11 August 2011

The British riots - symptoms aren't causes

An article in the Guardian by Zoe Williams, who has her headed screwed on, discussed vigilanteism and its relation to a functional society.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/10/uk-riots-vigilantism-big-society
I made the following comment:

Zoe writes: "Big society might look like people on the streets with brooms or doner knives; but that's not what functional society looks like."
For a long time society has been very functional - for the bourgeoisie running a capitalist society for their own benefit and enjoying a monopoly of violence (army and police) and public judgement (ie condemnation, punishment and criminalization of their antagonists).
Now not even the bourgeoisie and its public representatives (damn near everyone in politics and the media) can run a functional society. "Those above can't rule, and those below can't be ruled".
Which leads to unofficial attack groups (ultra-right thugs, ultimately death squads) attacking the enemies of capitalism and the bourgeois state, and others who are singled out as scapegoats.
And since the rest of us need to mind our backs, we organize self-defence groups. An "invisible", organized and "orderly" class war breaks surface and becomes visible, 2-way organized (ie polarized) and "disorderly" from the rulers' perspective. And since organization, education about society and politics, creative and benevolent treatment has been cut out of the non-ruling body of those living and working (or jobless) in Britain, no one should be surprised when the social eruptions are disorganized, ignorant, anti-social, apolitical, destructive and malevolent. It happens in the slums of the US (LA) and France (Paris) and now (once more) Britain.
Given all this we should note that given the degree of damage to property there has been very very little damage to person, and given the number of the rioters the state response has been disproportionate, vindictive and divisive, to say the least. A typical image from the riots has been of a half-a-dozen heavily armoured, anonymous (super-hoodied), armed police, with leash-tugging dogs and armoured cars in the background standing over a single unarmed lad who's about to be carted off and done over (if not physically, then civically).
The howls of rage at the symptoms (sometimes ugly symptoms) are hypocritical and cynical given the wilful neglect of the causes underlying these symptoms.
And the causes are inseparable from this bourgeois capitalist society, and will only become more deeply rooted and virulent as this society becomes less and less functional even on its own terms.
Temporary alleviation was achieved with the New Deal and the Welfare State in the 30s and 40s. However, this only occurred in powerful countries after their bourgeoisies were threatened with extinction by colonial independence and revolution - oh, and after a world war that ended with ultra-imperialist Churchill being unceremoniously dumped by the workers who had fought his imperialist war for him.
So now New Deal or Welfare State for a while yet, just more of the same gouging out of living flesh. And more and more panicky squealing and scapegoating from defenders of the state as quo (with no quid).

9 August 2011

The riots in Britain - London, Bristol, Birmingham and Liverpool so far

I made the following comment on the live coverage of the riots in the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2011/aug/09/london-riots-violence-looting-live)



Very briefly - it's not the government, it's the class they represent. The bourgeoisie has a monopoly of everything public in Britain Europe and most of the world today, and they're using this public authority to smash all public enterprise, goods, services and amenities they can. To put the profits from this into their own pockets (that's what profit is - private money after productive capital investment and unproductive military and ideological expenditure are taken care of). They're looting the general public (us) using the monopoly of public violence (military, police) their system gives them, not us.
Now the most reviled and criminalized and impoverished section of the general public - immigrant, slumdwelling working class lads are reacting in the way they have seen the ruling class acting towards reviled, impoverished and criminalized foreign countries - burning and looting. But they show none of the indiscriminate ruthlessness of the bourgeoisie on the rampage in the colonial wars of Britain and France, or the imperialist wars of the US.
They are a barometer showing the way the rest of us are feeling. They can react spontaneously this way because they aren't tied down by property debt, car and other loans, or a job to lose. And have the energy of youth. The rest of us don't challenge state (class) violence so lightly.
But when we do, it will need more than thousands of police to curb us. There are so many of us that we'll be kettling them, and occupying their lives the way they have been occupying ours.
And we'll be organized, and have a clear idea about what we need to do to get them off our backs for good, and tear public wealth out of their greedy, gory hands.

6 August 2011

Cochlea implants and discrimination against the deaf

An article in the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/05/deaf-people-cochlear-implants
took up the arrogant and authoritarian attitudes of hearing experts in relation to deaf people and cochlea implants. A lot of the commentators piled in on the side of those vilifying the deaf. So I added this comment:


TimSkellet's early comment is excellent - the historical perspective is absolutely necessary here. Since sign language is a native language like any spoken language (lexicon, syntax, semantics, brain location) this whole business is the same as the ignorant and vicious attacks common in relation to bilingualism or language diversity.
The audiologists campaigning against sign language users are no different from race biologists or ethnic cleansers - or the academic thugs attacking minority languages or languages on the brink of extinction.
These implants are very expensive. The people working with implants have a vested interest in promoting the intervention. They are like Microsoft Windows propagandists in IT.
Look - as hero of the intolerant and bigoted Maggie Thatcher used to say and probably still does - minorities can chew gum and walk at the same time. If I know two languages well, say Finnish or Welsh and English, then I use them both as I choose, as I see fit, according to my whim. It's my right, just as it's my right to go into a shop and spend my money any way I like. It's none of your damn business to tell me what to buy or how to use what I buy. Western civilization. Right of ownership. What's mine is mine to use and abuse. And my language is more important to me than any consumer crap. These audiologists (and the other geocentrics I've mentioned) would scream blue murder and call in the cops and the court of human rights if they were forced, or even just pressured into using their school French instead of their native language (presumably English). Well, sign language is the English of deaf people, and oralism or cochlea speak is their school French.
And we all know that women are imperfect men and blacks are imperfect whites, so let's operate them too to assimilate them and lift them out of their miserable victimized status.
What a shitty society where imbeciles in a position of authority and status insist on either/or instead of both/and.