Issue 260 of SOCIALIST REVIEW Published February 2002 Copyright © Socialist Review
Firing on the home frontPeter Morgan's article 'Tales From The Tabloids' (January SR) illustrates how during war the government, the military and the media collude in a reconstruction of truth. There is a further dimension to all this, however. As some commentators have noted, the US's military 'successes' in Afghanistan are encouraging the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the World Bank to push through similarly robust and abrasive measures in the economic sphere. These measures drive down living standards for the poorest and most vulnerable, directly creating the desperate conditions out of which so called 'terrorism' grows. In the activities of the WTO and the International Monetary Fund we also see the other reason why states are using the 'war against terror' to extend and strengthen their own domestic repressive apparatus. They know that sooner or later they are going to have to face internal resistance to their economic policies. The military aspect of 'full spectrum dominance', with its panoply of advanced military technology, its B-52s and its 'daisy-cutters', is meant to intimidate and terrify, to persuade all of us that resistance is futile. On the non-military level, however, things are different. The US is in an economic downturn, and in Latin American it can see revolt and revolution unfolding. The massive uprising in Argentina is directed against the very neoliberal IMF policies which the US pushed through. Ruling classes the world over depend upon the illusion of their own invulnerability, their own military might and power, to silence dissent and paralyse resistance. Bush's assault upon Afghanistan is part of this illusion. By carrying out slaughter and destruction on a mass scale he is sending out a message to all of us--'Don't mess with US capitalism or we'll destroy you.'
Despite the gung-ho triumphalism in the US, what is clear is that, while it is one thing for Bush to bomb Afghanistan, it is quite another for him to deal with the social and political chaos which his economic policies are creating worldwide. He may be able to bomb the caves of Tora Bora, but he cannot bomb the population of Buenos Aires. As IMF austerity measures, coupled with recession, destroy economies across the globe, revolutionary uprisings in Argentina, Zimbabwe, South Africa or eastern Europe can bring into play powerful social forces which can deny Bush the global 'full spectrum dominance' which he craves. Whatever the rhetoric since 11 September, it is not the spectre of terrorism that haunts the White House, but the spectre of revolution. Beijing is increasing its crackdown on Muslim separatists in the name of the global 'war against terrorism'. Socialists should denounce the Chinese government and support independence efforts calling for a division of China. We live under the illusion that the Chinese state, ruled by the Beijing government, is an inseparable and homogenous entity. Even Chinese democracy activists and dissidents take the borders of China as an indivisible given. This is ruling class ideology serve*d up on the Chinese Communist Party's silver platter. Fortunately anti-Beijing movements flourish in parts of China, demanding to break away from the control of the CCP and establish their own independent states. The strongest movements are in Xinjiang, the westernmost province in China, which shares a border with Afghanistan and other Muslim areas in the south. China has officially executed 25 Muslim activists this year, and scores more wait on death row. These Muslim ethnic minorities in China are ethnic majorities in their regions and subject to Beijing's apartheid-like oppression. All the good jobs and all senior government posts in their regions go to the Chinese. Condemnation by human rights groups has now been muffled by Beijing labelling them terrorists. It has even said that hundreds of the Muslims have received training from the Taliban and several of them are among Taliban fighters captured in Afghanistan.
The CCP in the 1920s--when it maintained a true revolutionary line before Mao came to power-called for the independence of minority regions including Xinjiang, Tibet and Mongolia. The about face comes as no surprise from a ruling class, but socialists should call once again for the self determination of the minority regions and the permanent division of China. |
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After completing an essay on the question, 'Can there be objectivity in history?' and after reading Paul McGarr's review of EH Carr's What is History? (January SR), I was rather angry and grinding my teeth at Tristram Hunt's English Civil War series on television. Tristram Hunt was wandering around Britain trying to make history 'trendy' but managed to butcher the subject. Sometimes the history that is taught to history students (like myself) is performed by a group of charlatans. This is not to say that history cannot be 'trendy', but many students have to endure endless rehashing and regurgitation of facts. I would like to see more objectivity in academia, but it is dominated by liberal empiricism and/or quasi-postmodernists--although I do know that there are some Marxist academics swimming against the tide.
We history students are bombarded with the Rankean theory of telling the facts as they are. This empiricism does not develop a theory of why some events happen in history. History is taught as snippets of virtually disconnected events, depending on what is popular at the time. Some pieces of history may lean more towards objective facts by coincidence rather than objectivity applied as a science. When periods of historical studies appear on television the whole notion of objectivity is abandoned and reduced to a medium of pulp science.
Tristram Hunt has been given four episodes spanning two hours of some of the most boring drivel to come from academia. Dr Hunt is a youthful chap, yet his position on the civil war is steeped in the tradition of the best kept secret in English history. Hunt's attempt to make history 'trendy' is to dress up the English Revolution as a religious war.
What ruling class ideas try to do is reduce everything down to their own twisted morality. Yet the capitalist class came into being through some of the bloodiest revolutions in history, although they try to cover this up as the actions of unreasonable movements.
Without any doubt the Russian Revolution is at the receiving end of the liberal intelligentsia's largest guns. Then the revisionists take their place trying desperately to write off the French Revolution. The centuries of silence concerning the English Revolution, as a revolution, have taken their toll, because academia has swallowed its own lie and can no longer get past the 'Civil War' debate.
Where does this leave academia? Since 11 September and the so called 'war on terrorism' many academics have been performing strange twists. How would the Suffragettes, Clyde Workers' Committee, Black Panthers and other liberation movements be treated today?
We know that movements like Globalise Resistance are being scrutinised by the media and academia. We also know that our rulers are quick to denounce any revolutionary act as not having any progressive role in human society or as being 'extremist'. They denounce any social movement from below for not being progressive, as unrealistic or illegal. But the grand narrative is alive and kicking--the history of class struggle is all around us, be it the struggle between labour and capital or the struggle between competing capitalist classes.
If Tristram Hunt wanted a 'trendy' look at history, he would have been wise to take on the class warfare argument (he only mentioned it in passing). This is why socialists should defend the class conflict argument--it is becoming more of a reality.
As for students, it is the duty of socialists to show that we do not live in a world consisting only of ideas, but one where material forces are at work. Workers and students don't have to accept the way things are. Another world is not only possible but desirable. We should not have to worry about the 'legality' of progressive movements.
Richard Stephens
Bristol
EH Carr was a liberal critic of capitalism who nevertheless had a good appreciation of the Marxist view of history. Nowhere was this clearer than in his recently republished classic, What is History?.
I agree with Paul McGarr (January SR) when he says that Carr's belief in an uncomplicated progression in history can jar somewhat. However, I think we need to understand that while defeats and detours in the class struggle mean there is no straightforward progress in history, the big picture is still one of progress. There have been setbacks for socialists in recent times as well as a number of possibilities of advance. It is worth recalling that Carr maintained his belief in progress in history in the face of the Nazi Holocaust. We need to do the same.
Keith Flett
North London
Could I make a couple of adjustments to Mike Gonzalez's article on 'Britishness' (January SR)? Firstly, Norman Tebbit's infamous 'cricket test' of 1990 was not designed to test immigrants' knowledge of cricket. He called specifically for white British people to note who black British people were cheering for when England played the West Indies. If they supported the West Indies (and he knew, of course, that most of them did) then the implication was that they therefore constituted some sporting version of 'the enemy within'.
Secondly, the West Indies first beat England in a test match in 1950, not 1963. Indeed, they won the series of that year three-one. The shock of the establishment at this may have been partly mitigated by the fact that the West Indies still had a white captain--the Barbadian John Goddard--and Britain still had its colonies in the Caribbean. In test cricket between England and the West Indies, the first serious manifestations of anti-colonialism and white anxiety were probably seen on England's tour of the Caribbean, when England captain Len Hutton was accused of disdaining local dignitaries, and numerous Caribbean whites told Hutton's players that they were now cheering for England.
Stephen Wagg
Roehampton
All the points made by China Miéville (January SR) about the reactionary outlook underpinning the imaginary world of Middle Earth are spot on, and The Lord of the Rings is certainly not the greatest book of the 20th century. Nevertheless, as it stands China's critique leaves a problem because it doesn't explain why this deeply conservative fantasy should have proved so enormously popular both with 60s hippies and many people on the left. I think it is because Tolkien's world view, like the feudal socialism described by Marx in The Communist Manifesto, does present a critique of capitalism--albeit a backward-looking one.
In the political and economic spheres this pining for the purity of the Middle Ages is completely impotent. But in the literary sphere it can generate quite powerful effects and exert a strong appeal. Examples range from the poetry of the Romantics, reacting against the industrial revolution, to the elitist modernism of Eliot and Pound, and, in popular culture, the Star Wars films. It is also an element in the poetry, art and writing of William Morris.
To understand this one has to grasp the dialectical point that although the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie was historically progressive, there was a certain loss involved in the destruction of all 'feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations' and the reduction of all social ties to the callous cash nexus and the free market. And in the sphere of literary fantasy it is possible to mourn this loss, as Tolkien does, without any risk of restoring real medieval conditions.
John Molyneux
Portsmouth
There is one point that I would like to disagree with in John Parrington's otherwise excellent article on human cloning (January SR). Parrington argues that 'humans long ago broke free of evolution'. However, this is not the case. Nor do I think that it is quite what Parrington meant to say.
Humans, like all other organisms, are still subject to biological evolution. Evolution by natural selection only requires that there be mutation to generate differences between organisms, that these differences result in differential reproduction, and that these differences are inheritable. However, there is a major evolutionary difference between humans and other organisms, which is that the transmission of culture across generations appears to play a very large role in making us what we are.
Thus I think what Parrington meant to say and should have said is that while humans are still undergoing biological evolution, this process seems to be of much smaller significance than the cultural evolution that we are also undergoing.
Terry Sullivan
Wisconsin
I don't agree with Nigel Davey's review of David Lynch's new film, Mulholland Drive (January SR). This film is a savage attack on the Hollywood dream factory dressed up as a mystery thriller. It is Sunset Boulevard seen from the opposite end of the casting couch.
What David Lynch depicts in this film 'montage'--like the Norma Desmond character in Sunset Boulevard--is an actor suffocating in the vicious, corrupt atmosphere of the Hollywood system.
It is the story of a young hopeful, Betty, who arrives, childlike, in Tinseltown pumped up with dreams generated by the alluring monster Hollywood.
David Lynch's strength is his ability to represent the psychological in a visual medium. Never overly bizarre, Lynch chronicles Betty's frustration, despondancy and ultimate demise through her own imagination. This is made all the more brutal since Betty is clearly intelligent and vital.
Betty imagines herself as multiple characters--Betty, Diane, Camilla Rhodes... She begins with a character's look, the situation they are in and, in the classical Stanislavskian method, creates the character. This is implied by Camilla having amnesia.
The frustration of her dreams being continually thwarted throws her further into the depths of despair. She hires a hitman to bump off her alter ego, Camilla. This is the point of no return for Betty. While the main danger is clearly the Hollywood machine, Lynch points to the fact that it attracts a particular kind of character, which the industry both preys upon and accentuates.
David Lynch has had a chequered career, plumbing the depths with Dune (1984) but returning to form two years later with Blue Velvet. Throughout he has given us a passionate involvement with both story and the process of film-making. Yet Nigel believes this film says nothing that Lynch has not said before. On the contrary. In his previous films the menace of life is portrayed as emanating from the colourful characters we find around ourselves--as in Blue Velvet, for example. In Mulholland Drive the menace comes from the Hollywood system.
The ultimate conclusion, however, is that the system is all-powerful, and the ingenious twist at the end of the film reinforces this. Whatever the film's merits, it generates a furious debate among viewers, who either love or hate it. It's worth seeing for that alone!
Graham Hodgin
West London
The National Audit Office is investigating the transfer of services from Crawley Hospital to East Surrey. About 18 months ago Alan Milburn, apparently at the instigation of our MP, called a delegation to his office asking us to put the case for a new hospital in Crawley and the retention of existing services at the old hospital in the meantime. As a result of this meeting he set up a review body to look into the matter of the health needs of the whole area. This body was set up towards the end of 2000, with instructions to report back by the end of 2001. It is in fact having its last meeting, at which, presumably, the report back will be made, on 31 January this year.
After this review was set up and working, in January 2001, maternity services were finally withdrawn from Crawley Hospital, despite members of Crawley Hospital Campaign trying to block the path of the removal vans. Soon after that Milburn--amid much trumpeting of triumph from the local MP--conceded a moratorium on the removal of other services until after the review body has reported. We thought this was to please the electorate just before the election.
Now it seems the National Audit Office is looking into the matter of whether, in fact, it was 'best practice' to remove the maternity service before the report of the review body had been made. Although it certainly came in handy just before the election, it seems the moratorium was a legal necessity--although conveniently too late to save maternity services.
When the announcement of the transfer of services was first made, the old, now discredited trust suggested that there was 'concrete cancer' in the maternity block and that it could not be repaired. The building has since been used for child development. The new trust has declared that there is no concrete cancer and that the building is sound.
There is a counter-argument in this case. The shortage of midwives qualified to oversee the intensive care cots had become so desperate that it was declared 'unsafe' to keep the services in Crawley. The high cost of housing in the town, plus the uncertain future of the hospital, has made it difficult to attract staff. But the audit office has suggested a new argument. The term 'best practice' is much bandied about by MPs and councillors, and normally used against the left. But surely no PFI arrangement can possibly be 'best practice'? PFI is a way of squandering taxpayers' money, forcing us to pay exorbitant rates of interest as well as profit to the private consortia. Perhaps someone better acquainted with the law than I am could explain how they are managing to get away with such profligacy, apparently unchallenged?
Muriel Hirsch
Crawley
With reference to the review of the book Rogue State (January SR), it's high time someone did a British version.
Since 1945 the British state has behaved in a very similar way to the US--especially in the former colonies, but also in Greece where British troops turned their fire on the liberation forces as soon as the Germans had gone. The result was the installation of a right wing government including fascist supporters, all the handiwork of a Labour government.
Such a book would be very timely. The right wing activities of New Labour have led to a very false, rose-tinted view of Old Labour emerging. Tell that to the Malayans who suffer today under a viciously repressive regime which is a direct descendant of that installed by a Labour government. This was done over the dead bodies of the people who liberated their country from the Japanese.
Bill Thornycroft
South east London