What is money?

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This is a piece we wrote for the SPGB’s summer school. The concluding sentence our regular readers will perhaps recognise, but it seems to us too good not to use at least twice.

The blind men and the elephant

What is money? As with pretty much everything else in the social sciences, you’ll get different answers depending on whom you ask. Societies are, after all, massively complex things, moved by human intention and will as much as by any other force, which makes them tricky things to analyse scientifically. Much heat, and occasionally some light, is generated by the conflict between the rival theories. Sometimes, of course, one theory will be contradicted by another, and one will be right and one wrong – which is which will be determined by an appeal to the facts. More often, in social science anyway, it will be a case of blind men feeling an elephant. If one blind man insists that the essence of elephants is trunkiness, and another tuskiness, and another thick-leggedness, then stepping back and taking a broader perspective, rather than choosing between them, will yield something closer to the truth.

Different theories of money are probably more like the blind men than they are like natural science. If they could be discriminated between on the basis of an appeal to the facts, then that would have happened long ago. It doesn’t matter then, for the purposes of my argument here, which theory of money one uses. I could have used any and come to the same result. But for novelty and variety, I have gone with one I hope Marxists will be less familiar with and hence find interesting.

A theory

Money, according to a theory with a long heritage but that came back into fashion in the wake of the financial crash of 2008, is a token issued by the state with the purpose of coercing work out of its population. How would that work? To answer that, let’s consider how money as we know it today might have originated. (The following story is not meant to be taken too literally as a historical account, but it probably captures something of the character of what really did happen.)

Once upon a time, there was a society without much in the way of money. Peasant communities produced directly for their own needs, and perhaps traded surpluses occasionally with nearby communities. For the purposes of trade, perhaps something like money had evolved as a convenience. But it played a peripheral role. Society was not organised around it. Then, one day, as happened now and then, the King decided to wage war with some other king, and an army was raised. This, as always, presented the state with a problem. To stand a chance of winning the war, the state had to keep the army on its feet, well fed and watered and sufficiently rested, and provided with all its other needs, bodily and military and spiritual, and this presented the state with an enormous economic calculation problem. Just how much food should be produced, and when, and distributed how? What spares and tools should be carried on the journey? How many horses, and how much feed will they require? Think about it even for a while and you’ll see that, even in a relatively simple feudal peasant society, the problems would not just be large – but intractable. The King had an idea. Perhaps he and his team of state advisers didn’t need to solve the problem at all. All they had to do was tax the peasants.

How would that work? All the state had to do to solve its economic problem was pay its soldiers in state-issued tokens, and impose a community-wide tax, to be paid only in state-issued tokens. The peasants, as we have seen, did not have much dealings with money at all, and none anyway in state-issued tokens. The state refuses to accept payment in kind or in any other kinds of money. What, then, is a peasant to do? What else but figure out ways of getting the soldiers’ tokens out of their hands and into their own? Figure out what it is soldiers need, then provide them with it in exchange for the tokens. The soldiers get their needs provisioned by the population. The peasants get their tax money and give it back to the state. The state has, merely by throwing bits of paper into circulation, coerced the population into stopping economic activity directly for its own needs and producing instead for the state. Magic. The magic, in fact, of the free market – of the Invisible Hand.

What follows?

If this theory captures something of the truth of money, and it surely does, then certain consequences follow. Social scientists working with this “modern monetary theory” have ideas about the implications for the working of modern economies. But for our purposes, it will be more interesting to consider what the consequences are for those socialists and communists who argue that modern society could do without money. Our sketch above helps throw some light on the arguments of those who say that it could and should, and those who say it’s impossible.

Those who say it’s impossible look at the role of the King and his state, and see just how much more intractable the problem of economic calculation has become in modern societies. To take just a few of an infinitely sprouting set of questions, how much energy need be produced to mine the gold for use in the army’s GPS equipment? And what would be the most efficient energy source for that mine? And might that gold not be better put to use in the aerospace industry? And so on ad infinitum. Money is the means by which society answers these questions and it can’t do without it.

Those who look forward to a moneyless society, on the other hand, just read the story backwards. What about those previous peasant communities that got along perfectly well producing directly for need and without much use for money? Had they not been perfectly happy and relatively prosperous before the King came along with his magic tokens? Could we not, now, do likewise? The claim that we could must take one of two options. Either the argument is that we could go back to some kind of simple peasant arrangement, directly producing for need. Or that we could keep the King’s army (ie, modern industrial economies) on the road, but without monetary incentive or state coercion, simply by doing all the work necessary for free, including the work of figuring out – by trial and error, and by means other than money, perhaps less efficient means – how to make economic decisions.

For those who argue that a moneyless modern society is impossible, both those options strike them as ludicrously unfeasible. Socialists and communists on the whole tend to agree with them that the first option is indeed unfeasible, so argue instead for the second. But if the second option strikes most people as unfeasible, then perhaps it’s not too hard to see why. The argument is that it is possible, within our lifetime, to create a society where a majority of its members fully understand and agree with the necessity of keeping the King’s army on the road, and selflessly agree to work, perhaps very hard, towards that end, without direct or selfish incentive. They would set the alarm at 6am in order to be at the factory gates (or office doors) on time for the orderly functioning of the economy, not because they are economically coerced into it, but out of their own free choice and will. That non-socialists find this improbable is hardly to be wondered at. But I wonder whether socialists have given it the full consideration it demands. If you agree, as I do, that such a societal arrangement is indeed possible, it has some direct political and ethical implications.

Breaking the spell

At the present time, we all work under the spell of magic pieces of paper, inscribed with runes and icons, and devote most of our energies every day to looking after Number One – an activity that comes naturally to us and, by the magic of the Invisible Hand previously described, keeps the King’s army on the road too as a bonus. How is it possible to break this spell? Socialists and communists have tended to answer that question in mystical and religious terms. “Material forces” are working in our direction, it is claimed. Technology will save us. It will all come right after the Rapture, the Revolution, say the Millenarians. Those of a more pragmatic, earth-bound frame of mind will see through all this. External material considerations are of course important up to a point, but for the vast majority of us living in the rich countries, at least, that point was reached long ago. The idea that technology will save us is a feeble capitalist myth that socialists should know better than to fall for. As for the Rapture, the pragmatic know full well that tomorrow never comes. Think of the wise barman who had “Free drinks tomorrow!” written above the bar.

No, if you are labouring under a spell of delusion, there is only one way to dispel it, and that is through your own hard work. If you know deep within yourself that a society of goodwill and peace is possible, where people work freely and with good cheer for the common good for no other reason than that is necessary for the prosperity and health of us all, then there is only one thing to do and that is to live your life in accordance with that truth. That does not of course mean refusing your pay cheque. Socialists have to be practical. But they also have to be good propagandists for the cause. Anyone who has been a socialist for even a year or two will surely realise by now that propaganda by the word is, roughly, useless. Talk is cheap and everyone knows it. But propaganda by deed has a power beyond the magic of money. The socialist political project goes much deeper than ideology and party-building. It involves a deep reformation of individual character, a commitment to doing good works in a spirit of comradeship and charity, to care for one’s neighbour as much as oneself. Out of such commitment, it’s feasible that the necessary political and economic changes will come. What is not feasible is that it will happen the other way about.

Socialists have long said that socialism is not just a nice idea, but is a practical possibility. But too many of those who say that only entertain “practical possibility” as itself a nice idea. Socialism is indeed a practical project – but it begins with us, today, in the work we do and the attitude with which we do it. As Maya Angelou said, nothing will work unless you do.

Nothing will work unless you do

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Back when I was last active in political circles, for a period of a couple of years that ended about 18 months ago, I used to warn some of my most enthusiastic comrades about the dangers of burnout. Little did I realise that that was soon to prove a case of the pot warning the kettle about its tendency to turn black. Not long after pouring my wonderful wisdom into their patient ears, I burned out myself. I quit the party I (and my partner and many others) had helped to found, and returned (as activists often say, with a suitable note of criticism and disapproval) to private life. I did not plan to reemerge.

And I did not change my mind either, except by accident. The universe conspired against me. Just before I joined Left Unity, I had decided to join the Labour Party with a view to contributing to Ed Miliband’s efforts to become prime minister. Just as I was about to sign up, however, a letter appeared in The Guardian that changed my mind. Perhaps a more radical alternative to Labour was worth one more shot? It was certainly more in keeping with the politics I was used to. OK, then, one more shot it was – but it had better not disappoint me, or that was that, I was out of there.

That is, of course, a stupid attitude with which to engage with anything, and one that no party, or indeed any collection of human beings, could fail sooner or later to rub up the wrong way. Eventually, after two years of mostly rewarding and enjoyable work, the dissatisfactions began to weigh more heavily on my mind. A straw broke the camel’s back (I can’t even remember what the straw was). I quit. When asked why I had left the party I had spent a good few years of hard work building up, I had no better answer than, I just wanted to. You can always find a more reasonable justification for joining or leaving anything if you put your mind to it, but really it rarely or truly amounts to much more than a desire that that is what one wants to do. I joined because I wanted to; I left because I wanted to. And I wanted to because I’d burned out.

Anyone with a God’s eye view of my life and levels of activity might raise an eyebrow at that. It was not like I was a Mother Teresa or Ghandi figure, with no time to myself, dedicating every last scrap of spare time to serving the cause, let alone lifting a finger for anyone in real need. But the comparison is an apt one. Burnout is not connected so much with the quantity of work you do, but the quality and one’s attitude to it. If you are doing work that you know deep in your soul is worth doing, that it is noble to do, then you can keep going for ever. You’ll find resources deep in yourself you never knew you even had. If, on the other hand, you’re in the midst of writing letters and minutes of meetings and reports and replying to correspondence and so on and so on, and you look up from the work you’re doing and the whole day has passed by, and you say to yourself, “What the fuck am I doing?”, and you can’t answer that, then burnout has begun. It sounds like a joke, but it’s a true story: someone we knew was a hyper-activist who lived near by and he would write letters as secretary of one campaign group to another campaign group requesting affiliation and support, and he would get the letter, as secretary of that campaign group, and write himself a reply. Life of Brian has nothing on the reality of life on the left.

So, anyway, I quit, and months and months of “private life” went by. With the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, I raised my weary eyebrows, and tried to join the Labour Party so I could vote for him. I could do that at least. And when he became leader, I joined the party so I could bung him a few quid. I could do that at least. But that was about the limit of the activity I could bring myself to.

Then, out of the blue, just last week, an old comrade contacted us and asked if we wanted to go to a Labour Party meeting. I said yes and I’ll be honest about why. It would be nice to see old friends again of course. But I also thought it would satisfy a curiosity about how the Labour Party worked and what its members were like. I thought that once I’d had a look at how it worked, and slipped out of the meeting early, I could roll my eyes, declare my suspicions correct about how shit everything is, and, once again, retire to private life, having satisfied myself that at least I’d “done my bit” and at least I was giving Jeremy my couple of quid every month, and that was something.

I’m happy to report that the meeting had quite the opposite effect on me. Now, as I’m sure anyone at the meeting could confirm, this could not be because of any particular or intrinsic interest the meeting itself held. I mean no criticism to anyone, but it was just as you might expect: pretty dull, dealing with uninteresting matters of party business and organisation and campaigns, spilling over into the odd personal and/or political feud. I said nothing, just raising my hand occasionally to vote for the most-left alternative wherever there was one, listening as intelligent and eloquent and committed campaigners got to their feet to put their points of view and argue their corner. But I felt so happy! After an 18 month hiatus, it was like I’d come home. I was back where I belonged: in the back room of a bar, with like-minded and committed people of all ages struggling to get their voices heard over the juke box next door, arguing the toss about the issues of the day and how to get our point of view over and our politics in power. Did I say the meeting was dull? Well, if so, this is the kind of dullness that blood was spilt for. The right of ordinary people of no property to meet together and discuss issues of mutual concern and seek to put things right – our ancestors were struck down with swords or shot dead for trying it. Dullness is our victory. Dullness is thrilling when you can see it right, when you know your history and your current affairs.

It is actually a very satisfying experience to be politically active. We live in a democracy and, because most of us were brought up in one, when the battles to win it were over (at least apparently), we take it for granted. And because our democracy has been hollowed out and largely taken over by elites, it seems reasonable to turn out backs on it. But it’s not reasonable. It’s wrong. Our ancestors paid in blood and with their very lives for the freedoms we take for granted. Around the world, people are still paying in blood and with their lives for the freedoms we take for granted. When we take them for granted, we betray them – and we help create a hell for our children tomorrow. We live in a democracy, and it is our duty to participate in it – to defend it, to make it work, to extend it.

I don’t say that to guilt-trip people into coming to boring meetings. There are many ways to participate in a democracy, from using your vote to trying to understand the issues to joining a party or a union to going on a demo or signing a petition and so on and so on. People are different and at different times in their lives will want to participate in differing ways. That’s fine. But your participation on some level is a matter that deserves your serious consideration. One of the things I learnt at my recent party meeting – something I had learned before, from experience and from Chomsky, but had forgotten – is that participating in collective decision making is the only way to become really informed about what’s going on in the world. You only need go along to one public meeting to understand that you can learn precisely nothing about what is really going on in this world by reading newspapers or watching the news – not even the very best papers or programmes. This is because newspapers and news programmes are essentially entertainment – they’re trying to tell interesting, arresting stories to people who are about to reach for the remote control. But the issues on which their trivial stories are based are serious – deadly serious, in so many instances. Listening to well-informed people try to share their knowledge about these issue may be “dull” by the standards of cheap media entertainment. But they will nourish your mind and soul like nothing else. It’s the difference between a good home-cooked meal and junk food.

Many people, when they hear you are political, will tell you that they share your disgust with what’s going on in the world, but are at a genuine loss for what to do about it. But the answer couldn’t be more simple. Wherever you are in the world, just have a look around. It won’t take long before you find some issue that needs your attention, and a group of people who are trying to do something about it. Just turn up. Join the movement. Do your bit. Out of duty? Well, yes, it is your duty. But it can be a whole lot of fun too. As Maya Angelou said, nothing will work unless you do.

Ignoring Chaucer

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A guest post by Stan Silver, author of a new book available now from Pegasus.

For more than six hundred years, a key passage in Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale has defied all attempts to interpret it. Near the opening of the tale, the Merchant seems to flatly contradict himself. Moments after saying that his own wife and two-month-old marriage are unspeakably awful, he delivers what is generally known as the “encomium on marriage”. Bewilderingly, this lengthy digression contains an absolute paeon of praise for the institution of marriage, although – to add to the confusion – it also includes a couple of caustic anti-matrimonial jokes. In my book, I hope to show that I have definitively solved this mystery.

My central argument is that Chaucer has left numerous textual clues to the hidden meaning of the encomium. This claim is the first step in a chain of argument, which works as follows. If these supposed clues are used to interpret the passage, its basic meaning becomes clear for the first time. Also, a strong thematic link with the rest of the tale emerges, where no connection whatever was visible before. And finally, this baffling passage – which has often been regarded as ill-conceived, botched or unfinished – is revealed to be a miniature literary masterpiece, profound and moving, and many centuries ahead of its time in both conception and technique. The veracity of all these claims can be confirmed by reading the essay containing my interpretation.

All of which would seem to indicate, both that Chaucer did leave textual clues of the kind described above, and also that the interpretation presented in my essay must represent something very close to the hidden meaning he intended those clues to reveal.

So what do Chaucerians make of such claims?

When essays on Chaucer’s work are submitted to literary journals, their editors employ professional “Chaucerians” as “readers” to produce reports recommending for or against publication. I’ve submitted numerous different versions of my essay to these journals over a period of very many years, and in all that time not one reader has ever so much as acknowledged the existence of my claim that Chaucer left textual clues of the kind I’ve described above – in fact, they seem to take the greatest care to avoid all mention of it. They are equally evasive regarding my interpretation as a whole.

Now why, one is bound to wonder, should people who devote their lives to interpreting Chaucer’s work choose to display no interest whatever in the meaning of a key passage in one of his greatest works? How, in particular, can they flatly disregard the claim that the encomium contains clues that reveal the precise intentions regarding the meaning of this important passage of the man on whose work their entire professional life depends?

The reader may wonder what their reports do contain. Well, there are quite a number of allegations of insufficient respect displayed towards particular Chaucerian authority-figures; frequent complaints about my methodology and presentation; numerous attacks directed against carefully isolated – and therefore virtually meaningless – snippets of my argument; and countless other evasive devices. Since there is no discussion of my interpretation as a meaningful whole, there is naturally no mention of the revelations that come with it.

So it would seem that the question of whether I’ve succeeded in solving this long-standing mystery by following the poet’s own carefully-laid clues is a matter of little or no importance to professional Chaucerians. Other considerations always supervene. Not long ago, the reader for one journal, after having had the grace, for once, to concede, “It should be published”, immediately added, “but not, I think, in this journal”. Such a ploy seems to me to offer a glimpse of the fear of breaking ranks which I believe rules the hearts of Chaucerians and finds expression in a steely resolve never to publish any criticism so utterly different from their own, in almost every respect, as mine.

Viewed as an achievement, discovering the meaning of the encomium is not specially impressive. It should have happened long ago. But it is an extremely important – indeed a historic – literary event. Happily, that event can now be revealed to the public, in my book, Ignoring Chaucer, which contains my essay and examines the Chaucerians’ response both to it and to the encomium itself. I hope that many members of the wider public will enjoy reading it. I can’t imagine that many specialist readers will.

Brexit? No thanks! Better the Devil you know

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That there is a lot wrong with the European Union is not in doubt. It has morphed into a lumbering, hubristic leviathan before our very eyes, often displaying the kind of staggering incompetence, not to mention cruelty and abuse of power, associated with empires that have grown too quickly; losing touch not only with reality, but most importantly with its people, as it shambles along in a delusive bubble of its own creation. But it was not always like this.

A potted history of the EU

Back in the eighties, it was a no-brainer that Britain should be a part of the nascent European project. That the Labour Party dared to advocate withdrawal from the EEC in its 1983 ‘suicide note’ was deemed to be further proof that Mrs Thatcher’s Conservatives were the only competent party to be trusted with the economy. It is now often forgotten that it was Mrs Thatcher (later to succumb to Euroscepticism) who signed the Single Market Act in 1985 – giving us the free movement of capital and people, a neoliberal nirvana. Only a few years later John Major followed up with the Maastricht treaty, which drew out some of the political implications of the ongoing process of the union of European nations, and then took us into what turned into the disaster of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). The ever-expanding EU project culminated in the creation of the single currency – something now widely credited with much of Europe’s economic woes. Euroscepticism grew in tandem with the expansion. The European project was growing too fast, said the sceptics, and Britain risked losing what was left of its sovereignty – we were sleepwalking into a ‘superstate’. Even from the very start of the creation of the EU, the Tories had had their naysayers – its right-wingers, who cloaked their ideological objections in an economic rationale. This struck a chord with their doubles on the left who were doing the same thing. These ideologues patiently bided their time as, over the decades, the fantastic success of what is now called the EU slipped into its opposite – vindication of the naysayers’ warnings, at least in their eyes.

Britain was always something of a reluctant partner in this project. It wanted to have its cake and eat it too. After the decline and fall of its empire, Britain was caught following the second world war between the rise of the new superpower, the USA, and the formation of the European power bloc. The former imperial power naturally wanted to retain power and influence in a changing world – but what compromises should it make with rising greater powers, and with which ones? Straightaway we see that worries about the loss of ‘sovereignty’, voiced by the likes of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, is at least situated by history. But if it was all as simple as they like to make out, why did Johnson only convert to Brexit after David Cameron’s apparent failure to secure suitable reforms? It’s not as if those reforms were ever going to deliver the kind of sovereignty wished for. Brexiteers argue that, with full sovereignty restored, Britain would be free to do trade deals with all four corners of the globe, but what sort of trade deals would the likes of Johnson and Farage sign us up to? Presumably, ones without the socio-economic protections of the EU – arguably good for businesses, or at least for some of them, but what kind of boon for democracy and ‘sovereignty’ would it represent for the mass of the population? One that is hard to discern, we would wager.

It’s not the economy, stupid

You can argue the toss about the economic trade-offs. As far as it is possible to tell, the boring reality is that the purely economic costs or benefits will probably be marginal either way. The whole question is more a political one. As Paul Mason points out, there are good arguments for wanting to exit the EU, but that doesn’t mean you should actually vote for Brexit. Why? Two words: Boris Johnson. Vote Brexit, get a resurgent Tory right, which will dominate the next period of British politics, and which will use the referendum win as a mandate to pursue ever more extreme Thatcherite polices. It is all very well voting to ‘get your country back’, but you won’t get it back – you’re handing it to the Tory right.

There’s a small ‘c’ conservative argument for staying, too, in that we are gambling with uncertain and potentially big upheavals for at best marginal economic gains. The terms of the withdrawal that Britain will win from the EU are by no means clear at this stage, but could conceivably be punitive – the EU will want to discourage other countries with similar ideas. Britain will want a continuing relationship with Europe, particularly access to the single market – and Europe will to an extent surely want that too. Britain is still one of the biggest and richest economies in the world. But given Britain’s current (at least apparent) hostility to migration and regulation and other conditions imposed by Brussels, how will this be achieved? The devil will of course be in the detail. But this is the real point. Brexiteers are pursuing an ideological agenda, the implications and real consequences of which they cannot be sure of. They are dangerous radicals, not conservatives. They want the benefits of EU membership without the costs. They are not really conservatives at all but have a petit–bourgeois spiv mentality.

Don’t let’s divorce or kick out the kids, let’s talk

Let’s return to the sovereignty question, as this would seem to be something of a trump card for Brexiteers of left and right. It can be seen for the myth it is with an analogy. When an individual decides to get married, they cede a large portion of their personal sovereignty with another person who is doing likewise. Both parties pool sovereignty: what they lose in one aspect, they gain in another. This is only apparently a loss, from a limited and selfish point of view. Actually, the apparent loss is a real gain: both individuals are strengthened by the partnership – the ‘individual’ has been transformed into a higher synthesis. At this point, it would be stupid and counterproductive to continue to insist on your individual rights. All that would do would be to threaten the higher synthesis. You’ll end up back on your own again, back where you started, having gained nothing. As The Economist likes to point out, full sovereignty is not obviously something to be wished for. Nowhere on earth is more sovereign and independent than North Korea.

What would we want this much-prized sovereignty for? The Brexiteers top trump, at least when it comes to connecting with a disaffected populace, is: to control our borders. The UK has entered an arrangement which nominally cedes border control for the right of access to other countries. The Brexiteers’ big beef is that more people in the other countries appear to have taken advantage of this to come here than people in the UK have to go there. This is a partial and hence misleading truth. What has really been happening is that the UK economy has been sucking in some of the most able workers from other EU countries and exploiting them in our more-flexible and hence cheaper labour markets. This has been made possible because of the near collapse of the ‘wage’ following 30 years of Thatcherism. Many indigenous Brits cannot afford to live on the wage a job offers without relying on a relatively generous (soon to be taken away) system of benefits. That this has been a boon to UK business (if not to its workers) is not in doubt. The UK has expanded its economy by raiding poorer countries’ labour forces, at the expense of our own, whilst at the same time having the chutzpah to claim that these very same people are clogging up our hospitals and social services – institutions that are, ironically, most often built and staffed by those very same immigrants.

Increased migration was an inevitable consequence of neoliberalism. This is the economy Thatcher and her successors built – a globalised, neoliberal, free-market utopia – and it explains why large sections of the business community still support EU membership, albeit through gritted teeth. But rather than accepting this reality, the likes of Johnson and Farage want to go a step further. For them, the EU stands in opposition to the kind of neoliberalism they want to see. When they bemoan the EU’s ‘regulations’ and ‘red tape’ what they are tacitly acknowledging are the remains of the social democratic settlement that followed in the wake of the second world war. This settlement was a compromise that recognised the rights of ordinary working people to such things as health, education, housing and a decent wage, if in return working people would recognise the rights of businesses to ply their trade in search of profits. This compromise, now thinned out, still underpins the Single Market, and the likes of Farage and Johnson want to get rid of what remains. The rest of the ‘red tape’ constitutes the legal framework required to underpin any free trading agreement – costs big businesses are happy to take on, but which can be an intolerable burden to smaller ones (a reason in itself why big businesses are happy to take them on). So when the Brexiteers light a bonfire under EU red tape, we can assume that any new such arrangements they come up with will be just as bureaucratic and costly (if not more so, minus the social protections we currently enjoy). What kind of free-trading paradise would you expect when when a desperate UK led by the blonde opportunist starts renegotiating our trading position with the likes of Trump or authoritarian states such as China?

Bigger dreams

At least some of the Brexit people have bigger dreams. They believe that a referendum victory will lead to a series of referendums in other EU states, thereby destroying the EU leviathan by stealth and turning Europe into a group of free associating and freely trading democractic nations – a kind of anarcho-capitalism, in fact. This is almost certainly a dangerous illusion and makes Cameron’s overheated warnings about world war seem all the more plausible. As the Remainers rhetorically point out, about the only foreign power praying for Brexit is Vladimir Putin – there’s nothing that would suit his geopolitical strategy more than the break-up of the power blocs currently frustrating his ambitions. This is not to say that there will be chaotic break up and war in the event of Brexit – but given the uncertainties, and the continent’s still recent history, conservative caution would seem sensible. There’s nothing very wrong with utopian dreaming, but beware the fanatics who are in a rush to impose their vision on a recalcitrant reality. Afghanistan and Iraq provide sobering lessons for those who are in a hurry to engage in utopian state-destruction and social engineering. The hope there was that ‘liberal democracy’ would spontaneously emerge from the rubble; what we actually saw was tribalism, sectarianism and corruption, to mention nothing worse, emerging in the power vacuum of these failed states. Utopian Brexiteers, whether of the free trading or socialist variety, should be careful what they wish for.

The EU does of course need to change, and the best way for progressive forces to help bring about democratic change is for Britain to remain a member. Being outside will leave us with no control over events occurring on our doorstep and will not return any meaningful sovereignty. Warnings from the likes of the Bank of England and the IMF should be heeded. The only likely result of a win for the Brexit campaign is a carnival of reaction in this country – and perhaps worse in the countries on our borders. That many people want to leave the EU is entirely understandable, however. The EU needs to wake up to the simple fact that its current course is unsustainable. Let’s hope the UK’s referendum goes the right way – for Remain – but that the EU learns a lesson from all the millions of ordinary people who are clamouring for the exits.

The embarrassing non sequitur of death – and a silent rebellion

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“It seemed that episcopal authority had now triumphed in the Church. But worshippers at the Eucharist, seeing the bishop seated before them with his presbyters, might be aware that there was an alternative source of power and spirituality in the Church: an institution which had only gradually emerged during the third century [monasticism]. The closer the Church came to society, the more obvious were the tensions with some of its founder’s messages about the rejection of convention and the abandonment of worldly wealth. Human societies are based on the human tendency to want things, and are geared to satisfying those wants: possessions or facilities to bring ease and personal satisfaction. The results are frequently disappointing, and always terminate in the embarrassing non sequitur of death. It is not surprising that many have sought a radical alternative, a mode of life which is in itself a criticism of ordinary society. Worldy goods, cravings and self-centred personal priorities are to be avoided so that their accompanying frustrations and failures can be transcended. The assumption is that such transcendence has a goal beyond the human life span, the goal which some term God […] The Church might well have seen [the] silent rebellion [of those who lived this life] as a threat […] because […] simply by their style of life, they denied the whole basis on which the Church had come to be organised. ”

Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity

In defence of Hitler

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Once upon a time, “political correctness” was, more or less, a matter of manners, politeness. Government policies pursued by both Labour and Conservative governments meant that there were many more of our brown-skinned brothers and sisters from overseas living among us than we had ever before been used to, and this could be an unsettling experience – especially as the costs of the changes were, of course, imposed without consultation on the white working class, a section of society that was once honoured, it seems strange to remember now. Given this new reality, it was a simple matter of common decency to begin to insist that we treat our new neighbours with the kindness and respect we might hope to be treated with ourselves and address them as they might wish to be addressed. Our society was, at least in the letter, once based on this great moral teaching – again, it seems strange to remember that now.

People who resented being reminded of the basics of ethical behaviour, or who had built up an identity for themselves, and hence got their own self-respect, out of their hatred for others, put up a fight against this. Before long, not only were they expected not to use hateful terms of abuse against humans with different skin colours to them, but also to extend similar courtesies to those who had chosen different lifestyles, or expressed their sexuality in different ways, or who demanded equal treatment before the law, equal opportunity in the social and political structure, and so on. This was “political correctness gone mad”. There was of course nothing particularly mad about it, and the howls of protest said more about those protesting than those protested against.

Now, however, political correctness really has gone mad. If you’re old enough, you might remember that one of the visible figureheads of “political correctness gone mad” was “Red Ken” Livingstone – a dangerous fanatic who has over his career proved reasonably adept at seizing power from those it truly belongs to by the despicable political manoeuvring known as winning elections. Love him or loathe him, it’s hard to deny that he has always been a politician who speaks his mind, often without tact, and is therefore ill at ease in the modern political environment where politicians’ interviews and commentary are expected to be about as enlightening as those of Premier League footballers. Ken Livingstone has always been “off message”. From his days as leader of the Greater London Council, right up to his return as mayor of London, controversy has never been far away. Given all this, it may surprise you to have learnt, if you are unwise enough as we sometimes are to follow media commentary, that Red Ken is not a veteran of the struggle for political correctness after all, but a secret fascist who empathised with the Nazi’s aim of mass extermination of the Jewish people.

If this is a surprise to you, and you think that on first principles there must be some kind of mistake, then don’t worry – turn to that very same media commentary and you will find plenty of people who have been so highly educated that they will believe and try to convince you of just about anything. Ken said something that is, in broad terms, true. But truths can be inconvenient, even painful. Those who are committed, therefore, not to truth, but to narrow political advantage, turn to a modern-day political weapon: political correctness gone mad. This is where you launch mob violence, or the threat of it, or legal violence, or the threat of it, against anyone who says something you don’t like. The current war against Ken, and against the supposed anti-Semitism in the Labour party, is nothing other than a vile slander used as a weapon in the ongoing battle for control of the Labour Party. The Blairites have still not come to terms with the Corbyn leadership with which Ken Livingstone is associated, and this is how they attack. It ain’t pretty. As Norman Finkelstein says in the interview linked to previously, suggesting that Ken’s comments are an apology for the Nazi genocide is an insult of a far greater magnitude than anything that can be drawn from Ken’s own comments.

One of the arguments often advanced against Ken is that it is absolutely illegitimate to compare what modern democratic states think and do (particularly that of Israel) with what Hitler thought and did. Why? Simply because it is a painful and inconvenient truth that we in the West tend to agree with Hitler on many issues, and we would like to deny it. We agree that it’s right to invade countries and murder the populations, if some kind of political or economic justification can be found. We agree that some human beings are worth more than others, and that the rest can for all we care be rounded up into concentration camps (though we don’t call them that anymore). We agree that some expressions of religious belief are so troublesome that to kill those that hold them would be the best policy. We often agree that democracy is an inefficient and corrupt business, and a strong leader would be preferable. We agree with all this, but don’t want to be reminded that they are the views of one of the greatest monsters of recent historical time. If the principles applied at the Nuremburg trials were applied consistently, then every post-war American president would be hanged, as Chomsky points out. But when people hear Chomsky’s arguments, particularly those educated types before referred to whose job is to convince the public that Ken is a Nazi, what do they do? Listen carefully then worry about what it means for those of us who bear the responsibility, who are a part of Western political life? Or attack Chomsky for defending Hitler? Do some Googling and you’ll find the answer.

In the case of Chomsky and Ken, political correctness as a tool of mob violence is in the hands of the right against the left, and it is despicable. But it is no less despicable when the boot is on the other foot, as it has been so often in recent times. We can’t talk about the wearing of the veil in societies with liberal values without being called Islamophobic. We can’t wonder whether patriarchy might not have gone mad when men dictate to women and feminists what it means to be a woman, and shut down the debate when they don’t like what is said. We can’t wonder about how to manage the difficulties that come with open borders, or how to challenge the racist fear and loathing our society directs against the white working class, without being called racist. We can’t oppose the idea of quotas for women on boards and committees in social institutions without being screamed at for being women-hating fascists.

It may seem very silly, and for the most part, it just is. But it reflects something more serious. Our society is fragmenting. We can’t talk to each other any more. We can’t have serious debates about serious issues because we lack the patience to listen to views we disagree with, find hateful even. This is more than just a crisis for the Labour party. It is a crisis of our civilisation. It is a spiritual crisis. We are at once the victims and the perpetrators. We are also the solution.

Quote of the day

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“Although the flower has many qualities, such as smell, taste, form, colour, &c., yet it is one. None of these qualities could be absent in the particular leaf or flower: each individual part of the leaf shares alike all the qualities of the leaf entire. Gold, similarly contains in every particle all its qualities unseparated and entire. It is frequently allowed with sensuous things that such varied elements may be joined together, but, in the spiritual, differentiation is supposed to involve opposition. We do not controvert the fact, or think it contradictory, that the smell and taste of the flower, although otherwise opposed, are yet clearly in one subject; nor do we place the one against the other. But the understanding and understanding thought find everything of a different kind, placed in conjunction, to be incompatible.

Hegel_portrait_by_Schlesinger_1831

“Matter, for example, is complex and coherent, or space is continuous and uninterrupted. Likewise we may take separate points in space and break up matter dividing it ever further into infinity. It then is said that matter consists of atoms and points, and hence is not continuous. Therefore we have here the two determinations of continuity and of definite points, which understanding regards as mutually exclusive, combined in one. It is said that matter must be clearly either continuous or divisible into points, but in reality it has both these qualities. Or when we say of the mind of man that it has freedom, the understanding at once brings up the other quality, which in this case is necessity, saying, that if Mind is free it is not in subjection to necessity, and, inversely, if its will and thought are determined through necessity, it is not free – the one, they say, excludes the other. The distinctions here are regarded as exclusive, and not as forming something concrete. But that which is true, the Mind, is concrete, and its attributes are freedom and necessity. Similarly the higher point of view is that Mind is free in its necessity, and finds its freedom in it alone, since its necessity rests on its freedom. But it is more difficult for us to show the unity here than in the case of natural objects. Freedom can, however, be also abstract freedom without necessity, which false freedom is self-will, and for that reason it is self-opposed, unconsciously limited, an imaginary freedom which is free in form alone.” Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy

The Young Conservatives, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, and me

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What follows is our second extract from Dave’s work in progress, currently entitled From Solipsism to Socialism – Portrait of a Political Animal. It traces Dave’s personal, social and political development from the 1970s to the turn of the millennium, trying to discover what may lie behind the social and political ideas we choose to identify with. For Dave, there is a complexity of subjective factors underpinning our ideologies, and more often than not, they are in no way ‘political’…

The perfect antidote to an evening’s political entertainment at the Young Conservatives meeting was going home to my favourite television show of the moment, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet – the story of a group of unemployed building workers who’d ‘got on their bikes’ to find work abroad. Dad was a fan of the show because it reminded him of his time in Germany, and because there was some swearing in it. When he picked Stephen and myself up from the meeting he was usually excited from having just watched it, and I was paranoid that he may not have recorded it.

“How was the ‘twits’ tonight?” Dad called my Young Conservative friends “the twits”.

“Yes, good. Did you remember to tape Auf Wiedersehen?”

“Of course I did, it is all set up for you when you get in.”

“Was it good?”

“Yes it was, Oz insulted the ‘erics’ and said ‘Bollocks man’.”

“Why was he insulting the ‘erics’? They’re not in Germany, they’re in Spain in this series.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right, but he still said ‘Bollocks man’. I love the Geordie accent, don’t you? We’re gannin’ doon the toon like. Why do they always say like? We had some Geordies in the army you know, canny lads like.”

And all the way home with Dad continually muttering to himself, “We’re gannin’ like, we’re gannin’ yem – that means ‘we’re going home’.” “They call women Pet, so it translates to ‘Goodbye love or dear’. “I still remember some German.”

“Yes we know.”

Stephen’s nose flared sarcastically.

As soon as we got in, Dad loaded up the video, whilst Mum made me a sandwich. “Why don’t you watch it as well Mum?”

“Oh, I don’t understand their accents so I wouldn’t be able to follow it.”

“Oh, it’s easy,” interjected Dad, “if they say ‘gannin’ yem’ that means going home, and they’re fond of saying ‘bollocks man’, or ‘bollicks man’ a lot. Yes, that’s it ‘bollicks’ not ‘bollocks’. We ‘ad a lot of ‘em in the army y’knaa, y’knaa.”

“Well I won’t enjoy it if I can’t understand them, and they spend all their time swearing. Anyway, I have the wiping up to do, bring your plate out when you’ve finished the sandwich.”

Oh I loved this show, from the opening credits right through to the theme song at the end. Three Geordies from Newcastle, Barry from Birmingham, Bomber from Bristol, Moxy from Liverpool, and Wayne from London, living together in a wooden hut on a building site in Dusseldorf, Germany. All victims of the recent economic changes, yet these men continued to eke out a human existence in straitened circumstances forming strong bonds of friendship and solidarity as they went along. None of them wanted to leave their homes and families, but had nonetheless followed Norman Tebbit’s advice, and not only ‘got on their bikes’, but caught the ferry too. As ‘boring’ Barry from Birmingham, the group’s ‘intellectual’, put it, “I think Thatcherism is a misguided policy. That’s why I joined the SDP.” But even Oz, a big rough Geordie who was more likely to use his fists than his brain, was still human enough to care for his friends when it was needed. He hated the Germans with a passion, and considered himself a supporter of Arthur Scargill. His constant anti-German jibes often got him into the kind of trouble that only one’s friends can get you out of. Most of the group wanted to get along with the ‘erics’, as they referred to the Germans, and make the best of a bad situation, even educate themselves in aspects of German culture. But Oz rejected all of this, preferring to spend most of his spare time drinking and being socially obnoxious. As fellow Geordie and group ‘leader’ Denis put it, with words to the effect of, “I‘ve seen men like you before Oz, working abroad for the first time, getting all patriotic for the country that couldn’t employ you in the first place.”

And this last sentiment struck me as self-evident: if there was ‘work out there if you want it’, as Dad so often insisted, and unemployment was caused by laziness, why were these people abroad in the first place? Dad never questioned their need to be there, it was obvious – there was no work in England. One time, I was watching an episode with Dad and ‘uncle’ Paul was there. Oz was complaining about why all foreigners don’t speak English and Denis rebuked him with, “You would have made a good imperialist Oz”, to which Paul gave a nodding chuckle, but I had not understood the joke. I was now at the stage where pride prevented me asking Paul what an ‘imperialist’ was. Later, I looked it up in a dictionary and Denis’s comment became clearer. It was another political type word I could throw into conversations along with the distinction between monarchy and republicanism, and fiscal and monetary policy.

In one episode, the lads decided to paint the interior walls of their hut to make it as homely as possible. The problem was that they couldn’t decide upon which colour they wanted, until SDP member Barry suggested they use a form of proportional representation – the single transferable vote – to decide. The joke was that after an extraordinary labour on Barry’s part, to organise the election as democratically as possible, the colour which ‘won’, pink, was nobody’s actually first choice (aside from Barry’s). Such comedy only reinforced in me that the First-Past-the-Post system that we had in the UK was the only way to ensure effective government. This said, I fully appreciated that the likes of the SDP were discriminated against in this regard.

From my warm bedroom in southern suburbia, I would lay fantasising about the wooden hut from Auf Wiedersehen Pet and how warm and snug it could be. In my version, they had an inside toilet and a full kitchen. In the second series they slept in the stately home they were doing up, before going to Spain. The conditions in the stately home were not fantastic, but it was an improvement upon the wooden hut. For me, these men were living exciting lives, rather than being victims of the free market.

A wanderlust, on my part, was taking a nascent form.

But Oz’s inexplicable Germanophobia continued to grate upon the other characters as well as myself. I couldn’t make any sense of it – after all, Germany had given him work, but all he could think about was the fact that they had lost the war. Besides this, Germany was just about the only foreign country which Dad liked, so I had had no real exposé to anti-German feeling (with the notable exception of my Nan who didn’t really like anyone). But Oz himself didn’t really know either, and on one occasion when he was pushed, all he could come up with, after a few seconds of refection was, “The bastards bombed me granny”.

I found out that my Young Conservative friend Kevin enjoyed Auf Wiedersehen Pet and spent more time discussing this than actual politics. He was fascinated by the character of ‘Bomber’, played by professional wrestler Pat Roach. “He’s six foot five and weighs around 19 stone,” I told him.

“Is that all he is?”

“I thought he’d be more than that, he’s so big!”

“He’s a really good wrestler too,” I proffered.

“I bet he never gets beaten”, returned Kevin.

“No he doesn’t.” I was just relieved I didn’t have to defend pro wrestling from another potential detractor. The premature death of Gary Holton, who played the cockney carpenter, Wayne, provided another talking point. Kevin was almost crying into his beer. “I can’t see them continuing without him,” he said wistfully shaking his head. I thought that it was good that Kevin and I had something to bond over. I had tried him with monetarism, but that hadn’t worked.

The power of now: addendum

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Reading our previous post back, our readers may wonder why we protest so much. Probably because of our own petty anxieties about intellectual appearances. But as we get towards the end of yet another re-reading of Eckhart Tolle’s Power of Now and The New Earth, we feel less inclined than ever to make any apologies. These books are powerful. Tolle himself considered his teachings to be the stream where Ramana Maharshi and Jiddhu Krishnamurti meet. This may seem puzzling. What can a quiet and gentle Hindu mystic who claimed to have found God and taught mostly through silence have in common with a man who (at least apparently) rejected all religion and religious organisation and lectured at great length and in often strident and (at least apparently) obscure philosophical tones? Go into it (to use a favourite phrase of Krishnamurti’s), and you’ll see that both their teachings are the same: know thyself. And how? How else but through self-enquiry? Such teachings can be extremely frustrating to hear for those seeking guidance and help. Ramana Maharshi and Krishnamurti take you to the door to self-enquiry, kick you through and leave you to it. A bracing experience! But for modern, western minds at least, Tolle may be kinder and more helpful. He takes you to the same door – but takes your luggage and helps you over the threshold. Then he shows you round. The tour he gives reveals an extraordinary palace, full of riches. There are demons and monsters there, but angels and bodhisattvas too. You can take the tour whenever you’re ready. There’s no charge.