Of course, everyone knows the story of Zaire, the defeat of Sonny Liston, the refusal to go to Vietnam and Ali’s library of famous taunts, but here are a few things you might not have heard yet. As a warm up, here‘s the best Ali youtube video I’ve seen to date, followed by this video where Ali stops a suicidal man from killing himself.

1) Underwater Combat

Such a wonderful self-promoter was Ali in his early days that, when confronted with Flip Schulke, a photographer who did freelance underwater photography for Life, he had to think on his feet. Ali immediately burst into a frenzied discussion of his ‘secret’ training method heretofore unknown: underwater boxing.

Transfixed, the photographer took dozens of photographs of Ali up to his neck in a swimming pool, throwing punches and performing defence. The technique, Ali proudly claimed, forced him to compete with the added traction and weight of moving underwater, making his land-speed all the higher when Angelo finally handed him a towel. The result? A five page spread in America’s biggest magazine at that time.

2) Ali Inspired Rocky

Well, that’s perhaps a bit misleading. Seeing Ali fight Chuck Wepner, a journerman boxer who knocked Ali down (but ultimately lost the fight) inspired Stallone to write Rocky. Ali became the not so subtle basis basis for Apollo Creed, the mouthy, show-off that Balboa finally defeats in Rocky II. Stallone says of Ali:

“…as fate would have it, I saw the fight between Ali and Chuck Wepner. And the fight was really undistinguished until the man who was considered an sbolute pushover knowkced the unbeatable champion down. I saw how the crowd reacted, and I said to myself, ‘This is what it’s all about.’ Everybody wants a slice of immortality, wheter it’s for fifteen rounds in a fight or two minutes in their own life. They want that sensation that they have a shot at the impossible dream, and that solidified the whole thing for me…Rocky came out of that fight between Wepner and Ali…And of course, Apollo Creed was a thinly disguised impersonation of Ali.”

What’s also entertaining is that many of the more bizarre aspects of Rocky: the fight with the wrestler in Rocky III, and the computer simulation that started off Rocky Balboa both happened to Ali. The fight with the wrestler we’ll get to in a minute, but as for the computer simulation story, the bizarre tale goes like this, according to Burt Sugar:

It began with an old concept. While Ali was in exile, an advertizing executive named Murray Woroner put data on sixteen heavyweight champtions into a computer and created a fictitious tournament which was broadcast on radio.” (196)

The Rocky Marciano-Ali fight, which Marciano won, was then turned into a televised bout using filmed rounds with different endings, which ere broadcast for closed circuit viewing.

3) Ali: the Wrestling Connection

Naturally, there is something in Ali’s showmanship that likens him to a professional wrestler, albeit far classier and charismatic than anyone on the WWE rosters. That is, apart from the Rock, who shamelessly emulates “The Greatest” in his persona. Personally, I would pay most of all my prospective future earnings to see Ali in his Prime versus the Rock. What’s more, Don King has probably considered this possibility, so I don’t see why you shouldn’t.

The Rock’s term ‘The People’s Champion’ has a strange connection to Ali’s mythology as well. Elvis himself had Ali fitted for a jacket bearing the inscription ‘The People’s Champ’. Still, the strangest crossover with professional wrestling came via a strange exhibition match with a Japanese wrestler called Inoki. This bizarre match, which was supposed to generate millions of dollars and drew in millions of viewers worldwide (including, as wrestling fans will be happy to her, one screening organized by Vince McMahon) turned out to be farcical for two many reasons to mention. As Hauser writes:

“Ali-Inoki was insufferably boring. For fifteen rounds, Inoki crab-walked around the ring, horizontal to the canvas, kicking at Ali’s legs. That was the fight.” (337)

What’s worse is that this bizarre disaster of a fight caused Ali serious leg injuries, described by Freddie Pacheco

“Because of the kicks, Ali suffered ruptured blood vessels and his left leg filled uip with about a quart of blood.” (337)

According to many, this hampered his mobility from then on.

4) The Nation of Islam’s other beliefs.

The Nation of Islam were, among other things, sci-fi prophets. While this isn’t a Ali fact per se, the book also reveals some of the more bizarre details of the group’s belief system. These days, opening a talk by claiming the Jews control America via the Federal Reserve is enough to reduce and organization’s credibility to a sub-zero level, but added to the early mix was, alongside black separatism and racial supremacy, a belief a ‘Motherplan’ was en route to deliver America’s black population. Farrakhan, helpfully, explains the contemporary view:

“The Honorable Elijah Muhammad told us of a giant Motherplane that is made like the universe, spheres within spheres. White people call them unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Ezekiel, in the Old Testament, saw a wheel that looked like a cloud by day but a pillar of fire by night. The Hon. Elijah Muhammad said that that wheel was built on the island of Nippon, which is now called Japan, by some of the original scientists. It took 15 billion dollars in gold at that time to build it. It is made of the toughest steel. America does not yet know the composition of the steel used to make an instrument like it. It is a circular plane, and the Bible says that it never makes turns. Because of its circular nature it can stop and travel in all directions at speeds of thousands of miles per hour. He said there are 1,500 small wheels in this mother wheel which is a half mile by a half mile (800 by 800 m). This Mother Wheel is like a small human built planet. Each one of these small planes carry three bombs.”

What also struck me as unfortunate was Elijah Muhammad’s decision to prevent Ali from being an actor in Heaven CAn Wait, being developed by Warner Brothers and with a Frances Ford Coppella screenplay, thereby denying us all what would have doubtlessly been a career of family friendly summer blockbusters or culminating with Ali hosting some sort of unspeakably awesome reverse Jeremy Kyle talk show.

5) Ali: The Diplomatic Years

Such a popular global figure, Ali was at one point considered for a role as ambassador to Iran during the hostage crisis. As Hauser writes:

“Ali took his diplomatic skills seriously, on occasion referring to himself as “the black Henry Kissinger.”

And he wasn’t alone in that regard. Jimmy Carter ackonoledges that, soon after ht eIranian takeover of the United States embassy in Tehran, “We very seriously contemplated having Ali serve as an intermediary, perhaps in conjunction with Andy Young [United Staets ambassador to the United Nations] to find an avenue of communication to release the hostages.” (395-6)

While this unfortunately did not come to pass, Ali was recruited for another diplomatic mission, this time to Africa to push for the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Unsurprisingly, this was taken rather badly in Tanzania, Ali’s first port of call, where officials wondered aloud whether Chris Evans would be sent by the U.S. to negotiate with London. Despite the unseemly nature of the trip, Ali comes off rather well, albeit a little behind on world events. When questioned about the hypocricy of the US’s refusal to boycott the Montreal Olympics four years earlier due to South Africa’s involvement, Ali said in a press conference: “They didn’t tell me about that in America…Maybe I’m being used to do something that ain’t right. You’re going making me look at things different. If I find out I’m wrong , I’m going back to America and canel the whole trip…I’m not a traitor to black people. If you can show me something I don’t know, I want to be helped. You all have given me some questions which are good and are making me look at this thing different.” (397)

6) Ali and fan-mail

I don’t know whether this is still true, because the first edition of this book was published in 1991, and reissued in 2004. Whether this was edited, added in or changed in the more recent edition, I’m unsure. Even so, I like to imagine it’s still somewhat the case. Either way, Hauser writes that, at the time of writing:

“Around eleven, Ali returns home and shifts his attention to the daily mail. He gets more than a hundred letters  week, and personally answers every one.” (464)

I’m heartened to hear this, and will be duly be writing one of my own. This statement comes towards the end of the book, which ends on an interesting note, finding optimism and ambition in Ali, then aged

“People said I had a full life, but I ain’t dead yet, I’m just getting started. All of my boxing, all of running around, all of my publicity, was just the start of my life. Now my life is really starting. Fighting injutice, fighting racism, fithgint crime, fighting illiteracy, fighting poverty. using this face the world knows so well, and going out and fighting for truth and different causes.” (514)

And since then he appears to have been doing just that. Receiving numerous awards, acting as a UN Messenger of Peace, opening a not for profit centre in Louisville Kentucky, performing numerous humanitarian acts, and so on. On second thoughts, that probably does mean he’s too busy to write back, but I’ll just have to let that one slide.

The final chapter, excluding the paperback afterword – which I’ll not be covering – opens by discussing three sites of truth in contemporary life: political commitments, the economic sphere and scientific knowledge. Zizek points towards the inarticulation these generate; that, despite the wealth of information and significantion there is a distinct lack of ‘quilting’, or linking the information to a broader, ‘Master’, narrative. Hence the farce of ethical capitalism alongside the cacophony of science and seemingly indeterminate risks. It is in this void, or ‘worldlessness’ as Badiou would put it, that the communist project should be re-imagined. Zizek writes:

“This is the true legacy of ’68, at the core of which wa a rejection of the liberal-capitalist system, a no o the totality of it, best encapsulated in the formula Soyons relistes, demandons l’impossilne! The true utopia is the belief that the existing global system can reproduce itself indefinitely; the only way to be truly “realistic” is to think what, within the coordinates of this system, cannot but appear as impossble. How are we to prepare for this radical change, to lay the foundations for it? The leat we can do is to look for traces of the new communist collective in already existing social or even artistic movements. What is tehrefoer needed today is a refined search for “signs coming from the future,” for indications of this new radical questioning of te system.” (363)

What follows ias an outline of suggestions for how to think about this new movement. The suggestions are of varying quality and, while you’ve probably cottoned onto this alredy, Zizek’s suggestions aren’t so much about what we should call it or ‘what the logo should be  but more connected to the sort of music it should structurally resemble and so on (Eric Satie, if you’re curious).

It’s certainly good to get these perspectives and, regardless of what you think of Zizek, I think there is something kind of ballsy about making the case for discipline and political violence when you’re a famous public intellectual and carried by a pretty major publishing house.

The first precept concerns social immersion. Consistent with the theological references earlier and, coming late to the anti-globalization legacy, Zizek writes, referencing Kafka:

”The first lesson of Kafka’s “Josephione” is that we have to endose a shamelessly total form of immersion into the social body, a shared ritualistic social performance that would send all good liberals into shock with its totalitarian” intensity … which is the “vehicle for the collectivity’s affirmation of itself.”” (371)

There is then a defense of this from potential aspects of “totalitarianism”, citing the emancipatory aspects of these practices against the liberal reading of authoritarianism in any mass ritual. He also returns to violence, discussing the familiar topic of the short-circuit between structural violence – starvation, poverty and so on – and subjective or terroristic violence, citing the Naxalite Rebellion as an example of one passing into the other.

Then we get the libidinal economy of such a subject. Here, Zizek surprises, touching lightly (as in: not explicitly) on the points about the post-traumatic subject in the last chapter:

“once I forfeit my right to a “normal life,” I also, in a way, forfeit my right to “bare life,: I cut off my link with mere survival, with clinging to life for life’s sake, and koin the :living dead,” become some who, in renouncing his right to life, thereby overcomes his fear of death.” (397)

This survival point neatly rhymes with an earlier observation that, among other things, the aim of the radical collective wherein survival needs would be accounted for automatically, engendering freedom. As Zizek writes:

“…the disciplined collecive leads not to some Dionysian uniformity, but rather clears the slate and opens up the field for authentic idiosyncrasies. More precisely, what such passionate immerion suspends is not primarily the “rational Self” bu the reign of the survival (self-preservation_ instinct on which, as Adorno knew, the functioning of our “normal” rational egos is based.” (273).

Overall then, we have calls for a disciplined collective, taking structural violence seriously and, in turn, rejecting completely the co-ordinates of the capitalist life-plan. There is certainly more detail in the chapter- to stress an obvious point – that I can really relay in souch a cursory summary, and is linked in turn to Zizek’s theology: reflecting on a God who has deserted us, leaving us fully responsible for humanity, designated here as the ‘holy ghost’ both here and during his youtubeable talk at occupy wall street.

I think this chapter works excellently for three reasons. Firstly, it makes some sort of use out of the typically anecdotal stories about ethical capitalism, chocolate laxatives, and so on, and winds them up into something broader. Secondly, it engages in dangerous thinking which sidesteps the normal prospective proposals from academics like a Tobin Tax and ‘more emphasis on the things that are really important’. Instead, we get a sense of something that is not yet overdetermined and toothless. Finally, and perhaps most of all. it’s a rebuttal towards the audience who consider him conformist and establishement, as well as a follow up to his accusation  that his fans wanted a ‘revolution without a revolution’.

Overall Grade: A

Concluding Thoughts

That brings us to the conclusion of this section. Living in the End Times is a good – though hardly great – Zizek book which makes some very shaky connections and some altogether compelling ones. It’s chewy: the arguments are nuanced but valuable, and despite a certain degree of repetition, Zizek manages to bring in something baldly normative, though dressed in obscure references and difficult language, instead of an easier and more familiar reliance on reinterpretation.

Overall: B+

Next week, I’ll be revisiting Zizek with a discussion of the Parallax View. Also in the pipeline is ‘What if Latin American Ruled the World’ by Oscar Guardiola-Rivera. If there are any books you would like to see in this section, don’t hesitate to leave a comment. In the meantime, look forward to hip-hop analysis, a review of Mic Righteous’ new mixtape (you can download it here, donations recommended) and some reflections on Muhammad Ali. Hopefully, some reading of SOPA and PIPA in the context of ‘cultural commons’, as opposed to ‘unintended consequences’ and censorship will also emerge over the weekend, if time would only have the decency to relax a bit.

In Chapter 3, Zizek  ambitiously ponder whether Marx might not be divided into a later, non Marxist “Marx” and the earlier, less impressive version. Put another way, we have a problematization of utopian thought based around Marx’s theory of exploitation. It’s a shame that the reading of natural capitalism, found in afterword, isn’t here too, as it’s one of the stronger examples of this. This is by far the most ambiguous and confusing chapter in the book, so please feel free to disregard this interpretation if you have a better one.

From what I can tell, the break in Marxism Zizek wants to revisit is where Marx starts moving away from a ‘Marxist’ definition of labour – one that sees it as the fundamental aspect of all society – into a more reflexive analysis that sees this very abstraction as a result of capitalism itself. Concluding a bracing and somewhat difficult to follow line of argument, he concludes:

“ Returning to Marx, then: there is not so much a poetic as a theoretical justice in the fact tha the manuscript of the third volume of Capital breaks off with a class analysis: one should read this break not as a sign of the need to change the theoretical approach from objective social analysis to a more subjective, but as an indication of the need to turn the text reflexively back onto itself, to realize that all the categories the text had analyzed up to this point, starting with the simple commodity, had involve class struggle.” (204)

That is to say,  the qualities such as abstract labour and commodity form which had foregrounded the Marxist critique were in themselves the result of the reality of class struggle and the imposition of capitalist forms. This is why, earlier in the chapter, Zizek speculates about the links between “really existing socialism” and their reification of labour, wondering whether these oppressive results were due to an immature reading of Marxist categories.

While he is interested in resuscitating the critique of political economy, this requires a new understanding of ‘exploitation’, as well as an understanding of the ‘general intellect’, the immaterial labour done increasingly in place of material labour in the West that is in turn privatized. This is a slice of a bigger problem Zizek is trying to wrestle with more generally: how is it that, consistently, protesting subjects are not the most exploited but rather the ‘salaried’ bourgeoisie, those with a surplus income whose labour is primarily affective and concerned with information. It would be wrong to try and prise some sort of conclusion out of these speculations, but we do get some ambiguous pointers which I imagine will come to fruition in Zizek’s future work:

“The paradox is while this “immaterial labour” no longer involves the separation of labour from its  immediate “objective” conditions (workers own their computers, etc., which is why they can make contracts as autonomous producers), nevertheless the “substance” of “immaterial labour” (what Lacan alled the “big Other” the network of symbolic relations) cannot be “appropriated by the collective subject(s) the way the substance of material labour can be. The reason is very precise: the “big Other” (the symbolic substance) is teh very network of intersubjective (“collective”) relations, as such its “appropriation” can only be achieved if intersubjectivity is reduced to a single subject (even if it is a “collective” one). At the level of the “big Other,” “reconciliation£ between subject and substance can no longer be conceived as the subject’s (re-) appropriatiuon of the substance, but only as the reconciliation of subjects mediated by substance.” (233)

Ultimately, this gets us here:

“…the problem is that the rise of “intellectual”labour (scientific knowledge as well as practical savoir-faire) to a hegemonic position…undermines the standard notion of exploitation, since it is no longer labour time which serves as teh source and ultimate measure of value. But what this means is that the concept of exploitation needs to be radically re-thought.” (241)

The way forward, for Zizek, is to modify the ‘labour theory of value’ which maintains that there is an inherent value to commodities which is a product of their use-value or their labour time. This introduces the basic problem with alternative currencies and so on, as it imagines that there is something other than capitalism and exchange value which regulates the inherent value of a commodity:

“In other words, when Marx defines exchange-value as the mode of appearance of value, one should mobilize here the entire Hegelian weight of the opposition between essence and appearance: essence exists only insofar as it appears, it does not pre-exist its appearance. In the same way, the value of a commodity is not its intrinsic substantial property which exists independently of tis appearance in exchange. What this means is that Marx’s distinction between concrete and abstract labour is also a kind of misnomer: in a Hegelian sense, “concrete” labour (an individual working on a natural object, transforming it to make it satisfy some human need) is an abstraction from the network of concrete social relations within which it always takes place.” (214)

We then get this very long, often rather rambling set of speculations about how we should interpret Marx through the lens of various theoretical thinkers (Lukacs, Hegel, Karatani, and so on). This chapter is hard going, but from my understanding Zizek is taking aim at the notion that, in some objective sense, labour creates value, which can be accurately measured and rewarded, thus avoiding exploitation. This doesn’t work because our tools for measuring labour and value descend from a false, yet fully self-sustaining world of appearances, this is to say capitalism, which develops value through it’s own internal processes.

In addition to this main thrust, there are also various barbs aimed at, for example the social wage, which is criticized for requiring not only a very strong state but remaining within capitalism, and some critiques of Sloterdijk. Another way of putting this chapter simply would be to say the following: capitalism has it’s own internal logic and creates appearances which Marx attempted to demystify. However, this initial attempts at demystification which are mobilized today – the idea of a social wage which overcomes exploitation and exploitative labour relations, the idea of really rewarding us for our labour time, and so on – fall short because labour time is not, in the same sense that capital and resources as conceived of in Marx, an accurate measurement of exploitation in modern conditions. Therefore, either exploitation needs to be rethought or the labour theory of value should be done away with. Zizek says as much apropos Venezuela, which is arguably ‘exploiting’ the US on the basis of it’s oil rent. Prior to this, was Venezuela ‘exploited’? Here, Marx either has to be abandoned, as it’s scarcity rather than labour-time that measured the value of the oil, or the concept of exploitation must be reconsidered.  (242)

Ultimately, all of this fumbling will hopefully become ‘necessary’ in Zizek’s Hegelian sense: required retroactively in the positing of some new formula of exploitation. While I would prefer if we got the refined version ‘first’, I suppose that in this era of tweeting, blogging and so on, the process of how you make sausages (or, if you like, how you make dialectic break bricks) is on show for all to see.

Overall Grade: C

Chapter 4: Depression

Here what we get is a much more concise piece of analysis. The chapter begins by critiquing Chakrabarty’s idea of mutually existing histories: H1, the history of capital, and H2, the history of particular lifeworlds, that is to say, our Morris dancing, bagpipes and provincial traditions which escape capitalism. Zizek argues against this that what capital does is not so much coexist but fatally wound these worlds because, ultimately, culture must be made to bend to the all-encompassing logic of capitalism. To illustrate this, we have a long detour about the Chinese Communist Parties appropriation of Tibetan reincarnation and reduction of it to something to be administered and controlled by the state. (This is a good example of Law: rather than banning reincarnation and oppressing it with weapons, as is a failing strategy, the authorities regulate the prohibition on reincarnation, creating a much more effective method of control).

This is in part a result of the fact that capitalism negates social stability and so religion must be sought as something to give it substance: “The role of religion in China as a force of stability against the capitalist dynamic is thus officially sanctioned – what bother sthe Chinese authorities in the case of sects like the Falun Gong is merely their independence from state control.” (288)

However, by erasing the organic lifeworlds or bringing them into capitalism, there is something liberatory that happens. While this may well irk those who’ve dedicated time to protecting ‘authentic’ cultures from capitalism, Zizek argues that:

“…before we succumb to bemoaning the “alienating” effect of the fact that “relations between persons” are being replaced by “relations between things,” we should keep in mind the opposite, liberating , effect: displacement of the fetishism onto “relations between things” de-fetishizes “relatioins between persons,” allowing tehm to acquire “formal” freedom and autonomy.” (290)

This follows on to the argument that formal freedom is better than direct servitude, as in many ‘organic’ societies, although perhaps not all, because it creates the conditions for real freedom: “That very force of abstraction which dissolves organic lifeworlds is simultaneously the resource of emancipator politics.” (291) Of course, it can be argued that, not for the first time, Zizek is making a hash of the details in the hope of getting a closer look at the theory: obscuring the forest for th‘idea’ of the forest.

Enter Malabou: here Zizek takes up her notion of the new subjects created by ‘abstract negativity’, by the violence that comes from capitalism, natural disasters and medical problems. Unlike ‘organic’ subjects,  modern subjects cannot regard these developments as making any sort of sense, but rather as completely meaningless intrusions of trauma. In simpler, more local terms, it is the failure to maintain your crappy job on the basis that it is a prelude or paying of one’s dues in a long-term narrative, but rather simply an abstract imposition which has no real meaning. In the world of refugees, victims of natural catastrophes, war, displacement, economic shocks, pretty much everything in ‘The Shock Doctrine’ by Naomi Klein, this is an expanding phenomenon. What the trauma does is not so much scar a person’s horizon, but rather completely destroys the horizon and creates a new subject who is lost in the meaninglessness, forming a new self which, of course, remembers the old self but does not engage with the world it knew. Rather, “This subject lives death as a form of life – his or her life is the death drive embodied, a life deprived or erotic engagement..” (294)

However, and controversially, Zizek argues that Malabou may be wrong that these subjects are ‘suffering’ as such:

“This subject is primordially an enigmatic impenetrable Thing, totally ambiguous, such that one cannot but oscillate between attributing to it immense suffering and blessed ignorance. What characterizes it is the lack of recognition in a double sense: we do not recognize ourselves in it, there is no empathy possible, and trhe autistic subject, on account of its withdrawal, does not recognize us, its partner in communication.

At this point, one naturally wonders whether something has changed: all of these seems rather natural, one theorist at a time, a clear line of argument, and so on. But don’t worry, haters, because things pretty soon get messy, which is predictably the point at which Lacan-Hegel-Freud are brought into the equation. In this case, since Lacanian psychoanalysis identifies the self with the loss, or the gap separating us from our desire, the post-traumatic subject posits something new:

“The post-traumatic autistic subject is teh “living proof” that the subject cannot be identified (does not fully overlap) with the “sotires it tells itself about itself, “ with the narrative symbolic textures of its life: when all this is taken away, something (or, rather, nothing, but a form of nothing) remains, and this something is the pure subject of the death drive.” (311)

Let’s take a local example. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a TV show that could be used as a basic hermeneutic for most of the philosophical problems you care to name, Buffy finds herself helpless at the end of season 2. She has been expelled from school, her friends are in hospital, her mother has discovered her secret identity and rejected her, and Angel has no soul. Angel, or Angelous, the unsoiled vampire, is about to kill her with a sword, stopping to ask, rhetorically: “no plans, no tricks, no friends….when you take all that away, what’s left?” Thrusting the sword at her head, Buffy suddenly recovers, catching the blade between her palms and, opening her eyes, says “Me”, then proceeds to annihilate Angelous in a stunning display of almost pure drive, eventually killing him despite his re-souling by a bed-ridden Willow. Of course, this “Me” is not Buffy in all her – now destroyed – lifeworld co-ordinates, but the very living-dead, post traumatic thing which refuses to die.

Subsequently, Buffy leaves, creating a new identity in the form of Anne who tries not to live, ignoring her calling and trying to reconstruct a normal life. It is in the failure  to do so (recall her reinterpellation as the slayer towards the end of the episode) and later, in the failure to connect with her friends following resurrection, that Buffy becomes more and more pure death drive, the living embodiment of her Slayer-self, which proceeds negatively, abstractly, and purely in place of a personality proper. No wonder her relationships collapse with the exception of her entanglement with a properly dead nihilism in the form of Spike, again a pure drive deprived of his life substance in the form of the chip, but who eventually manages to regain a persona via the removal of the chip in his brain in season 7. This lifeworld which he enters is barred to Buffy, who only wishes she had a chip (“Did I come back wrong?”) to remove.

So, Buffy aside, what we have here is the detached subject that arises from the enclosure of the commons in capitalism, in this case the enclosure of our ‘inner nature’, the stories we tell ourselves, that is destroyed by meaningless trauma, which is the purest form of Cartesian cogito. The cogito, for Zizek is “the zero-pint of the overlapping of thinking and being, that point at which the subject, in a way, neither “is” (it is deprived of all positive substantial content) nor “thinks” (its thinking is reduced to the empty tautology of thinking that it thinks).” (312)

This is around where the chapter ends. I found this rather distressing as it feels like this is only the beginning. I thought that, on the basis of radical de subjectivized, formally free people being the threat to capitalism, we were going to go somewhere with this analysis of the post-traumatic subject. Certainly, the chapter points this way, and in this sense problematizes and opens ups the question of how we approach the misery of capitalism and liberalism, but it doesn’t seal the deal. What’s worse is that, alongside the earlier reading of the need to distance renew exploitation and, indeed, renew the distinction between proletarians (workers deprived of the fruits of their labour) and proletarianization (whereby our substance is taken, i.e. the commons enclosed, our lifeworlds and understanding is destroyed), there is clearly a link which might move us forward in this line of thought. Perhaps this ambiguity is where Zizek wants us, forced to make the links ourselves, or perhaps (however unlikely) this will all be resolved and stacked up in the final chapter and afterword.

Still, there is something potent and fascinating on display here. Alongside the excellent critical readings, we have the emergence of a new line of thought brought into the co-ordinates of thinking about capitalism more generally. The blue balls at the end detracts from this, but does not leave it empty.

Final Grade: A-

While I am more than aware that, in the halls of the sophisticated intelligentsia to which I have occasionally been invited (orat least looked in the window at), Zizek has gone from that cool guy you reference with regard to his obscurity to that bloated, over-hyped, reactionary mainstream populist, I am going to risk my credibility by declaring that I think he is an excellent, challenging thinker with a penchant for brilliance despite a tendancy to overcompensate. Cool status: high risk.

So, without further ado, lets have a look at Zizek’s book and see what we can prise out of it.

What Kind of Book is This?

OK, that was a bluff. Before we go much further it’s important to place this book in context. Zizek’s aim with his work is not to create a programme for social change. He can be found cursing those who come to his talks expecfting ‘a revolution without a revolution’. Principally, he is a theorist as sees the task of philosophy as being about reconceptualizing the questions we are asking, and demonstrating how the way we posit problems is part of the problem itself. As he recounts in Zizek!, when you have a real problem, don’t ask a philosopher. When, however, you appear to be stuck in a deadlock between mutually incompatible opposites (Zizek’s approach to multiculturalism would be an obvious approach here) a philosopher might be able to throw new light on the problem.

This, roughly, is how we should approach the 5 stagesof grief that give the book structure (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance). I’m not really going to go into the Interludes because I think that while, read a certain way, they can add a certain depth to proceedings, they are by and large in need of editing and simply substract from the sene that there is a coherent whole here. Each aspect of grief, of Living in the End Times, presupposes an approach to the problem which is flawed, or needs further thought out. Zizek is therefore tasked with making us look differently at each aspect, as times elevating a contingent ‘problem’ in it’s solution (as with anger) and sometimes demonstrating the futility of an apparent set of solutions (as with bargaining). Changes the way we think about problems, or, more precisely, changing the way we respond with grief reactions to the immanent catastrophe, is what’s at stake. Nothing more, nothing less.

However, while this is how I see it, this reading is a little too neat. This is where the context of being a slightly  pathological reader of Zizek’s work comes in. Despite seeing all the limitations, I keep coming back for more, and the limitation here is that, in Zizek’s oeurve, there are two types of work.

The first is the trailblazer: the focused, concise, and moving books which are precisely aimed and revalatory. The Puppet and the Dwarf, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, arguably The Ticklish Subject, at least for the first 4 chapters, Looking Awry, and so on. Then, there are the rambling, somewhat out-of-joint books that goes on for longer, adds up to less, and ultimately appear like a random selection of Zizek’s thoughts and, as a friend once pointed out, contain more than their fair share of airport metaphors or references to airport bookshops. In Defence of Lost Causes, Plague of Fantasies, Violence: Six Sideways Reflections, I’m looking at you. On the scale of Farce to Fantasies I’m definitely putting Living in the End Times in the camp of untidy, rushed, messy and insufficiently edited books. At times it feels like Verso sees Zizek as a license to print money, andresembles a comic book company putting out endless Batman tie-in books that are basically a mess but hey,  everyone will buy a Batman book and then agonize about where it fits into the continuity so why not?

Really, then, let’s get started:

Chapter 1: Denial

The first chapter deals with the utopian liberalism – the belief that liberalism can, if pushed far enough, deal with the inherent problems of capitalism. As above, we are here dealing with an attempt to show that this mode of thinking is part of the problem, a task to be achieved by reading it’s limitations.

The basic argument in the opening passages, illustrated with a complex myriad of exotic examples, is about two aspects of Law. The first is clear enough: Law functions not so much through prohibitions but through creating exceptions to the prohibitions and regulating the manner of their expression. Secondly, the way in which legal situations change, really change, is not by changing the status of those inevitably excluded by the Law – the Daleks, the poor, women, etc – but by an analysis which finds the problem within the entire system itself. This is illustrated neatly by the conflict between Gandhi and Ambedkar, the conflict between redeeming the untouchables and ‘honouring’ them, and Ambedkar’s view that “As long as there are castes, there will be outcasts.”. Indeed, they are functionally necessary, in as much as the debt-bonded and incarcerated are necessary today. We then move on to the arbitrary violence that ‘founds’ the Law, “The dimension of the law that the law cannot admit to publicly” (25). This is the point, emphasised with reference to Lenin, that “one should take responsibility for the revolutionary act not covered by the big Other…An act proper is not just a strategic intervention into a situation, bound by its conditions – it retroactively creates its conditions.”

So far, so good, but so far it’s hard to argue that we have broken any new ground. Zizek’s reading of the act inspired by Badiou has been part of his theoretical edifice for some time now. However, here is where things get interesting:

“This brings us to the contemporary liberal idea of global justice, whose aim is not only to characterize all past injustices as collective crimes, for it also involves the politically corret utopia of “restituting” the past collective violence (towards blacks, Native Americans, Chinese immigrants…) by payment or legal measures. This is the true utopia, the idea that a legal order can make recompense for its founding crimes, thereby retroactively cleansing itself of its guilt in regaining its innocence.” (35)

The highest form of liberalism, which abhors the regulation of other by our own moral standards, is caught in a tension between its market form and personal form, as exemplified by Zizek in the contemporary liberal (for personal individuality, tolerance) and Right-wing (market forces, conservative family values) ideologies: “We thus get the double paradox of traditionalist Rightist supporting teh market economy while ferociously rejecting the vulture and mores that economy engenders, and his counterpoint, the muliculturalist Leftists, resisting the market…while enthusiastically enforcing the ideology it engenders. “ (37)

In this ‘value-neutral’ zone, we not only are reduced to the somewhat pathological, egoistically inclined individuals, supported in our abtility to ignore all that does not provide for a utilitarian advantage, but  encouraged to believe that this elevation and personalization of the market is somehow mechanical, scientific,and value-free. This approach, what Zizek calls “ideology at it’s purest” engenders the violence of librelalism, in which subjects can ‘choose’ to relate to the Law but only if they make the right choice. Zizek takes this up particularly with regard to multiculturalism, seeing the supposed choice between true and limited multiculturalism, (i.e. allowing full expression or rejecting the label), concluding that the only way to confront this deadlock, looping back to the start, is with the creation a new Universal “that of an antagonistic struggle which, rather than taking place between particular communities,splits each community from within, so that the “trans-cultural” link between communities is one of a shared struggle.

Personally, I don’t think this is the strongest chapter in the book. I wish that less time had been spent rectifying or finding new examples to illustrate previously made points. The key feature is in explaining the falseness, or denial, in the liberal vision. Frankly, there is muchmore to be said here, and there are few people I’d rather here it from.

Final Grade: B-

Chapoter 2: Anger

This chapter is much more interesting. It approaches the issue we’ve been hearing about a lot in texts like Toscano’s  Fanatasism and so on. Basically, it considers the proper status of  revolutionary morality. and ends up in a fascinating conclusion (although not altogether surprising, if you’re familiar with either Violence: Six Sideways Reflections and Zizek’s writing on religion more broadly).

Religious violence is on the rise today, according to Zizek, because:

“…we live in an era which perceives itself as post-ideological. Since great public causes can no longer be mobilized, since our hegemonic ideology calls on us to enjoy life and to fulfil ourselves, it is difficult for the majority of humans to overcome their revulsion at torturing and killing other human beings. Since the majority are spontaneously “moral” in this way, a larger “sacred Cause is neede, which will make individual concerns about killing seem trivial. Religious or ethnic belonging fit this role perfectly.” (97)

This observation is counterposed to Zizek’s reading of the Christian gesture. While, undoubtedly Zizek views religions as basically contradictory and opportunistic, the radicalism of Christ, and importantly, the violence of Christ (in the sense of the social damage inflicted) should not be ignored. Taking seriously Christ’s claims about the need to hate one’s father, to bring not peace but a sword, Zizek reads the Gospels in the vein of Badiou, arguing:

“At the very core of Christianity there is a radically different project: that of a destructure negativity which ends not in chaotic Void, but reverts (organizes itself) into a new Order, imposing itself on reality. For this reason, Christianity is anti-Wisdom: wisdoms tells ust aht all our efforts are vain, that everything ends in chaos while Christianity madly insists on the impossible. Love, in the Christian form, is certainly not wise.” (116)

He continues:

“Love is the force of this universal link which, in an emancipator collective, connects people directly, in their singularity, by-passing their particular hierarchical determinations. Terror is terror out of love for the universal-singular others and against the particular. This terror names exactly the same things as the work of love.” (117)

Zizek’s question here becomes whether we can have an emancipatory politics which does not shun the Neighbour and reject them from ethical consideration. It this ‘excess’ in Christianity which makes it potentiality subversive as, as above, it threatens to directly embrace the Neighbour as ourselves, seeing ourselves, and the excluded, as parts of this universal category. Crucially, this involves a suspension of ‘culture’. Zizek writes:

“One of the most elementary cultural skills is to know when (and how) to pretend not to know (or notice), how to go on and act as if something which has happened not in fact happen. If a person close by involuntarily farts burps, the proper thing to do is to ignore it, not to reassure him…” (133)

This opposition, between the theological-political, the righteous and fanatical anger which is excessive, versus the polite and understanding of cultural norms, is what is important to emphasize. Zizek is returning to his notion that, ultimately, Hitler “was not violent enough” in the sense that he did not aim at the whole structure of the social body, which is what Paul’s christianity does. The earlier part of the chapter, which discusses one of Zizek’s seemingly favourite topics, Karadic’s poetry, is eerily redoubled with the suggestion that, yes, it is only in our immanent commitment to higher ethical ideal than real revolutionary change can happen. So, in reading the Anger in the post-modern era as formally correct but ultiamtely, in it’s target and approach, to nostalgic and insufficiently thought through, we are left with a view of political commitment which strives towards the complete, ecstatic and self-annihiliating cause of a fundamentalist but with much more radical co-ordinates. Obviously, this is a risky topic, which is why (I guess) the  window-dressing is so complex. However, it does make for an interesting and rare programmatic statement on Zizek’s part. What if it is not fundamentalism that is the real enemy, but rather (as above in the chapter on Liberalism) the notion that we are at a perfectly rational, culturally mature, mediating state which is non-ideological is in fact the real problem? It’s interesting to note how this rejection of the cultural and the seeking of truth in the being-together is at work in the recent, seemingly now forgotten, statements of the Insivible Committee as well.

Overall Grade: A-

Tune in tomorrow for Part 2.

[A quick disclaimer should confirm that the hip hop I’m interested in the conscious – for lack of a better term – politically engaged and musically innovative acts generally associated with Global Faction and the People’s Army. Lowkey, Akala, Logic, English Frank and Mic Righteous are at the forefront of this for me, but obviously are not alone. If you know decent people I don’t mention who I should know about, please leave a comment.]

On one level, what works is that a group of talented artists are searching for original language to talk about important ideas. At it’s best, and here is my crude version of Deleuze, an attempt to ‘repeat’ – i.e. demonstrate the same passion and extremity taking place in a new event, rather than a step by step mimicking of the original event – the great social awakenings we’ve seen throughout history. This also comes with the allure of being able to make sweeping statements without having to provide 20 pages of references and explanatory notes. Akala can say “it’s not the money you make, YOU are the wealth”, it’s up to the listener to piece together what that means. You can have Lowkey talking about the illusion of money: “some will try to tell you it doesn’t grow on trees/I heard the saying said many times but they were wrong/if it doesn’t then tell me where do you get the paper from” without referring to David Graeber once. You can have Mic Righteous saying “No matter who it be on the other side of the computer screen/no one is perfect/only different between you and me/is the skin we’re in/and underneath we’re all equal” without a glint of irony. Obviously, all of this leaves some room for interpretation but in the current conditions of uncertainty and impotence, a little room for interpretation is a good thing.

For me, this means that the result is a radical departure from the tired, buzzworded liberal-speak or worn out communist terminology I’m used to on the left. While some have, in the most well meaning way, understood political hip hop as a tool for interesting the ‘yout’ in preconceived political ideologies, I think this ignores the potentiality creative possibilities it has. (Or, as Refused put it: Money buys the access – and we can’t pay the cost/ And how can we expect anyone to listen if we are using the same old voice?/We need new noise – new art for the real people).

In this way, it’s a great thing that this is coming at a time when most official political ideologies have either stopped being relevant or faded from view. By making immanent critique,  whether in a global context or not, a picture of antagonism and frustration emerges that doesn’t fit particularly well with anything we know. While it certainly contains shards of communist, liberal, socialist and sometimes nationalist thought, these are the starting rather than the ending points.  As much as I love Dead Prez, I think the importance of this becomes quite clear when you contrast the Maoist and Black Nationalist slogans that pepper their lyrics with the more heart-on-your-sleave lyrics in the UK scene. Mic Righteous is a particularly good example here. In ‘No More’ the sense of pain, anger and a sense of unease proceed directly, rather than mediated through terms like ‘class struggle’ which can, in fairness, make statements sound either tired or alienating: I get the feeling like we’re meant to broke/when it comes to making money we’re all mentally slow/maybe because we’re watching everything the telly is showin/my brothers locked behind bars they aren’t letting him go.

This is tied to a second element that makes the music important. Pierre Bordieu once wisely said that many political struggles are about how we define problems and that we should bear this in mind when talking about social suffering. That is to say, is a problem (like inequality for women or poverty) an incidental, unimportant and generally laughable feature of an otherwise perfect society, or is it a scar that demonstrates the fundamental injustice of our social system? The answer, of course, determines the appropriate response. In UK hip hop, the voice from the slums/end/manor/council estates which are traditionally mocked or disregarded in the media are put at the forefront, and their concerns are made central. As Owen Jones knows, ‘Chav-bashing’ has become the mainstream way to deal with Britain’s otherwise awkward structural inequality. You can watch grainy footage of ‘yobs’ from security cameras or tune in to see millionaire comedians degrade them, but beyond that they are largely ignored or interviewed strictly for the gag reel. In sharp contrast, English Frank, for example, makes these/his concerns central: “I tell it straight if we don’t do crime we’re below the breadline/we can’t feed our fucking babies let alone a phone line/then they tell we should be working, but there ain’t enough jobs…if you don’t have to live it it’s cool, if you have to live it it’s cruel/I wish I’d never had to live it at all/I’m white British trash, can’t afford british gas/then you’ve got the nerve to call us chavs cause we live in council flats.” UK Hip-hop defines these problems as central and structural, and I’m not inclined to disagree. This is the issue in Britain today, but for most on the left it’s easier to abandon the housing estates in lieu of the greener pastures of university campuses and trade union meetings. I’m not condemning this – it would be deeply hypocritical – but I imagine you know what I mean.

As a side note, what’s particularly moving about this is not just the emphasis on problems certain people would rather ignore, but the fact that, almost always, the artists in question express compassion, hope and positivity. It should make the patronizing feel uneasy and the snobbish feel ashamed. One of the highlights for me last year was to meet Mic Righteous, someone I would have crossed the street to avoid if I hadn’t heard him rap. I am a better person due to this music, and I doubt it’s just me.

Thirdly, there is the question of values. I’m pretty sure the left needs to talk about values more. For far too long ‘values’ has become synonymous with Bible-bashing, traditionalist, draconian and homophobic garbage. But, for me and I think for potentially a lot of people, values like ‘equality’ and ‘justice’ are galvanizing ideas that let us rethink our situation from an abstract point. This is something where UK hip hop also excels. Whether it’s the abstract ‘Equality’ spoken about by Logic or Lowkey’s belief in personal integrity, this is one place where values get the airtime they deserve.  If the left don’t talk about the power of abstract ideas – while of course seeking to implement them at the same time – they will fail to overcome cycnicism and genuinely inspire. As long as justice means an impartial judge – though make no mistake, this would be a good start – these concepts are limited. By repeating them in a way that’s not tethered to this, but rather sees them as a distant aspiration rather than a limiting doctrine, they might finally come out of their cage. Again, it’s new noise for the real people. More importantly, UK hip hop does this in a way that connects with people who might otherwise find Hardt and Negri leave them a bit cold.

I don’t by any means think the genre is without it’s problems. Certainly, derogatory and bigoted language can slip in (although a lot less than the liberal in you thinks) and there are unresolved questions about how the left should embrace ‘masculinity as resistance’. I hope to address these further at a later date, but thought this would make a good start in the mean time.

Dub Phizix is a Manchester based drum and bass artist, so this is not the most political interview in the world. Interesting stuff about the Manchester scene though.

On 19 December Manchester’s own Dub Phizix and Skeptical released Marka. With it’s hypnotic, creepy minimalism and atmospheric groove, it’s clocked up over 400,000 hits on YouTube and become an instant favourite for drum and bass fans. Last week, MULE caught up with Dub Phizix to see what he made of all the hype…

So how did the collaboration between you and Skeptical come about?

We’ve worked together for a little while now. We’ve done a few things on Ingredients, we did a “12 on dispatch and we did some stuff on Critical. So we’ve probably worked together for nearly 2 years: Skeptical is my partner in crime though we’ve only actually been in the studio together once – we’ve made about 20 tunes together – but we’ve only actually sat together once.

What we usually do is one of us will start a tune and send the other the parts. So he might send me five folders and I’ll send him five with the beginnings of a tune – a bit of bass, a bit of drums etc – and it’ll go from there. We’ll take the parts we like, change a few parts, and it progresses like that.

With this tune he sent me a file and it sat there for a bit. Then one night I was in the studio with Johnni and we started working on it. He put the bar on and it was about a four-hour session in the end.  The thing I’ve always liked about working with Skeptical is that if I send him any of my parts, I know the tune is going to come back better than I sent it. He’s gonna add bits, change bits around and all that and it will always improve it. It’s nice working with someone who inspires you and you can trust 100 per cent to make it better.

What inspired Marka?

Nothing specific. On my part, it was just listening to the parts Ash [Skeptical] sent me – the half speed part and the ragga clap – Johnni had the bar and we went from there. We’ve always had one eye on doing something different, but without being too contrived about it. At that point, we thought “this hasn’t been done so let’s try that.” Obviously the lyrics are clash talk so there’s the inspiration for that.

People often make links between your music and film soundtracks. What do you think about the comparison?

Yeah, you’re trying to paint a picture with the music. Not consciously, but, I watch a lot of films and film music is sometimes the best music. It’s not trying to be cool or anything but is purely there to set a mood, and that’s the best kind of music, where you’re trying to generate some kind of feeling, or set a tone. Sometimes it comes from the oddest shit. There’s actually some atmospheric sounds from Marka that come from a weird old Polish film called Seven Days of Night.  I got about half way through and thought, “This is weird but the soundtrack is great!” So I recorded the whole thing in.

What do you think about the reception to Marka?

It’s been mad. It’s more than we could ever imagine could happen. Obviously it’s been great and we’re absolutely over the moon. When we finished it we thought it was just weird and some people might like but a lot of people would probably hate it. The response has been absolutely overwhelming though. We didn’t think you could make a tune with that kind of reach anymore. In a sea of mass promotion where anyone can make something it’s so hard to get noticed so for a tune to take over social media for a day like it did was just mental. It’s all a bit odd because you think that if and when it happens it’ll never happen to you.

It’s like when you talk to older people about how they got their job – they just turned up and asked for it – and it seems like that with some older bands: they just play a couple of shows and they get signed. It seems like a lot more work today.

I used to read that kind of stuff – ‘cause I’ve been doing this 11 years – so I used to think, “How have you done that?” To me that doesn’t seem possible. I’ve been in the same places where you said you’ve been and got a job and I didn’t get a job…am I just shit? But I guess you’ve got to just live with that. I’m quite proud of the fact that I stuck to my guns, I’ve been here all this time, doing it, and finally gotten somewhere.

What do you think about the scene in Manchester?

For me, Manchester is the most inspiring place in the world to be.  We’ve got everything here from musicians, producers, DJs, MCs, graphic designers, great clubs, video people, web designers, press people, PR people, clothes designers. You name it, we’ve got it. The problem is, at least not since the days of Madchester, has the whole of Manchester come together and said “right, let’s get together and do this” probably.

We’re outside of London where all the industry has traditionally been, and being a little city in the North it’s very hard for us to be on that circuit. The only way we’re going to get anywhere is by having our own circuit. Obviously there are some great things up here but now we’re all working together and it’s starting to be a bit more conducive. We’ve got the Estate UK thing, originally Broke N’English’s label, but now it’s a group thing with Skittles, Chimpo and Fox, T man, Sparks, Ellis Meade, myself and James from Example Media at the helm– there’s a really strong little unit there where it’ll be a great thing if we do it properly. At the moment it’s just a bunch of mates trying to support each other but hopefully it could be something bigger if we work hard enough.

What was interesting was that the last mixmag had myself, Skittles, DRS, Strategy, Hit and Run and a few other bits. Someone tweeted something about how strong Manchester was looking at the moment. It’s great that people are saying that but we were thinking “wait ‘til they realise that we’re all the same crew”.

What is it about the city that inspires that sort of thing?

It’s the size partly. Everyone knows everyone. But it’s got a strong musical identity and a rich heritage. The people, the place, the rain, everything – it’s an inspiring place to be. We’ve got so many people as well, so many creeds and cultures, it’s so culturally rich.

Is there much conflict between staying independent versus going with big labels?

I don’t think major labels are something you can turn down because at the end of the day we’ve all got to put food on the table and they can guarantee that. But there’s a certain romance to staying independent. With Marka we didn’t use any of the usual channels. We just put it up on YouTube. I’m quite proud of the fact we didn’t get a remix of a big name, we didn’t go to a massive PR company, didn’t pay tonnes of people to push it in all these different places. It was just a natural thing.

What do you think of the Warehouse Project?

It’s cool for what it is and it puts the city on the map. Some of the acts they have I think are wicked but it’s not totally my kind of thing. I’ve only been there once – make of that what you will…

What should we expecting from you this year?

I’m all over this year. Pretty much every city in the UK, quite a few European dates, festivals over the summer. Check out the fanpage for all the listings. Release-wise is a “12 on Critical Music called Codec with Never beenft Fox on the other side. After that there’s a “12 on Samurai which is a collab’ with Skeptical. One side featuring T Man, the other featuring Sparks. There’s also a number of remixes due and some stuff at different tempos. Again, check the fanpage for details on those as and when.

So who haven’t you mentioned that we should be keeping a look out for at the moment?

For me, Chimpo and Fox are two of the most underrated musicians about. Do yourself a favour and check them out.

Dear Rt. Hon. Michael Gove MP,

I was heartened to hear of your plans to reward the Queen for the tough job of reigning over us for 60 years, while being maintained in more luxury than most of us will probably ever experience. After taxpayers paid £20 million for the marriage one of her grandchildren, such a gesture is surely the least we can do.

I was particularly moved when I read that Prince Charles , the Queen’s son, was  part of the plan. It’s heartening, in this day and age, to see a son working hard to reward his mother: it must be hard to go gift shopping for the 27^th richest women in the world, particularly when she owns about a sixth of the planet’s surface! I was so inspired that I decided to make an impassioned plea of my own: in the next month my own mother will be celebrating her birthday and I can assure you she would simply be thrilled to receive a yacht of her own! Isn’t it a wonderful idea? I know what you’re thinking: “£120 million on yachts in a double-dip recession? You must be mad!” But alas, on yachtworld.com I’ve seen boats going for as little as £500 000. Think of the possibilities.While I can’t pretend she has accumulated the wealth and power of the Queen and doubt she would make the top 100 wealthiest women in the world – let alone number 27 – she has contributed rather a lot to the British economy, at least in so far as a peasant like myself can tell.

Having been among the first people in her family to go to university from the humble Scottish city of Dundee, she graduated from Edinburgh University with a degree in English Literature. This experience, provided free of charge, provided her with a love of Milton and English poetry she has retained to this day. After helping to found a company determined to support people with learning difficulties, she now works without a wage directing an enterprise that provides organic food to the local community. In the age of self-service machines in Tesco and 1 million plus youth unemployment, she goes out her way to provide employment in an area that, shall we say, is not exactly the definition of ‘thriving’. Amongst her many responsibilities, which include continually battling the economic climate in part created by public sector spending cuts, she organizes school trips to the farm for disadvantaged kids and supports local businesses seeking to do something productive with the land.

While I can’t pretend she’s appointed one of her myriad nephews to represent Britain diplomatically – only to be fired amidst a scandal involving a convicted paedophile – or accumulated priceless works of art through imperial conquest, we do our best with what we have. Perhaps one day one of her grandchildren can even dress up as a nazi for comic effect! And, of course, whether the Common Agricultural Policy will extend the generosity to us currently dealt to the nation’s aristocrats, among them the Queen’s extended family and friends, remains to be seen.

Anyway, do let me know. I would hate to see her special day taking place solely on dry land.

Yours,

AScannerDespairingly

Reading Eurig Scandrett’s ‘Reactions to Violence’ last month raised a lot of questions for me. Mainly, it’s because the completely reasonable account of the non-violence movement that was presented there contrasts sharply with my on-the-ground experience of being scolded by ‘mature’ and ‘realistic’ voices within demonstrations and bearing witness to many heated, vicious arguments between people who should be allies. I get the feeling I’m not alone in this. To quote one of many examples, here’s what Malcolm Harris has written about his experience at Occupy Wall Street, one of the more celebrated examples of non-violence in recent months: “In addition to the police, occupiers now have to worry about getting harassed or undermined by self-appointed guardians of the non-violent movement. Try chanting something that deviates from the friendly universalist “99%” line and see what happens.”[1]

Rather than choosing a side in the over-wrought debate about violence versus non-violence, I wanted to take a closer look at some of the central arguments for non-violence, and ponder whether the two sides might have more in common than is normally supposed. While it might be argued that I’m attacking a straw man or being unfair by not naming a specific target, it’s not my aim to undermine anyone’s position, but simply unpack some common problems in the broader discussion.

What is Gandhi’s Legacy?

Let’s talk about Gandhi first as he’s so central to the non-violence tradition. I’m sure we all know the traditional account: Gandhi preached non-violence and by enduring colonial repression with dignity de-legitimized the British Empire. While there is much to be argued over here in terms of the direct historical sequence, one thing this account leaves out is that Gandhi was not absolutist in his rejection of violence. Norman Finkelstein, better known for his work related to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, has studied Gandhi’s writing in great depth. He finds that, while Gandhi saw the moral and pragmatic superiority of non-violence, he did not condemn violence per se:

“He wants to recommend non-violence, but, he recognizes that according to the contemporary standards of rights and wrong, people are allowed to resort to violence, and you have no right to tell people…or tell some people, they can’t use violence, because that’s the current standard of right and wrong.”[2]

This flexibility is the first point. The second is this: whatever the status of violence in Gandhi’s thought, his legacy should never be invoked to justify non-confrontation or, indeed, obedience and submission to authority, something with which non-violence can often be conflated. In contrast, non-violence, for Ghandi, involved all the typical repercussions and risks of violence, but without lifting a hand in response. As Finkelstein quotes:

“I believe that a man is the strongest soldier for daring to die unarmed with his breast bare before the enemy.”…Into the valley of death it must headlong march, unarmed yet “smilingly”[3] and “cheerfully”; “if we are to train ourselves to receive the bullet wounds or bayonet charges in our bare chests, we must accustom ourselves to standing unmoved in the face of cavalry or baton charges.””[4]

In a context where non-violence on the ground often boils down ‘not giving the police an excuse’ for violence, this statement could not be more relevant.

Gene Sharp and the politics of defiance

The questions of ‘violent’ and ‘non-violent’ protest techniques should also be read against the work of Gene Sharp. Sharp, whose support for non-violent resistance – given its greater effectiveness and smaller, though hardly negligible, risk – has influenced successful struggles against tyranny in Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgystan, Belarus and, arguably, the Egypt. This is a powerful endorsement of his position, and should make him widely read amongst British activist circles. Crucially, however, he substitutes the concept of violent resistance not with pacifism per se but something he calls “political defiance”. This typically involves sustained campaigns of non-cooperation, intervention, protest and persuasion aimed at the governing regime. While nothing at all like armed resistance, these methods can cause considerable disorder, strife and government repression: the very things many pacifists appear determined to avoid.

But isn’t this only legitimate and useful in situations of tyranny? Indeed, but here I think it’s foolish to rely on cold war narratives about which countries are ‘free’ and which are not, but rather look at the zones in any ruling regime that are tyrannical and those which are open. For example, it’s possible to argue that the tax rates are primarily within our democratic purview. Although defiance has certainly been extremely helpful in the past – consider the anti-Poll Tax campaign – legal methods and negotiation may be suitable, at least on paper.

By contrast, the aims of Occupy Wall Street, for example, are much more ambitious. Here, the goal appears to involve establishing democratic control over the economy. To put this in concrete terms, this would mean at the very least dismantling the dominance of the 147 companies that effectively control 40% of the world’s wealth, as reported in New Scientist last October.[5] Such demands are plainly not within the purview of electoral politics: if our political leaders cannot agree on better labour conditions for fear of capital flight, does anyone seriously believe that they are going to redistribute society’s productive assets? If not open to electoral contest, I don’t see how these dictums are anything other than tyrannically imposed. We are frequently told that the state is increasingly irrelevant in a globalized world, and the current financial coups in the Euro-zone would appear to bear this out. Regardless, while the state might be powerless to control global capital, it appears more than happy to keep it’s workforce (that is to say: us) in line, regardless of the consequences. In this context, isn’t it possible that Gene Sharp has some relevance?

Deconstructing the 99%

The choice of strategy can also have political implications. When any movement develops spontaneously, there will be those who seek to give it legitimacy within the dominant media discourse by producing demands, forming leadership councils and, crucially, agreeing in advance what sorts of resistance will and will not be considered appropriate. This can be (but is not always) an extremely efficient method for taking its teeth out, as the ‘responsible’ may well police the ‘irresponsible’ on behalf of the state. To quote Peter Gelderloos: “Nowadays the way that states rule is by accepting the inevitably of conflict and resistance and trying to manage it permanently. And the best way to manage is to have people in the resistance who are managing it for you.”[6]

And who are the typical managers? Well, this is where an obvious limitation of the 99% rhetoric becomes clear. While there is an obvious distinction between the 1% and everyone else, it’s important not to ignore the 20% – the co-ordinator class – identified by Michael Albert in Parecon and elsewhere. These are those within capitalism who do all the empowering work – the managers, technocrats, intellectuals, lawyers, etc – and as a result are articulate, decisive and organized. If there is any desire to overcome this division, it has to be immanent within the movement itself. State co-option, with non-violence and pacifism as its wedge, tends to replicate this division, with a leadership calling the shots and the rank-and-file doing the (non-violent) marching.

And in conclusion?

To be clear, I’m not calling for a purge of pacifists, and I fully endorse the view that militarism excludes people from the movement and frequently fails to achieve its goals. Thinking about all of this, however, what I would like to see is a much broader definition of ‘non-violence’ and less condemnation of ‘anarchists’ and ‘trouble-makers’ from those who have other approaches. What’s more, any social movement that seriously threatens the social hierarchy is violent, at least for those who feel entitled to their power. Whether it balances out for society as a whole in the long-term is irrelevant for the hypothetical CEO who sees his vast fortune channelled into social projects and redistributed amongst the undeserving poor. In turn, this means that no matter how submissive your posture is, your movement will be seen as threatening and treated as such, making solidarity with the ‘irresponsible’ a rather valuable commodity.

Basically, I’m proposing that in the emerging movements what’s needed more than anything is a cease-fire between those advocating non-violence and those who are less convinced. This means, on the one hand, a little less of the spectacular violence typically associated with revolutionaries attempting to ‘short-circuit’ the social order by breaking windows and so on to ‘wake-up’ the population. On the other hand, non-violence advocates need to refrain from attacking the inevitable violence that arises from police provocation and stop becoming agents of oppression themselves. As I’ve argued, this tends to maintain class hierarchies, make police neutralization easy and alienate the engaged in exchange for appeasing the apathetic. What’s more, they represent very narrow approach to non-violence. The precise dimensions and terms of this cease-fire will have to be fought out within these movements, but what’s crucial is that both sides can relinquish their occasionally histrionic moral authority with a view to the larger context.

Land Ownership

Coming as no surprise to people that know me, I think land ownership is one of Scotland’s most enduring historical problems. For more about it see here. But, the cut a long story short, 969 people own around 60% of the privately held rural land, in a country of 5.2 million people. On average, their holdings are around 9 735 acres each, most of which will never be on the market. What’s more, they generate absurd revenue via vast subsidies paid to landowners by the Common Agricultural Policy, while the remaining countryside economy tends to deteriorate around them.

Officially, there is nothing in the current situation that would prevent Scottish ministers from, tomorrow, taking steps to address the problem. During the first session of the Scottish Parliament there something approaching a flurry of Parliamentary Acts related to the land situation. Abolishing Feudalism (in 2001!), creating the right to roam and giving communities the right to buy in some situations were all progressive steps but, somehow, the momentum has collapsed. The unequal distribution of land also throws up a number of issues, related to house building, tax evasion, the environment, land use and community self-determination, and will shape an independent Scotland whether it is a addressed or not.

Land Ownership is also important in the context of Scotland’s ‘green economy’, at least on the subject of how the benefits accrue. I would certainly be disappointed if projects like Lord Roxburghe’s became the face of the green revolution. The benefits of nationalizing critical resources, or making them the property of local communities, should be part of any discussion on our collective economic future.

Crime and Punishment (Or, wee scallies and gettin’ the jail)

It’s a well established but little known fact that the prison population in the UK has massively expanded in the last thirty years, trailing only the United States in penal expansion among the western states.  In England and Wales, the population is currently 87 945, an all-time high. In 1993, according to this BBC chart, this number was 41 600, meaning that numbers have more than doubled in under 20 years. This has come alongside an explosion in criminal offences under new Labour – around 3605 new offences over three terms, according to Loic Wacquant – draconian limitations on the freedoms of expression and a heightened sense of Orwellian terror in our discussions about ‘security’. Remember ID Cards? What’s more, like the United States, the UK has embraced private prisons, outstripping Europe in terms of the number build. According to the Guardian, there are eleven privately run prisons in England and Wales, alongside 9 developed under PFI contracts, and accounting for around 10% of the prison population as a whole.

I believe that it’s important to take seriously the issue of crime and prison populations because, as Loic Wacquant aptly points out in the long but highly impressive lecture cited above, carceral expansion is not linked to the levels of crime. Rather, as he argues, prison is the principal strategy for dealing with marginaility in the modern neoliberal state.

In Scotland, there are mixed signals. Prison populations have grown in line with England and Wales, and private prisons are not an anomaly, as HMP Addiewell demonstrates. As Lesley McAra points out, before devolution Scotland was marked by the contradiction between rising prison populations and an emphasis on welfare. Since devolution, at least under Labour and the Lib Dems, there was a consolidation of penal power with the vast creation of new institutions, increased central control and the deployment of crime control to a number of other problems.

A quick glance at this BBC page on the parties approaches to crime indicate little difference among the major parties, all going for varients on ‘toughness’. How we think about and act in response to crime is one of our deciding features as a nation, and I think it should be part of any debate about Scotland’s future.

Fortress Scotland?

We should also be talking about the relationship between Scotland and military.  There are two aspects to this. First, as detailed by Scottish CND in their excellent ‘Fortress Scotland’ (you can download it here) Scotland has long been a crucial place for housing military facilities for both the UK government and NATO. The most obvious example are the Trident Nuclear submarines at Faslane, but this is far from all.

As the report states:

“Despite the strategic nuclear weapons based at Faslane and Coulport, and the large RAF bases on the east coast of Scotland, the main conclusion drawn from this pamphlet would be that Scotland has become increasingly important as a training ground for the troops, sailors and air-crews of both Britain’s and NATO’s military forces and as a testing ground for their new weapons. With Cape Wrath in the north and Dundrennan in the south, over the last decade the air, waters and land of Scotland have become increasingly used for major exercises and weapons testing. At Dundrennan the US are testing their ‘super-gun’; at Cape Wrath, the US Navy come to test their crew’s live-firing skills before becoming operationally ready. The Highlands is covered by the largest and most often used low flying exercise area in Europe. The Joint Maritime Course, held three times a year off the North and West coast of Scotland, is the largest combined forces exercise held regularly by NATO countries. Increasingly, as the strategic importance of Scotland’s position declines, its relatively low population density, its distance from Westminster (and, as importantly, the voters of Middle England) and its large MoD estate has made Scotland one of the most important military play-grounds in the Northern hemisphere.”

In addition, as Corporate Watch point out, Scotland is heavily embroiled in the arms trade, housing a number of factories and facilities operated by everyone from Thales to BAe to Raytheon. Scotland’s military facilities are valuable resources for some and, certainly, serious questions need to be asked about their future in an independent Scotland, alongside the questions of whether we would continue down the aggressive foreign policy frequently adopted in Westminster.

I have tried to outline what I consider three areas pertaining Scotland’s future as an independent country, if and when this takes place. These are issues which, unlike tuition fees and prescription charges, do not indicate a comfortable ‘liberalism’ north of the border. Moreover, the sit at the centre of what the state is and how the nation functions. For these reasons, I believe they are debates worth starting.

This is why I’m so impressed by the work done by Michael Albert and co to develop models of alternatives economics. The left sometime seems reluctant to embrace utopian thinking, or take seriously abstract values – the ‘fanatical’ commitment to equality explored by authors like Toscano – in forming their goals. Parecon is an exception to this and makes us seriously consider whether Zizek is correct and “we are all Fukuyamaists today.”

Parecon is Albert’s name for the system of economics he developed alongside Robin Hahnel, and serves two important purposes in political organizing. First of all, it gives us the beginning of a genuine remedy to many of our contemporary problems. In this way it’s a bold declaration that, perhaps, Terry Eagleton is right and that materialism – that our institutions and cultures determine the world, rather than anything innate and irrevocable – is the only real antidote to despair. Secondly, it gives us tools for immanent critique. Put another way, it allows us to think critically about our existing institutions and find ways out of them, and means to judge our progress in social struggles.

The system is based on a number of quite simple ideas. Albert is a masterful writer when it comes to dealing with complex problems in an accessible, convincing manner. Founded on the values of Solidairty, Equity, Self-Management and Diversity, it imagines new schemes of economic production and trade which would not reproduce capitalism and hierarchy. In this way also, we learn to see work and production as at the centre of our problems, unleashing a number of critical possibilities.

While there have been some positive signs, like the founding of the Project for a Participatory Society – UK, there is still much work to be done to distribute the ideas surrounding Parecon and bring them up for serious discussion on the left. In my own small way, I’m hoping to help with that, so what follows is a three part guide to the basic ideas. Links for further reading and viewing are at the end, as I can’t possibly pretend to have answered or asked all the important questions here.

1. Wages in Parecon

This is the best place to start. As noted above, Parecon is about equity, and therefore equitable remuneration. This doesn’t mean identical remuneration for everyone, but it does approach the question in a radically different way to capitalism. As Albert correctly points out, the modern system of remuneration essentially rewards people for ‘what they can take’. That is to say, economic power is a manifestation of social power, with the most powerful taking the most.  For Albert, as for most people, this is unjust, whether it’s in the form on inherited wealth, overblown industries (like banks) or the inflated wealth of the super-rich. While it may be the natural outcome of a ‘market system’, Albert is a ‘market abolitionist’ arguing that, in a market, ‘shit rises’. I’m not inclined to disagree.

In Parecon, remuneration would take place on the basis of the effort, onerousness and sacrifice the work involves. This is to say, how much you have to sacrifice to do socially valuable work – working nights and in isolation from away from loved ones, working in dangerous conditions, working on tedious and difficult tasks – should be the basis of remuneration. How to measure these things would be decided collectively. This suggests that, for instance, certain care workers, teachers and long distance drivers would be remunerated considerably more than, say, merchants bankers or shareholders.

This seems pretty objectionable at first glance. What about the extensive training required to become, say, a doctor? Here, Albert’s answer is not only simple but obvious. Firstly, how much more would you have to be paid to pick garbage from trash heaps before you decided to do that rather practice medicine? Because the work is empowering, conveys social status, involves a very personally rewarding contribution, most people would be inclined to opt for being a doctor. Not because of the money, which is a manifestation of social power, but because the work is simply more appealing. What’s more, if you said to just about anyone on the planet, “Would you rather go to school for 7 years to learn medicine, as opposed to working for that 7 years in the coal mine,  even if you make the same as a doctor?” I imagine most people would choose school. So, on the assumption that people, all other things being equal, would not suddenly stop working hard to do useful and important work because it would no longer be disproportionally rewarded, I think this makes sense. In fact, given the number of people I know (including myself) who continually ponder corporate options because of the need for cash might put their talents and abilities to work doing something a little bit more useful.

2. Balanced Job Complexes

Bear with me here because, if remuneration for effort and sacrifice sounded like utopian nonsense, this one is way worse: workplaces should be self-managed, with each worker having a voice in decisions to the extent that they effect them. But what about, critics argue, the impossibility of collective ownership given the stupidity and indifference they perceive in most people?

Parecon’s answer to this is the ‘balanced job complex’. This is an idea based on the analysis that, in contemporary society, there is a division not just between the ruling class and the working class but between the ‘co-ordinator class’ and the  other two. The ‘co-ordinator class’ comprise the 20% of the population who monopolize the ‘empowering’ work – work which involves analysis of information, delegation, decision-making, and creative input into the direction of the enterprise – and leave the ‘rote’ work – following orders and being obedient – to everyone else. The 20% consist of politicians, doctors, lawyers, engineers, CEOs, and other high-flyers in industry and finance. In short, those to whom capitalism needs to co-ordinate and oversee the work of the rest of society. Typically, they are treated with respect and appreciation, amply rewarded, networked and to a certain extent in control of their own lives. At the centre of this is not, as people might be quick to argue, their superior skills or abilities, but rather a superior education and a great deal of what Bordieu would call ‘cultural capital’ that stems from their upbringing.

For Albert, overcoming this initial division within the workplace is at the centre of a radical strategy because, he writes, self-management of enterprises cannot take place while there is a 20% who monopolize the empowering work. Therefore, each person should have an equal share of rote work and empowering work. This creates a ‘balanced job complexes’. By doing so, we not only create equity and, indeed, a less miserable existence for the working class, but also maximise the creative abilities of all who work. “But what about the inherent stupidity of the working class?” some might gasp. Naturally, Albert is a materialist, and believes that schooling and work do not respond to so much as create these divisions between people, there being nothing natural about them. “Imagine” he asks, “saying in the 50s that the medical profession represented the only people capable of doing that sort of work. What’s wrong with this picture?” The answer is of course the medical profession then would have been primarily male, white and from privileged backgrounds. The overcoming of these barriers in the contemporary society should make it clear that the places people end up in society has little to do with any sort of inevitable destiny.

It’s therefore encouraging that the Occupy movements have, despite some early mistakes, made a good show of trying to overcome these divisions. It also informs what we should mean when we talk about ‘wanting jobs’ within our movements:  interesting, democratically determined and challenging work directed at real problems and needs,  light years away from what Tesco mean when they say their new superstore will ‘provide jobs’.

3. But What About the Market?

Of course, no such business could survive in the modern marketplace. Democracy and equity, not to mention horizontal organization and empowerment, are all very well and good. But providing competition for Coca-Cola or IBM and their legion of obedient wage slave? The short answer is that this is obviously impossible. A longer answer, and certainly the one I understand Albert to be giving, is that an economy which allows greed, hierarchy and servitude to triumph over the values embedded in the self-managed workplace of balanced job complexes, is not an economy particularly worthy of us. In this sense too, Albert is a market abolitionist. In it’s place, he argues that we should have a system of distribution, without a top or bottom, through which workers and consumers (who, we would do well to remember are simply opposite sides of the same coin) come together to collectively make decisions about what is made, how it is priced, and so on. Innovation would be a collective process, distributed evenly throughout society, and in turn creating an incentive towards pro-social development.

Further Reading

This is a whistle stop tour, and many of the problems you might have detected or further questions you might have are generally dealt with in detail in Albert’s myriad articles, books and talks on the subject. I’ve linked to some below. However, even if Parecon isn’t the model for the future of the economy (although I would argue it’s currently the best we have) I believe that it illustrates many of the starting points we need for a properly utopian and progressive discussion. By placing work and the economy at the centre of our proposals for reform, as opposed to something archaic and inevitable to be decided by the ‘markets’, there are much greater radical possibilities than arise from debating the proper extent of our civil liberties or discussing the merits of organic food.

Parecon is also valuable because it gives us some interesting criteria to debate the success or failure of our movements. This is something Albert also writes about extensively, but what I mean here is simply that it is in establishing these alternatives, creating networks of support, and making democratic work and trade viable that we can entrench our resistance and alternatives, either through parliamentary moves (as seen in Venezuela) or alternatives ‘outside the state’ (as John Holloway might argue). Part of the challenge of the left is to make an ethical life possible and, indeed, accessible. Parecon takes up this challenge and deserves our attention for it.

Albert outlining Parecon at Strathclyde University, Scotland, part 1 of 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOGQWk4M13U

Albert introducing Parecon at the ‘Real Utopia’ event in NYC http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0_MJcIBMyY

Interesting video of Albert discussing organizing in the 60s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eINYRw3pWdg

Parecon Q&A http://www.zcommunications.org/zparecon/zpareconfaq.htm

Parecon Tutorial: http://www.zcommunications.org/zmi/zinstruc6.htm

Parecon Reading List: http://www.zcommunications.org/zmi/readparecon.htm

Parecon Today by Michael Albert: http://www.zcommunications.org/parecon-today-by-michael-albert

Parecon by Michael Albert on Amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/Parecon-After-Capitalism-Michael-Albert/dp/184467505X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1326469772&sr=8-1