Your prospects will please her
The iron-king's daughter,
Up here on Broomhill:
Strange Hallamshire, County
Of dearth and of bounty,
Of brown tumbling water
And furnace and mill.
Tuesday, 20 July 2010
Friday, 9 July 2010
Grist to the Mill
The liberalism of Mill and Locke has enjoyed a golden age which must soon be in decline. Yet its grip is strong. It reifies its world-view, establishing a state of being which is necessarily right and natural and in need of protection.
Liberalism assmes that a distribution of power to the masses is realised by decentralising, individualising, marketed as giving citizens autonomy or control over their lives.
This has two effects. The first is to create a society of individual customers where the right to choose precedes all others. This is beneficial for the primacy of capital in society. Secondly, it gives the impression that power has been distributed and that people are freer or enjoy more self-determination.
This assumption is based on a liberal conception of society as a mass of individuals, rather than considering the manifestations of power relations between social beings in families, communities, regions and nations. The illusion of greater freedom and self-determination hides the requirement of the state to subsequently rationalise the behaviour of citizens, thus maintaining a crucial power over subjects which is more transcendent than choice over local facilities or a voice in local decision-making. This voice of personal freedom foresakes a louder one that has the potential for greater influence. For liberalism creates bureaucrats, not ideologues, as the individual freedoms must be properly managed, and thus shuts out potential for inspirational change at a high level when choice is appeared to be practised at a lower one. Indeed New Labour's obsession with bureaucrats and targets is because of their ideological acceptance of liberalism. Politicians become managers, creating productivity to enable ideas to be implemented locally - half-baked, cut-cost ideas. As citizens are endowed with these greater levels of freedom over certain issues (such as GP surgeries), their increased scope of action must be restrained. Order must be maintained by somehow limiting the capacity for citizens to act completely freely (as this real freedom would be anarchic and stateless) and so individuals are rationalised and behaviouralised, placed in categories of ethnicity, gender and class to assess how they will act, their likely career, their predicted consumption of public services. Courageous, unpredictable acts are seen as dangerous and state intervention necessary. This is the case in schools where pupils are punished for not respecting authority. Public protest is allowed, but only the type that fits the state's description of regular, peaceful protest; anything else is illegal. Expression is welcome in liberal states, providing it does not rattle established truths.
And therefore humans are not truly free from the shackles of the state and its power, under liberalism we are simply free to believe we are.
And so inequality can rise, because the rhetoric of liberty maintains that some are freer than others and intervention is anti-liberal since it creates more trouble than it solves.
And electoral democracy is a freedom because it gives people a voice, and voices and choices are good.
And some public services suffer because it is not liberal to redistribute wealth.
Less state intervention reduces inequality. This is a fact. Private companies and local authorities discriminate, the latter on geography and the former on profitability, preference or luck. Liberalism is a system that meritocrises and allows the best (cf. the elite) to gain ascendence, no matter how small this number, no matter about the rest. This contrasts from a society that values all, in which diversity reigns.
No to characterisation. Refuse rationalisation, categoritisation of gender, class, race, nationality. Refuse unequal treatment, sliding salaries, poor life chances based on the lack of profitibility of your passion or 'vocational choice'. Embrace the unusual, the unpredictable and the sub-par which make society more than the sum of its parts.
Liberalism assmes that a distribution of power to the masses is realised by decentralising, individualising, marketed as giving citizens autonomy or control over their lives.
This has two effects. The first is to create a society of individual customers where the right to choose precedes all others. This is beneficial for the primacy of capital in society. Secondly, it gives the impression that power has been distributed and that people are freer or enjoy more self-determination.
This assumption is based on a liberal conception of society as a mass of individuals, rather than considering the manifestations of power relations between social beings in families, communities, regions and nations. The illusion of greater freedom and self-determination hides the requirement of the state to subsequently rationalise the behaviour of citizens, thus maintaining a crucial power over subjects which is more transcendent than choice over local facilities or a voice in local decision-making. This voice of personal freedom foresakes a louder one that has the potential for greater influence. For liberalism creates bureaucrats, not ideologues, as the individual freedoms must be properly managed, and thus shuts out potential for inspirational change at a high level when choice is appeared to be practised at a lower one. Indeed New Labour's obsession with bureaucrats and targets is because of their ideological acceptance of liberalism. Politicians become managers, creating productivity to enable ideas to be implemented locally - half-baked, cut-cost ideas. As citizens are endowed with these greater levels of freedom over certain issues (such as GP surgeries), their increased scope of action must be restrained. Order must be maintained by somehow limiting the capacity for citizens to act completely freely (as this real freedom would be anarchic and stateless) and so individuals are rationalised and behaviouralised, placed in categories of ethnicity, gender and class to assess how they will act, their likely career, their predicted consumption of public services. Courageous, unpredictable acts are seen as dangerous and state intervention necessary. This is the case in schools where pupils are punished for not respecting authority. Public protest is allowed, but only the type that fits the state's description of regular, peaceful protest; anything else is illegal. Expression is welcome in liberal states, providing it does not rattle established truths.
And therefore humans are not truly free from the shackles of the state and its power, under liberalism we are simply free to believe we are.
And so inequality can rise, because the rhetoric of liberty maintains that some are freer than others and intervention is anti-liberal since it creates more trouble than it solves.
And electoral democracy is a freedom because it gives people a voice, and voices and choices are good.
And some public services suffer because it is not liberal to redistribute wealth.
Less state intervention reduces inequality. This is a fact. Private companies and local authorities discriminate, the latter on geography and the former on profitability, preference or luck. Liberalism is a system that meritocrises and allows the best (cf. the elite) to gain ascendence, no matter how small this number, no matter about the rest. This contrasts from a society that values all, in which diversity reigns.
No to characterisation. Refuse rationalisation, categoritisation of gender, class, race, nationality. Refuse unequal treatment, sliding salaries, poor life chances based on the lack of profitibility of your passion or 'vocational choice'. Embrace the unusual, the unpredictable and the sub-par which make society more than the sum of its parts.
Thursday, 1 July 2010
Summer Playlist: Glastonbury Special
Tracklist:
The Eraser (Satoshi Tomiie Reconstruction)- Thom Yorke
Hatari- tUnE-YarDs
Angel Echoes (Caribou Remix)- Four Tet
Graceland- Grizzly Bear
Watching the Planets- Flaming Lips feat. Karen O
On and Ever Onward- Dirty Projectors & Bjork
Intro- The XX
Who Am I (What's My Name?)- Snoop Dog
10 Mile Stereo (Cough Syrup Remix)- Beach House
Bossy (SebastiAn remix)- Kelis
Sera Sera- Shakira feat. Wyclef Jean
Hyph Mngo- Joy Orbison
At Home He's a Tourist- Gang of Four
This is the Way- Devendra Banhart
You Don't Wash (Actress Remix)- Kode9
Always On My Mind (Julian Mendelsohn Extended Dance Version)- Pet Shop Boys
Bonus Track:
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