In Response to Alan Johnson

This Article has been written in response to an Article By Alan Johnson In the Jacobin Magazine found here http://jacobinmag.com/summer-2011/the-power-of-nonsense/. To understand the context of this post please read this link, if not the post still should make sense.

I have come across Alan Johnsons writings before and his critique of Zizek is typical of this article. What frustrates me immediately is the absence of referencing to all the quotes he uses, as I’d like to see the full context. It is easy to pick something Zizek says and attack his work without fully understanding what he means. 

Alan Johnson is picking and choosing what theories of Lenins he approves of whilst not offering Zizek the same grounds completely dismissing Zizeks works out right; I don’t think that this is acceptable.

If he wishes to be consistent all theoreticians have aspects of work which have many empirical truths in them whether we like it or not. Off the top of my head, take Fukuyama as an example. I completely disagree with his analysis but what he is saying should be understood as a legitimate argument. I do agree that it is important to understand the pit falls particularly in Zizek who does construe jargon throughout his works, but the beauty of jargon is that in many cases is it a puzzle waiting to be unravelled and the nature of jargon is that it often holds different messages for different people. This aspect of theory particularly interests me as opposed to being something that is snobbery, and is thus nothing to be afraid of, and I feel the interjection of it is some of the best writings of Zizek. Take his approach to religion as an example. Although what he does with religion is controversial if an atheist sees no absolute value in religious text, but if it is to be understood as offering ‘value’ then inferences to religion can be suggested, such as; when Jesus died on the cross (Jesus in this instance is the embodiment of god and not Jesus the prophet), that it was no longer the case that people need to pray to god because he is dead. And so it is no longer that we should trust god (as he is dead) but that the death of god meant that god trust us, and so WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR OWN ACTIONS. There is no redemption or forgiveness! As Zizek says “There is no big Other telling you what your duty is... it is up to you to come up with what your duty is.

On democracy thinking that zizek is anti-democracy is wrong in an abstract sense. When he is critiquing democracy as the greatest of all evils he is trying to encourage a debate over the real possibility of society ordering itself in a much more radical manner not yet conceived. Society is often and in this instance all too willing to maintain the way things function, as this is form of democratic organisation is what we know as opposed to approaching the much more difficult task of trying to conceive ‘radical new modes of social production’. In my understanding, if what would form as a result of taking a Zizekian approach would turn out to be a dictatorship suppressing and maiming the world population, then Zizek would see this as “an absolute failure” and far from the message he, somewhat awkwardly, tries to convey.

I would also mention here that I recently read a collaborative book called Democracy in What state? http://www.amazon.com/Demo​cracy-State-Directions-Cri​tical-Theory/dp/0231152981 and I would like to write the closing paragraph:

When Rosa Louxembourg wrote that “dictatorship consists in the way in which democracy is used and not in its absolution,” her point was not that democracy is an empty frame that can be used by different political agents (Hitler also came to power through – more or less –free democratic elections), but that there is a “class bias” inscribed into this very empty (procedural) frame. That is why when radical leftists came to power through elections, their signe de reconnaissance is that they move to “change the rules”, to transform not only electoral and other state mechanisms but also the entire logic of the political space (relying directly on the power of the mobilised movements; imposing different forms of local self-organisation; etc.) to guarantee the hegemony of their base, they are guided by the right intuition about the “class bias” of the democratic form.

This is far from the simple assumption that Zizek dismisses democracy.

On Violence I do feel that the Liberal message of peaceful revolution and radical social change whether in the form of a workers democracy or a communist realisation would most necessarily end result in some form of violence. It is ignorant to believe that no violence would occur in the event of such an act. And so it is right of Zizek to contextualise that very possibility and to theoritise over the meaning and outcome of such inevitabilities. If such scenarios where to take place we must not cower over the reality that it was a good message turned bad and so therefore failed from the start but to move on with the understanding that violence is, whether humans like it or not, part and parcel of what it means to be a human. This is not to suggest that systematic violence, such as the atrocities caused by Stalin and Hitler is the same as the violence that occurred during the 1917 Russian revolution, and to jump slightly, it is not the same violence as domestic abuse, violence indeed needs to be contextualised and understood, it is not a topic that we can dismiss or claim not to be an inherent occurrence in the human social edifice!

An article by Zizek article in the same issue of the Jacobin Magazinehttp://jacobinmag.com/summ​er-2011/the-jacobin-spirit​/ is a good accompaniment to this article. 

Whilst I recognise the need for these types of Zizeks works, as Zizek is indeed as this article suggests lurking in the realms of the unknown, a theoretical arena of how to come to terms with the mission to overhaul the current organisms of neo-liberal capitalism, and how to re-appropriate them if the revolution was to occur. I am very aware of the dangers that lurk in zizeks writing, as the task he sees is an empty space where conceptions for a new society, as he puts it, a blank paper have yet to be created and this is a dangerous almost taboo area to be dealing with. So it is only natural for people like Alan Johnson to view Zizek in this misconstrued way, a result of which leads me to conclude that he fails in his, necessary critique.

The contours of History Re-appropriated

The world is in chaos. What was once a guaranteed global social order, global capitalism, is now laying bare, shattered and facing turmoil. As Mao once said “there is great chaos under heaven – never has the time been more prefect”.  

Form the early 90s to 2001 we lived in an era of truly ‘Fukuyamaist’ western parameters, where there was no longer a need for political opposition to the ‘democratic’ capitalist system. Communism had fallen and capitalism had won. Enter the, devastating, conquest of Thatcher to Blair to Cameron. The ‘middle class’ was expanding, by middle class what is meant is those who have an expendable income, free to purchase beyond our means through the invention of credit, a further expanse toward a disassociation between cause and effect. The cause being purchasing beyond your means the effect of which resulted in boom and bust, a dynamic that Engels was writing about in his Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy of 1844!  

“No worker can hold his own against his competitors if he does not devote all his powers to labour. No one at all who becomes involved in the struggle of competition can stand the strain without the utmost exertion of his powers, without renouncing every truly human purpose. The consequences of this over-exertion on the side is, inevitably, collapse on the other. When the fluctuation of competition is small, when demand and supply, consumption and production, are almost equal, a stage must be reached in the development of production where there is so much superfluous productive power that the great mass of the nation has nothing to live on, that the people starve from sheer abundance. For some considerable time England has found herself in this crazy position, in this living absurdity. When as a necessary consequence of such a situation, production is subject to greater fluctuations, then the alteration of boom and slump (bust), overproduction and slump, (bust) sets in”

Currently there is numerous accounts of the contradictions and fallings of the capitalist system, such critiques will continue to be presented for as long as capitalism, in its current form, continues to function, but what would be a true act would be for the left to move away from such a dynamic, and purely formulate a way to live outside the contours of a critique of capitalism. The most prominent critique of this era would seem to be Naomi Klein Shock’s Doctrine, where she systematically attributes all the horrendous contradictions, decisions and consequences of the catastrophe of Capitalism. What would be ideal in situations of global fragility would be to re-appropriate the way we engage with capitalist proponents and the system itself, this is the area where we need to be preparing the battle ground. A revolution may be caused through great unrest, caused from an expansive disenchantment with the ruling order, but what truly matters is the events after the revolution. To make an event after the revolution, ‘the true event’, the left needs more than just a critique of where capitalism went wrong but a new agenda of how we can move forward in such a way that would engineer a functioning emacipatory global civility. It must be recognised here that revolution cannot happen in isolation, for the Arab springs to be successful they all need to combine their new orders in co-operative with other Arab uprising and combine their efforts to construct new societies. And if those in Greece end up causing the biggest upset in European history and stage a full scale revolution then this will only work if Spain and other European states follow.        

Owen Jones and his contemporary analysis critiquing the way the phrase ‘Chavs’ has been appropriated by ruling elitist discourse, has laid bare the way class functions in British society. What is more pertinent than the fact that ‘Chavs’ is derogatory terminology which, in the words of Owen’s book Subtitle, “demonises the working class”, this functioning goes further than its immediate cognitive function, it suggests a deeper psychoanalytic consequence: on the surface those who are working class are made to believe that they are of lesser worth than a bourgeoisie, and so do not want to be deemed ‘Chavs’, or more precisely worker! What, in effect, this means is that there is disillusionment amongst the workers of Britain of the potential they hold to escape this demonization and embrace their true reality, which would surely lead to a new class consciousness and class appropriation, or rather class re-appropriating its position.

That fact that they are not an equal in the domineering cultural agenda, where it is believed that those with wealth and possessions are worthy of their circumstance and that those without are ‘lesser’ people of not having. Incidentally and crucially the wealthy have attained such wealth in the past couple of decades through the invention of credit given to the workers, which turned out to be a false economy as we saw in the credit collapse in 2008. This has caused a double blow to the workers. Not only have they been coerced into accumulating large debts as a result of bankers deceiving its customers into believing that the credit was entirely legitimate and stable, but also their mantra that wealth trickles down was for a time deceiving many workers to believe, that capitalism is a system that works, creating a scenario where no longer would a working class exist, we can all be wealthy now, a dream the working classes clearly bought. But which has only truly been a mechanism for the rich to smother their wealth and power in their envious capacities of nothingness.

Never before has there been a more justified time for the rise of an authentic left. A left which would recognise now is the time to re-appropriate the contours of history! Owen Jones and his latest book goes some way towards a step in the direction of a left wing re-appropriation not only of history but of the reins of the future. We need to direct our lives against the contours of capitalist appropriation of the way things seem and the way they are and fight the system not within the liberal framework laid down by capitalism, but by undermining its functioning, whilst continuing to mobilise for strike action an integral part of the left, a dynamic which needs no re-appropriation!   

                                                             

Paul Robertson - Joe Hill

The Contours of History: Now let’s re-appropriate

 Blade Runner? See link

A battle has been ensuing since the writings of Karl Marx and Frederic Engels who were the first to critique the political economy, of which they had seen the start of the capitalist process, the full extent of which they could never contemplate. They would never learn  the true extent  that the monopolisation of capitalism would have over the governing of the entire globe. The purpose of what Marx and Engels stood for most was class war and the ability of capitalism to manipulate and control, the violently pacifistic, classes, and dominate the workers of the world. This collective of the population has diversified immensely since the social capacities of the 18^th century.

Never before has their existed a more populace globe than the era we currently inhabit and never before have we lived in an era where communication and information have been more readily available. What such a scenario has created is one where the greater the size of the population the lesser the amount the upper classes will number. However the rulers and elitists are still holding the reins of history, one where the workers, proletariat and underclass are being steered down a path of a dark future.

In large part this is to do the way neo-liberalism has re-appropriated the contours of history and how the West sees no alternative organisation to the world we live in. A world deeply disparate and unrepresentative of its inhabitants, this world caters for the survival and prosperity of the wealthy. No other example of this could be more clear than the fact that after the worst financial collapse in history the less economically endowed are becoming less so whilst the oligarchic, monopolistic, birth coincidence... amongst; bankers, bosses, hereditary wealthy are ever increasing their wealth.

Why have we let such a scenario go on for so long, and let them make us believe that we really don’t believe that, “There may be light at the end of the tunnel but that light might be another train coming towards us”,  Why does society choose to accept such contours of history? We know that we are affecting the temperature of the earth, or even we are at the whim of the earth’s temperature or anything else it has to throw at us; earthquakes volcanoes and such. What would happen if a huge population would be displaced by a mega volcanic eruption, and they do happen, where would the inhabitants go? We have no provisions to cater for such a scenario.         

The human catastrophe in the Congo as poignantly re-emphasised in the recent BBC episode by Adam Curtis, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace what this episode highlights is how endemic the current neo-liberal capitalist construct is. This endemic disease prevents the abolition of charity, a world which would exist without the need for charities, a world where no one went hungry, without decent shelter and basic access to health care, a world which entailed little, if any, citizenry discrimination by the state and perhaps even its inhabitants, where no one was a migrant or immigrant but merely a citizen only the corrupt and murderers would be excluded. Exclusion would not be based on discrimination but on the basis of one’s actions. There would be no privileging of education all would be educated to the highest possible standard not with the intention of gaining wealth but to better the course of history toward a trajectory of global sustainability, the abolition of private property, and the increase in leisure time for the worlds inhabitancy who presently work with the bare minimum of leisure time to contemplate and evaluate the human experience, yet we are stuck with cultural capitalism.  

Many of the left today, amongst the ‘disenfranchised’ (or rather those violently pacifistic ‘apathetic, citizens) have forgotten or have chosen to ignore the formidability of the neo-liberal capitalist system. It is ingrained in our very being! The ruling class has given us the tools with which to fight it. It gave us multi-culturalism then demeaned it, and then we fought for it. It gave us charity, and then decreased it, and then we fought for it. It gave us protests, and then impeded them and we fought for them. They gave us trade unions, and they attacked them, and we fight for them. This is Capitalism with a human face... a little bit reform here and there.

The recent unrest we have seen at the end of the last decade and which continues today is a small window of grace, these are dark times the global edifice has never been more fragile and interdependent, the unrest represents the outbursts from the void. The void being the failure of neo-liberal ideology; where any real alternative is absent from debate. We see catastrophe movies by the abundance but never alternative realities in the movies. That is to say democracy in its current form is not democracy but a pathetic choice between two parties, parties which consist of the elites and in no way are representative of its mass population. The western culture under capitalism has failed to produce an alternative society and the regimes of the Middle East, which are a direct result of imperial intervention, are beginning to crumble in dramatic and in some instances in tragic ways. But lest not forget it is not the revolution that is the important part it is what happens after that matters. 

Now is the time to end the suffocation of the left and NOT continue fighting within the proposed parameters introduced by the enemy but to re-appropriate the struggle for humanity on our terms and fight for radical reform. To alter the contours of history. We must re-appropriate the contours of history.


Part 2 coming soon!

Universalism exists in Emancipation: Theoretical meanderings II

To write freely without a plan is an arduous task. The act is an attempt to muster the sub/conscious part of a being into a reality of interconnected existence, within a nonlinear timeframe, constantly self reflecting the next conception. Time is the valuable method used to deduce the next step in this dialectic. Over time the collation of a written piece can be drawn out through the method of re-reading what lies in front of the author’s amalgamation of inter-subjective conceptions. Serving this cognitive function an argument will undoubtedly be conceived, only, if the author is to write for a purpose; the purpose being to further the progression of human emancipation, only when this effort is taken will the produced work be of any value. The ‘value’ can in most instances be related to emancipation, a - universal value.

Taken as the case, emancipation becomes the purpose of any dialectical process. Emancipation does not in this instance pertain to suggest the enlightenment of the ignoble or the fetishistic disavowed: the contours of reality suggest that such a task would seem, as taken from a stoic perception, impenetrable, if it is understood that we live in an era of epicurean nature. To break out of this contemporary negation would be a paradox as to do so would require divine emancipation. That is to say, it is a conscious decision to either strive for material abundance, personal wealth, and therefore hostile alienation or to oppose such conjunctions in favour of being “truly universal...as radically singular, in the interstices of communal identities”, as suggested by Kant; the former is the embodiment of the liberal capitalist who supposes that this system propounds the promotion of the individualist, paradoxically, only inasmuch as one conforms to the stereotype! To be an individual in this instance one has to be part of the collective, or rather, to be idiosyncratic within capitalism is the anti-thesis of its core. Whereas, the latter suggests a radical break by suggesting; the universal aspect of individuality can only exist once the idiosyncratic individuals constitutes the communal identities. In other words, the capitalist conforms to communal stereotypes alienating true individuals, whereas in truth, society can only be universal if it is made up of truly individuals, where society requires idiosyncrasies, not alienates them, within the collective. This could only exist in an alternative society to the one we inhabit.

Whilst it is widely acknowledged that those living in the developed West live, in general, in ‘neat’ conditions, that is to say, they have not only the necessary tools to survive but may also live lives where leisure is a major part of living as opposed to those countries where survival is, by far, the dominating factor involved in day to day living. Here lies a cross-road. The decision, which way to turn has already onomatopoeically been reached, you can turn left or right (although this is not to suggest either has a monopoly on a standardised interpretations of ideology, such a suggestion requires further insight that will not be present here). It is those individuals who believe they took the left road but were in fact approaching the crossroad from the wrong direction that are of concern. These individuals can be understood to be Liberal capitalists who are themselves unaware or have, like most capitalists reached the point of utopianistic dreams, believing that the society we encounter is the only way to order society, giving the assumption that we have or will, if we follow the current path reach the best possible world. A capitalist will affirm this position through stating “ I have no time for politics” or “I don’t do politics”, such statements are the most ideological statements one can make, this sentiment is pure avocation of the ruling ideology. Therefore their actions reinforce the matrix of neo-liberal capitalism. Instances of belief that the current neo-liberal mechanisms help society are falsities. If anything fair-trade coffee and philanthropic gestures from the likes of Bill Gates and Gorge Soros debilitate the intricate capitalist matrix, furthering the process of alienation. Such institutions and acts are under the current guise necessary but these should be institutions of the past. In an emancipated universality such acts would not be necessary. See Video below...

Moral of the blog... strive for and cherish idiosyncrasies, accept that all public acts are intrinsically political, if you dispute this then you will be advocating the current status quo, and once you have accepted this now let’s contemplate ways in which to undermine the ruling power structure to facilitate an alternative future - a future which caters for the emancipation and eradication of alienation.  

Law: The Dood does NOT abide

Law is the mechanism highlighting the class antagonism and subsequently the class war that has been intensifying in recent months.  It is in the realm of the law that signifies the dynamics favoured by the state and its relation with whom they deem worthy and therefore worth sacrificing and those who are worthless and merely worth killing.

The Law is the state’s most powerful, civilian, controlling mechanism. From this understanding we can understand the challenges which face the radical left, the emancipatory movement, which is here to represent the majority, a category which the majority are unaware that they are a part of, in as much as the majority are unaware of their complicity with the ruling ideology of the day, neo-liberal capitalism, even those in the radical Left are unaware that they are involved in such a movement.

This may sound ridiculous but what is intended by this statement is to suggest that we are so ingrained within the contours of neo-liberal agenda that when we opposes the neo-liberal agenda we are actually reinforcing or legitimising it through our very opposition...

This statement needs elaboration however it will be left open-ended, although I will say that the Left needs to invoke a sense of radical social measures which, through its disregard for the contours of neo-liberalism, undermines the spectacle that has managed to distort the hierarchy of reality. That is to say, if one is able to live outside the contours of ‘acceptable’ social reality i.e. capitalist dogmatism, then an authentic left would be able to exist.

Is this not the true task of the Left today, to undermine the very structures which we bravely and admirably are fighting against?

It is for this reason that an analysis of UK Law will be critiqued in order to understand that; to stand and fight an enemy within the mechanisms that your enemy has created will only end in failure, or rather we may win some battles, but we will not win the war, to do so we need to stand our ground and draw the enemy towards a battle ground where capitalism is powerless through our very abstraction and mechanisms created through our abstraction.

Recent legislation that has been either enhanced or implemented under the Con-Dem regime give insight into the way the government favours and protects the wealthy and condemns the lower echelons for being just that, this is done through an uneven system which smothers the circumstances of all classes from birth.

Here are some examples of Law and its use to separate justice from the poor to the rich:

Recent legislation to abandon Legal aid for couples who wish to divorce will/has been axed in favour of ‘four way conciliations’ in governments attempts to keep couples together as it is much cheaper than having Legal aid to protect couples from domestic violence or forced marriage. Such legislation dissuades victims of abuse to seek help as they will have to stick with their abusive partner until they are able to unequivocally prove that they are abused. It is clear in this instance that those who can afford it will not need legal aid and therefore will be able to get a divorce as soon as they want, thus condemning abusive relationships to continue due to a lack of financial capital!

Although Cameron announced back in November that he would slack the intellectual property laws for start up internet companies, this did in no way go far enough. Intellectual property on all products; from pharmaceutical patenting, such as the patenting of AIDS drugs which creates scenarios of victims of AIDS unable to afford the drug treatments due to them having to pay the price of the intellectual property if they want to live. Yes there should be quality assurance on products particularly drug companies, but only when we abandon intellectual property rights will we live in a society which functions for the common good, and not for the wallets of domineering ‘individuals’.

Super-injunctions are another prime example of the Law which is there to protect its citizens. It is in fact a play tool for the rich and wealthy to stop arbitrary information being flung around, in order to save a ‘celebrity’ figure from his wife finding out about his affair, to the likes of Fred Goodwin being called a banker. If we all had the money to go to the Supreme Court to file cases against name calling or to stop rumours spreading, this would be a laughable practice. Such actions are merely the goings on of the rich and famous. Super injunctions are the pathetic instance where the Law is there purely as a servant of the rich. Any instance such as this is an attack on the poor as this is a mockery of the Legal system which is functioning for one class only.

Migratory Laws is the most explicit out of all the above examples of when a Law favours, it is also created just for the wealthy. The Con-Dem government has stated that rich migrants have tax exemptions if they leave £5 million in UK banks. This goes some way toward explaining the social apartheid that has been emerging over the past two decades with the likes of gated communities. What about all those migrants living in impoverished conditions in asylum houses, the equivalent of prisons, and the terrible treatment of migrants in this country who are subjugated to if they have little money. All states need migrants in particular poor ones to fill the jobs that many are not willing to do. On top of this all states have an obligation to accommodate migrants. In this world we live on a constant precipice, not knowing where nature will strike next, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, all these events have the ability to displace whole populations and it is our responsibility to produce provisions when such scenarios occur.

It is plain to see the ways in which Legal frameworks favour the richer groups in society at the detriment of the poor. The message the Left should take from this is to devise circumstances and ways we can undermine such power structures through abstracting the very laws which serve the rich. How to do this is not so clear, but if it can be done; a truly authentic left would exist, external to the contours of neo-liberal capitalism. 

The song that inspired the youth of Portugal to stand and Protest

Follow this link to Read more

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_PORTUGAL_FINANCIAL_CRISIS?SITE=NYONE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

See also their new entrants to the Euro-vision song contest - Revolutionary spirit is in the Air