SPECTRE - New Website!

So after six years of keeping this blog I've decided the time is right to move forward. I won't be taking down this blog, but I will be moving to a new website. The new project is a collaborative effort of myself and my friends Chris Horner and Mark Waller (hopefully others too). It's called Spectre as an ode to the Communist Manifesto, and not to the villainous James Bond organisation.

Spectre aims to channel radical perspectives and conversations on politics, philosophy, history and culture. The objective being to challenge the conventional wisdom of neoliberalism and build an online presence for ideas not heard in the mainstream. In its commentary on today’s political system Spectre hopes to recognise and record the possibilities of a better world.

So from now on, you can read my work here: http://spectre-online.org/

Can right-wing people read?

It's been nice to see my articles on Peter Hitchens being read. So much of the time we spend on the internet seems fruitless. One of the unfortunate side-effects of attracting the attention of a Mail columnist is that the comment section on your blog is soon a refuge for a new breed. Namely the people, who are unspeakably ignorant, but think they are more intelligent than you because they are right-wing. It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't turn up four by four. The kind of comments made on the Hitchens blog about my writing have been no more pithy, as you can see below.

Mike Barnes: Well I read his response. Might as well have been in Arabic or some lost tongue. These lefty are so comfortable. Unaware their grasp on power, can and will be wrenched from their wretched hands in a moment. All they have is a backward nature. The future would and does confound them. Egalitarianism didn't work in the French terror. And today its used against the mob, a kind of reversal of the French revolution. All they really want is to sit atop the pile. They care not if its a pile of corpses.

My response: It's funny how often the people of the Anglosphere seem to take pride in ignorance. Mr. Barnes says I might as well be writing in Arabic, as if that's some kind of put-down, it could just as well mean Mr. Barnes is a bit of a dullard. I'm writing in English and I do my best to articulate my ideas. As for the rest of the comment, I have no idea what he thinks constitutes a "comfortable lefty" and a "backward nature". After all, he's the one who can't read my writing.

Andrew Pitt: On conscience, Mr White says that moral values have "a necessary role". This sounds a bit relativist to me, as though other things have a role as well. He says, "I do not know of any leftist who embraces moral relativism". I find this statement inexplicable: no doubt we all claim to be moral, but in practice do the policies we advocate lead to the upholding of moral values, or do they undermine them? There is then a reference to personal circumstances and he says, "I don't expect the Mail to portray this side of so called 'dependency culture'....." Lumping Mr Hitchens in with "The Mail" is contrary to the point of Mr White's original article. Mr White says that he doesn't "romanticise" marriage, which implies that Mr Hitchens does. He then moves on to addiction: it's obviously a totemic issue for those on Left, with "addiction" having the status of a scientific fact.
I think it is the case that Mr White has rowed back a little from his original article.
  
My response: It would seem Mr. Pitt can't read either. The necessity of moral values in human life is a statement of realism. Moral relativism does not refer to 'other things', which may have a role, nor does it suggest moral values aren't important. In descriptive terms relativism is only the acknowledgement of differences of moral opinion, nothing outrageous there; but it's in the normative sense that it is really problematic. If you hold that the beliefs we have stand in relative terms to other beliefs then you can't make judgements in the first place. As everyone is right in context, then it's the context to which we must keep, and we can't infringe upon one another.

If Mr. Hitchens doesn't want to be lumped in with the Mail then he should write for another newspaper. He writes for the Mail because he does have an affinity with the paper's content, editorial policies and its offer of payment. So the criticism still stands of the prognosis taken by the Mail journalist.

Addiction is not a 'totemic issue' for those on the Left. As I said, the case for illegalisation/recriminalisation of drugs can be made without such a bafflingly stupid attempt to disprove the 'existence' of addiction. It's a clever maneouvre. Addicts certainly exist, but addiction is hardly tangible though it has physical symptoms.

As for the charge of 'rowing', it's just that the two articles have different purposes. The original piece made the case for a qualified respect for an opponent of the Left. The follow up articles (see here and here) were primarily written in response to the points made by Peter Hitchens.

John Vernau: "... he yearns for a return to halcyon days, and of course these days never existed. To be fair, I was referring more so to the reactionary press in general ..." ---J.T. White, 'accordingly' responding to PH.
Odd that Mr White should say that halcyon days never existed and say so on the 29th of December, which is in fact within the 14 day period of the traditional 'halcyon days'. I'm also much impressed by his use of "more so" in the above quote. It seems so much more literary than the common 'more' that most of us would use. I suppose he is one of those people so educated that they always say 'epicentre' when they mean 'centre'. Reading Mr White is diverting, in the way that crossword puzzles are, except that with those it becomes clear when the meaning has been deciphered.

My response: Turn of phrase, Mr. Vernau. Not everything is to be taken literally, I used 'halcyon days' in reference to the "golden age" nostalgia often misattributed to Peter Hitchens. It's nice of Mr. Vernau to say my writing style is 'much more literary'. I wouldn't consider myself 'so educated' in spite of the fact that I've been to university. Education is mostly about the numbing and stifling of independent thought. It seems Vernau makes two points: 1) I'm literary and therefore 'uncommon', 2) he can't understand my writing. I fail to see the threat of such dim observations.

5 Years of Philistia.

I've been posting regularly on here for 5 years now. In that time I've blogged articles, as well as written essays, reposted writings of those I admire, and commented on a wide variety of subjects - from AV and alcohol to self-service machines and Syria - probably too varied, some would argue. Only the pace of events has challenged my typing abilities. I've since tried to expand my online presence to other websites and outlets, such efforts I'll be continuing and with much more success I hope. Below I've outlined a couple of new changes and additions to the blog coming up soon.

Writing aims: Since I think self-criticism is important I'm starting up a series of articles in which I go through old arguments where I could have taken a better line. The first article was posted just before the New Year, the subject: race and the riots. Future plans include my writings on the Libyan civil war, as well as some of my earliest articles. I do intend to produce something on my transition from anarchism to socialism at some point. Perhaps I'll write up a short critique of anarchism. On that note I've got to write more about 'New Atheism', as well as go after more liberal pieties around technological and scientism.

New comment policy: As I'm sick of spam and other assorted bullplop I have decided to remove the comment section of the blog. I'll be explaining why in a yet to be completed page, which will be added some time in the near future (at which point the comment section will disappear). The few interesting, and entertaining, comments will be posted on a separate page for all to see. I've created a proper email account for the blog - livinginphilistia@gmail.com - for anyone shouty enough to follow up a post. Any and all feed back will be welcome. Any nutty rants that flood my inbox will be posted for all to see.

When Nixon goes to China...

... Lower Your Expectations!

Only Richard Nixon could have gone to China to make peace with Mao, for it was Nixon who was the most staunchly anti-Communist of Republicans and had been embedded in McCarthyism in the 1950s. If the step had been made by a Democrat then they would have been torn apart by the right-wing media. Only Obama can legally enshrine killing American citizens aligned with the "associated forces" of al-Qaeda, even as the conservatives accuse him of being a 'socialist' and the liberals remain silent just to keep the Republicans out of office. This is the lowering of expectations that Alexander Cockburn talks about. The business of conventional politics is rooted in a kind of realism which forecloses any manifested opposition to the ruling-class. We can see this in Britain where the Labour Party signed onto the Thatcherite programme in the 1990s, which amounted to nothing less than an assault on the minimal living standards of working-class people.

The architects of New Labour were well aware that the trade unions would hang on no matter what, a large chunk of Scotland and the North would vote Labour no matter what, so it was only a matter of winning over the Southern middle-class. Under Blair the Party quickly dumped it's commitments to any kind of socialist development, indicatively the common ownership of the workplace by workers was abandoned. It was only because of Labour's history that it could hand over the Bank of England to the private sector and let the markets run amok in the NHS. So it should be no surprise that Ed Miliband has signed onto every pathetic decision of the Conservative Party to trash health-care, education, pensions and benefits in general. The opposition has been foreclosed. Now no one stands on the side of the vulnerable and the exploited in this time of great turmoil. No doubt if Blair was in power he would be pushing through bigger cuts than the Conservative Party could get away with.

So it would seem that the Labour Party is beyond reform, you can thank Tony Blair for that. In another sense then the ground is ripe for the radicals to tap into popular disillusionment, widespread grievances and the people's wrath. We need some major decisions, perhaps the trade unions should break off from the Labour Party and align themselves with the Greens. Of course, the unions won't because they're afraid that would forfeit any influence in Parliament whatsoever. The trite of Ed Miliband is the best they can hope for and clearly the unions have lowered their expectations. There is widespread outrage at what has gone on for the last 30 years. Now we have to think of what is to be undone. It wouldn't take much to reach out to ordinary people, we've seen nearly 1 million march against cuts through the streets of London. The Coalition of Resistance seems to have petered out since Ed Miliband gave a crap speech at the March for the Alternative. The Occupy movement is a good thing in terms of popular energy, but it is insufficient in many respects.

We can't lower our expectations and give in to this crowd. We should remind ourselves that it isn't all gloom and doom. Take a close look at the hubbub around SOPA and PIPA, what do you see? So Wikipedia goes on strike because libertarian Jimmy Wales wants to take a stand for free-speech online. Can't you just make out one of the contradictions of capitalism prevalent today? The more the common is captured as private property, the more its productivity declines and yet the further expansion of the common undermines the relations of property.  Neither the state nor the market has any substantive answers to this matter. Both have demonstrated a remarkable ability to shoot themselves and each other in the foot. Jimmy Wales took a stand for free-speech and undermined property rights in doing so. The state acted to defend the interests of corporations vested in private property, but it will only reduce the productivity of the system if it succeeds. This is just another repeat of when Nixon went to China, except we won't be lowering our expectations this time!


As for the question of what's your alternative? We shouldn't shirk away from central planning even though it was largely a disaster in the 20th Century. There does exist a model for socio-economic planning within the current system and this is reason enough to not dump all talk of planning from radical programmes. In a capitalist system the markets are meant to provide coordination to an intricate network of firms, the only alternative is central planning to coordinate a network of worker self-management. The Left doesn't want to talk seriously about the question of coordination. The corporation is the most advanced, sophisticated and dynamic command and control system in world history. It is a profit-based planning system but the corporate model is not a free-market one, it sends order through supply chains to extract and distribute resources. These techniques of planning can be ripped out of the capitalist system and applied to an egalitarian end.

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.

THE RISE OF THE MACHINES AND THE DREAM OF A STABLE WORLD WITH NOVELISTS, ANIMALS, THE WORLD WIDE WEB, PRESIDENTS, LOVE, CYBERNETIC PROPHETS, A BALANCED ECOSYSTEM AND A SAFE PAIR OF HANDS.

Good news fellow travelers, Adam Curtis is back with a new documentary series called All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, it's title was borrowed from a poem by Richard Brautigan, it looks to be typical of his style and quality. Apparently the "vertigo-inducing intellectual leaps, choppy archive material and disorienting music" will be included in the package. The central focus of the documentary is the way computers have not liberated us, contrary to popular belief and instead we have lost our vision in a disillusioned age of managerial post-politics. Engrained in computer systems are notions of a perfect balance in ecosystems, ideas which go back to the hippies but have made the leap to Silicon Valley and then onwards to Wall Street. With some contributions from Ayn Rand and Richard Dawkins along the way of course, we know Enron couldn't have done without the selfish gene and free-market fundamentalism.


The pseudo-spiritualism of hippie counter-culture in the 1960s with it's communal living, free love, experimental psychedelia and emphasis on the balance of nature's ecosystems have had a great deal of impact over the trajectory of recent decades. It was a cultural revolution of sorts, the individualism of which has since been harnessed by the system. Some of the hippies went on to be major figures in Silicon Valley, the ideas of a natural equilibrium have been built into technology. Now we have social networks as the sign that we are all free and connected, even in love. The idea of a economic equilibrium is appealing to radical free-marketeers like Ayn Rand with her devotee the Chairman of the FED Alan Greenspan. Once we have made the links between hippies turned soft-ware capitalists, Objectivism and the economy we can easily greet Richard Dawkins with his ideas about the selfish gene. But these are just my thoughts on some of the issues Curtis looks at.

WE LIVE IN A DREAM WORLD CREATED BY THE MACHINES WHERE WE ARE ALL CONNECTED AND WE ARE ALL FREE. EVEN IN LOVE. BUT THE MACHINES BROUGHT WITH THEM ANOTHER IDEA, THAT WE ARE ALL COMPONENTS IN SYSTEMS – NODES IN A GLOBAL NETWORK. WE DREAMED THE SYSTEMS COULD STABILISE THEMSELVES, THROUGH FEEDBACK, AND CREATE A PERFECT BALANCE IN NATURE’S ECOSYSTEMS. AND IN HUMAN SOCIETY. AND IN CAPITALISM. WITHOUT POLITICS AND THE OLD HIERARCHIES OF POWER. BUT POWER HASN’T GONE AWAY. IT NEVER DOES.

Adam Curtis was "inspired" to make this documentary when he watched amateur footage of a mass experiment that took place in 1991 and was hosted by Loren Carpenter. Hundreds of people were given a paddle and told nothing, but when a big screen in front of them projected a game of Pong all of them began to participate. The people had to operate it together, spontaneously and without any preparation, in the end they succeeded in playing a game of Pong. Loren Carpenter saw the experiment as freedom and order manifested. For Curtis the people were not free at all, in the self-organising systems we are expected to be "happy components" in a machine and our only duty is to stabilise the machine. We are all just cogs in the machine, each important in a way though as a mass the individual cogs are irrelevant and only matter in relation to the machine working smoothly.

Katharine Viner was right to emphasise the focus on power in the documentaries Curtis has churned out over the last 20 years. With Pandora's Box (1992) it was the use of science to control society and shape human beings. Similarly The Mayfair Set was about the collapse of political rise and rise of corporate power. The Century of the Self looked at the rise of Freudian psychoanalysis and the appropriation of Freud's theories by the public relations industry to market goods to consumers. My favourite is The Power of Nightmares in which politicised fear is explored as the only way for politicians to mobilise people in a disillusioned age. Now Curtis has moved onto machines and the way that the idea of a self-regulating ecosystem in nature has been torn from the thoughts of hippies and has become engrained in technology. The idea of a natural equilibrium eliminates the reason for the state and automatically writes-off all possibility of state-intervention. In this sense, the commune is a model for social networking as it is self-regulating and non-hierarchical.

Adam Curtis has also worked with Charlie Brooker in the past and has recently written for The Guardian in the aftermath of the death of Osama bin Laden. He argued that the death of bin Laden may herald the end of a grand narrative which has served American politicians, Western journalists and Islamists well in making sense of the world. It is only a question of what kind of narrative will open up to make sense of the world now, Curtis speculates that it may be the rise of China which will give America a reason to reassert itself in the world. This could be true as there has already been a great deal of emphasis on American decline and Chinese ascension in the mainstream discourse. Donald Trump made a big deal about imposing a tariff of 25% on imports from China. He might be right unless the Obama administration finds a way to maintain the current narrative of terror. As I am a fan of Curtis I will be making a post for each episode of his new series and I strongly recommend his work to all reading this article.