The State of the Situation

In order to add to the logjam of self-important high-horse riding and political posturing regarding the London riots, I here attempt a response.

Firstly, it is illuminating just how swiftly the authoritarian underpinnings of nominally liberal polities are revealed. While we are accustomed to the perpetual criticism by Western powers of the human rights records of China, Russia et al., it takes only four nights of civil unrest in the United Kingdom’s capital to spur large scale advocacy of increased security, the detention and prosecution of children, the training of all police in anti-riot techniques, the deployment of water cannons and rubber bullets, the general disparagement of human rights instruments such as the Human Rights Act 1998 (UK) as nothing more than a pesky, “phoney” constraint on authorities. The idea of popularly elected police chiefs has also been floated, presumably running every few years on an ad infinitum platform of strict law and order. While I have never been a huge fan of human rights discourse - which is observably much more of a rhetorical instrument than a concrete and enforceable constraint on the actions of states - the ease with which this “liberal-democratic” state seemed to slip on the authoritarian boot is almost embarrassing, even for this collection of known hypocrites.

Related to, and accentuating the “law and order” effort, is the reactive de-historicization of the civil unrest. A 12th grade history student can tell you that violence has causes. Every undergrad politics or history student writes at least one paper that starts “The causes of the French Revolution/The Cold War/The Cronulla Riots were...a complex mix of social, political and economic factors and so on. The value of writing such a paper is probably close to zero, but it is even less so now that no-one wants to hear about “macro” causes, because the explanation is usually limited to “this has been caused by moral decay, parents not smacking their children, wives being able to leave their abusive husbands because of the welfare safety net, white people becoming “black,” teachers not standing up to children and so on. Talking about large scale, systematic causes of things is not about making excuses, or being an “apologist” (although some limp-wristed drivelling from the left hasn’t helped the cause of those seeking to promote a more nuanced and complex analysis of the situation). It is about acting like you are older than ten, where someone was either your best friend or your worst enemy, and everything was the fault of some identifiable group of goodies or baddies. This is a worrying echo of previous failures in the decade post-9/11 to promote anything deeper that a “with us or against us” discourse regarding terrorism. Individual responsibility and underlying social causes are not mutually exclusive propositions. It must be acknowledged that it is far more plausible that there were at least some underlying causes that don’t have their genesis in the individual, rather than attempting to maintain the thesis that thousands of young people in London and around the country randomly and out of nowhere simply flew off the chain and went window shopping because their parents hadn’t locked them in to watch Junior Masterchef that night.

So my answer to the argument against “excuses” is this. You can either acknowledge that human beings don’t live in a vacuum, that social, historical and economic factors are to an extent the determinants of behaviour, and act to do something about it. Alternately, you can stand around moralising and crying “individual responsibility” while the ship goes down. Calls for law and order will only get you so far because the causes of unrest remain, and may even accentuate the underlying causes of violence. You will only need to build more walls, deploy more water cannons, more rubber bullets, give police more power and so on. While the discourse of personal responsibility is in many ways paradigmatic of rule-of-law liberalism (for without it there could be no punishment and hence no force of law), it is more than apparent in late capitalist societies such as England that:

1. The doctrine of individual responsibility is not evenly applied, and tends to focus on petty visible crime and violence, rather than large-scale systematic violence of the economic variety and,
2. People actually understand this (whether consciously or not), and it is a major source of unrest, and will eventually undermine the stability that “law and order” types crave - conservative and liberal alike.

There is also a perpetual double-standard regarding violence in liberal democracies, in that violence associated with maintaining the status quo is written off as “rogue” elements of what is overall considered a “just” cause or association (think Abu Ghraib, phone hacking, poor lending and investing practices), whereas legitimate protest that involves some rogue elements is conveniently all tarred with the same brush (London student protests, riots and so on). Politicians accordingly throw out a variation of the “we will not negotiate/be held to ransom by terrorists/anarchists” rhetoric, and hencforth the message of the protest is excluded from the public sphere on grounds of unreasonableness - the show goes on. Again, people are not stupid, they understand or sense this and they are not happy about it.

A lot has been made regarding the fact that these events cannot be political because none of the participants articulated a political program i.e. it was simply a spontaneous outburst of violence (and shopping) that has no meaning outside of the viciousness and criminality of the participants; “pure criminality” as has become the catchphrase. In addition to the above paragraph I have two points to make regarding this. Firstly, this is actually not the case – there were political protests in the weeks and months leading up to the riots, none of which gained much attention, and the riots started as an angered yet peaceful enquiry regarding the shooting of a young man by London police in Tottenham. Secondly, even if this was the case, it borders on the ridiculous to complain that a section of the population so uneducated and demonstrably excluded from the successes of English commercial society is in fact also excluded from the sphere of politics because they cannot articulate themselves in a manner befitting the reasoned and rational discourse of modern elites. Just because someone says, or does not say, that their actions are political, does not mean it is, or isn’t, the case. This would be like saying that Guernica wasn’t political because Picasso said it wasn’t.

A word on the rhetoric of entitlement that has observably permeated much of the post-London riot discourse, at least from elite circles (and yes I mean Labour as well). It is well known that how much money you earn is predominantly dictated by factors completely exogenous to your personal decisions in life; things such as how smart your parents were, how good looking your parents were, how wealthy your parents were, and so on. Unless you can claim to have chosen your parents, none of this was the result of your individual grit or enterprise. The idea that someone who is not successful is simply reaping the consequences of their own lack of individual initiative and enterprise is for my mind ideology at its purest. We didn’t all go to Eton, David, and we weren’t all members of the Bullingdon Club (that are evidently set apart from petty criminals by the fact their parents can afford to pay for the restaurants they trash), Boris.

With regard to the “underlying causes” of this unrest so liberally bandied about, I will only make one major point which I believe has been seriously overlooked in the mainstream debate. It is a point on which (although the left occasionally bemoans a lack of upward mobility) the left and right are seemingly in agreement; that “these people” are, historically speaking, relatively well off. They are fed, provided with housing, and so on. The argument follows that in spite of high unemployment, low levels of education and literacy, and minimal social services, they should to an extent be “content.” I unreservedly accept that this is in fact the case - they are historically well off for those people lucky enough to be born into the “underclass” towards the end of last century - but that this formulation of the problem completely misses the point. It misses the point because it willfully refuses to acknowledge a problem of commercial society that was identified at its genesis by its philosophical founders; that commercial society, in seeking to harness the potentially destructive human passions, is not driven by the satisfaction of material needs (to be fed, clothed etc) but by invidious comparison and envy. That is, not just to have enough for yourself, but to have the same or more than the other. With the attainment of such material heights comes the recognition which for many political philosophers (Hegel for instance) has been the key driver of human history. This is the source of capitalism’s dynamism and the perpetual growth imperative - “for the wants of the mind are infinite.” It provides incentivisation - to work, to create, to innovate, to invest and accrue wealth - but is also a potential source of instability.

Envy and the promotion of conspicuous consumption are seemingly fine as long as the rhetoric of meritocracy and upward mobility appear credible; if I study, work hard, and save my money I too one day can have those things that I so desire. It is observable that the rhetoric of the “American Dream” (that anyone can get rich and be successful because the United States (US) is the land of opportunity), for instance, is a huge source of social cohesion in the US, and this holds even in times of recession and economic uncertainty. The problem is when the nexus between meritocracy and envy (channelled productively as aspiration) is broken – you come to something of a road block where there is nowhere for the human passion of envy to channel itself. As soon as these kids are old enough to realise they are not going to grow up and marry Kim Kardashian, drive a Bentley and drink Loius Roederer no matter how hard they work, and seemingly have nowhere to even channel their dissatisfaction productively, we have a problem. From this we might deduce that it is really not enough to say that people’s material needs are satisfied; we need to look much more closely at the dynamics of commercial society for answers to these questions.

It is also here that we realise that for all their rhetoric against big government and social welfare dependency, the right (including the so called Labour Party) have actually misunderstood its ultimate purpose. Its ultimate purpose is to keep the “losers” of capitalism (i.e. those on the wrong side of the greatest income inequality in Britain in 50 years) placated while the machine roars ahead into the never-never. So while they think they are simply taking away another barrier to “waste and inefficiency,” in the spirit of free markets and economic rationalism, they are actually pulling the rug out from the only thing that is keeping the lid on total chaos, and standing around shouting “individual responsibility” into the abyss. Good luck with that.

Just thought I would re-post this quite extensive recent talk by probably the most persistent and determined critic of US imperialism over the last 50 years. Whether you agree with him or not he is absolutely relentless. Not a lot of new material in this one, but nevertheless a little preview for those Adelaideans that will be coming along to the Edward Said Memorial Lecture on November 5th.

Thanks goes to Mosquito Cloud for putting me on to this footage - they have plenty of other great stuff to check out there including some vintage Slavoj Zizek party tricks if that's what you're into.

Rosanne Barrett, under the headline "Not happy, Julia Gillard - we've done our bit," writes in today's Australian that front page pictured Samantha Gregg "doesn't begrudge her neighbours in flood-hit New Farm more help - it's just that she believes she did her bit before the government came along and put its hand in her pocket."

It turns out by paragraph two that she is prepared to pay the tax but is not "happy" about it.

By paragraph four it is belatedly revealed that Ms Gregg will not even have to pay the levy, because she earns under $50,000 as an administration worker. Her partner, who earns more as an electrician, may have to pay but is "O.K." with it given that it is only a one off.

As we move along, we are told that Oxlade Drive mother of one Gabrielle Edwards, another flood victim, is in fact so unimpressed with the levy that she is going to pay it regardless of the fact that she could get an exemption (because she qualifies for flood relief assistance). She argues that she doesn't "think we can do enough for people who were affected. If taxes pay for people who were affected by this flood then I'm glad to be part of this society."

Mrs Edwards sounds positively incensed that we live in this kind of society.

Jan Carol, who lives on the riverfront, concurs with Mrs Edwards, having "not even considered applying for the payment," and further to that "did not mind contributing to the tax."

Outraged!

Student Waylon Palmer adds his voice to the growing chorus of dissent, stating that he agrees with the levy in order to get disaster areas back in business as soon as possible.

Although statistically wanting (there are none), a pretty positive snap-survey of opinion I would offer. Not that you would know that reading the headline. While I am personally skeptical regarding the levy, as are most Australians according to the FR, that doesn't change the fact that Barrett's headline brazenly disregards even the meager anecdotal evidence offered in her own article.

I read a while back that 44% of Google News readers read only headlines. Let's hope readers of 'The Oz' are a little more curious than that.