Novara based meeting

[8ball]

This is last night and taken at Bastani's book tour or whatever it is. We know who these are....

I have no idea who they are.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

He seems to have citations for everything.

Does he? Like what?

 

[Smokeandsteam]

I have no idea who they are.

Then I'm afraid I can't help you.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Does he? Like what?

He's done a PhD so I am sure he has skim read a whole load of books.

 

[Rivendelboy]

Does he? Like what?

I'm jus' sayin'

He seems well read. I'm not, so I have no way of knowing if he's correct. He cuts an impressive intellectual demeanour, though for all I know it could be bollocks.

 

[chilango]

Academic training. That's all.

 

[Rob Ray]

Always worth bearing in mind that generally in everyday discussion the more Big Name citations a person is using, the more likely it is that what they're actually saying isn't all that clever.* Michael Gove and Boris Johnson for example love namechecking classical literature and whipping out a line of latin to try and intimidate the plebs.

* Because if it really truly was, they'd be concentrating on making what they're saying understandable rather than hiding behind giants.

 

[chilango]

Always worth bearing in mind that more often than not in everyday discussion the more Big Name citations a person is using, the more likely it is that what they're actually *saying* isn't all that clever. Michael Gove and Boris Johnson for example love namechecking classical literature and whipping out a line of latin to try and intimidate the plebs.

That's not quite why they do it. They're deploying their cultural capital to assert social, not intellectual, status.

 

[Rob Ray]

Both can apply. I've seen Gove pull out quotes to support "free" schools which drew on philosophers to put a clever gloss on a very unclever policy, for example.

 

[chilango]

Both can apply. I've seen Gove pull out quotes to support "free" schools which drew on philosophers to put a clever gloss on a very unclever policy, for example.

Perhaps

But it is a clever policy from their point of view. It's working perfectly.

 

[Rob Ray]

I mean it works, but it's not exactly subtle.

 

[Rivendelboy]

Always worth bearing in mind that generally in everyday discussion the more Big Name citations a person is using, the more likely it is that what they're actually saying isn't all that clever.* Michael Gove and Boris Johnson for example love namechecking classical literature and whipping out a line of latin to try and intimidate the plebs.

* Because if it really truly was, they'd be concentrating on making what they're saying understandable rather than hiding behind giants.

I'm not sure that applies to Aron, he seems to explain himself reasonably well. It's just you could spend all your spare time fact checking these sort of people. I don't really want to do that, tbh

 

[Rob Ray]

Aaron does it all the time. He'll quote Marx til the cows come home while producing a book on communism so bad (practically unreadable according to the folks I've spoken to who've bothered to try — can't even get a review because people aren't finishing the text) it got pre-emptively torn apart by an article written four years prior. And it's not gone down well in Marxist circles either judging by the reviews that have come out [1][2].

Ultimately it doesn't really matter how many articles you cite or how often you bark 'Grundrisse' at people, if your solution to a crisis of production in the midst of a climate crisis is "how about we robotically mine space asteroids" them clever-clever quotes aren't saving you.

 

[Proper Tidy]

Never cite anything. Pass it off as your own

 

[belboid]

Aaron does it all the time. He'll quote Marx til the cows come home while producing a book on communism so bad (practically unreadable according to the folks I've spoken to who've bothered to try — can't even get a review because people aren't finishing the text) it got pre-emptively torn apart by an article written four years prior. And it's not gone down well in Marxist circles either judging by the reviews that have come out [1][2].

Ultimately it doesn't really matter how many articles you cite or how often you bark 'Grundrisse' at people, if your solution to a crisis of production in the midst of a climate crisis is "how about we robotically mine space asteroids" them clever-clever quotes aren't saving you.

Bastani jumped in on Colin Wilson's timeline to say he hadn't understood the book at all and was just going of preconceived prejudices. Then disappeared again.

 

[Rob Ray]

Thing is I'm very in favour of offering a more optimistic, far-horizons vision of a future communism that does take into account the possibilities of technology as it exists today and is likely to exist in the near future, but the key word there is likely.

Everything I've seen of his vision seems to airily dismiss that the power brokers controlling these technologies are not going to give control up without a massive fight (collapse of all existing conditions or no), doesn't really address the question of how technology itself is structured through capitalist hierarchy and towards capitalist ends etc. Which means he ends up turning a starry-eyed gaze on technology's positive potentials (as advertised primarily by capitalists, who let's not forget, do lie a lot) rather than a level one on its very mixed realities.

Edit: This has reminded me that I should pick up some Lewis Mumford (and so should Aaron B).

 

[Rivendelboy]

Does he support vanguardism?

 

[8ball]

Then I'm afraid I can't help you.

'Tis great this site. Being able to rub shoulders with real intellectual giants.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

'Tis great this site. Being able to rub shoulders with real intellectual giants.

Glad to have been of assistance.

 

[chilango]

Always worth bearing in mind that generally in everyday discussion the more Big Name citations a person is using, the more likely it is that what they're actually saying isn't all that clever.* Michael Gove and Boris Johnson for example love namechecking classical literature and whipping out a line of latin to try and intimidate the plebs.

* Because if it really truly was, they'd be concentrating on making what they're saying understandable rather than hiding behind giants.

Having said all that re. Give and Johnson, I think in Bastani's case you're probably right.

I haven't, and won't, read the book. but I suspect the use of citations is done (consciously or not) to give the appearance of academic rigour and substance.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

I'd also imagine tracts of the book - which I probably will read and then wish I hadn't - are lifted straight from his PhD Thesis and therefore written in the required citation dense style.

 

[sunnysidedown]

Bastani's (space)ship sailed off long ago. I hear all the hip kids read Kohei Saito these days.

 

[brogdale]

Nadia Idle and Keir Milburn do the Acid Corbynism thing too. He's one of the ex-Class War, The Free Association, and now Plan C lot. He's just written a book too, Generation Left. He did a slot with Novara that I thought I'd hate, but thought was really good.

Generation Left? | Novara Media

For some reason, the LRB has this week decided to put out Will Davies' review of "Generation Left".
If I'm reading Davies correctly, he appears to misinterpret Milburn's notion of the generationally defining potential of "moments of excess" when he concludes about [the long?] 1968 and the Brexit supporting boomers:


Instead of identifying the resentment that might result from the promise of 1968 being thwarted by capital's neoliberal turn, Davies appears to suggest that the Brexit-boomers' resentment is that of the left behind who weren't there in Paris throwing paving at the CRS or in Grosvenor Sq.
Odd.

 

[chilango]

Davies appears to suggest that the Brexit-boomers' resentment is that of the left behind who weren't there in Paris throwing paving at the CRS or in Grosvenor Sq.
Odd.

Describes my mother perfectly.

 

[Flavour]

Have you listened to their podcasts/radio slots? Just sounds like fucking nonsense to me, people came up with a name that they think sounds hip and fun and then desperately trying to suck things in under it to justify it and create a name for themselves.

I'd always wondered about the name as it's an Italian town (not a very interesting one) but apparently the setting for a film by Elio Petri which is well worth watching called The Working Class Go To Heaven - shows quite nicely a situation where a bunch of different political groups (one of whom is distinctly Novara-like) trying to take advantage of a strike in a factory and use to their own ends rather than actually giving a shit about the workers' immediate demands.

 

[redsquirrel]

For some reason, the LRB has this week decided to put out Will Davies' review of "Generation Left".
If I'm reading Davies correctly, he appears to misinterpret Milburn's notion of the generationally defining potential of "moments of excess" when he concludes about [the long?] 1968 and the Brexit supporting boomers:
Instead of identifying the resentment that might result from the promise of 1968 being thwarted by capital's neoliberal turn, Davies appears to suggest that the Brexit-boomers' resentment is that of the left behind who weren't there in Paris throwing paving at the CRS or in Grosvenor Sq.
Odd.

How is he misinterpreting it? I've not read Milburn's book so I can't say whether Davies' review is fair or not but if you are going to argue

that generations aren’t formed by the biological accident of contemporaneous births but constituted in periods of rapid change and upheaval, which shape the sensibilities of those entering adulthood during that time.

then I think it is very fair to point out (1) most people played no part in these moments of excess and (2) such moments of excess must have equally be able to move people to towards socially conservative positions as socially liberal ones.

 

[brogdale]

How is he misinterpreting it? I've not read Milburn's book so I can't say whether Davies' review is fair or not but if you are going to argue
then I think it is very fair to point out (1) most people played no part in these moments of excess and (2) such moments of excess must have equally be able to move people to towards socially conservative positions as socially liberal ones.

Fair points, and I did preface my post by accepting that
I may be misreading Davies’ conclusion.

I suppose what I’m not buying is his contention that political resentment/susceptibility to socially conservative populism derives from their not actually having been participant in the [long] 1968 ‘ moment of excess’. An exclusion that caused the boomers to regard radical, socially ‘progressive’/liberatory politics as foreign, alluring and dangerous.

I’ve long believed in the importance of ‘1968’ as the moment that galvanised capital to wholeheartedly take the neoliberal turn. Having made concessions to labour through the Les Trente Glorieuses era of really existing system competition, capital ‘snapped’ at the prospect of a generation demanding more and further threatening their rates of accumulation.

I really don’t think Davies is right to ascribe the ‘boomer’ conservatism to an alienation from what happened in their youth; to me it lies more clearly with the subsequent reaction of capital. The resentment, rejection and poverty of political aspiration/appeal of populists derive from deterioration in their families life chances, public services, communities, towns’ fabric, cohesion and quality of life stemming from the destruction of the post-war ‘social contract’ into which this generation were born and lived for the early part of their working lives.

 

[redsquirrel]

Like I said I've not read Milburn's book but from this review and comments people have made it looks to me another attempt to write out class. As such I think I'd take issue with much the whole basis of the argument. But on Davies' review

I suppose what I’m not buying is his contention that political resentment/susceptibility to socially conservative populism derives from their not actually having been participant in the [long] 1968 ‘ moment of excess’. An exclusion that caused the boomers to regard ‘progressive’/liberatory politics as foreign, alluring and dangerous.

Is he contending that? Or is he trying to tease out the logic of Milburn's arguments? I'm not sure, and don't his background enough to try and guess.

I really don’t think Davies is right to ascribe the ‘boomer’ conservatism to an alienation from what happened in their youth;

Even if he is making some sort of claim rather than trying to follow the logic of Milburn's positions he suggest's such alienation as a possible factor not a certainty (my emphasis)

indeed, many may only have come to know it as something foreign, alluring and dangerous, a party to which they were never invited.

 

[brogdale]

Like I said I've not read Milburn's book but from this review and comments people have made it looks to me another attempt to write out class. As such I think I'd take issue with much the whole basis of the argument. But on Davies' review
Is he contending that? Or is he trying to tease out the logic of Milburn's arguments? I'm not sure, and don't his background enough to try and guess.
Even if he is making some sort of claim rather than trying to follow the logic of Milburn's positions I don't think he suggest such alienation as a possible factor not a certainty (my emphasis)

Milburn certainly doesn’t write out class, but attempts to interpret it through ‘generational’ experiences. I do think Davies’ liberal take is in danger of writing out class and misinterpreting the drivers of the ‘Brexit boomer’ cohort.

 

[redsquirrel]

Milburn certainly doesn’t write out class, but attempts to interpret it through ‘generational’ experiences.

I can't say but I know others disagree.