You have to admire the resilience of the Irish people. Or perhaps it's pure pigheadedness. We are a cursed race. Cursed with wind and rain. Weather that is unpredictable at best. We use the word Summer a little lightly sometimes but I think for us Summer if more about chronology than climate. We have to use the word summer so we can know where one winter ends and the next begins.
Yet despite this obvious handicap we still try to do things outdoors. We still try to have barbecues and go to the beach and most bizarrely of all we still try to have music festivals! I don't know if we ever had nice summers. I seem to remember some but I'm not sure if in hindsight I have created them in my imagination. I have memories form my childhood of days spent at the beach and sun drenched hay fields where the smell of diesel and freshly dried hay mingled to create an aroma which was carried on a warm breeze as big pots of tea and ham sandwiches were consumed.
I seem to remember in more recent years long summer evenings spent drinking cans by the Spanish Arch or getting annoyed with people who put meat on the vegetarian side of the barbecue. Surely summers gone by aren't a figment of my imagination? As I look outside now the sky is mostly blue, the sun seems to be shining and there is only a light breeze blowing but I will not allow myself to be lulled into a false sense of security! Only half an hour ago the heavens were open and I had pretty much written off having an opportunity to step outside the door without getting absoloutely soaked.
The irony is that I need to go outside to wash my car. I just know that if I start filling up basins of water and getting rags to wash it with and looking for a hosepipe as soon as I start the rain will start again. My car is caked in mud, it is pretty filthy on the inside too and the mats are covered with mud that came from the boots of weary and wet feet. It's sort of my own fault. I went to festival. Of course I should have known better, but we all should know better. Yet it's one of those things we still do.
The fact that the festival was badly organised has nothing to do with the weather. They couldn't have helped that. The festival was badly organised because it was organised by crusties, which is sort of a disability and you shouldn't really hold it against them. However I don't know which bright spark decided to put the carpark in the bog but they should have anticipated that this would inevitably lead to problems. They also could have thought about providing bins or running a hose up to the campsite. The organisers also could have communicated amongst themselves about the bands playing and the running order and let the bands and audience know who was on when. But crusties will be crusties I suppose.
Don't get me wrong certain things were well organised. They had tents and eventually on Saturday they had power. How was the music? I'm not sure. When we arrived on Saturday we were a bit later than expected. Let's put it this way, we now know that you don't get to Elphin from Galway via Sligo. They had trad on in two of the tents but apparently the generator had run out of diesel so it was all acoustic. We also heard the next morning that somebody had stolen the men's urinals and set fire to them. The crusties had decided on compost toilets of course and the men's urinals were actually small square bales of straw. Somebody stole them and used them as seats first. They were then set on fire and then beaten with sticks in an attempt to put them out.
We got to bed early enough on Friday night and the next morning had the pleasure of getting up and having to deal with people who were off their heads. Not being in such a state ourselves Fiona and I behaved like sensible adults and went for a drive to Lough Key Forest Park. Which is lovely and has a castle on an island. We arrived back on time to spend a good bit of the rest of the day hanging around watching bands set up. I generally steered clear of the tents with DJs in them and stuck around the main stage. I saw a couple of post rock bands. It seems all the young lads want to do these days is play post rock. During one of the bands Fiona asked me why they didn't have a singer. I told her that it was all the rage these days. She asked why and I was sort of stumped. Lack of aesthetics I suppose. Saw a dub outfit whose name and music I can't remember and then Intinn played. Crusties, complete fucking crusties. Not a bad band, but wouldn't be my thing at all. At this stage I ended up back at the tent and passed out.
Sunday was wet. Very wet. On Friday night some tool who I can only presume was hemped up on goofballs fell on our tent and broke one of the poles. It rained heavily on Saturday night and Sunday morning and water came in, a lot of water. A hell of a lot of water. My trousers had been bundled up in the corner and they and everything in my pockets was soaked. However there was no chance of hightailing it yet. We still had a gig to play and I was counting down the hours until I went on stage so I could get offstage and leave. We packed up our stuff and loaded the car and waited.
Things started off badly for Culture Vandals who had been on one list but not on another list but they got to play anyway. However they should have been on a bit later on the bill than they were. After them a bunch of local young lads were on playing covers. White stripes and that sort of shite. I made a bet with Mark at one point that the next song they played would be Kings of Leon. I won a fiver and he still hasn't paid me. Apparently when they finished up somebody through wet straw at them and told them they were shite. Which wasn't untrue but was unfair. Their Mammies and Daddies were there watching and they were only young lads after all. The next band had a guitarist wearing and AC/DC t-shirt and a bassist wearing a Rory Gallagher t-shirt. They were quite good but I'll leave what they sounded like up to your imagination.
Then at six o'clock we went on. The floor of the tent had gotten very wet and so straw was scattered everywhere giving it a nice cowshed feel. There were no more than fifteen people there to hear us as there had already been a mass evacuation due to flooding but those that were there seemed to love it. Which made it all worth while. We even got Ivan up to play fiddle on The Latest Craze but unfortunately it was a bit hard to hear him. Which was shame. The sound was otherwise really good and they had a decent PA and the sound man seemed to know his stuff although he didn't take kindly to Neil's use of Behringer equipment. In fact he seemed to hate Behringer gear. I reckon his wife must have run off with a v amp.
But we all had great craic. Even Brian who is not known for his fondness of the wet, outdoors or crusties. Even Neil who had shown up in beige pants and fancy shoes. And even Mark who had postponed his holiday to play to just over a dozen people. But as somebody pointed out, 'Just look at Woodstock. It pissed rain there too.' 'Yes but there were half a million people there.' 'Not on the last day when Hendrix played.' Point taken. But still and all.
And so in our muddy boots and muddy pants we piled into our muddy cars and with an awful lot of revving I managed to sail mine out of the bog without getting stuck and didn't stop until Fi and I arrived back at our nice comfy house and a dog who was glad to see us. Now we just have to clean the mud off everything.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
You probably shouldn't have been contender
So I was over in a friend's house last night and I happened to see some television. We don't have telly in my house and choose to be brainwashed by the internet instead.
Anyhow RTE were up to their old tricks or churning out fourth rate programming inhabited by fifth rate celebrities. I'm not sure if you'd call it reality television, there is nothing about it that in any way resembles reality.
Anyhow bizarrely enough, in a country where everybody knows everybody else and is related to half of them, they had two celebrities on this programme whom I had never heard of. Surely if they had picked any two people out of the country at random I would know at least one of them. But no the comedian and nightclub DJ (for fuck's sake, come on, a nightclub DJ is a fucking celebrity now?) had to... not learn to cook or run a hotel or work on a farm or build a house... they had to box the heads off each other. That's right these two nobodies had to get in a ring and hammer the shite out of each other. Apparently they had several weeks of training but what I saw would make the average Saturday night outside Supermacs on Eyre Square look like a scene from Raging Bull.
Their Mammies and Girlfriends were there as was an elderly Jimmy Magee (who now looks like he'll be getting a letter from the President any day) and Pat Spillane, yes the one only Pat Spillane who seems to have a mug with his name on it in RTE and who I know fuck all about apart from the fact he is from Kerry and has something to do with sport.
Anyhow Pat gave his opinion on the fight to a woman who looked like a newly resurrected Michael Jackson and Jimmy Magee tried to muster all the life he had left in him to make the atrocious display seem like an entertaining if not thrilling sporting event (in other circumstances we'd say 'If it was a fight it's be stopped').
And anyhow it turns out that these two celebrities were in the ring throwing sloppy punches not only for the glory of their respective highly esteemed fields of popular entertainment but also for the charities of their choice. One was swinging frantically for Temple Street Children's Hospital and the other for The Mercy Hospital. And I thought, 'Fuck. That's how bad the country has gotten. Now they've the hospitals fighting for money.'
Anyhow RTE were up to their old tricks or churning out fourth rate programming inhabited by fifth rate celebrities. I'm not sure if you'd call it reality television, there is nothing about it that in any way resembles reality.
Anyhow bizarrely enough, in a country where everybody knows everybody else and is related to half of them, they had two celebrities on this programme whom I had never heard of. Surely if they had picked any two people out of the country at random I would know at least one of them. But no the comedian and nightclub DJ (for fuck's sake, come on, a nightclub DJ is a fucking celebrity now?) had to... not learn to cook or run a hotel or work on a farm or build a house... they had to box the heads off each other. That's right these two nobodies had to get in a ring and hammer the shite out of each other. Apparently they had several weeks of training but what I saw would make the average Saturday night outside Supermacs on Eyre Square look like a scene from Raging Bull.
Their Mammies and Girlfriends were there as was an elderly Jimmy Magee (who now looks like he'll be getting a letter from the President any day) and Pat Spillane, yes the one only Pat Spillane who seems to have a mug with his name on it in RTE and who I know fuck all about apart from the fact he is from Kerry and has something to do with sport.
Anyhow Pat gave his opinion on the fight to a woman who looked like a newly resurrected Michael Jackson and Jimmy Magee tried to muster all the life he had left in him to make the atrocious display seem like an entertaining if not thrilling sporting event (in other circumstances we'd say 'If it was a fight it's be stopped').
And anyhow it turns out that these two celebrities were in the ring throwing sloppy punches not only for the glory of their respective highly esteemed fields of popular entertainment but also for the charities of their choice. One was swinging frantically for Temple Street Children's Hospital and the other for The Mercy Hospital. And I thought, 'Fuck. That's how bad the country has gotten. Now they've the hospitals fighting for money.'
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Who the hell was Noel Browne and why should we care?
Who the hell was Noel Browne and why should we care?
We are often led to believe in this country that we have no history of Socialism. That it is a foreign importation and indeed this has been the way for over a century. It was Connelly himself who said in the introduction to Socialism made easy;
'SOCIALISM IS A FOREIGN IMPORTATION!
I know it because I read it in the papers. I also know it to be the case because in every country I have graced with my presence up to the present time, or have heard from, the possessing classes through their organs in the press, and their spokesmen upon the platform have been vociferous and insistent in declaring the foreign origin of Socialism.
In Ireland Socialism is an English importation, in England they are convinced it was made in Germany, in Germany it is a scheme of traitors in alliance with the French to disrupt the Empire, in France it is an accursed conspiracy to discredit the army which is destined to reconquer Alsace and Lorraine, in Russia it is an English plot to prevent Russian extension towards Asia, in Asia it is known to have been set on foot by American enemies of Chinese and Japanese industrial progress, and in America it is one of the baneful fruits of unrestricted pauper and criminal immigration.'
Ironically those who went on the found the fledging Irish state were quick to hijack the legacy of Connelly and try to portray him as a nationalist of their ilk rather than the committed socialist and internationalist that he actually was. Indeed most people are probably not aware that Connelly was a Marxist and he is remembered by the elites of our state more for his role in the disastrous 1916 rising than his role in bringing militant trade unionism to Ireland and in attempting to create a class consciousness amongst the Irish people in their struggle against Imperialism.
In the same way Noel Browne, is if he is mentioned at all, usually has had his memory hijacked by those would consider themselves to be liberal reformers and who would rather concentrate on his secularism rather than his socialism. Best remembered, if at all, for the Mother and Child scheme Browne had a long and tumultuous career in Irish politics.
In his memoir Against the Tide, published in 1986 Browne details the circumstances of his early life which were to lead him into politics and the tumultuous career which followed. He was the perennial outsider and a rare conscience in Irish politics. The title of his memoir is highly fitting as he put forward left wing secular ideas at a time when the State was conservative and Catholic and was at every point in his career to find himself at odds with the establishment.
Browne came from humble beginnings. Born in Waterford to parents from Galway and Mayo he lived in Derry, Waterford, Athlone and Ballinrobe during his childhood, as his parents made their way about the country in order to find the means to take care of their eight children. His father died of Tuberculosis when Noel was just nine leaving his widowed mother to take care of a large family. She returned from Athlone to her home town of Ballinrobe where she was an outcast and a playmate once told Browne that his family 'had come to Ballinrobe to be fed'. The only visitors to come to the family home came for the auction of their worldly possessions when Noel's mother had to sell everything they had to take the family to England to stay with her eldest child when she herself contracted TB. She would die in a workhouse in England two weeks after bringing the family there.
The suffering of his mother made Browne a devout secularist. He saw from an early age the control which the church exercised over society and the way in which it was ultimately women and children who bore the brunt of this oppression. Receiving a catholic education taught him that the clergy were usually bullies and often paedophiles. He also saw how the Irish proletariat and peasantry never questioned the clergy and held themselves in servitude with their unquestioning faith in catholic teachings.
Browne However had a mixture of good and bad fortune which can only be described as bizarre. Having lost both parents by the age of twelve and facing into an uncertain future with only an impoverished sister to take care of the entire family, circumstances were to provide him with opportunities normally considered unattainable for someone of his class. When his sister found a job as a domestic help she was allowed to bring her siblings to stay with her. The owner of the house then managed to get Noel admitted to a Catholic preparatory school and this in turn led to him receiving a scholarship to a Jesuit grammar school where the English Catholic elites received their instruction (including military training) on how to serve the empire.
Having received a Christian Brothers' education in Ireland Browne was quick to spot discrepancies in the roles of Catholic education in the two countries and came to realise that the role religion played in society was more social and political than anything else. While the Imperialist and racist poet Kipling may have referred to walking among Kings and never losing the common touch Browne was to find himself walking amongst the elites but never losing sight of his class origins. He was the only person at his school who was not form a background of wealth and power but as he excelled both academically and athletically he was popular and well liked.
Not having a family or a home (one sister had been sent to America and his other siblings had been scattered throughout England. His eldest brother Jodie was to die in a workhouse and his eldest sister Eileen also suffered an untimely death.) he was often invited to take holidays with classmates and it was during his last summer holidays he was to stay with the appropriately named Chance family, who offered to pay for his education as a Doctor at Trinity college.
Browne had never considered becoming a Doctor and never even considered that the opportunity would ever be available to him. He had no qualms in going against the Catholic church and entering the Protestant Trinity College although it was in may ways to play a role in further alienating him from the society he inhabited. As a Trinity Graduate many of the doors open to Catholics were closed to him and as a Catholic many of the doors open to Trinity graduates were closed to him. He recalls how one teaching doctor told the assembled students 'I don't lecture to Jews, niggers or papists. If there are any here they should leave now.' Browne and a number of African and Jewish classmates had to leave the ward before the lecture could begin.
Most Trinity graduates went into private practise following their graduation. Browne however believed the connection between money and medical treatment was an aberration. In Against the Tide he is heavily critical of the mercenary attitudes of many in the medical profession. He points out that while Nursing is portrayed as a vocation and therefore nurses are subjected poor wages and conditions the role of Doctors and in particular consultants is not portrayed in the same way. Doctors expect to be paid for every patient they see while Nurses are not paid for every injection they administer or every bed they make.
His only attempt to enter private practise ended in a loss as he was unable to ask patients to pay for their treatment and instead set up a bowl in the waiting room where donations could be made. Unable to find work in Irish hospitals he returned to England where he gained experience in working in TB sanatoria and following world War II he returned to Ireland to work in what was essentially a voluntary capacity in the Sanatorium at Newcastle Co. Wicklow.
Browne's belief in the need for the creation of a system of Socialised medicine was to lead to his being drawn to politics. However mainstream Irish politics was divided along civil war lines with the two main parties being conservative organisations. The Labour party who claimed to be a left wing party wouldn't allow him to join and so he was to join Clann na Poblachta, a breakaway Republican party headed by Sean McBride.
Browne joined not because he was a Republican in the sense of the word used by his party Comrades but because in this party he saw a platform from which his quest for the establishment of a national health service could be advanced.
Browne won a Dail seat and overall the new party took ten seats in the 1948 elections. At this stage Fianna Fail had been in power for sixteen years and de Valera had set about creating a nation in his own image. All parties apart from FF decided to pool their resources and form what was on paper a left leaning government (the other parties were the arch conservative Fine Gael, the Labour Party, the National Labour Party and Clann na Talham (the farmer's party)). It was to be the State's first coalition government.
Despite his lack of political experience on his first day in government at the age of 33 Noel Browne was made minister for Health. It was a new department and it as seen as a safe place to put a potential upstart such as he. However Browne was to achieve more in three years than any other minister of health in the History of the State.
His personal mission was to eradicate TB and create a world class system of healthcare for all. In order to this more hospitals and clinics were needed and he was to find this task surprisingly easy. He was the only minister with control over his own budget. This was because funds were raised for health through the hospital sweepstakes. This money was being put into investments and previous ministers with responsibility for health had only been using the interest on this money to run the health service. Browne broke open the piggy bank and began a programme of building which has not been seen before or since.
This programme did not even need to held up by planning stages, it turned out that every county in the country had advanced plans for new hospitals and clinics and that land had already been acquired in many cases. This was as FF had made a habit out of promising new hospitals in every election and then then not building them so they could promise them again in the next election.
When it came to eradicating TB he did not need to appoint any experts or committees to decide how to proceed. As a TB doctor he knew which steps needed to be taken in the treatment of patients and progress in drastically reducing Ireland's TB levels was swift. He is more than any other person responsible for its eradication in the State.
Perhaps the greatest irony of Browne's career is that it was in attempting to implement a bill introduced by the former government that he was to make his most significant mark on history and to take on the might of the Catholic hierarchy and the medical profession. The Mother and Child scheme had been introduced by the FF government in 1947 and while objections had been received by the then Taoiseach de Valera he kept these secret from the incoming government and set Browne up for an ambush for which he was unprepared. The premise of the bill was simple. Free health care for all children under sixteen and free health care to all mothers.
While it may have fallen short of the sort of health care Browne himself may have wanted to introduce this level of non means tested health care to some of the most vulnerable in society was to eventually bring down the coalition.
The clergy gave numerous excuses for opposing it. They instigated a red scare. Claimed that it was against the family and that it would lead to the introduction of contraceptives and abortion and even that it would lead to a poorer quality of service. They claimed to be worried about taxes and said that it should be means tested so the rich would pay. However the over riding reason for their opposition was that Browne was crashing their party. They had a strangle hold over Irish society through their control of the education and health services. They didn't want the state interfering.
In this they had the support of the Doctors and Consultants who were worried about a loss in earnings.
Ironically one reason given by all sides who opposed the Mother and Child scheme was the fact that it was not means tested. The was an excuse formulated by the fake socialist William Norton, leader of the fake socialist Labour party. He claimed that he didn't see why he should have to pay for health care for the fur coated ladies of Foxrock and so was able to seem to give a valid reason for not supporting a bill which was designed to help the most vulnerable in society. He was able to side with the clergy and consultants and still make it seem to his supporters that he was doing it for the benefit of the people. It is the same excuse used by many today in relation to things such as third level fees. What they are not worried about however is that free services will be given to those who can afford to pay but rather that those how can afford to pay for themselves will have to pay taxes to provide services to the most disadvantaged in society.
The Mother and Child scheme had massive public support, in particular amongst the poorest sections of society and the church and doctors had to work extremely hard to terrify the population in order to make them less supportive. It was ultimately however not the people who lost faith in the proposed scheme but the politicians. The coalition partners failed to live up to the mandate they had and implement an extremely popular bill and instead sided with the clergy and medical professionals in order to subvert the democratic process. It was ultimately to lead to the collapse of the government. Browne was cast aside and the coalition collapsed. There was to be another coalition a couple of years later which was even more short lived and which collapsed to allow dev to rule for another sixteen years.
The first inter-party government is best remembered for three things. Being the first coalition government in the history of the State, the Mother and Child Scheme and declaring the Republic. It was ironic that it was not de Valera who declared Ireland a Republic as he had come very close in his ultra conservative, Catholic and Nationalist 1937 constitution. Fine Gael were generally seen as 'soft' on the national question and the minority Clann na Poblachta coalition partners were the only party in government who labelled themselves as Republican.
In the 1970s in an interview Browne revealed how exactly the Republic had come about. At a banquet in Ottawa the Taoiseach Costello had felt slighted and that Imperial triumphalism was being rubbed in his face by his hosts. In retaliation when he made his speech he announced that Ireland was to leave the Commonwealth and become a Republic. This was a shock not only to those present but also to his own cabinet colleagues. On his return he offered his resignation but it was refused by the cabinet and they decided to forge ahead and leave the Commonwealth.
Browne was the first to make this version of events public and he was quickly denounced as a liar by his former cabinet colleagues. It was not until the mid eighties (shortly before the publication of Against the Tide) that his story was corroborated and became the accepted version of events. Amongst those to condemn him for revealing the true events surrounding the leaving of the Commonwealth was his former party leader Mac Bride. Browne's vindication in this was ultimately to cast a shadow over what was previously considered to be a glorious part of Irish history.
It was of course far from glorious. The reason de Valera had never taken Ireland out of the Commonwealth was not out of conviction but rather out of pragmatism. He saw a united Ireland inside the commonwealth as more attractive to the Unionists in Northern Ireland. Ironically in making what was portrayed as a bold Nationalist/Republican move Costello ultimately took Ireland further away from the Nationalist ambition of unity. However neither de Valera nor Costello, or Mac Bride for that matter had anything against Imperialist organisations provided it would lead to a united Ireland. All three were willing to take Ireland into NATO provided that Ireland would be unified. According to Browne envoys were sent by Mac Bride to sound out this prospect and the only reason Ireland did not join NATO was not because of issues of principal or neutrality but because no guarantees were forthcoming.
Browne was to ultimately find that the rest of his political career was to be spent on the backbenches. Following on auspicious beginning in government he was to learn that politics of those like him have no place inside the establishment. Clann na Phoblachta did not last long after his expulsion and he spent most of the rest of his career as an independent. He did however at a couple of points join mainstream parties (Both Fianna Fail and Labour) in order to find platforms for his politics but was expelled from both parties. His attempts to found new left wing parties (first the National Progressive Democrats and then the Socialist Labour Party) ended in failure due to faction fighting and lack of proper organisation.
His period on the backbenches (which lasted three decades until his retirement in 1981) saw him regarded as a lone voice in the wilderness (although often he had another independent left wing deputy named McQuillan as a sidekick) and he was idolised by his followers and demonised by his opponents. Often branded as a Communist and Atheist he suffered through what he ultimately regarded to be a sham electoral system where the state surrendered all power to the clergy in order to provide a voice on issues such as contraceptives, gay rights, secularism and health care amongst many others. He was attacked by the Gardai and savaged by police dogs when he and others attempted to march against the American Embassy in protest against American policy on Cuba and the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was later informed that staff inside the embassy were armed and had been ready to open fire on protesters and that the Gardai were acting to protect the protesters but this may be a story concocted to cover the undemocratic actions of the Irish police, but then again it could be true.
He often found himself having the casting vote when it came to choosing governments and while he may have sometimes helped to bring far from ideal governments to power he claimed he always strove to pick the lesser of two evils and was willing to withdraw support when necessary. Perhaps his greatest impact on Irish history while in opposition was his role in finally ousting de Valera from power. Deputy McQuillan had been given a number of Irish Press shares and he signed one of these over to Browne. The Irish Press had been the newspaper created by de Valera when Fianna Fail were outside of the Dail in order to have a propaganda tool to counter the Irish Independent (Catholic Conservative and anti-Republican) and Irish Times (Protestant Conservative and anti-Republican). It had been funded by selling shares to ordinary Fianna Fail members who were mostly working class and small farmers.
As shareholders Browne and McQuillan were entitled to examine the books of Irish Press newspapers. They discovered that there was massive corruption and embezzlement in the Irish Press and that dev had surreptitiously procured a controlling interest in Irish Press newspapers for himself and his family at the expense of the shareholders, who were mostly grass roots Fianna Fail supporters. It took them over a year and a half to have debate on the issue brought up in the Dail but once it had been revealed that de Valera had swindled his own supporters his future was clear. The pope's plaything had to step down and hand control of the party over to his young protege Sean Lemass who would take Ireland from a society that was solely controlled by the Catholic church to one that was jointly controlled by the Catholic Church and big business.
When Browne eventually left politics he moved to Baile na hAbhainn in Connemara with his wife Phyllis and there he wrote his memoirs and played the accordion. He died in 1997. But what is his legacy? Where do we put a man like Noel Browne in Irish history? Is there a place for him either in establishment History or Socialist history?
He was it seems a man who tried to make a difference. Who really did try to fight against the tide. He was undoubtedly a Socialist but his flirtations with the establishment parties and forays into government could turn Socialists off him. Likewise his Socialism could turn establishment reformers off him. He was ultimately an outsider yet for three years he did participate in government and did make a difference. He was successful in building hospitals and eradicating TB because he had a will and the courage of his convictions. Yet when he tried to bring about social change the full force of the church, state and medical profession bore down on him. He didn't believe that we lived inside a true democracy but yet participated in elections and even supported governments he claimed not to agree with.
Perhaps when he came into government the establishment hadn't been ready for him. Perhaps creatures like him were until that point unknown. However once the establishment came to grips with him he was quickly dispatched to the political wilderness. Ultimately what we can learn from Noel Browne is that real change can never come from inside the establishment. It was as an outsider on the backbenches that he really belonged. Perhaps it is to his merit that he tried to change the system form within but only as it ultimately proved to in vain.
As a Socialist he was never overly preoccupied with tackling business but rather religion. The Ireland he lived in was after all a different one to the one we now inhabit. Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s wasn't a fully developed capitalist society. It was in some ways still a semi feudal State dominated by the clergy and civil war parties. Browne maintained that Ireland wasn't a democratic country. That while there might on the surface have been an electoral process it was in reality the clergy who held the reigns of power. One thing is for sure the political system hasn't changed much in Ireland in the past half century. So if the electoral system is still a sham we must ask then who now holds the reigns?
We are often led to believe in this country that we have no history of Socialism. That it is a foreign importation and indeed this has been the way for over a century. It was Connelly himself who said in the introduction to Socialism made easy;
'SOCIALISM IS A FOREIGN IMPORTATION!
I know it because I read it in the papers. I also know it to be the case because in every country I have graced with my presence up to the present time, or have heard from, the possessing classes through their organs in the press, and their spokesmen upon the platform have been vociferous and insistent in declaring the foreign origin of Socialism.
In Ireland Socialism is an English importation, in England they are convinced it was made in Germany, in Germany it is a scheme of traitors in alliance with the French to disrupt the Empire, in France it is an accursed conspiracy to discredit the army which is destined to reconquer Alsace and Lorraine, in Russia it is an English plot to prevent Russian extension towards Asia, in Asia it is known to have been set on foot by American enemies of Chinese and Japanese industrial progress, and in America it is one of the baneful fruits of unrestricted pauper and criminal immigration.'
Ironically those who went on the found the fledging Irish state were quick to hijack the legacy of Connelly and try to portray him as a nationalist of their ilk rather than the committed socialist and internationalist that he actually was. Indeed most people are probably not aware that Connelly was a Marxist and he is remembered by the elites of our state more for his role in the disastrous 1916 rising than his role in bringing militant trade unionism to Ireland and in attempting to create a class consciousness amongst the Irish people in their struggle against Imperialism.
In the same way Noel Browne, is if he is mentioned at all, usually has had his memory hijacked by those would consider themselves to be liberal reformers and who would rather concentrate on his secularism rather than his socialism. Best remembered, if at all, for the Mother and Child scheme Browne had a long and tumultuous career in Irish politics.
In his memoir Against the Tide, published in 1986 Browne details the circumstances of his early life which were to lead him into politics and the tumultuous career which followed. He was the perennial outsider and a rare conscience in Irish politics. The title of his memoir is highly fitting as he put forward left wing secular ideas at a time when the State was conservative and Catholic and was at every point in his career to find himself at odds with the establishment.
Browne came from humble beginnings. Born in Waterford to parents from Galway and Mayo he lived in Derry, Waterford, Athlone and Ballinrobe during his childhood, as his parents made their way about the country in order to find the means to take care of their eight children. His father died of Tuberculosis when Noel was just nine leaving his widowed mother to take care of a large family. She returned from Athlone to her home town of Ballinrobe where she was an outcast and a playmate once told Browne that his family 'had come to Ballinrobe to be fed'. The only visitors to come to the family home came for the auction of their worldly possessions when Noel's mother had to sell everything they had to take the family to England to stay with her eldest child when she herself contracted TB. She would die in a workhouse in England two weeks after bringing the family there.
The suffering of his mother made Browne a devout secularist. He saw from an early age the control which the church exercised over society and the way in which it was ultimately women and children who bore the brunt of this oppression. Receiving a catholic education taught him that the clergy were usually bullies and often paedophiles. He also saw how the Irish proletariat and peasantry never questioned the clergy and held themselves in servitude with their unquestioning faith in catholic teachings.
Browne However had a mixture of good and bad fortune which can only be described as bizarre. Having lost both parents by the age of twelve and facing into an uncertain future with only an impoverished sister to take care of the entire family, circumstances were to provide him with opportunities normally considered unattainable for someone of his class. When his sister found a job as a domestic help she was allowed to bring her siblings to stay with her. The owner of the house then managed to get Noel admitted to a Catholic preparatory school and this in turn led to him receiving a scholarship to a Jesuit grammar school where the English Catholic elites received their instruction (including military training) on how to serve the empire.
Having received a Christian Brothers' education in Ireland Browne was quick to spot discrepancies in the roles of Catholic education in the two countries and came to realise that the role religion played in society was more social and political than anything else. While the Imperialist and racist poet Kipling may have referred to walking among Kings and never losing the common touch Browne was to find himself walking amongst the elites but never losing sight of his class origins. He was the only person at his school who was not form a background of wealth and power but as he excelled both academically and athletically he was popular and well liked.
Not having a family or a home (one sister had been sent to America and his other siblings had been scattered throughout England. His eldest brother Jodie was to die in a workhouse and his eldest sister Eileen also suffered an untimely death.) he was often invited to take holidays with classmates and it was during his last summer holidays he was to stay with the appropriately named Chance family, who offered to pay for his education as a Doctor at Trinity college.
Browne had never considered becoming a Doctor and never even considered that the opportunity would ever be available to him. He had no qualms in going against the Catholic church and entering the Protestant Trinity College although it was in may ways to play a role in further alienating him from the society he inhabited. As a Trinity Graduate many of the doors open to Catholics were closed to him and as a Catholic many of the doors open to Trinity graduates were closed to him. He recalls how one teaching doctor told the assembled students 'I don't lecture to Jews, niggers or papists. If there are any here they should leave now.' Browne and a number of African and Jewish classmates had to leave the ward before the lecture could begin.
Most Trinity graduates went into private practise following their graduation. Browne however believed the connection between money and medical treatment was an aberration. In Against the Tide he is heavily critical of the mercenary attitudes of many in the medical profession. He points out that while Nursing is portrayed as a vocation and therefore nurses are subjected poor wages and conditions the role of Doctors and in particular consultants is not portrayed in the same way. Doctors expect to be paid for every patient they see while Nurses are not paid for every injection they administer or every bed they make.
His only attempt to enter private practise ended in a loss as he was unable to ask patients to pay for their treatment and instead set up a bowl in the waiting room where donations could be made. Unable to find work in Irish hospitals he returned to England where he gained experience in working in TB sanatoria and following world War II he returned to Ireland to work in what was essentially a voluntary capacity in the Sanatorium at Newcastle Co. Wicklow.
Browne's belief in the need for the creation of a system of Socialised medicine was to lead to his being drawn to politics. However mainstream Irish politics was divided along civil war lines with the two main parties being conservative organisations. The Labour party who claimed to be a left wing party wouldn't allow him to join and so he was to join Clann na Poblachta, a breakaway Republican party headed by Sean McBride.
Browne joined not because he was a Republican in the sense of the word used by his party Comrades but because in this party he saw a platform from which his quest for the establishment of a national health service could be advanced.
Browne won a Dail seat and overall the new party took ten seats in the 1948 elections. At this stage Fianna Fail had been in power for sixteen years and de Valera had set about creating a nation in his own image. All parties apart from FF decided to pool their resources and form what was on paper a left leaning government (the other parties were the arch conservative Fine Gael, the Labour Party, the National Labour Party and Clann na Talham (the farmer's party)). It was to be the State's first coalition government.
Despite his lack of political experience on his first day in government at the age of 33 Noel Browne was made minister for Health. It was a new department and it as seen as a safe place to put a potential upstart such as he. However Browne was to achieve more in three years than any other minister of health in the History of the State.
His personal mission was to eradicate TB and create a world class system of healthcare for all. In order to this more hospitals and clinics were needed and he was to find this task surprisingly easy. He was the only minister with control over his own budget. This was because funds were raised for health through the hospital sweepstakes. This money was being put into investments and previous ministers with responsibility for health had only been using the interest on this money to run the health service. Browne broke open the piggy bank and began a programme of building which has not been seen before or since.
This programme did not even need to held up by planning stages, it turned out that every county in the country had advanced plans for new hospitals and clinics and that land had already been acquired in many cases. This was as FF had made a habit out of promising new hospitals in every election and then then not building them so they could promise them again in the next election.
When it came to eradicating TB he did not need to appoint any experts or committees to decide how to proceed. As a TB doctor he knew which steps needed to be taken in the treatment of patients and progress in drastically reducing Ireland's TB levels was swift. He is more than any other person responsible for its eradication in the State.
Perhaps the greatest irony of Browne's career is that it was in attempting to implement a bill introduced by the former government that he was to make his most significant mark on history and to take on the might of the Catholic hierarchy and the medical profession. The Mother and Child scheme had been introduced by the FF government in 1947 and while objections had been received by the then Taoiseach de Valera he kept these secret from the incoming government and set Browne up for an ambush for which he was unprepared. The premise of the bill was simple. Free health care for all children under sixteen and free health care to all mothers.
While it may have fallen short of the sort of health care Browne himself may have wanted to introduce this level of non means tested health care to some of the most vulnerable in society was to eventually bring down the coalition.
The clergy gave numerous excuses for opposing it. They instigated a red scare. Claimed that it was against the family and that it would lead to the introduction of contraceptives and abortion and even that it would lead to a poorer quality of service. They claimed to be worried about taxes and said that it should be means tested so the rich would pay. However the over riding reason for their opposition was that Browne was crashing their party. They had a strangle hold over Irish society through their control of the education and health services. They didn't want the state interfering.
In this they had the support of the Doctors and Consultants who were worried about a loss in earnings.
Ironically one reason given by all sides who opposed the Mother and Child scheme was the fact that it was not means tested. The was an excuse formulated by the fake socialist William Norton, leader of the fake socialist Labour party. He claimed that he didn't see why he should have to pay for health care for the fur coated ladies of Foxrock and so was able to seem to give a valid reason for not supporting a bill which was designed to help the most vulnerable in society. He was able to side with the clergy and consultants and still make it seem to his supporters that he was doing it for the benefit of the people. It is the same excuse used by many today in relation to things such as third level fees. What they are not worried about however is that free services will be given to those who can afford to pay but rather that those how can afford to pay for themselves will have to pay taxes to provide services to the most disadvantaged in society.
The Mother and Child scheme had massive public support, in particular amongst the poorest sections of society and the church and doctors had to work extremely hard to terrify the population in order to make them less supportive. It was ultimately however not the people who lost faith in the proposed scheme but the politicians. The coalition partners failed to live up to the mandate they had and implement an extremely popular bill and instead sided with the clergy and medical professionals in order to subvert the democratic process. It was ultimately to lead to the collapse of the government. Browne was cast aside and the coalition collapsed. There was to be another coalition a couple of years later which was even more short lived and which collapsed to allow dev to rule for another sixteen years.
The first inter-party government is best remembered for three things. Being the first coalition government in the history of the State, the Mother and Child Scheme and declaring the Republic. It was ironic that it was not de Valera who declared Ireland a Republic as he had come very close in his ultra conservative, Catholic and Nationalist 1937 constitution. Fine Gael were generally seen as 'soft' on the national question and the minority Clann na Poblachta coalition partners were the only party in government who labelled themselves as Republican.
In the 1970s in an interview Browne revealed how exactly the Republic had come about. At a banquet in Ottawa the Taoiseach Costello had felt slighted and that Imperial triumphalism was being rubbed in his face by his hosts. In retaliation when he made his speech he announced that Ireland was to leave the Commonwealth and become a Republic. This was a shock not only to those present but also to his own cabinet colleagues. On his return he offered his resignation but it was refused by the cabinet and they decided to forge ahead and leave the Commonwealth.
Browne was the first to make this version of events public and he was quickly denounced as a liar by his former cabinet colleagues. It was not until the mid eighties (shortly before the publication of Against the Tide) that his story was corroborated and became the accepted version of events. Amongst those to condemn him for revealing the true events surrounding the leaving of the Commonwealth was his former party leader Mac Bride. Browne's vindication in this was ultimately to cast a shadow over what was previously considered to be a glorious part of Irish history.
It was of course far from glorious. The reason de Valera had never taken Ireland out of the Commonwealth was not out of conviction but rather out of pragmatism. He saw a united Ireland inside the commonwealth as more attractive to the Unionists in Northern Ireland. Ironically in making what was portrayed as a bold Nationalist/Republican move Costello ultimately took Ireland further away from the Nationalist ambition of unity. However neither de Valera nor Costello, or Mac Bride for that matter had anything against Imperialist organisations provided it would lead to a united Ireland. All three were willing to take Ireland into NATO provided that Ireland would be unified. According to Browne envoys were sent by Mac Bride to sound out this prospect and the only reason Ireland did not join NATO was not because of issues of principal or neutrality but because no guarantees were forthcoming.
Browne was to ultimately find that the rest of his political career was to be spent on the backbenches. Following on auspicious beginning in government he was to learn that politics of those like him have no place inside the establishment. Clann na Phoblachta did not last long after his expulsion and he spent most of the rest of his career as an independent. He did however at a couple of points join mainstream parties (Both Fianna Fail and Labour) in order to find platforms for his politics but was expelled from both parties. His attempts to found new left wing parties (first the National Progressive Democrats and then the Socialist Labour Party) ended in failure due to faction fighting and lack of proper organisation.
His period on the backbenches (which lasted three decades until his retirement in 1981) saw him regarded as a lone voice in the wilderness (although often he had another independent left wing deputy named McQuillan as a sidekick) and he was idolised by his followers and demonised by his opponents. Often branded as a Communist and Atheist he suffered through what he ultimately regarded to be a sham electoral system where the state surrendered all power to the clergy in order to provide a voice on issues such as contraceptives, gay rights, secularism and health care amongst many others. He was attacked by the Gardai and savaged by police dogs when he and others attempted to march against the American Embassy in protest against American policy on Cuba and the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was later informed that staff inside the embassy were armed and had been ready to open fire on protesters and that the Gardai were acting to protect the protesters but this may be a story concocted to cover the undemocratic actions of the Irish police, but then again it could be true.
He often found himself having the casting vote when it came to choosing governments and while he may have sometimes helped to bring far from ideal governments to power he claimed he always strove to pick the lesser of two evils and was willing to withdraw support when necessary. Perhaps his greatest impact on Irish history while in opposition was his role in finally ousting de Valera from power. Deputy McQuillan had been given a number of Irish Press shares and he signed one of these over to Browne. The Irish Press had been the newspaper created by de Valera when Fianna Fail were outside of the Dail in order to have a propaganda tool to counter the Irish Independent (Catholic Conservative and anti-Republican) and Irish Times (Protestant Conservative and anti-Republican). It had been funded by selling shares to ordinary Fianna Fail members who were mostly working class and small farmers.
As shareholders Browne and McQuillan were entitled to examine the books of Irish Press newspapers. They discovered that there was massive corruption and embezzlement in the Irish Press and that dev had surreptitiously procured a controlling interest in Irish Press newspapers for himself and his family at the expense of the shareholders, who were mostly grass roots Fianna Fail supporters. It took them over a year and a half to have debate on the issue brought up in the Dail but once it had been revealed that de Valera had swindled his own supporters his future was clear. The pope's plaything had to step down and hand control of the party over to his young protege Sean Lemass who would take Ireland from a society that was solely controlled by the Catholic church to one that was jointly controlled by the Catholic Church and big business.
When Browne eventually left politics he moved to Baile na hAbhainn in Connemara with his wife Phyllis and there he wrote his memoirs and played the accordion. He died in 1997. But what is his legacy? Where do we put a man like Noel Browne in Irish history? Is there a place for him either in establishment History or Socialist history?
He was it seems a man who tried to make a difference. Who really did try to fight against the tide. He was undoubtedly a Socialist but his flirtations with the establishment parties and forays into government could turn Socialists off him. Likewise his Socialism could turn establishment reformers off him. He was ultimately an outsider yet for three years he did participate in government and did make a difference. He was successful in building hospitals and eradicating TB because he had a will and the courage of his convictions. Yet when he tried to bring about social change the full force of the church, state and medical profession bore down on him. He didn't believe that we lived inside a true democracy but yet participated in elections and even supported governments he claimed not to agree with.
Perhaps when he came into government the establishment hadn't been ready for him. Perhaps creatures like him were until that point unknown. However once the establishment came to grips with him he was quickly dispatched to the political wilderness. Ultimately what we can learn from Noel Browne is that real change can never come from inside the establishment. It was as an outsider on the backbenches that he really belonged. Perhaps it is to his merit that he tried to change the system form within but only as it ultimately proved to in vain.
As a Socialist he was never overly preoccupied with tackling business but rather religion. The Ireland he lived in was after all a different one to the one we now inhabit. Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s wasn't a fully developed capitalist society. It was in some ways still a semi feudal State dominated by the clergy and civil war parties. Browne maintained that Ireland wasn't a democratic country. That while there might on the surface have been an electoral process it was in reality the clergy who held the reigns of power. One thing is for sure the political system hasn't changed much in Ireland in the past half century. So if the electoral system is still a sham we must ask then who now holds the reigns?
So long Leonard
The cheek of him, now he was never exactly a champion of the workers or anything but I always thought there was something cool about Leonard Cohen. I am thinking for example about the song, First we take Manhattan where he laments, 'They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom for trying to change the system from within'. Surely if ever there was a call for the abandonment of reformist policies in favour of revolutionary action this was it. He then goes on to out line a policy where 'First we take Manhattan and then we take Berlin.' Perhaps not the most developed or astute of policies but well intentioned nonetheless. It seems indeed to have a certain Maoist slant to it. As indeed does his rendition of the song The Partisan.
Of course Leonard Cohen was never really a revolutionary in anything but the musical sense. Not that you'd consider him a reactionary either but his bourgeois background was never exactly to the forefront of his music. Instead I always had an image of him dressed in a black suit and smoking du Maurier cigarettes and reminiscing about penetrations past. I mean that's all I was ever able to imagine him doing. Sitting, staring out a window, smoking, reminiscing, maybe getting a bit of a semi every now and again as he recollects yet another girl with a French name who he had had, possibly numerous times or, as in the case of Suzanne, never and wondering why all she had ever given him was tea and oranges.
I knew that he had gone up a mountain in California a while back and taken up residence in a Buddhist monastery (because of course that's where the conscientious Buddhist would build a monastery, California) and I just assumed it was because he could see further from the windows up there and that somehow this would aid his reminiscing.
However while he was up the mountain, smoking, looking out the window and reminiscing some sneaky fucker stole all his money. So Leonard had proved two things, it is possible to make millions from writing songs and poems about girls with French names, but being able to make it doesn't mean you'll be able to hang on to it. Perhaps the Buddhist God was trying to tell him something. (and yes they do have a God and yes it is a religion. Don't believe them just because they lie all the time).
So Leonard needed to come down form the mountain, like one of those bible characters he wrote songs about when he had run out of girls' names. However Leonard came down empty handed and needed to scavenge the earth so he could keep himself in the lifestyle to which he had become accustomed. All those cigarettes and black suits cost money you know.
So in his wandering he ends up with some gigs in the O2 in Dublin and if you want to see him it's ninety Euro. Ninety fucking quid. Sweet sufferin' Jaysus. Ninety Euro! Here we are with sky-rocketing unemployment and he wants ninety quid off us. Twelve per cent unemployment and the dole of two hundred quid a week (about to be cut) and he wants ninety for the CHEAPEST ticket. That's 45 per cent of the weekly income of twelve per cent of the population.
Then I see an ad in the paper proclaiming that his greatest hits is being released. This however is the same greatest hits album that was released in 1974, I know it, I grew up listening to it. Cynical and depraved are words that come to my mind (to describe him, not me).
Sorry Leonard I don't know what happened to you up that mountain but I used to think you were cool. Sorry you couldn't take care of your money but I'm taking care of mine.
Of course Leonard Cohen was never really a revolutionary in anything but the musical sense. Not that you'd consider him a reactionary either but his bourgeois background was never exactly to the forefront of his music. Instead I always had an image of him dressed in a black suit and smoking du Maurier cigarettes and reminiscing about penetrations past. I mean that's all I was ever able to imagine him doing. Sitting, staring out a window, smoking, reminiscing, maybe getting a bit of a semi every now and again as he recollects yet another girl with a French name who he had had, possibly numerous times or, as in the case of Suzanne, never and wondering why all she had ever given him was tea and oranges.
I knew that he had gone up a mountain in California a while back and taken up residence in a Buddhist monastery (because of course that's where the conscientious Buddhist would build a monastery, California) and I just assumed it was because he could see further from the windows up there and that somehow this would aid his reminiscing.
However while he was up the mountain, smoking, looking out the window and reminiscing some sneaky fucker stole all his money. So Leonard had proved two things, it is possible to make millions from writing songs and poems about girls with French names, but being able to make it doesn't mean you'll be able to hang on to it. Perhaps the Buddhist God was trying to tell him something. (and yes they do have a God and yes it is a religion. Don't believe them just because they lie all the time).
So Leonard needed to come down form the mountain, like one of those bible characters he wrote songs about when he had run out of girls' names. However Leonard came down empty handed and needed to scavenge the earth so he could keep himself in the lifestyle to which he had become accustomed. All those cigarettes and black suits cost money you know.
So in his wandering he ends up with some gigs in the O2 in Dublin and if you want to see him it's ninety Euro. Ninety fucking quid. Sweet sufferin' Jaysus. Ninety Euro! Here we are with sky-rocketing unemployment and he wants ninety quid off us. Twelve per cent unemployment and the dole of two hundred quid a week (about to be cut) and he wants ninety for the CHEAPEST ticket. That's 45 per cent of the weekly income of twelve per cent of the population.
Then I see an ad in the paper proclaiming that his greatest hits is being released. This however is the same greatest hits album that was released in 1974, I know it, I grew up listening to it. Cynical and depraved are words that come to my mind (to describe him, not me).
Sorry Leonard I don't know what happened to you up that mountain but I used to think you were cool. Sorry you couldn't take care of your money but I'm taking care of mine.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Marxism and the Individual
This is a lead off I gave at this weeks Socialist Party meeting in Galway.
Capitalists like to talk about freedom a lot. As if they somehow hold the monopoly on the word. As if somehow their exploitative and destructive economic and social system actually guaranteed freedom and prosperity to the billions of people who live under constant fear of economic instability and bullying from corporations and organs of the state.
Freedom is something which we all aspire to, it is the right to be free from harassment and to enjoy the ability to live ones life in the way in which we see fit and to be individuals amongst many other things.
Capitalists claim that we can only experience freedom under a free market. That any attempts to interfere with their freedom to make money and exploit their workers and the environment will somehow interfere with our own ability to be free.
In actual fact nothing could be further from the truth. While they may like to claim that Socialism would end individual freedom, the opposite is the case. By ending the exploitation of workers by an oppressive capitalist class Socialism would leave workers free to pursue their own lives and leave them with more time and greater security to do so.
In a capitalist society workers never see the full value of their labour and have to work extra hard in order to ensure greater profits for their bosses. A the same time greater and greater financial demands are placed on them in order to keep them enslaved in this unequal relationship. Paying mortgages and day to day expenses as well as having no security regarding health care or pensions mean that workers must work harder and harder not just to make money for their own bosses but for all the bosses.
Capitalists however say this system is necessary to ensure personal freedom for all. They claim that any attempt to interfere in the free market would lead to tyranny and despotism and that their version of liberal democracy has ensured freedom to all. The reason they want us to think that is because they are the ones who benefit most from this system and while the vast majority of people struggle on a day to day basis to make ends meet the ruling elite are able to lead lives of luxury and abundance.
However Leon Trotsky describes the relationship between the classes in a Capitalist society as one which has historical precedents and leads to certain conclusions is what he calls the materialist conception of history.
“Human society is an historically-originated collaboration in the struggle for existence and the assurance of the maintenance of the generations.
The character of a society is determined by the character of its economy. The character of its economy is determined by its means of productive labour.
For every great epoch in the development of the productive forces there is a definite corresponding social regime. Every social regime until now has secured enormous advantages to the ruling class.
It is clear, therefore, that social regimes are not eternal. They arise historically, and then become fetters on further progress. "All that arises deserves to be destroyed."
But no ruling class has ever voluntarily and peacefully abdicated. In questions of life and death, arguments based on reason have never replaced the arguments of force. This may be sad, but it is so. It is not we that have made this world. We can do nothing but take it as it is.”
In other words our freedom is not inextricably linked to the freedom of the ruling classes. Rather they achieve their own freedom through their dominant social position. While there are those who believe that capitalism can be replaced by 'arguments of reason' in actual fact the ruling classes will use all means available to them in order to keep their position and one tactic they use is to make us believe that we will never be any freer under any other system.
They use organs of the press and educational institutions to extend their control into the daily lives of the people and to convince them that there is no other way and that no system would ensure them greater individual freedom than the current one.
In actual fact the worker suffers not just materially under capitalism but also psychologically. According to Karl Marx the lack of control they exercise over their daily lives leave many to develop a sense of alienation. As the worker does not work towards the common good or even, as they are led to believe, their own self interest but rather for the benefit of the bosses and they lose control of their lives by not having control of their work. They never become autonomous self realised human beings in any way except the way the bourgeoisie see fit.
Ironically while the Capitalist classes cry that socialism cannot lead to individual freedom they are never slow to appropriate revolutionary imagery for their own marketing purposes. Hammers and Sickles, Red stars and the letters CCCP have all found their way on to t-shirts as has the image of Che Guevara which is now one of the most reproduced images on the planet and symbol of Socialist Revolution which has made millions upon millions of dollars for those who would abhor the true substance of Guevara's politics.
He himself said:
'I am not interested in dry economic socialism. We are fighting against misery, but we are also fighting against alienation. One of the fundamental objectives of Marxism is to remove interest, the factor of individual interest, and gain, from people’s psychological motivations. Marx was preoccupied both with economic factors and with their repercussions on the spirit. If communism isn’t interested in this too, it may be a method of distributing goods, but it will never be a revolutionary way of life.'
Personally while I agree with a lot of this statement what I don't agree with is the factor of individual interest being removed from people's psychological motivations. Rather Socialism is a recognition of a common interest which can serve every individual through cooperation. Under Socialism rather than being pitted against each other as they are in a capitalist society, where they are encouraged to compete for work and lower the amount of money they will take to do a job, workers would be able to pool their resources in order to ensure that everybody would have a decent quality of life.
An example of what can be achieved through cooperation can be seen by the tremendous advances made by trade unions in the past. Benefits and entitlements such as weekends, sick leave, holidays, overtime and and pensions weren't handed out by bosses because they were feeling generous. Rather these were rights that were won by militant mass actions where the workers cooperated with one another in order to extract concessions from their employers that would benefit all.
This mass action terrified the bosses as they saw what the workers could achieve if they cooperated so in the latter part of the twentieth century massive assaults were launched on the workers and their unions. Many of the benefits won by militant industrial action over the previous century were stripped away and workers were forced into insecure employment with only a fraction of the benefits their parents might have had.
These are the sort of individuals the ruling elite want us to be. People who do not recognise our common class interest and who do not cooperate in order to extract what is rightfully ours from the bosses. And when they pay their individualist non union workers they are to express their individuality further by consuming any number of an array of goods produced by big business, information on which they can find on the television stations and in the publications of other big businesses.
In 2002 the BBC (which is a State run broadcaster) ran a four part series called century of the self. It focused on the role that the ideas of Sigmund Freud had played in creating modern society. Mostly it looked at how his ideas had been exploited by Big business or politicians to sell their products or themselves to the public.
Shortly after the end of WW1 a young man named Edward Bernays, who happened to be Sigmund Freud's nephew opened the World's first Public Relations company in New York. He set about using psychoanalysis to help companies to sell their products. One of his first major publicity coups was to make smoking fashionable to women. A cigarette company approached him as they were concerned that as smoking was taboo for women they were losing out on half their market. Bernays approached a psychologist who explained to him that the cigarette was a phallus and therefore a symbol of male power. Bernays realised that he had to create a connection in women's minds between cigarettes and female power. He did this by encouraging a group of débutantes to join New York's Easter Parade and at a given moment to produce cigarettes from under their clothing and light them. Meanwhile he tipped off the press that a group of suffragettes were planning to infiltrate the parade and light 'torches of freedom' as a symbolic protest. All of a sudden smoking cigarettes became a symbol of female power and the cigarette companies had doubled their markets.
Bernays had just solved a major problem for the capitalists. Quite simply he had found a way to sell the people things they didn't really need by appealing to their hopes and desires rather than their needs. Very often notions such as freedom and independence became wrapped up in marketing and people were encouraged to express their individuality through their purchases. Psychological marketing was to enter its golden age from the sixties onwards as a new breed of 'self actualising individuals' sought to express themselves by consuming.
Modern politicians also use such psychological tactics in order to promote themselves by appealing to people's aspirations. A prime example of this is Barak Obama who used the words change and hope to allow people to project their own desires on to him.
So then if we are tricked into conforming to the desires of the ruling elite by attempting to express our individuality can we break out of this cycle by acting as individuals?
If it is only inside socialism we will find the ability to be ourselves and not feel alienated can we take individual courses of action in order to achieve a Socialist society?
Leon Trotsky said that acts of individual terror were counter productive to the cause of revolution as they belittled the role of the masses and the nature of the society Marxists sought to create.
''Terrorising' with the threat of a strike, or actually conducting a strike is something only industrial workers can do. The social significance of a strike depends directly upon first, the size of the enterprise or the branch of industry that it affects, and second, the degree to which the workers taking part in it are organised, disciplined, and ready for action. This is just as true of a political strike as it is for an economic one. It continues to be the method of struggle that flows directly from the productive role of the proletariat in modern society.'
Trotsky says that if the workers are not operating en mass then any revolution can not be a truly proletarian revolution;
' Only the workers can conduct a strike. Artisans ruined by the factory, peasants whose water the factory is poisoning, or lumpen proletarians in search of plunder can smash machines, set fire to a factory, or murder its owner.
Only the conscious and organised working class can send a strong representation into the halls of parliament to look out for proletarian interests. However, in order to murder a prominent official you need not have the organised masses behind you. The recipe for explosives is accessible to all, and a Browning can be obtained anywhere.'
By recognising a common class interest and by organising and cooperating the workers can once and for all unite in order not only win their entitlements but create a society where they are not victim to the machinations of a predatory capitalist class and are able to exercise their individuality free from the tyranny of class division and where society can operate in a truly democratic manner.
Capitalists like to talk about freedom a lot. As if they somehow hold the monopoly on the word. As if somehow their exploitative and destructive economic and social system actually guaranteed freedom and prosperity to the billions of people who live under constant fear of economic instability and bullying from corporations and organs of the state.
Freedom is something which we all aspire to, it is the right to be free from harassment and to enjoy the ability to live ones life in the way in which we see fit and to be individuals amongst many other things.
Capitalists claim that we can only experience freedom under a free market. That any attempts to interfere with their freedom to make money and exploit their workers and the environment will somehow interfere with our own ability to be free.
In actual fact nothing could be further from the truth. While they may like to claim that Socialism would end individual freedom, the opposite is the case. By ending the exploitation of workers by an oppressive capitalist class Socialism would leave workers free to pursue their own lives and leave them with more time and greater security to do so.
In a capitalist society workers never see the full value of their labour and have to work extra hard in order to ensure greater profits for their bosses. A the same time greater and greater financial demands are placed on them in order to keep them enslaved in this unequal relationship. Paying mortgages and day to day expenses as well as having no security regarding health care or pensions mean that workers must work harder and harder not just to make money for their own bosses but for all the bosses.
Capitalists however say this system is necessary to ensure personal freedom for all. They claim that any attempt to interfere in the free market would lead to tyranny and despotism and that their version of liberal democracy has ensured freedom to all. The reason they want us to think that is because they are the ones who benefit most from this system and while the vast majority of people struggle on a day to day basis to make ends meet the ruling elite are able to lead lives of luxury and abundance.
However Leon Trotsky describes the relationship between the classes in a Capitalist society as one which has historical precedents and leads to certain conclusions is what he calls the materialist conception of history.
“Human society is an historically-originated collaboration in the struggle for existence and the assurance of the maintenance of the generations.
The character of a society is determined by the character of its economy. The character of its economy is determined by its means of productive labour.
For every great epoch in the development of the productive forces there is a definite corresponding social regime. Every social regime until now has secured enormous advantages to the ruling class.
It is clear, therefore, that social regimes are not eternal. They arise historically, and then become fetters on further progress. "All that arises deserves to be destroyed."
But no ruling class has ever voluntarily and peacefully abdicated. In questions of life and death, arguments based on reason have never replaced the arguments of force. This may be sad, but it is so. It is not we that have made this world. We can do nothing but take it as it is.”
In other words our freedom is not inextricably linked to the freedom of the ruling classes. Rather they achieve their own freedom through their dominant social position. While there are those who believe that capitalism can be replaced by 'arguments of reason' in actual fact the ruling classes will use all means available to them in order to keep their position and one tactic they use is to make us believe that we will never be any freer under any other system.
They use organs of the press and educational institutions to extend their control into the daily lives of the people and to convince them that there is no other way and that no system would ensure them greater individual freedom than the current one.
In actual fact the worker suffers not just materially under capitalism but also psychologically. According to Karl Marx the lack of control they exercise over their daily lives leave many to develop a sense of alienation. As the worker does not work towards the common good or even, as they are led to believe, their own self interest but rather for the benefit of the bosses and they lose control of their lives by not having control of their work. They never become autonomous self realised human beings in any way except the way the bourgeoisie see fit.
Ironically while the Capitalist classes cry that socialism cannot lead to individual freedom they are never slow to appropriate revolutionary imagery for their own marketing purposes. Hammers and Sickles, Red stars and the letters CCCP have all found their way on to t-shirts as has the image of Che Guevara which is now one of the most reproduced images on the planet and symbol of Socialist Revolution which has made millions upon millions of dollars for those who would abhor the true substance of Guevara's politics.
He himself said:
'I am not interested in dry economic socialism. We are fighting against misery, but we are also fighting against alienation. One of the fundamental objectives of Marxism is to remove interest, the factor of individual interest, and gain, from people’s psychological motivations. Marx was preoccupied both with economic factors and with their repercussions on the spirit. If communism isn’t interested in this too, it may be a method of distributing goods, but it will never be a revolutionary way of life.'
Personally while I agree with a lot of this statement what I don't agree with is the factor of individual interest being removed from people's psychological motivations. Rather Socialism is a recognition of a common interest which can serve every individual through cooperation. Under Socialism rather than being pitted against each other as they are in a capitalist society, where they are encouraged to compete for work and lower the amount of money they will take to do a job, workers would be able to pool their resources in order to ensure that everybody would have a decent quality of life.
An example of what can be achieved through cooperation can be seen by the tremendous advances made by trade unions in the past. Benefits and entitlements such as weekends, sick leave, holidays, overtime and and pensions weren't handed out by bosses because they were feeling generous. Rather these were rights that were won by militant mass actions where the workers cooperated with one another in order to extract concessions from their employers that would benefit all.
This mass action terrified the bosses as they saw what the workers could achieve if they cooperated so in the latter part of the twentieth century massive assaults were launched on the workers and their unions. Many of the benefits won by militant industrial action over the previous century were stripped away and workers were forced into insecure employment with only a fraction of the benefits their parents might have had.
These are the sort of individuals the ruling elite want us to be. People who do not recognise our common class interest and who do not cooperate in order to extract what is rightfully ours from the bosses. And when they pay their individualist non union workers they are to express their individuality further by consuming any number of an array of goods produced by big business, information on which they can find on the television stations and in the publications of other big businesses.
In 2002 the BBC (which is a State run broadcaster) ran a four part series called century of the self. It focused on the role that the ideas of Sigmund Freud had played in creating modern society. Mostly it looked at how his ideas had been exploited by Big business or politicians to sell their products or themselves to the public.
Shortly after the end of WW1 a young man named Edward Bernays, who happened to be Sigmund Freud's nephew opened the World's first Public Relations company in New York. He set about using psychoanalysis to help companies to sell their products. One of his first major publicity coups was to make smoking fashionable to women. A cigarette company approached him as they were concerned that as smoking was taboo for women they were losing out on half their market. Bernays approached a psychologist who explained to him that the cigarette was a phallus and therefore a symbol of male power. Bernays realised that he had to create a connection in women's minds between cigarettes and female power. He did this by encouraging a group of débutantes to join New York's Easter Parade and at a given moment to produce cigarettes from under their clothing and light them. Meanwhile he tipped off the press that a group of suffragettes were planning to infiltrate the parade and light 'torches of freedom' as a symbolic protest. All of a sudden smoking cigarettes became a symbol of female power and the cigarette companies had doubled their markets.
Bernays had just solved a major problem for the capitalists. Quite simply he had found a way to sell the people things they didn't really need by appealing to their hopes and desires rather than their needs. Very often notions such as freedom and independence became wrapped up in marketing and people were encouraged to express their individuality through their purchases. Psychological marketing was to enter its golden age from the sixties onwards as a new breed of 'self actualising individuals' sought to express themselves by consuming.
Modern politicians also use such psychological tactics in order to promote themselves by appealing to people's aspirations. A prime example of this is Barak Obama who used the words change and hope to allow people to project their own desires on to him.
So then if we are tricked into conforming to the desires of the ruling elite by attempting to express our individuality can we break out of this cycle by acting as individuals?
If it is only inside socialism we will find the ability to be ourselves and not feel alienated can we take individual courses of action in order to achieve a Socialist society?
Leon Trotsky said that acts of individual terror were counter productive to the cause of revolution as they belittled the role of the masses and the nature of the society Marxists sought to create.
''Terrorising' with the threat of a strike, or actually conducting a strike is something only industrial workers can do. The social significance of a strike depends directly upon first, the size of the enterprise or the branch of industry that it affects, and second, the degree to which the workers taking part in it are organised, disciplined, and ready for action. This is just as true of a political strike as it is for an economic one. It continues to be the method of struggle that flows directly from the productive role of the proletariat in modern society.'
Trotsky says that if the workers are not operating en mass then any revolution can not be a truly proletarian revolution;
' Only the workers can conduct a strike. Artisans ruined by the factory, peasants whose water the factory is poisoning, or lumpen proletarians in search of plunder can smash machines, set fire to a factory, or murder its owner.
Only the conscious and organised working class can send a strong representation into the halls of parliament to look out for proletarian interests. However, in order to murder a prominent official you need not have the organised masses behind you. The recipe for explosives is accessible to all, and a Browning can be obtained anywhere.'
By recognising a common class interest and by organising and cooperating the workers can once and for all unite in order not only win their entitlements but create a society where they are not victim to the machinations of a predatory capitalist class and are able to exercise their individuality free from the tyranny of class division and where society can operate in a truly democratic manner.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Vampire Friday
Last night for the sake of doing something new and different I spent Friday night sitting at home watching telly with the aul pair. Well not really. I sat in the room while they watched telly and made use of the ample bandwidth to download stuff while occasionally raising my head to pour scorn over the cast of Coronation street or Pat Kenny. Unfortunately in my own house out in Inverin we still don't have the internet as we have only been in communication with Eircom for about a month or so and common sense when dealing with obstacles isn't exactly their forte.
We also only have two stationsin my own house, RTE 1 and 2. This is quite strange as we are only a few kilometres from TG4, but for some reason we can't pick it up, however I generally reckon we have two stations too many. My parents on the other hand have satellite television and hundreds of stations but mostly just watch the Irish terrestrial stations. So while they were catching up on the goings on in Emmerdale and Coronation street I decided to get a bit hip and download some contemporary music. I first downloaded the Fleet Foxes, which is probably the best Neil Young album I've ever heard that isn't actually a Neil Young album. I then decided to get to the bottom of the whole Vampire weekend thing. You see I have had a bader meinhof phenomenon with Vampire weekend for a while now. In case you don't know what a bader meinhof phenomenon is, it doesn't have anything to do with the Red Army Faction but is when you hear of something for the first time and hear about it repeatedly afterwards. A classic example of the bader meinhof phenomenon is the bader meinhof phenomenon, until I heard the name for it I hadn't realised it existed, now I go through at least one a week.
I first heard of Vampire Weekend (although I had heard a couple of the tunes before) in a terrible free music magazine called Analogue, which I found on Fiona's kitchen table, although she didn't know whose it was. Analogue is home of some of the worst writing I have ever had the misfortune to read and mostly consists of pretentious wankers writing about pretentious wankers. You know the sort of article where writers gush over a boring indie band that has only been around for six months and attempt to sing their praises whole sounding intellectual? It is full of those articles. Well anyhow in reading this article I found out that they were a bunch of well off white boys who went to Columbia University and made music which, apparently, was influenced by African music. Some people were giving them a lot of stick for this and accusing them of exploiting Africa and being contrived and so on and so forth. Next I heard that Peter Gabriel was to cover one of their songs as he was mentioned in it and was to collaborate with Hot Chip on this project. Then I went to see The Wrestler (which is a fucking amazing film and everybody should go see it) and in it Randy's daughter had a Vampire Weekend poster up on her wall. So what the hell, I downloaded the album.
I won't say I was disappointed, it's actually quite a good album, but it isn't at all fucking African! What is all this hype about them exploiting African music about? It was a comparable experience to when I was sixteen and heard about an evil satanic band called Marilyn Manson that would get anybody who listened to them damned to hell. I went out and bought the album and my hands trembled as I placed it in the CD player. I suspected that I was about to sell my soul to Satan in exchange for hearing the most rocking album ever. By the end of the first song I had come to a realisation, 'This is shit! This isn't worth going to hell for! It's not even that evil!' So Vampire Weekend are to African Music what Marilyn Manson are to Satan, no fucking relation or at best very distant cousins. I can sort of see how some of it could be regarded as African influenced, but no more so than Paul Simon or Peter Gabriel and they were doing this shit twenty years ago. It is an Indie rock band who own one or two compilations of 'World' music and harp on about it interviews to seem cooler than they actually are. In fact they probably created all this controversy themselves in order to sell more records. Well tough shit to them because I illegally downloaded their album. Although I think it is a decent enough album but I haven't listened to it much yet.
However on the whole Vampire Weekend/The Wrestler connection there is more than meets the eye. In doing a little research on them I found that the founder of a website called stuffwhitepeoplelike.com called them 'the whitest band'. I checked out the website and was in knots. It pretty much just satirizes middle class, liberal, white Americans but does it in a very witty way. White people it seems like Hummus, frisbee games, facebook and amongst others, pea coats. In The Wrestler Randy buys his daughter a pea coat (which his stripper friend helps him pick) so I guess she is one of those particular breed of white people that stuffwhitepeoplelike.com targets, I am also assuming that the people parodied and the people reading the website are one and the same group of people.
Having felt I had spent enough time getting in touch with things I wasn't familiar with I decided to have a look and see if I could get my hands on the first episode of the second series of Flight of the Conchords, it just aired last week in the US. Low and behold there it was on mininova. I downloaded and watched it and what can I say, the lads have done it again. Absolute fucking genius. I had to be honest been a little worried that the second series wouldn't be on a par with the first but it easily matches it and in points even surpasses it. Bizarrely enough the first song is an operatic number sung by Murray. It seems that while the characters of Brett and Germaine in the series are as poor as ever, in real life the lads have managed to secure a bigger budget for this series. I am positively salivating a the thought of the next eleven episodes.
I pulled my headphones out of the laptop as the show ended just in time to see David Bellamy come on to the Late Late Show. Bet you haven't heard of him in a while? Not seen on our screens since the mid nineties it seems that David B is now a denier of climate change, which nowadays is sort of on a par with being a holocaust denier in terms of what it will do for your public image. He claims to be one of thirty four thousand scientists who now believe that the whole thing is nothing more than a scam that has been used as a way of increasing taxes. Some things he said I do agree with. Climate change is being used as a way of increasing taxes and selling carbon credits is on a par with the indulgences charged by the church in the middle ages. But there was a lot of what he said that I found hard to swallow. He claims to be a victim of a conspiracy that chased him off the airwaves because of his views on climate change. However he was last employed by the BBC in 1994 but he only began denying climate change in 2004, in the Daily Mail of all places. Before that he had been vocal in his views on the damage carbon emissions were doing.
He had however stood in the 1997 British general elections on behalf of the Referendum Party, a fringe party and this had done tremendous damage to his career. For years he had been saying it was this action which had got him booted off the telly (despite the fact he hadn't been with the BBC for three years before the election). He went on to write other articles about climate change using figures which were proved to be false. When he was fired from the boards of two charities he had been involved with for years he then attempted to withdraw his claims but when this failed to have him reinstated he went back to denying that mankind were having an effect on the climate. It seems that David Bellamy is to Botany what David Icke is to snooker. Pat Kenny however failed to raise any of these points with Bellamy and indeed failed to ask him any probing questions of any sort. It was an absolute disgrace. Five minutes of googling would have revealed all sorts of holes in Bellamy's claims but nobody it seems bothered to do even the most minuscule amount of research. RTE it seems fucked up in fine style yet again. Here's an idea, fire Pat Kenny and hire twenty competent people instead of one dull, conservative stick wearing make up who gets paid nearly a million Euro a year.
We also only have two stationsin my own house, RTE 1 and 2. This is quite strange as we are only a few kilometres from TG4, but for some reason we can't pick it up, however I generally reckon we have two stations too many. My parents on the other hand have satellite television and hundreds of stations but mostly just watch the Irish terrestrial stations. So while they were catching up on the goings on in Emmerdale and Coronation street I decided to get a bit hip and download some contemporary music. I first downloaded the Fleet Foxes, which is probably the best Neil Young album I've ever heard that isn't actually a Neil Young album. I then decided to get to the bottom of the whole Vampire weekend thing. You see I have had a bader meinhof phenomenon with Vampire weekend for a while now. In case you don't know what a bader meinhof phenomenon is, it doesn't have anything to do with the Red Army Faction but is when you hear of something for the first time and hear about it repeatedly afterwards. A classic example of the bader meinhof phenomenon is the bader meinhof phenomenon, until I heard the name for it I hadn't realised it existed, now I go through at least one a week.
I first heard of Vampire Weekend (although I had heard a couple of the tunes before) in a terrible free music magazine called Analogue, which I found on Fiona's kitchen table, although she didn't know whose it was. Analogue is home of some of the worst writing I have ever had the misfortune to read and mostly consists of pretentious wankers writing about pretentious wankers. You know the sort of article where writers gush over a boring indie band that has only been around for six months and attempt to sing their praises whole sounding intellectual? It is full of those articles. Well anyhow in reading this article I found out that they were a bunch of well off white boys who went to Columbia University and made music which, apparently, was influenced by African music. Some people were giving them a lot of stick for this and accusing them of exploiting Africa and being contrived and so on and so forth. Next I heard that Peter Gabriel was to cover one of their songs as he was mentioned in it and was to collaborate with Hot Chip on this project. Then I went to see The Wrestler (which is a fucking amazing film and everybody should go see it) and in it Randy's daughter had a Vampire Weekend poster up on her wall. So what the hell, I downloaded the album.
I won't say I was disappointed, it's actually quite a good album, but it isn't at all fucking African! What is all this hype about them exploiting African music about? It was a comparable experience to when I was sixteen and heard about an evil satanic band called Marilyn Manson that would get anybody who listened to them damned to hell. I went out and bought the album and my hands trembled as I placed it in the CD player. I suspected that I was about to sell my soul to Satan in exchange for hearing the most rocking album ever. By the end of the first song I had come to a realisation, 'This is shit! This isn't worth going to hell for! It's not even that evil!' So Vampire Weekend are to African Music what Marilyn Manson are to Satan, no fucking relation or at best very distant cousins. I can sort of see how some of it could be regarded as African influenced, but no more so than Paul Simon or Peter Gabriel and they were doing this shit twenty years ago. It is an Indie rock band who own one or two compilations of 'World' music and harp on about it interviews to seem cooler than they actually are. In fact they probably created all this controversy themselves in order to sell more records. Well tough shit to them because I illegally downloaded their album. Although I think it is a decent enough album but I haven't listened to it much yet.
However on the whole Vampire Weekend/The Wrestler connection there is more than meets the eye. In doing a little research on them I found that the founder of a website called stuffwhitepeoplelike.com called them 'the whitest band'. I checked out the website and was in knots. It pretty much just satirizes middle class, liberal, white Americans but does it in a very witty way. White people it seems like Hummus, frisbee games, facebook and amongst others, pea coats. In The Wrestler Randy buys his daughter a pea coat (which his stripper friend helps him pick) so I guess she is one of those particular breed of white people that stuffwhitepeoplelike.com targets, I am also assuming that the people parodied and the people reading the website are one and the same group of people.
Having felt I had spent enough time getting in touch with things I wasn't familiar with I decided to have a look and see if I could get my hands on the first episode of the second series of Flight of the Conchords, it just aired last week in the US. Low and behold there it was on mininova. I downloaded and watched it and what can I say, the lads have done it again. Absolute fucking genius. I had to be honest been a little worried that the second series wouldn't be on a par with the first but it easily matches it and in points even surpasses it. Bizarrely enough the first song is an operatic number sung by Murray. It seems that while the characters of Brett and Germaine in the series are as poor as ever, in real life the lads have managed to secure a bigger budget for this series. I am positively salivating a the thought of the next eleven episodes.
I pulled my headphones out of the laptop as the show ended just in time to see David Bellamy come on to the Late Late Show. Bet you haven't heard of him in a while? Not seen on our screens since the mid nineties it seems that David B is now a denier of climate change, which nowadays is sort of on a par with being a holocaust denier in terms of what it will do for your public image. He claims to be one of thirty four thousand scientists who now believe that the whole thing is nothing more than a scam that has been used as a way of increasing taxes. Some things he said I do agree with. Climate change is being used as a way of increasing taxes and selling carbon credits is on a par with the indulgences charged by the church in the middle ages. But there was a lot of what he said that I found hard to swallow. He claims to be a victim of a conspiracy that chased him off the airwaves because of his views on climate change. However he was last employed by the BBC in 1994 but he only began denying climate change in 2004, in the Daily Mail of all places. Before that he had been vocal in his views on the damage carbon emissions were doing.
He had however stood in the 1997 British general elections on behalf of the Referendum Party, a fringe party and this had done tremendous damage to his career. For years he had been saying it was this action which had got him booted off the telly (despite the fact he hadn't been with the BBC for three years before the election). He went on to write other articles about climate change using figures which were proved to be false. When he was fired from the boards of two charities he had been involved with for years he then attempted to withdraw his claims but when this failed to have him reinstated he went back to denying that mankind were having an effect on the climate. It seems that David Bellamy is to Botany what David Icke is to snooker. Pat Kenny however failed to raise any of these points with Bellamy and indeed failed to ask him any probing questions of any sort. It was an absolute disgrace. Five minutes of googling would have revealed all sorts of holes in Bellamy's claims but nobody it seems bothered to do even the most minuscule amount of research. RTE it seems fucked up in fine style yet again. Here's an idea, fire Pat Kenny and hire twenty competent people instead of one dull, conservative stick wearing make up who gets paid nearly a million Euro a year.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Black Skin, White Politics
Call me a pessimist if you want but I have been saying for over a year now that Obama won't change a fucking thing. But now at last the test can begin. I hate saying I told you so. I hate being right so often. I hated being right about the collapse of the Irish economy and the inevitable crisis in Global Capitalism. I hated being right about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But you know what I am certainly not the only one who thinks the way I do. There are hundreds of millions, possibly even billions of people on the planet who react with cynicism to the bile churned out by the builders of consensus.
Change and Hope are nothing but words. In themselves they mean nothing. Obama is nothing but a political parrot constantly repeating what he knows people want to hear. Of course people want change! Of course people want to be able to live in hope rather than fear! That's why he says it! Not because he means it but because he knows it's what people want to hear. It is also why he won the election. The establishment had to let the black guy win because otherwise people would have lost faith in the system. After eight years of Bush if another Republican had won people would have realised what is called democracy is nothing more than a sham. So the establishment bought itself another couple of years by slipping on a new mask. Make it look as if the system can change from the inside. People won't feel obliged to organise in their communities and workplaces to agitate for real social change and by the time they see through Obama we'll have conjured up another illusion to trick the people into supporting a system which exists only to exploit them.
Speaking of masks I would suggest that now is an excellent time for people to read Frantz Fanon. His excellent Black Skin, White Masks like most great books has yet to have the impact it should on society. Fanon was born on the Caribbean island of Martinique, a French colony. He was indoctrinated from an early age by the French colonisers to believe that he could gain acceptance by imitating their manner of doing things. As a result he eventually went on to become a psychoanalyst, a truly noble and middle class aspiration. However Fanon's experiences inside the French establishment and in France led him to a startling realisation. No matter how hard a black person tried to do the things in the way Whites wanted them to they would always be marginalised and discriminated against.
His activities in psychoanalysis now began to take a new form. He stated that colonised people take on the languages and culture of their colonisers in order to overcome an inferiority complex or a sense of alienation which has arisen as a direct result of being colonised. In essence they slip on a white mask as they see it as the only way to combat the malaise which has arisen out of their experiences as an oppressed people. Nations such as Britain and France always excelled in creating native elites. That is finding a section of the colonised people whom the favoured over others in order to educate and indoctrinate them into doing the bidding of their colonial masters. They create a native middle class, who are to relate more closely to their oppressors than their fellow oppressed. This system has led to the continuation of imperialism long after nations have attained their flag independence as the proteges of the erstwhile colonisers carry on in a business as usual manner and continue to implement the economic and social systems dictated to them by the coloniser. Fanon's experiences eventually led him to Algeria where he became involved with the FLN and their struggle for national liberation. It was in Algeria that he wrote his other great work The Wretched of the Earth.
So how does all this relate to Barak Obama? Well Obama's skin might be black but his politics aren't. It is exceedingly naïve to assume that a change in President will make any difference in the first place but the hype about Obama has reached an unprecedented level. Firstly because of his skin colour and secondly because of his rhetoric which rings hollower than the vaults of Anglo Irish Bank. So everybody else can feel free to wet themselves with excitement if they want but excuse me if I choose not to. I am a Marxist. But do you even know what I mean when I say that? I apply a class analysis to politics. The world is divided into lots of different groups but there is one group that dominates them all, the bourgeoisie. These are the elite businessmen who tell politicians what to do. They have crushed the ability of the people to resist by turning them against each other and brainwashing them. They have made the most effective tool for social change, the Unions their lapdogs and tell us that any time anybody struggles for social justice that it is bad for business and therefore bad for the country.
These are people who wouldn't even have let Obama be nominated if they thought he was actually going to change anything. We live in a world without democracy. We live in a world of smoke and mirrors and media sensationalism where a tiny elite have decided what is to be done before we even knew there was a decision to be made. Just look at the example of the Lisbon treaty here in Europe, living proof that politicians don't feel that people can be trusted to make their own decisions.
The lot of the millions of disadvantaged black people in America has not changed overnight because somebody of mixed race played by all the rules set down by the establishment and was awarded with high office. The primary form of discrimination suffered by African Americans is economic and social and has arisen as a direct result of the experiences which brought them to America in the first place, namely slavery. In the same way a colonised people can behave in the way the oppressor wishes them to and gain the upper hand over their countrymen so too an African American can become middle class or upper middle class, but he is not elevating the lot of his race. He is making a cynical bid for power and represents only self interest.
Obama is nothing more than a poster boy for the establishment, he is as much of a puppet as Bush because fundamentally nothing has changed with the election of Obama and nothing is going to. If we want to see change in the world then we are going to have look wider than the options presented to us by tweedle dum and tweedle dee political parties every few years. Feel free to disagree with me now but lets talk about it in six months or a year and see who was right.
Change and Hope are nothing but words. In themselves they mean nothing. Obama is nothing but a political parrot constantly repeating what he knows people want to hear. Of course people want change! Of course people want to be able to live in hope rather than fear! That's why he says it! Not because he means it but because he knows it's what people want to hear. It is also why he won the election. The establishment had to let the black guy win because otherwise people would have lost faith in the system. After eight years of Bush if another Republican had won people would have realised what is called democracy is nothing more than a sham. So the establishment bought itself another couple of years by slipping on a new mask. Make it look as if the system can change from the inside. People won't feel obliged to organise in their communities and workplaces to agitate for real social change and by the time they see through Obama we'll have conjured up another illusion to trick the people into supporting a system which exists only to exploit them.
Speaking of masks I would suggest that now is an excellent time for people to read Frantz Fanon. His excellent Black Skin, White Masks like most great books has yet to have the impact it should on society. Fanon was born on the Caribbean island of Martinique, a French colony. He was indoctrinated from an early age by the French colonisers to believe that he could gain acceptance by imitating their manner of doing things. As a result he eventually went on to become a psychoanalyst, a truly noble and middle class aspiration. However Fanon's experiences inside the French establishment and in France led him to a startling realisation. No matter how hard a black person tried to do the things in the way Whites wanted them to they would always be marginalised and discriminated against.
His activities in psychoanalysis now began to take a new form. He stated that colonised people take on the languages and culture of their colonisers in order to overcome an inferiority complex or a sense of alienation which has arisen as a direct result of being colonised. In essence they slip on a white mask as they see it as the only way to combat the malaise which has arisen out of their experiences as an oppressed people. Nations such as Britain and France always excelled in creating native elites. That is finding a section of the colonised people whom the favoured over others in order to educate and indoctrinate them into doing the bidding of their colonial masters. They create a native middle class, who are to relate more closely to their oppressors than their fellow oppressed. This system has led to the continuation of imperialism long after nations have attained their flag independence as the proteges of the erstwhile colonisers carry on in a business as usual manner and continue to implement the economic and social systems dictated to them by the coloniser. Fanon's experiences eventually led him to Algeria where he became involved with the FLN and their struggle for national liberation. It was in Algeria that he wrote his other great work The Wretched of the Earth.
So how does all this relate to Barak Obama? Well Obama's skin might be black but his politics aren't. It is exceedingly naïve to assume that a change in President will make any difference in the first place but the hype about Obama has reached an unprecedented level. Firstly because of his skin colour and secondly because of his rhetoric which rings hollower than the vaults of Anglo Irish Bank. So everybody else can feel free to wet themselves with excitement if they want but excuse me if I choose not to. I am a Marxist. But do you even know what I mean when I say that? I apply a class analysis to politics. The world is divided into lots of different groups but there is one group that dominates them all, the bourgeoisie. These are the elite businessmen who tell politicians what to do. They have crushed the ability of the people to resist by turning them against each other and brainwashing them. They have made the most effective tool for social change, the Unions their lapdogs and tell us that any time anybody struggles for social justice that it is bad for business and therefore bad for the country.
These are people who wouldn't even have let Obama be nominated if they thought he was actually going to change anything. We live in a world without democracy. We live in a world of smoke and mirrors and media sensationalism where a tiny elite have decided what is to be done before we even knew there was a decision to be made. Just look at the example of the Lisbon treaty here in Europe, living proof that politicians don't feel that people can be trusted to make their own decisions.
The lot of the millions of disadvantaged black people in America has not changed overnight because somebody of mixed race played by all the rules set down by the establishment and was awarded with high office. The primary form of discrimination suffered by African Americans is economic and social and has arisen as a direct result of the experiences which brought them to America in the first place, namely slavery. In the same way a colonised people can behave in the way the oppressor wishes them to and gain the upper hand over their countrymen so too an African American can become middle class or upper middle class, but he is not elevating the lot of his race. He is making a cynical bid for power and represents only self interest.
Obama is nothing more than a poster boy for the establishment, he is as much of a puppet as Bush because fundamentally nothing has changed with the election of Obama and nothing is going to. If we want to see change in the world then we are going to have look wider than the options presented to us by tweedle dum and tweedle dee political parties every few years. Feel free to disagree with me now but lets talk about it in six months or a year and see who was right.
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