How come the reaction to the above scenes in the west has been so poor? Like many of those jumping into the fray on this I have very little knowledge of Korean politics. But it seems to me that we are offered impoverished explanations that fit into a few simple camps. On the one hand, it is argued that the grieving shown here is somehow staged (this is a perfectly valid possibility), perhaps even at gunpoint, on the other, that a population is ‘brainwashed’ into feeling sincere sadness at the passing of someone we know to be amongst the last of the great dictators of the 20th century.

I think these responses say far more about those making them than they do about North Korea. For starters I’ve never had much time for the ‘brainwashing’ concept, as it generally tends to be used as a category to take agency away from groups who practice behaviours that don’t fit within the rational-actor model that labour demands of us- I’m not sure how it stands up in psychological studies or other forms of mental health practise, but its political use is often wide-reaching (I understand Alberto Toscano’s work on Fanaticism has covered some of this ground already). In particular its often used to demonize and alienate intentional communities and organizations that don’t conform to certain norms (to the benefit or detriment of their members). What Scientology gets accused of one week, the environmental movement gets accused of the next. The left is guilty of this as much as the right; a certain kind of naive empiricism abounds whereby the ‘mainstream media’ is to blame for obscuring the fundamental truth of exploitation. More broadly, its not like subjects in a liberal democracy are exactly immune from irrational outpourings of grief- in fact they seem to be far more common. Steve Jobs and Princess Diana are two examples mentioned by friends where the anglophone world has lost its shit over the death of a celebrity – while these two were clearly not as loathsome as Kim Jong Il, neither were they really any more intimately connected to our own lives; indeed there is a case to be made that the lives of both had largely negative consequences for those mourning them. The accusations of ‘brainwashing’ speak of a cold war arrogance and a western exceptionalism, more than the experience of North Koreans.

On the other hand, if we go with the ‘this is staged’ argument, its pretty much the same shit under a different banner. Yes, it may well be staged, but how many of us have gone into work or the classroom, shown enthusiasm for a project, then gone home thinking that everyone we worked with was a vile shit who we wished never to see again? In boardrooms up and down the country tomorrow a group of people will be referred to as “team” (yep, without the “the” in front of it) who might happily shank each other given the opportunity. How is this so different from a few crocodile tears for a distant leader, especially in a country where by all accounts there is so much to cry about? Emotional and affective labour is part and parcel of any economy these days- this conversation between ‘Bifo’ Berardi and Nina Power picks up on these themes. My point here is that it doesn’t take a gulag to cry for the camera. What is alien to us in this is not the fact that there is fake mourning but the degree and the scale to which it is performed.

I know very little about North Korea, and have little desire to involve myself in a debate about the internal workings of such a nation. But I could really do without the assumptions that a) people are powerless or idiotic drones unless they fit within certain parameters b) Liberal democratic citizens are somehow immune to manipulating our own emotions to what is demanded of us by a superior.

I’d like to offer some brief notes, consisting of four titles, on the recent occupation movement. many are incomplete ideas born of frustration and joy, but It’s best to strike while the iron is hot than mourn mistakes later, or both. 

Catalepsy/Seizure

cat·a·lep·sy (ktl-ps)

n. A condition that occurs in a variety of physical and psychological disorders and is characterized by lack of response to external stimuli and by muscular rigidity, so that the limbs remain in whatever position they are placed

‘Katalipsi‘- the term the current Greek movement uses to describe ‘occupation’ is perhaps better thought of through the term ‘catalepsy’ or ‘seizure’. Seizure has two meanings- the first implies capture- of the enemy base, of a hostage, of government, or indeed of Power itself. But it also carries this second meaning- a seizure as a fit, a convulsion of the body politic, a form of violent immobility in which muscles seem to wrench away from each other. It is this second sense that gets lost in the anglophone concept of ‘occupation’- the notion of a ‘catalepsy’ itself. Its already been pointed out that while UK movements try to copy the ‘memetic form’ of a social movement, they certainly lack any of the radical withdrawal of labour or disruptive capacity of the Greek occupations or Egyptian uprisings. A square outside St. Pauls might be occupied, but the Greek Finance Ministry is seized. Note what David Graeber says here; “reclaim it [non-public space], camp out, and use it as a base to start doing other things”. The ‘occupation’ as used here; basically just sitting in a space, be it public or private, is to a certain extent an irrelevance- the space is being used as an organizing place to plan other activities which pose the real threat to hegemonic power relationships.  Not simply being in a space, but the active organization of a space as a tactical device- occupation or seizure need to be, and can be, so much more. They can be the catalepsy of the body politic. In this short clip from the 1969 occupation of Tokyo university, this logic is taken to an extreme (indeed, one to which to which it is questionable whether today’s occupations need go), but the effect is powerful- the entire political system and the life support of the city itself is fastened to the fate of a few hundred square meters in one city, a catalepsy of the metropolis as its organs seize up: 

The Multitude?

There has been a lot of playing fast-and-loose with the concept of the multitude since the term was developed, but it has intensified a lot in recent weeks. Hardt and Negri have their own tentative take on the process in relation to the occupation movement, and refer to a ‘multitude form’ (though perhaps not yet a multitude function?) to organizing in these spaces. They’re absolutely right to hold back on making too many assertions. However their ideas about the multitude have been latched on to by mainstream-liberal media sources in order to avoid the fundamental class-content of the contemporary occupy movements. Of course, this sets up a dichotomy of multitude vs. working class which is utterly facetious. Here’s Paolo Virno, author of “Grammar of the Multitude” on the topic:

“I would like to dispel an optical illusion. It is said: the multitude signals the end of the working class. It is said: in the universe of the ‘many’ there is no longer a place for blue overalls, that are all the same and constitute a body that is insensitive to the kaleidoscope of ‘differences’. Whoever says this is wrong… Working class is a theoretical concept, not a souvenir photo: it indicates the subject that produces absolute and relative surplus value. The notion of ‘multitude’ is counterpoised to that of ‘people’ rather than to that of the ‘working class’. Being multitude does not impede the production of surplus value. On the other hand, producing surplus value does not at all entail the need to be politically a ‘people’.

Of course the moment the working class ceases to be a people and becomes a multitude many things change: starting from the forms of organisation and of conflict. All becomes complicated and gets paradoxical. How easier it would be to tell ourselves that now we have the multitude rather than the working class…but if simplicity is desired at all costs, we might as well down a bottle of red wine.”

Which brings up a second point: for all of the talk of a “multitude” it is clear that the concept of organizing as a ‘people’ remains deeply entrenched within occupations like Occupy Wall Street. The slogan of “we are the 99%”  is a slogan of a ‘people’- one only need cast a brief eye over this structure to see the amount of people asking “America” as a mass. Speaking broadly, for thinkers like Hobbes, Rousseau and Locke, a ‘people’ opposes itself to a ‘multitude’ by virtue of its coherence, and its ability to avert conflict by management by a sovereign power. Appeals like “what happened, America?” and the emerging left-liberal call for a “new social contract”- like in this frankly odd Elizabeth Warren video (aren’t these the people who always accuse more revolutionary leftists of wanting ‘year zero’?), show that while the basic element of constituent power is understood- that the sovereign is the product of their subjects, the call seems to be for a rebirth of the concept of the ‘people’ itself- the 99% slogan places agency in a very small group of people, a narrative that has strengths, but very clear limitations. In many ways this is, I suspect, part of its attraction for libertarian activists of Ron Paul, Assange and Zeitgeist breeds- the emphasis in social contract theory which opposes the individual and the collective will that can be resolved through the establishment of a ‘people’ (as per Rousseau and Locke) appeals to both libertarians and social democrats in their various guises.

The ‘occupy x’ movement, then, carries the tension between a ‘multitude’ and a ‘people’ as the subject of resistance. I would argue that, given the alignment of those who want a ‘new social contract’; who fairly explicitly desire a return to a Keynsian state-market configuration, in comparison to those who are railing against the old social contract model, the multitude is the truly insurgent subject of the occupy movement, the one that is most likely to raise the critique of capital. Catalepsy is the weapon proper to a radically-oriented multitude; to plunder Alinsky, a catalepsy can “pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it” in a way ‘occupation’ cannot. In this case the target may be the body politic itself.

While the multitude has always been a certain element of resistance to capitalism, it has never before encountered such a intense period. This is as-near-as-damn-it as we are ever likely to get to a ‘Negriist’ political moment- much of what he and many of his fellow autonomists have argued for is to some degree coming to pass (or at the very least, no-one has come up with a better set of descriptive tools). Of course, this doesn’t mean that the class critiques implicit and explicit in Empire are present on the ground at every occupation, but rather that its particular take manages to account for what is happening now in a way few other texts have. The upshot of this is that things like the occupation movement should be watched closely not so much for confirmation of the Hardt & Negri hypothesis (there is never such confirmation for any political thought) but for the critique of the very concept of ‘multitude’ that uncovers its limits and its new possibilities.

The furies of Consensus

I’d like to deal with a few of the more pointless critiques of the occupy movement- frankly because they annoy me so. The most infuriating for me is the criticism of ‘leaderless organization’. This post points out the recurrent narrative of the ‘anarcho-liberal’ in certain parts of leftist media.

While consensus decision making is prevalent amongst these groups, to confuse it as the essence of anarchist philosophy is a disingenuous move. Anarchism seeks non-hierarchical movements, but it also looks to a world without hierarchy. Movements which call for social democracy but then use these methods of organization are using anarchist tools but are not de facto anarchist- any more than they are de facto Tory because they talk about government. 

Its also important to remember why consensus decision making is used and emerged as an organizing method on the left. It emerged as a response to forms of organization that excluded a whole set of minor politics from its form. Robert’s Rules of Order and other methods of organizing tended to favour political grandstanding and those with the insider knowledge to manipulate process. Consensus is an attempt to create a structure that means that privileged people have to let people who don’t enjoy the same privileges speak. Few who have taken part in a movement that uses a consensus structure in meetings for a long period of time thinks its a perfect model, or that it has eliminated all the problems it set out to challenge. I, personally, would like to see it developed and altered beyond its present form. But I have to say, many of those making criticisms of consensus seem to be able to offer little if no progression on a Leninist vanguard- indeed, some seem to be making a critique that has the specific intent of propping this model of organizing up.

When consensus fails, the consequences can often be violent, traumatic, and upsetting. Yes, there is such a thing as the ‘tyranny of structurelessness’ (and my god aren’t we told about it an awful lot), but the vanguard party model simply proposes a tyranny of tyrannies to resolve this. Just because there may be unacknowledged leaders, and just because there may be an implicit vanguard, does not mean that, when they are recognised, they should be lauded or replaced with a more intense form. There is a part of me that jumps up and down in my belly, shouting:

“No, I will not turn to the byzantine central committees or the pathetic splits, I don’t want a ‘correct revolutionary path’ given to me by someone else. I don’t want some cuts-but-slower Labour Party ‘alternative’. It upsets me to see good people who I often count as friends and comrades, and have worked with effectively on other campaigns, falling for this crap. I would actually like to be challenged in organizing, to encounter views, and to have a process that includes voices I haven’t yet heard. Consensus is being used by thousands, maybe millions, of people across the globe right now. It isn’t a perfect system, but it has captured imaginations and appealed to people in a way no mass-produced placard handed out at the latest a to b march or party-line chant ever could.”

Its important to play around with decision making, to grab the time to work on issues of process outside of organizing immediate needs and pressures. I’ll write more about this soon, I hope. But its important to keep in mind that while consensus isn’t great, it contains the seeds of a positive step forwards. Perhaps we can move forward with the hope and aim that “one day humanity will play with law just as children play with disused objects, not in order to restore them to their canonical use but to free them from it for good”(viz.).

Capitalism and Final Crisis

It has come to the point where we must entertain a real and frightening possibility: that the present crisis of capitalism may be the last, even if nothing better comes along to replace it. The great hope of certain economists right now seems to be China. The problem is that China’s internal economy is actually a maze of confusion, and seems to be slowing. France looks like Italy 2 months ago, Italy is increasingly looking like Greece, as Greece begins to look like civil war.

In Octavia Butler’s book The Parable of The Sower Californian society faces crises which are merely those of today, intensified. An economic recession has put paid to the dream of space travel. Resource scarcity has limited access to communications networks. Police protection will cost you, and the middle class is swiftly disappearing to be replaced by a vagrancy crisis like that of the 14^th century. Indentured servitude reappears. Environmental catastrophe makes food scarce. While Butler’s work has often been termed post-apocalyptic, many have pointed out that these are already the conditions of living for the bottom billion human beings on the planet. In Butlers book we get a description of capitalism effectively coming to an end as wealth concentrates to the point where power must once again be protected by naked force, not employed consent, and a new feudalism emerges. This vision is just one possibility, but it does provide a believable scenario in which capitalism might come to an end without improvement; The Marxist defining feature of capitalism, the bourgeoisie, divides itself into a lordly class and a serf class. This is not the only way that capitalism might come to an end, but at some point the cost of maintaining an economic system may be more than simply extracting surplus labour through direct force (rather than wage labour), or by some other diabolical means.

This is only one possibility, of course. But the continuing crises of the resources (soil and oil), finance, and environment may have passed beyond a ‘tipping point’ where economic and social growth and expansion is simply no longer possible. At this point capitalism as we know it becomes a liability, not a strength. It is enlightenment-based magical thinking to assume that this means an improvement in the conditions of life (though it may not mean a faster rate of decline in those conditions either), or the end of oppressions, but it might mean an opening of new potentialities, while others close.

Capitalism as we recognise it today has only been around 500 years.  What is commonly called neoliberalism is 60 years old at most. The paintings in the Chauvet Cave are 32,000 years old. There are no guarantees that anything will last. A crucial moment is upon us. Capitalism may yet trick the world into saving it. It may vanish into the very forces it has generated. Or we might win this time, and initiate a new set of possibilities for being.

-a note left in the house of a pit-ower, after it was broken into during a strike riot, 1831 Source: R. Fyne, The Miners of Northumberland and Durham (1923 ed.) p21 quoted in EP Thompson ‘The Making of The English Working Class’, Pelican, p785

I’ve had this quote at the back of my mind since last week, but I couldn’t place where I’d read it or remember it in total. Of course, it can be found in E.P Thompson’s classic “The Making of The English Working Class”.  Its a very good example of how the wholly artificial divide between “political” and “apolitical” language is very precarious indeed.

But fuck me if there isn’t a big, fat nail-shaped situation right here.

Far too much has been written on the motivations and causes of the riots. This isn’t my main focus here: I’m not a youth worker, poverty researcher, or can really say I know for sure. Like many I have more than an inkling that poverty, decades of terrible policing, and institutional racism are probably amongst the causes. But in the age where we must comment, we end up being ‘treated’ to the spectacle on Newsnight of two white, well-paid journalists who frequently get exposure in national media berating two men of BME origin for attempting to give some kind of meaning and understanding to a difficult situation. Alternately we get articles complaining bitterly about poverty (in its abstract and idealised sense) being the cause of the riots, from liberal-left writers who wouldn’t even dare to take the briefest of shortcuts through the areas that the rioters have been coming from, but are all to prepared to jump in and condemn rioting. As I said above, I can’t claim any unique experience either, so the best I can do is shut up about the causes outside of private debates and not add another pointless and irrelevant post.

However, what needs to be addressed is the institution of mechanisms of control, the deployment of various tools both in terms of political discourse and police action, that seek to suppress and control unrest, rather than understand it. This is because these mechanisms have a profound effect on the possibilities for making the changes that might address some of the various causes of this.

As was written earlier, the theory of the state of exception, according to Agamben, is crudely this: at a crisis point, political norms (which most frequently take the form of laws) are suspended, and sets of ‘emergency powers’ are put in place which then become regular, replacing those pre-existing norms. The person or mechanism that makes the decision on whether such a state of emergency exists, is what Carl Schmitt terms the Sovereign. An easy way to think about this is to look at extreme examples; the ‘state of emergency’ that existed under Mubarak before the Egyptian uprising which lasted for decades is a useful one; as is Hitler’s use of the Reichstag fire to take power. However the exception takes varied, often subtle, and less specific forms; when a ‘dispersal order’ is placed on an area of town, when city centres are closed off for major sporting events and conferences, when students are kettled on Westminister bridge in suspension of habeas corpus. These are decisions taken not at the ‘top’ of society by an all-powerful ruler, but precision-targeted exceptions put in place by much smaller sovereigns.

The example for recent events is fairly clear; the (historically blind) calls by ‘experts’ to suspend PACE, Ed Miliband’s request from the prime minister in parliament that the police stay on the street beyond the weekend until trouble has gone away, the decision to bring more armaments onto the streets in the hands of police, the barriers going up around shopping centres, the rousing of vigilante militias, the proposed closing of phone networks, the suspicion that a DA-notice was served, David Cameron in rumoured talks with the Chinese government to introduce web filtering; all these can become regular features of the ‘new normal’. But the exception is not merely the establishment of new norms, it is also a structure built around inclusion and exclusion: it is the means by which a sovereign system excludes what it cannot incorporate, by including in the form of a suspended norm. The exception that has emerged is a collaborative and networked one; through a whole set of means and media, the entire population has been drawn into calls to suspend the norm and exclude: enter the ‘condemnathon’.

This takes a dangerous turn when it comes to the bodies of the excluded; it creates a surplus mass of humanity who cannot be included and therefore must be excluded.

The calls by many to ‘shoot a looter’, Westminister city council’s decision to evict looters from council homes (shifting housing from a right to a privilege in the process), making them homeless; these fit almost the exact model of Agamben’s notion of homo sacer- the person who can be killed without being sacrificed, or rather, killed on sight without any investigation or anyone caring. Looters; people who have no respect for private property, policing, law, due process or the state simply cannot be incorporated into liberal democracies and capitalism; a framework which is founded on these principles, and so it follows that they must be excluded. (1)

In a political system such as our own, in which politics is defined as the field of activity which separates humans from animals (an artificial divide, at best), when someone is wholly excluded from politics, from sovereign power, Agamben argues that they cease to be considered human, and come to be considered as animal- we can turn to the old Saxon word for people who held a similar status; wargus- wolf, or as we know it now, the werewolf. The comparison of looters to ‘rats’, ‘animals’, and as ‘feral’ youth, and the claim that the riots cleanup groups were ‘the REAL London’ and the rise of a stunted faux-communitarianism, can be explained using this approach. When so many were comparing the riots to a zombie movie, they drew precisely on this distinction; many responses have ended up like the protagonist of  the song ‘Werewolves in the City‘ (covered here by Viking Moses); a middle class cyclist demanding a distant policeman intervene and stop a seemingly savage and inhuamn enemy stalking the streets. Of course, this distinction is a fallacy from the start, and serves as a shield to discussion of the material and social causes of the unrest.

What can be done? Its difficult to say; however its noticeable that there is little in human rights legislation to actually prevent its own suspension, and what is more in many ways it merely exacerbates this division between human and animal life, and seeks reconciliation with a system that builds itself on a right to property. However it is also emerging that a vast surplus of human life is developing in our cities and prisons that is irreconcilable within the political and social system. As I said earlier, I do not have the solution to the riots, and this is only a speculative framework; but if it does fit, it is clear that a politics that challenges this exclusion must reposition itself in relation to surplus humanity to avoid replicating the same logic. Maybe its time more of those interested in social change took a step outside their comfort zones.

The killer moment comes when he makes the bold speculation that:

“It’s like Hari’s “interviewing” career is one long postmodern prank, and, really, this episode ought to be liberal empiricism’s equivalent of the Sokal scandal.”

This is a critical point. However, it is also possible to take this a lot further. Watching recent footage of shambling tabloid-journo-stereotype Paul McMullan on Newsnight and the other chat shows he seems to have found his way onto, it becomes noticeable his consistent defence was to revert to the obsession with ‘the truth’. In the hilarious footage of McMullan being dressed down by Steve Coogan, his opening gambit is one of truth;

“what better way to get at the truth than to hack someone’s phone?”.

An element central in the ideology of liberal empiricism is the notion that truth is just there to be ‘got at’. A quick overview of Hari’s articles reveals a number of titles in which the intrepid journalist claims to know the ‘secret truth’ behind the actions of politician x or y. One reposte to Niall Ferguson on the British Empire is so blunt as to seem frankly crass and uncaring -the empire killed millions. Truth got. A few ‘serious historians’ and the job is done nicely. The problem is that, if you read Ferguson’s book, Empire, it becomes quite apparent early on that, although he is gentle on the figures, Ferguson never denies that the Empire was a brutal and nasty affair- his point, like many conservatives, is one of necessity, not morality. Elsewhere we find the ‘hidden truth’ behind Tory Policies, Libya, Drugs Companies, Donald Trump, and the Queen Mother all being uncovered. Of course, he can’t be blamed to harshly for writing in these terms- the point here is not that Hari is a particular failed type of liberal journalist, but rather that a naïve empircism pervades in journalistic ethics. McMullan clearly shared the same ethos when he chose to defend phone hacking in the name of “the truth”.

In Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s novella, Roadside Picnic,a dangerous ‘zone’ of alien contact on earth contains a strange set of scientific anomalies that cannot be explained by standard earth science. Alongside theses zones two communities have developed- the first is an official scientific-military-industrial community monitored by the UN. The second is a black market of corporate spies and mobsters who trade in stolen artefacts- these people employ ‘stalkers’ to cross into the zone and retrieve anomalies that might be useful to human beings. Journalists like McMullan and Hari almost see themselves as these stalkers or scientists, traversing dangerous anomalies called ‘lies’ to find the ‘truth’ lying hidden in the political or social zone. Of course, one interpretation of what the stalkers and scientists do is quite different- they carry the market and military-industrial forces into the zone in a discursive manner, selecting and choosing those items that make most sense according to their own paradigms. In Tarkovsky’s film based on the story, Stalker, the concept is taken even further: the anomalies are apparently imperceptible, and the stalker serves the function of maintaining the truth of the zone itself by being faithful to its idea.

Hari, for his part, is closest in behaviour to the stalker of Tarkovsky’s version of events- building his zone by repeating old patterns and ‘remembering’ past incidents. When Hari was caught fabricating apparently whole interviews from previously conducted ones, his defence was revealing;

“My test for journalism is always – would the readers mind you did this, or prefer it? Would they rather I quoted an unclear sentence expressing a thought, or a clear sentence expressing the same thought by the same person very recently? Both give an accurate sense of what a person is like, but one makes their ideas as accessible as possible for the reader while also being an accurate portrait of the person.”

As K-Punk points out, this is a neo-Hobbesian market rationality- you want it, therefore you cannot complain. Hari’s understanding of a thinker or writer has an oddly juridical tone- its basis, like the law, is in the notion of precedent- Negri or Gideon Levy said this before (albeit supposedly recently), therefore it is more faithful to the ‘truth’ of Gideon Levy or Negri, than they are themselves- Hari has seen the devil in the marble. One can then understand why, in both Coogan’s debate with McMullan, but also more broadly in journalism, law is repeatedly substituted for ‘truth’ or validity. This has been seen most recently in the case of Charlie Gilmour, and the way the notion that his sentence is ‘within the law’ is used to silence debate about political repression of dissent. This is Carl Schmitt’s wet dream.

In liberal empiricism, the greatest crime is to have been wrong- it invalidates all past experiences, and destroys the possibility of induction. But society is not a basic scientific experiment, where the concept of induction could be (at best) reliable. For induction to have significant use in this context it demands the self-interested rational actors of Hobbes’ world. The very foreign policy which the likes of Hari often rail against has been run on the same principles for at least half a century if not much much longer. By buying into this concept, the journalistic ethics that sees basic accuracy of fact as its sine qua non serves a dominant understanding of the human being, and cannot escape the confines of law- hence such panic when journalism does-for better or worse- do exactly that.

At this point its worthwhile going back to K-Punk’s original point. The Sokal Scandal did not, despite some of Alan Sokal’s wishes, destroy continental theory or poststructuralism as a political and social force or tool of analysis outside of science. But, amongst other things, it did curb some of the excesses of a certain kind of mindless deconstructionism in which the simple rearrangement and fiddling of language was used to avoid an engagement with actual challenges posed in political and social thought and action. It is ironic then that this is precisely what Hari did in his ‘interview’ with Antonio Negri- by fiddling with the words that he used, he delayed and prevented an engagement with Negri’s ideas and the social struggle that informed them. Far from it being the case that these incidents show that we should abandon any hope for ‘the truth’ or the possibility of empiricism, it should instead be used to remind us that ‘truth’ has always been a major philosophical problem, and is not some trophy to be waved about for cash or prizes.

There’s long been a history of illusions and lies about squatters, who are, on the whole, a diverse and intangible group of people whose demography is formed by the needs and desires of the moment.

One particular myth is that squatters, by virtue of being squatters, commit offences already illegal under UK/English law, such as criminal damage, breaking and entering and aggravated trespass. That a squatting ban will somehow mitigate these behaviours is ludicrous. Squatting is legal largely due to there being nothing in England and Wales to legislate against it, and laws that protect homes in general from intrusion by the state (The famous ‘Section 6′ of the Criminal law Act); Scotland has a trespass law already in place. If anything the legal status of squatting gives incentive for squatters not to commit such acts as they would incur swifter evictions and a potential jail term/fine.

Another favourite myth is that squatters will somehow sneak into holidaymakers’ houses at high midsummer and hold raves. The more insidious racist kinds of argument about ‘travellers’ and ‘gypsies’ or ‘immigrants’, are even more idiotically bigoted. Both arguments point towards a certain kind of propertied fascism creeping into acceptability in our society. A more recent one has been the ‘liberal concern’ argument- abandoned buildings are dangerous, therefore we shouldn’t let the squatters use them. Instead they should be left to freeze on the streets, rather than suffer building problems (which groups like the Advisory Service For Squatters might show them how to identify, repair or have removed).

In short, many small and large would like us to see all squatters as being somewhat like the Punks in this Australian documentary:

Putting all this aside, there is one, fairly ignorant, but very important assumption behind all of these myths: largely that squatting has never achieved anything good in British society, and moreover, that ‘squatters’, as the name suggests, are some sort of lumpen class, delaying the wheels of progress and simply parasitising what has already been made. The reality is that trespass and squatting have historically been productive and empowering forms of activity. In fact, many of the images of Britain that David Cameron might hold dear could not exist without squatting and trespassing.

A striking example which millions benefit from every weekend is the maintenance of Britain’s public footpaths. The Ramblers’ association makes the following claim:

“In legal theory most paths become rights of way because the owner “dedicates” them to public use. In fact very few paths have been formally dedicated, but the law assumes that if the public uses a path without interference for some period of time – set by statute at 20 years – then the owner had intended to dedicate it as a right of way”

Footpaths, in other words, largely enjoy their existence due to their continued use by countless numbers of people using and re-using them with a healthy disregard for private property. Of course, this is not to say that all footpaths are considerate to needs of agriculture and ecology, but even the richest rely on these pathways from time to time. Without them, the much-touted ‘local tourism industry’ simply would not function. Often direct action has been used to keep these pathways open, the most notable instance being the mass trespass on Kinder Scout in 1932.

The idea that the Tory voter on holiday in Somerset, Derbyshire or Dorset might walk on a pathway won for them by an act of disobedience has a delicious irony to it; for a moment let us imagine this voter taking the country air.

Ty Hyll, A 'one-night' house in Wales, built as a squat, now housing the Snowdonia Society offices.

Perhaps our Tory might stop at a village to take in the pretty sights; the village green, the cottages. Yet, as Colin Ward observed in his excellent text, Cotters and Squatters, this image of the village simply could not exist were it not for the erection of temporary and permanent housing by squatters on empty, abandoned and common land; whilst many of these were cold, damp and poorly constructed, others have survived into the 20^th century and inform the idealized image of the country village. These cottages, now desirable as second homes by those causing much of the problems of contemporary housing, were once the pain of the local landowner trying to assert his claim to the land. There are countless more examples; but what really matters in this situation is the sheer hypocrisy of the Conservative appeal to tradition, when contrasted with a policy that would outlaw squatting.

A recent project to map Nottingham’s caves has revealed the staggering and labyrinthine nature of what was once a system of makeshift housing and storage carved out by hand, much of it without any permission of Nottingham’s landowners; these came in for many uses including as shelter during the Battle of Britain. “If a man be destitute of a house” says one visitor from the 1630s quoted by Ward;

“it is but to go to Nottingham, and with a Mattock, a Shovell, a Crow of Iron, a Chizell and a Mallet, he may play the Mole, the Cunny, or the Pioner, and worke himselfe a hole, or a Burrow, for him and his family”

This would not be the first or last time that a city has been economically dependent upon illicit housing. But, quite literally beneath the apparent surface of a city that seems to be driven by commerce, trade, and property, was an underworld without which it could not have functioned. The ‘wartime spirit’ that Conservatives summon upon to get us to accept cuts to social housing could have been found in Nottingham’s cave system.

One wonders if the Conservatives see this same ‘wartime spirit’ amongst the families that occupied abandoned barracks after World War two? This was a crisis so substantial that Aneurin Bevan, then responsible for housing, tried to call a halt to it, but was ultimately forced to concede to the popular pressure from those occupying the camps. It is odd that someone we may think of as the great provider of his era was also opposed to a popular movement such as this, yet it happened- squatting is rarely in favour with political institutions. Camps such as those at Chalfont St. Giles (ironically, birthplace of Nick Clegg) were a convenient solution to overcrowding- as fascinating footage from the time shows, these were not crusties or ravers, just families looking for a home.

While, as Vasudevan rightly argues, squatting is a useful tool of protest, in particular to put pressure on the property owners to make use of their holdings, it is also the case that the nature and needs of squats has been a constantly evolving circumstance- while everyone is in need of housing, the actual social and cultural background of that person who needs or sees fit to squat can change drastically and radically; and, more importantly, they will leave behind structures and legacies that profoundly shape the nature of their society. Even the punks left behind a musical legacy. To attempt to remove this is retrograde in the extreme.

If there’s one final thing squatters should be noted for, it is that they nearly always disregard the imperatives of government and business in their work, often choosing to resist. As the A.S.S points out;

“Last time they threatened to criminalise squatting, in 1992, the result in 1995 was a new type of court case.”

Losing one glove

is certainly painful,

but nothing

compared to the pain,

of losing one,

throwing away the other,

and finding

the first one again.

-Piet Hein

viz.

On the same day, roughly two miles away from the Embassy, and a stones’ throw from the site of many of the student occupations in the Bloomsbury area earlier in the year, the (Labour Party run) Progress Annual Conference took place. It could not have been more at odds with the actions by those at the Embassy and in the squares of Spain. While the democracy movement of Spain is about prying open access to power, to reconfigure it’s flows and instrumentality, the PAC featured Ed Miliband as a keynote speaker, and seems to have been, for all intents an purposes, aimed at finding means to placate such movements while preserving parliamentary-political privilege. Two successive tweets from the different events sum this up perfectly;

The first read: “good to see Ed not anti-Tesco. Supermarket-led regeneration can transform communities, would be a huge error to knock this #pac11”.

The second: “Spanish protesters call for end of “dictatorship of the markets”. With them in spirit. #solidarity”

There is a fundamental division in responses to a coaxial recession of politics and finance, then, and it extends beyond these events.

What makes this differ from previous years, in which an anti-capitalist left pitched itself against a neo-liberal left ‘New Labour’ position, is the general acceptance that capitalism has, at least in part, failed. When Miliband spoke at the PAC it was to promote the ‘building of a better capitalism’, building on his claim that he should “Make capitalism work for the people” in the Guardian. The central concept in Miliband’s discourse is that capitalism is the naughty child of the west and needs some time in a corner to make it know its place. Whereas the Spanish movement addresses capitalism as a violent and coercive force, Miliband addresses it as an equal, and thus the privilege of (capital-P) Politics is maintained.

Meanwhile Maurice Glasman, the new guru of ‘Blue Labour’, was present at the PAC along with his counterpart, Philip Blond of ‘Red Tory’ fame: It’s important that we don’t make the mistake of thinking that either of these men are party-loyal theorists each working their own little furrow of social activism that has some similarities. It is necessay to realise that they are part of a broader church of mercenary theory that politicians turn to in search of a ‘Third Way’ now that neo-liberalism can no longer provide. They are a tool for apolitical centrism. What these thinkers express, more so Glasman than Blond, is a curiously similar desire to that of those protesting in Spain, or Egypt, or even Student Occupiers. Namely, it is the desire to access or create the commons.

The common is the classic ‘third place’ or way between the State and the Private forms of ownership. It has been fought over for a very long time indeed; we can turn to the days of the English revolution for examples of battles over the enclosure of land previously held collectively by communities (see Christopher Hill’s work for the classic account of this struggle). This process of enclosure of land continues today in the places like India, were neoliberalism is increasing it’s reach. Land and physical goods are perhaps the clearest and most traditional example of the commons in action, and while the contemporary political actions are often urban and do far too little to address the issues of the countryside, they nonetheless draw on this tradition.

The uprisings, occupations and camps of the moment offer us a new perception of the commons. This understanding is closer to that of Hardt and Negri, who posit the commons as an ever-present category of human existence under global capitalism, which has accidentally created us a shared world, through new technologies places and experiences. This is a re-imagining of Marx’s internationalism of the worker, through what Foucault calls the use of “a certain manipulation of force, a rational and concerted intervention in those relations of force, either to develop them in some direction, or to stabilize and utilize them” (H&N Commonwealth 126). The aim is not so much to accept and be subsumed into this shared world, but to re-purpose it for a ‘multitude of the poor’.

The direction Glasman takes is the opposite to this, a retreat into “family, faith and the flag”, and institutions that often preserve, rather than mobilize and open up, social norms and currents:

“Football clubs are a form of magic and a form of belonging, of hope, of glory, but fans are just being exploited by venture capitalists from a thousand miles away. It offends against the sacred sense of belonging. Ideally I would like to see the Labour party taking very strong support for mutual ownership of football clubs. I would like to see the endowment of local banks so there is regional capital and regional economies.”

In Kōji Wakamatsu‘s documentary-drama about the Japanese Maoist group the United Red Army, a member of the army is put to death for ‘violating the sacred space of the Party’ by the URA’s political leadership. Is this just the extreme end of Glasman’s logic? Designating space as ‘sacred’ also creates the profane. Here Hardt and Negri brilliantly dissect Glasman’s position on the family, observing that those things that seem most community-building are often   those we will destroy others for:

“although the family pretends to extend desires and interests beyond the individual toward the community, it unleashes some of the most extreme forms of narcissim and individualism…When school decisions pose the good of their child against that of others or the community as a whole, for example, many parents launch the most ferociously antisocial arguments under a halo of virtue” (Commonwealth, 161)

Glasman’s understanding of the family is based upon an extension of the self, rather than a connection of the self to another through shared cause and capability. He fails to understand the potential for extreme and personal violence in the instituions he proffers. While Glasman doubtless believes in the ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ model of society- the community bank, the loving family, the society where each individual is essential to their community, it is, at the very best, the farcical suburbanism of Mary Poppins’ Banks family.

Furthermore, isn’t the positioning of the ‘sacred sense of belonging’ in the football stadium in denial about its own similarities to neoliberal cyber-utopian understandings of the ‘singularity’, a unified technological consciousness that frees humanity from the self in its entirety? Offering us a transcendent community such as that which he sees in a football stadium, like Blond, Glasman’s position is a thin veneer for a false religiosity; an irony of today is that while the Spanish movement and Miliband’s speech seem like the most obvious possibilities for the Blue Labour/Red Tory positions to take, their true genetic inheritance is shared with with Harold Camping’s abortive rapture that didn’t take place at 6pm on the same day; some will invariably be left behind, the surplus flesh of an unwanted humanity.

Meanwhile, the pro-democracy movement is already extending and reconsidering the kind of understandings that Hardt and Negri offer. They are establishing nodes to operates as centres of a new form of subjectivity, and creating new possibilities; many new ideas about the commons will be built on the backs of what we’ve seen today. These aren’t perfect movements, indeed they retain many of the worst traits of what Glasman valourizes, but they also insist on the key element of what is sorely missing from Glasman’s ideas; true, active, and productive control over the way power works: in short, democracy. Rather than sitting in conference halls, discussing what a political party might do in a few years time, they are questioning the necessity of the party itself.

A translation of the subsequent ‘Spanish Revolution’ manifesto is here

Yesterday, the 29th of April 2011, was a day unlike any other. In other words, it was a day like every other. It saw two key events unfold: the first was a wedding between two people towards whom I bear no personal ill will. However, as Royalty, they were immediately thronged upon and raised above us all.

The other was the punchup at the wedding reception. An as yet unknown quantity of activists, though numbers are clearly into double if not triple figures, were rounded up and arrested under spurious ‘pre-emptive’ circumstances. Anti-monarchist protests were hounded and one individual was even seemingly arrested for singing about a ‘police state’ in public. Squats and houses were, and continue to be, raided. In addition, several, maybe 50, profiles, events and groups came under attack on facebook (though the facts of this are still contestable and some argue perhaps point to weaknesses of planning rather than orchestrated repression in cyberspace).

What connects these two events has a fairly obvious face-value reading. This is basically that police were ordered to clamp down on any and all forms of potential dissent to the Royal Wedding in order to make sure the day went smoothly. Sod the IPCC and court cases for wrongful arrest that might arise: its worth it to make the big day go without a glitch.

This isn’t in and of itself wrong. Its probably likely that theres an element of truth in here. However, its also possible to stretch the case a bit further; that this contributes to the normalization of a paradigm of policing of major pubic events, especially patriotic ones that are matters of ‘national pride’ (eg. the 2012 Olympics, Queens Diamond Jubilee, and maybe even international trade summits). Usually at major public events, we see massive security and restrictions on movement in a city like London. However, it is rare that visual and performative, but non-direct, protest is denied outright. Usually it is quite literally chanelled into a safe zone such as Hyde Park, Whitehall, or Trafalgar. Not so yesterday- individuals, groups, and organizations found themselves pre-emptively attacked for saying even the most benign of anti-monarchist statement. This is what political philosopher Giorgio Agamben might call a ‘state of exception’-a moment of transgression is established by the ‘sovereign’ in which ‘normal’ rules are suspended because of some dire emergency or unusual circumstance. Think about the use of the recession to dismantle much-loved public services.

Exceptions are built upon pre-existing exceptions, rather than simply invoked against a standard norm. The exception, rather than going away, then becomes the norm. In this context, pre-emptive arrest upon suspicion of protest, but without conviction, might become the norm- policing may increasingly become the punishment in and of itself- like a softer form of the system in 2000AD’s Judge Dredd, where judgement and punishment are decided on the spot. A night in the cells, or at least a forcible removal from the area, seems to be the prescribed punishment for anyone who decideds to protest.

Yet, what is a wedding if not a form of exception? Surely marriage is the codification of an exception concerning two individuals by the state? Of course, marriage is also to do with a certain kind of love, but then the specific legal distinction is different to merely being recognized as sharing a unique relationship in front of a community. In short, the Royal Wedding, unlike a games competition or a trade summit, was a moment prone to exceptionalism right from the start. This isnt to argue that the love between two people I find fairly boring and irrelevant to my own life is not legitimate or alternately somehow fundamentally authoritarian. But what is important is a shift of the role of Monarchy in relation to sovereignty and the police. Rather than being that which is protected by the state through the police, the monarchy is instead weaponized  by it as a tool for controlling and supressing dissent. Like a chess piece or playing card, the monarchy has become a tool of politics and policing, rather than its goal.

This isn't quite what I mean.

This is not likely to be some flash-in-the-pan but rather a model for future policing of protest at national events. Of course, this will not prevent protest. But it will make the forms of protest people use more likely to endanger the public and less democratic as underground organization becomes a necessity, rather than than an extremity, of organizing even the most simple and benign of protests at major events. Which should concern anyone actually concerned about ‘public safety’.

What then, is the sound of Cameron’s ideology?

We can’t treat bands as monoliths, or necessarily as holding the ideology they reflect in a song. But equally if a song is able to be mobilized to back an ideology, something is fundamentally lacking. So I offer 4 songs. If they annoy/upset you to the point of pain there is a panic button to purge your ears here:

PANIC BUTTON

OK, on with the sh*tshow.

Mumford and Sons. Mumford. and. Sons. Actually found on  David Cameron’s PR ipod, alongside, erm Modest Mouse. Utterly compromised ‘nu-folk’ with no heart to it. A false collective experience, that draws on the aesthetic of artists such as Viking Moses and Jeffrey Lewis, with a bit of diluted 16 Horsepower and Beirut to make for a smoother tone. Unlike Horsepower’s venegeful apocalyptics, Mumford practices the smiley, creepy form of evangelism. As The Quietus points out, the lyrics are full of religious references that seem thoroughly dull and without meaning. A false collectivity driven by crap evangelism and corporate interest? Mumford and Sons, you are the Big Society.

Florence and The Machine are probably the ‘safest’ act to exist right now. Florence is obviously a reasonably talented singer, and its not really something that would embarass most if it was found in their record collection. It’s also bland. There also been well known instances of homage/possible plagiarism involved in the writing of songs- Kiss With a Fist sounds a bit too much like The White Stripes, Rabbit Heart got into hot water about borrowing from Gang Gang Dance- a perfect metaphor for the ideas process in Cameron’s Whitehall- this could be theft, or merely a stultification into a very similar set of forms as previous tunes. There’s also another issue in this particular track: “Leave all your loving, your loving behind/You cant carry it with you if you want to survive”- this is a song about austerity- yets its expressed in the most utterly gaudy and unnecesary wrapping. Florence and The Machine is Cameron’s cuts: someone disgustingly extravagant telling you off for your own extravagance in caring.

Eliza Doolittle in Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion is a woman trained by a member of the upper class to speak their language. Today’s Doolittle serves the inverse function of disguising a middle class in the dress and garb of a fantasy ‘common’ culture. The purchase of this kind of music by the middle class under Cameron is  the spirit of Pulp’s Common People made into a consumer choice. The fact remains: it just isn’t cool  to have lots of money or be a Tory. What is cool is having no money, but being happy, or being middle class and depressed. Thus when Cameron’s Britain listens to happy music, it invariably has to come from a place of chirpy, cheeky, poor people, a music hall nudge-nudge wink-wink sexuality, and pickpocket ragamuffins. In other words, it comes from a place that can and never will truly exist: its the world of musicals; Oliver Twist, and the adaptation of Shaw’s play, My Fair Lady. It’s notable that the track singled out here is not a bad pop song in itself,  but Pack Up seems to have been played on TV every time anyone, shall we say, ‘of African descent’ appears in a reality show. This is belittling and tokenist hug-a-hoodie Cameron at his most intolerable.

What is Cameron if not the same thing again, only worse?