Riots, Individuals, Communities and Bullshit

Over at The New Statesman, we have some robust analysis dismissing the claims of the right that the recent riots were anything to do with family. Oh, actually, we don't. Instead we have lacklustre and predictable analysis just as tedious and meaningless as those people who drone on endlessly and without mercy about "broken Britain". Let's take a look and some choice cuts of prime grade bullshit from the article introducing the leading left thinkers (who, laughably, include Diane Abbott):

In his great book After Virtue, published in 1981, Alasdair MacIntyre wrote that the most striking feature of "contemporary moral utterance is that so much of it is used to express disagreements . . . There seems to be no rational way of securing moral agreement in our culture." Moral statements amounted to little more than statements of personal preference.

Now MacIntyre - a Catholic Thomist - strikes me as an odd choice for a left-wing magazine to be citing. After all, it is difficult to imagine the modern MacIntyre being classed as left-wing. Of course, the author of the article could argue that the Thomist turn in MacIntyre's work came after the book quoted above - and they'd be accurate. But let me pluck a copy of After Virtue from the bookshelf and turn to the pessimistic conclusion. MacIntyre writes "This time the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers: they have already been governing us for quite some time". So MacIntyre believes the barbarians have been in charge for quite some time and MacIntyre was writing in 1981... meaning that, in this country, the Tory administration was circa two years old (and you don't write a book like After Virtue in a hurry) whereas the Labour party - as well as a post-war consensus worshipping Labour-lite Tory party - had been in power for, well, quite some time. It would appear that MacIntyre was attacking the very sort of politicians that The New Statesman loves to praise.

Thirty years later, little has changed, as the aftermath of the English riots and responses to them show. Appalled and embarrassed by the marauding gangs and looters, David Cameron speaks of the "sickness" in our society, showing himself to be a classical conservative pessimist, a believer in original sin and in the futility of all utopian schemes to remake society.

I have to say that it is a bit of a stretch to call Cameron a believer in "original sin" (although, as a Catholic, the approvingly quoted Alasdair MacIntyre actually is) but there is nothing wrong with being a political pessimist and there is nothing wrong with believing the futility of "utopian schemes to remake society". You only have to look at France in the reign of terror or Stalinist Russia or the nightmare of the Cambodian Year Zero to see just how badly wrong such utopias and go - and how devastating they can be when they do go wrong. Whatever crass schemes Cameron embarks on and whatever damage he does to this country, it is pretty hard to imagine him doing anything as devastating as those utopians who have managed to gain control of certain societies in history.

He says nothing about the socio-economic forces that shape behaviour, or the corrosive effects of entrenched inequality (for the true conservative, there are always natural inequalities). Nothing about how three decades of neoliberalism have coarsened our society, debased our discourse and corrupted our public morality.

Y'know, I'm sick of left-wing people using the term "neoliberalism" in such a way. It is a bit like those tedious right-wingers who rail against political correctness or multiculturalism without ever really engaging with what those terms mean. Yeah, there's a critique of neoliberalism to be made, but it requires consistent, intelligent engagement with neoliberal thinkers in order to make it credible. And part of that will be acknowledging that we have never seen the free market in action - at least not in the period since 1981. What we have seen is varying degrees of the Mixed Economy.

Nothing about how the venality of those at the top of society affects those at the bottom.

Ah, venality. Let's ask those venal bastards like Tony Blair about the impact they have had on our society. We should probably acknowledge at some point that they are Labour politicians, though. Or is that a bit too inconvenient? Yeah, yeah, you might well argue that bankers are also examples of the venal. And they tend to be Tories... except for their willing less to enter into pacts with the Labour party during the latter's thirteen years in power.

As for the left in general, there has long been a reluctance to address what it means to live a good and fulfilled life in an age when religion, for most of us in the secular west, can no longer offer guidance and when family life has become dysfunctional for many. The solution to all problems, it is said, is more state intervention and greater redistributive taxation.

And that is precisely the solution we have heard trotted out time and time again in the aftermath of the riots. The biggest problem is that pretty much any situation, according to the left, requires more state intervention. If you comprehensively made the case that state intervention was the problem then I don't doubt that some people would respond - completely in earnest - with the idea that more state intervention is the solution. The fucking morons.

Long before the rise of Red Tories and Blue Labourites, Houellebecq articulated how globalisation had disenfranchised the urban poor and how lifestyle libertarianism had broken society. It is an insight understood by Phillip Blond, who, in 2009, in his essay "Rise of the Red Tories", wrote: "The current political consensus is left-liberal in culture and right-liberal in economics. And this is precisely the wrong place to be." One need not endorse Blond's religiously inspired social conservatism to acknowledge that many of the ties that used to bind us together - ties of familial, communal and civic obligation - have frayed.

MacIntyre probably would embrace Blond's conclusions, at least to some extent. But to say that the ties that bind us together have been "frayed" is to make a massive assumption across a broad, diverse and pluralistic society. But even if we accept that, then what is the alternative to the reality we now face? Forced state intervention to rebuild those ties? 'Cos that seems to be completely counter-productive and utterly naive.

Pleasure without happiness, freedom without responsibility: we are living through a profound cultural crisis. Does the left in Britain have anything original to say about family breakdown and our moral confusion? Can agreement be reached about what has gone wrong and what should be done about it?

Agreement seems unlikely - a tenuous consensus is probably the best we can hope for. But that would involve interested parties not adopting the casual and thoughtless positions that left and right demand. Just a cursory glance at the very titles of the articles in The New Statesman suggest that there is precious little original thinking going on there.

Overleaf, leading thinkers attempt to answer these questions and others as they, like the rest of us, move uncertainly through the burnt-out and blackened landscape of our cities, looking for a way forward.

Oh, please. I live in Leeds, and nothing happened. Across this country, millions of people live in cities and parts of cities where nothing happened. And that is just the people who live in cities; people who live in unaffected towns or the countryside are also probably rolling their eyes at the needless hyperbole that rounds off this article. An article that adds little to the debate on the riots.

But given my criticisms of the views of both left and right in the aftermath of these riots, it would probably be remiss of me not to offer my own opinions on those riots. I think some peope rioted because of poverty. And I think some people rioted because of the lack a father figure in their lives. And I think that some people rioted because (once again) the police gunned down someone. And I think people rioted because of peer pressure, because of uncontrolled rage, because of a desire to have new trainers for literally no cost whatsoever. The point is that disparate people with all kinds of different motives took part in those riots - when we attempt to ascribe a common cause, we are bound to get into trouble.

Which is part of the problem facing both those who claim that the riots were down to poverty etc and those who claim that it was down to a breakdown in some families. It seems to assume identikit people inhabit this country - people with the same motivations, across the board. Now I'm not trying to deny the existence of community - or, on a more micro-level family or on a more macro level society - but I am pointing out that we are a collection of communities of individuals. We respond to different things in different ways - hell, we even respond to the same things in different ways. To deny this is to deny our true nature as individuals, and to suppose that we can truly build a better future through such a denial is to embrace the sort of utopian politics that should be rejected based of, if nothing else, than the lessons of history.

Genuine Libertarians - Neither Left nor Right

Sunny on Alex Massie:

I say Alex Massie is a left-libertarian. He’s just giving the right an undue good name by aligning himself with them.

Now, that's a phrase I'm hearing being used more and more - "left-libertarian". I suppose on one level it represents a step forward for the Libertarian cause: the left are starting to realise that libertarianism has something to offer. But the undertone is less positive - it represents the left trying to co-opt Libertarians of which they approve, and make them part of their crude and out-dated vision of political discourse. The identification of "left-libertarian" comfortably places anyone branded with that tag on the left side of the political spectrum, and as a result almost immediately negates the radical alternative offered by libertarianism.

That's not to say that I like the concept of a right-wing libertarian anymore than I do the idea of a left-libertarian. Right-wing libertarians are ultimately not libertarian at all. They tend to talk a good game on economic freedom, but end up being social conservatives or at the very least apologists for social conservatives. And it is amazing how many right-wing Libertarians end up becoming Republicans in the US or Conservatives in the UK - and in doing so miss the point that neither of those political movements is actually libertarian in any meaningful way or ever will be.

Put simply, a true Libertarian will simultaneously be right-wing and left-wing. I'm a libertarian, and I hold extremely left-wing views on immigration, LGBT issues, drug legalisation and in a number of other areas. But when it comes to economics, I'm right-wing - I believe in the free market, in lower taxes, and that nationalisation is, in the vast majority of cases, a bad idea. As a result, I automatically reject the terms "left" and "right" when someone tries to apply them to me.

This isn't a case of political schizophrenia - that libertarians like myself cannot make up our minds between the two sides of the political spectrum. Because there is a theme running through my beliefs - the theme of freedom. I take the left-wing views that say that the state should not tell me how to live socially, and I take the right-wing views that say that the state should not tell me how live economically (or, to put it another way, the state should not tell me how to spend my money). Fundamentally, I cannot be left-wing or right-wing since they both advocate intensive control of the lives of citizens, albeit in different ways.

Indeed, the concept of the difference between left and right is actually all smoke and mirrors - there is remarkably little difference actually there. Those on the left and the right vie for control of the state and argue over the best way to run that state. Yet they seldom, if ever, challenge the fundamental assumption underpinning both of their beliefs - that the state, run in the correct way, is a good thing. Genuine libertarians understand that the state is a human construct, and therefore must always be subordinate to its people rather than becoming more important than its creators. Genuine libertarians also understand that the state, as a human construct, reflects many of the flaws of its creators. By definition, it cannot be neutral and it cannot be without flaws. As such, libertarians realise that the state is not automatically benign in its dealings with its people, and history is littered with examples of where states have become actively malign.

I honestly believe that the radical alternative to the bloated, ineffectual political status quo is being offered by Libertarians. As such, I believe it is important for libertarians to reject those tags that would make them part of the current status quo. Genuine libertarians are neither right-wing or left-wing; their fundamental belief should be in rescuing the concept of liberty from an ever-expanding and increasingly controlling state. The fundamental political question of our time isn't whether you're left or right. It is whether you favour state control or freedom.

The BNP: Both left AND right-wing.

As well as giving British fascists the chance to go and embarrass us on an international stage, the minor BNP victories in the EU election has led to some arguing that the BNP is actually left-wing, whilst it has led to others reasserting its place on the right of the political spectrum. Unsurprisingly, those who identify as left or right don’t want the BNP infesting their part of the political spectrum.

Of course, you can make great cases for the BNP being on either end of the political spectrum, and I’m not going to rehearse those arguments here. Suffice to say that the BNP is an extremist party, and as a result can sit at the extremes of either the left or the right.

Because aside from the rhetoric, there is bugger all difference between the extremes of the left and the right in practice. Hitler may have despised Stalin and vice versa, but the way they implemented their politics were identical. Hitler had no issue with bending industries to the needs of the state, just as Stalin had no issue with scape-goating and persecuting minorities based on race and/or religion. The BNP, which has the draconian and utterly ineffective economic policies of the socialist left combined with the traditionally* racist policies identified with the reactionary right, simply represents the extremes of any party or political position that believes the answer to the problems faced by a country is a strong state.

Which makes the BNP the best party to illustrate why a small state is best. The BNP are a statist party that want to use the state to suppress minorities and suppress the economy. They simultaneously show the dangers of the extremes of both the left and right wing – you give enough power to a statist party, and that party can break the economy whilst persecuting ethnic minorities on the wishes of a vocal group of ignorant, self-identified indigenous mis-fits.

Doesn’t matter if you are a Tory or Labour, right-wing or left-wing when it comes down to it, since the BNP can claim to sit on either side of that spectrum. Debates about where they sit on that spectrum are smokescreens for the fact that they sit at the extremes of both ends at the same time. On some levels, the BNP are on your side Tory Supporter, they are your neighbours Labour Supporter. If you are traditionally left-wing or right-wing, then the BNP simply represents some of the extremes of your political beliefs. If you want to take anything from this debate then it should be that the BNP simply show how meaningless it has become to talk about the traditional left-right divide when the real political debate should be about how much power you want the government to have.

*Although leftwing Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown adopted that racist, BNP sounding slogan of British Jobs for British Workers, showing that racism is not the preserve of the right.