Why aren't the left doing better?

[ViolentPanda]

Perhaps the problem is this, neo-liberal capital accumulation can be analysed into two basic streams. The sort that you can actually struggle against in a workplace, and the sort that works via either primitive accumulation (say in Russia or China or much of the developing world) or by privatisation and financialisation. The traditional left stuff works ok when dealing with the former, but right now, the main issues in the UK are actually the latter, so we need new approaches.

In other words, we need approaches that tackle the marketisation and sell-off of "the family silver", or in fact actually reverse them, removing or restricting the power that the accumulators of capital gain over those "assets", then?
The problem being that the accepted and dominant discourse that's "out there" is still that of market-based neo-liberal economics and the politics that flow from it, and changing that for a coherent discourse "of the left" will be difficult because the left is fractured into an almost infinite amount of small groups, each claiming to be the followers of the one true path, and to have the "right" medicine to solve all problems. It's also the case that, despite people like brasicritique pulling the old "I'm considerably more class aware/prolier than thou" schtick, it doesn't help "the left" to construct an answer to the dominant discourse, even if it does delude them into feeling like they've done something worthwhile.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Yeah, sort of. I'm deliberately not going to get involved in a bunch of Judean People's Front vs People's Front of Judea fingerpointing here 'cos I think it's stupid and pointless. What I wanted to suggest is that its possibly quite useful to analyse things in the way that I was suggesting.

That is, to accept that the traditional left approaches centred on workplace struggles definitely still have their place, but that new approaches need to be developed, in parallel with the traditional left stuff, to address privatisation, financialisation and endebtedness as equally, and perhaps right now even more important ways, in which present-day capitalism dispossesses the majority to benefit elites. Possibly also to link the latter up with global struggles against primitive accumulation too, because in effect that's what those various forms of what Harvey calls 'accumulation by dispossession' are to my way of thinking.

I don't claim to have any magic solutions, but I strongly believe that it's worth recognising that both areas exist and may require quite different strategies and probably necessary to do so to form any constructive approach.

I think one thing you've pointed out there VP is particularly important though. The dominance of a neo-liberal discourse that really has very little to do with neo-liberal practice other than being a propaganda justification for it, and an increasingly threadbare one after a few decades of the practice. So it seems to me that an important part of getting started with forming alternatives is to supplant that discourse when and wherever that's possible. This seems to me to be a very realistic short-term objective in the light of all the rhetoric of crisis we're hearing now and the likelihood of a fair amount of actual privation occurring in circumstances even low-wattage Daily Mail readers can connect to financialisation without too much help in joining the dots. A bunch of sectarian squabbles is not I think, a constructive way to do that though.

I think another really good target is the increasingly obviously anti-democratic nature of the latest versions of neo-liberalism. It's very clear to me that there is widespread dissatisfaction with the choice between two very slightly different versions of neo-liberalism with which we're now presented and obvious dismay at their inherent submission to money power. This is only likely to become stronger if as seems probable the comfortable flow of debt-funded prosperity that some of the population have enjoyed for the last decade or two dries up.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Yeah, sort of. I'm deliberately not going to get involved in a bunch of Judean People's Front vs People's Front of Judea fingerpointing here 'cos I think it's stupid and pointless. What I wanted to suggest is that its possibly quite useful to analyse things in the way that I was suggesting.

That is, to accept that the traditional left approaches centred on workplace struggles definitely still have their place, but that new approaches need to be developed, in parallel with the traditional left stuff, to address privatisation, financialisation and endebtedness as equally, and perhaps right now even more important ways, in which present-day capitalism dispossesses the majority to benefit elites. Possibly also to link the latter up with global struggles against primitive accumulation too, because in effect that's what those various forms of what Harvey calls 'accumulation by dispossession' are to my way of thinking.

I don't claim to have any magic solutions, but I strongly believe that it's worth recognising that both areas exist and may require quite different strategies and probably necessary to do so to form any constructive approach.

I think one thing you've pointed out there VP is particularly important though. The dominance of a neo-liberal discourse that really has very little to do with neo-liberal practice other than being a propaganda justification for it, and an increasingly threadbare one after a few decades of the practice. So it seems to me that an important part of getting started with forming alternatives is to supplant that discourse when and wherever that's possible. This seems to me to be a very realistic short-term objective in the light of all the rhetoric of crisis we're hearing now and the likelihood of a fair amount of actual privation occurring in circumstances even low-wattage Daily Mail readers can connect to financialisation without too much help in joining the dots.

IMHO the major stumbling block to this happening on a broad front (which is absolutely necessary for anything worthwhile to occur) is the resistance of what we could term "the soft left" to any anti-capitalism that challenges what we might call "the Thatcherite consensus"; the idea that (re-)nationalisation/government ownership/state funding is a bad thing (something that can be noted in the equivocal nature of "acceptance" of the recent bank "nationalisations). It does unfortunately seem that those "low-wattage Daily Mail readers" (and Mirror, Indie and Guardian readers etc) are going to have to actually suffer before it becomes clear that maintaining the market status quo, or attempting to deal with the economy on a piecemeal basis without a coherent plan rooted in a shift away from neo-liberal justifications, puts us all on a hiding to nothing.

 

[nino_savatte]

Just remember: You should have stoped.

I think brasic wants you to become a eugenicist birth control advocate.

So that's where I've been going wrong!

 

[Bernie Gunther]

IMHO the major stumbling block to this happening on a broad front (which is absolutely necessary for anything worthwhile to occur) is the resistance of what we could term "the soft left" to any anti-capitalism that challenges what we might call "the Thatcherite consensus"; the idea that (re-)nationalisation/government ownership/state funding is a bad thing (something that can be noted in the equivocal nature of "acceptance" of the recent bank "nationalisations). It does unfortunately seem that those "low-wattage Daily Mail readers" (and Mirror, Indie and Guardian readers etc) are going to have to actually suffer before it becomes clear that maintaining the market status quo, or attempting to deal with the economy on a piecemeal basis without a coherent plan rooted in a shift away from neo-liberal justifications, puts us all on a hiding to nothing.

Sure, that's why I think that 'consensus' (and the evident anti-democratic tendencies of the neo-liberals & neo-cons when in power) is what you might call the enemy's 'centre of gravity' and hence the point of strategic attack, particularly given that it does seem very likely that a fair number of people who have bought into that consensus are going to have it challenged by changes in their standard of living pretty soon.

 

[Streathamite]

not from my experince and those of people i know

I strongly suspect your experience, and social circle, like your reasoning ability, to be on the limited side; as evidenced by the fact that all you've done is make cliched assertion after cliched assertion, without a single shred of supporting evidence

 

[phildwyer]

Perhaps the problem is this, neo-liberal capital accumulation can be analysed into two basic streams. The sort that you can actually struggle against in a workplace, and the sort that works via either primitive accumulation (say in Russia or China or much of the developing world) or by privatisation and financialisation. The traditional left stuff works ok when dealing with the former, but right now, the main issues in the UK are actually the latter, so we need new approaches.

Yes. Essentially we need to start treating capital as what it really is: a psychological rather than a material power. Since capital only reveals itself as such in its "late" formations, such an approach is more viable in the West than in the "BRIC" countries.

Although one could also argue that the stage of primitive accumulation reveals the ethical status of capital more clearly than its later forms, thus facilitating a reaction against it. I'm thinking for example of the obvious contradictions between traditional moral structures and consumerism that are playing out in India at the moment.

 

[Fruitloop]

Just remember: You should have stoped.

I think brasic wants you to become a eugenicist birth control advocate.

Like some kind of Nazi Onan?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Yes. Essentially we need to start treating capital as what it really is: a psychological rather than a material power. Since capital only reveals itself as such in its "late" formations, such an approach is more viable in the West than in the "BRIC" countries.

Although one could also argue that the stage of primitive accumulation reveals the ethical status of capital more clearly than its later forms, thus facilitating a reaction against it. I'm thinking for example of the obvious contradictions between traditional moral structures and consumerism that are playing out in India at the moment.

Well, I think I get what you're trying to say, but I bet a bunch of people take issue with it the way you've said it

Reason I suggest a focus where I do is because I think several aspects of capitalist power depend on it and are vulnerable there. If you can change the present situation, in which a large number of people simply accept neo-liberal discourse as 'common sense' and in doing so raise a bunch of challenges around democracy and social justice, the moral sphere to which I think you're alluding, then you get to mess with one of the things that holds together the present status quo of a neo-liberal one-party (more or less) state with no democratic or ideological challenges to its hegemony ...

Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System

 

[phildwyer]

Well, I think I get what you're trying to say, but I bet a bunch of people take issue with it the way you've said it

I almost said "spiritual" instead of "psychological," but I managed to stop myself just in time.

Reason I suggest a focus where I do is because I think several aspects of capitalist power depend on it and are vulnerable there. If you can change the present situation, in which a large number of people simply accept neo-liberal discourse as 'common sense' and in doing so raise a bunch of challenges around democracy and social justice, the moral sphere to which I think you're alluding, then you get to mess with one of the things that holds together the present status quo of a neo-liberal one-party (more or less) state with no democratic or ideological challenges to its hegemony ...

Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System

The way things develop in India over the next 5-10 years will be very interesting to watch. I say India rather than China, because in the latter case the Communists have been introducing "modernity" for 50 years, but India is still a far more traditional society, with a set of ethics that could not be in greater contradiction to capitalist ideology.

There is a very overt and deliberate campaign to create a consumer class and culture in India, and very rapidly too. It's being done so blatantly that I suspect it may well misfire. For instance, there's an advert playing incessantly on the radio that literally goes like this:

[young female voice speaking bad, heavily accented English over throbbing disco backbeat] "Hey, check out that one. He is so sexy!"

[exactly similar voice] "Yes, I also find him very attractive."

"What do you think is so special about him?"

"It must be his aftershave: Mangel. The smell is so sexy!"

[both dissolve in giggles].

Just one example. The population is being bombarded with this sort of thing through every kind of media. Now, it seems to me that this is a bit of a gamble on the part of the capitalists, because it is so blatantly and unashamedly in violation of very ancient moralities that the vast majority of the people still hold sacred. It might well go horribly wrong.

Of course we're long past that stage in the West, having internalized market values two centuries ago, but the increasingly abstract (or psychological) nature of capital in the West suggests a point of convergence in a possible critique: capital must be fought in the only place it exists--the human mind.

 

[brasicritique]

I'll make the usual futile request that you back up your assertions, but I'm sure that (as usual) you'll run a mile from actually supporting the crap you spout with actual fact. .

who the fuck do you think you are get the ego on you when you do the same or even post on the topic the thread is about instead of just making lame flaming then maybe instaed all we ever get is panda self appointed urban political policeman (do you chnage uniforms for this )

You're a cretin, and a cretin who isn't aware of my family history and so couldn't have a clue about what my tagline means to me..

neither do most other posters so so what and looking at your hipocritical conduct i doubt anypone would want to know or give a shit tbh

And you know what, brasic? I really don't give a drip of dog piss what it means to you, because you're the idiot who thinks that it implies I hug racists and fascists. What does that say about you,

it says that i think your tags line is shit as imo most people on these boards would not hug nazis but dont feel the need to tell the world about it in order to make up for what they lack

You couldn't call out the fire brigade with a telephone, let alone call out anyone on Urban in a coherent manner..

piss poor come back as usual

Oh, and "me and mine" is an old expression which usually means "me, my family and my class". At least that's the meaning it had when Nye Bevan used it.

Tell dotcom and hipocrical kyser given that they were clearly talking shit no suprise you the shit lover has had to come to there aid btw i doubt either he or you have read Nye Bevan and the mirage of socialism

 

[brasicritique]

Care to tell us what this means? You can't punctuate for toffee and your spelling stinks.

it mens your a ninny

 

[brasicritique]

Another steaming pile of shite from a poster whose lack of punctuation is only matched by his lack of brainpower.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Well, again I think I get what you're trying to say Phil, but I believe you're putting it in an unnecessarily confusing way.

The point of vigorously challenging the tacit acceptance of a whole bunch of neo-liberal ideology as 'common sense' is, to give one example, that it's a large part of the basis for an electoral system which can only produce a series of virtually indistinguishable governments of capitalist stooges. It's also as VP pointed out a large part of why the 'soft left' can't effectively cooperate with a 'hard left' which for all its many failings, at least doesn't think some form of market capitalism is the only viable form of human society that isn't a gulag.

So the point of challenging the ideology is that it's the 'schwerpunkt' (focal point in a military sense) for any attempt to open up the possibility of effective anti-capitalist politics in the UK and probably also in any of the other countries infected by neo-liberal ideology. While that ideology appears to a large segment of the population as 'common sense' that nobody needs to reflect on for a moment to admit as true, there is little chance of mass organisation leading to material change.

The point though is the material change.

 

[brasicritique]

Just remember: You should have stoped.

I think brasic wants you to become a eugenicist birth control advocate.

yeh really your one sick snide self obessed oaf going back to the old 'brasic is a nazi smear' you fat useless pile of shit

 

[brasicritique]

I strongly suspect your experience, and social circle, like your reasoning ability, to be on the limited side; as evidenced by the fact that all you've done is make cliched assertion after cliched assertion, without a single shred of supporting evidence

yeah really thanks for your stunning contribution to the topic of this thread which actaully reveals your the one suffering from from limited reasoning ability given that your post is a typical swapie white middleclass cliched assertion i think its is highly hilarious that you think it is possible for anyone to give 'supporting eveidence' of there personal experiences on an onlin eforum what do you want times date names places you prick as i said it is beacuse left wing partys in the south for the most part ( excluding the odd iwca ) white middleclass faux internationalist and didactic and full of inane pricks like you that it is on its knees and why sadly come the next election we will all see another thread moaning about the rise of the bnp while the galloways of the world harp on about the middle east - well heres the thing the bnp are not standing in the middle east so until th eleft start putting a bit of time and effot into tackling the inequalities in the uk it will whine into oblivion

 

[brasicritique]

Like some kind of Nazi Onan?

oh look its lord of the onanism

 

[DotCommunist]

*wipes spittle from screen*

 

[phildwyer]

Well, again I think I get what you're trying to say Phil, but I believe you're putting it in an unnecessarily confusing way.

The point of vigorously challenging the tacit acceptance of a whole bunch of neo-liberal ideology as 'common sense' is, to give one example, that it's a large part of the basis for an electoral system which can only produce a series of virtually indistinguishable governments of capitalist stooges. It's also as VP pointed out a large part of why the 'soft left' can't effectively cooperate with a 'hard left' which for all its many failings, at least doesn't think some form of market capitalism is the only viable form of human society that isn't a gulag.

So the point of challenging the ideology is that it's the 'schwerpunkt' (focal point in a military sense) for any attempt to open up the possibility of effective anti-capitalist politics in the UK and probably also in any of the other countries infected by neo-liberal ideology. While that ideology appears to a large segment of the population as 'common sense' that nobody needs to reflect on for a moment to admit as true, there is little chance of mass organisation leading to material change.

The point though is the material change.

Is it? Do you mean wealth redistribution? Or do you mean the abolition of capital? The latter is surely not a material change, since capital is not a material thing.

On the centrality of the need to "challenge the ideology" of neo-liberalism I completely agree, but of course a challenge to ideology can only take place at the level of ideas, which is to say inside people's minds.

And if you really want to raise an effective challenge to neo-liberal ideology, you will need to do a lot of things that I suspect you may not want to do. You will for instance need to address the problem of Darwinism. At the very least you will need to correct the gross misunderstanding of Darwinism currently being propagated by Dawkins et al.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Phil, if you're going to start on about that again, I'm going to start on about the importance of source-separating toilets.

I mean yeah, I see the point, but I think it's an extremely theoretical one in the general scheme of things. You aren't going to unpick the entirety of western thought since Darwin and you absolutely don't need to in order to make useful progress in challenging the neo-liberal consensus.

 

[phildwyer]

Phil, if you're going to start on about that again, I'm going to start on about the importance of source-separating toilets.

Point taken. But you must admit that pro-capitalists love to argue that competition is a natural and thus ineradicable part of human nature, and that they usually do this with some sort of ignorant gesture towards Darwinism.

Bon, c'est tout.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Sure, like I say, I do get your point. I just think it isn't likely to be a productive angle of attack, as you've seen here when you've raised it. 90% of the people who hear you say that are going to think you're pushing creationist propaganda. I don't think the way to take on the neo-liberal version of 'common sense' is by going back to first principles and unpicking it from there. Only academics are going to have the patience for that.

I think the way to attack it is much more likely to be in the context of issues that have a more direct impact.

e.g. 'Where the fuck did my pension go?', 'Why is our local library closing?', 'Why can't my kid get a job?' etc.

 

[phildwyer]

I mean yeah, I see the point, but I think it's an extremely theoretical one in the general scheme of things. You aren't going to unpick the entirety of western thought since Darwin and you absolutely don't need to in order to make useful progress in challenging the neo-liberal consensus.

I replied before you edited. I believe that you underestimate the ideological power of the complicity between capitalism and "science." I believe it is precisely that complicity that makes neo-liberal economics appear natural and inevitable to the popular mind.

I wish I were as optimistic as you about the ease with which the neo-liberal consensus can be challenged. But I'm not. I think any such challenge must move very far beyond the sphere of "economics." In fact I think it must begin by attacking the very concept of "economics," by showing the complicity between "economics" and such allegedly separate discursive spheres such as "science."

 

[brasicritique]

*wipes spittle from screen*

mine or pandas you and yours you prick

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I replied before you edited. I believe that you underestimate the ideological power of the complicity between capitalism and "science." I believe it is precisely that complicity that makes neo-liberal economics appear natural and inevitable to the popular mind.

I wish I were as optimistic as you about the ease with which the neo-liberal consensus can be challenged. But I'm not. I think any such challenge must move very far beyond the sphere of "economics." In fact I think it must begin by attacking the very concept of "economics," by showing the complicity between "economics" and such allegedly separate discursive spheres such as "science."

Well, if you can come up with a practical way of doing it, I'd be interested to hear about it. I don't necessarily claim it'd be easy to do by whatever route, but I think it's absolutely necessary to challenge the neo-liberal version of 'common sense' that people have been pumped full of for the last 30 years. I just think you need to do it in terms that link issues of pressing concern like jobs, pensions, hospitals and stuff to specific challenges to key aspects of the neo-liberal consensus. So you need to, for example, challenge the idea that it's either the 'market or the gulag' with absolutely no other possible choices, directly in terms of people's pressing concerns, not by building some elaborate cricial analysis only academics might read.

I grant you that your notion might work a bit better in the US, where there's already a large degree of anti-darwin propaganda out there to work off, but in the UK that stuff just sounds like religious weirdness, which most people think indicates feeble-mindedness.

 

[phildwyer]

Sure, like I say, I do get your point. I just think it isn't likely to be a productive angle of attack, as you've seen here when you've raised it. 90% of the people who hear you say that are going to think you're pushing creationist propaganda. I don't think the way to take on the neo-liberal version of 'common sense' is by going back to first principles and unpicking it from there. Only academics are going to have the patience for that.

In the West, maybe. But concentrations of capital are moving away from the West, towards societies which seem likely to prove more sympathetic to critiques of "science," because the scientific method has never been accepted by the general populations. Furthermore such societies feature extremely ancient and profoundly engrained habits of thought that are absolutely antithetical to capitalism.

At present the capitalists appear to believe that these peoples will simply jettison Buddha and Confucius as soon as they can get their hands on a Tata or i-pod, much as the West jettisoned Christianity at the dawn of the capitalist era. They forget that the civilizations of India and China are far older and more culturally continuous than the Barbarity of the West, and for that reason seem likely to prove harder to destroy.

 

[DotCommunist]

mine or pandas you and yours you prick

you've mastered the using of other peoples phrases, now you must graduate to actual substance over spittle

 

[ViolentPanda]

who the fuck do you think you are get the ego on you when you do the same or even post on the topic the thread is about instead of just making lame flaming then maybe instaed all we ever get is panda self appointed urban political policeman (do you chnage uniforms for this )

Right, so you've got nothing to back up your repeated claims, then, or you wouldn't be going all-out with the bullshit.
As I suspected.

neither do most other posters so so what and looking at your hipocritical conduct i doubt anypone would want to know or give a shit tbh

Then why make an issue of it, unless you're an idiot who's got nothing better to do or say?

it says that i think your tags line is shit as imo most people on these boards would not hug nazis but dont feel the need to tell the world about it in order to make up for what they lack

Yeah, whatever, brasic.

piss poor come back as usual

So you say, but then you would, wouldn't you?

Tell dotcom and hipocrical kyser given that they were clearly talking shit no suprise you the shit lover has had to come to there aid btw i doubt either he or you have read Nye Bevan and the mirage of socialism

I'd reply to that sentence if it made any sense, but it's even more fucked up than the usual crap you puke up.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

In the West, maybe. But concentrations of capital are moving away from the West, towards societies which seem likely to prove more sympathetic to critiques of "science," because the scientific method has never been accepted by the general populations. Furthermore such societies feature extremely ancient and profoundly engrained habits of thought that are absolutely antithetical to capitalism.

At present the capitalists appear to believe that these peoples will simply jettison Buddha and Confucius as soon as they can get their hands on a Tata or i-pod, much as the West jettisoned Christianity at the dawn of the capitalist era. They forget that the civilizations of India and China are far older and more culturally continuous than the Barbarity of the West, and for that reason seem likely to prove harder to destroy.

In terms of other countries, one thing that I find myself wondering is whether there's a way to work the linkage between primitive accumulation elsewhere and the various kinds of accumulation by dispossession we're being exposed to here, privatisation, financialisation, the debt trap that's being sprung etc. I mean, I know there's stuff like the World Social Forum, and there was pre-911 quite a bit of interesting stuff happening on the streets in places like Seattle, although obviously the forces of repression have figured out how to suppress the populist side of that since the 'war on terr' got started.

 

[ViolentPanda]

yeh really your one sick snide self obessed oaf going back to the old 'brasic is a nazi smear' you fat useless pile of shit

Did I call you a "nazi"?
Nope, I made a joke about your having written "stoped".
If you're enough of a fool to take my saying that I reckon you might want nino to become a eugenicist as me calling you a nazi, you've got to be even dumber than I thought.

Oh, and nice to see you're so articulate and able to argue that you have to resort to name-calling and acting the internet hardman. Well done, tough-guy. You'd be amusing if you weren't quite such a sad case.