Thursday, December 13, 2007
Loss of authority is capitalist nonsense…
Mick Hall’s been a long time contributor to Slugger. About six months ago he set up his own blog, and has been merrily (often not so merrily) blogging his own view of the world from the left. Yesterday, he wrote that the demise of societal authority, if it is true at all, is a result of the dominance of Capital over Labour, and the endless grind of ‘getting and spending’. Think previously placid but low earning Dublin bus drivers letting rip at the most trivial communication gap between him and the Spanish migrant worker.
Mick Fealty @ 12:56 PM
One powerful indicator of the modern decline of authority is the invention of the term “anti-social behaviour” to cover what we increasingly see in our neighbourhoods.
Of course one reason for anti-social behaviour is the attack on traditional 2 parent married family sponsored by the Left over the last 50 years. But I guess it’s easier to blame it all on the capitalists, eh?
Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 01:19 PMJust read Mick Hall’s article again and am struck by the sheer envy that some people are wealthier than others. If you took away the vice of jealousy the Left wouldn’t have a lot to stand on.
Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 01:24 PMLast post, promise.
“No where is this better demonstrated than when the London Tube line workers went on strike over issues of public safety. They were portrayed in the media as dinosaurs who have no respect for authority, with their leader Bob Crowe being portrayed as the devil incarnate. Never mind that these striking workers were defending the publics best interest against the callousness of their employers who had refused to make the traveling publics safety their main priority.”
Crow also of course threatened industrial action (I forget whether it went to a strike) and cried victimisation when someone in his union was disciplined short of dismissal for an unacceptable breach of safety. Which rather discredits the safety point.
Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 01:27 PMSmall point, but Mick wants to check his spelling. Hard to take seriously something that carries the most basic of spelling errors.
On second thoughts, just forget about the spelling. You just couldn’t take seriously this kind of pie-in-the-sky, Marxist-based nonsense no matter how it’s presented.
Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 01:47 PMThe Penguin:
‘You just couldn’t take seriously this kind of pie-in-the-sky, Marxist-based nonsense no matter how it’s presented. ‘
That’s not an argument just a lame exercise in labelling.
Most of the reigning neo-cons and neo-liberals were marxist leninists of a time (Hitch, J Reid, A Milburn, E Harris, Aaro, BH Levy et al ad nauseam) and their end-of-history rhetoric is similarly unfalsifiable and suitably apocalyptic - just with the terms inverted and this time on the winning side - which is where they thought they were in the first place.
Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 01:58 PMThe Watchman: ‘Of course one reason for anti-social behaviour is the attack on traditional 2 parent married family sponsored by the Left over the last 50 years.’
What a bizarre thing to say!
What form has this ‘attack’ taken and who on the left is sponsoring it? (As it seems to me the Left couldn’t sponsor a tea party and get it right).
The period in question has been dominated by Conservative governments here, and US Republicans in the US. Their right wing policies have been the over-riding influence on our public policy.
(Or perhaps you would prefer to blame the mythical ‘PC-brigade’ of hapless social workers and primary school teachers marching couples into the divorce courts or down the street to the nearest gay bar?)
My own tuppence worth - the lack of ‘respect’ is closely linked to the fact that, increasingly, none of us know or have interaction our neighbourhoods. Kids behave when they know Joe Bloggs down the street is going to tell their parents.
We are ceasing to be part of ‘local communities’. Our social glue is being reduced to the out of town shopping centre, the internet and Burger King. Even the local pub is becoming a place to sit and watch TV.
What’s the driver for this? A consumer society driven by advanced global capitalism? Errr, actually, maybe Mick is on to something after all.
Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 02:09 PMNo, Nestor, not bizarre at all actually. And the Right may have been in office in the UK over this period but the Left has been in power. The UK Tories for many years have been at best apathetic to socially conservative concerns, and didn’t contest the assaults by the Left on the family. Now with society in a mess, it is no wonder that the Left won’t face up to what it helped to create.
Oh and as someone with an insight into the public sector, I have plenty of first hand experience of the PC brigade’s front line.
I could say more but I’ve got to get back to work and Melanie Phillips and Peter Hitchens have blogs devoted to the subject heaving with examples I don’t have time to mention.
Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 02:26 PMI started to read this ‘piece’ but I became overcome with rage that someone who writes so badly and who can’t spell simple words has the temerity to inflict such lengthy shite on the blog-reading public. To find it linked on Slugger is even more shocking.
Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 02:41 PM‘And the Right may have been in office in the UK over this period but the Left has been in power.’
That’s why South Yorkshire is just choc-full of well paid coal miners. Not a nuclear submarine to be found anywhere. No money spent on prisons. Clearly time for the left to go.
Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 02:45 PMIf spelling, grammar and structure were prerequisites for inclusion on Slugger poor old Mick would be excluded ;0)
(along with me)
Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 02:48 PMbtw, I was referring to Mick Fealty
Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 02:51 PM“I could say more but I’ve got to get back to work and Melanie Phillips and Peter Hitchens have blogs devoted to the subject heaving with examples I don’t have time to mention.”
Citing Melanie Phillips as a source; surely the best way to lose an argument without it even starting properly?
Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 02:57 PMAttacking someone’s spelling as an excuse to avoid dealing with the issues? Embarassing.
Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 02:57 PM“Think previously placid but low earning Dublin bus drivers”
I’m trying but as hard as I do I just can’t imagine a placid Dublin bus driver.
As for low earners, 20 years ago your average Dublin bus conductor’s basic wage was over 50% higher than an entry level civil servant but the last two decades of relentless assaults on the unions has probably seen their favoured position completely undermined.
This all despite the fact that the weekly NBU subscription used to be £17 out of a wage of 160 while the CPSSU sub was £1 out of a basic of £105.
The bus drivers had a war chest and fought an all-out war with the capitalists in the 80s, not collecting fares, pocketing fares (go aheads), driving the bus with the handbrake on so it breaks down etc.
But through it all, it was plain to see that the bus drivers and conductors were acting in their own selfish interests, not in the interests of the travelling public, and certainly not in the interests of the Dublin working class as a whole.
We passengers were just “skulls”, nothing more nothing less. There was nothing worse than to be buried with skulls of a Tuesday.
The lack of respect for governmental authority was great to see until you realised that these “workers” didn’t give a toss about you either.
Roll on 20 years and the trade union movement is still more interested in feathering the nest of its own members than the plight of workers as a whole, and most annoyingly, are quite happy to see the rest of us pay for their benefits while we continue to exist with none.
These buckos are even against the free movement of labour in 2007.
With friends like these..
Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 03:15 PMThe Watchman et al may wish to delude themselves that somehow societal changes over the last decades have been as a result of an abuse of power by the Left which they never in fact held when the simple truth is that the mode of social organisation has been determined by the means and method of production as has been the case ever since men first socially interacted.
And what has been the dominant method of production in this time? Step forward, please and take a bow, our old friend International Capitalism! I am surprised that its fawning admirers on here are so reluctant to give it credit where credit is due. So unlike The Watchman to be such a blushing violet.
Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 04:09 PM“And the Right may have been in office in the UK over this period but the Left has been in power.”
Watchman
Oh dear boy what rapier wit, what a devastating refutation of the points I made. In the blog I pointed out the political right whilst in power has attempted to turn reality on its head and set out a number of examples, however never did I hope some rightist would immediately come on slugger and prove my point.
By the way this has nothing to do with envy as you well know, the reason some of us despise enormous personal wealth and believe it should be discourage by progressive taxation, is because it is made at some else expense and does not benefit society as a whole.
Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 05:02 PMThe reason why there is no nationalised industry as once there was is that the industries themselves were always going to die off anyway. (Peter Hitchens, a former Trotskyite and labour correspondent, has speculated that this was the intention of the communist entryists in the trade union movement.) Thatcher administered the coup de grace but at some point someone else would have pulled the plug. Those industries died because they were unviable in the real world not because of Thatch the Wicked Witch. South Yorkshire mining was always doomed, even if Scargill’s wretched political strike had succeeded.
Plenty of Tory politicos, and even her enemies, believe that the Left was beaten by the end of the Thatcher era and that New Labour is Thatcherism-with-a-human-face. I don’t buy into that analysis. Nationalised industry isn’t a prerequisite of an egalitarian society run by a “benevolent” all-powerful state. Under New Labour we have increasing nationalisation of the family, levelling down education through the wretched comprehensive schooling that the IRA/SF Education minister wants to inflict on us, the politicisation of minority groups, an explosion in the public sector, growing surrender to a European Union hostile to Anglo-Saxon free market economics, to name but a few.
I think these things are more important that Marxist lingo like “means of production” that Rory comes out with and which I don’t think is illuminating. I haven’t read any Marx since Sixth Form and much prefer Andrew Roberts or Niall Ferguson.
As to envy, can I quote you word for word, Mick?
“Are we up in arms against the disrespect and contempt this countries millionaires display towards us almost every day, no, not even when we pay our taxes and they do not. Nor when the rich award themselves and their fellow millionaires massive salary hikes or redundancy pay off whilst the average working man must make do with a below inflation wage rises.”
Sorry, Mick, that sounds a lot like the politics of envy to me, which is why more astute Lefties try to keep their pitchforks hidden so as not to frighten those they intend to tax to the hilt.
I don’t know why you on the Left are always so hot under the collar when your views are in the driving seat under Comrade Broon.
Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 06:20 PMReturning to the subject of this thread, namely loss of authority, one important reason why this has happened, in my opinion, has been the development of a human rights based culture. I know of incidents where policemen have gone inro schools and told quite young children what they can expect in their upbringing. No one wants to see vulnerable children abused in any way, but what the police were doing was undermining parental authority. I know of another instance where a child was sent to his room without his dinner for bad behaviour and the child promptly phoned the police to complain. The police came to the house and had the cheek to tell the parents that their child was entitled to a meal.
These are anecdotal examples from personal experience but they are sympotomatic of the “benevolent” all-powerful state encroaching into places it has no right to be. One kind of authority is diluted and when all these dilutions are aggregated then we get the society in which we now live where the Vicky Pollard character is so funny because she is so horribly familiar.
Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 06:30 PMAll this started back in the late seventies when Margaret Thatcher stopped the school milk.
We ended up with a generation of bad tempered kids who grew up with no respect for authority and passed it on to their kids.Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 07:59 PMWhy are right-wingers always the first to shrilly proclaim that society is breaking down then the first to whine about ‘nanny state’ when governments take steps towards rectifying the problems? As for the ‘attack’ on the family by the Left; right-wingers can’t seem to get it into their head that unregulated neo-liberal economics has ripped the heart out of once content working class communities with breadwinners once working in industry forced on to the dole through lack of skills in the competitive market or into low-paid and insecure service sector employment. It is this undermining of the structure of society (which the right denied even existed in the 1980s when they were so enarmoured with individualism and selfishness) that has harmed the family unit and communities, not ‘the Left’. Now our economy is wholly reliant on the financial sector, everyone is living on debt and we produce and export very little worth talking about.
I hope that The Watchman is joking about Comrade Broon. What sort of comrade serves in a government that limits public sector pay to 2% while ignoring massive City bonues, refuses to pay out on pensions while the government uses our taxes to prop up Northern Rock (a bank in trouble because of a high-risk business model and bosses who made it take on debt that no one would touch for short-term gain), has deregulated the economy and privatised as much as Thatcher and who has introduced internal markets to our National Health Service. New Labour isn’t Thatcherism-with-a-human-face, it’s just Thatcherism. Different party, same policies.Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 10:35 PMMuch as New Labour are a shower of bollixes, if Cameron wins the next election we’ll find out the difference between New Labour and Thatcherism in a very brutal fashion.
Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 10:49 PMGaribaldy
I hope we do.....but fear we won’t.
An end to human rights rubbish and a return to the rights of society, getting rid of corrupt politicians with no regard for the laws they make, proper fiscal management.
Will it happen? In your dreams.
Same old Same old
Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 11:07 PMIn your dreams more like Frustrated Democrat :)
And if you think the Tories aren’t corrupt, then you might well be in for a severe shock.Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 11:10 PMGaribaldy
I was saying nothing would change, if you would care to look again.
You indicated it would change not me.
Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 11:14 PMWe lack good authority for sure. We distrust the ‘left’, having witnessed the nepotism repression and brutality of elites brought to power by revolutionary violence. We would rather have private property, especially when it is somewhere to sleep, and a degree of freedom even if only expressed as a buying preference. To maintain our relative affluence in a crowded world we may have to work harder, but many of us would not look forward to living on the basic state pension.
There are real problems around family life. The state pretends that it has no interest in marriage, as expressed in ‘no fault’ divorce. This is a cruel fraud, as stable legal partnerships are great for children, and when these fail, the state often picks up the slack. This flatters state functionaries, from the judges through social workers to welfare clerks, so the family is under siege, with married working parents paying for single ones as well as for their own childcare.
Economic competition tends to pulverise communities, with long commuting times lessening community and cultural involvements. Natural systems often have ‘redundancy’, extra bits that come into play when the system is disrupted. Extended families can be the same sort of thing, with strength in reserve, but economic migration threatens this. Education can have ‘added value’ that gives people values beyond the economic.
So do socialists still value education or are they now the people who just happen to know everything already?
Looking at the ads in the Guardian, they seem to know something about living well.
Posted by on Dec 13, 2007 @ 11:20 PM
