I had no idea that the Euston Manifesto was still bubbling along its merry manifestist way (which I imagine to be a third way of some sort) in cyberspace as opposed to having hit a dead end. But it seems it is, and that there is an entire YouTube channel devoted to videos such as:
This informative discussion involving key Ministers in the British government, trade unionist activists, a top journalist and key NGO leaders; discussed the lack of a Arab response to the crisis in the Darfur, the excuses made by Western intellectuals for suicide bombings and other terrorist acts, Iraq and the need to support democrats, and the future for the UN (and whether it is a ‘failed’ organisation).
I’d have thought its moment past, since even though it purported to be some sort of declaration of enduring truths for the left, its actual genesis was in a particularly Blairite moment which will soon be fading into history as a Brown led government loses interest in neocon adventurism and liberal imperialism. The Tories, perhaps appropriately for a party with a pragmatic Oakeshottian philosophical tradition, never had much attraction to grand projects for inscribing democracy on the sands of the Middle East. And British troops will soon be gone from Iraq.
In any event, as some of the subjects discussed in the series of videos linked testify, the Manifestists were never particularly focused on tasks peculiar to the left but rather on raising non sequiturs such as “the lack of a Arab response to the crisis in the Darfur” in order to mask the hypocrisy lying behind the inaction of the West, and the extremely uneven application of principles of international humanitarian law. This, of course, was an aporia necessary to such a project, as those whom the Euston Manifestists would applaud had no actual commitment to principle except as convenient spin and justification of power. In short, rather than re-inventing the left, the Manifestists were more interested in firstly defending Blairism (and to the degree that they showed any interest in the traditional economic and social goals of the left, subscribing to morally authoritarian communitarianism) and secondly justifying their own effective exit from any plausible left. Really, it was all about the two I’s – Iraq and Israel.
It’s instructive then to consider what the tasks of the left are, outside the lingering Trotskyism or Maoism of some manifestists, who are still looking for one last throw of the dialectical dice to instantiate some faux-Hegelian end (of history). In truth, the same sorts of targets the manifestists attack, when in most Popperian mode, are replicated in their own utopian eschatological discourse.
So, we’re lucky to have eminently sensible people around the shop, like the British sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, to remind us both of the real work that a non-utopian (and anti-manifestist) left needs to do in the world, and of the perils of third ways past, present and future (perhaps particularly relevant here in the era of Ruddism).
Bauman writes, in a very interesting piece in the latest number of Soundings:
There are currently two dominant ways of arriving at the idea of ‘the left’, both of which lead to a definition that is as unsettled and transitory as the reference points from which it is drawn. (Indeed such approaches can be seen as typical of the ‘nowist’ vision – the tyranny of the moment – that is a feature of our times: ideas can be assigned a history, but rarely ascribed a steady, stable substance.)
The first approach is to review and overhaul what has been remembered as the left (how much easier it would be if it could be forgotten) – with the intention of ‘updating’ it – that is, catching up with the most recent meanders of ‘the right’. Examples include Blair’s concept of New Labour as Labour adjusted to Thatcherist patterns of political wisdom, or warnings to Gordon Brown not to veer to the left given the apparent drift of disenchanted Labour voters to the Tories. In this approach, any substance the left may possess is secondary to the current position of the right. The agenda of the left becomes a derivative, a mirror image of the agenda scripted by the right. The left is whatever is not quite as right as the right currently manages to be. Ultimately it all boils down to a question of what the left could do better and more efficiently than the right, in relation to the things that the right has declared to be good and proper. In the last two decades this has been the British, and to a lesser extent German, way.
The second approach is to assemble a notion of the left out of the scattered and variegated political leftovers, rejects and refuse of the right. The substance underpinning this approach is purely negative, and lacks any inner core or cohesion. Being rejected – or not-fully-accepted – by the scriptwriters and directors of the right is the sole glue deemed necessary for holding the left together. This has recently been the approach of the Italians, for instance, and to a lesser extent the French.
All that, I think, has a lot of relevance for social democrats in Australia. The truth of the description of the Ruddite Labor Party as “New Labor” is not in any nonsense about allowing mining companies to trample on collective bargaining rights, but in the degree to which a socially and economically conservative leader has largely accepted the legacy of a decade or so of Howardism, and appears to construct policy alternatives more on a sense of the impossible rather than the possible. Greg Combet’s appearance on Lateline tonight was refreshing in this respect, as it enabled us to conceive of what a more unashamedly social democratic electoral agenda might look like, and although I think Rudd is playing a superb game of electoral politics, it’s an agenda which I very strongly suspect would also enjoy electoral success if only Labor had the courage to articulate it clearly.
So, in that he rejects any notion that there should be some sort of Hegelian end state or eternal essence of the left, which might appeal to those who like to change the world by Manifesting rather than what Weber described as the real work of non-utopian politics, “drilling through hard boards”, what does Bauman suggest are the enduring tasks of the left?
There is, however, another way of grasping and comprehending the phenomenon of the left (not to be confused with the ‘third way’, or warmed-over policies represented as ‘beyond left and right’). This other way starts from two assumptions essential for a specifically left perception of the human condition and its prospects and untapped possibilities. These assumptions are the basis for a self-assertive left, which, instead of apologising for its opposition to the mainstream, strives to create, protect, and be tested against values which it regards as non-negotiable. This way of grasping the defining features of the left is one that realises the left’s ubiquitous and steadfast presence in modern forms of life, and understands that its frequently alleged demise always turns out to be no more than a relatively brief period of hibernation and/or recuperation.
The first assumption is that it is the duty of the community to insure its individual members against individual misfortune. And the second is that, just as the carrying capacity of a bridge is measured by the strength of its weakest support, so the quality of a society should be measured by the quality of life of its weakest members. These two constant and non-negotiable assumptions set the left on a perpetual collision course with the realities of the human condition under the rule of capitalism; they necessarily lead to charges against the capitalist order, with its twin sins of wastefulness and immorality, manifested in social injustice.
These assumptions will continue to set the left on such a course in the future – for at least three vital reasons. First, the charges they raise against capitalism remain completely topical: if anything, they have acquired even greater force in the globalisation of the capitalist order. Second, it is utterly unlikely that collective insurance against individual mishaps will ever be completed and made truly safe, or that vigilant scrutiny will ever be no longer be required. And third, it is equally unlikely that a society will ever be achieved in which some groups or categories of people do not fall behind the rest, or below the average standards.
The left is best described as a stance of permanent criticism of the realities of social life, which always fall short of the values a society professes and promises to serve. The left is not committed to any specific model of human togetherness: the sole model it refuses to tolerate is a regime that deems itself perfect – or at least the best of all possible worlds – and therefore immune to questioning. The left wants a humane society, one that strives for justice for all its members. The left defines a just society as one that is aware that it is not-yet-sufficiently-just, that is haunted by this awareness and thereby spurred into action.
The left cannot be anything other than democratic. It is a natural adversary and a sworn and staunch enemy of all pensée unique, whether in its current or any other variety – and of the TINA (‘There Is No Alternative’) posture. If an optimist is someone who believes that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist is someone who suspects that the optimist may be right, the left places itself instead in the third camp: that of hope. Refusing to pre-empt the shape of the good society, it can’t but question, listen and seek. As Cornelius Castoriadis, one of the founders of the ’socialism or barbarism’ movement, has pointed out, in Ancient Athens each law accepted in the agora was preceded by a preamble stating that it was ‘the view of the Council and the people’: this alerted people to the law’s possible fallibility, and the need to subject it to continual critical scrutiny. The left’s hope is that such perpetual questioning, listening and seeking will call into being and keep alive a community of citizens – of people armed with tongues as much as with ears, and adept at using both. A community is democratic only insofar as its members know that the society that makes them citizens and gives shape to their citizenship is of their own making; and insofar as its citizens are prepared to bear responsibility for its assets and liabilities, virtues and vices.
The left stands for the awareness that the job of making the world more hospitable to human dignity – the dignity of all humans – remains unfinished. It stands for the principled action that derives from such awareness. In these circumstances nothing is likely to make the left redundant: the completion of this task seems unlikely in any future that its principles enable/allow it to foresee, bring forth and shape. The sole thing one can be sure of when pondering the shape of such a future is that it is unlikely to be beyond criticism, and so is bound to have its left. Making the left indispensable, and ever and anew calling it into being, is the one permanent, unchanged and perhaps unchangeable feature of an otherwise eminently unstable and restless modern world.
But if you’d prefer the politics of gesture and war dignified by the lie of humanitarianism, here’s Manifestist and arch-Blairite, the Right Honourable Hilary Benn MP. But others may prefer to change the world by changing their YouTube channel.
Heh. Where?
As to the Third or other kind of Way on which the Eustonians have been tootling—it’s the one to Damascus, surely.
Something about the Euston Manifesto that makes me think of this
On a more serious, less banally sarcastic note, I think Bauman’s two rules are accurate but unnecessarily universalist: the capital-L Left as we understand it can’t be separated from the historical project of modernism. The idea of ‘permanent critique’ is a good one, but it implies a timelessness that doesn’t exist.
The existence of an historical Left is dependent on the sense that time and history is dynamic rather than cyclical in nature, it requires an understanding that societies are unfixed and alterable, and most of all the historical Left has required a thoroughly modern and European approach to questioning the role of humans in a machine-society. These conditions haven’t always existed—and won’t exist, forever, either.
Mmmm.
Lots of name-dropping, obscure phrases and slurs in that one Mark.
How about writing in plain English and backing up statements that defame those who signed the Manifesto?
It is beyond me how you can describe someone as “sensible” who celebrates the “recent triumphs” of the “social state” in Venezuela. Chavez’s policies exemplify domestic adventurism and utopianism; “pragmatic” and “sensible” are not words that can be used to describe it.
The necessity for the left (as for the right) is re-examination of their assumptions and the ability to discard ideological baggage. I admired the Euston Manifesto people because it seemed they were doing precisely this.
On the domestic front, I would just like leftists to acknowledge the costs of their plans, not just the benefits. OK, put restrictions on the labour market, which may help many workers, but acknowledge that some will lose their jobs as a result (and there is no union of the unemployed to protect their interests). OK, put more money into social services, but acknowledge that this will have to be administered and spent by bureaucrats, who may ultimately be acting more in their own interests than in the intended beneficiaries’.
Bauman, like most leftists, makes no mentions of any contradictions or problems in his vision: the Scandinavian model is the pathway to the sunlit lands ahead.
And yes, before you mention it, this lack of introspection and unwillingness to admit the existence of problems is also characteristic of a great many on the right.
How absurd, mel. I doubt I’ll be receiving any defamation writs.
Aporia is a perfectly good Greek word, by the way, with a precise definition.
Paulus, it’s an overview – an attempt to define broadly the political tasks of the left. I don’t approve of Chavez’ authoritarianism, but I think there’s no doubt that there are elements in his social policy to applaud.
Similarly, when one comes to articulate particular policies, of course costs as well as benefits need to be taken into account (though I don’t necessarily accept your logic – employment in the mining boom for instance is supported by international demand not by employment arrangements, as evidenced indeed by the salaries offered) but what’s important is that ends be thought out from first principles.
No, I think they were moving out of the left and adopting the cast off dreams of neocons and conservative moralists.
FdG, yes, that’s true, but what comes after those conditions? It might well be something worse (hence history is not unilinear nor necessarily progressive) but that doesn’t absolve us either from working to ensure that systemic change is for the good, or working in the here and now in a practical sense.
Benjamin’s second thesis on history is perhaps relevant to the points you make, FDG:
http://www.leedstrinity.ac.uk/depart/media/staff/ls/WBenjamin/CONCEPT2.html
If it doesn’t involve access to cold beer and hot showers for the people, worse it will be indeed. And you’re right—I’ll fight anyone, here and now, who tries to take either away.
Reread the manifesto, for example on Iraq:
Disagree with that, do you?
Or do you find the section on Israel particularly objectionable?
I have never been able to understand the hatred directed at the Manifesto and its authors: it seems such an eminently sensible and moderate document.
Well, I’m missing out on the eight hours’ rest I need to do eight hours’ work tomorrow, so I’d best retire now without a beer, but perhaps a hot shower may be in order.
Paulus, I’m not interested in debating the particulars of the Manifesto again. I’ve had my say at some length, which is why I linked to previous discussions here. I think it’s a document that’s now largely of historic interest, as indeed demonstrated by (at least) the first section you cite. I’m much more interested in discussing what the left should be doing, in the Australian domestic policy context, which I think is at the moment being appropriated by the Manifestist error that Bauman identifies – taking on the right’s agenda, and being just a little less right than the right.
I feel this post is a missed opportunity.
Marc, all the contributors to the debate backed intervention in Darfur, so to say that the Euston Manifesto members at the meeting supported: ‘the hypocrisy lying behind the inaction of the West’, is spin itself.
Arab States have failed in Darfur to protect the lives of fellow Muslims: a Muslim life in Palestine seems to be worth considerably more than a Muslim life in Darfur. Asking why is an important question.
The Euston debate on protecting lives and the threshold for intervention is an important one, and a debate the Left needs to have. I think this debate (the entire debate is at: http://www.youtube.com/EustonManifesto) is a worthy contribution to that debate.
I had in mind Orwell’s rules on plain English:
1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never us a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/index.cgi/work/essays/language.html
These rules were very sensibly included in my old Humanities and Social Sciences Collected Essays.
I imagine there must be more precise and less pretentious ways of saying:
“In truth, the same sorts of targets the manifestists attack, when in most Popperian mode, are replicated in their own utopian eschatological discourse.”
“In any event, as some of the subjects discussed in the series of videos linked testify, the Manifestists were never particularly focused on tasks peculiar to the left but rather on raising non sequiturs such as “the lack of a Arab response to the crisis in the Darfurâ€? in order to mask the hypocrisy lying behind the inaction of the West, and the extremely uneven application of principles of international humanitarian law.”
What do you think the West should be doing? Presumably you oppose sending in the troops. And what is wrong with criticising the Arab World? Surely no-one and no group is beyond criticism.
The above statements by Bauman defining what the (essentialist?!) Left should be are very interesting. It would seem to me though that they could equally be used to describe classical liberalism and/or conservatism:
1) “The left is best described as a stance of permanent criticism of the realities of social life, which always fall short of the values a society professes and promises to serve.”
–> Surely classical liberalism and conservatism often echo these sentiments.
2) “The left is not committed to any specific model of human togetherness: the sole model it refuses to tolerate is a regime that deems itself perfect – or at least the best of all possible worlds – and therefore immune to questioning.”
–> Again, this is a view shared by classical liberals. Conservatives are equally suspicious of the concept of the “best possible society”.
3) “The left wants a humane society, one that strives for justice for all its members. The left defines a just society as one that is aware that it is not-yet-sufficiently-just, that is haunted by this awareness and thereby spurred into action.”
–> This statement is sufficient broad as to encompass most political ideologies. Is there a political ideology that doesn’t strive for justice for all?
4) “The first assumption is that it is the duty of the community to insure its individual members against individual misfortune.”
–> Religious conservatives firmly believe this as well whilst classical liberals like myself view it as a utopian conceit. Besides, the admission further on – “…it is utterly unlikely that collective insurance against individual mishaps will ever be completed and made truly safe, or that vigilant scrutiny will ever be no longer be required.” renders the sentiment’s actualisation to an infinitely distant eschaton. Aren’t there shades of pessimist absolutism here despite the “cri de coeur” for hope(tm) mentioned elsewhere?
5) “And the second is that, just as the carrying capacity of a bridge is measured by the strength of its weakest support, so the quality of a society should be measured by the quality of life of its weakest members. These two constant and non-negotiable assumptions set the left on a perpetual collision course with the realities of the human condition under the rule of capitalism; they necessarily lead to charges against the capitalist order, with its twin sins of wastefulness and immorality, manifested in social injustice.”
–> “Sins… “Wasteful”… “Immorality” – sounds VERY similar to religious conservatism here. As a classical liberal I find the appropriation of religious tinged language hopelessly problematic. I’m quite sure that many secularists on the Left would agree.
The essential point of differentiation between the left and right remains unclear with this statement:
“The left stands for the awareness that the job of making the world more hospitable to human dignity – the dignity of all humans – remains unfinished. It stands for the principled action that derives from such awareness. In these circumstances nothing is likely to make the left redundant: the completion of this task seems unlikely in any future that its principles enable/allow it to foresee, bring forth and shape. The sole thing one can be sure of when pondering the shape of such a future is that it is unlikely to be beyond criticism, and so is bound to have its left.”
–> “human dignity” remains hopelessly undefined to such an extent that if the words”classical liberal” were substituted for “left” in this paragraph, the statement would remain equally ideological defensible for a classical liberal. Furthermore, this statement – “such a future … that … is unlikely to be beyond criticism,…. is bound to have its left” – concerningly comes very close to equating the Left with “criticism” (whatever that actually means in this context). Does this statement mean that classical liberal criticisms of the fairly successful and sustained (until very recently) social democratic project in Scandinavian countries – could be considered Left?
Surely the Left is at its best when it makes the link between injustice oppression and incongruous distribution of capital & when it emphasises structural oppression? Indeed, I cannot really detect any attempt to formulate an economic theory in Bauman’s manifesto. Surely the economy consistently remains an important issue for the Left?!
But there’s been no effective intervention in Darfur (which I’ve supported myself, right here, on this blog) and people like Benn, as a Minister of the British Crown, are in a much better position to see that something happen than we mere citizens are rather than making rhetorical gestures. So consequently their responsibility is also much greater. Arab states don’t have the military ability to intervene effectively, just as the African Union troops have not, and also probably don’t have the requisite degree of distance from the issues of the conflict. That’s plain, I think, so, migsuk, I really do see these calls as just a pretext for advancing some sort of civilisationist argument that’s quite plainly got a lot more to do with their politics than any real strategic assessment.
My intention in this post is to focus on the historical commitments of the left to greater equality, which, as perhaps indicated by the fact that foreign policy is the issue which everyone who wishes to suggest the Euston Manifestists are serious cites, is something that is largely a debate within nation states (though now with a global institutional and economic dimension). By discussing the issues the Manifestists discuss, I wanted to point out what they don’t discuss, which is what the left should be doing to ensure greater equality within countries such as Britain and Australia right now. That’s what I’d like to discuss!
Hello, Mark. Thank you adding to the enormous pile of prolix and pretentious “critiques” of the Euston Manifesto that make no reference whatsoever to the substance of the document itself, but instead imagine who its authors are, tell the World what these invented creatures think, and list the crimes they are responsible for, then dismiss them as unworthy of anyone’s attention. It’s fascinating: I run the Euston Manifesto Website and I write less about the thing than most of the people who keep telling me it’s dead.
Just for the record though, as one of the pink unicorns responsible for drafting the document, I’d like to point out that I am not and have never been a Trotskyist, a Maoist, a utopian, a Popperian (shome mishtake shurely?), or a communitarian. Do you even know what those terms mean? Have you even bothered to look them up, or anything the Manifesto’s authors have written? (You could start with the text of the manifesto. It’s on the Internet.) Do you even care?
I used to be scientist. I was trained in this crazy tradition that demands a grasp of basic terminology, concerns itself with applying logic and reason to others’ actual arguments—rather applying smears to fantasies of your perceived enemies’ personal allegiances—and expects scholars to marshal facts and reason in the pursuit of knowledge. Science is quite keen on its practitioners supporting their assertions with empirical evidence too.
I should have done sociology. If this post is anything to go by then I wouldn’t have had to bother with all that crap; I could just sneer incoherently at anything I didn’t agree with. The conversion course would have been easy too. According to you, I “have no actual commitment to principle”.
For anyone interested in our arguments, we are having a conference in London on 30May07 at which those famous supporters of the Iraq war and “liberal imperialism” Profs Michael Walzer and Fred Halliday will be speaking. Just google “Euston Manifesto” for details. It’s more than Mark could be bothered to do.
Thanks, Antonio, for the comment. That’s the sort of thing I was actually trying to stimulate debate on. But I’ll have to get back to you because I really need to go to sleep! But I read Bauman as making those arguments mainly in the context of substantive economic equality (of opportunity) rather than formal liberal equality. In regard to one of Paulus’ points (about bureaucracy), I myself, as a social democrat with strong libertarian leanings, would always argue against both the moral authoritarianism of communitarianism (which I really see as being a conservative view) and against overly bureaucratic solutions.
Don’t let us stop you, comrade.
My point exactly, Antonio. Before there existed some kind of machine economy there could exist no modern Left.
You could, PooterGeek, but there are already enough of us doing the job. If you can handle the responsibility you’ll be expected to join the International Sneerers’ Union, of course, though your Manifesto is more or less silent on that small plank of traditional Left politics.
Just to clarify, Antonio, I’m not necessarily endorsing everything Bauman argues, as I think a careful reading of the way I introduce the second quote shows. But I think his argument worth discussing.
Mark, this statement of yours is crucial:
“….what the left should be doing to ensure greater equality within countries such as Britain and Australia right now. That’s what I’d like to discuss!”
Before the (essentialist?!) Left determines what it should be doing to ensure greater equality, surely some definition of “equality” needs to be stated first! Are we talking outcome, opportunity, the legal system, financial etc? The answer to this question is the real crux of the problem for the Left. The definition of “equality” will also surely help to narrow down what the Left is and what it should be doing.
Personally, I think the Left gets into internal twists and knots on equality and is better served by focussing on its “core business” of ameliorating economic injustice & structural oppression. This focus, I believe, is a better way of defining what the Left is as against a classical liberal, conservative or totalitarian.
But isn’t that the same thing basically as striving for substantive equality of economic opportunity, which is what I was saying?
I’d pretty much agree with this statement from my distinguished co-blogger!
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2005/08/30/beyond-left-and-right/
PooterGeek, surely if the Euston Manifesto represents a progessive way forward for the Left, why are you as an advocate for it resorting to such oldskool ad hominem on anyone daring to critique it?
One would hope that with reference to factual information, historical examples, logic and analogy you would be able to advance your manifesto?
Why not have a look at Mark’s bio and his other posts on the Euston Manifesto before you dismiss him in such a sectarian way again? Could your abusive attack perhaps indicate that adherent of the new Euston Left(tm) still stick to that same annoying sectarian puritanism that put many genuine leftwingers off the Old Left(tm)?
You are being utterly absurd Mark. The public in the West, and that includes Anglosphere countries like Britain, Australia and America, does not have the stomach for sending troops into Darfur.
I also note your reluctance to say what the West should do in Darfur. I’m afraid I’m not convinced by people who jump and down saying “do something, do something”.
From Australia’s perspective, as we now see in places like PNG, the Solomons and East Timor, even the most well-intentioned and ostensibly legitimate interventions in foreign disputes can turn out to be disastrous misadventures.
Bauman’s ideas seem worth listening to, though I have reservations about some of his piece. I think that the task of the Left is twofold (probably more than twofold, but two is a start):
1. Reconnect with grassroots politics, by clearly articulating positions and winning a few meaningful battles. Most Australians tend not to be rabid ideologues; if anything, people are incredibly cynical about any/all politicians, and are therefore quite detached from the political process. To achieve this requires:
2. A thinking through of political philosophy and ideology, so that universal principles (by which I mean basic ideas of reason, and social justice) can be applied meaningfully to particular situations.
To that end, for those who can swallow their anti-Gallic gall, I recommend the French philosopher Alain Badiou as a counterpoint to Bauman, and as an antidote to the post-hoc rationalisations of the Eustonites. In particular, I suggest that his writings on Iraq and 9/11 might be curative for these third-way revisionists who seem to confuse a ’shock and awe’ campaign conducted by a cowboy state (leaving hundres of thousands dead and millions exiled) with ‘liberation’ and ‘democratic intervention’.
I think that what’s left for the Left to accomplish is to move beyond the ‘Beyond Left and Right’ question and into some kind of futuristic space bubble. With lasers.
It’s 2am fellas, c’mon…
Heh. Thanks!
Yes we know.
Since you’re into reason, and all that, you might care to read more carefully.
Some of the highest profile ones – like Cohen and Geras, for instance.
And I’d have thought the past and present political affiliations of manifestists would be very important since they purport to be speaking on behalf of, you know, a political ideology.
And, if you read the post and the comments, instead of arriving here with your bluster from the Euston Manifesto phone tree or auto-googler or whatever, you’d have noticed that there’s a link in the very first sentence to previous discussions we’ve had here, where we’ve parsed the text of the manifesto to death.
So, contra straight talkin’ mel, sometimes it’s worthwhile writing carefully and reading carefully.
I’m not a fella, fella!
And I’ll talk political philosophy and snark at whatever hour I choose!
Mark,
“But isn’t that the same thing basically as striving for substantive equality of economic opportunity, which is what I was saying?”
Yes it is. I’m sorry I posted before I saw your refined approach to the problem of “equality”.
Obviously classical liberals also purport to believe in “striving for substantive equality of economic opportunity”. Classical liberal methodology obviously advocates the equation – more genuine free markets tends towards more equality of economic opportunity. Given this, aren’t the Left “wedged” into an interventionist methodology of varying degrees? As they say in Scotland – Cauld Kale Het! (“Boiled cabbage again!”)
Perhaps a way forward in the discussion is to try to work out where the Left should stand vis a vis “free markets” and if they have any alternative models?
Well, I think the left should support markets insofar as they are a way of effectively coordinating complex decisions and aggregating dispersed networks and things but not be complacent about the power imbalances in them, their tendency towards oligopoly, and be aware of their constructed nature and thus of the ends of market regulation. A lot of the mythos about markets presumes a very simplified model that had few actual instances in history.
So deconstructing the “free” in “free” markets with equality of opportunity and true liberty in mind is the way to go.
I agree with Kim’s 2:07am comment. But I think the Left needs to avoid the emotive term Capitalism. Let’s leave that one for the Marxists.
Kim,
Not to be too unnecessarily argumentative but your qualified support of free markets sounds VERY similar to classical liberalism:
- A “free market” with a power imbalance is obviously not free and classical liberals support interventions which protect the freedom of the market and prevent oligarchies.
- Classical liberals also readily acknowledge that there have been precious few “free” markets historically. This is the root cause of a fundamental lack of equality in classical liberalism.
I’m not trying to convert anyone to the case of liberalism but I am genuinely interested in finding out what the modern Left alternative is to free-market economics and classical liberalism in general.
Is there a Left answer to the question: “What is the root cause of injustice and oppression?” From a Left perspective, is the question even valid?
Kim at 1:53am appears to be maligning Nick Cohen as a Trotskyvite/Maoist.
It aint so, sister:
Nick Cohen says:
“Socialism which defined what it meant to be left wing from the 1880s to the 1980s is dead; killed by the atrocities of the communists and the success of market economics. ”
http://www.nickcohen.net/
Like many of the Euston Manifesto signers, Cohen is sick of this type of crap:
“In an interview on the Today programme which should become notorious, John Humprhys made the implied indifference explicit. Tony Blair was talking to him about the need to base British foreign policy on the “spread of democracy, freedom and justiceâ€?, when an irritated Humphrys blurted out, “Our idea of democracy.â€? “I don’t know that there is another idea of democracy,â€? Blair countered. “If I may say so,â€? Humphrys went on, “that’s naive … in the view of many people.â€? “The one basic fact about democracy, surely,â€? insisted the Prime Minister, “is that you can get rid of your government if you don’t like them.â€? “But the Iranians elected their own government,â€? Humphrys barked back, “and we’re now telling them what to do.â€? “Hold on John,â€? came the steely response, “something like 60 per cent of the candidates were excluded.â€?
In its treatment of its staff and coverage of Britain, the BBC is consistently anti-racist, but its presenters find it acceptable to imply that free elections are fine for white-skinned broadcasters in London but not brown-skinned democrats in Tehran, and that it is somehow culturally imperialist to think otherwise.” http://www.nickcohen.net/?p=232
And so he damn well should be.
ps. Have a spent enough time in the moderation naughty chair now?
Kim:
Thank you to you too, Kim, for drawing people’s attention to the other posts “about” the Euston Manifesto on this site. You’re right: Google lets me know know when people have written about it so I have already read every post that’s mentioned the document by name here.
There are seven. Not one of them quotes or addresses a single sentence of the manifesto. There are some more slurs; there’s more than one attempt to smear by association; there are a couple of quotes from random signatories; and, er, that’s it. You’ve made my original point—and, indeed, the manifesto’s point about the standard of debate on the Left—perfectly.
Who needs “straw men” when we’re standing in a field full of scarecrows?
Well, if that’s what you think (though you might care to read the associated comments threads too), how about raising the standard of debate, PooterGeek, and addressing the substantive points about the domestic agenda of the Euston Manifesto?
I can cite chapter and verse if that will assist you.
Never. All of us are in the gutter, and I don’t give a shit what stars you’re looking at, you’re still in the gutter.
If you take the time to read history, long-dead comments threads sometimes turn up delicious nuggets. This one perhaps should be included in a Greatest Hits of Boxhead:
And gracias al GeneralÃssimo Pinochet-Edwards:
—SIGNAL (UNCLASSIFIED)—
TO: LARVATUSPRODEO HQ
SENDER: ADM DAGAMA (ret. injured)
POSITION: CENTRE HALF-FORWARD
—TEXT—
MESSAGE AUTOMODERATED
SUSPECT ENEMY ACTIVITY
WE ARE SINKING FAST
PASSENGERS BEING PUT INTO BOATS
DELECTATIO MOROSA
—SIGNAL ENDS—
Euston Manifesto:
We are, however, united in our view about the reactionary, semi-fascist and
Paulus:
Well, yes, actually.
1. The Baathist regime was fascist.
2. But no, it was only a potential liberation of Iraq to overthrow Saddam. It cannot be said to be an actual liberation unless and until the offending regime is replaced by a stable regime that is qualitatively superior to the one replaced.
3. And the manifestists concede this point when they speak about the opportunity lost or perhaps never enjoyed to effect positive regime change.
4. Finally, the manifestists blame the opponents of intervention in Iraq for its failure. This is an outright lie. The failure belongs to the idiot proponents of war. Opponents of the war may have questioned the morality of the adventure, but their killing argument concerns the incompetence of its execution. There was no time that opponents of the war before its outbreak could be justified in switching to support during the fighting and occupation phases. On the other hand, the execution of the war has provided plenty of justification for supporters of the war before its outbreak to withdraw that support.
I’ve not read the Euston Manifesto, only about it, so these comments are generic, not aimed at any of the Eustonists in particular.
There is a certain strain of British left of centre politicians and activists, going to back at least to Ramsey Macdonald, that feels a compelling need to convince the Right that they really are respectable and responsible people. They contort themselves senseless by adopting the policies of the Right, while insisting hat they are still following the principles of the Left.
Of course this does them no good at all. They just get held in contempt by both Left and Right.
It happens in other countries too but it’s particularly acute in Britain. Don’t know why. Maybe the class system with its attendant upward envy is responsible.
Quite so. Which is why there are countless examples of folks recanting their support, while those going the other way (if indeed are there any) seem thin on the ground.
Indeedy Spiros, but if they can convince themselves that
criticismslurs from the Left is due to their courageous thinking and that the purrs from tummy tickling the Right are credibility, then you’ve got your all-day seaside donkey right there.Perhaps the Euston Manifestists at their next meeting in the Palace of Westminster could advise Iraqis on how to breach manifesto commitments by allowing 90 hereditary peers to remain in the House of Lords and then taking eight years to do precisely nothing about upper house reform, leaving the unelected membership thereof in the gift of party leaders. Since they’re such vigorous democrats, etc, etc, etc.
Maybe Iraq could follow the British practice of having no separation of church and state – with 26 Anglican Bishops in the House of Lords?
What we have here is a confusion of languages. The Euston Manifestists employ the language of experience: that is, they describe what they see on the contemporary left and their appalled reaction to it. Mark and Bauman use the language of explanation: they describe not what the contemporary left is, but rather what it means, and their laudatory reaction to it.
Explanation has its merits, of course; but it often falls prey to escalating spirals of abstraction that take its articulators further and further away from the real. Barthes described this as the difference between de-politicised and politicised speech. Baudrillard described it as the creation of simulacra.
This is true of Bauman. The statement –
— sounds well enough in the language of explanation, but is meaningless in the language of experience.
As for –
Spare me.
Orwell said it best, constructing a bridge between the two languages:
Excuse the pomo tone. But at least I quoted Orwell.
No, I think that’s wrong, Rob. The Manifestists have a very partial and prejudicial (in the sense that they’ve pre-judged before they turn their eyes to the state of play) view of “experience”, and Bauman is not setting out to explain so much as to inspire.
I realise you’re basically a conservative now (and that’s not meant to be an unkind comment but your total scepticism towards any planned action to bring about social change proves the point) but I wonder why you, and the Manifestists, can’t just get on with advocating your own political position without holding on to a personal and historical legacy of affiliation and identification with the left (which I think is at the root of the disdainful attacks, which contrary to what our friend and comrade PooterGeek alleges, are in fact objectively sneers, on those of us who are more than happy to identify with the left). I don’t see why it wouldn’t just be a better and more honourable way of proceeding to come out (as it were) as a right winger and contest the ideas and policies of the left rather than constantly writing some narrative of sorrow and betrayal (“I haven’t changed, it’s they who’ve changed”) etc.
I’ll also observe in passing the Hitchens-led deification of Orwell, someone who never resiled from a socialist stance, is ironic.
Where Hitchens and Orwell are concerned, the only voice worth listening to is John Dolan’s.
But your whole post is ‘objectively’ a ’sneer’ at the Manifestists.
I realise that it suits your own discourse to disallow your opposition on the left any ‘left’ credentials, but your argument is both specious and self-defensive, IMHO. Hitchens and Cohen have far better credentials than you do.
It would be very convenient for you if we were all raving Bushites. Unhappily, we are not, for all you try and make us so.
And you, as I understand it, were never a socialist anyway, so what you are either attacking or defending I fail to see, quite frankly.
At least the guys at Leftwrites have some kind of identifiable position.
Either I’m in moderation or the ether has chewed up my response.
The Spaminator is having an over-active day, unfortunately.
I see you didn’t take my comment well, Rob. It was well meant.
I don’t understand what you’re getting at in your response, really.
Obviously they’re much more widely known and have written and sold books, etc. But that doesn’t exempt them from having to frame coherent arguments. Hitchens is an amusing writer (and a master of the art of smear and sneer, as I suspect you’d admit if it didn’t suit your argument to argue otherwise) but quite an illogical and emotion driven one. But I don’t think that’s what you mean.
So I assume that’s their (and your) “left credentials”? That’s very telling, Rob.
I’m a social democrat, and I’ve made my position very clear indeed. The fact that I don’t have some sort of conversion narrative like all you ex-socialists do just goes to my point about the fundamental problems with the Euston position – they just can’t admit that they’re really on the right (and no, not everyone on the right is a “raving Bushie”) and have to direct all their rhetorical guns at the actually existing left in order to write these stories of betrayal, all of which are rather tedious. It’s a fundamentally emotional rather than a rational position, I think.
I referred before to the fact that on many threads, whenever any sort of proposal for positive state action in the domestic sphere has been made, you’ve evinced a view that governments can achieve nothing and only do harm. That’s a classically conservative position, and I don’t see why you wouldn’t be happy to own up to it, rather than claiming that you’re on the left. Please do forgive me if I’ve mischaracterised your position, but that’s my good faith reading of it.
But mutual sneering is so enjoyable, Rob. It’s like karaoke kabuki. [poses]
Pseudo-left, according to many. Or is it ultra-left?
We on the left or we on the right? Presumably current leftists would have trouble raving in favour of Bush—though I await the internet to prove me wrong.
As for the manifestists: if they were actually positioning themselves as a critical Left, the kind that makes sound, reaching critiques of government and society, rather than just self-justifications and self-critiques (which all happen to favour the current foreign policy of HMG), they wouldn’t be opposition at all. As it stands they’re just a circular suck-hole conga line.
Yep. You are being dishonest, Rob. You have carried on with gay abandon about the wonders of capitalism and the evils of Government on previous threads. It is kind of sickening when Rightists such as yourself latch onto Orwell.
Fiasco is also being rather silly. There is nothing in John Dolan’s (John who?) that would convince anyone with an IQ that Orwell is a racist.
Once again it is the same tired old shit. Those of us stained with white skin are inherently evil and guilty of every conceivable crime. We must wear a crown of thorns and a black armband. We are responsible for everything wrong in the world. We must never critique other cultures or persons of a non-white colour (unless they are uppity traitors like Hirsi Ali) lest we be guilty of racism. We must ………
The manifestists seem to be big on accusations, but don’t appear to have really worked through the morass of assumptions they’ve uncritically incorporated into their bullet points (i.e. about the nature of ‘intervention’, ‘democracy’, etc). I don’t really understand the overly defensive tone, unless we should understand it as the necessary accompaniment to the grotesque apologetics found therein.
In any case, didn’t manifestos go out of fashion about 70 years ago? I think the last decent one I read was by the Surrealists.
I’ll cop to silliness, mel, but WTFBBQ? Dolan’s was a humorous sledge against Hater Hitchens and Orwell—your insecurities are your own problem.
(Mel who?)
That’s the sort of residual Trotskyism, I think. I await a platform of “maximal demands” which cunningly exposes for the workers the machinations of the ruling classes by making demands which the running dog reformists won’t support.
Hang on, that’s so last century.
But the tone and the desire to blast other elements of the left is still there, even if there’s little left of actual leftism.
I must put a good word in for SCUM and the Situationists, though.
That’s it, really, isn’t it?
How many bloggers in Australia apart from Rob signed the manifesto?
It’s a very British document, and very much tied to its time, as I argued in the post with regard to the Blairite moment.
It also seems to give some emotional satisfaction to former socialists.
But, politics moves on. That’s Bauman’s point. Political configurations and forces are not frozen in time.
When there’s a Democratic President in the White House and a Tory Prime Minister at no. 10, how relevant will these anguished debates be?
One of the things that revolted Cohen, and sent him down the Euston path, was how some of his Lefty mates and acquaintenances, shreiked with joy (in private, of course) about the disaster in Iraq.
Don’t deny it boys and girls. There is no shortage of schadenfreude on the Left about this miserable state of affairs.
I’ll deny it. I don’t see any of it in Australia. And I don’t trust Cohen as far as I can throw him. Have a look at any of the serious reviews of his book to get a sense of how sloppy he is with the truth.
I recommend Sunder Katwala:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sunder_katwala/2007/02/my_left.html
And on the way in which all this manifestism provides for its authors, cheerleaders and epigones a pleasing “personal psychodrama”:
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2807/
As I’ve said many times before (Rob and I must have been stoushing on the intertubes now for three years or so), the whole “I realised the errors of the left and its totalitarian ways when event x was brought to light (varies according to generation – Kruschev’s speech, Prague, Cambodia) and I now have a moral obligation to denounce the current representatives of the left” thing is completely and totally irrelevant in the twenty-first century to anyone who’s under forty, and will become more and more irrelevant as time goes on.
There was a bifurcation within the socialist movement from the beginning between reformists and revolutionaries. Have a look at whom Marx wanted to read out of the International Working Men’s Movement – it wasn’t just the anarchists. This bifurcation, which was theorised later by Bernstein and Kautsky, had an institutional expression in the split of the Socialist International after WW1 and the formation of Leninist parties.
Social democrats are still around, while Leninists are not in any real sense.
But these sort of hysterical narratives seem to have survived the end of actually existing political Marxism. They’re an irrelevant legacy of history, and they have nothing positive to say about what the enduring role of the left is with regard to the amelioration of inequality and the promotion of equality of opportunity.
In addition, the various global wars and unending crusades have lost their cachet. The terrorist problem is now seen in its proper dimension by many people – as a problem but not an existential struggle or a new World War. There are also a lot of people in the foreign policy community in America who are increasingly questioning whether or not the way in which the Middle East has come to dominate foreign policy, and the absurd way in which political Islamist movements and extremist premilleniarist Christians have framed debates, are also on the way out.
As to discussions of humanitarian intervention, they would be far better off if they were conducted rationally and not as instruments to conjure up some spectre of doom.
Quite right. I find them much more evidentially and intellectually persuasive. Sorry.
Well that’s unanswerable, really, since you don’t provide any examples of these apparently compelling arguments supported by the careful citation and sifting of evidence that, say, Hitchens makes.
Mark, you just can’t stand the thought that the moral heart of the left is somewhere other than where you are at. That’s what this whole post is about.
No, Rob, that’s where we differ. I don’t see politics as an affair of morality. It’s the moral airs that people ascribe to it which cause many of the problems. I’m an old Weberian too – personal and political ethics should not be confused and to do so is to fall into the danger of doing harm. That’s why I’m arguing against both the utopian politics of Marxism and the moral self-righteousness and preference for emotion over reason which in my view characterises the Eustonists.
Yes, I agree that’s where we differ.
Tigtog. Need. Couch. Pearls. Must. Clutch. Gasp!
Turn it up, Rob, and give away the faux sentimentalism: perhaps you could fight GK Chesterton’s ghost for the Left’s moral heart? I’ll give you sporting odds.
Echoes of Derrida.
Interesting post, Mark. Lots of good stuff about The Big Questions, and so forth. But let’s get our priorities straight, here: silly things first.
“In any case, didn’t manifestos go out of fashion about 70 years ago? I think the last decent one I read was by the Surrealists.”
“I must put a good word in for SCUM and the Situationists, though.”
Delusional, reactionary fools! The greatest (and funniest) manifestos were written by the Futurists, who even designed Futurist men’s fashions, were planning a Futurist cookbook, and were busy making some of the worst art I’ve ever seen, before they were so rudely interrupted by, uh, World War I (itself a sort of Futurist wish-fulfilment). They were some of the greatest comedians of the 20th-cent.; the absolute bench-mark of manifesto-writing, I dare say. You can’t make it through two consecutive sentences without erupting in a fit of giggles. A must!
Back to substance. I’m afraid your buddy Bauman has written some awfully silly things as quoted here; I’m straining to find a word more courteous and polite than “retarded” that is still accurate, but I’m coming up empty. I could whack this guy like a friggin’ pinata all day long, and perhaps I shall, in a later comment; but I wanted to address the main question of your post, viz., what now for the left?
Coupla things. First, this word “equality” that keeps cropping up in the post. In human terms, the word ‘equality’ only has any meaningful, serious value in the concept of equality before the law (and in our particular world, we mean a ‘law’ that is made of, by, and for the people, etc etc). That is its true (and I believe only) place in these discourses, and I think that if we treated the words “equality,” “law,” and “the people” seriously and strictly in those phrases, and defined issues with respect to that pole-star and not w/respect to the issues themselves as such, many current problems would evaporate like the morning mist. But “equality” in an economic sense, or in a social sense outside of “before the law” is a pretty ridiculous concept, and the sooner it is tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail, the better off everyone will be, especially those who view themselves as victims of ostensible ‘inequality’.
What is wanted is not equality but decent baseline standards. If A and B both have access to clean running water, efficient plumbing and sanitation, acceptable standards of housing, public education, decent infrastructure and access to health care and a few basic social amenities, then what earthly difference does it make if B also has a kool DVD player and a better car? What does A really have to complain about then? Equality as such, is not only a silly idea, it’s a malicious one.
So what should the left be doing? In simple terms, trying to define and implement workable, scalable baseline standards that increase the store of human decency, and thus of global well-being. And acknowleding frankly what the costs and problems are, every step of the way, as Paulus astutely recognizes in a comment above. Step one: take out a hacksaw, and sever those links that have got the left clumsily and hamperingly handcuffed to every stupid, shrieking, poisonous, resentful, unworkable ideology you can name: communism, socialism, multiculturalism, immigrationism, racial preferencing, and the zillion silly intellectual subcultures that hide behind the world theory. Abandon theory. Abandon ideology. Abandon pre-judicial certainty. These are mug’s games; the world is always all about the actual nuts and bolts.
I think the left should regroup and reform around the simple, clear idea of trying to get a decent shake for the little guy. And in practical terms, what that means in our historic moment may just be a commitment to a workable form of global trade-unionism, or labor standards, or something similar that achieves the same effects. In the current economic climate, you can’t get the leverage to demand a decent shake locally, if you can always be outsourced some place where there isn’t any decency. So the main game I think is to find where the floor is, and to try and raise that, steadily, thus increasing baseline decency across the board.
Bauman is a regular hockey puck, and I hope to come back and have a few fun slap shots with him later, but this comment is getting way too long. I’ll just leave you with this thought: Bauman gives us this howler: “the left is… a state of permanent criticism of the realities of social life.”
Well, actually, if you think about it for more than roughly ten friggin’ seconds, the best practical standing criticism of social life is, um… capitalism. Perhaps the true role of the left is to criticize and refine not social life directly, but the residual rough effects of the superior critical method that is capitalism. And rough effects there are, as we all well know. We can always do better. But let’s stop believing in irrational, emotionally gratifying Systems that have all the liabilities of the religions the left is usually so eager to deride. Futurists unite! Take back the, uh, uh…
Oops, moderated. I think. I certainly hope the very long comment I just wrote wasn’t completely vaporized; it took me a while to write it, and I won’t be able to reproduce it. If it can be rescued from oblivion, thanks; if not, oh well, futility, thy name is… something.
True. Oh so true. But tragedy of the left in Australia – and much of the world over the past 17 years – is that they are reluctant to say what they stand for, while they are ever so eager to say what they stand against. The tragic truth is that Kevin Rudd ain’t no Social Democrat messiah, he is just another politician on the make, and he just doing and saying whatever will help him get his hands on the levers of power. Still, when all is said and done, I would rather have a Labor apparatchik grab power under the cover of ambiguous statements than a conservative…
Ain’t politics the last refuge of the non-believers these days…
Cheers…
As I said, the spaminator is a rapacious beast tonight.
Indeed, Cliff, that struck me too.
j_p_z, “equality”, like “liberty” has many shades of meaning and much of the post-Enlightenment political conversation is an argument not only over which trumps which (because in practice you can’t have a perfect share of both) but also how we are to conceive of the substantive content of such political concepts.
Please note above the debate between me and Antonio. It may be that you and I are not as far apart as you think. Or we may be further apart than I think, because I suspect the degree of collective provision which you think necessary to ensure equality of opportunity is much smaller than that which I think necessary. I think social democracy is actually quite a radical agenda. Particularly these days!
I think you are on to something Rob.
It would seem that Mark has never quite recovered from discovering that there is a small left out there that can make a coherent argument on the merits of draining the swamps of the Middle East after 60 years of rotten to the core U.S. policies had helped to sustain it.
An internationalist left. A left that is 100% supportive of overthrowing failed U.S. policies and spreading bourgeois revolution to that region and far beyond. A left that is enthusiastic about development and cheaper air-fares and electricity as the world continues on the path of industrialization and globalisation.
People that run around pushing the party of millionaires and yuppies as important representatives of the working people while hiding from the real debate of ‘what is to be done’ to deal with the oppressors in the context of 9/11 are not leftists in any sense other than the form that their right-wing stand is presented.
One is struck by the ‘I’ll get back to you’ cowardice; the contempt for politicians who are now dealing with Al Qaeda, Baathists and Shia death squads as a day in, day out reality. Politicians who are confronting the issues of how to make war on the most blatant oppressors going round. The lack of very basic solidarity with people who are under attack by the enemy right now is breathtaking.
Mick, our comments crossed. But I agree wholeheartedly.
Bauman’s reference is obviously to Marx (in his more Hegelian stage, if I recall correctly) calling for “ruthless criticism of all that exists”. I don’t see capitalism as rational, necessarily, though in Weber’s terms it embodies a rationality and a logic. Keynes is a good corrective to any view that the outcomes of market transactions are necessarily rational. Lest it be thought that Keynes has been invalidated by subsequent events, one could point to the recent madness of hedge funds engaging in trades so complicated that they end up defeating both their purposes and the purposes of private equity with whom they are allied. There are any number of substantively (if not formally) irrational outcomes from capitalism. It was true historically that liberalism was an attempt to apply the hard sword of reason to outdated social institutions, but that’s true only historically in many instances, I think. Conservatism, as something which articulates a political position as such (remembering that ideology as a word gained something like its modern meaning with the French revolution) is intimately tied to romanticism, which people like Schmitt would argue has also infected liberalism. As I said before, and with direct reference to the Eustonists, romanticism and sentiment in politics is a very dangerous thing indeed.
patrickm, as a modern day Maoist, you merely prove my point – your viewpoint is not so dissimilar to that of the ex-Maoists and Trostkyites who manifest themselves as Eustonists. Bizarre dreams of reshaping the world entailing massive violence and unending war. You’re welcome to them. Though if you ever actually did anything about “bourgeois revolution” aside from writing tendentious blog comments…
Though I must confess I find the relationship between “cheaper air fares” as a panacea for the ills of the exploited and oppressed and Marxist theory somewhat curious, and puzzling.
http://orwell.ru/library/articles/niggers/english/e_ncn
Could anyone in the year 2007 imagine British imperialists re-colonizing India, and through local Indian puppets to be sure, ruling India for the benefit of the English ruling-class? Could the Japanese elite run Korea via Korean puppets? Of course they couldn’t.
Why on earth would anyone think that the great Satan could achieve this result in Iraq?
I take it this is what GT thinks is the US game. It’s all about oil!! Yet that world is now not possible. The world has moved on since the US were preventing elections in Vietnam and yet GT drags this quote in.
Still no support for the Iraqi masses from him.
Evidently any sort of Marxist analysis of global economics is out of fashion at the bourgeois temple of The Last Superpower.
What Gummo is getting at, I think it’s safe to say, is that the cheap air fares and all the wonderful benefits (bread and circuses?) of “globalisation” are largely produced through the cheap and exploited labour of those in the third world. I’m sure patrickm will applaud when Qantas outsources unionised jobs to Malaysia, China and Singapore. Though I’m not sure why. Perhaps some of the redundant workers will blow their Newstart on his cheaper air fares.
Orwell’s India is an analogy, obviously.
If The Last Superpower bourgeois revolutionaries haven’t read Marxist theorists of development such as Sadir Amin and Andre Gunder Frank on the replacement of the imperialism of territorial control by that of capital and the international division of labour, I’d at least have expected them to have consulted The Communist Manifesto.
But maybe not.
And old grandfather Marx had something to say about the practice of “primitive accumulation”.
Probably too busy buying shares in Webjet or something. It’s all about TEH CHEAP AIR FARES!
No, not all, but some of it is about TEH PRIVATISATION!
Instead of mouthing off about draining swamps, you might care to study the economic decisions the “Coalition Provisional Authority” made, which were illegal at international law, as Bremmer was advised, and indeed the rate of unemployment and the decline in income that occurred before the insurgency got going. Not to mention the complete failure to provide even basic services. And the fact that public health was assigned to an evangelical Doctor who knew precisely nothing about things like ensuring an adequate supply of drugs to hospitals. Whatever the economics of Iraq was about, it certainly wasn’t about “the Iraqi masses”.
But, really, Christine is right – it’s a complete waste of time arguing with patrickm. “The Last Superpower” view of the world is beyond parody.
It’s extraodinary that some of these things are even at issue outside of Coalition dogma.
Since when do the masses ask for gunpoint ‘democracy’, at the cost of civil war and ongoing military occupation? Since when does ‘liberation’ entail a ’shock and awe’ campaign?
It is entirely disingenuous for the apologists to suggest that Iraq’s current plight is a case of ‘mismanagement’ or bureaucratic bungling, rather than by design. The consequences of US invasion were entirely predictable by any informed and reasonable person. It is inconceivable that a government that invests billions into military resources and technology would not have had a few advisors and analysts warning of the likely chaos that would ensue in post-invasion Iraq.
If you want to support the Iraqi masses, perhaps you should listen to their wishes, and not to those seemingly acquiescent to slaughter (conducted for the best humanitarian reasons, of course).
Kim,
that was pretty much what I was on about – but patrick does like to base his responses to criticism on wilfully obtuse misreading of his critics, doesn’t he?
If being a “true leftist” means giving tacit support to this government’s domestic agenda by voting informal at the next election, because at least they’re doing their bit towards “draining the swamps of the middle-east” and bringing on the day of cheap airfares for the world proletariat, I’ll wear the label “pseudo-lefty” with pride.
BTW, patrick do you know how much of the price you paid for your computer, your mobile phone and your other globalised economy goodies went to fund civil wars in developing countries? Thought not.
Kim says:
“I’m sure patrickm will applaud when Qantas outsources unionised jobs to Malaysia, China and Singapore. Though I’m not sure why. Perhaps some of the redundant workers will blow their Newstart on his cheaper air fares.”
That is a very problematic argument, Kim. Don’t people in low wage countries deserve jobs as much as Australians? Your statement sounds more nationalist than internationalist.
“… the cheap and exploited labour of those in the third world.”
The exploitation of third world labour argument is also problematic. Arguably if someone in a third world country decides to work in a low wage job outsourced by a first world multinational in order to escape potential starvation, they are not being exploited.
I’m equivocal on these issues. Sadly, most Lefties know little about economics and consequently fail to fully consider the ramifications of their views on matters like “globalisation”.
Rob, you credulous old Platonist, you.
The Euston Manifestists don’t employ the language of experience at all. As I demonstrated here the manifestists are utterly mistaken in their understanding of the facts of the matter in regard to their most important argument (intervention in Iraq) against what they imagine to be the Left.
Thus, the Manifestists have created an idealised (that is ideally bad and dysfunctional) image of the Left. Against this the Manifestists have posited and idealised, wise and competent Bushite agenda.
Blatantly, these two images contradict reality. Yet, Rob treats these tragically mistaken assertions of the Euston Manifestists as if they were nothing less than then pure, unalloyed truth.
Tragic, really.
You don’t have to stay in that cave, you know, Rob.
Nicely put, Katz. Now, if you reverse the polarity of your argument you will have taken a long step in the direction of reality.
Katz acknowledges that;
So is the Baathist insurgency / Sunni ‘resistance’ that is obviously loosing the current war. Yet the implication from Katz
Is that the current government is no better than the overthrown Baathists based in the Sunni 20% minority and therefore nothing positive has happened for Katz that would warrant abandoning the ‘anti-war’ anti-liberation stance. For Katz and the rest it would seem that it’s ‘each to their own and let the devil take the hindmost!’
The constitution and election of a proportionally representative parliament means nothing of decisive substance to Katz. The constitutional protections of minorities mean nothing. The vibrant mass-media, nothing; the open existence of numerous contending political parties… All mean nothing (of decisive substance).
Because the three enemies of all progressives are still at their grizzly work and (horror of horrors) Islamist parties are dominant in the government, the Coalition war aims are supposedly failed and thus the war a misguided undertaking, and progressives and all leftists are supposed to throw our hands up, demand withdrawal of the coalition forces and avoid any analysis of how the left can contribute to the revolutionary transformation that is required in the region. To paraphrase Mark, what’s it got to do with us?
Mark and Kim are not pacifists and they support the war in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is apparently the responsible war that left’s and progressives can sign on to in their view. It’s to be the proper focus of leftists but if war is on the table in Iraq it’s none of the left’s business; yet strategically this is nonsense.
Katz is wrong because Islamists are not fascists requiring suppression at all, but a huge part of the emerging democratic reality of any Middle Eastern society as many of them attempt to throw off tyranny and the autocratic rubbish that the U.S. had kept in place since WW2.
The left always believed that the U.S. maintained their revolting policies in order to suppress communists, other democrats and Islamists struggling for their national liberation, for the independence of their countries and for the revolutionary advancement of their people in exactly the same tradition as Jefferson. The pseudo-left has no explanation for a reversal of these policies yet is now aware that they have been reversed.
Time to rethink.
Rob, you’d do your case more good were you to engage with evidence and argument.
Not the manifestist way, Katz.
So The Euston Manifesto states ‘the reconfiguration of progressive opinion that we aim for involves drawing a line between forces on the Left that remain true to its authentic values, and currents that have lately shown themselves rather too flexible about these values.”
What? Could that mean something about the impotent remaining pure (to quote Whitlam)? Sorry I’m a bit hazy about what Left is, but always thought that politics in real life inevitably involves a tussle of messy, dirty, sweaty compromise where even the most starry-eyed idealists are eventually worn down.
Leaving aside for the moment all the epistomoloigical and ideological implications, inferences and accusations of heresy inherent in any discussion of the Euston Manifestio (sounds like an el cheapo 80s Brit knockoff of The Ludlum Formula, doesn’t it?) – can anyone point to one lick of good actually achieved by it? All it seems to have done is drive a wedge between some people of good will and generally further polarise and poison discussion over the Mesopotamian caper.
As good old D2 pointed out, it basically reads like a combination of blank cheque and loyalty oath.
Shit, any evening in most pubs across this earth could come up with something far less windy, soapy and sanctimonious and far more “pull yer finger out” than that threadbare teenager’s tubesock masquerading as a adult manifesto.
You are a silly fellow PatrickM.
Your conflation of Baathism and Sunni fundamentalism runs utterly counter to reality. There has never been a relationship between the two movements.
I’ve already given your now absent confrere David Jackmanson a good slapping in regard to the “quote Parliament” [John McCain] of Iraq. I’m prepared to repeat the dose for your benefit if you persist in your fantasies.
The majority Shiite parties of Iraq control and operate the largest and most violent militias and hit squads in the country. It is grotesque for you to presume to hold these fanatics up as exemplars of democracy.
Learn some facts, for god’s sake.
Speaking of facts:
“The problem is more complex than many imagine. In particular, it is essential to realize that there is not merely ‘a’ civil war in Iraq, but that there are several overlapping conflict dynamics, including:
• a struggle over the control of the state between Shi’a and Sunnis, with Kurds involving themselves as potential ‘king-makers’. The result of this is a vicious Shi’a–Sunni civil war in Baghdad and its environs in which the security institutions of the Iraqi government are involved.
• a struggle for control over the design of the state, and whether it will be unitary or federal. This is bringing Kurds into direct confrontation with Sunnis and supporters of Muqtada Sadr, and causing conflict between Sadrists and other Shi’a organizations.
• a rapidly emerging conflict between Kurds and non-Kurds in Kirkuk, which has every possibility of being mirrored in Mosul.
• a Sunni–US conflict in the centre and north of the country.
• a Shi’a (Sadrist)–US/UK conflict in the centre and south of the country.
• a Sunni–Sunni conflict in the governorates of Anbar, Nineva and Diyala between tribal forces and those associated with Al-Qaeda and other radical Islamist movements.
• a conflict caused by the spreading and strengthening of the Islamic State of Iraq in Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle, including rifts between Al-Qaeda and home-grown Iraqi movements such as Ansar al-Sunna.
• a Shi’a–Shi’a conflict in Najaf and Basra, mainly between Sadrists and Badr forces.11
• rampant criminality across the entire country.
The existence of so many cross-cutting conflicts – some of which involve state forces – makes it exceptionally difficult to promote some form of security normalization without becoming implicated in one or more of the conflicts.“
From this Chatham House briefing paper (PDF).
What the hell, Gummo? Are you trying to obsure the pristine clarity of our mission to drain the swamps of the Middle East by engaging in a entymology lecture?
Another gem, courtesy of Juan Cole:
90 comments in just 60 hours and it’s all over before I had time to look at it. Sigh!
Now I’m faced with the prospect of making a(nother) post-length comment after everyone has gone off to play somewhere else. Sigh again!
I’ll try to make it short and save a fuller explanation for a post some other day.
Contra Mark and Kim, I think it’s important to try to hold the foundational concepts of liberty, equality and fraternity in equal balance. I see them as interpenetrating concepts.
This can’t do them justice, but I’ll need to explain each a little.
Equality I see largely in terms of dignity, respect and empowerment within a social setting and yes, opportunity.
Liberty is not just the absence of constraints but freedom to. That is you should have access to experiences and support to realise your full potential irrespective of where and to whom you were born. Liberty operates also within the constraints and opportunities of a social setting, but such constraints should apply equally to all.
‘Fraternity’ if understood to be gender-inclusive is preferable to ’solidarity’ which leans to the political.
Fraternity is existential rather than political and is about our personalities, our personal identities which are fraternal because socially constructed and constituted. It’s more than communication and interaction between individuals. We are all part of each other.
Essential to the universal realisation of these foundational concepts is what Bauman calls the ’social state’ (rather than the welfare state) and the achievement of democratic international institutions and arrangements to bring all those things under human control which threaten us existentially but are beyond the power of any state.
I’m not happy with just critiquing ‘reality’ which can take what ever course it likes. We need to do more than yap at the heels of the monster. We need something more robust if we are ever to break out of Max Weber’s ’stahlhartes Gehäuse’ (literally ‘steel-hard casing’, cf Talcott Parsons’ ‘iron cage’). We need to get out of the steel box where we are being reconstituted by neoliberal capitalism into individualistic, competitive, rights-bearing consumers and entrepreneurs. We need to stand on top of the box, to control it and be free to become ourselves.
But what then do you do when you get up tomorrow morning? That, I’m afraid, is another matter.
“…what Bauman calls the ’social state’ (rather than the welfare state) and the achievement of democratic international institutions and arrangements to bring all those things under human control which threaten us existentially but are beyond the power of any state.”
Yes, for starters, where would we be without transnational bodies and treaties like ISO and IATA, ensuring our planes are properly built and assembled by global supply chains so they go up, stay up and are guided in to land safely – thousands every minute around the planet. (And when was the last time your luggage went missing at an airport? Hundreds of millions of dollars in international cross-border meetings and frontier and sovereign state busting protocols went into developing a true transnational barcoded sytem for international baggage throwing.)
And returning to one of the original points of this post, exactly who has the Euston Manifesto produced a discernable and tangible outcome for – and about what?
Gummo Trotsky offers a quoted list of nine issues that are generating war in different parts of Iraq (the ABC ran with it on PM today) but no solution to any one of the issues, and no mention of the Baathists. We do need to remember them; they were the fascists based on a tiny minority of a 20% minority that ran all of Iraq before the liberation of first the Kurdish region then the rest of Iraq. But let’s look at what GT quotes.
Now what can progressives or leftists make of that? Who for example ought to be able to control the South African State? Blacks I would think. Could the Sunnis in Iraq be armed and assisted by progressives to control the Iraqi state? No! Yet they did so for decades on end.
Minorities must be protected so how about we have an Iraqi constitution that does that? Well what do you know there is one. Those that will not adhere to it would seem to be the current problem. Some people think that blacks and Middle Eastern people just aren’t capable of sticking to a constitution so it would be better to stay with responsible minority rule. Stick with tyranny. Leftists don’t think along those racist / sectarian lines. The left as I would understand it, believes in democracy and it is the free and fair elections that ought to resolve the issue of control of the state. They were held.
Well what do you know clericalists are struggling for power and being vigorously resisted. The left knows where we stand on that issue. We oppose clericalists. When they oppress us we fight back and or run away. That’s exactly what is happening now in Iraq. It is 2007 and any left ought to know where we stand on the national question. Is the nation in question fully liberated or not? If not then we support that nation continuing the struggle for its liberation. The current constitution does not oppress any national minority in Iraq.
Does the national question require resolution or can we wish it away? To ask the question is to begin to resolve it. Why could not people of good will, live happily in a rapidly developing Kirkuk and Mosul? What policies are preventing that happy future? Are the Kurds seeking to return to and thus dominate areas that the Baathists drove them from and settled more politically acceptable Sunni people in?
I would have thought that as the left has always argued for the right of return of the Palestinians there would be little dispute over the right of return for Kurds. But then these days we have people claiming to be of the left that even deny that the Palestinians have a right of return or compensation.
Hello; the US would like to go home! But right now they have to save a great many Sunni people from rampaging Shia death squads run by the likes of Sadr.
Blow me down the clericalists are causing more grief where they are in bigger numbers. But what does that mean for the central government? Ought they cave into them or stand up to them? It wasn’t that long ago that there were many anti-war people suggesting that al Sadr would come to power and that is obviously not the case. A distinction between Islamic and Islamist is essential.
Al-Qaeda is being fought by someone; gee I wonder what side the left is on?
What can one say about such a paragraph? MUSHY provoked from staring too long at the swamp.
Blow me down the clericalists are back causing problems.
Note to Gummo; the left does not support rampant criminality.
The existence of so many cross-cutting conflicts – some of which involve state forces – makes it exceptionally difficult to promote some form of security normalization without becoming implicated in one or more of the conflicts.“
So get implicated and take a side!
I think that Arbil will take on the role of Yenan in this quite clearly protracted struggle and when the clericalists oppress the people they will run there.
Strategically speaking; the Baathists aren’t coming back to power, and neither are the Sunni ever going to rule over the other 80% of the population ever again and Al Qaeda will not be allowed to win anything. Criminals will have to be dealt no matter what. Clericalists are in the minority and it is important to distinguish between them and Islamic parties.
The above links to discussion of the term Islamofascism and helps with reaching some conclusions about the complicated forces Gummo has now usefully highlighted.