This is an article I drafted with additions suggested by comrades at a meeting last Wednesday in Liverpool.
Any comments or questions welcome!
THE EUROPEAN CRISIS
World crisis
This crisis isn’t a US crisis or a European crisis or an Asian crisis or a Latin American crisis. It’s a world crisis.
The Asian crisis of the late 90s brought Indonesia to its knees and then infected Argentina, and brought down Enron in the US. The Milken junk bond scandal of the mid-80s shook the US finance world. But neither crisis saw the bankruptcy of corporations at the very core of US capitalism like Ford and General Motors, or the fall of financial giants like Lehmann. Or the gutting of European nations like Iceland or the Ukraine. Or such a standstill in world trade or manufacturing. This crisis is not localized, or on-and-off, or sectoral. It’s a general world crisis affecting the imperialist metropolises and every country in their thrall. It’s an economic earthquake and tsunami in one, bringing down economic structures and drowning whole countries.
Overproduction crisis
The crisis is a classical overproduction crisis – of both commodities and capital
All credit is based on collateral. The bottom line here is the sale of real commodities. Regardless of the labyrinths, distorting mirrors, and smoke-and-mirrors illusions created by capitalist accounting wizards, and no matter how high the castles-in-the-air appear to tower above our heads, if the cars, TVs, clothes, machines and raw materials don’t get sold all these illusions will dissolve. And if there are more commodities in the shops than money to buy them, the market will choke. There will be a glut, and an overproduction crisis.
The reason too many goods can be produced is that there is too much capital throwing goods into the market. If one company can saturate a market, two companies will flood it. The only way out of this dead end is for one of the companies to disappear, for its capital to be destroyed. This is done by manufacturing being choked back, and weaker companies going to the wall. And if this isn’t enough, war has to step in to do the job.
These crises are recurrent, ruthless and deadly. And invisible to bourgeois economics, except in the after-the-event, “please don’t expropriate us and throw us away” shape of Keynesianism. That is to say, the large-scale concessions to the working class represented by the New Deal or the Welfare State.
Old powers falling
The US and Europe hollowed out
This crisis has seen US and European imperialism on the losing end of the competitive war. This is unprecedented. The bayonets usually skewer dependent countries or weaker imperialist nations. This time household names have been gone bankrupt – Ford, General Motors, Lehmann, the Royal Bank of Scotland. And huge conglomerates have been cannibalizing groups that aren’t quite huge enough – Cadbury’s has been swallowed by Kraft Foods, for instance.
New powers rising
More viable production meets remaining demand
If two companies compete to the death, the surviving company will emerge stronger. As Ford and General Motors fail, Chinese carmakers take their place. Geely steps in to take over Volvo from Ford, and BAIC makes the best offer for Saab as General Motors is forced to sell. However, GM refused to accept the Chinese as buyers for its new line of Saabs, and ended up selling to a Dutch sports car maker in the pocket of a Russian billionaire. British companies like the steel giant Corus, and the prestigious brands of Jaguar, Land Rover went down to the Indian juggernaut Tata Group.
Britain’s manufacturing sector now comprises only 13% of GDP. It’s little wonder that it is more vulnerable to credit collapse than countries with a strong manufacturing or natural resources sector that are able to hold out in markets where less competitive countries are swept away.
Rising countries are moving into the spaces left by declining imperialist powers. China, India and Russia are making themselves felt, and Brazil is picking up momentum in Latin America - even intervening in the Middle East with a recent visit to Iran by the Brazilian president.
The crisis is general and interlinked
Financial, commercial and manufacturing developments in one place immediately affect and are affected by developments in other places
When Ford and General Motors went bust, Volvo and Saab, with their R&D and manufacturing operations in Sweden, had to be auctioned off, and were on the brink of bankruptcy. If they had been liquidated this would have gutted the economy of the whole of western Sweden. Whole towns would have lost their livelihoods as their only major employers were Volvo or Saab, or companies producing parts or components for them. In the event both were saved, by Chinese and Russian capital. But this solved nothing as far as capitalism is concerned, because world capitalism needs capital to be destroyed, not saved.
The same futile scenario is being repeated around the world.
The EU is tearing apart
The interests of imperialist countries in the EU are savaging the interests of the weaker countries
While Sweden has been scrabbling to save its own skin, Swedish banks have been digging their claws into weaker countries. Sweden is, after all, an imperialist country in its own right. So although more and more of its economy has been bought up by foreign capital, its own capital has been sucking the blood of Latvia and the Ukraine. One of the major leeches being the cooperative and trade union owned Swedbank.
French banks are holding a knife to the throats of Portugal and Spain – and most dramatically of Greece. German capital is setting up shop everywhere in Europe. This process is very visible on the streets of Serbia, which has only recently been prised open to foreign capital. The same goes for new EU members from former Warsaw Pact countries like Romania and Bulgaria.
In this process Germany, France and Britain are all out for themselves. All the fine talk about European unity and solidarity evaporates when national interests are at stake.
The interests of the banks are savaging the lives of individuals
Insolvencies are at record levels and negative equity is sky-rocketing. Perhaps the most striking example of this is Latvia, where a whole stratum of starry-eyed conspicuous consumers suddenly couldn’t pay the loans they’d taken out to buy their flats or a Mercedes. The new material wealth they thought was theirs was repossessed, leaving them facing a lifetime of debt with nothing to show for it. Personal catastrophes of this kind will soon hammer Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland and other countries on the sharpest end of the crisis.
Debtors and creditors
Payback time
The biggest imperialist countries are in debt on a huge scale to the Market. To cover this debt they need to enforce payment by their own debtors. But if they drive their debtors into bankruptcy they will lose all the unpaid debts. They desperately need to get their money back, but they also desperately need to have debtors able to keep paying, preferably for ever. To reduce debtor countries to complete servitude would be to turn them into colonies. This is a very inefficient form of exploitation. “Free” wage labour is a more efficient from of exploitation than slavery, and “free” nations offer greater profits than colonies – with far fewer overheads.
The Great Depression
The current crisis so far is the 1930s in slow motion
The Big Crash happened very fast. There were no bail-outs. The capitalist world economy stopped dead. Recovery was slow and painful. Our present recovery, if and when it happens, will be even slower and even more painful, but the crash is still happening. Bail-outs, international attempts to coordinate responses, all kinds of artificial resuscitation methods are being deployed to put off disaster for another few months. They might as well try to hold back the tide or use a wooden fence to stop a lava flow.
The big difference is that the working class is not defeated
The great difference between the current crisis and the 1930s is that the working class is not defeated. Capital has been unable to deal a decisive blow to the class, despite sluggers like Thatcher and Reagan. The class is still putting up resistance and making demands, despite pro-capitalist leadership in trade unions and labour parties.
And today the general standard of living is higher than it was in the 30s, and there is still a welfare state, however run-down. Purchasing power in Greece has fallen by a third, but people still survive. And although this cushions the first blows, it also means that the class is stronger and in a better condition to fight when it finally starts fighting.
War
This resistance means that the ultimate capitalist solution to the crisis of overproduction of capital -- war on a world scale -- is so far more of a threat than an immediate danger. This was not the case in the 1930s.
The capitalist response
Privatization of profits and socialization of losses
Normally sluggish governments become nimble and quick as soon as capital needs to be rescued. Red tape is ignored, there are no humiliating interrogations or insulting pittances involved.
The neo-liberal ideology of total market freedom has been unceremoniously dumped. It was fine to justify huge private profiteering when the circumstances allowed huge profits to be made. But as soon as losses appear the market is shoved aside and the capitalists run squealing to their governments. Corporate welfare is lavished on capitalists who have fallen on hard times. The losses are socialized. And this means that the billions handed over to failed capitalists by their governments will be paid for by the working class by way of higher taxes and slashed public services
Huge loans and crippling austerity
To extract payment, governments are imposing austerity programmes of unprecedented severity. The trillion dollar loan the Greek government needs to rescue capital has been granted by Germany, France and the IMF on condition that it drives through the cuts.
The working class response
The class response has so far been passive or unfocused
In the current crisis no working class organizations have demanded permanent public ownership of banks or companies that have gone bankrupt and been rescued with public money. With this kind of leadership it’s no wonder that the class response has been passive or unfocused. Treacherous political and union leaders are fighting desperately to keep the lid on discontent. They are fighting the workers they represent instead of the capitalists causing the crisis.
Governments are not as savage as their masters would like
Despite the treacherous manoeuvring of unions and parties, class anger has made itself felt. In Greece there have been massive and prolonged demonstrations, and violent confrontations. The austerity measures have been met by general strikes. This kind of response terrifies governments and means that although they are savagely attacking the working class, they are nowhere near as savage as their masters in the Market would like.
Great social problems like mass unemployment (for example the 20% unemployment in Spain, and the much higher figures for youth unemployment throughout Europe) are too dangerous for politicians to discuss. In parliamentary debates and during elections the real world is a million miles away. This silence is also caused by fear of the working class.
A powerful working class will undoubtedly fight back
Although there has been no great increase in working class mobilization in recent years, the working class remains undefeated and its potential power is greater than ever. Today’s developments will push the class forward to struggle. When it starts moving it will rise in many countries at once. The speed with which mobilizations spread from country to country in 1968 will be surpassed. There are fewer differences between countries today, there are more links, and communications are faster and easier.
From defence to attack
To do more than just defend itself the working class must consciously target its real enemy. To replace the political dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and set up a workers government the class must learn who its enemy is, and how to defeat it. In each country and in the world as a whole. But taking power nationally and creating a socialist world demands a completely different class leadership than we see around us today.
Building a new and conscious leadership is the only way to give the working class confidence in its own strength and in its ability to change the world. And it’s the only way to ensure that we never have to endure another catastrophic capitalist crisis.
17 May 2010
29 April 2010
Posturing...
This is a short item about slouching and confidence from Scientific American:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=stop-slouching
"When you were growing up, your mother probably told you to sit up straight, because good posture helps you look confident and make a good impression. And now it turns out that sitting up straight can also improve how you feel about yourself, according to a study in the October 2009 issue of the European Journal of Social Psychology. Researchers asked college students to rate themselves on how good they would be as job candidates and employees. Those told to sit up straight with their chests out gave themselves higher ratings than those instructed to slouch while filling out the rating form. Once again, Mom was right".
So I commented:
There's a difference between a good healthy posture and an uptight ramrod.
The ramrod stiff, chest puffed out position is crippling. It creates enormous stress on the body, especially the spine, and blocks its relaxed natural functioning. Any athlete can tell you that. Wilhelm Reich - a much-maligned psychologist - worked all his life to loosen up what he called the "body armour" encasing most of his patients. This armour is a sure sign of an authoritarian social setting and rigid(ified) attitudes.
Good healthy posture is what our bodies are designed for. The body stands upright of its own accord if we let it. If we use the muscles of our lower back and chest to "consciously" hold ourselves up then this natural capability atrophies. Resulting in straightening followed either by sit-all-day slouching or the rigidity of a tin soldier.
The rich and royal, by the way, make sure their whelps get years of training in standing up straight and walking so they can a) project impressive confidence (as the article says) and b) subject their bodies to as little wear and tear as possible during all the walkabouts and hanging around at cocktail parties they have to do.
In Sweden, where I live, it's taken them 7 long years to train the common-as-muck personal trainer boyfriend of the heiress to the throne so he can walk properly as her consort.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=stop-slouching
Stop Slouching!
Good posture boosts self-esteem
By Harvey Black
"When you were growing up, your mother probably told you to sit up straight, because good posture helps you look confident and make a good impression. And now it turns out that sitting up straight can also improve how you feel about yourself, according to a study in the October 2009 issue of the European Journal of Social Psychology. Researchers asked college students to rate themselves on how good they would be as job candidates and employees. Those told to sit up straight with their chests out gave themselves higher ratings than those instructed to slouch while filling out the rating form. Once again, Mom was right".
So I commented:
There's a difference between a good healthy posture and an uptight ramrod.
The ramrod stiff, chest puffed out position is crippling. It creates enormous stress on the body, especially the spine, and blocks its relaxed natural functioning. Any athlete can tell you that. Wilhelm Reich - a much-maligned psychologist - worked all his life to loosen up what he called the "body armour" encasing most of his patients. This armour is a sure sign of an authoritarian social setting and rigid(ified) attitudes.
Good healthy posture is what our bodies are designed for. The body stands upright of its own accord if we let it. If we use the muscles of our lower back and chest to "consciously" hold ourselves up then this natural capability atrophies. Resulting in straightening followed either by sit-all-day slouching or the rigidity of a tin soldier.
The rich and royal, by the way, make sure their whelps get years of training in standing up straight and walking so they can a) project impressive confidence (as the article says) and b) subject their bodies to as little wear and tear as possible during all the walkabouts and hanging around at cocktail parties they have to do.
In Sweden, where I live, it's taken them 7 long years to train the common-as-muck personal trainer boyfriend of the heiress to the throne so he can walk properly as her consort.
19 April 2010
The emptiness of imperialist political manifestos (2)
I was asked a direct question about my comment to Mary's blog on political manifestos
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/04/and-the-prize-for-the-worst-manifesto-goes-to-.html#
Tim W said.: ...give us a crib to that last line, would you?
I replied: Hi Tim. Now you ask, I see that I expected four words to do more work than they should ;-)
It's a mini-quote from Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, Book I, stanza 1:
"Мой дядя самых честных правил,
Когда не в шутку занемог,
Он уважать себя заставил
И лучше выдумать не мог.
Его пример другим наука;
Но, *боже мой, какая скука*
С больным сидеть и день и ночь,
Не отходя ни шагу прочь!
Какое низкое коварство
Полу-живого забавлять,
Ему подушки поправлять,
Печально подносить лекарство,
Вздыхать и думать про себя:
Когда же чорт возьмет тебя!"
"Christ, what a terrible drag" .. literally "My God, what a bore"
Eugene's going to inherit an uncle so he's got to go to the country and look after him until he dies... take him food and be nice, etc...
A recent English translation (G R Ledger for the internet http://www.pushkins-poems.com/) is:
"My uncle, a most worthy gentleman,
When he fell seriously ill,
By snuffing it made us all respect him,
Couldn't have done better if he tried.
His behaviour was a lesson to us all.
But, God above, what crushing boredom
To sit with the malingerer night and day
Not moving even one footstep away.
What demeaning hypocrisy
To amuse the half-dead codger,
To fluff up his pillows, and then,
Mournfully to bring him his medicine;
To think to oneself, and to sigh:
When the devil will the old rascal die?"
The relevance is that we have to look after this decrepit old society, with its wealthy, murderous politicians and their lying manifestos till it dies and we can inherit what's good in it. There's an ironic twist to the quote - Eugene is a callous arsehole, cos his uncle is an exemplary gentleman. Our uncle is a vicious vampire condemning us to Life-in-Death - and yet we mollycoddle him by taking part in his cynical rituals and letting him claim we're behind him.
If we fail to put a stake through his heart, we end up broken zombies:
"Two ginscented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was
all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished.
He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/04/and-the-prize-for-the-worst-manifesto-goes-to-.html#
Tim W said.: ...give us a crib to that last line, would you?
I replied: Hi Tim. Now you ask, I see that I expected four words to do more work than they should ;-)
It's a mini-quote from Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, Book I, stanza 1:
"Мой дядя самых честных правил,
Когда не в шутку занемог,
Он уважать себя заставил
И лучше выдумать не мог.
Его пример другим наука;
Но, *боже мой, какая скука*
С больным сидеть и день и ночь,
Не отходя ни шагу прочь!
Какое низкое коварство
Полу-живого забавлять,
Ему подушки поправлять,
Печально подносить лекарство,
Вздыхать и думать про себя:
Когда же чорт возьмет тебя!"
"Christ, what a terrible drag" .. literally "My God, what a bore"
Eugene's going to inherit an uncle so he's got to go to the country and look after him until he dies... take him food and be nice, etc...
A recent English translation (G R Ledger for the internet http://www.pushkins-poems.com/) is:
"My uncle, a most worthy gentleman,
When he fell seriously ill,
By snuffing it made us all respect him,
Couldn't have done better if he tried.
His behaviour was a lesson to us all.
But, God above, what crushing boredom
To sit with the malingerer night and day
Not moving even one footstep away.
What demeaning hypocrisy
To amuse the half-dead codger,
To fluff up his pillows, and then,
Mournfully to bring him his medicine;
To think to oneself, and to sigh:
When the devil will the old rascal die?"
The relevance is that we have to look after this decrepit old society, with its wealthy, murderous politicians and their lying manifestos till it dies and we can inherit what's good in it. There's an ironic twist to the quote - Eugene is a callous arsehole, cos his uncle is an exemplary gentleman. Our uncle is a vicious vampire condemning us to Life-in-Death - and yet we mollycoddle him by taking part in his cynical rituals and letting him claim we're behind him.
If we fail to put a stake through his heart, we end up broken zombies:
"Two ginscented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was
all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished.
He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."
16 April 2010
The emptiness of imperialist political manifestos
Mary B has been very busy blogging recently. Her latest is about the uniformity and superficiality of the party manifestos for the coming general election in the UK.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/04/and-the-prize-for-the-worst-manifesto-goes-to-.html#more
My comment:
Politics on this blog? Oh deary me...
Anyway, has anyone else noticed that once the Soviet Union's bureaucrats/nomenklatura sold themselves to capitalism the imperialist states have had nothing to worry about in terms of rights and freedoms? They no longer have to pretend to they are the champions of decency, democracy, freedom of thought and expression, freedom of religion, and freedom of movement (eg no arbitrary restrictions on travel), that they are promoters of a society free of informers, denunciations, ideological straightjackets, corrupt leaders living lives of luxury unthinkable for the toiling masses, destructive militaristic priorities, and that they lovingly foster a heritage beauty,culture and truth. So the
imperialist leaders have been gleefully doing everything they once criticized (except the good things like the right to employment, universal access to education and health care, free cultural centres, dirt cheap books and music).
And now the aesthetics of repression and lies are stifling us here too. "Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend."
Little poxes on a commons bench, little poxes made of ticky-tacky, little poxes, little poxes, little poxes all the same... And there's blue ones and pink ones and cute little yellow ones, and they're all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same.
Bozhe moy, kakaya skuka!
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/04/and-the-prize-for-the-worst-manifesto-goes-to-.html#more
My comment:
Politics on this blog? Oh deary me...
Anyway, has anyone else noticed that once the Soviet Union's bureaucrats/nomenklatura sold themselves to capitalism the imperialist states have had nothing to worry about in terms of rights and freedoms? They no longer have to pretend to they are the champions of decency, democracy, freedom of thought and expression, freedom of religion, and freedom of movement (eg no arbitrary restrictions on travel), that they are promoters of a society free of informers, denunciations, ideological straightjackets, corrupt leaders living lives of luxury unthinkable for the toiling masses, destructive militaristic priorities, and that they lovingly foster a heritage beauty,culture and truth. So the
imperialist leaders have been gleefully doing everything they once criticized (except the good things like the right to employment, universal access to education and health care, free cultural centres, dirt cheap books and music).
And now the aesthetics of repression and lies are stifling us here too. "Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend."
Little poxes on a commons bench, little poxes made of ticky-tacky, little poxes, little poxes, little poxes all the same... And there's blue ones and pink ones and cute little yellow ones, and they're all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same.
Bozhe moy, kakaya skuka!
15 April 2010
An Indian site against caste
I got a mail from A in India linking to this site:
http://www.anti-caste.org/
on caste, women's oppression, communalism, and class struggle in South Asia from a Marxist perspective
With specific reference to the following article:
I subscribed to their emails immediately, and sent the following mail to A:
Straightforward stuff that gives us the conditions for struggle on a more than superficial level. We can contribute to sharpening the perspectives here. Particularly the common lack of trust in the strength of the oppressed classes to fight state repression. Always this emphasis on the "overwhelming" technical (including troops) superiority of the class enemy. If they succeed in their repression, it's because we aren't organizing and mobilizing the way we should.
Straightforward stuff that gives us the conditions for struggle on a more than superficial level. We can contribute to sharpening the perspectives here. Particularly the common lack of trust in the strength of the oppressed classes to fight state repression. Always this emphasis on the "overwhelming" technical (including troops) superiority of the class enemy. If they succeed in their repression, it's because we aren't organizing and mobilizing the way we should.
The principle here is neither pessimism nor optimism, but a clear understanding of the classes in struggle and the relations of power between them - on the surface and below the surface. Here we can help enormously by bringing in international and historical perspectives - how a determined and conscious struggle has resisted and defeated "overwhelming odds".
Down with empiricism! Empiricists have never understood history or been able to draw any lessons from it - regardless of what they call themselves. The Manifesto is our touchstone:
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
That should be clear enough. It's the classes that are at war, not the groups of individuals engaged in the battles. These groups do the fighting, but as representatives of the warring classes. The relative strengths of the groups change, often very rapidly. But the underlying social and historical strength of the warring classes is constant over whole epochs.
If they could do it despite the inadequate perspectives of the leadership, we can do it and surpass it, too.
« De l'audace, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace », as the great French revolutionary leader Danton said. "Bold and daring, even more bold and daring, always bold and daring!"
Cheers
C
14 April 2010
Meta-bloggery
Mary's blog about bureaucrats turning red tape into straitjackets has seen the comments taking an unexpected turn or two (my previous comment [7 April, Even sheep ...] provoked one commenter to accuse me of "synthetic rage"). I continued the discussion.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/04/why-good-practice-can-ruin-good-practice.html#
My earlier comments provoked some response, to which I responded with a "meta-comment":
James Smith writes: "And Xjy, why are so many of your comments about class conflict? I respect your political/sociological views, but is this really the place to expound your theories?"
This is really the place (a good place), James, and I'm not trying to expound anything.
Mary's being considered for the Orwell prize - for political writing! She's even labelled as "subversive" in the blog blurb. Those are establishment invitations to politically "subversive" comments. Num?
However, there is a real political and sociological perspective to Mary's reflections. How do state decisions (via the government and its bureaucracy) affect the acquisition, sharing and passing on of knowledge essential to a good society? This present blog is an example. Comments on the root of these decisions are relevant. If the comments are "outside the box", that's more a reflection on the box than the comments. Do I have to remind everyone that even Reader's Digest has been banging on for decades about the importance of dissident thought to creativity and progress? And if a reactionary US Republican rag does it, why shouldn't an educated and cultured bloghood welcome it? Diversity, stimulation? At my breadmill our last kick-off gave us a whole day of "creativity
I haven't been accused of corrupting youth - yet - though Mary has raised this spectre in blogs about state vetting of anyone with contact with kids. Censorship and paranoia are recurring themes in the blog. Gadflies sting. Hemlock, anyone?
"Here I stand; I can do no other. God help me."
"Dixi et salvavi animam meam."
Of course, if my "rage" is only "synthetic" instead of synthesizing, as Anthony A maintains, then it's Thersites bitching or Diogenes showboating naked in his barrel rather than Socrates or Luther. But hell, rather that and my own place in Hell than wafting about on the banks of the Styx.
A bit of meta-bloggery shouldn't be too out of place now and then, either, innit?
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/04/why-good-practice-can-ruin-good-practice.html#
My earlier comments provoked some response, to which I responded with a "meta-comment":
James Smith writes: "And Xjy, why are so many of your comments about class conflict? I respect your political/sociological views, but is this really the place to expound your theories?"
This is really the place (a good place), James, and I'm not trying to expound anything.
Mary's being considered for the Orwell prize - for political writing! She's even labelled as "subversive" in the blog blurb. Those are establishment invitations to politically "subversive" comments. Num?
However, there is a real political and sociological perspective to Mary's reflections. How do state decisions (via the government and its bureaucracy) affect the acquisition, sharing and passing on of knowledge essential to a good society? This present blog is an example. Comments on the root of these decisions are relevant. If the comments are "outside the box", that's more a reflection on the box than the comments. Do I have to remind everyone that even Reader's Digest has been banging on for decades about the importance of dissident thought to creativity and progress? And if a reactionary US Republican rag does it, why shouldn't an educated and cultured bloghood welcome it? Diversity, stimulation? At my breadmill our last kick-off gave us a whole day of "creativity
I haven't been accused of corrupting youth - yet - though Mary has raised this spectre in blogs about state vetting of anyone with contact with kids. Censorship and paranoia are recurring themes in the blog. Gadflies sting. Hemlock, anyone?
"Here I stand; I can do no other. God help me."
"Dixi et salvavi animam meam."
Of course, if my "rage" is only "synthetic" instead of synthesizing, as Anthony A maintains, then it's Thersites bitching or Diogenes showboating naked in his barrel rather than Socrates or Luther. But hell, rather that and my own place in Hell than wafting about on the banks of the Styx.
A bit of meta-bloggery shouldn't be too out of place now and then, either, innit?
12 April 2010
Let there be light!
A wonderful little story by Germaine Greer in today's Guardian. A perfect provocation of manacled minds, yielding a rich harvest of ignorant and bigoted comments.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/apr/11/germaine-greer-federico-fellini
My own comment:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/apr/11/germaine-greer-federico-fellini
My own comment:
The puppies yelp, the caravan passes...
One of the most liberating things about liberation is fighting for it. Those were liberating days. Fellini, old-style not-so-intellectual but no-holds-barred iconic culture critic and mythologue, meets new-style intellectual and no-holds-barred culture critic and iconoclast Germaine G... Female Eunuch meet Casanova and Citta delle Donne. If this had been filmed (heh) it would be as iconic as the Mailer brawl in New York. Mailer Iliad and Fellini Odyssey.
Out in the sun in the open air. US imperialism getting turfed out of Vietnam, Portuguese imperialism getting turfed out of Africa, Spanish fascism getting turfed out of Spain... Equal Pay Act... Sex Discrimination Act.
We had a few good years left (got rid of the Shah...) till Thatcher and Reagan and Disco started stomping all over us.
Fellini was good at twisting the Zeitgeist by his balls till he showed himself for what he was in relation to real people. So are you, Germaine.
And that generator! What to say...
Fiat lux!
8 April 2010
Movin' an' a-groovin'
Here's a comment I posted last year on Scientific American, on a piece about why we like dancing so much. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=experts-dance
The parallel with sex is good here - limber, coordinated, improvisational sex produces its own excitement and release, and good, tight, individual bonding. And D Marchant's comment: "Mirror Neurons are just structural evidence that we are wired for social harmonic unity, and unified rhythmic movement reinforces these social bonds" ties in with his observation about "group synchrony. So-called "primitive" tribal dance rituals organize individuals into collective group entities that hunt better, resist predation better and act as one larger organism than individuals alone." Getting the cacophony of individual conflicting interests, emotions etc (due to status, gender, age etc) into synch is imperative for effective group functioning - think orchestras or sports teams. Music and dance achieve this - the greater the crescendo and the freer the orgasmic release, the better for us and our groups. Which just shows how inhuman and sclerotic our present puritanical anti-sensual society is and how great the need is to change it to a more liberating and energizing society where schools give our kids a deep confidence and mastery of rhythm and harmony and interaction and creativity in their earliest and most formative years. With this foundation they'll be able to work together better and learn together better later when it comes to more abstract things like science, logic, maths, etc - theoretical analysis and synthesis. So Wilhelm Reich and his followers were bang on target with the central place they gave orgasmic release in their theory - and the necessity for loosening up, sloughing off body "armour", moving and a-grooving, reeling with the feeling, rocking and a-rolling, etc. Excellent! And of course, a lot of studies that you all know better than I do have shown that music and song target different parts of the brain from less rhythmic more discursive language. Which also (since it's all hardwired) shows that attempting to suppress rhythm, dance, music, poetry etc (as certain puritanical sects or regimes do) or to corral them into commercially profitable industrially bullwhipped sectors (Big Entertainment - Hollywood, Recording, etc) or to turn it all into some kind of hyper-exclusive minority activity (Big Art, Dance, Performance, etc) is as hopeless an enterprise as trying to stop the tide coming in, or trying to ban electricity.
7 April 2010
Even sheep can help you defeat a monster...
Mary's latest blog is about the neutralization of thought in higher education.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/04/why-good-practice-can-ruin-good-practice.html
I made the following comment:
Julian wrote: "When people like you meekly go along with such nonsense, it makes everyone's life harder because "they" continue to impose their petty rules and regulations. For goodness sake, get some backbone and stand up to them."
When you sign off your soul to Mephistopheles, he wins. He's got the enforcers on his side. He puts the food on your table. Nothing 'meek' about this - Faust wasn't meek. He just signed the wrong contract. And back in the 50s and 60s university life (in Britain) had academic freedom, tenure, optimism and excitement. Helen of Troy with a brain (girls - find your own equivalent :-)
Standing up to the Man requires more than spine. It's not an individual thing - unless you're feeling suicidal. It requires organization, hatred of the system, and a clear enough view of a good alternative.
Academics aren't exactly god's gift to the future of humanity, but we need 'em, and at the moment they're being ground into dust and irradiated. In 2000 years they'll be like the bags of shit in Pompeii - only toxic. Their freedom is our freedom. We grow a spine - they grow a spine.
Simple, but not easy...
Brian O wrote: "Perhaps a little deadwood is fine if it lets the rest of us do more work and less documentation of work."
This might sound like a defence of incompetence, time-serving and place-hunting, and we can all give examples - I'll just name Robbo the Fish and G O as my favourites.
When I was a "radical conservative" god help us all I used to think so too. I soon realized that what the British had ever done for us was starvation, slavery, pillage, rape and murder, however, and this put things in a different light. Efficiency and "total quality assurance" in an unjust and anarchistic society where everyone is at war with everyone else is not just a delusion but a ticket to the abbatoir. I give you the efficiency of the extermination camps. Or the pernickity mean-spirited egalitarianism of the social insurance system.
Every flame of freedom is a beacon of hope. The heroic autodidacts of 1850 to 1950 were following these beacons. Some of us Faustian idiots of the 50s and 60s were doing it too, in much better conditions.
Dead wood is better than wood that is cold, black, wet and slimy.
In a just and decent society where work and creativity are rewarded and where everyone has security of income, food and shelter, and culture, it will be possible to promote on merit (in the widest sense) alone, and to pursue efficiency without destroying people. Till then, resist, keep your head down, and drive that hypocritical beam in the eye of the oppressor into his brain.
Use your wits and even a flock of sheep will help you defeat a brutal one-eyed monster.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/04/why-good-practice-can-ruin-good-practice.html
I made the following comment:
Julian wrote: "When people like you meekly go along with such nonsense, it makes everyone's life harder because "they" continue to impose their petty rules and regulations. For goodness sake, get some backbone and stand up to them."
When you sign off your soul to Mephistopheles, he wins. He's got the enforcers on his side. He puts the food on your table. Nothing 'meek' about this - Faust wasn't meek. He just signed the wrong contract. And back in the 50s and 60s university life (in Britain) had academic freedom, tenure, optimism and excitement. Helen of Troy with a brain (girls - find your own equivalent :-)
Standing up to the Man requires more than spine. It's not an individual thing - unless you're feeling suicidal. It requires organization, hatred of the system, and a clear enough view of a good alternative.
Academics aren't exactly god's gift to the future of humanity, but we need 'em, and at the moment they're being ground into dust and irradiated. In 2000 years they'll be like the bags of shit in Pompeii - only toxic. Their freedom is our freedom. We grow a spine - they grow a spine.
Simple, but not easy...
Brian O wrote: "Perhaps a little deadwood is fine if it lets the rest of us do more work and less documentation of work."
This might sound like a defence of incompetence, time-serving and place-hunting, and we can all give examples - I'll just name Robbo the Fish and G O as my favourites.
When I was a "radical conservative" god help us all I used to think so too. I soon realized that what the British had ever done for us was starvation, slavery, pillage, rape and murder, however, and this put things in a different light. Efficiency and "total quality assurance" in an unjust and anarchistic society where everyone is at war with everyone else is not just a delusion but a ticket to the abbatoir. I give you the efficiency of the extermination camps. Or the pernickity mean-spirited egalitarianism of the social insurance system.
Every flame of freedom is a beacon of hope. The heroic autodidacts of 1850 to 1950 were following these beacons. Some of us Faustian idiots of the 50s and 60s were doing it too, in much better conditions.
Dead wood is better than wood that is cold, black, wet and slimy.
In a just and decent society where work and creativity are rewarded and where everyone has security of income, food and shelter, and culture, it will be possible to promote on merit (in the widest sense) alone, and to pursue efficiency without destroying people. Till then, resist, keep your head down, and drive that hypocritical beam in the eye of the oppressor into his brain.
Use your wits and even a flock of sheep will help you defeat a brutal one-eyed monster.
1 April 2010
Go, Trolley Dollies!
Mary B's most recent blog is about BA's cabin staff and their strike, and it's quite reasonable on the whole.
My comment:
How about issuing the BA cabin staff with the carbines toted by the goons patrolling the Heathrow terminals?
All for reasons of capitalist security of course, but these cabin carbines would come in handy when defending workers' security every few years.
Good working conditions grow out of the barrel of a gun.
Go, Trolley Dollies!
(Now there's a wickedly subversive comment to chew on... ;-)
My comment:
How about issuing the BA cabin staff with the carbines toted by the goons patrolling the Heathrow terminals?
All for reasons of capitalist security of course, but these cabin carbines would come in handy when defending workers' security every few years.
Good working conditions grow out of the barrel of a gun.
Go, Trolley Dollies!
(Now there's a wickedly subversive comment to chew on... ;-)
31 March 2010
Couple of random impressions about music
I was thinking the other day about how I react to music.
Just can't help moving to Tchaikovsky - like jumping up and starting to dance..
Or singing to Verdi, although he has amazing movement too. I always think about the entr'acte in La Traviata - a slow sinuous waltz in 4/4 time...
And Wagner - like Jabba the Hutt in white tie and tails...
And Puccini - Wagner lite. Sentimental pornography for the petty bourgeoisie.
Just can't help moving to Tchaikovsky - like jumping up and starting to dance..
Or singing to Verdi, although he has amazing movement too. I always think about the entr'acte in La Traviata - a slow sinuous waltz in 4/4 time...
And Wagner - like Jabba the Hutt in white tie and tails...
And Puccini - Wagner lite. Sentimental pornography for the petty bourgeoisie.
29 March 2010
Bone-headed bourgeois bigotry
Some philistine wrote a piece in The Guardian today about Sigmund Freud's analysis of Leonardo da Vinci, and, as usual, wasted no time or effort in putting the boot in.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2010/mar/26/art-sigmund-freud-leonardo-da-vinci
I commented:
The usual anti-scientific crap you get from flat-earthers ready to deny at any cost the significance of unconscious drives and motives in human activity.
The reason Freud's contribution is spat on while Einstein's isn't is that psychology is a much more social science than physics. The established flat-earthers have much more clout in relation to psychology. When they deny the relevance of "psychology" they are really denouncing the relevance of hidden mechanisms in society and life.
This denunciation still affects Darwin and evolutionary theory, although God is hardly a visible factor.
The other great scientist who revealed hidden and unconscious mechanisms working implacably to shape our society and world - Karl Marx - is perhaps even more vilified and misrepresented than Freud by bone-headed bourgeois bigotry.
As Marx wrote in Capital I: "Sie wissen das nicht, aber sie tun es." [They don't know what they're doing, but they do it.]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2010/mar/26/art-sigmund-freud-leonardo-da-vinci
I commented:
The usual anti-scientific crap you get from flat-earthers ready to deny at any cost the significance of unconscious drives and motives in human activity.
The reason Freud's contribution is spat on while Einstein's isn't is that psychology is a much more social science than physics. The established flat-earthers have much more clout in relation to psychology. When they deny the relevance of "psychology" they are really denouncing the relevance of hidden mechanisms in society and life.
This denunciation still affects Darwin and evolutionary theory, although God is hardly a visible factor.
The other great scientist who revealed hidden and unconscious mechanisms working implacably to shape our society and world - Karl Marx - is perhaps even more vilified and misrepresented than Freud by bone-headed bourgeois bigotry.
As Marx wrote in Capital I: "Sie wissen das nicht, aber sie tun es." [They don't know what they're doing, but they do it.]
19 March 2010
What kind of state is China today??
The other day I received this mail on the topic of China, and what kind of state it is - non-capitalist workers state or bourgeois capitalist state.
I replied:
"A comrade of mine was doing political work in Poland and came in contact with comrades of Worker Solidarity who had split off from Solidarity. She described to us the struggle of the solidarity movement since 1979 which began with the occupation of the Gdansk shipyards. How General Jaruzelski had siezed power in 1981 to try to crush this workers movement. Although they were unable to accomplish this due to the strength of the movement they were able to divert it to an extent. An unholy alliance of the Stalinists and the Catholic church set out a program of brutal suppression of the workers leadership in Solidarity while wooing the right wing elements including the opportunist Lech Walesa. They had enough success that the round table conference of 1989 was able to sell out the country to imperialism while deflecting the workers demands. Another reminder that the crisis of the leadership of the working class is the all important question today.
What is the relevance of this to China? Well I was doing some digging around in our archives on the 10th. anniversary of the Tiananman square massacre and found out several things. First of all the Chinese beaurocracy had taken a keen interest in the events in Poland and Jaruzelsky's policies. A book of his essays was translated into Chinese and published, Also he was the guest of honour at a special celebration laid on by the Chinese leadership some months before Tiananman.
Any study of the Tiananman massacre shows clearly that it was aimed at the working class wing of the emerging opposition movement. Robin Black, a member of USEC, who wrote a book about these events, described how the student leaders were negotiating with the army for a way out of the square while at the ither side tanks were crushing the tents of the workers.
This defeat of course played a big part in enabling the superexploitation on which the regime rests today."
I replied:
There is absolutely no disagreement on the counter-revolutionary (counter socialist bolshevik-leninist workers revolutionary) character of the Chinese regime. Just as we have no disagreement on the counter-revolutionary character of the Stalinist bureaucratic regime in the USSR. However, as Trotsky made clear in The Revolution Betrayed, the counter-revolutionary quasi-fascist character of this regime didn't mean the USSR was no longer a workers state - ie non-capitalist.
There is general agreement among us that China and some other countries made successful anti-bourgeois revolutions after world war 2 and got rid of capitalism as the dominant mode of production. And we characterized them as deformed workers states. That is, they were already in the condition right from the start that the Soviet Union degenerated into under the Stalinist regime. So Trotsky's principled argument goes for them too, regarding the relevance of the character of the regime (however vicious) to the character of the state (ie workers/non-capitalist or bourgeois).
But you don't take up question of the economic character of the Chinese state at all. Attacking workers leaders and beheading revolutionary organizations was and is part and parcel of Stalinist rule. Not just crushing a popular mobilizations in a capital city, but destroying whole socialist revolutions (China, Spain, Greece). China too has destroyed a whole revolution and with it a mass workers leadership (Indonesia).
To determine if China is still a deformed workers state or not we need to look at its mode of production and the economic relations defended by its armed forces and police, and if these are now *qualitatively* different from the early years. If they are qualitatively different we have to show exactly how and when the qualitative change occurred.
Water changes quantitatively if you heat it from 0 to 100 degrees Celsius. It gets much much hotter, but it's still remains water. It changes qualitatively - from water to steam - at 100 degrees. The change is sharp and general. It can be pinpointed easily in relation to any number of criteria.
The qualitative change from the non-capitalist Soviet Union to Russia (and from the non-capitalist Eastern Bloc to Balkanized capitalist ministates) was a bit messy, of course, but still sharp and general. Like the qualitative changes brought about by the English Revolution and the French Revolution, not to mention October 1917.
So, in relation to China, when did the qualitative change from deformed workers state to bourgeois state take place? An event like this is world-shaking, as in 1640, 1789, 1917 and 1990.
This is the question we have to ask ourselves, and I'm not ready to give a definite answer yet. However, from what I've observed there has been no sharp or general qualitative change. Not even the opening of the Shanghai stock exchange, or the absorption of Hong Kong with its capitalist structures almost entirely intact. The enclaves handed over to imperialist exploitation don't represent this kind of change. (In passing, I don't think "super-exploitation" is much use as a category - it reflects our impressions of exploitation, not its essential economic character) These enclaves developed quantitatively rather than qualitatively, as more and more potentially threatening joint ventures, as far as I can see at the moment.
These are indisputably acts of class collaboration and extreme cases of class betrayal. Yet we should recall the situation in the Soviet Union of the 30s, say. The dialectic tensions involved there almost defy belief, but Trotsky was able to bring them into a single polar relationship (opposed poles of the same phenomenon) by the analysis leading to the characterization of Degenerated Workers State. In some ways China strains the dialectic even more intolerably than the Soviet Union did (as in the examples I've mentioned). In other ways not (China hasn't paved the way for Nazism or an imperialist world war by its policies - yet).
But strains of this kind are quantitative, not qualitative. Qualitative is when the hawser mooring a big ship snaps. We don't have to argue the toss about the risks caused by the huge quantitative tensions that have been building up in it. We don't have to ask ourselves if it's broken yet - even if there can be doubts while some of the individual steel threads making it up are ripping apart.
Big questions I want to resolve in my mind concern the land, the stance (and social weight) of the lower and middle strata of the bureaucracy, and particularly the composition and attitudes of the mass of the armed forces, the troops, NCOs and lower officers.
And in all this we shouldn't forget the significance of India as a parallel and contrast.
The capitalist crisis in Greece
The Guardian today had an article on the Greek crisis dealing with the general European, Euro and German crisis too.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/18/greek-pm-gives-eu-leaders-rescue-deadline
It was followed by dozens of comments. I added mine:
Our media are liars. Our economists are more idiotic than the astronomers and priests who thought the earth was the centre of the universe. And they cheer on our rulers as if the sun shone out of their arses.
If any of this (or only a tiny fraction of it) had happened in the Soviet Bloc in the days of the Cold War, it would have been headlined as a catastrophic collapse and irrefutable evidence of an insane and absurd economy.
But it didn't happen. And the headlines screamed at us regardless.
Now we have a catastrophic collapse in the heartlands of capitalism, providing irrefutable evidence of an insane and absurd economy. And the media tell us it's all a readjustment. And the economists mumble into their beards. And our rulers work half of us to our deaths, and leave the other half to rot.
But in this capitalist world is There Is No Alternative. Just as there was no alternative to the Pope ("burn em alive!") or the maggoty sorry mighty Catholic Church or the Kings and Emperors by the grease of god.
That's enough irony and sarcasm. There is an alternative - workers states running a non-capitalist economy. This will replace the outworn, worm-eaten capitalist system and sweep the capitalists and their lickspittle politicians, astrologers and ideologues into the cesspool of history along with the Popes and the Emperors.
The capitalist class has no time - it faces its historical exit - and so its policies are more and more destructive and desperate. The people who produce the things the capitalists own and sell can't be got rid of until our world is destroyed. But our struggle is urgent - if socialism doesn't replace capitalism in the near future, then capitalism will destroy our world.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/18/greek-pm-gives-eu-leaders-rescue-deadline
It was followed by dozens of comments. I added mine:
Our media are liars. Our economists are more idiotic than the astronomers and priests who thought the earth was the centre of the universe. And they cheer on our rulers as if the sun shone out of their arses.
If any of this (or only a tiny fraction of it) had happened in the Soviet Bloc in the days of the Cold War, it would have been headlined as a catastrophic collapse and irrefutable evidence of an insane and absurd economy.
But it didn't happen. And the headlines screamed at us regardless.
Now we have a catastrophic collapse in the heartlands of capitalism, providing irrefutable evidence of an insane and absurd economy. And the media tell us it's all a readjustment. And the economists mumble into their beards. And our rulers work half of us to our deaths, and leave the other half to rot.
But in this capitalist world is There Is No Alternative. Just as there was no alternative to the Pope ("burn em alive!") or the maggoty sorry mighty Catholic Church or the Kings and Emperors by the grease of god.
That's enough irony and sarcasm. There is an alternative - workers states running a non-capitalist economy. This will replace the outworn, worm-eaten capitalist system and sweep the capitalists and their lickspittle politicians, astrologers and ideologues into the cesspool of history along with the Popes and the Emperors.
The capitalist class has no time - it faces its historical exit - and so its policies are more and more destructive and desperate. The people who produce the things the capitalists own and sell can't be got rid of until our world is destroyed. But our struggle is urgent - if socialism doesn't replace capitalism in the near future, then capitalism will destroy our world.
11 March 2010
It'll only be the "bad guys" of course
An article brought up the question of IT companies and human rights.
http://www.eweek.com/showblog/58575/GoogleChina-Dispute-May-End-Up-at-WTO/rp/
My comment:
You can bet they won't get stuck into allies like Britain or Australia or Sweden. Or the US for that matter. Not to mention Israel.
Remember all the human rights violators who aren't touched cos they're "our sons of bitches" - like Uzbekistan, where the British ambassador Craig Murray was fired for his public criticism of a dictator who boils his enemies alive. Or Colombia (just one example of many) where it's routine for the US to waive human rights conditions in relation to arms deals.
http://www.eweek.com/showblog/58575/GoogleChina-Dispute-May-End-Up-at-WTO/rp/
My comment:
You can bet they won't get stuck into allies like Britain or Australia or Sweden. Or the US for that matter. Not to mention Israel.
Remember all the human rights violators who aren't touched cos they're "our sons of bitches" - like Uzbekistan, where the British ambassador Craig Murray was fired for his public criticism of a dictator who boils his enemies alive. Or Colombia (just one example of many) where it's routine for the US to waive human rights conditions in relation to arms deals.
25 February 2010
The poor "barely able to speak"
Mary Beard's blog about Social Mobility:
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/01/social-mobility-down-and-up.html
My response to a comment:
Ysabel H writes:
"I could read at 3. That is the true privilege the educated middle-classes confer on their young. Others arrive at school barely able to speak."
The reading bit is a real discriminator in favour of the literate ie it's not enough to be born human, you've got to choose your parents and your place of upbringing.
The second point is brain-dead prejudice.
All kids in a social context can think and speak perfectly adequately. It's just that their thoughts and speech are spat on by the privileged and their parasites (eg teachers).
Their concepts develop in their own social context for the purposes of this context. If the context is local - a sink estate, a slum, a ghetto, a discriminated and excluded group (travellers, blacks, women) - then these concepts and non-standard language can form a very strong disincentive to moving out into broader (received) society.
I taught at a school in Sweden's third or fourth most underprivileged district for 15 years. This taught me that what we were doing as teachers was providing a bridge for some of the kids into wider society. Of course some teachers (the bouncers) spent most of their time and effort trying to blow the bridge to kingdom come - as NATO did to the Petrovaradin bridge in Novi Sad while it was bombing the shit out of Serbia.
For a devastating scholarly counter-attack on this prejudice read Labov's paper “The Logic of Nonstandard English” from 1969 (plus ca change..) (Labov himself on this: http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/sociolinguistics/labov/ ). It vaporizes Bernstein's pretentious bombast.
It's a linguistic commonplace that every language is as adequate as any other for the socio-cultural purposes of the community in which it's native. Just as it's a democratic commonplace that every person is born equal and is just as adequate as a human being as any other.
All people are born free, but everywhere they're in chains.
And these chains are often mind-forged manacles.
In fact, for most of us, all we have to lose are these chains.
QED.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/01/social-mobility-down-and-up.html
My response to a comment:
Ysabel H writes:
"I could read at 3. That is the true privilege the educated middle-classes confer on their young. Others arrive at school barely able to speak."
The reading bit is a real discriminator in favour of the literate ie it's not enough to be born human, you've got to choose your parents and your place of upbringing.
The second point is brain-dead prejudice.
All kids in a social context can think and speak perfectly adequately. It's just that their thoughts and speech are spat on by the privileged and their parasites (eg teachers).
Their concepts develop in their own social context for the purposes of this context. If the context is local - a sink estate, a slum, a ghetto, a discriminated and excluded group (travellers, blacks, women) - then these concepts and non-standard language can form a very strong disincentive to moving out into broader (received) society.
I taught at a school in Sweden's third or fourth most underprivileged district for 15 years. This taught me that what we were doing as teachers was providing a bridge for some of the kids into wider society. Of course some teachers (the bouncers) spent most of their time and effort trying to blow the bridge to kingdom come - as NATO did to the Petrovaradin bridge in Novi Sad while it was bombing the shit out of Serbia.
For a devastating scholarly counter-attack on this prejudice read Labov's paper “The Logic of Nonstandard English” from 1969 (plus ca change..) (Labov himself on this: http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/sociolinguistics/labov/ ). It vaporizes Bernstein's pretentious bombast.
It's a linguistic commonplace that every language is as adequate as any other for the socio-cultural purposes of the community in which it's native. Just as it's a democratic commonplace that every person is born equal and is just as adequate as a human being as any other.
All people are born free, but everywhere they're in chains.
And these chains are often mind-forged manacles.
In fact, for most of us, all we have to lose are these chains.
QED.
23 February 2010
Using "plagiarism" to attack ideas as a public good
More on plagiarism at Mary B's blog:
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/02/are-you-at-risk-of-plagiarism.html#more
My comment:
Fascinating thread!
Brian Lewis writes: "I came into this world with nothing and all I know has been learnt from others and from books."
Surely not! Socrates (out of copywrong) spent his best years showing that all we know is actually inside us from the start. So we're like scratchy cats with our mewticks.
Scratching away, I notice nobody's yet mentioned ideas and culture as "gifts of nature", like air, sunlight, or the oceans. Otherwise known as "public goods".
However, fresh water has been made into a marketable commodity, and territorial waters are encroaching on the oceans.
Economics discusses various kinds of "natural monopolies" where a single provider is the most efficient solution, eg gas and water utilities.
The interesting thing for us is how market forces are encroaching on human infrastructure, like flesh and blood and internal organs. And how ideas and culture are being trapped and flayed and sold as furred robes to the rich and privileged.
Inadequate provision of necessities often results - causing "market failure". These days education is a blatant example.
So in view of all this the very idea of plagiarism is a mind-forged manacle (out of copywrong) with sharp spikes facing inwards.
Am I stealing by breathing?? Or strolling in the sun? I certainly am if I wander the city streets, or use roads or public spaces. Plagiarism and the sanctions tied in with it is just a new but equally vicious form of Enclosure and the Vagrancy Laws (see for instance http://homepage.ntlworld.com/janusg/landls.htm )
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/02/are-you-at-risk-of-plagiarism.html#more
My comment:
Fascinating thread!
Brian Lewis writes: "I came into this world with nothing and all I know has been learnt from others and from books."
Surely not! Socrates (out of copywrong) spent his best years showing that all we know is actually inside us from the start. So we're like scratchy cats with our mewticks.
Scratching away, I notice nobody's yet mentioned ideas and culture as "gifts of nature", like air, sunlight, or the oceans. Otherwise known as "public goods".
However, fresh water has been made into a marketable commodity, and territorial waters are encroaching on the oceans.
Economics discusses various kinds of "natural monopolies" where a single provider is the most efficient solution, eg gas and water utilities.
The interesting thing for us is how market forces are encroaching on human infrastructure, like flesh and blood and internal organs. And how ideas and culture are being trapped and flayed and sold as furred robes to the rich and privileged.
Inadequate provision of necessities often results - causing "market failure". These days education is a blatant example.
So in view of all this the very idea of plagiarism is a mind-forged manacle (out of copywrong) with sharp spikes facing inwards.
Am I stealing by breathing?? Or strolling in the sun? I certainly am if I wander the city streets, or use roads or public spaces. Plagiarism and the sanctions tied in with it is just a new but equally vicious form of Enclosure and the Vagrancy Laws (see for instance http://homepage.ntlworld.com/janusg/landls.htm )
State snooping - get at the cause not the symptoms!
This is an article in New Scientist about a new and highly invasive snooping law being surreptitiously in many countries.
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2010/02/online-copyright-clampdown-con.html#_login
And this is my comment:
Two very clear tendencies here.
One is the explosive and accelerating development of the forces of production - hardware, software and wetware (ideas, culture, science).
Two is the growing incapacity of our current bourgeois-capitalist relations of production (private property, eg patents and copywrong) to contain it.
This incapacity is causing accelerating desperation in the ruling class (and its willing and less willing tools), which in turn generates an accelerating juggernaut of repressive measures - censorship, spying, "security" operations, and military aggression.
The big beneficiaries of the present setup - the Big Bourgeoisie - are shrinking in number nation by nation and worldwide. The losers - those with nothing to sell in the market but their labour power - have hugely increased in number over the decades following the second world war by means of subsistence rural populations being expelled from the land and forced into big city slums. This is not "urbanization" but proletarianization.
We need to start reacting to the totality of the developing totalitarian repression, not just symptoms like this latest snooping law. Symptoms are painful and important - but until the underlying causes are removed they will break out anywhere and everywhere at any time.
It's clean, fresh air we need, not facemasks.
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2010/02/online-copyright-clampdown-con.html#_login
And this is my comment:
Two very clear tendencies here.
One is the explosive and accelerating development of the forces of production - hardware, software and wetware (ideas, culture, science).
Two is the growing incapacity of our current bourgeois-capitalist relations of production (private property, eg patents and copywrong) to contain it.
This incapacity is causing accelerating desperation in the ruling class (and its willing and less willing tools), which in turn generates an accelerating juggernaut of repressive measures - censorship, spying, "security" operations, and military aggression.
The big beneficiaries of the present setup - the Big Bourgeoisie - are shrinking in number nation by nation and worldwide. The losers - those with nothing to sell in the market but their labour power - have hugely increased in number over the decades following the second world war by means of subsistence rural populations being expelled from the land and forced into big city slums. This is not "urbanization" but proletarianization.
We need to start reacting to the totality of the developing totalitarian repression, not just symptoms like this latest snooping law. Symptoms are painful and important - but until the underlying causes are removed they will break out anywhere and everywhere at any time.
It's clean, fresh air we need, not facemasks.
18 February 2010
Central planning, socialization...
This is my response to a tech magazine piece on Google's plans for developing ultra-fast broadband access in the US.
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Search-Engines/Google-Broadband-Play-Pushes-Network-Neutrality-in-Googles-Favor-681320/?kc=EWKNLGOV02172010STR1
Well, if ordinary capitalism (Verizon etc) is unable and unwilling to unleash the full potential of high speed broadband access for a nation and its citizens, then socializing, centrally planned, innovational and let's do it ubercapitalism will. Google is showing not just the potential of high-speed universal access broadband provision, but also the huge and incontrovertible superiority of blatantly creative and socially oriented large-scale operations.
Their recipe for satisfying humanity's thirst for knowledge, ideas and culture is to make these things instantly available to everyone. Revolutionary, ANTI- monopolistic, and absolutely necessary.
When it comes to collective social progress and responsiblity, Google puts even the cutting-edge innovative excellence of Apple into the shade. Apple is a one-man show, and giving society what it needs is not where it's at. It releases its products in tightly controlled pellets, so to speak. Compared to Google Apple is constipated and Steve Jobs screams when he shits.
So Google isn't perfect. Who is? But it's decades ahead of the zombie capitalism suffocating the US and the rest of the world today.
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Search-Engines/Google-Broadband-Play-Pushes-Network-Neutrality-in-Googles-Favor-681320/?kc=EWKNLGOV02172010STR1
Well, if ordinary capitalism (Verizon etc) is unable and unwilling to unleash the full potential of high speed broadband access for a nation and its citizens, then socializing, centrally planned, innovational and let's do it ubercapitalism will. Google is showing not just the potential of high-speed universal access broadband provision, but also the huge and incontrovertible superiority of blatantly creative and socially oriented large-scale operations.
Their recipe for satisfying humanity's thirst for knowledge, ideas and culture is to make these things instantly available to everyone. Revolutionary, ANTI- monopolistic, and absolutely necessary.
When it comes to collective social progress and responsiblity, Google puts even the cutting-edge innovative excellence of Apple into the shade. Apple is a one-man show, and giving society what it needs is not where it's at. It releases its products in tightly controlled pellets, so to speak. Compared to Google Apple is constipated and Steve Jobs screams when he shits.
So Google isn't perfect. Who is? But it's decades ahead of the zombie capitalism suffocating the US and the rest of the world today.
15 February 2010
Plagiarism is very very dangerous!!
Mary Beard's latest blog is about plagiarism.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/02/are-you-at-risk-of-plagiarism.html
I made the following comment:
The problem is "ownership", innit? Whose seed impregnates which belly, and who owns the issue - sorry "outcome".
You have all kinds of transgressions here, some mortal, some venal. Rape, teenage lust, marriage (oops, that's legal!), normal infidelity, the occasional fling, party-party, the Lady and the Local Lad, bigamy...
So what kinds of egg-kidnapping deserve Hell, and are there any that deserve Heaven??
And isn't reproduction all about expanding the gene pool and serendipitous mutations? Silk purses from pigs' ears?
In the worlds of ideas and culture (to name a few), copywrong and patents (intellectual property) are far, far more destructive than borrowing humanity's collective creations and developing them. Emulation, progress, prosperity - they're all bound and gagged and chained upside down in inaccessible dungeons. (Inaccessible presumably meaning you can't access the outside, in NewSpeak.)
If a student can present commonplaces better than the last documented presenter then good on her! If not, tough titty and down go his grades. Always provided the grader a) has the knowledge to spot the copywronged commonplace, and b) has the skill and judgement to evaluate the quality involved.
So, if the community (say the ideas crowd in ancient Athens) is intelligent, perceptive, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed - what's yer problem? And if it isn't - who gives a fuck?
And - to state the obvious - the honour due to an original take on things can be very well shown by an IPBB community. And materially rewarded by a society in which IPBB communities are respected.
It's blatantly obvious that our present society/mode of production is not just disrespectful, but downright hostile to IPBB communities. And that our present society is more intent on binding and gagging original (or more generally, creative) people, and chaining them upside down in inaccessible dungeons, than it is in rewarding them materially.
So:
"Plagiarize!
Let no one else's work evade your eyes!
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes!
So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize!
Let no one else's work evade your eyes!
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes!
So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize!
Only be sure always to call it please "research"..."
[Etymological footnote: "Latin plagiarius, kidnapper, plagiarist, from plagium, kidnapping, from plaga, net; see plak-1 in Indo-European roots", American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. (http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/plagiary)]
13 February 2010
Educational policy and gambling in Pompeii
An article in the Times Higher Education reported and commented on Mary Beard's remarks on Roman gambling being more honest than our government's current policy-making on education.
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=410349
I commented:
Mary B's right. Why? Well, the factors involved in evaluating the risks and benefits of a high general level of education and of research are just not accounted for in the models being used in relation to higher education to close departments and exclude working class youth, etc. Same goes for the models used for creating bad schools and criminalizing working-class kids and their parents (aka promoting excellence and freedom of choice). (Criminalizing because parents can be jailed if their children play truant, for instance.)
It's an obvious case of market failure that those running the system will never admit. The best example of this kind of thing is the market failure of capitalism itself. The models used there assume that the system is basically in equilibrium and basically rational. This isn't the case. The system is out of control, as its recurrent crises since the 1850s (say) demonstrate clearly enough, together with the permanent state of war within the system between the states constituting the system.
People like Mervyn King talk of the economy returning to a "normal state" - but boom and bust are just as much normality as the ups and downs between them. So the assumptions used in the models explicitly exclude crisis, for ideological reasons.
Education and economic systems are excluded from rational scientific investigation, whereas most insurance statistical work isn't. You can't be actuarial about developments you refuse to understand. So toss those dice! And shoot yourself when you lose the society you've staked on the outcome.
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=410349
I commented:
Mary B's right. Why? Well, the factors involved in evaluating the risks and benefits of a high general level of education and of research are just not accounted for in the models being used in relation to higher education to close departments and exclude working class youth, etc. Same goes for the models used for creating bad schools and criminalizing working-class kids and their parents (aka promoting excellence and freedom of choice). (Criminalizing because parents can be jailed if their children play truant, for instance.)
It's an obvious case of market failure that those running the system will never admit. The best example of this kind of thing is the market failure of capitalism itself. The models used there assume that the system is basically in equilibrium and basically rational. This isn't the case. The system is out of control, as its recurrent crises since the 1850s (say) demonstrate clearly enough, together with the permanent state of war within the system between the states constituting the system.
People like Mervyn King talk of the economy returning to a "normal state" - but boom and bust are just as much normality as the ups and downs between them. So the assumptions used in the models explicitly exclude crisis, for ideological reasons.
Education and economic systems are excluded from rational scientific investigation, whereas most insurance statistical work isn't. You can't be actuarial about developments you refuse to understand. So toss those dice! And shoot yourself when you lose the society you've staked on the outcome.
9 February 2010
Public schools and student sex
Mary B on public schools and sex at Newnham (the women-only college at Cambridge where she's professor of Classics:
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/02/are-public-schools-a-blight-on-british-society-and-sex-at-newnham.html#comment-6a00d83451586c69e20120a87b20c1970b
My comment:
Well, there's a lot to chew on here!
1) "Education is about civilisation not dumbing us all down." Nonsense! And no offence whatever to Priscilla - this nonsense is so widespread it's a commonplace. As Michael B makes very clear, the dumbing down is not "civilization" at work.
I'd develop that further to argue that it's capitalism doing its damndest to deskill us as much as it can. Why else do they pour all this money into the perpetuum mobile of machine translation? And since deskilling only pays dividends in the capital/wage-slave relationship, then anything outside that is irrelevant - as we are seeing.
Deskilling by the way is probably better called despecializing. If everybody has a high level of training, then this higher level becomes the norm and can be paid normal (low) wages as against specialist (high) wages. As we see in medicine and education, frinstance.
1) "Education is about civilisation not dumbing us all down." Nonsense! And no offence whatever to Priscilla - this nonsense is so widespread it's a commonplace. As Michael B makes very clear, the dumbing down is not "civilization" at work.
I'd develop that further to argue that it's capitalism doing its damndest to deskill us as much as it can. Why else do they pour all this money into the perpetuum mobile of machine translation? And since deskilling only pays dividends in the capital/wage-slave relationship, then anything outside that is irrelevant - as we are seeing.
Deskilling by the way is probably better called despecializing. If everybody has a high level of training, then this higher level becomes the norm and can be paid normal (low) wages as against specialist (high) wages. As we see in medicine and education, frinstance.
2) Classroom disruption. Good article on ways of handling this in the Guardian today:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/joepublic/2010/feb/09/pupil-behaviour-management-tips
I have a comment on this at around no. 20 that deals with this issue.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/joepublic/2010/feb/09/pupil-behaviour-management-tips
I have a comment on this at around no. 20 that deals with this issue.
3) Making love/fucking. Well, the higher the proportion of making love (hi girls!) to fucking the better. Authoritarian repression and anti-sexual brutality and ignorance don't improve this proportion. They increase the proportion of violent and savage sex to consensual and pleasurable (or even boring old once-a-month that'll-do-him) sex.
4) There's a wonderful private school (US) in the wonderful film (learn all you need to know about practical rhetoric and advocacy here!) "Thank You for Smoking". It's name is St Euthanasia. Which says it all.
Managing behaviour in the classroom
Interesting and potentially useful article in the Guardian on how to manage classroom behaviour:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/joepublic/2010/feb/09/pupil-behaviour-management-tips
My comment:
I can endorse all of this and could even add some frills of my own... which I won't cos the suggestions given here will work if they are put into practice. But they do need a personal confidence and maturity and serenity of soul that you can't get off the shelf. Which is a big but given the social origins, upbringing, and training of most teachers.
The one thing I will add is an expansion of "walkie talkie as back up". Never walk alone!
If you feel it's only you and the kids you're dead unless you find some ad hoc system that works for both the kids and you - with the emphasis on the kids.
The best thing is for school management to be a supportive and familiar presence throughout the school.
Fat chance - so the next best thing is to have some reliable allies among your colleagues. One for all and all for one. Work out rapid communications methods, and feasible ways of joining the ruck without creating a bigger one in the hole you leave when you go to help. School layout and timetabling will play a big part in this.
If you're not lucky, then welcome to the club and get some training in mental and physical self-defence and keep your eyes open for alternative work, or you'll be a basket case by 45.
There *are* good schools of course, but then, there are also good estate agents and good second-hand car salesmen.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/joepublic/2010/feb/09/pupil-behaviour-management-tips
My comment:
I can endorse all of this and could even add some frills of my own... which I won't cos the suggestions given here will work if they are put into practice. But they do need a personal confidence and maturity and serenity of soul that you can't get off the shelf. Which is a big but given the social origins, upbringing, and training of most teachers.
The one thing I will add is an expansion of "walkie talkie as back up". Never walk alone!
If you feel it's only you and the kids you're dead unless you find some ad hoc system that works for both the kids and you - with the emphasis on the kids.
The best thing is for school management to be a supportive and familiar presence throughout the school.
Fat chance - so the next best thing is to have some reliable allies among your colleagues. One for all and all for one. Work out rapid communications methods, and feasible ways of joining the ruck without creating a bigger one in the hole you leave when you go to help. School layout and timetabling will play a big part in this.
If you're not lucky, then welcome to the club and get some training in mental and physical self-defence and keep your eyes open for alternative work, or you'll be a basket case by 45.
There *are* good schools of course, but then, there are also good estate agents and good second-hand car salesmen.
Sceptics of the world - dissolve in crocodile tears...
A completely undialectical article in today's Guardian about the "death of the left".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/08/new-labour-liberalism-david-cameron?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments
My comment:
Right...
Except that the working class is still there and still has the same fundamental needs as always - emancipating itself and humanity by ridding each nation and the world of bourgeois rule and the blatantly unsuccessful and pitifully inadequate capitalist system based on private property and wage-slavery.
Workers will always be there (but not always as wage-slaves), cos someone has to actually design and make and maintain the things we need. The capitalists need us.
But the bourgeoisie is in an historical pickle, to say the least. The workers don't need them or their capitalist system. Not never nohow.
So the New Left (more properly the Fake or Sceptical or Agnostic or Not-Really-Left Left) is no longer sitting on a fence between workers non-capitalist socialism and bourgeois capitalism, but is hovering over the abyss that has opened up between the classes following the tearing up of consensus and the clawing back of the crisis (of capitalist survival) measures of the Welfare State.
When it plummets, no one will shed a tear. Who the hell remembers or gives a shit about the Mensheviks? Or the Fabians, for that matter?
Which side are you on? is becoming a crucial question. Not "is there any more room on that fence?"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/08/new-labour-liberalism-david-cameron?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments
My comment:
Right...
Except that the working class is still there and still has the same fundamental needs as always - emancipating itself and humanity by ridding each nation and the world of bourgeois rule and the blatantly unsuccessful and pitifully inadequate capitalist system based on private property and wage-slavery.
Workers will always be there (but not always as wage-slaves), cos someone has to actually design and make and maintain the things we need. The capitalists need us.
But the bourgeoisie is in an historical pickle, to say the least. The workers don't need them or their capitalist system. Not never nohow.
So the New Left (more properly the Fake or Sceptical or Agnostic or Not-Really-Left Left) is no longer sitting on a fence between workers non-capitalist socialism and bourgeois capitalism, but is hovering over the abyss that has opened up between the classes following the tearing up of consensus and the clawing back of the crisis (of capitalist survival) measures of the Welfare State.
When it plummets, no one will shed a tear. Who the hell remembers or gives a shit about the Mensheviks? Or the Fabians, for that matter?
Which side are you on? is becoming a crucial question. Not "is there any more room on that fence?"
4 February 2010
Paleography - about to be axed at King's College, London (2)
The Mary Beard blog I mentioned a few items ago takes up the issue of unprofitable subjects in higher education, exemplified by paleography, the study of ancient and pre-modern handwritten scripts:
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/01/university-cuts-redundancies-and-byebye-palaeography.html
My comment:
This comment might look long, but I guarantee it will excite any of you who read it.
Let's look at some pointers to what can be done with state encouragement in the form of centrally funded centres of excellence. First two examples concerning Soviet paleography, that might surprise some of you:
http://hebraica.orientalstudies.ru/eng/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1325&Itemid=128
This second example is quite fascinating, and shows the contribution of dedicated paleographers to the wide range of human endeavour illuminated in recorded history:
http://ranumspanat.com/lublinskaya_obit.htm
"Historians of medieval and modern Europe have suffered a grievous loss with the death of Alexandra Dmitrievna Lublinskaya, who died of a heart attack on January 22, 1980, shortly after taking part in a defence of a doctoral thesis at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences in Leningrad.
Alexandra Dmitrievna was born in 1902, a daughter of the Rev. Dmitri Stefanovitch, a historian of the Russian Church, who was made, in 1911, rector of St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg. She enrolled in the Petrograd University, where she attended the courses of the noted medievalists I.M. Grevs, L.P. Karsavin, and Olga Dobiache-Rozhdestvenskaya, a disciple of Ferdinand Lot. It was Professor Dobiache who soon recognized the talents of her student and put her, in 1922, on the staff of the Public Library with its rich collection of medieval West European manuscripts. This was fortunate, for soon thereafter regular teaching of history was discontinued in Russian universities, not to be revived until 1935. At the Public Library, Alexandra Dmitrievna, under the guidance of Dobiache, fully developed her talents as a paleographer. The features peculiar to this science attention to minute detail that often leads to a significant discovery put a special imprint on all her subsequent scholarly work. In the 1930's she began to teach courses in West European paleography in the Leningrad University, and in 1949 was appointed to the chair of Medieval History. Eight years later she joined the Institute of History in the Academy of Sciences, while continuing her active involvement in the life of the Leningrad University.
The scholarly output of Professor Lublinskaya comprises close to 200 publications dealing with a great variety of topics. It is quite impossible to do justice to them all in this short review. Very roughly they can be subsumed under three categories: works on paleography, critical publication of historical documents, and monographs and articles on the social and political history of medieval and early modern France. It should be noted that in the periodization of history commonly accepted in the Soviet universities, the "Middle Ages" extend to mid-seventeenth century. One of the results of Lublinskaya's many years of paleographic studies was the publication, in 1969, by her and several of her disciples of a manual on Latin paleography from the first century to the eighteenth. This textbook is a model of clarity and conciseness; its chronological and geographical breadth is quite unusual in works of this sort.
During her work in the Leningrad Public Library, Mrs. Lublinskaya began a systematic study of the Dubrovsky Manuscript Collection housed in it since 1805. This collection comprises over 14,000 documents dealing with France, Italy, Spain, England, Germany and other countries from the 13th century to the 18th. P.P. Dubrovsky, a secretary of the Russian legation in Paris, acquired in 1791-92 a mass of manuscript materials from the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, among them many of the papers from the collections of Achille de Harlay and of Chancellor Séguier. The Harlay collection contains a large number of letters from the official correspondence of Catherine de Medici and of Constable Anne de Montmorency. In 1962 Lublinskaya published 128 documents from this collection under the title Documents pour servir à l'histoire des gueres civiles en France (1561-1563). These documents fully vindicate the views of L. Romier and R. Mandrou that the Wars of Religion had started much before the "Vassy Massacre" of March 1562; they also reveal the impotence of royal government in those years."
And here's different example of what paleography can do, involving collaboration between state-funded historical work (Chinese universities) and specialized US paleographical work. In the field of Judiac history in China god help us all...
http://www.sino-judaic.org/index.php?page=current_issue_highlights
**************
There's a blog and petition protesting against the projected axing of palaeography at King's.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=303202385890&ref=share
Read it and sign it!
**************
I just added a follow-up general comment:
A present without history is like a human being without a birth or childhood. An abomination. Hail Mary! (Not you, Mary - the other one...)
And a present like this that doesn't care to know where it's coming from, will run full speed ahead on to rocks or into an iceberg.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/01/university-cuts-redundancies-and-byebye-palaeography.html
My comment:
This comment might look long, but I guarantee it will excite any of you who read it.
Let's look at some pointers to what can be done with state encouragement in the form of centrally funded centres of excellence. First two examples concerning Soviet paleography, that might surprise some of you:
http://hebraica.orientalstudies.ru/eng/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1325&Itemid=128
This second example is quite fascinating, and shows the contribution of dedicated paleographers to the wide range of human endeavour illuminated in recorded history:
http://ranumspanat.com/lublinskaya_obit.htm
"Historians of medieval and modern Europe have suffered a grievous loss with the death of Alexandra Dmitrievna Lublinskaya, who died of a heart attack on January 22, 1980, shortly after taking part in a defence of a doctoral thesis at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences in Leningrad.
Alexandra Dmitrievna was born in 1902, a daughter of the Rev. Dmitri Stefanovitch, a historian of the Russian Church, who was made, in 1911, rector of St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg. She enrolled in the Petrograd University, where she attended the courses of the noted medievalists I.M. Grevs, L.P. Karsavin, and Olga Dobiache-Rozhdestvenskaya, a disciple of Ferdinand Lot. It was Professor Dobiache who soon recognized the talents of her student and put her, in 1922, on the staff of the Public Library with its rich collection of medieval West European manuscripts. This was fortunate, for soon thereafter regular teaching of history was discontinued in Russian universities, not to be revived until 1935. At the Public Library, Alexandra Dmitrievna, under the guidance of Dobiache, fully developed her talents as a paleographer. The features peculiar to this science attention to minute detail that often leads to a significant discovery put a special imprint on all her subsequent scholarly work. In the 1930's she began to teach courses in West European paleography in the Leningrad University, and in 1949 was appointed to the chair of Medieval History. Eight years later she joined the Institute of History in the Academy of Sciences, while continuing her active involvement in the life of the Leningrad University.
The scholarly output of Professor Lublinskaya comprises close to 200 publications dealing with a great variety of topics. It is quite impossible to do justice to them all in this short review. Very roughly they can be subsumed under three categories: works on paleography, critical publication of historical documents, and monographs and articles on the social and political history of medieval and early modern France. It should be noted that in the periodization of history commonly accepted in the Soviet universities, the "Middle Ages" extend to mid-seventeenth century. One of the results of Lublinskaya's many years of paleographic studies was the publication, in 1969, by her and several of her disciples of a manual on Latin paleography from the first century to the eighteenth. This textbook is a model of clarity and conciseness; its chronological and geographical breadth is quite unusual in works of this sort.
During her work in the Leningrad Public Library, Mrs. Lublinskaya began a systematic study of the Dubrovsky Manuscript Collection housed in it since 1805. This collection comprises over 14,000 documents dealing with France, Italy, Spain, England, Germany and other countries from the 13th century to the 18th. P.P. Dubrovsky, a secretary of the Russian legation in Paris, acquired in 1791-92 a mass of manuscript materials from the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, among them many of the papers from the collections of Achille de Harlay and of Chancellor Séguier. The Harlay collection contains a large number of letters from the official correspondence of Catherine de Medici and of Constable Anne de Montmorency. In 1962 Lublinskaya published 128 documents from this collection under the title Documents pour servir à l'histoire des gueres civiles en France (1561-1563). These documents fully vindicate the views of L. Romier and R. Mandrou that the Wars of Religion had started much before the "Vassy Massacre" of March 1562; they also reveal the impotence of royal government in those years."
And here's different example of what paleography can do, involving collaboration between state-funded historical work (Chinese universities) and specialized US paleographical work. In the field of Judiac history in China god help us all...
http://www.sino-judaic.org/index.php?page=current_issue_highlights
**************
There's a blog and petition protesting against the projected axing of palaeography at King's.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=303202385890&ref=share
Read it and sign it!
**************
I just added a follow-up general comment:
A present without history is like a human being without a birth or childhood. An abomination. Hail Mary! (Not you, Mary - the other one...)
And a present like this that doesn't care to know where it's coming from, will run full speed ahead on to rocks or into an iceberg.
2 February 2010
Chatting to God
My friend A's girlfriend halfway round the world, O, has a chat with God as an introduction to her blog page. A asked me what I thought, and wondered if I'd write to her about it.
So I did. And here's what I wrote:
Hi O!
A asked me what I thought of your chat with God. It reminds me of my friend in Jakarta, U. She's a devout Muslim, and prays five times a day, and must be one of the most deeply religious people in Indonesia (not superficial shit like a lot of her political-religious leader "friends"). She writes books about Islam, and the Hadj and so on.
Anyway, I'm an atheist and disagree completely about surface religion - churches, mosques, this god or that god, but she still thinks I'm one of her very best friends. Cos she wrote a lot of poetry - and I was one of the few people who knew what she was talking about. It was real - sex and guilt and duty, temptation and not knowing what to do.
And I know what she's talking about (most of the time) when she talks about religion. Most times we chat, I ask her to say Hi to Allah from me and she does.
So, if a personal feeling is deep and heartfelt, no problem in my view, unless it's hateful and intolerant - but I wouldn't call feelings like that (witch-hunting, racism, bigotry) deep or heartfelt. Deep is human - they haven't got that far down in themselves. Heartfelt - well, you need a heart for that.
And for me, a deeply private relationship between someone and their god is no political problem at all - the problems start with the churches and the mosques - the Popes and Vaticans of the world. The born-again Baptist bastards like Bush.
It's a bit like ice cream - if you pay it's yours to do what you like with, any flavour you like. You pay, you pray ;-)
Which means churches and so on are fine as long as the believers pay for them themselves.
I myself wouldn't have a chat with God or Allah in my page, but I'm not you ;-)
Nice warm hug from chilly Stockholm,
Chops
So I did. And here's what I wrote:
Hi O!
A asked me what I thought of your chat with God. It reminds me of my friend in Jakarta, U. She's a devout Muslim, and prays five times a day, and must be one of the most deeply religious people in Indonesia (not superficial shit like a lot of her political-religious leader "friends"). She writes books about Islam, and the Hadj and so on.
Anyway, I'm an atheist and disagree completely about surface religion - churches, mosques, this god or that god, but she still thinks I'm one of her very best friends. Cos she wrote a lot of poetry - and I was one of the few people who knew what she was talking about. It was real - sex and guilt and duty, temptation and not knowing what to do.
And I know what she's talking about (most of the time) when she talks about religion. Most times we chat, I ask her to say Hi to Allah from me and she does.
So, if a personal feeling is deep and heartfelt, no problem in my view, unless it's hateful and intolerant - but I wouldn't call feelings like that (witch-hunting, racism, bigotry) deep or heartfelt. Deep is human - they haven't got that far down in themselves. Heartfelt - well, you need a heart for that.
And for me, a deeply private relationship between someone and their god is no political problem at all - the problems start with the churches and the mosques - the Popes and Vaticans of the world. The born-again Baptist bastards like Bush.
It's a bit like ice cream - if you pay it's yours to do what you like with, any flavour you like. You pay, you pray ;-)
Which means churches and so on are fine as long as the believers pay for them themselves.
I myself wouldn't have a chat with God or Allah in my page, but I'm not you ;-)
Nice warm hug from chilly Stockholm,
Chops
Unmasked - Akseli Gallen-Kallela
"Demasquée" (1888) by Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Finnish fin-de-siecle painter (1865-1931).
One of the comments started:
""Lily: Symbolizes purity, chastity, and innocence. White lilies represent the purity of the Virgin Mary. The Angel Gabriel was often painted presenting Mary with a white lily when he announced to her that she would give birth to the Son of God." ...
And I replied:
Actually, everybody, this is a scary pic. The surface belies the deeper meaning. "Unmasked" (demasquee) doesn't just refer to her being naked. It refers to surface beauty and life being unmasked. If you look closely at her, you'll see the marks of age and fatigue. The colours are subdued - and the red of life is muted, the black of death is strong, and there's so much white - and the white lilies are a symbol of death, too. And her skin is white. the guitar is old and used.
But the clincher is on the table behind the highest lily - see the skull?
******
Gallen-Kallela is a favourite painter of mine. You can see some of his work at:
And here's a wild poster that could well have inspired Bulgakov in The Master and Margarita if he'd seen it:
(More on The Master and Margarita on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita)
My finger's in quite a bit of the pie)
1 February 2010
On an art exhibition
Germaine Greer's blog in the Guardian:
My comment:
Well, Titian was hugely/grotesquely successful in his day, and worked to a formula that appealed to his patrons. Of his time, and surpassing it - a bit like the Beatles, or the Dixie Chicks.
Anyway... this modern trio seems to be of their time and drowning in it (cesspool?).
So what aspects of their time don't they surpass? My guess would be along the lines of Walter Benjamin and Georgie Lukacs. Naturalistic "nostalgie de la boue" with no need for nostalgia - they're in it face down. Unlike Baudelaire, who "takes us to a realm beyond" the sludge. Or, in painting, the Finn Akseli Gallen-Kallela.
(http://www.groningermuseum.nl/uploads/Demasquee.jpg)
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That's Sickert and Spencer.
Sargent is the same thing face up. Phosphorescing like the cadaver in Baudelaire's 'Une Charogne'. In Lukacs's take, the Salammbo to Madame Bovary.
All very dialectical - opposite poles trapped in the same magnet. One can't exist without the other. The "greats" make their own magnet, aren't just passive elements of a piece of Zeitgeist iron.
So Germaine's points are just that, and she manages to put em in English, too.
On Desert Island Discs :-)
Mary Beard's blog:
My comment:
Anthologies, anthologies. Like a meal with nothing but the "best bits" - a Swedish smörgåsbord. Very nice, but...
But very nice as an appetizer! And a pointer to breadth and depth - Go, Mary!
But where can you find the main course? Or that special unexpected dessert? In libraries and universities, or their analogues. That's where. And what's happening to them?
And what if the main course is junk junk junk till you explode?
Time to exorcise the TimeGhost and vanquish its servile demons.
On cutting palaeography at universities
Mary Beard's blog:
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/01/university-cuts-redundancies-and-byebye-palaeography.html#comment-6a00d83451586c69e20128773e8248970c
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/01/university-cuts-redundancies-and-byebye-palaeography.html#comment-6a00d83451586c69e20128773e8248970c
My comment:
Governments exist to handle the general needs of the ruling class. At the moment the ruling class is the imperialist bourgeoisie. Its general needs are evidently pumping as much gold into the gullets of their rich and powerful big bourgeois buddies as possible, including themselves (eg Bliar post-PM). And protecting it by any means needed, including the Big Lie and the grotesque war juggernaut.
Culture is just as evidently no longer a general need of the ruling class.
So if we love palaeography - and I do - then our first priority should be to dump this ruling class and out ourselves in its place as the new ruling class. Ourselves ruling ourselves in our own best interests, including culture. This would eliminate private profit (a 15% surcharge on everything to "satisfy" the insatiable, vampires and leeches all...), and the lunacy of war. Good enough reasons??
Culture is just as evidently no longer a general need of the ruling class.
So if we love palaeography - and I do - then our first priority should be to dump this ruling class and out ourselves in its place as the new ruling class. Ourselves ruling ourselves in our own best interests, including culture. This would eliminate private profit (a 15% surcharge on everything to "satisfy" the insatiable, vampires and leeches all...), and the lunacy of war. Good enough reasons??
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