Return from Manchester
Today I didn't really read anything. I missed out on the train back from Manchester, where I was on a curious work fact-finding/promotional visit with some enterprising folks from a breakaway local educational authority.
Actually, that's not strictly true. I awoke in the early hours of this morning to the indeterminate rumble of what I presumed to be dustmen emptying bins behind the distinctly non-luxurious "hotel" in which we were staying. I'd just about come to terms with the constant buzz of some electrical appliance, that, I was later to learn, was a feature of not just my room but guests on the floor below.
After I realised that I wasn't going to be able to get back to sleep (due to a mixture of nerves and the steady throbbing in my throat, which I sincerely hope is not a harbinger of swine-flu woe), I got up and read an illuminating interview of Eric Hobsbawm in the Observer, that I bought at Euston station and hadn't had the chance to read on the day of publication.
This is something that I find happens to me a lot with weekend papers, which doesn't make me especially resentful as I don't feel a profound sense of achievement if I have read a copy from back to front, but I do feel slightly peeved if I don't really get the chance to peruse something which potentially costs the same as a shiny new book from one of the new bargain shops that I've found opposite St Pancras station.
Anyway, to return to the article, it was Tristram Hunt asking the questions of Mr Hobsbawm. Hunt is a new-ish Labour MP who seems to be of the old school, at least, he didn't come across as an affirmed Blairite. I'm possibly basing this entirely on the fact that he was interviewing the pre-eminent British Communist historian of the 20th century, not something that I can imagine Anthony doing.
The article largely dealt with the popular re-appraisal of Karl Marx that has apparently been taking place in recent times. Financial magazines have led with headlines such as "He's back!" and noted banking luminaries have apparently been spotted browsing "Das Kapital", which has returned (?) to the best-seller list. (Returned? I should have liked to have been there in 1888 when that hit the shelves. I wonder if there were hordes of eager readers filling up Waterstones, or the bookshops of Charing Cross road trying to grab hold of a copy. Perhaps the passenger in every third pony-and-trap would have been seen, face down in a copy of this famously dense tract on political economy. Or perhaps not - I imagine that the readers of London would likely have been immersed in the latest penny-dreadful, just as the majority of people on the Tube these days are likely to be seen reading Lee Child or some other such bilge.
Anyway, the article prompted a few thoughts in me regarding Marxian theory. It was something that I studied some years back in my first year at university, and I remember first coming to grasp with the abstract terminology that Marx, and his followers ever since, have used in describing state and society. I hadn't really realised, prior to my academic study of Marxism and Marx, that he had to all intents and purposes, invented the very notion of a class system. Hereafter, it has become indelibly associated with him, whilst also gaining such usage so as to become a popular phrase that many use without being aware of its lineage, and also its proper connotation and the specific role that it forms in socialist theory and historical dialectical materialism.
I do remember finding the use of terms such as "bourgeoisie" slightly tiresome, and the German orthodox Marxian professor that taught my course, gave little reason or opportunity to progress beyond reiterations of Marxian dogma. I don't think I managed to engage particularly well with the power and impact of Marx and Engels' words (we only studied the Communist Manifesto in this module. There were of course, as must be de rigeur at a British university, and certainly an institution of 1960s vintage, further courses on Marxism//communism, taught by the obligatory dyed-in-the-wool Red professor on campus.) I found it difficult to relate this language or urban industrial proletariats to the situation in the UK. When I attempted to relocate the argument to the Western dependence on cheap labour in the Far East and other sweatshops, this seemed to go part-way towards making it relevant to the world at the end of the 20th century.
However, one thing that I found frustrating about Marxism, or Marxianism if we want to play that game, was that it seemed to insulate itself against any attempts to prove it as false. This sort of negative verification occurs whenever a theory, or Weltanschauung, shifts the goalposts when it seems in danger being proven false, or at least capable of being so. I recall having this thought about some strands of post-structural feminist theory, but that was perhaps intentional, as it was a playful attempt to undermine essentialist arguments about the Self and sex/gender.(The book was by Luce Irigaray I think, although I can't remember the name of the book now).
The problem with Marxism (I can't be bothered to maintain the orthodox distinction between Marx and the corrupt ideologies of his followers) as it seemed to me (and no doubt countless others, I don't for a moment imagine that I'm the only one to have such thoughts about these matters) is that it never specifies a time when the socialist state is truly imminent. I'm not talking about a specific chronological time, in the sense of a calendar day and date, but a description of just what social conditions must prevail in order that a socialist uprising MUST occur. There have been innumerable proclamations that "the present state of conditions is ripe for a proletarian revolution" but every time this happens, the middle/upper classes reform to take control of the situation once again, or, as happened in Bolshevik Russia, the working classes became corrupted and the leadership began to skew away from its once lofty intentions. (Perhaps it was at this time that my thoughts about the ineluctable need for humans to designate for themselves a leader became manifest. We can never, it seems, all be one, but we need someone to act for us, tell us what to do, if only so that we have someone to blame when it all goes wrong. As it seemingly must.)
As any teenager with a passing interest in politics, I was of course initially beguiled by Communism. (Apart, that is,from strange oddities like William Hague that seem to have emerged from the womb fully formed as a mutant right-wing lifeform. Did he ever have the slightest left-wing wonderings?). "Beguiled" is perhaps too strong a term, interested - certainly, but I don't think I ever had myself down as a fully-signed up banner waving Trotskyist. The music of the revolution was certainly cooler, but many of the adherents of the movement, even then, seemed to me to be joyless, self-important prigs.
Actually, that's not strictly true. I awoke in the early hours of this morning to the indeterminate rumble of what I presumed to be dustmen emptying bins behind the distinctly non-luxurious "hotel" in which we were staying. I'd just about come to terms with the constant buzz of some electrical appliance, that, I was later to learn, was a feature of not just my room but guests on the floor below.
After I realised that I wasn't going to be able to get back to sleep (due to a mixture of nerves and the steady throbbing in my throat, which I sincerely hope is not a harbinger of swine-flu woe), I got up and read an illuminating interview of Eric Hobsbawm in the Observer, that I bought at Euston station and hadn't had the chance to read on the day of publication.
This is something that I find happens to me a lot with weekend papers, which doesn't make me especially resentful as I don't feel a profound sense of achievement if I have read a copy from back to front, but I do feel slightly peeved if I don't really get the chance to peruse something which potentially costs the same as a shiny new book from one of the new bargain shops that I've found opposite St Pancras station.
Anyway, to return to the article, it was Tristram Hunt asking the questions of Mr Hobsbawm. Hunt is a new-ish Labour MP who seems to be of the old school, at least, he didn't come across as an affirmed Blairite. I'm possibly basing this entirely on the fact that he was interviewing the pre-eminent British Communist historian of the 20th century, not something that I can imagine Anthony doing.
The article largely dealt with the popular re-appraisal of Karl Marx that has apparently been taking place in recent times. Financial magazines have led with headlines such as "He's back!" and noted banking luminaries have apparently been spotted browsing "Das Kapital", which has returned (?) to the best-seller list. (Returned? I should have liked to have been there in 1888 when that hit the shelves. I wonder if there were hordes of eager readers filling up Waterstones, or the bookshops of Charing Cross road trying to grab hold of a copy. Perhaps the passenger in every third pony-and-trap would have been seen, face down in a copy of this famously dense tract on political economy. Or perhaps not - I imagine that the readers of London would likely have been immersed in the latest penny-dreadful, just as the majority of people on the Tube these days are likely to be seen reading Lee Child or some other such bilge.
Anyway, the article prompted a few thoughts in me regarding Marxian theory. It was something that I studied some years back in my first year at university, and I remember first coming to grasp with the abstract terminology that Marx, and his followers ever since, have used in describing state and society. I hadn't really realised, prior to my academic study of Marxism and Marx, that he had to all intents and purposes, invented the very notion of a class system. Hereafter, it has become indelibly associated with him, whilst also gaining such usage so as to become a popular phrase that many use without being aware of its lineage, and also its proper connotation and the specific role that it forms in socialist theory and historical dialectical materialism.
I do remember finding the use of terms such as "bourgeoisie" slightly tiresome, and the German orthodox Marxian professor that taught my course, gave little reason or opportunity to progress beyond reiterations of Marxian dogma. I don't think I managed to engage particularly well with the power and impact of Marx and Engels' words (we only studied the Communist Manifesto in this module. There were of course, as must be de rigeur at a British university, and certainly an institution of 1960s vintage, further courses on Marxism//communism, taught by the obligatory dyed-in-the-wool Red professor on campus.) I found it difficult to relate this language or urban industrial proletariats to the situation in the UK. When I attempted to relocate the argument to the Western dependence on cheap labour in the Far East and other sweatshops, this seemed to go part-way towards making it relevant to the world at the end of the 20th century.
However, one thing that I found frustrating about Marxism, or Marxianism if we want to play that game, was that it seemed to insulate itself against any attempts to prove it as false. This sort of negative verification occurs whenever a theory, or Weltanschauung, shifts the goalposts when it seems in danger being proven false, or at least capable of being so. I recall having this thought about some strands of post-structural feminist theory, but that was perhaps intentional, as it was a playful attempt to undermine essentialist arguments about the Self and sex/gender.(The book was by Luce Irigaray I think, although I can't remember the name of the book now).
The problem with Marxism (I can't be bothered to maintain the orthodox distinction between Marx and the corrupt ideologies of his followers) as it seemed to me (and no doubt countless others, I don't for a moment imagine that I'm the only one to have such thoughts about these matters) is that it never specifies a time when the socialist state is truly imminent. I'm not talking about a specific chronological time, in the sense of a calendar day and date, but a description of just what social conditions must prevail in order that a socialist uprising MUST occur. There have been innumerable proclamations that "the present state of conditions is ripe for a proletarian revolution" but every time this happens, the middle/upper classes reform to take control of the situation once again, or, as happened in Bolshevik Russia, the working classes became corrupted and the leadership began to skew away from its once lofty intentions. (Perhaps it was at this time that my thoughts about the ineluctable need for humans to designate for themselves a leader became manifest. We can never, it seems, all be one, but we need someone to act for us, tell us what to do, if only so that we have someone to blame when it all goes wrong. As it seemingly must.)
As any teenager with a passing interest in politics, I was of course initially beguiled by Communism. (Apart, that is,from strange oddities like William Hague that seem to have emerged from the womb fully formed as a mutant right-wing lifeform. Did he ever have the slightest left-wing wonderings?). "Beguiled" is perhaps too strong a term, interested - certainly, but I don't think I ever had myself down as a fully-signed up banner waving Trotskyist. The music of the revolution was certainly cooler, but many of the adherents of the movement, even then, seemed to me to be joyless, self-important prigs.