Policeman in the head

This is a fascinating unfolding story - the traveller slaves. Quite what the alleged slaves were enslaved in, and how they were held and used still isn't clear, although it seems to have been an international ring. What I am interested in, though, is a quote in the Irish Independent.

Graham Clark, who is homeless, told Channel 4 news last night that he was kidnapped and held for ten months.

“You were separated from them. You weren’t allowed to enter their trailer...I wasn’t allowed to use their toilet services, strictly for them. I had to go into a bush and wipe myself with leaves. Degrading.

“I was treated like a slave, but at least I had a roof over my head. I was scared. I tried escaping once but they found me, not too far away.”

Note the phrase in bold: "at least I had a roof over my head." - he was imprisoned, made to shite in the bushes and work as a slave.

The psychology is fascinating, a mix of It could be worse" (really!?!), and holding on to the little that he has - a roof and a little food. This despite his previous attempt at escape.

What I'm driving at is that this illustrates the human capacity to withstand the conditions of slavery and gross impoverishment, and the mental architecture that allows such structures to survive. Imprisoned and maltreated animals will try and bite back, and human mentally adepts.

I have no way of knowing why he was found "nearby" but I surmise it was because he had no-where else to go, no company or structures to replace the slave conditions, so didn't go far and went back when found.

It seems the peculiar institution rests on our very human capacities.

Old film reviewed

So, I recently bought the Aliens DVD, and watched it for the first time in a long while.

Some random thoughts, which I maintain are (sort of) relevant to contemporary issues.

Obviously, the cries of fandom went up - the Alien from the original movie had fought unarmed civilians - surely, if someone sent in THE MARINES! things would be different. Lo, they went.

I think, I have already commented here on how popular genre movies structurally provide a narrative for militarism, the enjoyment of the pure right to exterminate your foes, with unlimited self defence justification are the preparatory ideological trappings for the military mindset. We fear the monster, and enjoy the justified extermination of it.

The Marines in aliens, though, to make it interesting, are hamstrung - they go into a reactor room, in which firing high explosive 10 mm rounds would be dangerous - they are disarmed by industrial processes (a process the evil corporate Burke points out has a big Dollar value). That is, capital, and the need to preserve it (and, importantly, its literal power to reproduce itself) sets the limits of the unlimited use of destructive fire power. Of course, in the end, the plant is destroyed, and thus the jouissance laden violence allows the nest of Alien eggs to be fried.

What of the Aliens themselves? They are biological, Ripley's threat to their eggs threatens their reproduction, and they cannot attack her when she rescues Newt. Their chest bursting is explicitly compared with birth giving in the dialogue, they come from us. They do not "fuck each other over for a dollar." And, of course, they co-operate, like a hive mind. Obviously, generically, the movie is actually a zombie movie, the colonists have become aliens, overtaken by biological pure need. That is, use values - consumerists in the mall.

Hence the centrality of Newt - Ripley risks all to go back for Newt, because she is an individual, and a value worth fighting for. In the end, she calls Ripley "Mommy", and traditional family values are restored (minus the father - although the hints at Romance with Hicks may be there to leave an impression of a future attachment/family). Ripley, the voice of pure extermination prevails and wipes the enemy out, establishing this new order.

Symbollicly, she battles the Alien queen in a powered lifted suite - open, but high tech, a visible meld of human and machine. Ultimately, the film is a Carlylian repudiation of finance capitalism and collectivism in favour of individual values.

Death of a canard?

There can never be a war between liberal democracies - they say - however, both Russia and Georgia are democracies (whatever flaws you can point out in Russia's democracy, you can find equal measures of flaws even in maturer democracies). Of course, the theory may try to save itself by saying that neither are mature democracies, but they do have well over ten years each (and changes of government) to suggest that their democracy is entrenched.

The ugly truth is that the situational logic of nation states plays its usual part, and their specific political form can't halt that - more democracy won't mean peace, only common ownership will.

Why I (re)joined the Socialist Party(*)

I suppose I never really blogged on my adventures into reformism. Partly, I think, because some of the issues were background personal ones rather than political theoretical. Partly because I don't think it involved that much of a change of position for me. That much. Anyway, here goes to try and explain my reversion of the masthead of this blog, and my re-application to join the Socialist Party.

OK, my basic political principles are that I am a democrat, and believe that the minimum requirement is to "just get involved" - the mere involvement of millions changes politics. That's important. Involvement plus objective circumstance is what makes things move.

As a democrat, I have to accept when I am outvoted, and argue to change the view of the majority. What difference, thinks I, does it make if I do that from within or without the Labour Party, recognising, as a basic, that it is a part of the workers' movement, and that it does contain socialists (albeit ones of a different tradition). Either way, I will be outvoted.

I suppose, what I missed, or underestimated, was the role of a political party in reinforcing ideology/identity in an organised and communal sense. I tried joining various strands of Labour organisation, but tended to find that unless you were prepared to be a hyperactivist who won your spurs through performative acts of loyalty (leafletting and phone canvassing), you were going to get no-where. How, though, could I canvass when I was profoundly at odds with the thrust of the party's policies (though believing that, at worst, they were better than the Tory/Liberal alternatives).

To stretch an anology, early on, Labour surrendered to the symbollic hegemonic conservative values on entering their first period in office, they won their spurs by demonstrating a loyalty to the existing ordering (including Ruritanian privy council costumes). They pegged for small wins, without overly rocking the boat.

My still small voice was as drowned in the Labour party as it is without it. Except, the problem of politics is how to square the big picture with the day-to-day. Ramsay MacDonald - who can be described as the real ideological founder of the Labour Party, much as he is reviled as its great traitor - Oedipus Rex, anyone? - proposed a tripartite structure - Trade Unions, Parliamentary Labour Party, Independent Labour Party. The latter was to function as an almost purely propaganda vehicle for Socialism, leaving day to day legislation to the PLP, workplace struggles to the Unions. He would chide the ILP for getting too involved in government policy, rather than promoting socialism.

The reality is, that, for many in the Labour Party, there isn't time for a big picture, they hae councils to run and opponents to chivvy and chide. Big politics is scary and a gift to the opposition. But we need the big picture.

Except, for much of the left, the big picture has been a sort of fantastic support, a utopia which make the present possible and bearable - the lunatic derangement of the impossiblist is to think the fantasy can somehow become real and thus pursues it. We're trying to climb up to our castles in the air. But, this willful, instranigent belief in faerie tales breaks the Labour compact, the idea that taking care of the pennies now will win us pounds in heaven.

So, we return to the other vexing question, what does the revolutionary minority do in a time of class peace and majority support for capitalism? They get outvoted, and get themselves seen to be outvoted.

(*)If they'll have me, that is.

How many brains?

I was befuddled, last night, listening to Start teh week with Andrew Marr, to hear David "Two Brains" Willets talking about game theory. more specifically, how game theory can describe how co-operative results occur within social systems. Further, he advocated state power as a means of constructing such circumstances, to attaion better social co-operative outcomes. They used to call that social engineering.

Admittedly, this isn't as incoherent for a Tory as it first sounds. After all, Adam Smith's economics was based around an assumption that free markets would produce co-operative and stale social outcomes. It was also profoundly egalitarian, believing free markets would produce socal equality. The invisible hand is a leveller.

More than that, they are now up against the weight of science, evolutionary science in particular which shows that each against each and devil take the hindmost isn't necessary nor essentially desirable. He cited Vampire Bats who will share out a good nights hunt to non-related colony members.

Of coruse, Willetts thinks this should come back to structures like the familly. Although discussing Pakistan, he noted that a high proportion of marriages are between first cousins, indicating the degree of clanishness that still exists there, and suggesting that this is a barrier to liberal democracy - maybe his brains haven't come to agreement on that one yet.

Cameron fucks it

Alan pre-empted my post for the day (see comments below).

David Cameron has announced Conservative Co-operativism. What might occur to him as a cunning technique to soak a few Lib-Dem and soft left voters into his camp, could well, in my opinion, become a catastrophic ideological hammer blow to conservatism.

Without the harumphing press releases and comments of Co-operaors - which are undoubtedly accurate, this lurch by Cameron has the possibility of being a massive own goal.

The point at which co-operativism and socialism meet is - if you will forgive a touch of jargon - the subordination of exchange value to use value. Co-operation is defining a social need and sharing the cost to ensure it happens. It is opposed to the profit motive which sees the use value of money as being its capacity to create more exchange value. It opposes private ownership - and as such it operates against the market in capital and thus against capitalism.

Cameron is right that there have always been conservative critics of the market. Look at the names he drops - Burke (a liberal) who is remembered in history, despite his writings on aesthetics and oranic society - for his swinish multitude comment (that the electorate, to you, Dave). Carlyle, a racist who objected to the sole connexion between man and man being cash - he wanted a genuine master servant relationship instead of the rebelious proles and they capacity to strike and quit their jobs.

See, Cameron is mistaken, there is a conservative counter-point to co-operatives - it's called charity. That does not interfere with private property, indeed, it makes a virtue of the accumulation of private property by converting the avarice of one (almost always) man into the figure of the philanthropist. Not common effort and mutual values, but private property being directed towards the ills caused by private property.

Cameron has either exposed himself as ignorant, or foolish. If the idea of co-operation grows it will harm his natural constituency. Of course, it is probably a cunning ruse to introduce, eventually, school vouchers and private health care, but it could also open the door to real co-operative values, and move the centre from its current point even further to the left.

Perhaps not a cigarette paper moement, more a great ruddy wedge.

Holliday reading

Well, I spent Easter reading a genuinely fascist novel. No, not a term of abuse, a genuine novel with fascistic sympathies from 1938. Dennis Wheatley's The Golden Spaniard.

It was worth the read - although it is mentioned on his Wikipedia article as having divided his core band of "modern musketeer" characters - that was in fact merely a device to implicate and demolish liberal sympathy for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War.

Louis Althusser thought that through fiction ideology could stand revealed - a rather soulless perspective on literature if you ask me - but this novel does illustrate a fantasy fiction world of a British fascist (although Wheatley assisted the British war effort, I don't think that dints his pre-war flirtation with the ideology).

It was fascinating to see how the ideology of fascis dovetailed neatly with the typical adventure story - and the absolute ruthlessness the author presumed his readers would find acceptable (as well as the sheer double standards of atrocity calling).

I can't, of course, condemn a writer for being partisan, after all, I read partisan leftist literature, but it is interesting to see the other side's point of view and how they construct their case. Both sides justified violence and atrocity by referrence to the threat from the other - the only thing that divided them, after the means, was the end.

The book stands as an interesting peice of literary archaeology that helps parse the debates over such things as Israel today. It is not that the study of literature reveals ideology concretised, but it reveals the working of rhetoric, an essential tool for intellectual self-defence.