The Ugliness of the Beautiful Game.

The cult of football is alive as ever, especially in Britain where the English pride themselves as the inventors of the beautiful game. It is unclear, at least to me, what is so beautiful about the sight of over twenty millionaires chasing a bladder around a field. Chomsky would remind us of the role sports play in training us to be submissive to authority as well as the tides of irrational jingoism. This shouldn't be taken lightly as it was George Orwell who noted "The nationalist does not only not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." The rampant flag-waving and patriotic chanting emanates from the delusion that the England team embodies the spirit of the nation. Indeed many are left intoxicated by the ecstasy of these non-events. The power of the mass event should not be understated. It's forgotten that the concerts and music festivals we enjoy today come from the same model of the mass rally which Hitler used in the 1930s.

Peter Hitchens has compared it to Pagan cults, and for good reason, but we shouldn't take football as a Pagan exploit entirely as it is essentially prolefeed. And the aristocratic fans of Paganism are too often forgotten. It used to be that Christianity was for the poor while the ruling-class remained largely Pagan until the 19th Century in Britain. The aristocratic radical Nietzsche wanted to undo Christian values in order to return to the life-affirming polytheism of Ancient Greece. If anything football is not elitist even if it is particularist rather than universalist, it is open to all and for all. And it is the particularism of football - the preference for us over them - that holds a great link with Paganism. The loyalty to the team matters most, it can get you beaten up in some places. The worship of heroes, special clothing, the celebration of "seasons" and singing are all symptomatic; another particularist deed is racism. It isn't a coincidence that the neo-völkisch movements of Scandinavia are Pagan and call for white supremacy and a return to Odin worship in the same breathe.

The emergence of football hooliganism is not a coincidence, the fact that these hooligan elements are typically racists and right-wing extremists is also not a coincidence. The primary base of recruitment into the EDL were these thugs, the ex-BNP leadership itself comes out of hooliganism. This isn't to say that the sport of football is inherently fascistic. For 20 years Kick It Out has campaigned against racism in British football now, which is something that Eastern Europe and a lot of other places lack. But it is the case that there are a great many people who were whinging that the England manager Fabio Capello at the time was not English. There is plenty of talk about the high presence of foreign players in our teams. There is undeniably an element of nationalism that has been harnessed as part of the base of support for football teams. The shirt you were aligns you with a specific team in the same way that the flag links you with a nation, the glory of which reflects back on you.

The race relations of football have been on blunt display recently. Hodgson thought it appropriate to leave Rio Ferdinand out of the Euro 2012 Squad for "footballing reasons" and include John Terry. Even though it was John Terry who called Anton Ferdinand a "fucking black cunt" and will soon be in court for doing so. Kick It Out might condemn Hodgson's handling of Rio Ferdinand. There was the time when Ron Atkinson described a player as a "lazy thick nigger" with Jimmy Hill coming to his defense on the grounds that the comment is just harmless fun in the football culture. We don't like to remember the days when fans lobbed bananas at black footballers. Today in Poland the fans can be seen waving banners with such slogans as "Death to Hook Noses!" For many it matters that England is finally managed by an Englishman. No doubt some will think that the English team will finally be victorious after 46 years, even though we didn't actually win in 1966 - an unacceptable fact to be uttered in the pubs of our weary little island.

Roy Hodgson played for Berea Park FC as part of a white-only league in the years before Apartheid was brought down in South Africa. Of course, Hodgson has since "come out" as an admirer of Nelson Mendela in the years since the end of Apartheid. He states that he played in South Africa for footballing reasons rather than political reasons. This isn't inconsistent as the sport is an institution of continuity around which the masses can huddle while the establishment remains largely the same. It is a part of society's wallpaper, an investment for the business class and a source of national pride for the masses. The managerial function in society to regulate the passions of the masses. The need for an identity marker to derive a higher meaning had to be sated to dull the rages of class instinct. It is no coincidence that the counter-revolution has come to Egypt around the same time that there was an explosion of ultra-violence at a football match. Similarly as social democracy began to be torn apart in Britain in the 1970s and 80s there was a great wave of football violence.

As Terry Eagleton observes "If every rightwing thinktank came up with a scheme to distract the populace from political injustice and compensate them for lives of hard labour, the solution in each case would be the same: football." The game provides mediocre forms of solidarity for the masses who gather around particular teams. This can't be said for high culture, the prolefeed excludes no one in its particularity. The teamwork can be seen as selfless for the most part, though this is undermined by the celebration of the obscene wealth accumulated by the likes of David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo. The sport combines intimacy with Otherness in celebrity form, the hero we worship is just like us really and so we could be him one day. The game may have a place carved out for "experts" but it transforms its viewers into experts too. This is why my understanding of the subject is limited to the political and the theoretical. Eagleton goes on to add "Football offers its followers beauty, drama, conflict, liturgy, carnival and the odd spot of tragedy".

Culturale Hedonia!

Take your Desires for Reality.

In the mid 1960s Herbert Marcuse had reached a conclusion about capitalist society which went against the position he took in Eros and Civilization. He had reached back to utopian socialism for an alternative to the models of bourgeois capitalism and Soviet communism. In the work of Charles Fourier he had hoped to find a way of unlocking the instincts of human beings as part of the transition to a post-capitalist society. It was Fourier's view that capitalism compounds sexual repression in society with exploitation, driving down wages generating poverty. It's a fine system for the few, but it's disastrous for the many. The repression of sexuality is what led to perversions, if the passions were unleashed then we would be able to create a harmonious society. Fourier wanted to build a utopia with love and sex as the primary mechanisms of this new order. This is the origin of the leftist penchant for sexual liberation and the opposition to repressive norms.


Of course, there are various different variations on this cause. Fourier dreamed of a utopian society based on a primary unit, a communal block known as a phalanx in which as many as 1,800 people could live together. It would be a community built on solidarity without any of the repressive taboos of capitalist society. There would be complete sexual freedom and people would be able to change partners frequently. Radical stuff in the 18th Century. The family would be done away with as the phalanx would take its place as the centre of loyalty and affection. Fourier thought that entire countries could be organised in this way with these set up as councils where all participate in decisions. The phalanxes would form chains of councils across nations and coordinate through cooperation grand civil projects with volunteer armies. This was the material base of a vision that came with a metaphysical superstructure, a new religious order where priests advised congregants on sex.

At the heart of this utopian vision was the idea of Love, in which sex is just one aspect, the priests who would manage the dynamics of Love would 'cure' you of your unhappiness in the midst of rejection. We can see how this vision may have tapped into the hedonistic utopianism of the 1960s. All the different impulses of human beings require a diversity of roles suited to the variety of human nature, even potential murderers will be welcome and be put to work as butchers to work-off their own homicidal urges. Of course, Charles Fourier was written-off as a lunatic in his day. He conceived of a theory of history comprised of 32 stages, each ordained by God, beginning in savagery before passing through civilisation to socialism and Harmony. The advent of Harmony would herald an age of 70,000 years which would end in savagery as humanity approached the end of times. Civilisation could be shortened to bring on socialism much earlier and Harmony could then be extended in its duration.

Live without Dead Time.

As you might expect Fourier was an opponent of the authoritarianism and moral righteousness he detected in the Jacobins. He had little faith in governments and preferred a grass-roots oriented approach to socialism. Change was to be achieved from the ground-up and not from the top-down. After first entertaining the tenets of utopian socialism Marcuse had become pessimistic by 1964 when he wrote One-Dimensional Man. As part of his thesis Marcuse rethought the revolutionary project of socialism. The proletariat could not be relied upon to overthrow capitalism in Marcuse's view. The tensions were mounting to the point that the black under-class would be a better revolutionary agent. The capitalist system had no real focus on the manipulation of their desires at the time. The same goes for the exploited workers of the Third World. Then there are the student radicals of the West who have the power to see beyond false consciousness. We can see how both works related to the 1960s zeitgeist.

In the authentic socialist society women and men could live without fear and without being compelled to spend their lives in alienated performances. Marcuse thought that this element had been lost in the 20th Century with the advent of the Soviet Union. The Soviet project of socialism in one country necessitated Stalinism due to the material conditions of Russian society. The New Left sought to carve out a new project to do away with the old conventions that bound women to men as well as crushed gays and ethnic minorities. To some extent this was the beginning of identity politics and the post-materialist Left. But the line was drawn from the imperial adventure in Vietnam to economic exploitation at home in America. The early 1970s were an optimistic time for the American Left and there were a lot of radical ideas around. The commune movement sprung up as part of a utopian attempt to build an alternative model for society devoid of hierarchy, authority and power. It was a retreat in part from what the participants saw as the failure of the student movement.

The communal ideal was of nature, which they saw as a self-stabilising eco-system. It continues to serve as an effective means of organisation on the Left, but it fails to provide a positive vision. It was one of the biggest migrations in American history with over 500,000 participants. There were no alliances and no politics inside the communes, but there were sessions in which the communards would express themselves. This was meant to be the source of stability in the community, a sort of feedback system for the organism of many who act as one. In a set up without any factions allowed soon the strong bullied the weak. All of the communes failed, most lasting less than 3 years. Power could not be abolished and the self-organised system removed any obstacles to the domineering personalities of a few. So new hierarchies sprung up out of the egalitarian model, patriarchical power returned without any leashes at all. This is where Feminism emerged as a reaction to the catastrophic failures of the commune movement.

Enjoy without Chains.

The communal model spread to Europe, where the same failures were even more realised. The avant garde artist Otto Mühl set up the Friedrichshof commune as a kind of anti-society. The central aspect of this is a war against monogamy, he sought to replace fidelity with promiscuity in the extreme. This is where the tendencies towards sexual liberation going back as far as Fourier seemed to converge with the commune movement. The communards were forbidden to have sex with the same partner more than once a week and yet each were obligated to have sex five times a day. Fourier had developed a card-indexing system that would have facilitated casual sex for his communards - it would've been handy in Vienna! The commune outlasted its American precursors as it lingered for nearly 20 years when Mühl was thrown in jail for sex offences against children. A hierarchy had sprung up where the most attractive extricated themselves from the ugly herd, while Mühl laid claim to the virginity of the young members.

The commune had descended into the abusive exercise of power through desire. It was an extreme failure that came out of the one of the leftist modes of a politicization of sex as identified in Nina Power's book - it mistakenly took sex to be innately emancipatory and egalitarian. Desire isn't fair at all, inequality, hierarchy and anxiety are more normal than not. Certainly not all members of the commune were desirable and desire became literally tyrannical. There were other attempts at a sexual critique of bourgeois morality among the radicals. The Weather Underground had sessions where members were required to have sex with comrades they were not attracted to. Boyfriends were expected to watch other men sleep with their girlfriends. There was to be no more romance, only a destitution of the subjective and the sexual. This was the darker side of sexual liberation, the underbelly of the counter-cultural revolution of '68 which has been victorious in the destruction of stuffy conventions and rigid traditions.

As Badiou points out, one of the ways that a revolutionary movement can fail is to be defeated in its own victory in that it only takes over the old mantle of the enemy it vanquished. The utopian hedonism of the 1960s did fail in its youthful triumph over the old, it now constitutes the prevailing culture and there is barely anything left to rail against. The irony is that after this great liberation we find any lack of desire impermissible and intolerable. And yet we may live in a time of greater impotence and frigidity than we like to admit. The real problem seems to be love rather than lust. We can screw around as much as we want but the real difficulty is in long-lasting relationships. This is really what is behind the emergence of dating sites. The conservatives have no answer here, but to reinstate the old superstructure and hope that we enjoy cheating on the partners we pretend to love. There doesn't seem to be a clear answer here. Perhaps the best we can hope for is that the Japanese invention of love colleges will catch on in the West.

Confronting Nietzsche.

 "Nietzsche has destroyed me." - Martin Heidegger

It is important to remember that Martin Heidegger had read Nietzsche before the 1930s; it was only after he broke with Being and Time that Heidegger turned to Nietzsche once more. The Heidegger of Being and Time had no interest at all in Nietzschean philosophy when it came to metaphysics and art, but more specifically the critique of nihilism. The ‘confrontation’ with Nietzsche was brought on by the dynamics of Heideggerian thought as well as the demands of the time. According to Hans Sluga, we can safely say that Heidegger learned three major lessons from this ‘confrontation’ with Nietzsche: metaphysics, politics and the situation in the modern world. Heidegger focused mostly on Nietzsche as a metaphysician above all else, though this focus did shift over time it remained largely the same.

For Heidegger the thoughts Nietzsche had on art illuminated the precarious nature of metaphysical thinking. Sluga stresses that Heidegger turned to Nietzsche after he became interested in art, which could not be an extension of Being and Time. Heidegger concludes that the views of art Nietzsche held are an inverted Platonism, as art remains semblance and retains its opposition truth. Art is the supreme configuration of the Will to Power.[1] Art can be understood in relation to the artist, the creative forces undertaken.[2] Metaphysics from Plato onwards leads to a conclusion, which Heidegger thought was imminent and he held up Nietzsche as the last metaphysician of the West. Sluga points out that this is quite problematic.

The work of Friedrich Nietzsche is symptomatic of how difficult it is to escape from metaphysics and that there is a valid focus behind the errors of metaphysics. In the work of Nietzsche the search for the nature of beings as a whole, a metaphysics of becoming behind which remains the question of Being – as this question is almost approached through the eternal recurrence of the same.[3] The problem is that the focus on the question of Being is never confronted head-on, as the question is forgotten it haunts the tradition of metaphysics. The task of overcoming of metaphysics ensnares oneself in metaphysics.[4]

Heidegger went as far as to see Nietzsche’s doctrines of eternal recurrence and the Übermensch as part of a metaphysical system.[5] The doctrine of eternal recurrence points to the question of Being, as Nietzsche approximates Being through the eternal recurrence of the same and the Übermensch is important in relation to the recurrence.[6][7] Nietzsche wrote “To impose upon becoming the character of being – that is the supreme will to power… That everything recurs is the closest approximation of a world of becoming to a world of being: high point of the meditation”. Heidegger maintained that the eternal recurrence of the same is illusive insofar as it is “wrapped in thick clouds – not for us, but for Nietzsche’s own thinking”. But he insisted that it is to be seen as Nietzsche’s attempt to deal with the being of Being. For Heidegger the fact that the eternal recurrence of the same is difficult to grasp is matched by the difficulty to grasp the being of Being.

Hans Sluga notes that the Heideggerian view of Nietzsche’s politics stands in distinct to Karl Jaspers and Alfred Baeumler. Karl Jaspers portrayed Nietzsche as an opposed German nationalism and anti-Semitism as he was in his lifetime. On the other hand, Alfred Baeumler was out to use Nietzsche as the intellectual harbinger of the Third Reich.[8] By contrast Heidegger saw Nietzsche as “anti-political” as well as a potential source to construct a refined national and social identity for Germans. The ‘confrontation’ with Nietzsche provided a means to attack the existing system safely, on the grounds that it was linked to an empty will to will and, by extension, haste to further technological advancements.[9] This preoccupation with identity came out of the way Heidegger viewed his country.[10]Heidegger saw the question of Being in connection with German identity, with Nietzsche and Hölderlin serving as a guide to what exactly it is to be German.  For Heidegger the future of Germany and the West is “determined” by Nietzsche and Hölderlin, so the philosopher of the godlessness and worldlessness of modern man belongs with the poet of the homecoming. To come home means to face the question of Being.

Martin Heidegger abandoned the project to determine the “essence of being German” through Nietzsche and instead he opted to reiterate his own thinking without nationalism, as Heidegger claimed after the war, as society supplanted the nation. Heidegger saw Nietzsche as diagnostic and symptomatic of the modern pathologies, just as the belief in historical progress became predominant in the world it was Nietzsche who pointed to a prevalent destruction. The metaphysics of becoming was in touch with the spirit of the times, with specific regards to technology where Nietzsche had foresaw man’s domination of the world. For Heidegger there is a sense in which Nietzsche reveals the core of technology which had led to Being as in calculation and the rule of reduced being by mathematically structured technology.

Heidegger went on to designate Nietzsche as the philosopher of “the struggle for the unlimited exploitation of the earth as the sphere of raw materials and fort he realistic utilisation of the ‘human material’, in the service of the unconditional empowering of the will to power”. Sluga points out that this interpretation appears ignorant of the Will to Power as a fundamental aspect of the world and living things. The world as a ‘monster of energy’ which has no beginning nor end, subject to contradictions and concord, while it affirms itself, destructive and self-creating as Dionysus had.[11] This view is lost as Heidegger reflects critically on Nietzsche’s work. But as Nietzsche is the philosopher of technology, for Heidegger, this critique is of the ideas of the modern age. By extension, Sluga argues, we can include the Third Reich, as well as other political conceptions of the time, as subject to this critique. The nihilism of modern man is revealed in the work of Nietzsche.[12] For Heidegger, Nietzsche saw an awful lot more than we can see, but it was never a clear picture and fell far short of capturing all that there is to see.

"I am not a man. I am dynamite." - Friedrich Nietzsche

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[1] The Will to Power has less to do with aristocratic status, militarism and power over people than it does with notions of self-discipline and personal restraint. ‘Power’ is meant in the strict sense of self-mastery and the discipline of the powers of thought, imagination and creativity. It might also be understood in terms of self-esteem, not just feeling good in the superficial sense but being energised by your own ideas and talents. It is about confidence and capability.

Solomon, Robert; Lecture 13, Nietzsche: Übermensch and the Will to Power – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZWlV9sP8n0

[2] Nietzsche thought art had to be “grasped in terms of the artist” – no doubt beings had to be understood in terms of “self-creating” as well – the work itself constitutes a countermovement to nihilism and ultimately it is worth more than “truth”. In Nietzsche’s words art is “the most perspicuous and familiar configuration of the will to power”.

Sluga, Hans: Heidegger’s Nietzsche pg.110-112

[3] By the early 40s Heidegger found it possible to summarise the core of Nietzsche’s metaphysics of becoming: the Will to Power, nihilism, the eternal recurrence, the Übermensch and justice. He noted importantly that every term “names at the same time what the others say. The naming of each basic word is exhausted only when one also thinks with it what the others say”.

Sluga, Hans; Heidegger’s Nietzsche pg.106-110

[4] This would mean that Heidegger is also a metaphysician insofar as he criticises Nietzsche – for his failure to confront the question of Being – within the terms of another metaphysics. The critique of Nietzsche along these lines relies on the distinction between Being and beings, which could be seen as metaphysical concepts. Ironically, Heidegger became trapped in metaphysical thinking in holding up Nietzsche as bringing metaphysics to an ‘end’.

Sluga, Hans; Heidegger’s Nietzsche pg.110-112

[5] For Heidegger the Übermensch casts Nietzsche’s metaphysics in a new light as Nietzsche’s concept of the eternal recurrence of the same became of central importance. Thus Spoke Zarathustra “thinks this thinkers one and only thought: the thought of the eternal recurrence of the same” and “the eternal recurrence of the same is the supreme triumph of the metaphysics of the will that eternally wills its own willing,” e.g. the Will to Power.

Sluga, Hans; Heidegger’s Nietzsche pg.106-110

[6] The Übermensch is master morality spiritualised by 2,000 of slave morality, he is the master of his powers and abilities, he aspires to excellence and ideals which are very much his own. The Übermensch is free of resentment and regret to the extent that he can say emphatically and without hesitation in the face of eternal recurrence, the notion that he would have to live his life over and over again endlessly, “Yes! Gladly I would accept this!”

Solomon, Robert; Lecture 13, Nietzsche: Übermensch and the Will to Power – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZWlV9sP8n0

[7] For Nietzsche a great example of the Übermensch and the Will to Power was Goethe who exercised all of his talents, ‘created’ himself as a unified being through his art and he experimented in life – taking jobs as a civil servant and a lawyer, as well as a playwright and a poet. As a writer he flirted with many styles and his works are voluminous. In Nietzsche’s terms the passion for life is the greatest of passions and Goethe was passionate at a creative and spiritual level. Nietzsche describes Goethe as “not a German event but a European one: a grand attempt to overcome the eighteenth century through a return to nature, through a going-up to the naturalness of the Renaissance, a kind of self-overcoming on the part of that century.”

Nietzsche, Friedrich; Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ (Hollingdale, RJ; Introduction and commentary | Penguin Books, 1968) pg.102-104

[8] Effectively Baeumler continued on the track which began with the proto-Nazi Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, who took over her brother’s works and set out to appropriate these works for the Nazi movement. Baeumler set out to explore Nietzsche as a metaphysician, who laid the groundwork for National Socialism in his metaphysical doctrines. Baeumler dismissed the doctrine of eternal recurrence as “mystical” and saw it incongruous to the Will to Power, whereas Heidegger (who was heavily influenced by Baeumler) insisted that the Will to Power and the eternal recurrence of the same were part of a coherent metaphysical conception. It was because of Baeumler’s political project that the notion of eternal recurrence had to be dismissed, as it clashed with the political Nietzsche.

Sluga, Hans; Heidegger’s Nietzsche pg.106-110

[9] Heidegger distinguished between National Socialism as it existed at the time as opposed to the idealised vision which had not been realised. Heidegger may have been indulging in a far-right parallel of ultra-leftist ‘comfortable resistance’ which retains a certain distance from power and real decisions in its criticism of the established order. The farthest Heidegger went, in later life, to repudiate Nazism was to point to its “failure” to emerge as a genuine Third Position from American capitalism and Soviet communism. In an interview for Der Spiegel, Heidegger makes it clear that he regards each of these systems as determined by ‘planetary technology’. The implication being that there has not yet been a thorough attempt to move beyond technology and establish a genuine alternative. This is where the idealised vision of National Socialism would come in as opposed to the regime established in 1933.

Der Spiegel interview with Martin Heidegger (September 23^rd 1966) - http://lacan.com/heidespie.html

The Philosophy Book (Dorling Kindersley Limited, 2011), Slavoj Zizek, pg.326

[10] In Heidegger’s own words Germany is “the land of the middle” where “Our people, as standing in the centre, suffers the most intense pressure”. He goes on to say “Precisely if the great decision regarding Europe is not to go down the path of annihilation – precisely then can this decision come about only through the development of new, spiritual forces from the centre”.

Sluga, Hans; Heidegger’s Nietzsche pg.112-116

[11] Nietzsche posits the Apollonian against the Dionysian in The Birth of Tragedy. Dionysian is a frenzied and orgiastic sense in which we feel ourselves as part of life flowing through us. He compared the Dionysian with intoxication as in a euphoria or ecstasy of sorts. It is the means by which one can escape from reality, but not into fantasy as with the Apollonian. Rather the Dionysian is about forgetting yourself, not the world, to experience a more mystical communal union. But the Dionysiac energies are dangerous, grotesque, cruel, sexual and wild. It is difficult to find meaning or beauty in a world of such destructive energies, though it is not on the road to nihilism for Nietzsche. Culture has emerged as attempts to refine this life force in a chaotic world driven by this force.

Dionysian – frenzied and orgiastic sense in which we feel ourselves as part of life flowing through us

Jackson, R; Nietzsche the Key Ideas (Hachette UK, 2008) pg.42-45

[12] This would probably refer to the Last Man, a concept introduced by Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra in contrast with the Übermensch. Unlike the Übermensch – the point of which was to rouse enthusiasm in the town’s people for the possibility of overcoming themselves – the Last Man is presented to get the town’s people to be disgusted with themselves; to awaken them to the stupidity and philistinism pervasive in their world. Robert Solomon describes the Last Man as “the ultimate bourgeois consumer and coach potato without any aspirations. The Last Man is content, comfortable and satisfied with the way of the world and life as it is.”

Solomon, Robert; Lecture 13, Nietzsche: Übermensch and the Will to Power –  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZWlV9sP8n0