Multitude

Democracy at a global scale is becoming for the first time, a real possibility that we call the multitude’s project. Multitude’s project is not only expressing the desire of a world of equality and liberty, it does not only claim for a global democratic society open and inclusive: it actually demonstrate the means of releasing this desire.

from Multitude. This, if anything represents the ethos and aims of Bella Caledonia. Tom Nairn reviews  Multidude by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri:

The cover of Multitude invites bookshop browsers not just to read it, but to ‘Join the many. Join the Empowered.’ The missionary tone is underlined by Naomi Klein’s blurb – ‘inspiring’ – and a frisson added by the book’s appearance: a brown paper wrapping like those used to discourage porn thieves and customs inspectors. Trembling fingers that go further are reminded that this book succeeds Empire (2000), by the same authors, which provided a picture of the global imperium supposed to have followed the Cold War – not the American Empire, but a wider settlement of which US supremacy was just one part. This imperium has generated global resistance, which all purchasers are now invited to approve, in the name of democracy.

Hardt and Negri’s multitude should not be confused with the working class, or any ethnic and national group. It seems to mean humanity in general – ‘The multitude is many-coloured, like Joseph’s magical coat,’ but the coat hides an increasingly common will, summed up by the authors as ‘democracy’. Readers are warned that the book’s argument may not be ‘immediately clear’ and are exhorted to be patient, for Multitude is ‘a mosaic from which the general design gradually emerges’. Before turning to that design, it’s important to stress how welcome this expansiveness is. In a venture like this, social anthropology and philosophy are as important as economics or conventional international relations. As Gopal Balakrishnan wrote in his review of Empire in New Left Review, it seems apposite to cite Virgil: ‘The final age that the oracle foretold has arrived; the great order of the centuries is born again.’

And yet, as in the previous book, this oracular tone is puzzling. If the outlook for global democratisation were as good as these prophets maintain, then surely a more empirical, matter-of-fact tone would suffice? Instead, an exalted and visionary tone prevails, right up to the high note of rapture on which they end: ‘Today time is split between a present that is already dead and a future that is already living . . . In time, an event will thrust us like an arrow into that living future. This will be the real political act of love.’ Hardt and Negri’s project is constantly undermined by an inebriate tendency towards the absolute. It is as if the authors find themselves transported by a philosophical elixir of oneness which, though invariably justified as ‘radicalism’, may in fact carry the reader towards an odd style of religiosity. Nor is this just a side effect: it is this that we are really being invited to ‘join’ – empowerment through faith, via spiritual transport.

You’ll have to tell them frankly you can’t explain
Why Nineveh is still standing though you hope to learn
At the feet of a prophet who for all you know
May be turning his donkey toward Nineveh even now.

Carl Dennis, ‘Prophet’

While Empire made some readers think of Virgil and Rome, in Multitude the defining shift is more restricted: the postmodern has become the premodern. The philosophy of Spinoza has replaced both Marxism and capitalist neo-liberalism. While affected timelessness is inherent in the Hardt-Negri rhetoric – hence their over-easy references to antiquity or the Middle Ages – the centre of gravity in this book is firmly in the later 17th century. Once regarded as an important precursor of the Enlightenment and of Marxist materialism, the thought of Spinoza (1632-77) is redeemed in these pages, as a wisdom awaiting its vindication in a globalised epoch yet to come. In vital ways, Spinoza told the whole story: his apparently abstract pantheistic philosophy explained history itself, future as well as past, and the globalisation process simply favours a return to such understanding, after the mounting sorrows and delusions of modernity.”

Read the full article here.

Not So Special Delivery

The same political forces that ask us to believe in the Union are the ones that are shredding Britain of the only civic institutions that would make that concept viable, public realm bodies such as the National Health Service, the Royal Mail and the education bodies are being broken down and sold off. As Eddie Barnes pointed out here there is a growing disparity to this approach North and South of the Border.

John Pilger in his latest piece for the New Statesman offers an acute observation on the wider context of the postal strike:

“The postal workers struggle is as vital for democracy as any national event in recent years. The campaign against them is part of a historic shift from the last vestiges of political democracy in Britain to a corporate world of insecurity and war. If the privateers running the Post Office are allowed to win, the regression that now touches all lives bar the wealthy will quicken its pace. A third of British children now live in low-income or impoverished families. One in five young people is denied hope of a decent job or education.

And now the Brown government is to mount a fire sale of public assets and services worth £16bn. Unmatched since Margaret That­cher’s transfer of public wealth to a new gross elite, the sale, or theft, will include the Channel Tunnel rail link, bridges, the student loan bank, school playing fields, libraries and public housing estates. The plunder of the National Health Service and public education is already under way.

The common thread is adherence to the demands of an opulent, sub-criminal minority exposed by the 2008 collapse of Wall Street and of the City of London, now rescued with hundreds of billions in public money and still unregulated with a single stringent condition imposed by the government. Goldman Sachs, which enjoys a personal connection with the Prime Minister, is to give employees record average individual pay and bonus packages of £500,000. The Financial Times now offers a service called How to Spend It.” Read the full piece here.

Joe Middleton writing for Bella here offers a personal account of dealings with the private service alternatives:

Another day, another strike. But there is one that particularly strikes a chord with me. Not because I wish to be some trendy lefty jumping on yet another bandwagon, but because in the case of the postal strike, there are some pretty serious issues at stake. Thing is, whatever our misgivings about the Royal Mail – the “Royal” part being one of them perhaps – the alternatives are far far worse. The postal service is already heavily mutilated by cuts from successive Tory and Labour administrations, and by EU “competition” laws. The Post Office has been asset stripped to disastrous effect, and we can’t blame the posties for fearing the same will happen to the Royal Mail.

British State – Police State

The British State has evolved into a surveillance society and a police state with the combination of digital technology, database culture and the use of  ‘the war on terror’ as a smokescreen for a full-on assault on civil liberties. From Tomlinson to Jean Charles de Menezes to the full extent of this co-ordinated national police force it adds up to a police state off the leash, unaccountable and dangerously out of control.

There is confirmation of years of political experience today as the Guardian announce:

“Police are gathering the personal details of thousands of activists who attend political meetings and protests, and storing their data on a network of nationwide intelligence databases.

The hidden apparatus has been constructed to monitor “domestic extremists”, the Guardian can reveal in the first of a three-day series into the policing of protests. Detailed information about the political activities of campaigners is being stored on a number of overlapping IT systems, even if they have not committed a crime.

Senior officers say domestic extremism, a term coined by police that has no legal basis, can include activists suspected of minor public order offences such as peaceful direct action and civil disobedience.”

More here. Read Adam Price on surveillance satire here.

Where are the slayers of big government when you need them?

The New 40% Rule

They’re just making it up now…Gerry Hassan in today’s Scotsman outlines the recent attempts to re-awaken an old debate that somehow we would need TWO referendums to gain independence. The first, you see, to sort of see if we wanted it, and the second, to, you know, er, just check we knew what we were talking about.

In the last few days, Jo Eric Murkens, a former researcher at the Constitution Unit has revisited the argument of their book, ‘Scottish Independence’ of a few years ago which made the case that Scotland needed to have not just one, but two votes on independence.

As  Gerry points out: “…there is no precedent anywhere in the world for two votes. Instead, it would be seen as another ‘40% rule’ – a constitutional barrier and the equivalent of gerrymandering to influence the ultimate result. “

But, I hear you say, I thought they didn’t want us to have one referendum now they want us to have two? Though Hassan recalls the 1979 attempts to derail the devolution vote – just think we could have avoided Thatcherism in Scotland if they hadnt done that! – he’s forgotten more recent history – whereby the devolution vote had added the Tartan Tax clause in an attempt to muddy the waters in 1997.

Gerry concludes:

“There are no comparative cases of two votes. Twenty four new nation states have been born since the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. Not one of them had two votes. Indeed not one new state anywhere has had two votes. Why should Scotland be the first and only one?”

Read the full article here.

Britain & Freedom

Our friend Tom Griffin argues that Anthony Barnett’s piece on the BNP and the BBC is the best he’s seen so far, and certainly Barnett is clear where some have been ambiguous:

“It is necessary and important to stress that Griffin is an English Fascist.”

He continues: “This means he wears a cloak of reasonableness wrapped around his prejudice. Choice phrases give the game away. Yesterday Griffin was interviewed by Martha Kearney on the BBC’s World at One.

In the course of his answers he referred to prisoners in British jails as “vermin”. She seemed to think this acceptable and let it pass. Of course, there are some very evil men behind bars in the UK. There are also over 4,000 women (in 2006, the last date given on the Prison Service website) and many sad, dyslexic short-term prisoners. To describe any of them as “vermin” is to fundamentally dehumanise some of our own citizens and part of the human race. Rats and cockroaches are vermin. You trap, kill poison… or gas them. The word was no slip, it occurs in official BNP communications. It gives permission to dream of extreme violence. It signals the real Fascism behind the New Fascism.

In these circumstances as the moral failure of the political class brings forth demons, the BNP has to be confronted. Stuart Hall got it right: they need to be engaged with by the media when they are part of a news story, but they should not be on Question Time giving us their views about everything as if they are an acceptable part of fireside conversation.”

Barnett’s point is not original (I knew the BNP were fascists!). The important point he makes is about the complicity and uselessness of the BBC. He makes two points:

“The reality is that it is part of the larger political class now seeking to perpetuate itself in the face of public discontent” and perhaps less obviously that:  “The BBC…is itself an extension of the surveillance society and the database state (for our own good of course).” Read the full article here.

Also good is Ian Bell in that dying organ, the Herald: “Tens of thousands of the men who fought in the Second World War were under no illusions. They disputed fascism with their lives and voted Churchill – whose image Griffin will not relinquish – out of office. A handful of them had bled with the International Brigades long before anti-fascism was “premature”, and found themselves treated to the state’s suspicion when they enlisted. No matter.

They did not go to death just to allow us the luxury of sophistry. The BNP is old evil newly painted. It finds democracy charming, and stupid. It loves our “debates”. So here’s a fact: no free society can allow liberty to those who loathe liberty.”

See Wikileaks here.

We Are All Learners

Two absolutely superb new  ventures have loomed into view recently. The first is the rather luverly looking This is Central Station, who say:  ‘this is a space for exploring art, film and design. Come in, join the community, share and discuss.’ Which seems like a good idea. This is their Beta version.

The second is the Bridge Network Project which states poetically: “There are no magical answers, false promises, just the belief that something else is possible.” Who can argue with that on a sunny Autumn Friday?

The Bridge is part of the City Strolls Empire of Vitality which seem to spark off endlessly  fantastic projects such as the Electron Club (see photo, right) amongst many many more:

“A series of workshops in self education. Held during Document 7 at the Electron Club CCA. The event and it’s organisers have no affiliations to any political party nor political ideology. We promise not to bore people rigid nor talk in a language they do not understand. Our purpose is to educate. There are no teachers nor students at this event. We are all learners.”

Carbon Futures

As the SNP gathers in Inverness the slogan “It’s Scotland’s Oil” seems an awfully long time ago. We rightly celebrate the best climate change bill in the world, but this from Grist makes the mood seem a little less celebratory:

“Schellnhehuber and his WBGU colleagues go a giant step beyond the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.N. body whose scientific reports are constrained because the world’s governments must approve their contents. The IPCC says that by 2020 rich industrial countries must cut emissions 25 to 40 percent (compared with 1990) if the world is to have a fair chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change. By contrast, the WBGU study says the United States must cut emissions 100 percent by 2020—in other words, quit carbon entirely within 10 years. Germany and other industrial nations must do the same by 2025 to 2030. China only has until 2035, and the world as a whole must be carbon free by 2050. The study adds that big polluters can delay their day of reckoning by “buying” emissions rights from developing countries, a step the study estimates would extend some countries’ deadlines by a decade or so.”

Read the full article here.

Edinburgh Claimants Solidarity

The ever-delivering Variant has a new issue out, with loads of great stuff, including Tom Jennings on “war as the health of the State” and John Barker on “KPMG and the Accountancy Oligopoly”. Best of all is the full interview with some of the people behind Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty (ECAP) and the Edinburgh Claimants’ Group who have for years been fighting alongside the poorest and most marginalised in society those long left behind by the “Labour and Trade Union Movement” and the traditional left. The history of this struggle that goes beyond  a workerist leftism is essential:

“The James Purnell’s 2008 Welfare Reform White Paper is the latest in a series of punitive welfare reform policies which go back at least as far as the infamous Youth Opportunities Programme of the late 1970s. Each ‘reform’, a word now inextricably linked to privatisation, has tended both to immiserate the claimant, and, in the language of Purnell, “deepen” and “widen” the obligation to work.

From Protest to Power

This week Edinburgh University Press have just published this book The Modern SNP from Protest to Power. This launch essay from author Gerry Hassan was published in the Sunday Times Ecosse section, which isn’t published online, so the link for the full article is to Gerry’s own site:

“While not disputing the centre-left nature of today’s Nationalists, what drives the party in its soul is not social democracy, but a sense of being ‘Scotland’s party’. This can at times be articulated as an ‘I believe in Scotland’ outlook, which has seen some of the party’s opponents believe they are perceived by the Nationalists as being ‘anti-Scottish’. This infuriates Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem politicians who believe that the SNP see themselves as having exclusive ownership of ‘Scotland’.

Piscator

This from Alastair McIntosh: “In the forecourt of Euston station sits a tractor-sized sculpture called Piscator. “Silvery and enigmatic”, said the Telegraph in its obituary of Sir Eduardo Paolozzi. He’d crafted the piece in honour of Erwin Piscator, the German exponent of so-called “epic theatre”.

I pondered Piscator during a break at a Quaker conference on the “zero-growth economy” – linking climate change and the credit crunch. Piscator just brooded, stolid and squat. But the scene shifted. In some epic theatre of my own mind he became an old-fashioned locomotive … elemental, unstoppable, stoked by fires of the human predicament.

Green fixes seek to reconcile economy with ecology. But the harsh truth is that many don’t add up when ripped from their contexts of honest-to-God simplicity and forced to serve industrial frenzy…”  full article here.