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[...] what's involved in re-floating this concept of paternalism is defending the concept of education, and also defending the concept of authority; and differentiating the concept of authority from that of authoritarianism. Authority based on expertise, knowledge, skills - there's nothing wrong with that, providing it isn't abused. That needs to be abused to be authoritarianism, which is simply power based on fear. Part of a democratic political project is not eliminating authority, but constituting authority collectively. The best way of fighting authoritarianism is not abandoning the question of authority - which will always re-assert itself in one form of another, if one simply ignores it - but of constituting authority in this colletive way. [...]
[...] we have to remember that the policy aren't the enemy, they are the servants of the enemy, and if all of our energy is taken up struggling against them, then they are doing their job for their masters very effectively. Ultimately, it must be far better if the servants are turned against their masters.
wonder what his take on police funding cuts would be
Can we be guided by these lights, instead of by the Olympic flame, a symbol of a capital now more globalised than ever, the ultra-bright striplights drawing planetary destiny into an eternal shopping mall surrounded by a sweatshop?
more mall imagery!
But the rejection of identitarianism can only be achieved by the re-assertion of class. A left that does not have class at its core can only be a liberal pressure group. Class consciousness is always double: it involves a simultaneous knowledge of the way in which class frames and shapes all experience, and a knowledge of the particular position that we occupy in the class structure. It must be remembered that the aim of our struggle is not recognition by the bourgeoisie, nor even the destruction of the bourgeoisie itself. It is the class structure – a structure that wounds everyone, even those who materially profit from it – that must be destroyed. The interests of the working class are the interests of all; the interests of the bourgeoisie are the interests of capital, which are the interests of no-one. Our struggle must be towards the construction of a new and surprising world, not the preservation of identities shaped and distorted by capital.
So, there’s a lineage, isn’t there, I think, from those first two commercials into the Louise Mensch position. There’s a narrative behind it, which is a story about desire. These protesters have the products of advanced capitalism, therefore… it’s not only that they’re hypocrites, it’s that they don’t really want what they say they want. They don’t really want a wealth beyond capitalism. What they want is all of the fruits of capitalism — and ultimately that’s why capitalism will win. They may claim, ethically, that they want to live in a different world but libidinally, at the level of desire, they are committed to living within the current capitalist world.
OK. So, what are the advantages of the concept of postcapitalism? — and just initially I think it’s worth thinking about this — why use the term “postcapitalism” rather than “communism”, “socialism”, etc.? Well, first of all, it’s not tainted by association with past failed and oppressive projects. The term “postcapitalism” has a kind of neutrality that is not there with “communism”, “socialism”. Although this is partly generational, I think: the word “communism” has lots of negative associations for people of my age and older.
It implies victory — that’s the other thing, isn’t it? If you’re talking about postcapitalism, it implies that there’s something beyond capitalism. It also implies direction, doesn’t it? If it’s postcapitalism, it’s a victory and a victory that will come through capitalism. It’s not just opposed to capitalism — it is what will happen when capitalism has ended. It starts from where we are. It’s not some entirely separate space — I think that’s implied, right? The concept of postcapitalism is something developed out of capitalism. It develops from capitalism and moves beyond capitalism. Therefore, we’re not required to imagine a sheer alterity, a pure outside. That’s one of the emphases of postcapitalism. We can begin with, work with, the pleasures of capitalism, as well as its oppressions. So, we’re not necessarily trapped in this Louise Mensch world where if we have iPhones, we can’t want postcapitalism. Although I don’t think we’d want iPhones in postcapitalism…
[Moralism] provides an emotional shoring up of the reactive stance of the weak, ‘who define themselves in opposition to the strong’. With the dissolution in recent times of positive projects of socialist construction, left moralism has been energized by increasing investments in injury, failure, and victimhood. When power is identified with what is ruthless and dominating, it becomes something the left must distance itself from, lest it be co-opted or compromised.
So, the idea there is, then: that power itself is pathological. To hold power is to inherently be oppressive, therefore it’s better to be wounded; it’s better to be the wounded, the abject, because you’re not actually holding power, which is oppressive. This becomes the name for a kind of impossible desire in lots of ways. Who are these appeals aimed at? What is a political project which doesn’t aim at capturing power or building power in some way? I think we can recognise the ways in which this form of desire has shaped a lot of left-wing politics recently. Brown’s essay is highly profound; both of those: “Wounded Attachments” and the one on left melancholia, which builds on [Walter] Benjamin’s discussion of left melancholia.19
i should read this essay
One of the themes you’ll have noticed running through this — through Lukács’ work and this text in particular — is a common philosophical theme of becoming versus being; the idea that ideology reifies. Ideology turns what is always a process of becoming — which is open-ended and therefore changeable — into something that is fixed and permanent. That’s what reification is. And, of course, that’s crucial. That’s the very purpose of ideology. The very purpose of ideology is to close off the possibility that anything could be different. That’s the A–Z of ideology, in fact. But, of course, the second step of ideology is to make itself disappear. Ideology doesn’t arrive and say, “I am ideology”. Ideology says: “I am nature, and this is how things are”. It probably doesn’t speak, but even in my metaphor it doesn’t really have to say anything. It’s we who must think in response to it. This is how things are. They can’t be any different.
Part of the problem of the old idea of objective truth, you could say, was its idea that consciousness has no effect on the truth. That might well be true of the state of a black hole or something like that, but it can’t possibly be true of social relations. I’m in those social relations! I’m already in those social relations. So, when I — and it can’t be me alone, ever, who does this — when group consciousness develops, when class consciousness develops, when any subordinated group [consciousness] develops, this immediately changes things — straight away. Because in being lifted out of experience, you’re broken out of ideology. You — and I’m using this as a second-person plural — you can then achieve agency! You can’t achieve it before.
Even before you do anything, something has happened, which is the production of this new consciousness. When we think about this set of social relations… Something has shifted in the set of social relations by the sheer fact that your consciousness has shifted anyway. That’s the first thing. It’s already changed things. Secondly, then, once a group recognises its common interests, then it can act together. Once workers realise the problem is capital, not them — once they stop competing against one another and realise they have a common enemy — capital — this is when they’re going to have agency. Similarly, when women realise the problem is patriarchy, not them as individuals, then their consciousness has immediately shifted. You feel better! That’s the first thing. You’ll feel relief from the guilt and misery of having to take responsibility for your own life, which you shouldn’t have to — despite everything neoliberal propaganda tells us. It is not you! It’s a direct inversion of Thatcher! “There’s no such thing as society. There are only individuals and their families”. It’s the other way round! There’s no such thing as the individual. But the individual is immediately given. And that’s part of the problem of immediacy.
If you’re in a subordinated group, you see the way things are talked about by the dominant group, and you see the reality of your life, and you see that they don’t match up. Ordinarily, before your consciousness has been raised, you will treat the mismatching of your experience from ideology as a failure in you. You must have thought of it wrong. You mustn’t be thinking about it in the right way. After consciousness raising, you can see: of course, it’s not going to match up. There are two fundamentally different ways of being in the world. There are the ways of the dominant group and the ways of the subordinate group. But precisely because the dominant group dominates, it can’t see that. Because it lives inside its own structure of dominance. Whereas, because the subordinated group is subordinated, it has the potential to see the schism.