is political philosophy centred around the individual and agency, rather than community and structure, for it's explanations of society / methods & tactics for change. Radical liberalism rejects the free market and advocates govt and community intervention, often people appear as socialists and advocate replacing capitalism with socialism, but it's all centred around the individual and individual behaviour, rather than structural analyses, so for ukuncut, tax avoidance is about individual companies taking advantage of loopholes (and Dave Hartnett) to increase profits, it doesn't even start to examine how the nature of profit seeking in capitalism produces tax avoidance & loopholes, and actually often ends up as reformist as a result, rather than revolutionary.
I accept that I've misunderstood the bit about being better people, he's advocating more of a spiritual thing is he? Like if we all want things to be nicer then they'll get nicer, but that airy-fairy nonsense being backed by more practical suggestions for action?
I've only read news from nowhere, nothing wider of Morris, was definitely a utopian novel in that it presented a complete working socialism without examining potential problems or how we get from here to there. Not anarchist though, fair enough, although the society he was imagining was, in my mind, anarchist (no heirarchies or govt iirc, just individuals wandering around in an autonomist fashion, lending their help where needed and getting food/shelter from people as they pass through places).
That's a different definition of utopia than what Butcher's is using though, so some care needed here, as I'm thinking about utopia/dystopia from sci-fi novels and what the words mean there, in terms of an imagination of a future perfect/disastrous society.
Jean-Luc
Well-Known Member
Actually I agree with you that an economy of worker-owned co-operatives would not be socialist/communist but it's a popular anarchist view (even the mainstream view in Spain and France where anarcho-communism is not very popular and of the Maurice Brinton mentioned earlier on this thread whose books are not sold at Sainsburys while Brand's is) but Brand does not actually say whether or not a money economy (with markets and wage-labour) will continue to exist in the post-revolution society he envisages. I expect that like most anarchists he's confused on the point seeing whether or not to retain money as one option after the revolution.
I still say, though, that the idea of the world being a federation of self-administering communities is a basic anarchist concept espoused by Kropotkin, Bookchin and the AF. The "central edict" bit comes in to deal with the question of what happens if one of these self-administering communities wants to discriminate against women, gays or practice FGM. But that's a problem for those who argue that local or regional communities should have "autonomy".
I was using "utopian" in the sense Engels did in the title of his pamphlet Socialism Utopian and Scientific in which he labelled Robert Owen for instance as one for not seeing socialism as the outcome of the class struggle between the working class and the capitalist class.
We can (and probably should) argue about Morris on a separate thread but, for the record, he did not spend "many decades" on drawing up a blueprint for future society (if only because he was only a socialist for the last decade of his life, from 1884 to 1896). He was in fact a "millionaire celeb" who did what you say Brand should be doing: being an activist on the ground (in his case writing leaflets and pamphlets, editing a weekly paper, lecturing and speaking on street corners about the need for a socialist revolution).
I don't like the term. I prefer "delegate democracy". But are you saying that nobody should ever vote for a delegate to act on their behalf? In that case, you really would be an anarchist but of the individualist variety. One of the reasons, incidentally, why Morris was opposed to anarchists in addition to their bomb-throwing.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
"Hatred"?
Concern about the effect he could have on the causes he supports, yes.
Distaste at the shambolic, inchoate state of his calls for revolution, yes.
Worry that the media can and will tar all revolutionary politics with the same brush as Brand's, yes.
But "hatred"? Only a dick would see the above and call it hatred.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
TBF, I'm not going to judge a bloke by a quote on a book cover, if only because those quotes are almost always stripped from a larger conversation, and are used shorn of the original context.
It has to be said, though, that the quote does resonate with both Brand's behaviour and his utterances of the time.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Utopian, perhaps, but "anarchist"?
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
It's always nice when someone who isn't an anarchist tells anarchists about anarchism.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Well, quite. It's hardly as if the ruling classes and their apparatus are going to sit still for change that would dis-empower them, is it? I doubt that "the people" would start a "hot" class war (as opposed to the "cold war" we've had for decades/centuries), but I'm fairly certain we'd finish it.
krtek a houby
Anger is Hi-NRG
It's quite anarchic, in a way
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
The idea pre-dates Kropotkin by a couple of centuries. It's a form of civic syndicalism.
As opposed to being governed by a vanguard of members of political class who will construct a top-down apparatus that can enforce non-discrimination,, you mean?
Anudder Oik
heinous pointless bellend/fucking gobshite muppet
I expected more of a verbal punch up on Question Time so was a bit disappointed with the result. I thought the panel, despite the supposed heavy weights, wasn't up to much.
Who else in the UK could have been on instead of Brand to counter the right wingers on the show?
The blue haired woman who heckled made me angry when she interrupted an audience member in mid question by screaming "racist", trying to impose censorship on a question as if she had the right to do so. What's more typical is she didn't even listen to the context of the question before she knee jerked. She obviously equates ukip with the bnp which is a mistake as ukip's support is coming from a wide section of society who aren't all racists but who perceive mass immigration as something that has brought too much change too fast. The figures given on the show were a rise in population of 8 million in the last 25 years. It's probably more as millions of brits have moved abroad.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
SWPer according to Twitter.
Dogsauce
I’ve got Skol but I’m not a Scholar
The areas with the strongest UKIP support tend to be areas with the least immigration. It's as much the perception of problems with immigration rather than experience of problems with immigration, and a willingness to use immigrants as an easy target to blame.
I think there's a graph somewhere on the UKIP thread showing a breakdown of UKIP supporters by social group (or whatever category they use) - tends to be a mix of well off and WC, mostly older and white. An unusual distribution, but not really a 'wide section'.
Regarding Question Time: Brand just had things he was waiting to say rather than actually participate in anything resembling a debate.
BigTom
Well-Known Member
What annoyed me most about that figure is it's a rise of about 14% which over 25 years really isn't that much, but Farage called it a "massive, massive rise" and nobody challenged him on whether 14% over 25 years is actually massive, or in fact a very manageable number.
It doesn't matter about emigration, because he was talking about population rise figure, not immigration figure - he's right that the rise has come almost or entirely from immigration though, as the natural birth rate of the UK has been at or below replacement rate for most or all of that time period.
Dogsauce
I’ve got Skol but I’m not a Scholar
Birthrate can still be below replacement rate yet the population still grow due to extended lifespans.
Immigrants generally turn up on our shores with all those expensive years (birth, education) already paid for and out of the way, so the idea of them as a burden is a bit preposterous, it's more of a loss to the country of origin. The idea that we live in a country where there isn't enough to go round is a load of shit, we're awash with wealth, go and stand by a road and count the value of cars that pass you in a few minutes. It's a choice not to share resources fairly, not a necessity.
Immigrants generally turn up on our shores with all those expensive years (birth, education) already paid for and out of the way, so the idea of them as a burden is a bit preposterous, it's more of a loss to the country of origin. The idea that we live in a country where there isn't enough to go round is a load of shit, we're awash with wealth, go and stand by a road and count the value of cars that pass you in a few minutes. It's a choice not to share resources fairly, not a necessity.
Jean-Luc
Well-Known Member
What (since we've started to discuss this) is it, then? Except for "general integration" these are all problems that are aggravated by any increase in population somewhere or by migration from one part of the British Isles to another. As also by capitalism not giving, and not being able to give, priority to services for the majority because its priority is profits and profit-making. This is conceding too much ground to the current anti-immigration hysteria.
Jean-Luc
Well-Known Member
This might be the view of some here but it's not mine. I couldn't be more opposed to trotskyism/leninism/vanguardism.
But if Brand's idea of a future society can't be described as anarchism what can it be described as?
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