conservatism

January 28, 2015

An Ageing System

Jack Graham austerity, capitalism, conservatism, corey robin, crisis, europe, evolution, french revolution, neoliberalism, production, SF, teenagers 0

It’s always puzzled me, this thing about people getting right-wing as they get older. You’d think that the opposite would happen.

I mean, as you get older, you notice that the world keeps having the same problems, and that they tend to have the same underlying causes, and that nothing is ever done about them. You notice more and more of the same kinds of scandals reoccurring over the years, time and again, and always based upon imbalances of power, and upon powerful people being unaccountable. You’re more likely to have a mortgage and debts, the older you are. You’re more likely to owe lots of money to banks and credit agencies, and to be crippled by these debts. You’re more likely to have health problems, and thus to need medical care, and thus to see that the Health Service is underfunded and overstretched. You’re more likely to realise that your investments and savings (if you have any) don’t pay off in anything like the way you’re told they will when you’re younger. You’re more likely to worry about how you will look after yourself and your partner in old age. You’re more likely to notice your retirement receding into the distance. You’re more likely to find yourself paying through the nose for medications that go with age, medications your parents didn’t have to pay through the nose for. You’re more likely to meet more and more people of different ‘races’ and nationalities, and thus to notice that they’re not too different to you. You’re more likely to have been mistreated at work, or sacked, or been forced to find second jobs or third jobs. You’re more likely to have seen talentless people around you rising while you stay still, simply because they were born with advantages you never had. You’re more likely to have lived through several wars and recessions instead of just one or two. You’re more likely to have observed the way the world’s weather systems have catastrophically changed even in the last few decades. You’re more likely to have seen friends’ lives ruined by discrimination or depression or stress. You’re more likely to have seen your parents face an uncertain and neglected old age. And you’re more likely to have kids and grandkids, and to see all the challenges they face. A restricted job market, more and more pressure on them to work harder to have a chance of being employed one day, the escalating cost of further and higher education, more debt earlier in life, less chance of being able to afford to buy a house or even move out of their parents’ home, spiraling costs of living, less social safety nets, a squeezed education system. And on and on it goes.

Decades of life means decades of observing the world getting worse, and the so-called solutions never working, and the so-called progressive parties always selling people out, and the persistence of poverty and corruption never being addressed, and inequality and injustice always being at the root of the problems.…

July 2, 2014

Victory of the Icon 4

Jack Graham british empire, conservatism, crisis, europe, imperialism, india, listen, reviewing doctor who episodes without having watched them, second world war, victory of the daleks, winston churchill, wwii 1

At the time, the liberals and the left thought of World War II as a battle between civilisation and barbarism, between progress and reaction. This is still the mainstream view today. But the leaders of the Allies did not think this way, if they were honest. For instance…

The Churchill who demanded a no-holds-barred prosecution of the war was the same Churchill who had been present during the butchery at Omdurman, sent troops to shoot down striking miners in 1910 [this is probably not true], ordered the RAF to use poison gas against Kurdish rebels in British-ruled Iraq [this is arguable], and praised Mussolini. He had attacked a Conservative government in the 1930s for granting a minimal amount of local self government to India, and throughout the war he remained adamant that no concessions could be made to anti-colonial movements in Britain’s colonies, although this could have helped the war effort. ‘I have not become the king’s first minister’, he declared, ‘to oversee the dismemberment of the British Empire.’ He told Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta, ‘While there is life in my body, no transfer of British sovereignty will be permitted’.

In the Second World War, many – probably most – ordinary people thought of themselves as fighting the evil of fascism, but

the motives of the rulers remained very different from those of their peoples. This was shown in the conduct of the war. Between the fall of France in the spring of 1940 and the Allied landings in southern Italy in 1943 most of the fighting by British armies was in northern Africa. Why? Because Churchill was determined to hang on to the area with the Suez Canal and the oilfields. His worries were not just about Germany but also the US, as was shown by a bitter diplomatic tussle between him and Roosevelt over Saudi Arabia.

The invasion of Italy was itself a consequence of Churchill’s obsession with re-establishing British hegemony in the Mediterranean. He refused pleas from both Russia and the US to open a second front in France at the time when the most vital battles of the war were being fought in western Russia. Instead he claimed that Italy and the Balkans constituted ‘the soft underbelly of Europe’—despite mountainous terrain which was bound to mean bloody battles and a very slow pace of advance.

Churchill’s refusal to concede the principle of independence for India meant that in 1942, while the decisive Battle of Stalingrad was taking place, thousands of British-led troops were brutally crushing demonstrations in India instead of fighting the Nazis, and that an Indian ‘liberation army’ was formed to fight on the side of Japan. It also led to a famine which killed three million people in Bengal.

The quotes are from Chris Harman’s, A People’s History of the World.…

November 20, 2013

9

Jack Graham 50th anniversary countdown, capitalism, conservatism, ideology, neoliberalism, robert holmes, satire, state capitalism, sun makers, tax, the state 0

Wow. Single figures. Okay, time for some fun.

“I’m asking you to help yourselves,” says the Doctor.

Revolution isn’t about everyone suddenly becoming altruistic and angelic. It is, as Marx saw it, “the movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority“.

“Nothing will change round here unless you change it,” says the Doctor. Here is ‘freedom and necessity‘. It must be done, but they can choose to do it or not to do it.

“What will we do with two guns against all those guards?” asks Veet.

“You can’t do anything, but there are fifty million people in this city. Think how the guards will react to that number.”

“It’s crazy talk,” says Goudry, “Rebellion? No one would support you.” Capitalist realism.

“Given the chance to breathe clean air for a few hours, they might. Have you thought of that?”

The Company pumps a chemical fug into the air that makes people anxious and weak. That’s how it works on Pluto. Here we call it ideology, or hegemony.

The Doctor and Bisham discuss ways of knocking out the gas pumps.

“I was a B grade in Main Control,” says Mandrell, “The Doctor’s right. It could work.”

Until now, nobody has been more cynical. But Mandrell has, in a sense, just been given the chance to breathe clean air.

The Doctor isn’t stinting on the revolutionary optimism. He suggests taking over main control. Mandrell thinks it could be done.

“What have we got to lose?” he asks.

“Only your claims,” says the Doctor.

Everyone is quite impressed by this. It’s a sign of the times that we, the audience, are evidently expected to recognise and relish the reference. The Doctor knows full well what he’s saying – and he’s not just punning. Workers don’t usually have to wear chains these days, but they still have nothing compared to the Companies of this world. They have their ‘claims’ of course – claims upon democracy and human rights, etc… But the Company never gives refunds unless forced to, so the workers’ ‘claims’ are essentially the same as ‘nothing’.

“Anything’s worth trying,” says Cordo, a man who was trying to kill himself that morning, but who is now frantic with revolutionary confidence, “If only we could win. Just think, if we could beat the Company!”

“There’s no ‘if’ about it, Cordo,” says the Doctor, “We will.”

There’s ‘the actuality of the revolution‘ for you.

Robert Holmes is often called a cynic… but he was at least as much a romantic. This story is a full-on romantic political drama of revolution. The cynical and self-seeking drop-outs turn strike-leaders. The cowed and suicidally-miserable worker is transformed by revolution until he’s a whooping, gung-ho, gun-toting freedom fighter. (Revolution changes people even as they change society – one reason why waiting until we’ve all changed ourselves for the better is functionally the same as accepting the status quo. You change yourself by changing society, and vice versa.) The workers collectively overthrow capitalism and set up a workers’ state in about a day. …

January 31, 2013

Apocalypse Below (or The Tractate Face-Off)

Jack Graham 80s, christopher h bidmead, conservatism, entropy, frontios, history 3

From Panic Moon, July 2011. Edited, and with new material in a seprate coda.

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end

At first, ‘Frontios’ seems like the odd one out amongst Christopher H. Bidmead’s Doctor Who scripts. Unlike ‘Logopolis’ and ‘Castrovalva’, it’s overtly political and doesn’t seem to be powered by any underlying scientific concept. Also, it has monsters in it.

Bidmead included monsters – reluctantly – at the insistence of John Nathan-Turner. On reflection, this seems a dodgy call. Monsters from Bidmead were always going to be too concept-heavy to realise properly on screen. Sure enough, he comes up with giant woodlice that can disguise themselves as rocks until they unexpectedly uncurl… which was never gonna look good on the day.

Apparently finding the macabre more fascinating than he expected, Bidmead also included alien machines made with bits of corpses. This was very tuned in to the then-current turn towards biomechanics and ‘body horror’ in the fantasy genre, but it proved too horrific for Doctor Who to attempt on screen (though it livens up the novelisation).

The politics is also a departure. Aside from Tegan’s worries about sweatshops in ‘Logopolis’ and the hilarious sexism of the Castrovalvans, previous Bidmead scripts seem politically detached. He’s a world-builder, but not in the utopian or dystopian manner. So ‘Frontios’ comes a little out of leftfield… though that’s the only leftish thing about it. I’ve no idea what Bidmead’s own politics may be, but ‘Frontios’ seems to say that the ordinary people require stern discipline, that they want and need confident rulers. The story frowns on the ‘every man for himself’ ethic, yet implies that only hierarchy and obedience stand between society and what Hobbes described as the “war of all against all”.

In the absence of Plantagenet, there is “anarchy”, with the colonists turning to looting with a rapidity that is almost funny. Thrown “outside the system”, Cockerill is quickly attacked by ravening ‘Retrogrades’. However, when he apparently defeats the hungry earth, Cockerill is eagerly adopted as a replacement leader by the mob. Meanwhile, Plantagenet’s bravery proves he is genetically fit to rule (he is, after all, named after a line of kings). Brazen – the personification of authority – ultimately proves himself admirable, his noble final words being “that’s an order!”.

Actually, I think ‘Frontios’ has more in common with ‘Logopolis’ than it appears. Bidmead never takes the series into the past – he’s too aware of entropy as ‘time’s arrow’ to believe that you can go backwards – and his view of the far future is one of maximum entropy. The “failure proof technology” that failed, the dwindling population, the wrecked ship, the malfunctioning generator, the “doomed planet Earth”, etc. Mine shafts collapse. Lights stop working. The TARDIS falls apart. Even “eaten by the earth” sounds like a metaphor for putrefaction.

The politics reflects this state of decay. Order becomes disorder as Orderlies become disorderly.…

January 15, 2013

Review: ‘The Reactionary Mind’ by Corey Robin

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The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin by Corey Robin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Superb.

As an historian of ideas, Robin concentrates on the patterns of thinking within conservatism, but never seems to say that conservative actions and policies stem entirely from ideology. Indeed, he frequently points out the ruptures between theory and practice… yet he can usually find hidden resonances within the conservative idea/s that are consistent in ironic, unexpected ways, ways that often make seemingly paradoxical dissonances between theory and practice seem much more explicable.

Disjointed, of necessity (since this is a compilation of previously published essays on a variety of subjects), there are still clear and original linking ideas which are spelled out mostly in the new introduction. Conservatism is fundamentally a reaction to the loss of privilege, or the challenge to privilege from the oppressed. Conservatism is much less enamoured of stasis, familiarity etc than it thinks it is. Conservatism is much more depressive and melancholy than many people think. It is dependant upon left-wing ideas to provide it with negative stimulus. It is animated by a preoccupation with violence. It is more revolutionary than it pretends, being often as critical of ancient regimes as of radical challenges. Etc.

Robin delineates these ideas with a selection of profiles and intellectual traceries, hunting down the lineages of certain preoccupations through history. The most entertaining chapter is probably his thorough and brief (it need not be extensive to be thorough) takedown of that malignant mediocrity Ayn Rand. The most piercing is probably his analysis of the malaise that afflicted and spurred on conservatives after the supposedly-desired triumph over communism. The analysis of conservatism as an ever-changing yet essentially consistent range of ideas that prize the retention of privilege is tested and found highly persuasive as he charts conservative disillusion with capitalism triumphant after the end of the Cold War.

It’s hard to imagine anybody interested in modern politics coming away from this book without a lot more to think about.

View all my reviews…