Politics, Buddhism, Geekery

Be young and shut up has written an important post about the hard left and the student movment.

I prefer community organising to ideological activism, so I had been out of contact with this part of the population of Glasgow until last year, when I was heavily involved in the campaigns at Glasgow University through personal interest in the matter. I experienced what she is describing first-hand and am publishing this to give public support to her, and – of course – to throw in my own tuppence.

She is quite right that on the hard left there is a very aggressive culture, where being arrested is a badge of honour, and violence is exalted by people who have generally lived very sheltered lives. One might blame the hubris of youth, but I have seen people fantasise publicly about throwing molotov cocktails at police officers. When I was a young and first involved in politics, I too engaged in this kind of braggadocio, because it is very much encouraged by the culture.

Being a pretty peaceful man it scares me to call that male, but she is quite right that these values are more typically masculine. While I have seen aggro from both sexes, the left selects for people who can live with that kind of angry competitive environment, which is one reason it is majority male. In geek feminist work, we see getting male-dominated projects to replace their culture of aggressive willy-waving debate with a calm professional tone as a key step to including more women.

She is completely right that valuing aggro forms of debate and valorising arrest privileges men. Because of the value placed on knowledge of critical theory and other relative obscurities, privilege is also handed to middle-class activists over working-class activists. The arrest issue also privileges the young and childless, full-time activists, and people who don’t have to work, usually thanks to being middle-class.

Common to a lot of other examples she gives is a sense of quickly defining an in group and an out group. There are goodies (Palestinians! All of them! Geroge Galloway!) and baddies (Israel! Anyone who is not a communist! All police officers ever!!! And most of all: THE REST OF THE LEFT!!!1!)

Goodies can be identified by never saying the wrong thing, unless they are already our pals, in which case they can say anything they like. Baddies can be identified because they say wrong things or hold wrong opinions. Once we have purged the baddies from our midst and the world, the goodies will triumph. This is an odd position to take – don’t we, following Foucault, say that there are people who commit criminal acts, not “criminals”?

It is, I think, about defining individual identity rather than changing the politics of the world. There is no political reason for a person’s opinion of a far-off conflict to effect working with them on anti-cuts in the UK. There is no reason for a person’s belief about what an ideal society would look like to effect any work at all, when we are so far from such a society. When I was young I initially worked in the anarchist movement, where people would happily refuse to work with the “Trots” and “Stalinists” because of what they might theoretically do come The Revolution (TM). This is clearly group identity and group bonding placed above political aims.

As she notes about liberal feminist organisations, they are simply better than the left at gender, lgbt, race… so are public sector employers and TUC trade unions for that matter.

A female friend of mine worked for the TUC for some years, and makes the point that although many of her colleagues were ageing Stalinist men, they were simply not allowed to be sexist while on business or the HR department of the organisation would have waved goodbye to them. The STUC’s council now has a majority of women and I think the left could learn lessons from that.

To take another example, at one public sector workplace of mine there was sometimes homophobic banter in the office. The moment I expressed discomfort at that, it stopped: people knew that in a professional environment, they should not be making those jokes. Because of the policies in place I, as the token bi guy on the team, had all the power on that issue. I couldn’t make the people not-homophobic but I could shut them the hell up.

For my part, I departed the part of the left that enjoys shouting about being the left years ago. I returned because the Hetherington campaign was close to my heart, and even then I could only stomach it a few months.

I’m working with some friends to build an NGO working to empower people in deprived areas of Glasgow. We’re still putting the formalities together, but is such a relief to work in a professional manner. I am looking forwards to imposing the kind of straightforward equality policies that many large companies have as a matter of course.

It’s also indescribably brilliant to work with loads of ‘ordinary’ people, who are concerned with bettering their communities more than what someone believes about x, y, or z abstract political issue. I meet a lot of left-wing people who are more interested in organising than bigging up how left-wing they are publicly, so I think the real left is a lot lot bigger than the visible hard left.

Aye, so, solidarity to the blogger, and massive respect for her bravery in writing the blog post.

Weirdly the left is way behind on institutional combatting of sexism. The average large liberal org, trade union, government or private employer will have rules, professional standards, and programmes to reduce discrimination and promote minority leadership Obviously those fail to address deeper structural problems but they have demonstrably had positive effect.

We could do with being humble enough to adopt other people’s best practise. Intersectionality theory is enjoying a renaissance at the moment, and is often promoted as the ideological solution to the left’s deep problems with gender and race; I agree that it is important to recognise that eg black women have a collective social position that is different to that of white women, and that indeed all power disparities intersect in complicated ways. I worry that a naive understanding of this leads to assumptions about people based on outward markers of privilege or oppression and sets up the dreaded Oppression Olympics.

Ultimately, it is practise, not ideology that will determine equality. We need to understand these as collective problems, but still be sensitive to the unique nature of individuals. And adopt a bit of bloody professionalism in our practise… we can’t make all the sexists in the world not sexist, but we CAN force them to not banter or letch in what is a volunteer work environment.

I am bothered by the idea I see tossed around that in the Napoleonic Wars, the British state stood for freedom against Napoleon’s tyranny.

Britain was a fairly tyrannical country at the time. It was an aristocratic state with a powerful merchant class, and a staunch opponent of both democracy and republicanism throughout the 19th century. The popular nature of the Sikh soldier’s councils was one of the causes of the Anglo-Sikh wars in the middle of the century, with one diplomat fearfully describing the Sikhs as “the world’s largest armed democracy”.

To be fair, Britain wasn’t absolutist like many European monarchies; parliament, which remember was in no sense a democratic body at this point, had limited the power of the monarchy. Even extracting this concession had taken forty-eight years of popular struggle in the face of brutal political repression.

Things began to change in Britain with the Chartists and the great reform act (1832), but it wasn’t really until the early 20th century that Britain became a representative democracy of the American kind – until 1928, women under thirty or without property still could not vote, and incredibly it took Britain until 1948 to end the practise of giving extra votes to businesspeople, owners of more than one property, and university graduates.

Napoleon, on the other hand, was defending a republican revolution in France. This is what the war was about – aristocratic government vs republican government. The French republican government certainly became despotic under Napoleon, but this was not a genuine factor in the conflict, which began with the revolution, long before anyone had heard of Napoleon.

lokithecomplex asked: Did the wars have any reforming pressure on the UK?

Haha, that’s a really good question with a complicated answer!

I would have to say yes. A good part of Napoleon’s success was the levee en masse, that is the mass conscription of troops, which was possibly under the republican system but a bit scary for aristocrats (you want me to arm HOW MANY peasants?!)

Prussia solved this issue with extraordinarily harsh military discipline, and built Europe’s strongest land army in the 19th century.

The revolution itself excited the passions of people across Europe, and kicked off a new radical upsurge. Demobbed Napoleonic veterans would play a key role in the early radical struggle in Britain, including the armed uprising in Scotland in the 1820s.

So I would have to say yes, the revolution certainly produced pressure for reform, and in more direct answer to your question so did the wars themselves, if only by giving hundreds of thousands of men military training then releasing them back into the general population.

Originally in reply to Gerry Hassan

Facebook is extremely dangerous. The theory from both sides (net entrepeneurs and hackers, basically mirroring capitalists and workers) about information as a commodity is extremely advanced. In brief, computers + the internet allow anyone to copy infinitely and share any information securely and anonymously.

This poses a threat to profit, so far largely in the creative industries. There are two capitalist responses: The entertainment industry favours Digital Rights Management (attempts to make your PC enforce the law whether you want it to or not), ie turning information goods back into regular, controllable commodities.

Zuckerberg is offering a second way. The theory is that by centralising our social interactions through computers they control, they can commoditise data about those interactions, and perhaps even turn social relationships themselves into a quantifiable, tradable currency

I have a more extensive dissection aimed at non-technical left wing people, here: http://mohkohn.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/wikileaks-karl-marx-and-you/

Cory Doctrow sumarises the political implications to a technical audience here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg

Eben Moglen outlines the hacker community’s plan to save us all here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k_cyW7cYOQ

Originally published on Newsnet Scotland

Scotland is at a unique point in its history.  At its recent conference, a bullish SNP announced the start of the campaign for Scottish independence.  This at a time when the global economic system is experiencing a systemic crisis of unprecedented scale, a time when the last of the post-war consensus in England is being ripped up, a time when people everywhere are crying out for change.

It seems certain that Scotland will achieve full fiscal autonomy.  It is entirely possible that we will see full-fledged independence.  This could be a triumph for the people of Scotland, but could just as easily be a disaster.  Have no doubt, the Scottish people will vote for a bold, self-confident vision of a Scotland responsible for its own affairs.  A Scotland with significant economic clout and a fair deal for working people and the disadvantaged.

Making this Scotland a reality will take more than a yes vote in a referendum: it will take a concerted effort by civil society – trade unions, NGOs, grassroots campaigns – to develop organisational capacity.  This capacity will be essential to regulating a society cast afloat on the international market, subject to sudden surges and withdrawals of capital.  Civil society must have the strength to assert the people’s will against these pressures.

Joseph Stiglitz, who the SNP have wisely brought in as an economic advisor, describes the dangers of what he calls the “hot money cycle”: speculative capital flows into an economy, producing an illusion of growth.  Sooner or later some happenstance causes the market to take fright, and the bubble collapses.  At this point austerity programmes are imposed, drastically harming ordinary people and lowering wages.  Scotland must avoid this fate.

Our own recent history shows that relying on parliament alone is not enough – every Scots parliament has had a nominal majority for social democracy, yet policy-making has been inconsistent.  We have no prescription charges, but we are seeing a decline in social housing stock.  We have reindustrialisation, but no national commitment to the living wage.  Our parliamentarians need social movements that can both support them and hold them to account.

The national debate on independence is a once in a generation opportunity to present a positive, inclusive concept of Scottishness based on internationalism and compassionate government.  A Scottish majority for social democracy.  A Scottish majority for full employment.  A Scottish majority for real, participative democracy.

This has to be more than mere words – it must be a movement in our workplaces and communities, something that is physically and socially present in the day-to-day lives of the people.  Something that is owned and shaped by them.

This is more than possible.  Many Scottish people define their politics against the ‘English’ Tories, never mind that within living memory the then-Unionist Party were the national party of Scotland.  There is a wealth of experience in our communities in tenant and workplace organising, of the bitter struggles of the 1970s and 1980s.  There are nostalgic memories of a time when Labour guaranteed good homes and good jobs.  The SNP, understanding this, are promising reindustrialisation, jobs, and a safety net for the poorest.  These basic political-economic desires return again and again through the last two hundred years of Scottish history.  We must take them and drive them to their logical conclusion.

We must at the same time be responsive to global changes: modern conceptions of power have combined with constant instant communication to create a strong drive to decentralisation.  The days of economies planned by government bureaucrats are gone.  We must instead pursue a vision of community control, insulated from the market by legal guarantees.

Andy Wightman has worked tirelessly for land reform in Scotland, and the furthering of his agenda to move Common Good land to community control would represent a real win for the Scottish people.  The creation of urban land trusts could finally end the blight of unsuitable housing and slum landlords, guaranteeing affordable housing for generations to come.  Micro-generation of electricity in communities, an idea that the Labour party has already backed, could end fuel poverty.  What these ideas share is that they create common property in a way that empowers people and improves their day-to-day standard of living.  They are winnable, and have support across party lines.

The challenge is that existing civil society in Scotland has been shaped by 30 years of seemingly eternal Labour Party rule.  Until now, deep links with Labour were a strength – Labour guaranteed industrial jobs and at a local level is still willing to do deals with the trade unions.  Now these links have led to a dependency, and become a weakness.  On the current evidence, even a yes-no vote will throw civil society into a tailspin, at the very moment when it is needed to shape the new Scotland.

There are many of us who dream of an independent Scotland that provides its people with jobs and security, that decentralises power, that gives its people a greater say in their own lives.  It falls to us to make it happen.