Spain and the left in the 1930's

There is a long and interesting piece in the Guardian by the historian Eric Hobsbawm. Supposedly about intellectuals and the Spanish Civil War, I read this with a growing sense of unease as I felt it slipping into a sophisticated apologia for the intellectual Stalinists of the 1930's.

There are some occasions when I fully agree with him. For instance, He rightly protests at the 'should have' approach to history, where political protagonists play around with the past for their own purposes;

"Today it is possible to see the civil war, Spain's contribution to the tragic history of that most brutal of centuries, the 20th, in its historical context. It was not, as the neoliberal François Furet argued it should have been, a war against both the ultra-right and the Comintern - a view shared, from a Trotskyist sectarian angle, by Ken Loach's powerful film Land and Freedom (1995). The only choice was between two sides, and liberal-democratic opinion overwhelmingly chose anti-fascism".

This sense of the necessity of a choice between fascism and anti-fascism was the force that propelled so many people into the arms of the Communist Party and I cannot quarrel with Hobsbawm's personal recollections of the urgency of the times. However, in doing so they were embracing a terrifying regime that was slaughtering its own at home and had carried out a genocide of the peasantry, it required faith rather than judgement and a revulsion with the liberal democracies in which they lived to make that commitment. For the rest of Hobsbawm's essay anti-fascism seems to becomes synonymous with Communism and the liberal democratic element drifts slowly out of sight.

The failure of the liberal democracies to aid the Republic and the absurdities of the Non-intervention Pact (how it resonates with the arms embargo to Bosnia) helped with Communist recruitment. It is too easy to talk of 1930's Communists in terms of moral failure without acknowledging the culpability of the regimes that palpably botched the challenge of fascist aggression. However, the most powerful, and moral, opposition to fascism did not come from Stalinism but from liberal democracy. Anti-fascism was not the monolith it may have appeared at the time of the Popular Front.

Hobsbawn throws out crumbs like,

"Moral revulsion against Stalinism and the behaviour of its agents in Spain is justified. It is right to criticise the communist conviction that the only revolution that counted was one that brought the party a monopoly of power."

But then he neatly brushes them aside as being "not central to the problem of the civil war". The necessity to win the war was the overwhelming concern, and the dilemmas that Hobsbawm pose were real enough. The two main ones were the need for military efficiency and for solidarity between all forces opposing Fascism, leading to a necessary conflict over the nature of the Spanish revolution. This he describes as related to the schisms in the left. In essence, it was the conflict between Marx and Bakunin. In any such quarrel, my prejudices would always lead me to tend to support Bakunin; Hobsbawm comes from the opposite side.

"Marx would have had to confront Bakunin even if all on the republican side had been angels. But it must be said that, among those who fought for the republic as soldiers, most found Marx more relevant than Bakunin - even though some survivors may recall the spontaneous but inefficient euphoria of the anarchist phase of liberation with tenderness as well as exasperation".

But this is not quite true. The dilemma posed by the revolution wasn't a product of the arguments of the First International written in blood on the Spanish landscape. This was not a conflict between Marx and Bakunin, but between Stalin and Bakunin. It was between totalitarian centralism and autonomous collectivism or, as Hobsbawm puts it, "between libertarian enthusiasm and disciplined organisation". Arguably, the reality of Stalinist tyranny may well have forced Marx into alliance with his bitter rival. All the while, sitting on the sidelines, was the very liberal democracy the war was nominally being fought to defend.

The perceived need for unity to ensure victory also leads Hobsbawm into support for the suppression of the truth. He damns Orwell with faint praise -"Only in the cold-war era did Orwell cease to be an awkward, marginal figure". Despite acknowledging that he told the truth in Homage to Catalonia, the book's initially poor sales were enough to allow him to argue for its lack of significance to the times.

My respect for those volunteers who went to fight in Spain makes outright condemnation difficult. If faced with the same dilemmas I have enough self-knowledge to realise that I would chicken out and make big speeches from a safe distance. Their commitment shamed their governments, though their courage was scarcely rewarded by the period between 28th August 1939 and 22nd June 1941 when Communists, far from being a bastion of anti-fascism, became the Nazi's allies. Those of us fortunate enough to have lived in Western democracies cannot guarantee that we would make the right choice faced with the profound threat posed by fascism. Hobsbawm is right to celebrate them, but his real purpose is the defence of intellectuals against those like Orwell who saw them as fatally compromised by a dalliance with Stalin.

Ultimately, this results in an exercise in wishful thinking used as a technique for the defence of intellectuals against polemicists, from George Orwell to Nick Cohen. Hobsbawm sees the writers and artists of the war as the creators of an historical record that excoriated fascism in Spain. He writes,

"But it is largely due to the intellectuals, the artists and writers who mobilised so overwhelmingly in favour of the republic, that in this instance history has not been written by the victors".

Any empirical historian would point out that the nature of fascism and the growing isolation of a repressive Spain in the context of the growing prosperity of post-war Europe would have ensured it a pretty bad press. And, of course, Franco may have won in Spain but fascism was defeated comprehensively elsewhere and the regime collapsed with his death. The victors did write the history, it was just that it was banned in Spain until after 1975.

Hobsbawm's optimistic conclusion is that "in creating the world's memory of the Spanish civil war, the pen, the brush and the camera wielded on behalf of the defeated have proved mightier than the sword and the power of those who won". However, what proved the mightiest of all was the ultimate victor of the wars of the 20th Century, the very capitalist liberal democracy that so many intellectuals despised and wished to see overthrown. It was the triumph of Enlightenment values that ensured that the Fascists got the press they deserved, not the literary works of Stalinist fellow travellers.

Bloody students

Ministers have been congratulating themselves on their Higher Education student funding policy as they breathe a sigh of relief at an increase in student applications this year, without considering whether the rise in numbers might be despite, rather than because of, their policies. I thought that there might be a significant overall deterrent effect in the new higher fees and loans. I was wrong. However, this isn't the main argument against the policy; it is the one that should most bother a left party - equity.

Much is made of the boost a degree gives to lifetime earnings and the argument that students should pay more towards their degrees is fairly made, but all students pay the same regardless of the benefit they receive. Those who use their degrees for corporate management, accountancy, commercial law etc. pay the same as those who become teachers, social workers, community development workers etc. Not only are the rewards disproportionate but the debt burden is equally so.

The model is also fixated on young people leaving school. This is totally unrealistic. 50% of students are classified as "mature". Many are at the younger end of the age range but those entering in their 30's or 40's pay back the same despite having significantly fewer years to reap the 'earnings premium'.

On top of which, 40% of the total number of students are part-time and they are discriminated against in that they have to pay their fees up-front. They are currently in a vacuum.

To try to deal with this, the government has a monstrously complex and ever-changing network of income contingent grants, bursaries and discretionary Access funds. Some of these can make a big difference to individuals but they do not deal with the central inequity of the system and their reach can be haphazard.

So the system is administratively expensive, inequitable and complex, but it didn't put a number of people off. As they pat themselves on the back for this magnificent success, perhaps the words 'graduate tax' - simple, equitable and social democratic - might linger in their minds for a few seconds to remind them of their socialist past.

Good arguments

The Normblog profile this week is Brian Micklethwait. It brought back fond memories of a conference in 2001 at Manchester Metropolitan University organised by my then PhD supervisor and friend Steve Davies. I gave a paper with Brian in the audience. The debate started, continued, continued, and went on some more, as libertarian went up against libertarian left. It was one of the best intellectual workouts I have ever had.

Several pints later, over a curry, still arguing, I finally spotted a point on which we could agree – debate is an outlet for competitive people who are crap at sport. He roared with laughter and we argued about football after that.

That was a good couple of days. Nice man and as an argumentative so-and-so, world class!

Eat, drink and be merry

Gillian McKeith has come in for some stick over her "PhD" in a wonderful hatchet job by Ben Goldacre. My real beef with her is her implication that fat and sin are synonymous as she lays into the participants in her show. I'm with the fatties. Stuff your liquidised celery and cucumber juice Gillian, fat is the new thin.

The result; I am fat and she is rich. Hmm…

(I also spent thousands of years doing a real PhD part-time, but at least I can call myself Dr all the time and she now can't.)

The kids are not alright

I am not surprised at the UNESCO report (full pdf here) placing Britain 21st out of 21 for child well-being. We have a real problem with young people. A combination of fear and dislike permeates the tabloids and criminal justice legislation. The Greeks can never understand why I like being childless.

Thanks to this new explanation I can now see that it is based on shock and ignorance and it is all the government's fault.

No sympathy for the devil

I have been reading a broadly respectful press about Norman Mailer's new novel 'The Castle in the Forest'. I haven't read it and almost certainly will not do so but there are things that I have read and heard that make me uneasy.

Mailer has a way with sweeping and alarming statements. His Hobbesian view of Iraq was exposed on a Radio 4 interview with Mark Lawson when he said that democracy could not be imposed by force as Iraqis did not want it. And how about this from an interview with Robert McCrum in the Guardian, 'the real damage Hitler did to the Jews, after killing six million, was to wreck the minds of the survivors. Before Hitler, the Jewish mind was more inquiring and much more elegant.' What on earth does that mean?

The real problem though is the way he describes his novel; it is about Hitler's father and his childhood. In the Guardian article he is quoted as saying that Hitler 'was an order of evil that can't be understood'. The historian in me bristles given the extensive research that is swept away by this seemingly casual remark. However, the Radio 4 interview made it clear that the theme of the book, diabolic intervention, is not a literary device or a metaphor, he is being literal. He appeared to argue that you can only understand Hitler by seeing him as an agent of the Devil. He sacralises Hitler as a satanic force for evil.

In fact, the whole point about anti-totalitarianism is that it recognises that there is a distinct and recognisable political and historical phenomenon, totalitarianism, which is not unique or supernatural. It is human, secular and malignant. It has to be recognised and opposed and it neither started nor ended with Hitler. By refusing to countenance a supernatural explanation, by rendering totalitarianism human, it makes resistance possible and practical. I do not think that Mailer is helping the cause, however fine the novel may be as a work of art.

UPDATE

Follow Will's link for a wonderful review. It describes the book as 'nearly five hundred of the most revolting pages in recent American fiction'.

The conclusion is spot on 'What is most vexing about such diabolical fatalism is that by foisting responsibility for man's evil onto an army of devils, Mailer effectively strips humanity of its moral agency, and thus of its ability ever to inhabit fully the deepest mysteries of the heart. If the last sixty years of meditation on Hitler's character have taught us anything, it is surely that the Nazis were neither gods nor demons, but finally all too human, and that is the most terrifying thing of all'.

Fat and trendy

Harry's Place has a piece on the wearing of the keffiyeh by westerners. I have to confess, there are times I wear one and Harry asks why? Well there are two simple answers. First there is the pretension of looking cool and, even better, hoping that people will ask me where I got it. A reply of, "A little shop at the back of the Ramallah bus station", is a real piece of one-upmanship. The only problem is no-one has ever asked the question because they are freely available in the UK from your local hippy store.

So the other reason is that it is bloody warm in cold weather. At 54 looking cool is not quite as important, or even possible, whereas looking sad is positively easy. I was teaching on the West Bank in the summer of 1981 and brought two back with me. Twenty five years later I am still wearing the first one, it refuses to wear out. The second sits pristinely at the top of the wardrobe awaiting the first one's demise. I think that at this rate my own will come first.

Intruding on private grief

John Kampfner patronises Nick Cohen here if you can be bothered. There is a perfect digested read at the Drink-soaked Trots, which says it all.

The digested read digested:

Kampfner says of Cohen, "He's Not the Messiah. He's a Very Naughty Boy."

More of me

No, I haven't put on yet more weight. I am now also posting over at the Drink-soaked Trots, having been mysteriously renamed "The Big Fat Gadgie". Oh well, the indignity we will put up with for fame.

You can read my first post here

Sorry Oliver

I like Oliver Kamm's blog, I have learnt from it and read it regularly. However, I really disagree with his latest post. He has a bugbear with 'relevance' in art and literature; instead, he stresses the universality of creative expression. There is a good argument in there but in tackling the topic of Shakespeare in schools, he goes wildly off-beam.

This is the passage from a BBC report he takes exception to,

Teachers have steered the Shakespeare curriculum for younger pupils in England away from Othello and Henry IV Part I in favour of lighter texts. After a poll, plays set for 13 and 14-year-olds in England could include Romeo and Juliet and As You Like It. Othello did not make the list because more than half of those questioned said the themes of sexual jealousy and racism were not suitable for that age.

Kamm argues,

Let's accept, for the sake of argument, that adolescents of 13 and 14 haven't experienced sexual jealousy and might be bewildered by Iago's malevolent imagery of "an old black ram ... tupping your white ewe". Ought they not to learn about such common and destructive sentiments before they enter adulthood?

What he is doing is mistaking the ideal with the practical. The teachers who were polled are not a bunch of rabid ideologues fixated with the idea of 'relevance' but enthusiasts and professionals who will be desperate to get their reluctant charges to love Shakespeare. All they are saying is that kids of that age are not intellectually or socially ready to be able to learn from those particular plays and others would be better to fire their imaginations. Most importantly, they know this because they have tried.

School teaching is a formidably difficult job, I would be absolutely terrible at it, and I trust teachers' ability to make a judgement about the best curriculum to follow. I have several exhausted teacher friends. One of them, given the highest praise by OFSTED recently, says the worst thing about teaching is that people who have never done it think that they are experts and pontificate about it to him endlessly. Sorry Oliver, that is what you are doing.

Kamm goes on to base his criticism in a theory of literature and again I can't fully agree with him.

But here I am accepting the utilitarian notions of the "teachers" who responded to the survey: we must teach what is relevant. That is an appalling notion. Literature gains its force not in describing a world we already know, but in illuminating enduring human concerns. Great writers see more and better than the rest of us. We gain experience through their art; we do not (or ought not to) fit the art to match our own experience. Anyone who thinks otherwise ought not to be teaching.

Here I can half agree, but to me great literature is not an instruction book, it does not just prepare us for experience or take us to places we have not seen. Really great literature is subversive. It takes what we think we know, what we thought we have seen and felt, and leads us into looking at the familiar in a completely different way. It challenges us. This literary experience is intimate and once we have read a book that touches us in that way we are not quite the same person afterwards. This is something that comes with maturity. A book you read when young, without experience, learning and your own personal history can be re-read later in life and be startlingly different. This is not fitting art to match experience, but using art to understand it anew. Writers know this; the best are ambiguous and not didactic. Literature is about "enduring human concerns", but they are enduring because we all have to deal with them in our own lives. This is why children's literature and teenage fiction exist after all, to talk to different levels of maturity.

Kamm clearly loves literature and is restlessly ambitious to share this love with others but if I were a teacher, I would not want to meet him on an appointment panel , especially if it was for teaching geography.

More madness

Now British pagans are demanding ancient human remains from museums for re-burial.

The Council of British Druid Orders say "We would like people to reconsider their relationship with the bones, … We view them as living people and therefore they have rights as people".

I'm sorry, I am not medically trained but, as far as I can see, they look very dead to me.

So far, so bonkers. But, here comes the cruncher:

Some in the museum community say it is unfair for scientists to impose their world view on pagans. "We think that there is actually an intellectual argument for pagan claims to be taken seriously," said Prof Bienkowski, "It is a different world view which, actually, like the scientific world view can be neither proved nor disproved. It is actually our responsibility to take those views into account." What right, he asks, do scientists have to speak for the bones either?

So it has come to this. We can't distinguish between science and bollocks eh? Post-modernism, you have so much to answer for.

I laughed out loud at this

When Osama bin Laden died, George Washington met him at the Pearly Gates. He slapped him across the face and yelled, "How dare you try to destroy the nation I helped conceive!"

Patrick Henry approached, punched him on the nose and shouted, "You wanted to end our liberties but you failed!"

James Madison followed, kicked him in the groin and said, "This is why I allowed our government to provide for the common defence!"

Thomas Jefferson was next, beat Osama with a long cane and snarled, "It was evil men like you who inspired me to write the Declaration of Independence."

The beatings and thrashings continued as George Mason, James Monroe and 66 other early Americans unleashed their anger on the terrorist leader.

As Osama lay bleeding and in pain, an Angel appeared. Bin Laden wept and said, "This is not what you promised me."

The Angel replied, "I told you there would be 72 Virginians waiting for you in Heaven. What did you think I said?"

(Thanks to Helena)

OK it was only a friendly

And they put out their reserve side so it doesn't really count as the fulfilment of one of my dreams, but it sure felt good.

Swinton 40 Salford 34

A world of one's own

Henry Porter gives a vigorous defence of liberal values. Though he concentrates on Islamism, much of what he says has universal import - particularly,

The thing I fear most is the growth of an alternative account of reality among radicalised youth …

Never mind just worrying about radicalised youth. How about New Age quacks, diet fetishists, conspiracy theorists, Mail readers, Mohammed Al-Fayed and, most of all, large numbers of reviewers of "What's Left"?

Lordy, lordy

With the White Paper on House of Lords' reform due out next week the papers are full of speculation/leaks about the proposals. The one thing no one mentions is the name. Surely, the idea that the nation is divided into two great estates, Nobility and Commoners, is an affront to the very concept of democratic citizenship. A programme of Parliamentary reform should rename both. After all, have New Labour forgotten that they are supposed to be 'modern'?

Has Nick Cohen written another book?

Because Peter Wilby hasn't reviewed the same one I read.

The abuse of history

I read Maleiha Malik's article comparing anti-Muslim racism with the anti-Semitism of the early 20th century. She does little more than state the obvious that racism takes similar forms regardless of whom it is aimed at in any period. She also makes the point that whole groups of people can be affected by the actions of a minority, especially in the midst of a 'moral panic'. So, not very startling. A general unease with the misuse of Islamophobia as a term does not alter the fact that there is widespread and deplorable racism against people of Asian origin, but anti-Semitism has hardly gone away either. There are many contestable views in the article, but at least Malik is consistently anti-racist.

There was one thing that bugged me though. She used a quote to imply that Winston Churchill was an anti-Semite. I couldn't square that with his known Zionism. She wrote the following:

Today the Middle East is the focus of a challenge to American political and economic hegemony, which is being presented as a "civilisational conflict with Islam". Nearly a century ago, the Russian revolution sent shockwaves through western states and financial markets. Anti-semites argued that Jewish involvement in revolutionary politics was part of a conspiracy by "the homeless wandering Jew" to replace European states with their "Hebrew nation". Winston Churchill, as secretary of state for war in 1920, wrote an article in the Illustrated Sunday Herald claiming there were three categories of Jews - good, bad and indifferent - and arguing that they were part of a "worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development".

OK the first sentence is worthy of a bit of fisking but I am an historian and it was the history that was worrying me. Where did her quote come from? This is the joy (?) of the Internet, it didn't take me long to find the article she refers to plastered all over neo-Nazi web sites, including David Irving's publishers Focal Point (and no, I am not going to link to them on principle).

At first, I had my doubts as to its validity due to the far right's typical technique of bolstering credibility by quoting seemingly authoritative academic sources. All the sites carried the same line that the authorship of the article "has been authenticated by one of the world's leading Churchill bibliographers, Richard Heinzkill, of the University of Eugene, Oregon". In fact, he was from the University of Oregon, which is based in Eugene, and it seems that Heinzkill was an ordinary librarian with no connection to the far right. All I could find by him was a 1993 article on the history of Oregon newspapers and a joint 2001 article entitled, The Perception of Image and Status in the Library Profession. He retired in 2000. In the 1984 letter that he wrote to David Irving, published on the site, he describes himself as "not enough of a Churchill scholar to discuss his stand on Zionism" and speculates that it might have been ghost written by Edward Marsh. He quotes his source for the attribution of the authorship to Churchill as Frederick Woods. Woods is in the British Library catalogue as the author of A Bibliography of the Works of Sir Winston Churchill (St Paul's Bibliographies, 1979). I guess that Heinzkill must have just looked it up in the book. Not very impressive, but I suppose that as the article has the by-line, "By the Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill", this masterful piece of expert authentication might just be right.

So I looked at the text. Of course, it is hugely misrepresented. Churchill starts by saying,

Some people like Jews and some do not; but no thoughtful man can doubt the fact that they are beyond all question the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has ever appeared in the world.

Hmm, not quite the words of a racist. What about the quote about the "world wide conspiracy"? It is there, but Churchill was talking about Bolshevism. However, then he does exactly what Malik accuses him of (and the Fascists celebrate) and equate Bolshevism with a malign form of Judaism. He had accepted, hook, line and sinker, the very common right-wing myth of the Jewishness of Communism. To modern eyes, it reads as completely unacceptable and not wholly sane. But where were these "three categories of Jews - good, bad and indifferent". The answer is nowhere really. It is a misreading. Whilst Churchill categorised Jews, he wasn't identifying and praising a group of "Uncle Toms", he was being virulently anti-revolutionary and ardently pro-Zionist. On top of which there were more than three categories. Another group he praised were the "National Jews" in pre-revolutionary Russia:

As bankers and industrialists they have strenuously promoted the development of Russia's economic resources, and they were foremost in the creation of those remarkable organisations, the Russian Cooperative Societies. In politics their support has been given, for the most part, to liberal and progressive movements, and they have been among the staunchest upholders of friendship with France and Great Britain.

Again, hardly the words of an anti-Semite. His stereotypes were the "International" and "Terrorist" Jews who were malign global revolutionaries. However, salvation was at hand, the struggle for the Jewish soul was now one between these and Zionism. And it is Zionism "which directs the energies and the hopes of Jews in every land towards a simpler, a truer, and a far more attainable goal" that must triumph. This article is a pro-Zionist tract. For Churchill, Zionism is the saviour of the Jews. He is calling for them to reject Bolshevism and embrace Zionism. This, Malik glosses over.

Churchill may have indulged himself in the casual anti-Semitic prejudices of his day, and particularly of his class, concerning the Russian Revolution. However, he writes as a betrayed lover rather than as a convinced racist. His beloved people had fallen in with the wrong crowd; they needed to come back from futile international utopianism to the practical nationalism of building a state of their own in the Promised Land. His Zionism was steadfast from the Balfour Declaration onwards. A real expert on Churchill, Martin Gilbert, has a new book out this summer, Churchill and the Jews. The synopsis makes interesting reading.

Churchill and the Jews covers the whole life of this greatest of Britons -- from his youth, when he was shocked by the anti-Semitism displayed during the Dreyfus Affair, to his last meeting with David Ben-Gurion in 1960, when he gave Ben-Gurion an article he had written about Moses. In the intervening years, during which Churchill cemented his place in history, his affinity with the Jews remained undimmed, even though his championing of Zionist issues and interests was often like a red rag to the bull of the British Establishment. One of those closest to Churchill once confided to the author that "Winston had one fault -- he was too fond of Jews." What does this mean? How did this fondness manifest itself? Exploring all aspects of his life and career, Churchill and the Jews sheds new light on a key figure of the twentieth century and how his attitudes affected not just the prosecution of the Second World War but the establishment of a Jewish state that followed it.

You can't expect good history from those who like to "revise" it but Malik is an academic and both she and the Guardian's editors should be a bit more scrupulous about their research. The false association between the Jews and Bolshevism was widely believed, but using a misconstrued quotation from Churchill as an exemplar is a serious distortion.

Ye Gods!

Readers of this blog will know of my affection for Greece and my respect for the Greek people. There is now another sign that Greece is becoming closer to the European mainstream, something celebrated a few years ago by Stanley Johnson, whose house is not far from mine. The special position of the Greek Church, previously only having been threatened by scandals, now faces a new challenge. Not the onward march of rational secularism but, no doubt to Francis Wheen's horror, mumbo-jumbo. Yes the pagans are back worshipping the Olympian Gods. Ellinais, a pagan group, is reviving the ancient forms of worship. Helena Smith reports,

Enter the Athens headquarters of YSEE, an umbrella organisation of pagans, and the first thing you encounter on feast days are white-clad believers offering libations before a life-size marble kouros symbolising eternal youth. Busts of Athena, Aphrodite, Hermes, Hera and Zeus cast their stony eyes on to an altar replete with burning incense, herbs and flowers. Housed in a decrepit apartment block, between a Kurdish-run cafe and a bathroom utilities store, YSEE has become a meeting point for pagans. Here believers, such as Vlassis Rassias, gather to discuss ancient Greek history and solace-giving gods.

Like pagans the world over, Rassias says he was drawn to polytheism by the religion's focus on humanity, ecology, cosmic connections and reverence for the past.

Oh well, is this how the Enlightenment will end, not in an ideological struggle over fascistic doctrines but in a "mostly harmless" general lunacy? Bring back the Titans, I say.

Hell hath no fury like a leftie scorned

The reaction to "What's Left" mirrors that to the Euston Manifesto, an unreasonable anger about a statement of the obvious.

The most furious is Edward Pearce in an awful piece. "All of this, every death, every amputation, is the fault of the American government". Don't you think that the people actually doing the arbitrary killing might bear some of the responsibility Edward? Then, from Beatrix Campbell, there is the sound of a firmly closed and locked mind refusing to budge even slightly open. There is also a strain of patronising criticism that Cohen has 'failed to understand imperialism', as if complex international issues can be reduced to a single ideological formula. The majority seem to criticise him for saying something that he does not say at all, a position beautifully demolished here by Norman Geras. The other line taken is one of apostasy. Nick Cohen has been described as a Blair apologist (have they read "Pretty Straight Guys"?), a neo-conservative (yawn) and even compared to the climate change denying Melanie Phillips (yikes!). It is only when you go back to the blogosphere that you run into some sanity. I liked Terry Glavin's review. "I think What's Left? is a brave book, a smart book, and damn well-written, in the bargain".

The most remarkable aspect of the apostasy argument is that "What's Left" is the most unambiguously left wing book I have read in yonks. This isn't just because of its commitment to liberal values, international solidarity, anti-racism, female equality, etc. It is for the reason that it is one of the few tracts that have not abandoned the concept of class. Class runs through this book as a central theme. It is the middle classes that have embraced relativism and abandoned universalism. Anti-Blair anger is self-righteously focussed on Iraq, an anger that conveniently leaves the other left issues that might just discomfort them – housing costs, low wage domestic labour, progressive taxation, equality etc – firmly out of the equation. This is best summed up as a tale of two trade unionisms. The UCU, the union for college and university lecturers, solidly middle class with a Trotskyist element amongst its activists, has affiliated to the Stop the War coalition. The TUC started the Aid Iraq Appeal, "raising money for Iraqi trade unionists to rebuild a free and independent trade union movement, and strengthen civil society in Iraq". I know which one I would rather support.

Actually, Cohen's thesis is not new, nor are the phenomena he described. I remember going to a meeting on Palestine in 1981 organised, unbeknown to me, by some strange Trotskyist sect. I had just returned from teaching on the West Bank and was appalled at being faced by a deranged rant about the "Thatcher/Reagan axis dominating the world" whilst watching the discomfort of two intelligent Palestinian guests being unable to get a word in edgeways. The nadir came when the speaker harangued an audience composed partly of Iranian Marxist political exiles about the importance of lending full support to the revolutionary theocracy in Iran. When they politely interrupted him to point out that leftists were being tortured and murdered by the regime, which was why they were in Salford after all, he turned to them sorrowfully and, in a tone of voice that would be used to address a child, explained to them that the Iranian revolution was "objectively" anti-imperialist and therefore served the cause of progress. They walked out making some very un-fraternal gestures.

In addition, some of the themes Cohen discusses were brilliantly dealt with in 1977 by Jean-Francois Revel in his book, "The Totalitarian Temptation", whilst you can find the same attitudes back in the radical movements of the 19th Century. In my research, I discovered nauseating anti-Semitism in the 19th Century Individualist Anarchist Henry Seymour's newspaper, "The Revolutionary Review". The Anarchist terrorism of the 1880's drew numerous apologias blaming society, not the bombers. There were also those who stood against the consensus. In an earlier post I pointed out that Josephine Butler supported the British in the Boer War, her hatred of Boer racism was greater than her colleagues' uncritical "anti-imperialism". Similarly, Peter Kropotkin lost many friends by insisting that German militarism and authoritarianism needed to be defeated in the First World War and thus supported the Allies instead of lapsing into pacifism.

Nothing is new, but every era needs someone to point out that the Emperor has no clothes and that it is not a pretty sight. Thanks Nick.

Groan

Q: Why do anarchists drink herbal tea?

A: Because proper tea is theft.

(Via The Vurtual Stoa)

A quote without a context …

When reading Nick Cohen's book I found this passage on page 76.

Said was a Palestinian and in a small way his viciousness and betrayals of principle were excusable. For the early Zionists to say that Palestine was 'a land without a people for a people without a land' was not so much to look down on Palestinians from a position of colonial superiority, as to look through them and deny their existence.

This is one of the examples in history where a quote can take on a life of its own independent of its intended meaning. It is attributed to Israel Zangwill, the novelist, radical and Zionist, although he was paraphrasing a comment from earlier in the 19th Century by Lord Shaftesbury.

Shaftesbury was the chair of the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, more commonly known as the Jew's Society. Founded in 1808, it was a curious mixture of Anglican evangelism and proto-Zionism. Zangwill picked up this quote in a particular context, his breach with mainstream Zionism over the rejection of the offer of Uganda for possible settlement by the British government in 1905. Zangwill was alarmed at the movement's determination to settle in the historic territory of Palestine and nowhere else. He had visited Palestine in 1897 and was struck by the density of its population and felt that there was little chance of peaceful co-existence with the existing population inside a Jewish state.

Zangwill's response was to form the Jewish Territorial Organisation to search for 'a land without a people for a people without a land' elsewhere in the world. Thus, the quote was not meant to be a description of Palestine but of an alternative to Palestine. What has happened is that a statement that was rooted in an affirmation of the existence of the Palestinians is now used to demonstrate their denial.

Without proper research, it is difficult to ascertain how the quote was transmitted. Certainly, it fits neatly into critiques of Zionism as colonialism and racism. Perhaps it absolved the Zionist movement of anything other than a casual ignorance of conditions in Palestine. Probably it was just too good a sound bite to be ignored. However, through constant repetition, not least by myself until I read more widely, it has not only lost its context but become an historical distortion.

Maybe too, the earlier quote was tied up in knowledge of Zangwill's later career. He returned to mainstream Zionism but still faced the reality of the existence of a Palestinian population, only this time he advocated "transfer" of the Arabs from the area of the Jewish State.

The outline of Zangwill's life and ideas is a perfect illustration of the fact that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is a localised one between two aspiring nationalism over territorial sovereignty and is not reducible to abstract notions with universal significance as so much of the 'left' seems to think.

Get fat, not fit

Sarfraz Manzoor indulges in some sympathy for those that suffer anti-fat sentiment (Society does not mock skinny people, and in particular skinny men, with the same ferocity it does fat people.) but then spoils it all by using it as an incentive to get fit and thin (actually the two are not necessarily synonymous).

Of course he is failing. My advice is give up and fight for equal rights to esteem and dosh for people of girth. There is solidarity in size; let yourself go Safraz. It is more fun, cheaper and one hell of a lot easier. I guarantee you will succeed. You too can have a body like mine.

Uncomfortable truth

Martin Kettle can't quite bring himself to fully agree with Nick Cohen:

Moreover, those who think like him have explaining to do. This book would have been easier to write four years ago. Cohen saw the Iraq war as a drive to replace tyranny with something approaching justice. That was a reasonable thing to believe once, but it has turned out disastrously wrong - an all too familiar pattern on the left. Iraq does not necessarily invalidate the policies of humanitarian intervention or internationally sanctioned regime change - and it certainly does not negate the power of much of what Cohen writes. But Robert Burns would surely have seen Iraq as a classic foolish notion - or worse - and it sure as hell carries lessons to which the believers have not yet faced up.

This ignores Cohen's main point that there were perfectly honourable reasons for opposing the war in Iraq but that once it has happened all the support of the left should have swung behind the democratic forces in Iraq instead of willing failure in order to bolster their own self-righteousness. This analysis may be uncomfortable but it is true.

It's too easy

But I can't resist. Take this from Neil Clark:

The Radicals, with 28.3% of the vote, could reasonably be expected to form a government with Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica's DSS party and the Serbian Socialist party. Except that this coalition - the best representation of the people's will - has been ruled strictly verboten by the self-appointed apostles of democracy.

Now, let's take these sentiments back to 1933.

The Nazis, with 43.9% of the vote, could reasonably be expected to form a government with the Catholic Centre Party and the DNVP. Except that this coalition - the best representation of the people's will - has been ruled strictly verboten by the self-appointed apostles of democracy.

Don't you think that these "apostles" might just have a point?

And for good measure he continues,

Although the Radicals' leader, Vojislav Seselj, currently on trial for war crimes at the Hague, is an anti-Yugoslavia Serb nationalist with a history of ugly chauvinist rhetoric …

That is one big "although", Neil, one very big "although".

What's Left

Apologies for a lack of recent posts. On Monday Amazon did me the favour of delivering Nick Cohen's new book early. The official publication date is not until next week. All my spare time has been spent reading and re-reading it. I have just finished it and this is simply a highly personal initial reaction. I will probably post more substantial comments later.

It is a magnificent book from a journalist who is an accomplished writer of fine prose. The intellectual clarity and the emotional commitment to universal values are convincing. Even though the arguments are now familiar, they still have the power to shock. Inevitably, I have some minor quibbles. The main one is that he is slightly unfair to some Anarchists and parts of the Green and Global Justice movements as he is less familiar with non-Marxist radical thought. Some, though by no means all, are better than he gives them credit for; others are far madder but arguably more benign than the Galloways of this world.

But this is nothing and I feel bad writing it. Perhaps I need some quibbles just because of the unease of seeing in clear, logical, reasoned and impassioned prose just how wrong I have been in the past. I have taken positions which I would now reject. At least my conscience is assuaged by the doubts that assailed me as I sought desperately to accommodate to orthodox positions. Nick Cohen has taken all my misgivings and explained why I was right to have them and wrong to suppress them. His journalism has helped me on a path on which I have been travelling; I owe him a huge debt of gratitude, as I do to Norman Geras, whose blog has become a central part of my daily routine, and all the other inhabitants of the blogosphere. My research had led me to libertarian ideas and I have now continued to anti-totalitarianism, I am grateful and proud that I discovered both.

I urge everyone to read What's Left. Even in January I can say it is my book of the year.

Education, education, education

More on education now and three things have caught the eye this week.

The headline today is about predictions of sharp rises in University fees. As always the old argument is dragged out.

… the present loans system in effect provided "a huge subsidy to the well-off middle class" because students are benefiting from a generous low-interest loans while pursuing careers that offer salaries well above the national average.

Leaving aside the argument that giving subsidies to the middle class is actually rather effective politics and thus likely to continue, this is only true if working class students are excluded from the system. It is an argument for widening participation, not higher fees.

Arguably, the current loan and fee system is the most regressive of the funding options. The repayment amounts are the same regardless of the benefits, so that a student who qualifies, say, as a company lawyer and earns a fortune, pays back exactly the same as someone who uses their qualification to enter the caring professions, or even non-graduate employment, at a fraction of the earnings. The tiny minority of students who use higher education to get elite jobs are hugely subsidised – the average student debt is a tiny percentage of a City bonus. The majority feel student debt as a colossal burden and obstacle to be surmounted. It is incontestable that the prospect of debt does deter low income students. Of course, part-time students are left to largely pay their own fees up front too, but then they only make up 40% of the total number!

I would have thought that a system that brought benefits to the few at the expense of the many would be inimical to a Labour government. However, political cowardice means that the government has shied away from the two logically consistent models. The first is a fully commercialised system where the risks and costs are met by the student and the cost/benefit analysis about how much to be spent on their education is theirs and theirs alone. I would argue that such a system was likely to entrench, rather than erode elitism and restrict social mobility. The other is a form of universal support, means-tested if necessary, financed through a graduate tax, thereby ensuring that those who benefit the most pay the most and vice versa. The latter is surely the best policy for a social democrat, removing social barriers to education whilst ensuring that those who benefit do pay. What the attraction of the current complex mess is, I do not know.

The second is a one of the rarely reported positive stories from Iraq.

A college in Iraq is trying to steer men away from violence with an approach to further education based on the British model.

The Najaf Technical Institute has begun training programmes aimed at giving skills to unemployed former members of militias, which, it is hoped, will lead them out of trouble into employment.

This is the type of initiative in Iraq the UCU should be promoting, helping and supporting rather than demonstrations calling for the withdrawal of troops.

Finally, the Telegraph reports that another of John Betjeman's lovers has come to light. Margie Geddes met him when he was a teacher at her brother's school. What I liked was the description of his teaching method.

"He climbs through the classroom window, and lies on the floor to teach; he says this is to make sure he's got control."

Don't you think that through the tyrannies of OFSTED and lesson plans we might just have lost something?

Did I read this right?

There are times when I get confused. Richard Gott seems to argue that we should downplay our commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 because a) there was a trade to abolish; b) it took rather a long time; c) there were slave rebellions as well as William Wilberforce; and d) it led to the invasion of Iraq. Curiouser and curiouser.

Headline of the day

From Tuesday's Guardian

"One in five Home Office statistics are unreliable, says department head"

Is he sure?

Depressing and predictable - again

My Union, the UCU, is urging support for the Stop the War Coalition demonstration on Saturday 24 February 2007. UCU has affiliated to the StWC.

So, we have an educational union that can affiliate to a body some of whose leading members have defended an insurgency that murders academics and teachers. Interesting.

Paul Mackney is quoted as saying, "I urge UCU members to promote understanding of these issues in every college and university". In fact, what he is urging is the unconditional acceptance of a line as laid down by a dubious Trotskyist/Islamist alliance, not an "understanding", or a even an open debate. Whatever your own view on the war, there is a nagging question for educationalists. Is this a position that an academic union should be taking?

Depressing - but predictable

According to the Times Educational Supplement the number of places in adult education fell by a massive 675,000 last year. Apparently, the government had been expecting a fall of "only" (!!) 200,000.

If you wish to read about this act of cultural vandalism you can do so here.

Conformism masquerading as profundity

There was a wonderful example of just what Fred Halliday was talking about (see below) in the Guardian last week by Liam Byrne and Bill Rammell. These Blairites wrote to emphasise the importance of "the politics of aspiration" to Labour's electoral strategy.

I have only seen Bill Rammel in operation once, giving a spectacularly inappropriate address to an Adult Learners' Awards event in London and it showed his deep attachment to conventional wisdom. He had just come back from China and had not been appalled by the oppression, the pollution, the corruption or the other aspects of Chinese development that Will Hutton wrote about earlier. Instead, he clearly had "seen the future and it worked". The bewildered award winners were then harangued on the reason for the fact that the funding for their courses was to be cut was so that cash can be concentrated on level 2 skills so that we can compete with China!

This column was in a similar vein. There is an element of truth there. They claim that the next election will be decided by 48 constituencies and that, "Sophisticated research tools mean we know more about these seats than ever - they tell us that in these constituencies, it's the votes of four or five groups that will decide the outcome". They are right. However, rather than questioning a system that renders the interests of 99% of the electorate irrelevant and forces us to bow to the desires of four or five groups in 48 constituencies and thus talk about the need for reform, they embrace the situation and see "aspiration" as the way that New Labour will win again. "The politics of aspiration is quite simply the common denominator of the New Labour coalition".

What on earth is "aspiration", other than another example of New Labour's rhetorical vacuity? At least they accept it isn't a static concept, "aspiration in 2009 will look different to 1997". That aspiration has aged doesn't give anyone much of a clue. Is it less "modern" or more so? We all have aspirations. For some of us it is to retire to Greece and to write. For others it is to see every ball in an Ashes series in Australia. Some look for promotion at work, others try to avoid it. Aspiration is meaningless unless it is defined.

The nearest they get to clarifying what they mean is another generalisation, "an ambition to get on in life". Ah, I suppose they mean careerists. Hang on a second. Haven't I just blogged on that? Isn't careerism Arendt's "banality of evil"? Well I never, New Labour's target voter is Adolph Eichmann.

Robin on Arendt

The London Review of Books has an idiosyncratic review by Corey Robin of works on and by Hannah Arendt. It is worth reading though I do not agree with the import of what he writes, in that he tries to draw a picture of Arendt as someone who would have been a supporter of his particular stance against Paul Berman and others of the anti-totalitarian left. His own position, nicely summarised in his article in The Nation of September 2005, actually seems to engage in the very type of psychological speculation that he accuses Arendt of in her work on Totalitarianism.

For example, his main claim is that liberals are driven by fear.

"… liberals need fear: to justify their principles, to warn us of what happens when liberalism is abandoned. And so they are driven abroad to confront the tyrannies that make life miserable elsewhere, in order to derive confidence in their own, admittedly imperfect but infinitely better, regimes."

This ignores a few simple facts. The collapse of liberalism in Germany gave us Hitler. It is infinitely better to live in Hull than in Harare. The brutal murder and torture of those who carry out the offence of teaching girls is a crime against humanity, that essential liberal concept. Opposition to tyranny abroad is both rational and moral and cannot be traduced as a form of "moral exhilaration". The desire to confront and ameliorate these crimes might just be a better way of explaining the reasons for liberals' engagement with the world.

Whilst he is right that Arendt wrote on Imperialism and Racism as well as Totalitarianism, by dismissing the latter and selectively emphasising elements of the former he is as guilty of distortion of those who simply focus on Totalitarianism to the exclusion of the rest. I am not well versed in Arendt's work and it is a long time since I read any so the review has achieved its primary purpose to make me want to go back and read more.

When he writes on Arendt's "Eichmann in Jerusalem" he is much more incisive. The point he makes is that the banality of Eichmann's evil was not submersion in a bureaucracy but relentless self promotion.

"The bureaucrat is a passive instrument, the careerist an architect of his own advance. The first loses himself in paper, the second hoists himself up a ladder. The first was how Eichmann saw himself; the second is how Arendt insisted he be seen."

This emphasis on what he sees as critique of careerism is a real insight, and much more impressive than his attempt to enrol Arendt in the "Stop the War Coalition". Sadly, this is not explored in greater depth before he goes off on another anti-liberal rant.

"In an era when capitalism is assumed to be not only efficient but also a source of freedom, the careerist seems like the agent of an easy-going tolerance and pluralism."

Hopeless liberal I may be, but as a careerist I have never been a great success. I share his concern about those who promote themselves in organisations at the expense of others but feel that it is a universal of any power structure, something that was noted by Bakunin to Marx's enduring anger. How do we confront it? Corey Robin sadly brings us no closer to an answer.

Down with conventional wisdom!

There is a good New Year's list by Fred Halliday in the current Open Democracy, "A 2007 warning: the world's twelve worst ideas".

As he says, "The world is full of conformism masquerading as profundity". And he goes on to expose the ideas that irritate him the most. It is a game we can all play and I fully approve of his choice of this,

"We have no need for history

In recent decades, large areas of intellectual and academic life - political thought and analysis, economics, philosophy - have jettisoned a concern with history. Yet it remains true that those who ignore history repeat it … "

And

"Religion should again be allowed, when not encouraged, to play a role in political and social life

... the claim about the benefits of religion is one of the great, and all too little challenged, impostures of our time. For centuries, those aspiring to freedom and democracy, be it in Europe or the middle east, fought to push back the influence of religion on public life. Secularism cannot guarantee freedom, but, against the claims of tradition and superstition, and the uses to which religion is put in modern political life, from California to Kuwait, it is an essential bulwark."

This too is one of my bugbears from enthusiasts of modernity (to which I would add many others such as "weightless economies", "knowledge societies", "portfolio careers", & etc.)

"The world is speeding up

This, a favourite trope of globalisation theorists, confuses acceleration in some areas, such as the transmission of knowledge, with the fact that large areas of human life continue to demand the same time as before: to conceive and bear a child, to learn a language, to grow up, to digest a meal, to enjoy a joke, to read a poem. It takes the same time to fly from London to New York as it did forty years ago, ditto to boil an egg or publish a book. Some activities – such as or driving around major western cities, getting through an airport, or dying - may take much longer."

Finally, though I tend to be anti-utopian in my outlook in the sense of opposing grand ideological plans, I still like this,

"In the modern world, we do not need utopias

Dreaming, the aspiration to a better world and the imagination thereof, is a necessary part of the human condition."

It is reminiscent of Oscar Wilde's famous quote from "The Soul of Man Under Socialism"

"A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisations of Utopias."

Read all twelve here

LRB

I have just had the first instalment of a very welcome Christmas present, a subscription to the London Review of Books.

I had only ever read some of the articles that they release on-line before so it is a real pleasure to read the whole magazine. Amongst the gems was a series of diary entries by Alan Bennett – "My 2006". (Sorry the copyright is reserved so that it is not available from the web site). I particularly liked this entry:

14 August. A year or two ago the National Parks were complaining that their visitors were predominantly white and that the Asian population of Leeds and Bradford, for instance, left them largely unvisited. In this morning's Guardian it's claimed that would-be terrorists learned some of their skills in camps in national parks in the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales. So some improvement there.

Hordes of fans and admirers ...

Or one anyway. One of the people who has posted some comments has linked to my blog in a post here. Apart from feeling surprised at having a reader in the US military, I thought he answers those 'blogging is the end of civilisation as we know it' critics beautifully.

I've learned a great amount from blogging … What has been very interesting is how I feel in touch with people I hardly know. Reading someone's blog can draw you in and make you use your brain. ... I want to be challenged in what I feel and think. Yes, if my beliefs can't stand under a little intellectual sparring then what are they made of.

He is right. At its best, blogging is a conversation and a completely free exercise in intellectual liberty. It is not a democracy but an anarchy, in the best sense of the word.

Recovery

Just emerging from the cocoon of the virus and so all I am doing is a token blog to alert readers to a marvellous book review on Harry's Place.

This is how the blurb describes "When the Angels Have Risen" by Andrew Feder:

Jerry Fletcher is a down-on-his luck man from Los Angeles who, after unpleasant clashes with government suits and contemptuous authorities, has become decidedly bitter against the establishment. During a trip to Las Vegas, he is mysteriously transported to an alien spaceship. On board, he meets an otherworldly being named Yoshu’ah, who confides that many of the Judeo-Christian teachings were actually provided by the alien angels. In addition, Fletcher learns that an alien war has been waged for thousands of years for control of Earth. The aliens send him home to explain his new knowledge, and the previously apathetic man assumes the enormous challenge of spreading this important message.

Yes, a classic and Harry quotes from it one of the worst sex scenes I have ever read. It looks mad, unreadable and almost irresistible. I will have the free copy if you don't want it Harry, but I don't think that even I, as a connoisseur of the truly terrible, will buy it – its tempting though.

A touch of the flu

This is what people say they when they have a cold. Flu is not the same as a cold, I now know only too well. I have flu; blogging will resume when my immune system does the business.

Zimbabwe

Normblog draws our attention to a chilling piece on Zimbabwe by R W Johnson.

"A vast human cull is under way in Zimbabwe and the great majority of deaths are a direct result of deliberate government policies. Ignored by the United Nations, it is a genocide perhaps 10 times greater than Darfur’s and more than twice as large as Rwanda’s".

Read it all here.

After reading it, I looked back to an old prospectus from our Centre documenting our work as part of a British Council link programme with the University of Harare a few years ago. I was not involved, but my good friends Gill and Daniel were. Part of what my colleagues did, in partnership with Hull's Developing Our Communities, was to deliver participatory appraisal training courses. One of the groups they worked with were displaced women living in Hatcliffe, a township outside Harare. The women identified the production and sale of hand-made textile goods as a way of beginning an independent micro business and they made two bedspreads which were brought back and raffled for funds to invest in their new business. Despite Gill's attempt to fiddle the raffle by putting my winning ticket back first time, the second ticket was also mine and she gave in to fate. The bedspread sits resplendent in my house in Greece. Then I read this.

I see Trudy Stevenson, an MP for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, who has carried out her own survey of Murambatsvina victims in Harare’s Hatcliffe Extension township, work that earned her a brutal assault by Zanu-PF thugs from which she narrowly escaped with her life. Stevenson estimates the death toll there at around a quarter.

I go out to Hatcliffe and talk to some of the survivors. One of them, Philomena Makoni, tells me that her family had a legal lease for their dwelling but this did not prevent the police from tearing it down.

“They came at night, shouting and yelling, made us get out of the house and just levelled it to the ground. “Then we were carted off into the countryside and dropped there. The president had said that people like us had lost our roots and that we must rediscover them.

“My baby that I was nursing died — I had no food and could give her no milk. We buried her in the bush. My other two children are terribly thin and sick. “We walked all the way back to Hatcliffe, it was many miles, but things are much harder even than before. My husband lost his job through being sent away and we have no income.

“We are only alive because the churches give us some food, but I am very frightened for my children. They are no longer in school and they are now begging at the roadside. I cannot see what will become of us.”

Now, rather than a symbol of hope for the future of a group of poor, but enterprising and positive women, my bedspread has a sense of poignancy, of hope destroyed under an unceasing oppression and institutionalised, systematic violence. Are the women who made it still alive? I don't know. Mugabe most certainly is.

Morality

On the same topic the Iraqi author Haifa Zangana finished her contentious piece with the following statement:

"The resistance to occupation is a basic human right as well as a moral responsibility".

To claim that an historic or political situation evinces an absolute moral responsibility without resting on moral principles is abhorrent. Under this general rule, Nazi resistance to Allied occupation would be moral, as would be the resistance of the Khmer Rouge to the Vietnamese intervention that ended the genocide. According to this argument, anyone who resists, however they choose to do so, in order to re-impose brutality, oppression and genocide are exercising a moral responsibility.

Historical and political circumstances do not confer moral imperatives; only moral principles can do that. This means that motives and actions need to be judged against ethical values and intended goals rather than simply, for example, the American and British presence in Iraq. Much of the murderous insurgency in Iraq would fail that test abysmally.

Saddam

The furore over the Saddam execution is odd. The event sounded grim. I only read about the pictures that were released, they sounded awful and the papers were delighted to flex their hypocrisies by plastering them over their front pages.

However, as I read the editorials and the political and media comments, I am assailed by questions. Why this anger? Whoever thought that executions were nice? Instead of creating a martyr, it might make those who advocate capital punishment face the reality of the death sentence. But Saddam? What respect did the thousands executed under his direct orders get? Why such surprise at his treatment? Was Mussolini a martyr because of the way his corpse was treated? I doubt that there were disapproving editorials about the partisans. Nor can I think of any fury at the worse summary trial and dispatch of the Ceaucescus. Hated tyrants tend not to get respect, but revenge. It isn't pleasant but he never suffered the horrific tortures he visited on others. I oppose the death sentence and did not want him, or anyone, to be executed, but I am not surprised that he was or that the process wasn't a model of clinical efficiency. Remember his crimes, those are what should spur our anger.

Depression

Back in England, I suppose I will get used to it.

The Balkan Trilogy

The Internet is a wonderful source for the discovery of new reading. Norman Geras has sold me Sophie Hannah's poetry which has been a mainstay of this year's Christmas presents. I read James Hawes thanks to Nick Cohen. I agree with both Oliver Kamm and Johan Hari's choice of Why Truth Matters as their neglected book of the year, first recommended on blogs. This time though my holiday reading came from one of those idiosyncratic book lists posted by customers on Amazon. This one was of books about Greece and this was the last entry, even though two thirds of this particular novel is actually set in Rumania. The novel is Olivia Manning's The Balkan Trilogy. Originally published as three separate books, it is really one very long one. The author makes only the most perfunctory attempt re-introduce the characters at the start of each new volume and the plot flows seamlessly between them.

Set at the outbreak of the Second World War there is a strong narrative thread and at first it seemed a little dated and almost too conventional. However, the sparse, precise prose drives the reader through a compelling story and you are quickly hooked. I knew nothing of Manning before but I am distinctly impressed. The themes are both big and small. If anything, the novel is about individuals and the complexity of their relationships, but there are two grand themes running through it as well, the war and liberal individualism's conflict with collectivism.

The focus is on the wife, Harriet, of an outgoing and gregarious English teacher, Guy, who is totally unprepared for marriage. This is especially so as Harriet is politically out of sympathy with Guy's Communism and combines sensitivity with close observation and intelligent judgement. Just as there is a struggle for power in Rumania, so there is in the marriage. What is curious is how passionless their love is. Harriet is deeply passionate about cats, a young Jewish army deserter, and comes close to an affair with an army officer. Marriage is more calculating, more about partnership and solidarity than passion. It is, in an un-didactic way, a feminist novel. Harriet is central, independent, an outsider, an observer and fiercely intelligent. The themes are semi-autobiographical and Harriet is clearly Manning. Whereas Guy is the critic, teacher and producer, Harriet is the writer, the one who sees. Manning, who died in 1980, teases the reader, there are possibilities that are never fulfilled, relationships and personalities are constantly shifting and they are revealed piecemeal, so that there is always a sense of future discovery and intrigue.

The final volume is set in Greece up until the Nazi invasion and the picture of the country that emerges is one that will be familiar to all of us who love this country. It is a warmer and far less uncomfortable one than that of Rumania. I sensed a fellow Greekophile in Manning. Whereas Rumania ended by embracing Fascism, Greece succumbed through invasion alone after fierce, undivided resistance.

I am not sure whether I have read a great novel or merely a very good one, but as I finished it tonight, I contemplated my own far less dramatic departure with a sense of poignancy. Tomorrow the house will be packed up and the day after a long journey will bring me back to Hull. Greece is a hard country to leave and saying goodbye to Pelion is always sad. The Easter return will be eagerly anticipated and I might just get hold of Manning's The Levant Trilogy to accompany me.

Hacking Democracy - again

I have posted on this documentary before when it was first released in the USA. Written and co-directed and produced by my nephew, Simon Ardizzone, it provoked a certain amount of avuncular pride. The Christmas break gave me the opportunity to watch the DVD Simon sent me. This was shared with my friends in their house high up overlooking the village. I suppose it was its Greek premiere.

I was nervous about viewing it for the first time with friends but needn't have worried; it is a gripping film. It contains the key ingredients for a good documentary, painstaking research, an intriguing topic and a star. In this case, in contrast to the egoism of the increasingly unconvincing populist Michael Moore, the filmmakers have simply provided the vehicle to allow their subjects to shine - the extraordinary Seattle grandmother and writer Bev Harris and her fellow activists from Black Box Voting.

The film exposes one aspect of the layers of alleged electoral fraud in the USA, the use of computer voting machines, specifically those manufactured by Diebold. It shows how, contrary to the corporation's assurances, the voting machines can be easily hacked to allow the falsification of the vote. Given the closeness of the last two presidential contests, and especially the importance of Florida and Ohio where some of the more controversial practices were identified, the issue could hardly be more apposite.

The remarkable part of the film is the picture that emerges of the obsessive democratic commitment of the activists who have come together to expose these flaws. It is a picture of extraordinarily diligent and courageous citizens seeking to defend their democracy from corruption. Though there is malicious pleasure in watching squirming executives searching for the weasel words to escape the truth, the real inspiration comes from the enthusiasm of these dedicated activists who personify the nature of a democratic society seeking a form of governance that matches their own expectations. It is an excellent, lucid and disturbing film – (OK I am biased but it is good). It may well be shown on Channel 4. Watch out for it but in the meantime follow the links in this post.

The sun is here

And that means frosty mornings











And perfect days

Good digestion ...

This is how my Greek friend greeted the local taxi driver on a stroll round the village after a large Christmas meal. Greeks are big on well wishing and what could be a better seasonal salutation for those of us in the world fortunate enough to be able to feast.

The future's bright?

Will Hutton in Sunday's Observer had an optimistic list of the ideas that will reshape the future for the better. I would quibble with some of his points. The techno-enthusiasm certainly seems overblown. There is only one thing that projections of a technological future have in common - they all turn out to be wrong. His take on foreign affairs is decidedly alarming. I do not see how a forced necessity to do a deal with two of the worst regimes on earth, Iran and Syria, in order to escape the mess left behind after removing a third, ushers in a wonderful new world of interdependence. However, he is better when he picks up on Richard Layard's work on happiness.

Layard has opened up some interesting discussions on public policy, though his neo-Benthamism is hardly convincing. I really don't think that modern psychology can make the "felicific calculus" a practical reality. What I do like though is the way he uses happiness as a concept to pertinently question conventional wisdom. For instance, why should the interests of producers not matter as much as those of consumers? After all, we are both at different times of our life. Then there were the awful clichés that flooded the media about the "sclerotic" German economy needing a good "dose of reform" and of how Germans had to learn to live without their "generous" pensions and benefits. The big question that is begged is why? Why shouldn't German wealth be used for the comfort and security of Germans? As for the over-generosity, governments are frequently over-generous with my money (see Nick Cohen's latest piece) but rarely towards me.

However, I would take this further and suggest that the notion of happiness could usefully be used as a tool for the analysis of ideologies. We are cursed with a whole range of political beliefs that are designed to make us miserable. This is arguably a form of pathological thinking. There are soft versions, for instance, Margaret Thatcher wanting to make Britain less "cosy" and more "invigorating" and management-speak that goes on about "challenges" (how I do not want to be challenged). What seems more important at the moment are those beliefs that seek the general imposition of unhappiness on the world. This 'hard miserablism' takes two forms, those that would make others unhappy and those that would promote unhappiness as a universal condition of humankind.

Racism, anti-Semitism and other forms of mass persecution inflict misery and horror on others purely because of the fact that they are the other. However, some ideologies seek to impose unhappiness as the normal state of human existence through ubiquitous violence, the celebration of struggle or enforced asceticism. They urge self-sacrifice and deride comfort, ease and ordinary private lives as "decadent" or as examples of "false consciousness". Fascism and Islamism loom large in this respect.

In facing this ideological confrontation, perhaps it is not enough to counter with the liberal concepts of liberty, tolerance and economic security. Maybe we should become militant hedonists and in the relentless pursuit of a happy life for ourselves make others as happy as can be given the complexities of life and the universal tragedy of mortality. Is it now time to celebrate pleasure as a form of liberation?

It's Christmas Eve

And the promised sunshine has not arrived. A low grey mist hangs over the village. The raw cold attacked my fingers this morning as I gathered in the day's firewood. Costas, our local butcher, has made his usual modernist display by crazily throwing strings of lights over the tree outside his house. Sadly, now he has finished the second floor, there is no illuminated plastic Santa climbing his chimney as usual. There are Christmas lights in the village by the sea front, but it is virtually deserted with only a few locals gathering in Nikos' café. All is quiet …

So, as I escape the commercialism of an English Christmas all I can say to the friends and strangers that may pass by this blog is,

Καλά Χριστούγεννα
kαι
Ευτυχισμένος ο καινούργιος χρόνος

(And if you can't guess what that means look at Brian Church's excellent book, "Learn Greek in 25 Years". You may not pick up much Greek but you won't stop laughing.)

Oh Mr Porter …

Into Volos yesterday for some Christmas shopping and there in a newsagent was a three-day-old copy of the Observer crammed with blogging material.

I am ignoring the customary provocative feature on diet books. Instead, I was drawn to comment on a number of articles. First, was a really poor piece by Jasper Gerard on heroin use, inspired by the serial killer in Ipswich whose victims were all in prostitution to feed their habit. He argued that there is a need to eradicate the Afghanistan poppy fields (humanely, he at least suggests buying the stuff and funding crop substitution before it became necessary to "bomb the buggers") in order to take heroin off the streets. He could do with some simple lessons in market economics. The demand from an addict is inelastic. Once supply drops, the price will rise. That means more crime and more prostitution to pay for it. Heroin addiction is not a supply problem; it is demand led.

In the wake of the crimes, the media has focused on the impact of drugs and the consensus is that drug use is a response to misery, a very real opiate of the masses. But my current wine consumption is not due to wretchedness; it is to reinforce my unbounded pleasure at being here. It helps that I can buy half a kilo of "loose wine" (for some reason it is nominally sold by weight rather than volume in Greece though the quantities are the same) for €1.50 but even if it was more expensive I would still be drinking it. Any drugs policy that does not admit that taking drugs is actually pleasurable, until it becomes a tyrannically urgent necessity through addiction, is doomed to fail.

The Ipswich murders are also helping to fill the column inches on prostitution itself. The liberal consensus seems to rest on some form of state control and regulation. How they need to read the great 19th Century campaigner on prostitution, Josephine Butler, whom I have blogged on before. Her humane, deeply moral libertarianism needs to be rediscovered, not least by the columnists turning themselves into instant 'experts'.

The sanity in the paper was provided by the consistently excellent Nick Cohen on conspiracy theory in the wake of the Stevens Report into the death of Diana. Reinforcing his conclusions, and taking them further by showing how they can be used by governments as a tool of repression, was the report on the desperate plight of the foreign medical staff in Libya facing the death penalty, having already spent seven years in prison, for a conspiracy to deliberately infect patients with AIDS, despite the evidence pointing to poor hygiene practice as the cause. There is an excellent article on the case in Open Democracy. Michel Thieren writes,

"Today, a judge trumped science to protect non-humanitarian interests, condemned six innocents to deaths, and made ignorance prevail over justice in fooling hundreds of parents into believing that their children had been poisoned and/or murdered by their nurses and doctor".

However, the crowning glory was Henry Porter abandoning the issue of civil liberties to write an idiosyncratic "radical manifesto to revitalise Britain". What a curious agenda this is. He makes the standard point about the lack of choice due to the current centrist consensus, though I would demur and point out that the political consensus is actually right wing. In fact, Cameron's attempt to drag the Tory Party back to the centre ground it once occupied is making it look decidedly leftist. A bewildered electorate can only look on and abstain.

Porter's five suggestions didn't appear that radical to me, nor did I find myself reinvigorated. The piece read like a school project on "what I would do with …" Parliament would be "totally reformed" simply by having 145 fewer and better paid MPs. His suggestion for a means-tested NHS ignores all the research on the failings of means testing and then, completely without any empirical basis, comes the following charge,

"It must also be said that NHS staff can be slapdash, rude and disdainful of people's need for personal dignity and privacy. Paying customers would soon put an end to that."

All I would just ask if he has ever been a paying customer trying to get sense out of a customer service call centre?

And so it continues. The idea of a statutory sabbatical once every fifteen years of work would be welcome but hardly earth shattering. As for preventing foreign companies or individuals owning a controlling interest in more than two national newspapers, I take it that means that as long as the mega-rich fascist is British it is OK to own as many as they like. How long do you think it would be before Rupert got his citizenship?

Perhaps the bit on prisons is most indicative of the way that good sense can be brought down by shoddy thinking.

"First-time offenders and those under 25 years of age would be given the chance to attend physically and intellectually testing courses".

What do second offenders get? What about the over 25's or are they past it? At least I know something about this, as my University is proud to run courses at Higher Education level in prisons. The work is fantastic, the ability and dedication of the students are legendary. Rarely do they fit into the under 25 first offender category. Higher Education in prisons can transform lives at whatever age and how ever many offences have been committed. Wouldn't it be nice to see columnists actually do a little research before proclaiming their brilliant new ideas?

Sorry, Henry. 4/10. Must try harder.

Empty

That is the state of my brain at the moment. Greece is more colourful than England, even on a chill misty day. The rains have left the ground covered with lush grass, the olive leaves are silvery whilst the olive harvest is in full swing, the citrus trees are covered with fruit - bright oranges and lemons contrasting with their dark green leaves.

A brief scan of the Guardian web site, some interesting posts at Harry's Place and despair at Normblog's Ashes triumphalism have failed to rouse the blogger in me. Instead, I am more interested in Sophia and Stathis' fine for placing an illegal canopy over the outside of their taverna, the repairs to the paraleia after the damage caused by torrential rain and land slips in the Autumn, progress on the new harbour and the way that Iannis has pruned my fruit trees in return for harvesting them and grazing his sheep in the garden when I am away.

This is a time of small things, something we all need.

Bliss ...

This is the best stress relief in the world. I am in Greece, in a small village in Pelion in the most extravagantly beautiful corner of this wonderful country. Posting may now be sporadic!

English newspapers do net get to the village in the winter and there was little in the English Language weekly, the Athens News. Much depends on how much I want to follow the world on the Internet. Sipping wine in front of a roaring log fire, yes Greece does have winters, calms my urgent need to communicate so I shall just indulge in some blatant, if unpaid, product placement. My friends Tim and Aphroula run a wonderful little holiday company out here. Check out their web site, and if you are sensible, buy a holiday this summer. Pelion is one place few can forget.

I intend to write an article on Individualist Anarchism, but there is also a vine to trim, a garden to be dug and trees to prune, let alone the enticements of Sakis and Soula's taverna. When one enters a small community the world shrinks and the little, individual things become more important, as does the great pastimes of sitting and looking. I shall be doing much of both. This is my version of an activity holiday. To paraphrase the dying words of George Vth, "bugger skiing".

Stoutism - again

I just heard a piece on radio 4 talking about proposals published in the BMJ for health warnings on clothes over a 40" waist for men and a size 16 for women. Obesity is such a problem apparently that it could "bankrupt the NHS". Well, how about siphoning off the savings on pensions from our early demise to pay for us disgusting fatties?

The whole thing is ridiculous, we may be fatter but we are living longer and longer. This is not about health but morality, a specious Puritanism that loathes the image of pleasure and subversion presented by fat people. Not that this image is true either. We just put on weight. So what?

Apologies

Apologies for the lack of posts. This is one of the busiest weeks of the year as I clear up work before Christmas. This is compounded by three days of interviews for new tutors. This process is as amazing as it is tiring with some astonishingly talented people applying. One of them made a comment that stuck in my mind, "there are no bad learners, just bad teachers". Instinctively, I want to agree though I doubt whether I can shoulder that degree of guilt. It is indicative of the idealism that still burns despite the best attempt of authority to smother it with a blanket of bureaucracy. There is still hope.

Inside every thin person …

The old cliché has always been that inside every fat person there is a thin one trying to get out. Now we apparently have Tofis. Yes, thin outside, fat inside. Is this a sign of successful undercover work by the Stout Liberation Front? Or are these thinnies are just jealous?

Ho, ho, ho

Really nice piece here by Oliver Burkeman on the myth of the abolition of Christmas, 'winterval' and all, by the PC lobby.

None of this exists. No one at all is abolishing Christmas, banning Christmas decorations and all the rest of the things that get the tabloids hot under the collar. It is all made up. The article is excellent on the combination of idleness and malice of the right wing press and the unholy (or should that be holy?) alliance of Muslim and Christian religious fundamentalists at war with secularism who are pushing this fabrication.

Actually, they all miss the root of secularism at Christmas; it's called Christmas. Overspend, overeat, overdrink and quarrel with your family. What could be more secular than that?

Spam, spam, spam ...

This site is being spammed to death so I will probably be turning off comments. I was tolerant of it until one of the many waved a red rag to this somewhat rotund bull:

Adipex is considered one of the most effective weight loss drugs of our times.

I am not putting up with this exploitation of body-fascist induced neuroses so the comments box will be off unless I get some real comments.

Apologies to anyone who reads this blog who actually wants a fake Rolex, selection of porn or Viagra. A tip, download your email, there will be plenty more links there.

UPDATE

I have just been told of word verification. It is now on for the site. Let's see if it works.

Funding Hedges

There is a snide piece in the Guardian diary by Jon Henley about Oliver Kamm. He writes,

But what with the excellent Iraq Study Group finally publishing its long-awaited encomium to Mr Tony's action-packed Iraqi adventure and all, we would imagine this column's favourite hedge-fund-trading leftist and staunch advocate of the war, Mr Oliver Kamm, will be mighty relieved he's already pledged not to update his important and influential blog for the whole of December. A shame, really; we were rather looking forward to Ollie's condemnation of the report's misguided authors as a pernicious bunch of Chomsky-reading Muslim-huggers.

Notice how he neatly avoids dealing with any of Kamm's carefully made arguments, with which I do not fully agree, instead Henley uses sarcasm and a sideswipe at Kamm's profession as a way of de-legitimising his comments.

Of course the whole point about Kamm's critique of the left is that it has abandoned its long tradition of internationalism, of the kind that sent volunteers to fight fascism in Spain, to become identical with conservative, isolationist appeasers, the very people who make up the Iraq Study Group. I think his case is proved. One-nil to Ollie.

Bluff!

I always thought that Melvyn Bragg bluffs his way through "In our Time" and isn't quite the polymath he tries to seem to be. This week there was a programme on something I know about and my suspicions were confirmed. It was still a good programme on Anarchism with nice contributions from Peter Marshall and Ruth Kinna. There was nothing about the Individualists though, a sad omission from Anarchist history that I am trying to correct at the moment.

Good advice, which we will all ignore

Apologies for the lack of posts, work pressure is intense at this time of year. Never mind, escape is near.

The latest Normblog profile is of Geoff Robinson and he has a tip for us bloggers:

What would be your main blogging advice to a novice blogger? >
Refer to facts rather than expressing opinions; don't just quote silly statements by people you dislike.

Geoff, that is the whole fun of it!

A lonely impulse of delight

Last night I had one those moments of delight that would be familiar to anyone who loves reading. I had tortured myself by watching the second half of Manchester City's dire 0-0 draw with Watford and then scanned my shelves for something to read. There was Bohumil Hrabal's novella, 'Too Loud a Solitude', bought some time ago but unread. For the next two hours I disappeared into Hrabal's world, lost in prose, unable to surface until the last page. Fighting the temptation to read it all again, I went to bed.

A little while ago, I made my daily journey to Normblog and there was one of his writer's choice features. Chris Simms had chosen to write on M.R. James' classic ghost story 'Oh, whistle and I'll come to you, my lad'. I love James' stories and they too are reminiscent of my childhood. Simms reckons that, "At its heart, the tale addresses the dangers of surrounding yourself with books and leading a solitary life that retreats ever further from the outside world".

That is the theme of 'Too Loud a Solitude', but rather than being about an archetypical bookish professor its main protagonist is a worker, a man who pulps books yet loves them. You can begin to glimpse the complexities. The basis is profound social comment, but this is a book whose humour, pathos and beauty stand above meaning. It is perfect art.

Here is just one passage from the beginning and I defy any reader to fail to recognise this experience.

"… when I read, I don't really read; I like to pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop, or I sip it like a liqueur until the thought dissolves in me like alcohol, infusing brain and heart and coursing on through the veins to the root of each blood vessel."

The novella has now infused me. I won't forget it.

Phobiophobia

Oh dear, I seem to have 'not-another-phobia-phobia'.

How many phobias can you have these days? Russophobia seems to be the new one. The seemingly litigious Neil Clark makes his customary relativist argument that we should overlook the sins of Putin (the flat-rate tax; the "partial marketisation of Russia's education and health systems"; his "bloody campaign of repression in Chechnya"; the "chasmic" gap between rich and poor) because "an independent Russia stands in the way of their (neo-conservatives) plans for global hegemony". This theme of my enemy's enemy is my friend is a well worn one that I reject in favour of a consistent left liberalism. I suppose I am tyrannophobic.

This isn't my main point though. There is now a tendency to add the suffix phobia to any critical political stance in order to discredit it. It is a casual, unthinking habit, much in the same way that "gate" was appended to any scandal. However, phobia normally means an irrational fear. What happens if your fear is rational? Are you still phobic? What if you don't fear but hate? Perhaps The Plain English Campaign should stop targeting Germaine Greer's use of Kantian terminology and pick up on this. Let's face it, fear of Muslims is ridiculous, hatred of Muslims is dangerously prejudiced, fear of terrorism is rational, hatred of tyranny is human. The use of the phobic suffix throws a derogatory blanket over a number of completely distinct positions and, in doing so, reduces debate to sloganising. Let's get rid of it and return to critical thought and the use of English.

Democracy or dumbing down

Two views on blogging:

First, Jasper Gerrard:

"Vodcasts and blogs are to the noughties what graffiti was to the Seventies: mindless scrawls reading: 'I woz ere.' It says: 'I'm a moron, but worship me anyway.' …
Bloggers are the codgers who used to write letters in green ink banging on about speed humps or Judao-Freemason conspiracies".

In contrast, Robert Tait in Tehran:

"With some 7.5 million surfers, Iran is believed to have the highest rate of web use in the Middle East after Israel. The net's popularity has prompted an estimated 100,000 bloggers, many opposed to the Islamic regime. Some blogs are substitutes for Iran's once-flourishing, but now largely suppressed, reformist press".

Instinctively, and obviously, I approve of the latter and I don't like the snobbish rubbishing of any open method of communications that does not require the moderation of an editorial board.

Jasper Gerrard does qualify his remark by, rather patronisingly saying, "They probably include gifted amateurs whose vodding and blogging will earn them a proper job. As for the rest, well, everyone has a right to write; but a right to be heard still has to be earned". Presumably, this means that amateurs like Norman Geras might get a proper job, just like those erudite masters of the English language who sometimes lurk on the Guardian's opinion page, and then we might be able to read him with respect.

Blogging is for me a simple form of self-indulgence, but I have also learnt much from a number of distinguished bloggers, all anyone has to do is to exercise their judgement. I am certain that I am as capable of making my own mind up about the quality of the blogs I read, just as I am of abandoning another ghastly Guardian article about the travails of being middle-class in London after the first few lines.

Democratiya

The new edition of Democratiya is out. As always it looks excellent, even more so this time as there is an article by me!

I am really proud to be included in what is one of the best political journals around. There is a lot of good reading in there.