Blair declares war on civil liberty

[8ball]

8ball - it is extremely unlikely this regime will manage to force ID cards on a population that does not want them.

I sense the populace softening on this issue. It'll start with the passports, the biometrics necessary to get into the US, and creep from there. These fuckers aren't going to force anything through in a single bill.

I've spoken to enough people who say they want the cards and rattle off the 'if you've nothing to hide you've nothing to fear' claptrap like little Pavlov puppies, I feel that they'll get this through if no one fights them very, very hard on the issue.

Sometimes I just think the old values don't play well in this new order and our arguments are too subtle and layered and not amenable to easy soundbites. Old conduits of rational argument and reflection such as our universal education system are being eroded - the generation coming up could be the last to enjoy the benefits of what is left of an educated culture that feels free to question authority I really hope they turn out to have decent perception, a morl compass and some measure of backbone because my contemporaries are lost in a haze of media-led fear, property porn and joyless distraction fucking.

 

[Azrael]

No it aint. Socialism is about social equality. Marx effectively took issue with the idea that equality could be imposed from above. He aso took issue with the idea that notions of freedom, equality under law, or democracy could mean anything without social equality.

It has been those socialists who looked either to the dictatorships in Eastern Eurpoe/China as supposed examples of state socialism or to Labour Party type bodies to utilise the pre-existing state in order to bring about reforms to benefit the majority who could be said to see the state as a cure. The latter were responsible for the welfare state, NHS, comprehensive education and council housing. There is a clean break between Blair and these old reformist socialists. For these the state was only ever something to be used constitutionally to benefit people. This project failed.

Tony Blair and New Labour represent something completely different. He believes, as right-wingers tend to, in state control in the 'tough on law and order' sense. He does not believe in proactive state intervention in the economy and he is out to dismantle progresive state functions such as public services, council housing, NHS. Just like any good Tory.

Marxists (not Stalinists) do not accept that the state needs to be strengthened against the people. We would defend the 'welfare state'. But ultimately the present state cannnot be used to benefit the majority. For Marxists any state has an element of oppression by definition.

Utopianism actualises perdition.

Trying to force equality of outcome has bloated the state with each sucessive intervention; but big government is the foundation stone of tyranny. There's a clear break in aim between Blair and those reformist socialists, but not in method; they let the state expand because they thought to control it. They attacked constitutional restraints because they stopped them being good. The beginning of this long march came with the Parliament Act 1911, brought about because the Lords weren't letting the Liberals be liberal enough, establishing elective dictatorship in the name of equality. Equality died but the dictatorship remained.

The more comprehensive socialism becomes the worse the problem gets. Collectivism fatally undermines individualism and either descends into the false equality of equal wage slavery or fails, leaving behind a society accepting a pervasive state, and that, not unequal distribution, is the real evil.

As for Blair and his attack on 'yob culture' there is a populist element to this. It is old fashioned right wing rhetoric - blaming the people for the insecurity in fact largely caused by Blair et als own policies. Then seeking more power to the state in order to keep people in their place in the pretence of seeking to protect the law abiding majority from thuggish elements. There are thuggish elements. Blair's policies are creating the environment where such elements breed, but for the greatest thuggery we should look to the New Labour Government themselves.

It's usual for both sides to project their own failings onto their opponents, but this isn't true. It's the tactic of authoritarians, but neither left or right has a monopoly on them. Most right-wingers want small government and a market kept strong by its own merits, not constant state intervention.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Have you been reading Ayn Rand or something Azrael?

 

[FridgeMagnet]

a haze of media-led fear, property porn and joyless distraction fucking

Good line there.

You're right, it is challenging to get the basic message across about ID cards in a short soundbite. All that one needs is to have something that makes people think that there may be something basically wrong with the idea, and then they will start looking for themselves and reading further... but it's getting that initial idea that's the problem.

I've found that appealing to people's basic dislike of being watched works the best: do you like being watched? What business is it of theirs? Look at all this stuff they want to know... and so on. But arguments to do with database consolidation are hard to get across, except to people who already work with databases (and all of the ones I've talked to on the subject are completely opposed to ID cards).

 

[Azrael]

Tony Blair doesn't really like the term socialism at all. He has gone on record as saying he believes the creation of the Labour Party to have been a historic mistake (the split with the Liberals).

As for the failure of old style reformism I should make myself a little clearer. I do believe that reformism has not succeeded and has no immediate future. That is not the same as saying that the NHS and welfare state have failed - it is more that old style labourism is failing to defend it!

The reforms that were won after the 2nd World War were won partly because the ruling class feared revolution unless such reforms were conceded, and partly because this coincided with restructuring of modern capitalism. The post-war boom economically meant that reforms could be granted by capitalism to ensure relative stability in profit making. Since the post war boom ended progressive reform has slowed down to a halt. In its place we see 'reforms' from Thatcher onwards that are backward and amount to undoing the public sevice ethos that built up during the 'concensus' years.

There needs to be a battle to stop the rot and to reinstate a public service not private profit ethos. I do not believe this can come from the Labour Party. Any new party seeling to achieve progressive measures will need to confront capitalism; it is not possible to work within the system as old style social democrats believed. This is a debate that must be had within the movement but we should not subordinate immediate strategic goals to these differences. We need to unite all those with a public service ethos into a powerful movement for change.

Here we'll depart ideological company because I have no desire to confront capitalism; far from it, I admire the system enormously and consider it to ensure liberty by dispersing economic power. Seperation of powers politically requires seperation of powers economically.

Old-labourism is failing to defend its reforms because their ideology conflicts with capitalism and, if it comes to a choice, they'll take capitalism. The one and only time I'll agree with Blair here is to say redefining the left-right split as a fight over the control of capital instead of a fight over government power in the late 19thC is one of the most disasterous mistakes is progressive history.

 

[MatthewCuffe]

"In a society tutored by Thatcherism to glorify individualism, narcissism is sanctioned, immaturity is tenaciously grasped. Whereas [Michael] Foot, to his great credit, failed to relate to that wretched society, Blair immediately, and dramatically, succeeded; Foot was a misfit; Blair clicked in. That he did so was not only due to an eagerness on the part of the electorate to be free of the decrepitude of the Tory government, not only because of the attraction of the novelty which for some years he was to provide, but because there was a strange and disturbing congruence between the pathology of our society and the configuration of Blair's psyche. The homoeopathic 'magic' he proffered to a sick society society differed from that prescribed by the genuinely charismatic Labour figures of the past; as a remedy for its ails, Blair offered our society its own disease; loving its own sores, a credulous electorate, albeit for only a while, revelled in the potions so artfully sold it in the May 1997 General Election."

- Leo Abse, "Tony Blair: The Man Behind The Smile" (1996)

Abse was Labour MP for Pontypool from 1968 to 1987.


As Groucho says, we need a new movement(s) that replaces the profit motive with public solidarity.

As 8ball says, most people have been uneducated into being consumers rather than citizens.

Large movements begin from small numbers of people, who make themselves back into citizens, and will not be silenced.

 

[Groucho]

Utopianism actualises perdition.

Trying to force equality of outcome has bloated the state with each sucessive intervention; but big government is the foundation stone of tyranny. There's a clear break in aim between Blair and those reformist socialists, but not in method; they let the state expand because they thought to control it. They attacked constitutional restraints because they stopped them being good. The beginning of this long march came with the Parliament Act 1911, brought about because the Lords weren't letting the Liberals be liberal enough, establishing elective dictatorship in the name of equality. Equality died but the dictatorship remained.

The more comprehensive socialism becomes the worse the problem gets. Collectivism fatally undermines individualism and either descends into the false equality of equal wage slavery or fails, leaving behind a society accepting a pervasive state, and that, not unequal distribution, is the real evil.

It's usual for both sides to project their own failings onto their opponents, but this isn't true. It's the tactic of authoritarians, but neither left or right has a monopoly on them. Most right-wingers want small government and a market kept strong by its own merits, not constant state intervention.

By rejecting both equality and collectivism you inevitably accept tyranny. Democracy itself is a form of collectivism. Without equality domocracy will always be subverted by those with power. Without democracy equality is impossible.

Right-wingers do not want a small state although they often say they do. Usually they want tto do away with the 'bureaucracy' of such things as health and safety legislation, minimum wage legislation and publicaly funded health service. They oppose state intervention in the economy. They favour state control over the people. They might want to dismantle the social aspects of the 'state' but they seek to strengthen the police and social control aspect of the state.

Granted there is a right-wing libertarian tradition who want total 'freedom' from state control but the very market capitalism they love so much actually relies on a strong state. Their's is a 'utopian' nightmare that has never and will never come to fruition. They mean of course feeedom for the powerful to do whatthey like - hire and fire at will, set prices at will, hire private armies at will etc

 

[MatthewCuffe]

The tragedy from 1997 to 2006 is that we have endured a fifth-rate authoritarian ring-winger masquerading as a libertarian left-winger.

 

[Azrael]

"In a society tutored by Thatcherism to glorify individualism, narcissism is sanctioned, immaturity is tenaciously grasped."

Neat soundbite, but my own support of capital has nothing to do with Thatcher. The new-right didn't teach us to glorify individualism, she reminded us of it after a half-century of atrophy, albeit in a thorougly twisted way. Individualism isn't the perverted community wasteland of new-right; it's an anti-Blair respect for the rights of one person over the supposed right of the majority to restrict them as they will.

 

[8ball]

Their's is a 'utopian' nightmare that has never and will never come to fruition. They mean of course feeedom for the powerful to do whatthey like - hire and fire at will, set prices at will, hire private armies at will etc

Nope, now you've confused me. Something to do with that 'has never and will never' bit doesn't seem to fit with the sentence that follows. I think you're going to have to go through it again

 

[MatthewCuffe]

Margaret Thatcher taught the people of this country to put their own personal interests first, above those of the rest of society.

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair liked it, along with millions of others.

Today, with a global environmental crisis and a post peak oil economy on the way, their philosophies are as useful as a Titanic without lifeboats.

 

[Azrael]

By rejecting both equality and collectivism you inevitably accept tyranny. Democracy itself is a form of collectivism. Without equality domocracy will always be subverted by those with power. Without democracy equality is impossible.

Right-wingers do not want a small state although they often say they do. Usually they want tto do away with the 'bureaucracy' of such things as health and safety legislation, minimum wage legislation and publicaly funded health service. They oppose state intervention in the economy. They favour state control over the people. They might want to dismantle the social aspects of the 'state' but they seek to strengthen the police and social control aspect of the state.

Granted there is a right-wing libertarian tradition who want total 'freedom' from state control but the very market capitalism they love so much actually relies on a strong state. Their's is a 'utopian' nightmare that has never and will never come to fruition. They mean of course feeedom for the powerful to do whatthey like - hire and fire at will, set prices at will, hire private armies at will etc

Freedom from tyranny demands freedom from any one group dominating the rest. Democracy isn't a panaceca any more than Blair's hardarsed government. People have and will vote to repress themselves.

Freedom from tyranny is balance between competing power-centres. I've no more liking for capital-anarchism than I have Blair, and the market isn't a panacea either. I'm all for a strong state, but a small one; one who's power is ringfenced in a strictly limited arena. Strengthing social control is, as I've arguing with plenty of right-wingers, going against their own values; ban raves one parliament, ban foxhunting the next.

And unlike most I'd support strong trade union rights to stop one side of capitalism dominating the other. Self-interest wasn't originally promoted in the cause of property porn but out of a belief that it was the only way to disperse economic power, and that's the only root of freedom. Collectivism focusses that power. Much as I loath Hobbes's conclusions I agree completely that if our natural insticts are unconstrained life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Removing restraints on them in the belief we're naturally good isn't going to prolong it.

 

[MatthewCuffe]

We are naturally good.

Give me Rousseau over Hobbes any day.

The authoritarianism of this regime, and its belief that life is dog-eat-dog (or omnia contra omnes, in Hobbes's language) is a corruption of our natural, simple goodness.

 

[Azrael]

Margaret Thatcher taught the people of this country to put their own personal interests first, above those of the rest of society.

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair liked it, along with millions of others.

Today, with a global environmental crisis and a post peak oil economy on the way, their philosophies are as useful as a Titanic without lifeboats.

Thatcher might have taught that, but she was as deluded as Blair, and twisting right-wing ideas doesn't serve as a general indictment. It's no coincidence many of those old-style capitalists were philantrophists. Used to be taught what you picked from society with one hand you re-sowed with the other. But then that's when we had other gods besides the financial market.

 

[MatthewCuffe]

The decline of the spirit of philanthropy is a marked feature of the past 28 years of my life on this planet. The culture of "get rich quick or die trying" has taken hold. To what extent a stewardship capitalism ever existed I am not sure, but the stewardship element has been banished from the financial trading floors. It is all about short-term gains and the degradation of the long-run. Very dark indeed.

Save the planet, or die-off trying.

 

[Azrael]

We are naturally good.

Give me Rousseau over Hobbes any day.

The authoritarianism of this regime, and its belief that life is dog-eat-dog (or omnia contra omnes, in Hobbes's language) is a corruption of our natural, simple goodness.

We're neither, and I'll take nither of 'em!

Rousseau turned the French revolution into a bloodbath with his noble savage doctrine; if a savage is noble, a mob can do no wrong. We're angel, devil and everything in between given the right circumstances; and a carefully balanced web of freedom and control is needed to restrict the baser urgers and liberate the better ones.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

The Secret of Primitive Accumulation

 

[MatthewCuffe]

How do we turn the vicious circle described by Marx into a virtuous circle?

 

[Groucho]

Nope, now you've confused me. Something to do with that 'has never and will never' bit doesn't seem to fit with the sentence that follows. I think you're going to have to go through it again

The second sentence was merely meant to acknowledge the fact that in reality their opposition to state power is very one sided. Right-wing libertarians argue for no state - an anarchism dominated by a capitalist market. They don't acknowlege that capitalism requires a state, or that individual freedom in a system they imagine would actually be extremely oppressive for the majority. It would be freedom only for big capitalists.

The never has and never will refers to the 'capitalism with no state' bit not capitalist oppression.

 

[Azrael]

The decline of the spirit of philanthropy is a marked feature of the past 28 years of my life on this planet. The culture of "get rich quick or die trying" has taken hold. To what extent a stewardship capitalism ever existed I am not sure, but the stewardship element has been banished from the financial trading floors. It is all about short-term gains and the degradation of the long-run. Very dark indeed.

Save the planet, or die-off trying.

Yes, I agree completely stewardship has vanished, and it hurts moral capitalists (dismisses "oxymoron" before anyone else has a chance to say it ) like myself more than anyone. I don’t pedal any golden age bollocks, there have always been selfish bastards exploiting capitalism for all its worth, and if they're not restrained capitalism serves them very well. But collectivism serves them better by denying an ineradicably selfish gene instead harnessing it for some good.

Capitalism at its best encourages enterprise fuelled prosperity and, yes, a lot of ugliness is inevitable; but also a lot of gain. Acceptaning that duality is better than pretending it's eradicable and paving the way for the dominance of our malign instincts.

 

[Azrael]

The second sentence was merely meant to acknowledge the fact that in reality their opposition to state power is very one sided. Right-wing libertarians argue for no state - an anarchism dominated by a capitalist market. They don't acknowlege that capitalism requires a state, or that individual freedom in a system they imagine would actually be extremely oppressive for the majority. It would be freedom only for big capitalists.

The never has and never will refers to the 'capitalism with no state' bit not capitalist oppression.

From a purely economic POV it also denies the awkward fact that a completely free market doesn't stay free for very long.

 

[8ball]

The never has and never will refers to the 'capitalism with no state' bit not capitalist oppression.

Ah, right, gotcha. The largest emergent power would manifest as a state soon enough even if this weirdness ever did happen, anyway. I tend to think of a 'state' as the group with the biggest guns on any staked-out piece of turf, mind.

 

[Azrael]

Have you been reading Ayn Rand or something Azrael?

Better Rand than Marx.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

As far as I can see, capitalism absolutely requires a state in order to enforce its claims. The more powerful that state is, the better, because capitalists are the people with money, and hence are better able to influence the politicians.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Better Rand than Marx.

Rand has more misogynistic sex scenes certainly, but have you actually read any Marx?

For example that stuff I linked earlier?

 

[8ball]

Better Rand than Marx.

This made me laugh out loud

Why not just post a single-figure IQ score??

 

[Azrael]

Rand has more misogynistic sex scenes certainly, but have you actually read any Marx?

For example that stuff I linked earlier?

Given the state of Marx's fundament it's probably for the best he confined his focus to economics.

Manifesto is always a good read if you're in the mood for punchy political propaganda, and Kapital ain't half as dull as people claim, but I don't agree for a second with Old Grizzley's solutions. If I want utopianism Moore's a far better read, and more realistic; it's full of slaves as well.

 

[Azrael]

This made me laugh out loud

Why not just post a single-figure IQ score??

Evidence for banging on about IQ conclusively proved.

 

[8ball]

Evidence for banging on about IQ conclusively proved.

Maybe an extra preposition or something in that sentence would help. Just to make grammatical sense, you understand. And wipe that dribble off your chin.

 

[Azrael]

Only seemed fair to give that bulging quotient of yours a workout since the topic in question seems to have bored it.

So, this guy look best in profile or what?