Social Issues

The fine line between solidarity and self-criticism

I recently read an interesting article in The Nation entitled Letter to my Allies on the Left, which discusses the pessimism and apathy which plagues the left in many ways. Particularly, voter apathy is a serious issue; there are innumerable elections that have been won by the right because the many on the left have decided it is better not to vote than to vote for a centrist candidate. There is the tendency to ignore any successes that are made if they are not seen as sufficient, or if they coincide with losses. The in-fighting between Social Democrats, Socialist Libertarians, Trotskyists and old-school Communists is the source of a lot of wasted effort when a great deal of common progress can be made before we go our separate ways.

On the other hand, while solidarity is a good thing overall, there are some problems, and it would be naïve to think that all the left needs is more solidarity. One need look no further than the atheist movement to see the flip-side. The atheist movement now suffers from endemic sexism precisely because that sexism has not been challenged. While getting together and working on our common atheism, disregarding other views, works for solidarity, it comes at the price of accepting misogyny. (more…)

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Conflicting Worldviews

As a result of writing the essay, Crime as a Public Welfare Issue, the line of thinking towards human beings, less as absolutely free-willed actors, but as any other animal or machine, at least to a degree, products of causation, leads me again to ponder the different paths which many of us have taken politically.

I myself started out in life politically apathetic to what was essentially quite a late point. Many of my peers at school had already developed allegiances to one party or another. It was only when I began to recognise that the views I held were actually ‘political’ in nature that I started to form associations of my own. Unfortunately, at this point, these were the wrong associations. I fell into the trap of the far-right; of racism, homophobia, sexism, ableism and of general intolerance.

I think that the thing I now understand, looking back, is that I wasn’t a bad person back then. I didn’t decide to have those views because I was particularly hateful. This is why I feel it is necessary to challenge this misconception, held by many on the left, that those on the right are terrible people and somehow, that’s the end of it. Yet, I think of my own friends who are currently right-wing and again come to the realisation that they are not at all ill-meaning people. These are people with whom I am friends and have witnessed the compassion, empathy and generosity they are capable of. The question of why they would take up a political position that seems contrary to all of these things is therefore not as clear-cut as initially thought. (more…)

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Crime as a Public Welfare Issue

“With authority, punishment will pass away. This will be a great gain – a gain, in fact, of incalculable value. As one reads history, not in the expurgated editions written for school-boys and passmen, but in the original authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment, than it is by the occurrence of crime. It obviously follows that the more punishment is inflicted the more crime is produced, and most modern legislation has clearly recognised this, and has made it its task to diminish punishment as far as it thinks it can. Wherever it has really diminished it, the results have always been extremely good. The less punishment, the less crime. When there is no punishment at all, crime will either cease to exist, or, if it occurs, will be treated by physicians as a very distressing form of dementia, to be cured by care and kindness. For what are called criminals nowadays are not criminals at all. Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of modern crime. That indeed is the reason why our criminals are, as a class, so absolutely uninteresting from any psychological point of view. They are not marvellous Macbeths and terrible Vautrins. They are merely what ordinary, respectable, commonplace people would be if they had not got enough to eat. When private property is abolished there will be no necessity for crime, no demand for it; it will cease to exist. Of course, all crimes are not crimes against property, though such are the crimes that the English law, valuing what a man has more than what a man is, punishes with the harshest and most horrible severity, if we except the crime of murder, and regard death as worse than penal servitude, a point on which our criminals, I believe, disagree. But though a crime may not be against property, it may spring from the misery and rage and depression produced by our wrong system of property-holding, and so, when that system is abolished, will disappear. When each member of the community has sufficient for his wants, and is not interfered with by his neighbour, it will not be an object of any interest to him to interfere with anyone else. Jealousy, which is an extraordinary source of crime in modern life, is an emotion closely bound up with our conceptions of property, and under Socialism and Individualism will die out.”

Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism

“When it comes to crime and punishment, far too often politicians confuse toughness, longer sentences, greater use of imprisonment, harsher treatment, with effectiveness, dealing with addictions, mental health, unemployment and homelessness and requiring offenders to make amends to their victims.”

Juliet Lyon, Director of the Prison Reform Trust

“Train any population rationally, and they will be rational. Furnish honest and useful employments to those so trained, and such employments they will greatly prefer to dishonest or injurious occupations. It is beyond all calculation the interest of every government to provide that training and that employment; and to provide both is easily practicable.”

Robert Owen

I want to challenge a set of beliefs that are absolutely fundamental to our society. Beliefs that are not only embedded in our social practice and our laws, but in the language we speak.

The most core of those beliefs is in the idea of what we call ‘good’ and ‘evil’. The word ‘bad’ is used to present a less superstitious impression, but in truth it still conveys the same superstitious meaning. It is put upon us from a very early age that people and actions alike can be divided cleanly into ‘good’ and ‘bad’. It is this idea that forms the basis of our concept of ‘justice’. These ideas are collectively thrust upon us by parents, teachers, churches and entertainment. God and the Devil, Superman and Lex Luthor, the Sheriff and the Outlaw; all are manifestations of the same conceptual divide. When we tell our children about the ‘bad people’, we still do so in a superstitious manner, identifying them in terms of their actions rather than any inherent factor that causes them to be ‘bad’; as if they are not people who perform actions for a reason, but some manifestation of supernatural evil. In fact the logic behind this, as far as the ordinary thinker is concerned, runs dry at this point. It is simply established that there are ‘bad people’ who ‘are bad’ and therefore do ‘bad things’ because they are ‘bad’. (more…)

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We need to stop arguing on the right’s terms

It’s a funny game, politics.  The vast majority of people now consider themselves to be somewhat apathetic, especially if you take a look at poll turnouts.  On the other hand, most people are more wrapped up in it than ever; it’s simply that they’re unaware that their opinions, usually strong opinions, classify as politics.  What’s more, disillusionment with the major parties has lead to many declaring that, “they’re just as bad as one another”, even though they might have strong views on issues that divide the parties.  Actually, I could rail on about this kind of pseudo-apathy for a good hour, but I’ll save that for another time.  The fundamental point is that we’ve become unaware of the political basis of many beliefs.  Not only that, but as beliefs once considered partisan have come into the mainstream, these beliefs have ceased to be considered partisan, or even political at all.  Effectively, the political standard, the centre ground, has been redefined.

When Margaret Thatcher was asked what her greatest achievement was, she replied, “”Tony Blair and New Labour. We forced our opponents to change their minds”.  Arguably however, the Conservatives did much more than this.  Their greatest trick was to go so far to the right themselves, that two effects were realised: the first, that labour would follow them over to the right, as is common in bi-partisan systems; the second being that the centre ground of politics was moved, the standard brought over to the right, therefore meaning that even though New Labour were — economically, at least — right wing, they were still perceived as left wing, under this new relativism.  Not only did this trick of perception fool those in the centre, but also those on the left, who then found themselves defending a Labour that went against many of their own core beliefs, and whose neo-liberal economic doctrine flew in the face of old Labour. (more…)

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Corporations have no place in education

My friend Ivor alerted me to a scheme currently run by an American doughnut company, in collaboration with schools and community groups.  The scheme involves doughnuts being sold to the school or group at a discounted rate, which are then sold on, to the public or to pupils. While the scheme might sound like a good idea at first glance, there are some major negative points.

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The Daily Mail’s portrayal of cannabis is textbook bad journalism

Generally speaking, I try not to get too hung up on the individual failings of articles in the right wing press.  I could spend from now until Christmas objectively criticising just one edition of the Express or Mail – and they are tame compared to their American counterparts.  Every so often however, they seem to lose the plot a little bit, drop their pseudo-moderate cover and output what can only be described as textbook, blatant propoganda, the likes of which Joseph Goebbels would be proud.  Every once in a while, the logical jumps made become so cavernous, that one is forced to consider the possibility that the Daily Mail is in fact a working proof of Poe’s Law; that their ranks are in fact filled with undercover liberals, pretending to hold conservative viewpoints, while deliberately presenting themselves as idiots, in order to discredit the conservative ideology.

Press editorial standards, including those supposedly upheld by the PPC, state that there should be a separation between news and opinion.  That means that the DM is free, within reason, to publish its racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, xenophobic, hysterical and illogical babble, so long is it is clearly portrayed as opinion.  It is also free, should it choose to make such a bold leap, to publish actual facts, about actual things, things that actually happened.  What it is not free to do, is to mix the two up.  Of course, this means that yesterday it went ahead and did exactly that, exploiting the death of a young man to push its anti-drugs message. (more…)

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What ever happened to conviction?

Conviction.  Not of the criminal kind, but the act, the nature, of sticking to your beliefs.  What ever happened to it?

I may not be all that old, but I’m pretty sure there was a time when people had it – or at least, some people had it.  Yet it seems we’re at an all time low right now.   Looking at the commentary following the death of Steve Jobs a few days ago reminded me of how bad things really are.  People who I often agree with, who stand up and speak out for fair trade, localism, workers’ rights, environmentalism and against consumerism, mourning for the CEO of a company whose own actions are the complete opposite to all those ideals.  That isn’t to say that Apple are any worse than their competitors, but we don’t put their competitors on a pedestal.  People seem to think that it’s rebellious to leave Microsoft for Apple, which leaves me drowning in irony. (more…)

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Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

The infamous words above, of course, from Macbeth.  I thought of these words in relation to the recent spate of protests, of the Occupy kind and otherwise.  Let me say first that I am greatly supportive of these protests.  I am also however, concerned. (more…)

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Notes on Swing Voting

Current events in US politics have had me thinking.  There’s a huge fear that a lack of satisfaction in Obama may well provide an opportunity for the extreme right.  It is true that the chances of an radical group coming to power increase drastically in times of crisis, but we must not view the situation as on first glance.

One of the great advantages of a two party system is that those who lean left, can vote for the left-leaning party and those who lean right, vice verse.  There’s no worry that, as in a three party system like the UK, a vote for the Lib Dems might be “wasted” and instead benefit the Conservatives (of course, this is one reason we wanted STV/AV).  The cost of this however is a lack of choice – if the left-leaning party is in fact too centerist for you as a voter, you’re between a rock and a hard place. (more…)

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Obligatory Post-Riot Blog Post

As a result of the recent riots, it seems like every man and his dog has returned to their blog to pass comment.  I’m therefore going to, in typical riot style, join the masses and put forward a brief (turned out not so brief) post.  It’d almost be wrong not to.  One thing I must say however is that most of what can be said has been – I won’t claim to be adding anything new, although I have managed to agregate some of the better stories of the past week or two.  The unfortunate problem is that the people with the power to change things aren’t listening, so we might just have to shout louder to escape the liberal echo-chamber.  Please though, no looting.

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