Over Hyde Park, the weather appeared unable to make up its mind. The blazing sun was interrupted by showers of hail, seemingly depending on who was on stage at the time. Whether this counted as some sort of divine disapproval was uncertain, as the hailed-on speakers took it as an opportunity to praise the crowd for braving the weather. And indeed ‘brave’ was the right word – unlike many of these protests I’ve been to, most of the crowd looked like they were unused to mud.
This was the ‘Put People First’ march, whose clarion call was ‘Jobs, Justice and Climate’. Given the diversity of groups under its banner (154 separate organisations at current counting), the lack of specificity in how these goals were to be achieved was probably inevitable. There was a clear consensus on who was to blame for them not being achieved, however, and at the top of that list were the bankers. There was also a clear consensus on who would provide the means to achieve those goals – the leaders of the G20.
Flash forward to Wednesday, and the agenda of the G20 protesters becomes even less focused. Now it’s about simple anger at a banking sector collapsing in under its own hubris. Change is demanded – but what change?
In Hyde Park, only Mark Thomas actually used the word socialism, and only to condemn Labour for not believing in it. Even Brendan Barber, General Secretary of the TUC, limited himself to condemning government incompetence. The focus of the grand anti-capitalism protests – Seattle, Genoa, May Day – has always been on actions the protesters are demanding from the state, or from international organisations. It has never been as a coherent ideology, which has meant their efforts are frequently (and correctly, in today’s case) painted as simple anger with the system. The classic of this has always been the banner which states, ‘Let’s overthrow capitalism and replace it with something nicer!’
That anger has always been with the state in its role as an agent of change – in essence, it presupposes that the state is the sole agent of change within society. It comes from a statist viewpoint, even if it never describes itself as such. The actions demanded by Put People First are exclusively about what the state can do to mitigate the financial crisis.
At this point, I imagine a lot of you are going, ‘Well, duh, the state has all the power.’ This is wrong. One of the worst aspects of socialism is the disempowering impact it has on the individual; jobs, justice and the mitigation of climate change are on this viewpoint something that can only be provided by the state. The left has been talking the talk of socialism for many years without actually believing it, and it has been left without a coherent ideology of its own.
The original pre-9/11 anti-capitalist movement took its inspiration from the excesses of capitalism as detailed by the investigative journalism of the late 90’s and early 2000’s, the work of people like Naomi Klein and John Pilger. These were not political treatises, but rather exposes of the dubious nature of many of the monoliths of corporate world. Again, the language was the same, to do with the actions of states against the villainous corporations. It was moral indignation in a socialist framework, with the meat of the socialism part taken out.
Now in this crisis of capitalism the left has been reduced to merely demanding more government power over the economy, when it was precisely the government’s mismanagement of the rules of credit that brought us to our current predicament. There is no coherency to the movement, beyond the indignation we have seen previously.
The root cause of this indignation has been claimed to be the structure of the corporation itself as a legal entity. Because shareholders do not manage a corporation, and because the managers of a corporation only have a responsibility to create profit for the shareholders, at no point within its structure is there a place for moral accountability. The manager who employs sweatshop labour can claim that he or she is compelled to do so by the duty to create profit for the shareholders, and the shareholders can claim that since they do not control the actions of the corporation, those actions are not their responsibility.
We have seen this in the banking sector. The enormous bonuses given for producing short-term gains were a direct consequence of the duty of the directors to maintain the profitability of their bank and maintain the share price of the company. Therefore the long-term interests of the banks (and therefore the economy based on them) were sacrificed for short-term profit. And yet, no-one is morally responsible.
It is this structure, rather than capitalism itself, which I argue has been the root cause of the anti-capitalist protests over the past two decades, and to which the left must propose an alternative.
Thankfully, we need not look far, as an alternative has been in existence for hundreds of years. In Principles of Political Economy, JS Mill argued for the institution of limited liability partnerships in which every worker would contribute a share of the capital. Today, we call those co-operatives. And they work, and work well, across the world. Indeed, I bank with one. The Co-Operative Bank has been one of the few high street chains to come out of the credit crunch entirely intact. Unlike a corporation, the members of a co-operative are collectively responsible for its actions, as they are involved in both its financing and its day-to-day running. They are the progressive left’s answer to corporatism.
But this leads me to the most important part of this argument. Co-operatives can be set up in law already – there is no need to lobby the state. They create jobs, they lift people out of poverty and are generally environmentally friendly. The only remaining element necessary for change is not the state, but you. Do you want to put a stop to corporate excess? Then find others who feel the same way you do, and compete against those corporations.
The left needs to accept that the agent of change in society is no longer the state, but the individual. The state has a role to play in enabling the founding of co-operative businesses, in terms of providing education, training and start-up loans – but it already does that. Those on the left who wish to see the demise of the corporate system need to stop lobbying the government, and engage with the rest of the population, to tell them that they can co-operate to get themselves out of poverty, and no longer have to rely on provision by the state. Socialism is not the answer – working together at the individual level is.
As I write this, the windows of the RBS branch on Threadneedle Street are being broken. RBS can afford to lose a few panes of glass. But if the 35,000 people who attended Saturday’s protest started banking co-operatively, that would be a different story entirely.
Essay on the Commodification of Experience
March 6, 2009
I haven’t written on philosophy in a very long time, so if you’re not a fan of slightly meandering (and in this case rather simplistically written – I haven’t really slept for a while) discourse I suggest you look away now. But as I get (very slightly) older, something has been intriguing me, and that’s the notion of paying for particular experiences.
Now, while that may sound as though the subject of this essay is prostitution, what I’m referring to is the modern practice of paying to experience something that would have initially been done as part of a broader venture. I’m thinking about sky diving. I’m thinking about holidays to Macchu Picchu. I’m thinking about, in essence, paying for adventure and for experiences beyond the norm.
Surely, you might say, this is just an extension of ordinary holidays? It’s not. What it is is revealed by the language used in the advertisement of these experiences; typically this involves phrases like ‘Discover the..’ or ‘A unique adventure’, the ‘unique’ in this case seemingly used in an unironic way. The language used is typically structured to present the image of an opportunity to overcome adversity; even though it is clear that there is no real adversity to be had – that has already been taken away by the pioneers of these ‘unique experiences’. What would Hiram Bingham say if he realised that, a century after his (alleged) rediscovery of Machu Picchu, tourists would be sold the chance to ‘discover’ the city for themselves?
I am going to argue that this sort of activity is (surprisingly) entirely defensible from the standpoint of any existentialist approach which includes a concept of authenticity, and from the standpoint of any concept of one’s relationship with society in the context of an ever-expanding human population. First, a definition.
Authenticity in philosophy is frequently difficult to pin down, and I shall not attempt a precise definition here. It can be broadly described as acting in accordance with one’s inner self, rather than external pressures. Thus, an authentic act is one that is performed with respect to how one wishes to encounter the world rather than how one wishes to be perceived by the world. This is, as is clear, not a moral stance, but rather an experiential one.
It would therefore seem to be the case that the purchasers of adventure are acting inauthentically; in seeking adventure they are not going beyond social convention and setting out into the wild, but rather following a path that has already been laid down. Every single Westerner trudging up the Andes to Machu Picchu is following in the footsteps of Bingham – does that not devalue their experience? Does it not mean that they are living inauthentically by merely acting in accordance with an established means of encountering this experience?
No. The key point here is that it is entirely possible to live authentically in the context of social convention if that is what one seeks to do. This is because if one seeks experience purely for the sake of it becoming one’s own experience in isolation from what has gone before, it does not matter if the path is well-worn – it is unique and authentic to oneself. The distinction is between seeking adventure and seeking to be perceived as an adventurer; not between actually being an adventurer and merely having similar experiences. Travelling to the Lost City of the Incas for the purpose of seeing it and travelling to the lost city in order that one may be the sort of person who talks about travelling to lost cities at dinner parties are two different things, and only one can be labelled authentic.
There will still be some who resist this notion, arguing instead that the contemporary Western lifestyle of selecting from a smorgasboard of purchasable experiences is in some way a betrayal of one’s own authenticity; that in order to be authentic experiences must be won for oneself in a true struggle with adversity. This is to misunderstand the place of the self on a planet shared with six billion other people – there is simply little room for adventure. One cannot seperate one’s adventurous experiences from this basic truth – the authentic life is one that is lived in accordance with one’s inner self in all contexts, not simply when adventuring. And when encountering the world one cannot fail to be limited by it – some external pressures are optional, some are not. One is not living an inauthentic life if one cannot follow through on one’s desire to fly by flapping one’s arms. The authentic life must be lived within physical constraints, and one of those constraints is not the wishes of society, but simply the sheer number of other people.
In a world where many are striving to be authentic, unless one’s inner self leans towards the vicious end of the spectrum, the only way in which one can encounter the world in an authentic manner is to choose to experience in way that permits others to engage in that experience as well. This is almost a Kantian maxim; to experience in such a way that one’s experiences can be repeated by others.
The purchase of experiences permits others to repeat them. Now, while some may still decry this as being inauthentic on their own terms, many choose to follow this while still retaining authentic lives. Authenticity is not the sole province of the intellectual or artistic, but rather the individual who lives one’s life in the way in which they choose. And this may involve moving to the suburbs and going on adventure holidays.
Issues about Single Issues on the Climate March
December 8, 2008
I attended the Climate Change March on Saturday, mostly to seek absolution for my lack of domestic recycling, but also to support the Cleggmeister in his attempts to sway hippies with powerful rhetoric.
Previous readers of this blog will know I love protesting. There’s always a little bit of theatre that makes me believe it’s all going to somehow work out right, whether it be the hippies with the painted faces pushing a cart labelled ‘Climate Change Bandwagon’ or the entrepreneurs selling whistles to the communists, protests are always reassuring.
And so it was again. Despite the fact that a protest consisting mostly of socialists marched on a route that took in the Rolls Royce & Bentley showrooms, the Ritz, innumerable Starbucks, and the US embassy no-one threw any bricks at all. We arrived in Parliament Square in good spirits and settled down to listen to some hippy band’s deep and meaningful song about how capitalism was bullshit, man.
Then the voices of the young Liberals and middle-aged environmental Liberals around me rose in cheering as the Clegg came on stage to give his speech. And it was very good. He’d clearly worked out that his audience weren’t going to be particularly market friendly, and so his speech was full of exhortations to environmental action.
“No to a third runway at Heathrow!”
Hippies cheer!
“No to Kingsnorth!”
Hippies cheer!
“And no to spending twelve and a half billion quid of our money to give us a short-term VAT cut – which we’ll all have to pay for in the future – when every penny of that money should be spent on public transport, on green energy, on sustainable housing for the future.”
Hippies look confused!
That last part was a typically Lib Dem complicating of the issue, I admit. But it did make me observe the reactions of the rest of the protest during the remainder of the speech. It brought something interesting to light.
During the, “…the scandalous situation that the big energy companies are charging a pensioner – scrimping and saving, living on her own, to perhaps heat one room in her home (or his!) – is charging her or him more than a multimillionaire who’s heating their five-storey mansion from top to toe…” section, the only ones cheering such an ostensibly worthwhile statement were us. Even the socialists didn’t want to know about little old ladies. Everyone just looked grumpy.
Why would that be? Theoretically, the majority of the crowd were the self-defined ‘ethical’ sort, who doubtless do their recycling, owned a wormery, biked everywhere and generally are very nice to the planet. But they don’t appear to care about little old ladies.
I’d like to make a distinction here, based not on science but on public perception. It’s about single issues. They fall into one of two camps: the ’sexy’ single issues, and the ‘unsexy’ single issues. Climate change, human rights and the developing world fall under the former, the plight of the elderly, the mentally ill and arguably trade unionism fall under the latter. The test is whether you’d find someone more attractive depending on which field they worked in. “I work with the elderly” isn’t as attractive (to me at least, putting subjectivity aside here) as “I work for Friends of the Earth”.
And this is the danger. People who think they’re saving the world don’t want to be reminded about the people who are too poor and too old to join in. As evidence, I give you the crowd’s reaction on Saturday. While single issue campaigning has been spoken about as a reflection of society’s new individualism, with people focusing on the issues they care about, I see it more as intellectual cowardice. If you don’t consider that your new bill that’ll cut carbon emissions by whatever percent by levelling a higher duty on fuel will leave the elderly to freeze to death in the winter because they can no longer afford to heat their homes, then you’re a monster. Reducing the sphere of the ethical to an individual’s relationship with the planet ignores the rest of society. Single issue campaigning will ultimately lead to bad policy – if it hasn’t already.
So the next time you’re confronted by an environmental activist who’s demanding that you recycle more, ask them if they’re sharing their wormery with the little old lady living by herself in the flat upstairs. Picking and choosing when you’re going to be ethical is despicable. Luckily, I chose not to be ethical. I work in politics instead.
