Love the Unemployed - in Praise of Entitlement

This month, the number of British unemployed rose to 2.26 million (7.6%), and is expected to reach 3 million next year. Unemployment is widely considered one of the major social problems of our time. So, what is unemployment, why does it exist and what should we make of this phenomenon and those experiencing it? Further, how does unemployment as well as public attitudes to and treatment of the unemployed affect those with jobs? Joan Robinson, who held a professorship of economics at Cambridge University and was a close associate of the legendary J.M. Keynes, provides us with the following insights:

"The first function of unemployment (which has always existed in open or disguised forms) is that it maintains the authority of master over man. The master has normally been in a position to say: 'If you don't want the job, there are plenty of others who do.' When the man can say: 'If you don't want to employ me, there are plenty of others who will', the situation is radically altered. One effect of such a change might be to remove a number of abuses to which the workers have been compelled to submit in the past . . . [Another that] the absence of fear of unemployment might go further and have a disruptive effect upon factory discipline . . . [the worker may use] his newly-found freedom from fear to snatch every advantage that he can . .”1

So unemployment is of great benefit to bosses in the frequent instances where their interests conflict with those of their workers (pay, conditions, job security etc). Professor Robinson was echoing the views of Michael Kalecki who argued that the main cause of unemployment was the fact that governments work to deliberately maintain it in order to keep wages low and maintain the power of boss over worker. The hypothesis that unemployment is pursued as a matter of government policy is not lacking in empirical confirmation, indeed it is openly admitted. Economic Journalist Doug Henwood tells us:

"there's supporting testimony from Alan Greenspan. Several times during the late 1990s, Greenspan worried publicly that, as unemployment drifted steadily lower the 'pool of available workers' was running dry. The dryer it ran, the greater risk of 'wage inflation,' meaning anything more than minimal increases.”2

Esteemed economist Dean Baker continues the story:

“The Fed justifies limiting job growth and raising the unemployment rate because of its concern that inflation may get out of control, but this does not change the fact that it is preventing workers, and specifically less-skilled workers, from getting jobs, and clamping down on their wage growth."3

There is a half-truth behind this stated concern. Where a fall in unemployment causes a rise in money wages via a shift in the supply/demand ratio for labour, firms may (in cartel fashion) raise prices across the board. This means that real wages (measured in terms of what they can buy) stay the same. Realising this workers demand further money-wage increases and in response firms again raise prices. A government wishing to avoid runaway inflation has two options, either control prices by preventing this cartel behaviour or control wages (usually by increasing unemployment). As governments are in thrall to capital, and the former would mean a reduction in profits, it is not considered. The latter option is presented as the only one. As economist Edward Herman explains, this approach:

“has a huge built-in bias. It takes as granted all the other institutional factors that influence the price level-unemployment trade-off (market structures and independent pricing power, business investment policies at home and abroad, the distribution of income, the fiscal and monetary mix, etc.) and focuses solely on the tightness of the labour market as the controllable variable. Inflation is the main threat, the labour market (i.e. wage rates and unemployment levels) is the locus of the solution to the problem."4

A detailed and empirical discussion of the deliberate maintenance of unemployment by governments can be found in Dean Bakers The Conservative Nanny State. Free online here: http://www.conservativenannystate.org/
This can and does take active forms, such as the raising of interest rates, but its passive form is much more significant. Governments have an enormous ability to mobilise resources, which could easily be used to provide employment for all, but isn’t. A measure of this ability can be seen from the recent bailout – overwhelmingly used to defend the possessors of inordinate privilege from their own mismanagement rather than secure jobs for ordinary people. A high rate of unemployment is usually, more than anything, the result of efforts by government and the business lobby to discipline working people – this required during a recession where falling profits result in efforts to squeeze even more from working people.

This understanding must change our view of unemployment markedly. Even if we were to accept the (in my view laughably false) arguments of professional apologists – that unemployment is necessary to the effective functioning of the economy, and so that governments are justified in deliberately maintaining it – it would be idiotic to blame the unemployed for their condition, when it is an explicit aim of government policy. The idea that the solution to unemployment lies in personal responsibility, incentives, labour market flexibility and the like looks equally ridiculous, as should any of these things significantly reduce unemployment, governments will take measures to raise it again.

The Dole, Unemployment Benefit, Welfare - whatever it is called in your country - now looks absolutely essential. The most meagre and insufficient token restitution to those governments have robbed of their livelihood. And we would be deceiving ourselves if we thought that it only the unemployed who are harmed, or that is only the welfare of the unemployed to which Benefits are essential. Indeed, as Professor Robinson explains, it is precisely for its effects on those with jobs that unemployment is maintained. On the moral course for someone placed in this position, Oscar Wilde's imortal wit remains as pertinent as ever:

“Man should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal. He should decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the rates [dole], which is considered by many to be a form of stealing. As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg.”5

What of obligations to his fellows? (most) taxpayers are not responsible for the condition of the unemployed. Should he not endeavour to contribute to society rather than living on the work of others? In a just society, perhaps. Under the present system of extortion social responsibility takes more pressing forms, which assuming the responsibility to contribute actively works against. Wilde continues:

“As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They have made private terms with the enemy and sold their birthright for very bad pottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid.”

The unemployed serve two purposes in the extortion of working people. The first is passive suffering. To sit as an example to disobedient workers – step out of line and that’s you. The second is the active self debasement they perform when seeking work. Driven by the misery they experience, they engage in sordid competition with their fellows – who will accept the worst pay and conditions, who will do the most for the least – unemployment for the loser. The effects of this travel all the way up the pay scale. As competition for lower tier jobs becomes more fierce, desire for, the number of people desiring and so competition for higher tier jobs increases.

To see this clearly is to see that it is absolutely immoral for an unemployed person to take personal responsibility for her situation. It is equally immoral to accept any guilt, shame or stigma. Worse, but much more understandable, is for an unemployed person to accept undignified work. As far as social responsibility goes, the first duty of the unemployed is to seek what happiness they can, to live with dignity and not to debase themselves in the pursuit of work.

What is the social responsibility of the unemployed is the self-interest of working people. In the cries of the gutter press ‘dole scroungers’ are the new witches. Scapegoats for all societies ills. Working people must fight this slander, not only for the sake of its targets, but for their own. The solidarity of others does wonders for self esteem and is crucial to maintaining the dignity of the unemployed in particular and the working class more generally.

Abolishing or seriously mitigating the dynamics outlined in this article requires collective action. This requires organisation which comes from solidarity and the wide recognition of the manner in which the vast majority are induced to compete for the favour of a privileged minority (employers). From this a culture of dignity, a wide scale recognition of the anti social character of the work ethic, submissiveness in the workplace and general acceptance of unpleasantness in competition with your fellow worker. More importantly, from the spread of such a culture would emerge political fight for the abolition of unpleasant conditions which drive workers such competition, and the strength in numbers needed to win it. Where unemployment exists, the fight for higher benefits, with no paperwork or obligations for the recipient. But preferably for the condition of more jobs than workers.

The first prerequisite for all this is a mentality of entitlement. Do they owe us a living? Of course they fucking do. How will we get it? The same way we got the entitlements we do have. Wilde says it best:

“the best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious … Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table? They should be seated at the board, and are beginning to know it. As for being discontented, a man who would not be discontented with such surroundings and such a low mode of life would be a perfect brute. Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.”

Sources:

1 Robinson, Joan, Collected Economic Papers: vol. 1, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1973, pp. 84-5
2 Doug Henwood, After the New Economy, pp. 206-7
3 Baker, Dean, The Conservative Nanny State, LULU, 2006 p. 31
http://www.conservativenannystate.org/
4 Herman, Edward S., Beyond Hypocrisy, South End Press, Boston, 1992, pg 94
5 Wilde, Oscar, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/wilde_soul.html

In Defense of the Enlightenment

This is an essay I wrote at uni (so a somewhat watered down expression of my sentiments expressed with more verbiage than necessary), the title:

On what grounds do some people consider the Enlightenment to be the source of so much that is wrong in modernity? Should we be persuaded by their criticism?

I don’t think we should be persuaded by their criticisms. I think more blame can be attributed to Christianity and Capitalism than to the Enlightenment and that we should focus on the complex interplay of causes rather than searching for a single source. To demonstrate this, I will outline the enlightenment and modernism, look at what the postmodern tradition sees as wrong in modernity and the conception of truth they see as underlying this before discussing how they connect it to the enlightenment. I will then show how this conception of truth predates the enlightenment, that the enlightenment was in many ways a reaction against this conception of truth and posit the transition from Paganism to Christianity as a more important source. Finally I will look at the changes in the structure of society which caused the propagation of modernist ideals – ignored by a postmodern tradition focused exclusively on ideas as causal factors.

Modernity is in many ways the product of the Enlightenment, so it may seem intuitive to lay the flaws of modernism at its feet. The essence of the critique is that it was the enlightenment which made instrumental reason the supreme arbiter of truth and instituted it as a major cultural value. A fetish for instrumental reason is considered to be the main cause of modernity’s woes.

The enlightenment occurred during what is referred to as the long eighteenth century. Kant described the process involved as “man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity”, defining immaturity as “the inability to use ones understanding without guidance from another”1. It was believed that instrumental reason was the tool which would allow people to use their understanding without the ‘guidance’ traditionally provided by institutions such as the church.

In practical terms, the enlightenment began with the era of scientific revolutions, massive technological advances and the fundamentally new ways of understanding the world provided by thinkers such as Newton and Darwin. The massive successes of instrumental reason in the natural sciences became the key argument for the replacement of traditional authoritarian ‘guidance’ with a society of individuals guided by their own reason endeavouring to use their own understanding in all things.

Modernity is the cultural era we have been living in roughly since the enlightenment. Jean Francoise Lyotard identifies The Postmodern Condition as our current state of affairs. This is where the values of modernity, derived he claims from the enlightenment, have blindly perpetuated themselves beyond all proportion, begun to parody themselves and more importantly we are becoming aware of this. A philosophical tradition which considers the enlightenment the source of much that is wrong in modernity stems from Lyotard. Most who express it in these terms come from this tradition, though there are many who hold similar views expressed in different terms – such as the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory.

What the postmodern tradition sees as wrong in modernity is primarily an obsession with representation and measurement. An inordinate focus on end product and an ignorance of process. This finds its expression in all facets of culture, an example would be education, where often league table results are everything and the subjective learning experiences of students nothing.

According to Lyotard, this all stems from a particular vision of truth which is prevalent in society. In this vision, all forms of knowledge are commensurable (ie compatible, that they can be perfectly expressed in each others terms), offering the prospect of a single, all embracing, theory or ‘metanarrative’. This metanarrative is expected to be based on the natural sciences, and this leads to the aggressive devaluing of the forms of knowledge which are less compatible with the natural sciences. The narrative, storytelling attempts to understand the world which have been prevalent throughout history, and which are the key means of knowing humans are evolved to use are in all instances rejected in favour of abstract logic and focus on precise measurement – those fields in which precise measurement is impossible or impractically difficult are ignored and devalued. This approach underlies the flaws of modernity and is seen to begin with, and follow from, the ideas of the enlightenment.

Lyotard instead proposes that we view different ways of knowing as (at the very least potentially) incommensurable, and instead of attempting to determine which is right and wrong wherever they disagree, focus on doing them all justice. He envisions a world of incommensurable ‘little stories’, all afforded respect. In much quoted summary he argues that Postmodern Knowledge “refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable. Its principle is not the experts homology, but the inventors paralogy”2. The last sentence seems to me almost exactly in the spirit of Kant’s unguided use of understanding – the experts homology being traditional guidance and paralogy (movement against established ways of reasoning) inevitably the result of people learning to use their understanding unguided by established approaches.

The idea of an all embracing truth and single right way of knowing (the experts homology) was stronger and more prevalent before the enlightenment than after – before the enlightenment it found its strongest, but by no means its only, expression in religion. This is acknowledged in the postmodern tradition, in the pre-modern era “little difference was seen or made between now strictly separated standards of human conduct, such as ‘usefulness’, ‘truth’, ‘beauty’, ‘propriety’. In the ‘traditional’ way of life, rarely looked upon from a distance and thus seldom reflected upon, everything seemed to float at the same level of importance, weighed on the same scales of ‘right’ versus ‘wrong’.”3.

However, it wasn’t always like this. Indeed a view of knowledge very similar to that advocated by Lyotard was once the norm – it was called Paganism. Lyotard was aware of this, and used the term Paganism to metaphorically refer to the new approach he proposed. In the pagan ancient world, religion was the primary means of knowing, however it was very different to religion as commonly practiced today. Very many, usually polytheistic, religions coexisted tolerantly. The knowledge they expressed was highly narrative (myths), their truth (in the sense understood by modern science) was not considered particularly important and neither was agreement on this truth (dogma).

With Christianity arose a completely different understanding of truth. The pagans lampooned it as a death cult for its focus on the literal (science style) truth of after death rewards and punishments, and it was made the official religion of an increasingly totalitarian roman state. Commensurable knowledge and consensus on dogma became the obsession of the early church hierarchy. Paganism was annihilated in what is to my knowledge the first recorded genocide, and our conception of knowledge transformed. This is to my mind a much more potent source of the flaws Lyotard and those he has influenced see than the enlightenment.

For over a thousand years the ruling Christians strove to impose their totalising vision of knowledge on all facets of culture, destroying by violence all that was incommensurable. Religion (and so our means of knowing) entwined itself with authoritarian politics to a degree unheard of in the pagan era. All knowledge was believed to be held by the church, and to claim to have discovered something new was heresy punishable by death. It was in, and in reaction to, an intellectual culture stripped barren by this process that the enlightenment occurred. In many respects, the enlightenment was a reaction against the totalising vision of knowledge. We see that as the natural sciences have progressed, they have moved in the direction advocated by Lyotard. They at first billed themselves as the search for universal ‘laws of nature’ which mirror the world. Such a view is rarely acceptable today. More modern philosophies of science, such as Popperian Falsificationism are very humble – seeing scientific knowledge as entirely contingent, just as (say) Richard Rorty does.

In my view, the idea of a totalising metanarrative based on the natural sciences should be seen as the product of an infant enlightenment justifying itself to, and piecing itself together from the unenlightened and their ideas. As something the enlightenment outgrew. A ‘god of reason’ was set up to express enlightenment ideas in the language of the old order, and give the project the strength to resist massive conservative opposition. This rhetoric was characteristic of promoters and interpreters of enlightenment thought, not so much the enlightenment thinkers themselves. Newtons oft quoted self evaluation: “I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” 4

Nevertheless, the view of science as a totalising metanarative remains prevalent outside of advanced science. League table obsessed schools teach the findings of the natural sciences as if they were religious dogma, instilling a spirit diametrically opposed to that which led to those findings. The social sciences are continuously harassed and degraded by methodological criticisms rooted in long outdated and mind numbingly rigid visions of the scientific method (the doctrine of behaviourism was a particularly ugly example). Genuine Enlightenment ideals have been very selectively applied, and often perverted. Now why is this?

Here we come to what I see as the main flaw of the postmodern tradition – what Marx would call their idealism. By this I mean their focus on the ideas held by the minority intellectual elements of the population as causal agents in the development of society. Also their lack of focus on the structures and institutions in society which cause these ideas to propagate and develop, and of which prevailing ideas are often merely symptoms.

In his work The Great Transformation economic historian Karl Polanyi lays out a convincing and detailed explanation of the rise of modernity and the flaws the postmodern tradition sees in it (though he does not use the same terms). The enlightenment was closely followed by a cataclysmic change in the social structure of Europe – the industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism. This was made possible by the scientific and technological advances of the enlightenment.

The Great Transformation he refers to is the transition to a market society, which destroyed the old culture, social order and its associated values - things which had evolved to a great degree of subtlety over thousands of years. For Polanyi the key change was the subordination of all social institutions to the ‘self-regulating’ market. Whilst markets had existed long before Polanyi’s Great Transformation, they existed within, and were subordinate to, a social framework containing a wide array of values and motivations. This change was effected by the transformation of land and labour into simple commodities. In the market society all values and motivations are reduced to ‘rational’ economic calculation.

That which the postmodern tradition seeks to explain (ie the rise of modernism and its flaws) are things which permeate all sections of society and most facets of culture. However their explanations are entirely based upon ideas held and intellectual trends followed by a tiny minority. It is debated when the ‘modern era’ began, Lawrence Cahoone asks whether it was the sixteenth century with “the development of a humanistic scepticism epitomised by Erasmus and Montaigne? Or was it in the seventeenth century with the scientific revolution … Or with the republican political theories”5 in the eighteenth century? None of these events seriously affected the lifestyles of (or were likely even known to) the majority of the population. The event which brought most people into the modern era was the enclosure of the commons. The state made most of the previously common farmland the property of the aristocracy, rendering the subsistence farming lifestyle of most of the population impossible and forcing the widespread adoption of wage labour. It was this which did the most to change lifestyles, and cause most people to spend a serious amount of time in institutions dominated by modernist ideas (ie factories and other components of the new industrial economy).

In conclusion, while the demands of the economic system may cloak themselves in the rhetoric of the enlightenment, this is not their primary source, and not what determines the detail of their content. There is a complex interdependence between prevailing ideas and the structure of society. An effective attempt to explain modernism and its flaws must, in my view, be linked to historical and economic analysis detailing the changes in the structure of society which caused and assisted the propagation of modernist ideas. Further, the enlightenment cannot be understood in isolation, it need to be looked at in the context of the culture it developed from and was in discourse with. The conception of truth Lyotard takes issue with dates back much further than the enlightenment and the enlightenment weakened its influence.

Bibliography:

1 Kant, Immanuel (1784) An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment pp. 1, online here: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/kant.html
2 Lyotard, Jean-François (1979) The Postmodern Condition: a Report on Knowledge (Manchester University Press)
3 Bauman, Zygmunt (1998) Postmodern Ethics (Blackwell) pp. 4
4 (Quoted) Brewster, David (2001) Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton (Booksurge Publishing) pp.126
5 Cahoone, Lawrence (1996) From Modernism to Postmodernism: an anthology (Oxford: Blackwell), pp.12-13 5 Cahoone, Lawrence (1996) From Modernism to Postmodernism: an anthology (Oxford: Blackwell), pp.12-13

Popperian Philosophy as a framework for Leftwing Theory

INTRODUCTION

I wrote this as an undergraduate dissertation in Combined Social Sciences at durham university. If you want an exposition of my political views and the basic ideas behind this blog, this is it.

ABSTRACT

This dissertation sketches a proposed reformulation of leftwing theory, using a framework derived from the political philosophy of Karl Popper. Begins with basic methodological considerations, outlining the role of political theory, and what should be required of it. Presents the framework to be derived from Popper and how this fits these requirements. Outlines the vast differences between this framework and liberalism (by far the most common framework for political theory) demonstrating the inadequacy of the latter.

Discusses limitations in Poppers work, and his inadequate development of the approach we are deriving from him. Identifies Class Analysis as the logical development of the approach we are proposing. Sketches a theory of Class and Class Struggle derived from our approach, demonstrating the degree to which these two modes of analysis complement and reinforce one another. This new way of looking at class to serve as the foundation of a reformulated Left-Wing Theory – with an increased emphasis on freedom, effective understanding and action.

Empirical discussion of the late 20th Century & present day with particular emphasis on the US/UK demonstrating the relevance and utility of the analysis outlined. A case study on the modern mass media, showcasing the Herman-Chomsky ‘propaganda model’ as the sort of analysis the approach outlined would aim to produce and the sorts of concern it would lead to.

This work may strike the reader as sweeping, as a great deal is covered very quickly. However, this (the development of an approach which makes political theory as accessible as possible, while endeavouring to do justice to the complexity of the subject matter) is necessitated by the ideas involved.

CONTENTS

1 – The Open Society Approach
Methodological Introduction
The Open Society Approach

2 – Liberalism and Popper’s Limitations
Liberalism
Popper’s Limitations

3 – Class Analysis

4 – Anatomy of the Modern CSA

5 – Case Study – The Mass Media

6 – Concluding Remarks

7 – Bibliography

CHAPTER 1 - THE OPEN SOCIETY APPROACH

Methodological Introduction

The methods of enquiry which command the most respect (with good reason due to their successes) are those used in the natural sciences. It is thus tempting, however I believe misguided, to blindly transplant these methods to other disciplines. There are massive differences in the subject matter of the natural and social sciences, and methods need to be sensitively attuned to the subject matter we are investigating. Nowhere are these differences more acute than where the subject matter is political. I will begin by laying out some of the key differences which should cause us to depart from the scientific method.

Most glaringly, our theories of politics, and how they frame political matters, impact said matters enormously. Not only intellectual high politics does this. Rather, the impact of theories of low politics – commonly held theories of politics, often much simpler vulgarisations of high politics – are in many ways much more influential and so significant in their effects on the subject matter. Thus we have a strong interaction between the subject matter and our theories about it, and further between our theories and their vulgarisations which is entirely absent from the natural sciences. When economists predict a recession, this reduces investor confidence, making a recession more likely. Nothing of the sort is conceivable in physics. What is taught as physics in schools has no impact on the subject matter of a physics professor’s research, while the political views of the general population are a major factor determining the course of events which are studied by politics professors.

We also have the massively greater complexity of the phenomenon under investigation in the social sciences, and the much lesser completeness and sophistication of existing theories concerning them. Counterpoised to this we have much more developed folk theories about political phenomenon than those investigated by the natural sciences. A major reason for this is that most people have a use for a theory of politics. Their needs are very different to those of people who make use of scientific theories. It is something we synthesize with our worldview and social life experience and most people don’t want to invest too much time and effort in it.

One upshot of this is that the typical academic approach (by which I mean specialised experts, each with their narrow field, contributing to a wider discourse) becomes much less effective. This is compounded when we consider the different ways in which science and political theory make themselves useful to people. Science provides us with an understanding of the physical world, which aids us in the development of technology and improved ways of doing things. These developments are almost always conducted by small groups disconnected from wider society. What is useful to them is the detailed work of specialists. Accessibility is not important.

By contrast the main way in which political theory makes itself useful is in leading us to a better society. This is a process which involves all of society. History gives us far too many examples of major changes affecting all being conducted by small groups disconnected from wider society. However this is not the only way societies change, nor is it the most powerful method for achieving change or the method which produces the best changes. Very few political theorists would openly advocate it. As everyone is an agent of socio-political change, the audience the discourse of political theory should be targeted at is very different to that of natural science, and accessibility is vital. This makes the criteria for what constitutes ‘good political theory’ and what constitutes ‘good science’ radically different.

Another point, perhaps more important than all the others; it is rare that major scientific discourses are excessively moulded by the requirements of concentrated power. With political discourses, this is the norm. I will be discussing some of the mechanisms by which this occurs extensively in my section on the media.

So, where do these observations leave us? The task at hand is in many ways much more difficult than that of the natural sciences – the subject matter is much more complex and theories are required to be much simpler. What seems clear is that building a culture which is effective at political enquiry and distributing the results should be an important objective. A key task of political theory is to figure out how to do this. Indeed, this may be considered its first and most important task as it facilitates all the others.

I believe that there is a lot that is helpful to this project in the thought of Karl Popper and his concept of the Open Society and his general approach. In this dissertation I intend to give an overview of the Popperian ideas I consider helpful, and develop them

The Open Society Approach

I’m calling what I take from Popper ‘The Open Society Approach’. Poppers approach to political matters stemmed from his wider philosophical views. One of the most influential figures in the philosophy of science, his approach is rooted in his view that ‘all life is problem solving’. What emerges from this is an analysis of institutions and society which foregrounds their problem solving ability.

This analysis finds its strongest expression in The Open Society and Its Enemies - a defence of freedom and democracy (in the widest sense, as the term was understood before US propaganda stripped it of its meaning), but one entirely shorn of ethics. Freedom and democracy are advocated entirely because they produce societies which are effective at problem solving. While shadows of this argument have been advanced before by the likes of Proudhon (anarchy is order, government is chaos) and J.S. Mill (classic defence of free speech) their arguments didn’t have nearly the scope or depth of Poppers.

I must acknowledge a great debt to the work of Rudolf Rocker, in particular his magnum opus Nationalism and Culture. Here he argues for an intimate relationship between freedom and the development of culture. This is a work of enormous scope, spanning most of history, and its understanding of freedom is vague to be inclusive. Rocker understood freedom primarily as the condition of not being subject to the operation of organised power. The latter analysed extensively, not only as blatant violence, but also as functioning through culture parasitically made subject to its aims. I believe Poppers conceptual framework can articulate this with much greater clarity.

Popper called his key concept openness. A society is open to the extent that a wide range of ideas are proposed, widely distributed and criticised. However it is not just ideas, but their implementation, which is important to openness. Openness is also a measure of the extent to which a wide range of ideas are implemented, and the extent to which a wide range of critiques affect what is implemented. Openness is an attempt to conceptualise the dynamics behind a culture of effective intellectual inquiry, democratic tendencies in society and creative culture. The conditions which produce openness are called free institutions.

An advantage of this approach is that endeavouring to understand what constitutes openness provides understanding of how to more effectively achieve it. Means and ends are seamlessly united. Where the Open Society Approach is the ideal, the more idealistic one endeavours to be, the more pragmatic one becomes. It is an analysis which can be applied to engage with almost any facet of society or culture and as such is very empowering. It is often asserted that proposed societies with too high a degree of freedom and democracy wouldn’t ‘work’ – that no one would know whats going on, there would be a thousand voices screaming to be heard and nothing would get done. These assertions assume that what is meant by freedom and democracy are particular institutions. However, by these terms we mean particular processes which institutions merely facilitate. If nothing gets done, the processes we value are not occurring and we do not have openness.

The open society approach, properly applied, is not about producing a blueprint of a better society, then working towards it. It is about cultivating openness here and now, this cultivation allowing and producing the discourse and experimentation which will much more effectively determine the nature of a better society at the same time as creating the movements and dynamics in existing society which will transform it into a better one. In this way, the humility which should result from the enormous intellectual challenge political enquiry presents can be reconciled with the need to profoundly engage which results from the abuses perpetrated by the current system and the arrogance and patent falsity of its discourses. It is for this reason that I talk about the open society approach, rather than simply the open society. It is a way of looking at political matters.

This approach is superb medicine for the sectarianism which has so often crippled the left. Where emphasis is placed on desired states of affairs, or very specific tactics, political movements are disinclined to work with those who do not share them. In extreme cases similar groups, seeing each other as leading potential agents of political change down dead ends, expend a lot of effort trying to thwart each other – convinced of the all important power of a few good ideas, which are otherwise wrapped in the ideology of the current order, and using the methods borrowed from the current order to implement them. By contrast, we should recognise that, with the complexity of the subject matter in political enquiry, no thinker or small movement can deviate far enough from mainstream ideology to produce a vision of a radically better society cogent enough to get us there. In trying they will inevitably fall back on the aims and methods of the old order. By cultivating openness, we can get this massive project conducted on a large scale and achieved, creating and distributing a political theory more radical than we can imagine. The prerequisites for this are openness within movements, communication, cooperation, viewing breadth of opinion as healthy and opposition to sectarianism.

Poppers key motivation in writing The Open Society was to refute the common view, eloquently expressed by Plato, that authoritarianism is efficient. As a result, The Open Society is almost entirely a critique of the enemies. Poppers critiques are important and profound; however the supremely constructive approach which he formulated is left woefully underdeveloped. In this dissertation I will develop and adapt the open society approach to form a foundation for political theory which aims at a society and culture which is effective at political enquiry.

In his limited discussion of openness, Popper states the obvious. All else being equal, a society with leaders who can be changed in elections is more open than one with leaders who can only be removed by massive violence. A society which safeguards freedom of expression is more open than one where dissent is criminalised. A society which permits people to practice whatever religion the please is more open than one which combats heresy with rack and stake. The transparent operation of government makes for greater openness than government shrouded in secrecy.

However the practical demands of the Open Society Approach extend far beyond these requirements. A society where all the political parties with a serious chance of getting elected have similar policies, most people voting for them on the basis of ‘lesser evil’ reasoning, is not very open. Indeed formal democratic institutions can serve to impede a societies opening by diverting and neutralising social forces which would otherwise transform it. Third world clients of the US in the late 20th century, the “death-squad democracies” of Central America, bear sombre witness. What makes societies under elected governments more open than those under single party states is the greater degree of choice over social institutions they offer the people. For this same reason the greater the variety of policies offered by credible parties in an election, the more open the society. Proportional representation makes for greater openness than first past the post. A small percentage of the vote grants minor parties seats in Parliament; this gives those with a programme markedly different from the status quo a place in government and broadens discourse by making support for such programmes a more worthwhile activity.

Just as formal elections are only one small facet of openness in decisions about the administration of society so formally defended free expression is but one requirement for open discourse. Openness is the presence of certain processes and dynamics in society. Where these are destroyed or prevented from emerging it is immaterial how. The open society approach judges repressive measures on there effect, not their form. Where economic barriers or subtle psychological techniques (what Johann Galtung calls ‘structural violence’) have the same effect on discourse as the threat of physical violence they are as much a danger to openness. It is this effect we are concerned with.

From the above follows serious concern for economic matters and access to resources. Such access is required for people to effectively disseminate their ideas. Access to resources is equally necessary for the education and leisure people require to develop their ideas. The open society approach is concerned with much more than ideas, it is concerned with their implementation. Productive discussion is based on evidence, generates questions to be answered with evidence and devises tests to procure this evidence. People’s ability to implement and test their ideas is directly proportional to the resources they have access to. The upshot of this is a very strong egalitarian tendency. The concentration of resources in a few hands does not make for variety and wide experimentation.

Clearly a society’s openness depends on much more than the nature of the state (indeed many societies have existed without states). The state has featured so prominently in our and Popper’s discussion because it has so often been such a massive impediment to openness. Because states wield such enormous power over the societies subject to them. This usually exerted to maintain the societies form, much more rarely to change it. In non-totalitarian societies non-state factors, taken together, have a far greater impact on openness than the state.

Purely cultural factors are of enormous importance. For example, in a culture where ‘patriotism’ is prevalent and as a result unorthodox or anti-establishment views are generally dismissed or viewed in simple and emotive terms, openness is significantly diminished. The same goes for most other forms of prejudice, taboo, dogmatism and hostility to the new and different. The manner in which children are raised and educated will be of great significance, due to the impact this has on the way people learn, and how we come to accept or reject the ideas we are confronted with.

Here I have attempted to sketch a few practical demands which emerge from the open society approach to help the reader form a clearer picture of it. Clearly a definitive exposition is beyond the scope of this dissertation, or indeed any theoretical project. An understanding of what constitutes openness and how to build and improve free institutions must evolve with social and cultural forms and can expand till it matches them in complexity. Like any project of understanding it proceeds most effectively when nourished by empirical evidence. As societies become more open a greater understanding of dynamics and processes of which make up openness becomes possible. Hence Rocker “freedom is only a relative, not an absolute concept, since it tends constantly to become broader and affect wider circles in more manifold ways”1.

Why should we base our politics around openness rather than other factors? Because openness and the free institutions which promote it make a society effective at problem solving (in the widest sense). Rather than make the solving of specific problems as seen now the overarching aim, this approach aims to improve our ability to solve problems whatever they may be as well as our future ability to pose the right problems. As we noted at the beginning, the first task of political enquiry/engagement is to create the circumstances in which it can be conducted effectively. These are openness. I emphasise again the connection between openness and effective problem solving. It is this effective problem solving which gives movements the strength to get their ideas implemented. Thinking about freedom this way (as the processes of openness) makes it achievable and enables its development beyond the limits of our ideas.

In the next section I will discuss how the open society approach differs from the methodology of the liberal tradition (which dominates modern political discourse). From this I will look at how Popper and most of his followers argued from the Open Society Approach to their relatively conservative views using mistaken assumptions derived from the liberal tradition and mainstream discourse. Following this I will give an exposition of class analysis and develop an account of class struggle from the Open Society Approach. Finally I will apply my theories to modern society in a case study on the media.

1 Rocker, Rudolf, Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice, AK Press, Edinburgh/Oakland, 2004, ch 1

CHAPTER 2 - LIBERALISM AND POPPERS LIMITATIONS

Liberalism

The difference between the Open Society Approach and the methodology prevalent in the liberal tradition is the difference between a pragmatic versus an idealistic, an empowering versus a servile conception of freedom.
Liberalism reduces politics to ethics (indeed a very limited view of ethics). We see this most crudely in the celebrated classical liberals1, their entire political philosophy built upon theories of ‘natural rights’. These were obtuse mixtures of ethics and metaphysics, derived (often explicitly as in the case of John Locke) from the theological modes of thinking prevalent in the eighteenth century. Natural Rights were laws, in the sense of laws passed by governments, believed to be part of nature itself. It was the task of the political philosopher to discover them, and the best possible society would result from their enforcement by government. These metaphysical laws (conveniently with the sole purpose of securing the property so coveted by the landed gentry which discovered them) need to be codified and enforced, Locke laments, “for though the law of nature be plain and intelligible to all rational creatures; yet men being biassed by their interest, as well as ignorant for want of study of it, are not apt to allow of it as a law binding to them in the application of it to their particular cases.”2

This metaphysics may sound silly to modern audiences, but fitted well with common eighteenth century worldviews. The idea that law, government and the prevailing political order was built into the very fabric of reality had dominated European thought for over a thousand years. It is a truism that religion has, for most of history, played a major role in political oppression. Much less common is detailed analysis of the mechanisms by which this occurred and the extent to which they carried over into modern worldviews. Such an analysis is beyond the scope of this dissertation, an excellent attempt can be found in Rocker’s Nationalism and Culture. We will content ourselves here with an outline. We will not concern ourselves here with sklavmoral personal ethics, or anything else which does not bear directly on how people think about political matters (though such things permeated throughout culture and remain to this day as impediments to openness).

Oppression is almost entirely associated with images of violence and the threat thereof. The role of violence cannot be disputed, but it is equally false to consider violence the sole or even the main component. In most historical tyrannies weight of numbers, and thus martial power, was so heavily on the side of the oppressed that naked force could not have maintained them overnight. What did maintain them was the manipulation of culture and so peoples understanding of the world and their ability to coordinate an opposition. The recognition of this goes back at least to David Hume.

Central to this is influencing the way people understand and think about political institutions, how they function, what determines their nature and how/if they can be changed. The setting up of a false picture. Most obviously it is expedient for a ruler to have his subjects believe the prevailing order good and just, however effective ideology goes far beyond this and is much more subtle. Also useful is the belief its inevitability, and a false understanding of the mechanics of its operation. How people think about politics is as important as what. Concepts should be fuzzy and thinking difficult and unproductive. Abstract, idealistic and ethical speculation should be engaged in wherever possible, at the expense of practical considerations and the analysis of the real world.

All of this and more reached a fiendish perfection in the political theology of the ancien regime and its concepts of ‘natural law’ and ‘natural rights’ - part ethics, part metaphysics, emanating from god and as incomprehensible. Natural Rights liberalism emerged in cordial discourse with this worldview. This ensured that, despite its oppositional character, liberalism retained most of the basic approach, assumptions and ways of thinking (effects outlined above) of its adversary – an inverted mirror image.

Popper astutely noted that a telling feature uniting authoritarian philosophies is the aim of finality. Ardent Popperian Bryan Magee tells us “The scientific outlook, then, commits us to a certain form of society … It is incompatible with closed and completed systems of thought, and also with the fixed political goals that such systems characteristically produce … The pre-scientific approach in politics, as in knowledge, aims at certainty, at finality, at establishing something which, once established, will be permanent. Nazism aimed at setting up a ‘thousand-year Reich’ – an unending, unchanging new order. [Marxist] Communism aims at creating a … society which will put an end to the dialectical development of human affairs”3. The idea of objective, ‘natural laws’ to be discovered embodies the quest for a completed system of thought. A fixed goal, an ideal constitution, was the aim of most Classical Liberals. Nowadays, only do liberals aim for a permanent end state, but many such as Francis Fukyama believe we have already attained it4.

The philosophical foundations of Liberalism and fellow travelling ideas have been reformulated many times, however the methods and priorities established by the Natural Rights school have always dominated. In Rousseau (a prominent fellow traveller) we see the exact language of the Natural Rights School, reached by convoluted argument from the idea of an fictitious and allegedly implicit ‘Social Contract’. (Locke also postulates such a social contract as the basis of existing governments – Natural Law being something independent of this which they must aspire to emulate. In Rousseau Natural Law is created by this contract). The utilitarian liberals, finding their most developed exponent in J.S. Mill, championed consequentialist ethical foundations. However their treatment of large scale politics consisted mainly of trying to find the deontological principles which if followed would best promote utility. Modern liberal thought is dominated by the ideas of John Rawls. He saw the deduction of ideal principles, from a hypothetical scenario in which a Social Contract is being developed, as the proper basis for political theory. All else is to be derived from the legalistic application of these principles.

What is important here is not that the philosophical foundations of liberalism are unsound (though they are). What matters is the approach to political enquiry they lead to – the unsoundness of its foundations is merely indicative. The approach which follows logically from natural rights foundations is that which has been applied across the liberal tradition, regardless of actual foundations. The approach led to is arrogant, authoritarian and impotent. It is supremely idealistic, emphasising form, not function, venerating theory, disparaging practice and fostering a dangerous separation between the two. It conceives of laws and institutions as abstract ideas, their context and implementation all but forgotten. On the dynamics determining the course of societies development and the effective means of changing society it is silent.

The best that can be said for classical liberalism is that it championed respect for the individual in the language of the feudal era. However, as there is not now a pressing need to argue our case to theocratic absolutists, this language and the repressive modes of thinking it carries with it should be rejected. For these reasons, I believe that the liberal tradition would have made a worthy enemy for a third volume of The Open Society. (Neo)Liberalism provides the ideological justification for the greatest injustices occurring today. Across the world, from Pinochet’s Chile to Suharto’s Indonesia, it has inspired societal closings at least as violent as those Popper saw stemming from the ideas of Marx and Plato (occurring we must add in societies with much stronger traditions of openness than Tsarist Russia or Weimar Germany). The pursuit of an abstract ‘economic liberty’5 by means of concentration camps and secret police can follow very easily from the liberal worldview.

The Open Society Approach offers a way of thinking about political matters which is diametrically opposed to the liberal tendencies just outlined. Where liberalism reduces politics to ethics, the open society approach produces political theory entirely independent of ethics. It understands that views on ethics vary widely and that it is healthy for this to be so. That to require agreement on ethics for political initiatives is counterproductive and dangerous. That political theory capable of underlying mass movements with the ability to seriously change society must be compatible with a wide range of ethical theories. It should be compatible with ethics from Ghandi to Nechayev.

While it could, if necessary, be reached from absolutist ethical foundations, for me the open society approach embodies the understanding that ethics are the creations of people and society. As such they are contingent, incomplete and can always be improved. As with anything, effective improvement proceeds on the basis of evidence and experiment, and is a collective project which proceeds best under conditions of openness. As such it seems more sensible to ground political theory in the processes by which ethics are improved, rather than fixed ethical theory.

Decentralisation of decision making follows directly from the acknowledgement of the contingency and incompleteness of our views. The people in a particular situation have the most evidence about them as a result of their experience, so are particularly qualified to make decisions concerning that situation. The task of the activist should be to empower people vis a vis their immediate situation. The task of the theorist to give people a practical understanding of how society operates and, derived from this, an understanding of how to effectively change it – how they see fit. Ethical Baggage is unnecessary and counterproductive.

Liberalism sees freedom as the possession of certain ethical/metaphysical ‘rights’. This is servile and idealistic because it is simply a condition people find themselves in, entirely the work of the state and little thought is given to how people can move towards it. The open society approach sees freedom as the sum of a vast array of social processes, of which the state and the ‘rights’ it grants at best serve merely as a barometer. It is empowering and pragmatic because an understanding of these processes is the understanding needed for effective political engagement.

1 Classical Liberalism was a broad church, and contained many very admirable political philosophies, which stood in stark contrast to that of Locke (I am thinking in particular of Godwin). However, these were marginalised and deontological thinking came to dominate the tradition.
2 Locke, John, Second Treatise on Government, bnpublishing.net, 2008, p. 42
3 Magee, Bryan, The New Radicalism, Secker & Warburg, 1962, p. 38
4 "What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." Fukyama, Francis, The End of History and the last Man, Harper Perennial, 1993
5 Stated aim of the Pinochet Regime.


Popper’s Limitations

I have many disagreements with Popper, however as space is limited and I wish to focus on the constructive development of the Open Society Approach I will only discuss those which bear directly on my development and these in general terms. Most of my disagreements stem from Poppers uncritical acceptance of mainstream discourse and much of the liberal approach. While we differ little in terms of abstract theory, our views of the world are quite different, in my opinion he is too prone to separate the too and places too much emphasis on the former. This is particularly apparent from his lack of attention to conflicts of interest within society, the dynamic struggles these generate and the degree to which these determine the nature of society.

The main way I intend to develop the open society approach beyond Poppers conception of it is to synthesise it with an understanding of the major dynamic which determines a society’s openness – the class struggle. Popper argues from the open society approach to his relatively conservative political views using some assumptions that are in my view mistaken. For example he argues that society should always be changed slowly. The reason for this is that actions have unintended consequences, and in an open society time must be given for these to be observed, critiqued and actions to be corrected in light of these observations and critiques.

What this assumes is that society is already pretty open. In a society with large concentrations of power which desire to keep it closed, the ‘unintended consequences’ to be corrected will be any moves towards a more open society. Where this is the case, it is imperative that society be opened quickly, so a strong culture based on openness can be developed in time to resist the reactionary closing. As the grim history of counterrevolutionary violence can attest, this has usually been the case and for the most part remains so.

Those of Popper’s views with which I disagree are rooted in his belief that the people in a given society generally have harmonious common interests and his lack of attention to conflicts of interest and power struggles within society. A self sustaining open society relies on the common interests of its members. It requires at the very least that those holding the majority of the power are more interested in solving problems common to or affecting most of societies members than forcing the pursuit of their interests on those who do not share them. Very rarely is this the case.

Poppers social theory suggests that the opening of society is advantageous to all involved. Bryan Magee writes “authoritarian societies will get left behind by free societies in intellectual development, and therefore in wealth and power, unless they evade this by themselves [by becoming more open]”1. This panglossian view doesn’t explain history. Time and time again freer societies have fallen to more repressive ones and societies have gradually closed of their own accord. Over many millennia mankind’s movement toward greater social openness has not been impressive. For enormous periods we have moved away from openness. Why did those who directed the development of civilisation choose as they did? I am not in doubt about the advantages openness confers, but history can only be explained if it also confers serious disadvantages – at least to those making the decisions. As we will see, these disadvantages stem directly from the effective problem solving that openness allows.

Openness allows everyone to more effectively solve their problems, and more effectively organise to solve shared ones. Everyone includes the oppressed and the problem of their oppressors. In a society characterised by conflict it may be more advantageous to reduce your opponent’s problem solving ability (by closing society) than to increase your own (by opening it). Where your opponents outnumber you, they stand to gain much more from openness, the free exchange of ideas, than you do. In such a situation, a closed society is to your advantage. Most historical ruling elites have been tiny minorities engaged in open or veiled warfare against the rest of the population, this was their situation, and it explains why they acted as they did.

As an aside, it is worth noting that those societies which have been most effective in perpetrating, spreading and deepening oppression and misery have always had a degree of openness (think the Roman, British and American empires). The most authoritarian and closed societies (i.e. ancient Sparta) have always been stagnant, incapable of innovating – passing nightmares. For a tyranny to endure, expand ande develop more effective means of oppression it needs some problem solving ability. This provided by openness carefully confined to particular areas of social life and sections of the population – the sort guaranteed by ideologies like liberalism. A living motor, shackled to power the evil machine. While generally speaking openness benefits the ruled more than the rulers, this is not the case in all fields.

What does this mean for our analysis? Openness remains to the advantage of most, as it is only through disadvantages to their opponents that people can gain from societal closing. But the minority that benefits from a closed society can and often has wielded most of the power. If we seek a more open society, it is worth understanding in detail how vested interests in a closed one emerge and operate. As the benefits of a closed society come as disadvantages to opponents in conflicts, these conflicts should be the subject of serious analysis.

Many thinkers have analysed society in terms of internal struggles, and this approach is called Class Analysis. We will discuss it in depth in the next section. What is the source and character of major intra-social conflicts which impact openness? It is a truism that in most places for most of history humanity has been divided – the few who command and the many who must obey (though apply this analysis today and you raise eyebrows). This is a low entropy situation, to the liking of the former the latter not so much. It takes serious efforts to maintain, these efforts commonly called oppression. The term oppression carries ethical overtones, but they don’t concern us here. We are interested in the efforts of rulers to force the pursuit of their interests on everyone else, resistance to this, the relationship between the two and the relation of openness to both. ‘Rulers’ and ‘force’ also carry ethical overtones in which we are not interested, the effect is what matters. As with the processes comprising openness, it is processes we are concerned with here. Actions and their consequences, not the ethical character of either.

The actions and consequences we are concerned with are the struggle between rulers and ruled and its effective waging. As we noted earlier effective oppression involves much more than naked violence, and we should add that it is carried out by far wider sections of society than official rulers and governments. Culture is forced into forms which help maintain the power and privilege of society’s directors. This is an unlikely, low entropy situation, and as such change and its unpredictable results are likely to disrupt it. What results from this is a drive to standardise all forms of culture, to extinguish and limit new developments and anything which might lead to them. This is the closing of society. What we have is a loose group with an interest in the closing of society. This interest derives from an interest in the impotence of the majorities struggle against them, from inordinate power and privilege.

Both the open society approach and the specific needs of political theory as distinct from natural science necessitate an accessible holistic model which anyone can use to engage on the level of the entire struggle. Class analysis goes a long way to providing this. The open society approach has a lot to add to class analysis, as openness is an important factor determining the effectiveness of struggles. In the next section I will give an exposition of class analysis and synthesise it with the Open Society Approach.

1 Magee, Bryan, The New Radicalism, Secker & Warburg, 1962 pg. 41

CHAPTER 3 - CLASS ANALYSIS

Class analysis is a holistic approach which has been widely used throughout history and across the political spectrum. It has taken many different forms. The essence of class analysis is society modelled as consisting of groups of people (classes) linked by common interests. Different classes have different interests, this generates conflict, and this conflict is one of the key dynamics determining the nature of society. In The Republic Plato discusses class struggle extensively, considering its amplification to be one of the key defects of democratic societies. In the Wealth of Nations Adam Smith considers the relative degree to which the workers and the masters (capitalists) are able to ‘combine’ against each other to be the main factor determining the wage rate, and the distribution of wealth. In The Federalist Papers, James Madison notes that “Those who hold and those who are without have ever formed distinct interests in society”1.

The product of a more honest age, the left-right spectrum has its origins in class analysis. It comes from the seating arrangements in various legislative bodies in revolutionary-era France. Representatives of the ruling class (aristocrats) sat to the right of the speaker, whilst representatives of the working class (commoners) sat to the left. That this model came to be the most widely used means of mapping political discourse indicates the power of class analysis.

When the classical socialist thinkers were writing, class was a major concept in mainstream political discourse. The existence of class was acknowledged, even trumpeted, by the ruling class. It was with the necessarily vague understanding of class prevalent in mainstream discourse that they engaged. By contrast, nowadays the existence of class is furiously denied. I believe that the essence of the left-wing tradition can be distilled as ‘the attempt to further the class struggle from below’. The fundamental aim of revolutionary socialism has been a society without a ruling class and the dynamic I refer to as the class struggle from above.

There are many common understandings of class which are unhelpful to our purposes here. Class analysis is most strongly associated with the thought of Karl Marx, and has been brought into disrepute by this association. It must be stressed here that very few of Marx ideas were original, and that his work was a synthesis of previous ideas. Marx is widely interpreted as believing that class was entirely determined by relation to production. Such a specific definition was absent from previous theories of class, including radical socialist ones. Whilst relation to production is a useful indicator, and production is perhaps the most important terrain of class struggle, such a definition would cause us to miss much of what is significant in class analysis.

For example, a practical result of the Marxist theory was to see industrial workers and peasants as entirely separate classes as they had different relations to production. However the class struggle waged by the ruling class usually targeted both indiscriminately, and resistance, in particular effective resistance, incorporated both. If our aim is to model the dynamics of this struggle, then the Marxist theory is unhelpful. Ones position in the class struggle is determined by more than relation to production.

Further, there is the understanding prevalent in sociology. A sociological understanding sees classes as different cultures within society and is interested in how this affects the identity, values and lifestyles of individuals. Mine is a political understanding, where class position is entirely determined by ones relation to the power struggles within society.

To illustrate how significant these differences are, consider what is referred to as the ‘middle class’ in the first world. Sociologists motivated by what is called liberalism in the United States look at the greater education, opportunities, support and social mobility middle class people possess and point to the unfairness of traditional working class people lacking this. From this, or its vulgarisations, the view of class struggle as something based on jealousy, waged by the traditional working class against the middle and ruling classes is sometimes deduced.

By the analysis I am using, what is called the middle class is part of the working class. When analysing middle class culture, common themes are work ethic, self discipline and ambition. Middle class people work for wages, generally as qualified professionals. An excellent political analysis of salaried professionals can be found in Jeff Schmidt’s Disciplined Minds2. Schmidt comprehensively demonstrates their position as patients rather than agents of the class struggle from above.

As different theories of class are models of different things they do not necessarily contradict one another. It is just important to note the distinctions as with, say, a sociological understanding of class, the idea of class struggle as the major force driving society is laughably flawed. This picture is often used to straw man class analysis.

So, what are the aims of our theory of class, and how are they to be achieved? What we are after is a holistic model of the dynamics which determine the nature of society and push its opening or closing. Due to the anti-specialisation required by the specific needs of political enquiry and the open society approach we want a model which is as accessible and as broad as possible. This is to give as many people as possible the tools to effectively engage on as fundamental a level as possible, both as individuals, and as contributing to discourse and so greater openness within movements.

In the basic model I propose, there are two major dynamics, the class struggle from above (CSA) and class struggle from below (CSB). Generally speaking, the effective CSA is massively tied up in the closing of society, the effective CSB in its opening. Corresponding to these are two significant classes; Ruling Class and Working Class. The most important analysis is that of the Ruling Class and the CSA. In just about every large scale society which has existed, a small minority has possessed far more political and economic power than the majority. This is the Ruling Class. Ruling Classes have taken many forms throughout history, for example; aristocracy, private-capitalist oligarchy and state-capitalist bureaucracy – the Nomenklatura of the USSR. The common feature is the massive concentration of power in the hands of a small minority.

All those who are not ruling class form the working class. The working class is the creation of the CSA, thus the analysis of the ruling class is prior and more significant. As Warren Buffet put it “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning”3. The working class is so called because one of the key objectives of the CSA has been to exploit, extract surplus value and as such make people work. Ruled Class would perhaps be a more apt description, however, as Working Class is the term which has been overwhelmingly used, I will continue with it.

The most striking examples of class struggle from above are events like the enclosure of the commons, where the structure of society is radically altered to the benefit of the ruling and detriment of the working class. However most CSA is not about this, it is about preserving the status quo and keeping the rabble in line. CSA incorporates everything from the most violent state terror to the most subtle means of propaganda and opinion manipulation.

It is worth stressing that CSA is not always consciously planned (though it often is), and perhaps the bulk of it consists of unconscious dynamics. As a means of conceiving this, consider Richard Dawkins concept of memes. Ideas and culture are considered to develop in a manner similar to life through natural selection. Whilst there are massive and obvious differences, this is very powerful as an analogy. The evolution of ideas is governed by selection pressures. A striking example would be heretics facing the stake in the middle ages – this obviously had a massive impact on which ideas and trends in culture spread and developed and which ones did not. As with natural selection, selection pressures do not have to be striking, and very subtle ones can have massive effects. (See my later section on the media for a detailed example of extensive CSA in the modern first world.)

The upshot of this is that we have all manner of cultural phenomenon which display most characteristics of conscious design – though they have not been consciously designed. I propose that class society creates selection pressures which cause the evolution of culture which furthers the class struggle from above. By example, there is an extensive literature on the role played by racism, sexism and homophobia in dividing the working class, diverting discontent and generally maintaining oppressive conditions. Oppressive culture takes a myriad forms, and it would be impossible to produce a rigorous analysis without extreme specialisation and ensuing myopia. From the view of an activist or engaged citizen, what is needed is a general map and understanding of how most of it is produced. This is what class analysis provides.

Exploitation, and hierarchical economic relationships, are important parts of the CSA. Throughout history we see classes clearly divided along economic lines. Slaves and Masters, Serfs and their Feudal Lords, Workers and Capitalists. The first two examples are not controversial, and a cursory glance at history and current affairs shows that the third should not be either. The interests of capitalists are very often diametrically opposed to those of their workers. Time and again history shows the former being achieved at the expense of the latter by the most gruesome means. Take for example Guatemala in the second half of the 20th century. We see a clear polarity of interests between the majority of Guatemalans and the United Fruit Company which essentially ran the place. One of the key issues was land use – the United Fruit Company owned most of the land, and used it to grow crops to be sold abroad (where the profits were also taken) whilst the people starved. As a result of popular organising and class struggle from below a democratic regime initiated some modest land reforms to help alleviate starvation and malnutrition. The United Fruit Companies response was to call in the CIA which carried out a coup, installing a string of military dictators, with regular interventions and support. They reversed the land reforms and carried out state terror which claimed 250000 lives in order to crush dissent. As it was often ethnically targeted, the UN considers it genocide.

That conflicts of interest arise over economic issues is obvious. Clearly we have conflict over the use of limited resources, as in Guatemala. More often we have the conflict of interest inherent in hierarchical and exploitative economic relationships such as wage labour. Capitalists generally want cheap labour, which works long hours, has few rights and can be moulded and directed in whatever way serves its interests. Naturally, this is not in the interest of working people. Time and again we see capitalists acting collectively, both through the state (on which they have inordinate influence) and outside it, to achieve this - often by aggressively restructuring society.

A prime example would be the enclosure of the commons. The ‘satanic mills’ of industrial revolution Britain held little appeal for most of the population, and most had the option of a subsistence farming lifestyle, on the vast quantities of land which had been common since the middle ages. In the context of considerable pressure from the rising capitalist class, the state ‘enclosed’ most of this common land – that is, made the exclusive property of the landed aristocracy. This rendered the traditional lifestyle impossible for most of the population impossible. This a key factor in the conditions which forced those who wanted to eat to migrate en masse to the cities and accept whatever terms the capitalists cared to set. Collective action by the ruling class to curb and limit the lifestyle options available to most of the population is very common in societies where the production relations between classes are technically voluntary (i.e. wage labour).

The social dynamic opposed to the CSA is the class struggle from below (CSB). It is a response to the CSA, and much of the CSA is an attempt to contain the CSB, so the two are heavily intertwined. Clearly the objectives of the CSA are not desirable to ordinary people - the CSB incorporates resistance in all its forms (and like the CSA it need not be conscious). As the structure of the two classes is radically different, so are the forms their struggles take. Where the CSA is often unconscious, the CSB is far more so. Ruling classes have always been rabidly class conscious, highly organised and motivated in waging the class struggle. Generally speaking, the working class has lacked organisation, class consciousness and as such motivation. A key aim of the CSA is to ensure and maintain this state of affairs.

Social Mobility in modern society is often touted as a refutation of the existence or importance of class. Leaving aside the question of how much Social Mobility exists in modern society, its presence would have a very marginal effect on class dynamics. What this argument is, is a moral argument. It takes claims about class to be complaints about the immorality of pre-determined inequality, and says this is mitigated as workers can change their class. However, when claims about class are understood as attempts to model social dynamics, this is completely irrelevant.

Working classes have taken many diverse forms throughout history. To greater and lesser extents they have been divided and stratified by the CSA. What unites the working class is the CSA directed at all of it. The degree to which the working class organises and wages the CSB reduces the CSA for all its victims. Class analysis is the source of the belief that different struggles are connected which has so inspired the left - expressed in the slogans “an injury to one is an injury to all” and “a victory anywhere is a victory everywhere”.

One clear advantage possessed by the working class is numbers, though this is offset and partly the cause of disorganisation. The main factor determining the strength of the CSB is the degree to which the working class can organise and coordinate its numbers – and the degree to which it can retain that organisation and coordination in the face of changes in circumstance and aggressive CSA.

This organisation and coordination has to effectively involve the working class, and it has to be dynamic and communicative. This is to ensure that it effectively represents the working class and that it can adapt to changes in circumstance. If it does not do the latter, it will fail. If it does not do the former, if the organisation comes to serve the interests of a minority, then this will result in the disenchantment of the working class with said organisation and so weaker CSB, particularly in the long term. If this is not fatal, we are likely to see either the collaboration of the directing minority with the existing ruling class (see the social democrat parties) or the creation of a new ruling class upon revolution (see the Bolsheviks).

It is worth noting too the hubris of associating the organisation CSB solely with a single organisation or party (as has often occurred). It incorporates an incomprehensibly vast array of cultural dynamics before which we should be humble, and we should be constantly on the lookout for new manifestations. When we discuss the organisation of the CSB, what we are discussing is democracy in its truest sense – the function, not the form. An Open Society. As a framework for clearly conceiving and furthering the organisation of the CSB, the open society approach is excellently suited. Considerably better than the liberal or Marxist paradigms. Openness within political movements is a key determinant of their strength, and this should be a key aim when building and influencing them. This is something which can and should be applied now, building the new society in the shell of the old, rather than in the idealistic planning of a new society.

Most of the efforts of the CSA have been directed towards preventing the organisation of the CSB. As the opening of society ensures the more effective organisation of the CSB, the CSA has always been by far the most powerful dynamic pushing the closing of society. If we want a serious understanding of the forces closing society, in order to combat them, it must be rooted in class analysis. Lacking this, the liberal paradigm produces moral judgements and flounders in any attempt to produce thought out strategy.

For these reasons I believe that the open society approach is an invaluable tool for those who wish to further the class struggle from below. Further that those who are serious about furthering the opening of society (or resisting its closing) would do well to embrace class analysis.

1 Madison, James, Federalist Paper #10, OUP Oxford, 2008
2 Schmidt, Jeff, Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives, Rowman & Littlefield, 2001
3 (Quoted) Ben Stein, New York Times, 26/11/2006

CHAPTER 4 - ANATOMY OF THE MODERN CSA

The view of Americas leading social philosopher, John Dewey, that “politics is the shadow cast on society by big business”1 is widely held. Indeed, it is shared at the highest levels. President Woodrow Wilson informed us, days before taking office, that “the masters of the government of the United States are the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States”. In this section I will give an outline of the mechanisms behind this mastery, the CSA as it exists today (with particular reference to the US and UK) and demonstrate why class analysis as outlined in the previous section is the best way to model the phenomena discussed. This requires making a lot of empirical claims in a short space, so I will be quoting extensively.

The most visible conflict of class interest can be seen at the point of production. The interests of bosses and workers are in many respects diametrically opposed. It is in the interest of bosses that workers are paid as little as possible and that the boss has as much power as possible, able to direct them in whatever manner proves most profitable and able to let them go the moment they prove unprofitable (note capital must do this, compete to externalise costs). On the other hand it is in the interest of workers to be paid as highly as possible, to have a degree of control over their work to ensure they live and work with dignity and to have secure future income. Both sides wage the struggle that results from this collectively and their ability to do so is impacted by, and so comes to be waged in most facets of society and culture. As a struggle between a privileged minority and the majority (as discussed at the end of section 3) the opening of society benefits labour’s struggle, the closing of society capital’s fight.

A key determinant of the balance of power between labour and capital is the level of unemployment. This has been widely recognised, to my mind the most sophisticated treatment is the work of economist Michael Kalecki, who argued that governments deliberately maintain unemployment to keep wages down and maintain the power of boss over worker. His follower, Professor Joan Robinson explains:
"The first function of unemployment (which has always existed in open or disguised forms) is that it maintains the authority of master over man. The master has normally been in a position to say: 'If you don't want the job, there are plenty of others who do.' When the man can say: 'If you don't want to employ me, there are plenty of others who will', the situation is radically altered. One effect of such a change might be to remove a number of abuses to which the workers have been compelled to submit in the past . . . [Another that] the absence of fear of unemployment might go further and have a disruptive effect upon factory discipline . . . [the worker may use] his newly-found freedom from fear to snatch every advantage that he can . .”3 The detrimental effect unemployment thus has on openness, by restricting the choices and control over their work available to most people should be obvious. (as an aside: hopefully this makes clear something which is often not understood – why the chronically unemployed should be considered part of the working class).

That governments deliberately maintain unemployment (by raising interest rates specifically for this purpose, not pursuing full employment policies etc) is openly admitted. "there's supporting testimony from Alan Greenspan. Several times during the late 1990s, Greenspan worried publicly that, as unemployment drifted steadily lower the 'pool of available workers' was running dry. The dryer it ran, the greater risk of 'wage inflation,' meaning anything more than minimal increases.”4 We find that “The Fed justifies limiting job growth and raising the unemployment rate because of its concern that inflation may get out of control, but this does not change the fact that it is preventing workers, and specifically less-skilled workers, from getting jobs, and clamping down on their wage growth."5

There is an element of truth in this. In the rare cases where there has been full or near full employment (more on this later) the shift in the ratio of supply to demand causes the price of labour to rise. Firms may then attempt to pass the increased costs incurred by this on to consumers in the form of higher prices. As prices rise with money wages, workers realise that their wages are not increasing in real terms and demand further money wage increases, so firms again raise prices. A government wishing to break this cycle and control inflation must either control wages or control prices. To a state in thrall to capital, the latter is unthinkable as it implies a reduction of profits, so only the former is considered. As economist Edward Herman tells us this approach “has a huge built-in bias. It takes as granted all the other institutional factors that influence the price level-unemployment trade-off (market structures and independent pricing power, business investment policies at home and abroad, the distribution of income, the fiscal and monetary mix, etc.) and focuses solely on the tightness of the labour market as the controllable variable. Inflation is the main threat, the labour market (i.e. wage rates and unemployment levels) is the locus of the solution to the problem."6 The deliberate maintenance of unemployment is only one state intervention carried out to further the CSA. Many more are detailed in economist Dean Bakers accessible work The Conservative Nanny State.

So the mastery over the state which Wilson ascribed to Capital is key to the CSA in modern society. We would do well to investigate the mechanisms behind it. First let’s consider the direct influence of capital on government. While a small part of a much bigger picture it is the simplest, most obvious and not to be overlooked. Viable political parties require significant funds; these can only be provided by wealthy elites and is overwhelmingly supplied by capital. The impact of this is given sophisticated treatment in Thomas Fergusson’s ‘investment theory of politics’7, in which the platforms of mainstream political parties are primarily determined by the preferences of ‘investors’ who fund them. Developed in the context of the US Republicans-Democrats, it can be generalised to Conservatives-New Labour, CDU-SPD etc.

Fergusson details a fundamental split in the ruling class. On the one side we have Labour intensive, nationally oriented firms in more competitive markets (these investing in Republicans, Conservatives, CDU etc). On the other side we see Capital intensive, internationally oriented firms in less competitive markets (which invest in Democrats, New Labour, SPD etc). The former see the host country more as a workforce the latter more as a market for their products. This leads the former to place more emphasis on cheap labour, the latter on economic stability and infrastructure. This is a very simplified account of a detailed theory, which explains party platforms to a great degree of subtlety which the reader is advised to consult.

Another fairly simple mechanism is Public debt. UK public debt is expected to double to 79% of GDP by 2013, while in the first quarter of 2009 US public debt stood at 78.1% of GDP. Doug Henwood informs us; "[p]ublic debt is a powerful way of assuring that the state remains safely in capital's hands. The higher a government's debt, the more it must please its bankers. Should bankers grow displeased, they will refuse to roll over old debts or to extend new financing on any but the most punishing terms (if at all). The explosion of [US] federal debt in the 1980s vastly increased the power of creditors to demand austere fiscal and monetary policies to dampen the US economy as it recovered . . . from the 1989-92 slowdown."8

More complex and more powerful is the phenomenon of Capital Flight. Capital is significantly more globalised than it was in the days of Woodrow Wilson, and this has increased its power. Where and to the extent capital is globalised we have a ‘market for states’. Capital will move to states with policies it perceives to its advantage, and governments must compete for capitals favour. Where a government pursues policies to capital’s perceived disadvantage capital may leave en masse, wrecking the economy. This requires no organisation, only the widespread perception that conditions are not favourable to capital. And it would be a cruel self deception to assume that capitals perceived advantage correlates to efficiency or other desirables. Key factors are government assistance in capitals struggle against labour, high unemployment, anti-union policies etc. The threat of capital flight compels governments to wage the CSA in all its forms against their people ‘in their own interest’, with the best intentions. Indeed, in many respects it is in the people’s interest to be suppressed and made subservient, as if this does not occur economic collapse does. Thus we have “the great paradox of our age, according to which those nations that prosper most (attract corporate investment) by most readily lowering their standard of living (wages, benefits, quality of life, political freedom). The net result of this system of extortion is a universal lowering of conditions and expectations in the name of competitiveness and prosperity."9 How powerful is the threat of capital flight? International economist Robert Wade describes its power in the modern United States as that of a “virtual senate” with “veto power” on government decisions.10

An example of Capital Flight bringing a wayward administration to heel can be seen with the 1974-9 British Labour Government. A big indicator of capital flight (and amplifier of the damage it does) is attacks on currency by speculators, as the World Bank informs us; “Speculative currency attacks are not a uniquely modern phenomenon. Historically, they have occurred during periods characterized by high capital mobility”11 .In 1974, a year of intense CSB with a major strikes forcing an election which ushered in a slightly radical Labour government, the FT Index for the London Stock Exchange fell from 500 to 150 points12. The Times newspaper noted that “the further decline in the value of the pound has occurred despite the high level of interest rates. . . . [D]ealers said that selling pressure against the pound was not heavy or persistent, but there was an almost total lack of interest amongst buyers. The drop in the pound is extremely surprising in view of the unanimous opinion of bankers, politicians and officials that the currency is undervalued."13 The devastation this wreaked eventually forced the government to accept an IMF bailout with conditions antithetical to the platform on which it was elected, the government’s attitude “we’ll do anything you say”14. On earlier efforts to pressure him, Prime Minister Harold Wilson reflected "a newly elected government with a mandate from the people was being told, not so much by the Governor of the Bank of England but by international speculators, that the policies on which we had fought the election could not be implemented; that the government was to be forced into the adoption of Tory policies to which it was fundamentally opposed. The Governor confirmed that that was, in fact, the case."15 There are many more examples, some, such as that deployed against the Sandinistas in 1980s Nicaragua more extreme.

Since the 1970s capital has become still further globalised. The subsequent Thatcher government removed many impediments to Capital Flight and it stands as a more potent weapon now than it did then. But this wasn’t always and needn’t be the case. To the extent that capital mobility is restricted, Capital Flight is prevented. Such restrictions were a key pillar of the economic system which emerged from the postwar Bretton Woods agreement where “limits on capital mobility substituted for limits on democracy as insulation from market pressures”16 JM Keynes, renowned economist and the British delegate considered the establishment of the right of governments to restrict capital movement the most important achievement of the Bretton Woods agreement. A striking example of this is South Korea where, during its period of miraculous growth, capital flight carried the death penalty – freeing the government to pursue policies conducive to long term growth rather than the short term interest of capital.

The result of the Bretton Woods system, 1945 - mid 1970s, is often called ‘the golden age of capitalism’. A major weapon of the CSA had been disarmed, and governments were more able to implement the demands of the CSB. As predicted by my model, the CSB closely correlates to the opening of society and as such carries a multiplier effect. The threat of capital flight no longer able to enforce anti-labour policies, unemployment reached its lowest ever rates and the CSB compelled the development of the welfare state to an unprecedented level (this amongst other things making unemployment a much less scary prospect and further increasing the bargaining power of labour). In flat contradiction to Marx ‘immiseration thesis’, the improvement of conditions increased the belligerence of the working class as they increased openness.

The increased security and power ordinary people gained in relation to their work had a profound psychological effect. The 1975 report to the ruling class Trilateral Commission, aiming to understand the rising dissent tells us "People no longer felt the same compulsion to obey those whom they had previously considered superior to themselves in age, rank, status, expertise, character, or talent". This resulting in "previously passive or unorganised groups in the population, blacks, Indians, Chicanos, white ethnic groups, students and women... embark[ing] on concerted efforts to establish their claims to opportunities, rewards, and privileges, which they had not considered themselves entitled to before." Economic victories and psychological/cultural liberation mutually reinforced oneanother. This era experienced both the highest and most equitable economic growth ever seen, as well as a profound broadening of culture (the ‘60’s’).

While the gains of this remarkable period were significant, the working class did not move quickly enough to consolidate them or disarm the many powerful mechanisms of CSA still in existence. The Mainstream Keynesians and reformist Social Democrats in official power were blind to class struggle and expected the period to continue indefinitely. As usual the ruling class had a much clearer understanding. The ‘limits on democracy’ had to be restored before the vast edifice of the CSA unravelled completely. (This is the exact language of the Trilateral Commission report which argues that high employment leads to "an excess of democracy." And that "the effective operation of a democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and non-involvement on the part of some individuals and groups. . . . In itself, this marginality on the part of some groups is inherently undemocratic, but it is also one of the factors which has enabled democracy to function effectively."17)

The model for the great reaction began in Chile 1973 with what in Latin America is called ‘the first 9/11’ – a CIA orchestrated coup which replaced left leaning democrats with the bloodthirsty Pinochet dictatorship. This the first implementation of the ideology prepared to replace Keynesianism and the Breton Woods system and the model for the Neo-liberal project. Similar US violence struck Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia, Nicaragua etc. Much more commonly economic warfare was used, as against Britain. A readable overview of this process, engineered catastrophes used to shock and disarm resistance to the ‘reforms’, can be found in journalist Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine18.

The new order was characterised by anti-labour policies, union breaking, high unemployment, the dismantling of the welfare state, transfer of wealth from poor to rich and CSA/societal closing by any means politically feasible. Restrictions of capital mobility were dismantled, and it became much less practical for countries to deviate from the one size fits all economic model demanded by international capital. This homogenising ‘globalisation’, alongside aggravated CSA within countries massively reduced openness and so societies’ problem solving ability, so Growth “slowed down. During the 1960s, the average rate of growth of world GDP per capita was 3.5% per annum . . . The average rate of growth of world GDP per capital was 2.1% per annum during the 1970s, 1.3% per annum during the 1980s and 1% per annum during the 1990s. This growth was more volatile compared with the past, particularly in the developing world. the growth was also [more] unevenly distributed across countries . . .”19

We see here the role of US foreign policy (often, as in Indonesia, with Britain in tow) in the destruction of third world democracies and democratic movements. The CSA has always been a key motive of western foreign policy. Some indication of the extent of this can be gathered from extensive statistical studies by Edward Herman demonstrating a strong correlation between US military aid and torture, his hypothesis; they correlate independently with improving the business climate20. This should be unsurprising considering the array of mechanisms outlined by which a globalised ruling class controls western governments. Governments act to reinforce these mechanisms and these mechanisms compel further government action. The state can be considered a section of the ruling class.

This shows with particular clarity the necessity of the closing of society to effective CSA – in this case the society in question being the international community. Where a system which benefits a privileged minority at the expense of most of mankind is to be maintained, alternatives must not be visible. Hence what analyst Noam Chomsky calls “the threat of a good example” must be averted. No matter how small or inconsequential the country in question may seem, deviations from the global norm, which could potentially prove effective at meeting the needs of their people must not be permitted – as they may inspire others. So the US State Department advocated the previously discussed 1954 replacement of Guatemalan democracy with a genocidal dictatorship as follows; "Guatemala has become an increasing threat to the stability of Honduras and El Salvador. Its agrarian reform is a powerful propaganda weapon: its broad social program of aiding the workers and peasants in a victorious struggle against the upper classes and large foreign enterprises has a strong appeal to the populations of Central American neighbors where similar conditions prevail."21

This section is by necessity of its length an incomplete overview. But hopefully it has made clear the some of the major processes by which the CSA occurs, demonstrating their existence, significance and the interdependence of the various mechanisms comprising these processes. Also the interdependence of the various actors implementing them – states and capital. As a result attempts to understand these mechanisms and actors in isolation will be at best incomplete. I hope too that the examples make clear the important relationship between openness and class struggle.

Class Analysis as detailed in the previous section thus represents the best framework for constructing the sort of political theory demanded by the conclusions of my methodological introduction and the open society approach. Meaning the best framework for producing an accessible, holistic theory of the forces pushing the opening and closing of society, able to be widely distributed due to its accessibility and allowing people to most effectively engage with and influence these forces.

In this section, a quick overview, I have focused on ‘objective’ economic and violent aspects of the CSA. ‘Subjective’ psychological aspects are arguably more significant (particularly in defusing the CSB), thought these are again strongly interdependent with the aspects just outlined. In the next section, a case study on the mass media in the US and UK, I treat these psychological aspects as well as their relationship to the economic ones and showcase my theory in a specific context.

1 (Quoted) Westbrook, Robert, John Dewey and American Democracy, Cornell, 1991
2 (Quoted) Sklar, Martin, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism: 1890-1918, Cambridge, 1998, pp.413-14
3 Robinson, Joan, Collected Economic Papers: vol. 1, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1973, pp. 84-5
4 Doug Henwood, After the New Economy, pp. 206-7
5 Baker, Dean, The Conservative Nanny State, LULU, 2006 p. 31
6 Herman, Edward S., Beyond Hypocrisy, South End Press, Boston, 1992, pg 94
7 Fergusson, Thomas, Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems, University Of Chicago Press, 1995
8 Henwood, Doug, Wall Street: How it works and for whom, Verso, London, 1998 pp. 23-24
9 Noble, David Progress without People: In defense of Luddism, Charles H. Kerr Publishing Ltd., Chicago, 1993 pp. 91-92
10 Wade, Robert, Challenge, January-February, 2004
11 IMF research department staff, Capital Flow Sustainability and Speculative Currency Attacks, http://www.worldbank.org/fandd/english/1297/articles/0111297.htm
12 John Casey, "The Seventies", The Heavy Stuff, no. 3, p. 21
13 The Times, 10/6/76
14 Donaldson, Peter, A Question of Economics, p. 89
15 Wilson, Harold, The Labour Government, London, 1971 p. 37
16 Eichengreen, Barry, Globalising Capital: A History of the International Monetary System, Princeton, 1996
17 Crozier, Michael and Huntington, Samuel P. and Watanuki Joji, The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission, New York University Press, 1975
18 Klein, Naomi, The Shock Doctrine, Metropolitan Books, 2007
19 Nayyar, Deepak, "Globalisation, history and development: a tale of two centuries," pp. 137-159, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol. 30, No. 1, pp. 153-4 and p. 154
20 (Cited) Chomsky, Noam , Turning the Tide, South End Press, 1999 p. 158
21 (Quoted) Chomsky, Noam, What Uncle Sam Really Wants, Odonian Press, 2002 http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/ChomOdon_Example.html

CASE STUDY - THE MASS MEDIA

In this section I will outline the Herman-Chomsky model of the mass media. I will argue that it corresponds to reality and details the mechanisms behind important aspects of the CSA. Finally I will discuss it as a practical example of the sort of analysis and concern which should emerge from the approach I have been advocating.

In Manufacturing Consent (1988) economist Edward Herman in collaboration with Noam Chomsky outlines ‘a propaganda model’, detailing how economic forces shape the content of political news media. In a retrospective article he notes; “We had long been impressed with the regularity with which the media operate on the basis of a set of ideological premises, depend heavily and uncritically on elite information sources, and participate in propaganda campaigns helpful to elite interests. In trying to explain why they do this we looked to structural factors as the only possible root of the systematic patterns of behavior and performance.”1 The essence of the model is five ‘filters’ which prevent certain types of stories from appearing. Ownership, Advertising, Government-sources, Flak and Anti-communist Ideology.

The first filter, ownership, establishes amongst other things the profit orientation of the mass media, the assumption on which the others rest. Modern national newspapers are capital intensive enterprises, operating in an oligopolistic market with high barriers to entry. Setting one up is impossible without enormous resources, and staying in business (thereby not losing the associated investment) impossible without running it along lines of explicit profit orientation. The media are owned and operated by the same people in the same manner as most other industries. One may expect this, and explicit profit orientation to significantly influence the culture, values, and internal organisation of media institutions – this influencing content.

The second filter is what Herman calls ‘the advertising licence to do business’. As we have established, the major media are profit oriented institutions selling a product to a market. The product is audiences, the market is advertisers. In the present day UK, even ostensibly ‘leftwing’ papers such as the guardian and independent get over 75% of their revenue from advertisers. This allows papers to be sold at well below production cost, is an effective subsidy and makes papers without, or with less, advertising revenue uncompetitive and unviable. Producing an audience which meets the demands of advertisers is the main motive driving media institutions and decisions about content.

What is being sold to advertisers, and what makes it attractive to them? They are being sold an audience, and are attracted by the degree to which this will result in sales. The size of the audience is a factor here, but more significant is what is called audience ‘quality’ – the likelihood that they will buy advertised products. Chomsky, Herman’s co-author, discusses how the general strategy for a media enterprise facing failure is to up quality at the expense of circulation. Key to quality is wealth, rich readers have more to spend on advertised products, so content must be designed to attract wealthy readers, and societies discourse is skewed in favour of elements attractive to the wealthy. Further, content must be designed to induce the ‘buying mood’. Volumes could be written on precisely what this involves, suffice to say that such things as critical thought, discomfort, outrage, anti-capitalism, anti-consumerism etc are not conducive.

An example of this filter in action can be seen with British social-democratic press in the 1960’s. This comprising the Daily Herald, News Chronicle and Sunday Citizen, with a combined average daily readership of 9.3 million, all gone by 1967. Media analyst James Curran notes that in its last year “The Daily Herald actually had almost double the readership of The Times, the Financial Times and the Guardian combined”, and surveys tell us this readership “thought more highly of their paper than the regular readers of any other popular newspaper” and “also read more in their paper than the readers of other popular papers despite being overwhelmingly working class”2. However, the herald had 8.1% of national daily circulation, but only 3.1% of net advertising revenue. This rendered it uncompetitive and forced its closure – – not because it was ineffective at meeting consumer demand, at this it was better than its competitors – –but because of its political slant and the socio-economic status of its readership. The News Chronicle and Sunday Citizen faced the same difficulties, figures adjusted for circulation the Sunday Citizen got only 1/10th the advertising revenue of the Sunday Times and 1/7th the revenue of the observer. Curran and Seaton make a convincing case than the elimination of the social democratic press was a major factor in the decline of the Labour Party. The Herald in particular was an institution offering “an alternative framework of analysis and understanding that contested the dominant systems of representation in both broadcasting and the mainstream press”3 to a significant fraction of the population. Its elimination must thus be considered a serious narrowing of discourse and closure of society.

So, with advertising, the operation of market mechanisms does not, as might be supposed, produce a ‘democratic’ media, the form of which is determined by consumer demand. The analogous political system would be elections where peoples votes are weighted by income. The influence of advertising goes beyond necessitating efforts to attract it; advertisers frequently threaten withdrawal to directly influence specific stories. Of 150 American newspaper editors questioned in a 1992 survey 90% had experienced advertisers threatening withdrawal to influence a story, 70% had experienced advertisers demanding that stories be stopped altogether.4

Advertising grants increased revenue in exchange for a particular line. The third filter Sourcing grant lower costs for the same price. Any industry requires a steady flow of raw materials to operate, firms which cannot get them as cheaply as their competitors are at a competitive disadvantage. For the media, raw materials primarily consist of news information. Governments expend an enormous amount of effort and resources to provide this in an easy to use format, naturally with the slant the government desires. Herman details the enormous amount of resources directed towards this. It is much cheaper to use this than to source your own news, so those who take the official line receive an effective subsidy and competitive advantage.

Professor of communications Robert McChesney explains “Professional journalism relies heavily on official sources. Reporters have to talk to the PM's official spokesperson, the White House press secretary, the business association, the army general. What those people say is news. Their perspectives are automatically legitimate.” Whereas, according to McChesney, 'if you talk to prisoners, strikers, the homeless, or protesters, you have to paint their perspectives as unreliable, or else you've become an advocate and are no longer a "neutral" professional journalist.'5

Herman advances the principle of “bureaucratic affinity”. Both government public relations departments and major media are highly bureaucratic organisations which function and process information in very similar fashions. Thus there is little translation required and processing news sourced from the government much less costly than that sourced elsewhere. The same applies to information sourced from the extensive public relations industry, which also commands serious resources. As a final point, withdrawal of sourcing and its convenient and timely provision is a potent mechanism by which governments can discipline critical media.

Herman describes the fourth filter, Flak, as “negative responses to a media statement or [TV or radio] program. It may take the form of letters, telegrams, phone calls, petitions, law-suits, speeches and Bills before Congress, and other modes of complaint, threat and punitive action”6. In significant quantities, this can become embarrassing, costly and damaging to media institutions. The ability to produce flak directly correlates to wealth and power, so this is overwhelmingly a mechanism for punishing criticism of powerful interests. Herman discusses in detail many organisations set up and given serious resources by Big Business, the primary function of which are the production of flak. An example would be the Global Climate Coalition, funded by fossil fuel and automobile companies to attack climate science.

The fifth filter Anti-Communist ideology is specific to the United States during what is called the ‘cold war’. However many of the processes behind this can be generalised and remain relevant. Many factors make the reinforcement of dominant ideologies and memes more competitive than challenging them. For example, we have what is called ‘concision’; it takes considerably fewer column inches to effectively advance a position with which people are familiar than one with which they are not. Thus it is more competitive to reinforce dominant memes than to challenge them. Naturally there is significant interaction between the filters. For instance, Flak can lead to advertiser withdrawal, and is likely to be picked up by media subordinated by the other factors.

In Manufacturing Consent Herman presents detailed case studies testing the predictions of this his model against the performance of the US media. Of particular note is his analysis and extensive statistical presentation of the differences in coverage of ‘worthy and unworthy victims’. Victims of abuses carried out by official enemies are given massive coverage, sympathy and the abuses are often exaggerated. By contrast victims of similar or worse abuses carried out by the United States its allies and clients are generally ignored, or where they are given coverage it is limited, their suffering is downplayed and qualifications and apologetics are provided. Very informative is his explosion of the myth that sections of the mainstream US media took an ‘adversarial stance’ during the Indochina conflict, or more outrageously that it ‘lost the war’.

Most revealing is his exhaustive comparison of the coverage and reality of 1982-5 Central American elections. The Nicaraguan elections was “by Latin American standards a model of probity and fairness” and the incumbent party “did little more to take advantage of its incumbency than incumbent parties everywhere (including the United States) routinely do”7, according to the report of independent observers from the Latin American Studies Association. The Nicaraguan government was a US official enemy against which Washington was fighting an illegal proxy war. The US media universally portrayed the election as a sham conducted by a brutal tyranny looking for a veneer of legitimacy. Next door in Guatemala and El Salvador we had actual sham elections, stage managed by Washington to legitimise its client regimes. The US media overwhelmingly portrayed these elections as free, fair and legitimate. Daniel Santiago, a catholic priest working in El Salvador gives us some insight into the nature of the regime legitimised;
“People are not just killed by death squads in El Salvador -- they are decapitated and then their heads are placed on pikes and used to dot the landscape. Men are not just disemboweled by the Salvadoran Treasury Police; their severed genitalia are stuffed into their mouths. Salvadoran women are not just raped by the National Guard; their wombs are cut from their bodies and used to cover their faces. It is not enough to kill children; they are dragged over barbed wire until the flesh falls from their bones, while parents are forced to watch.”8
Herman writes “We would expect reports on Guatemala put out by Amnesty International and other human-rights groups to be downplayed or ignored, despite their spectacular data and horrifying stories. This is a strong test of the model, as the number of civilians murdered between 1978 and 1985 may have approached 100,000, with a style of killing reminiscent of Pol Pot … The expectations of a propaganda model are fully realized”9

The British group Media Lens have analysed the present day media extensively, primarily drawing on the Herman-Chomsky model. Their analysis is profound and wide ranging, their primary focus the ‘liberal’ Guardian and Independent. Particularly revealing is their comparison of (very similar) western and soviet media coverage of the respective invasions of Afghanistan. Likewise their discussion of coverage of mortality in Iraq where studies by world renowned epidemiologists which appeared in the Lancet were at first ignored, then virulently attacked while the Iraq Body Count, conducted by unqualified individuals, was taken as authoritative because of its much lower figures.

What I have presented is necessarily a simplified summary and the reader is encouraged to consult Manufacturing Consent. In particular, I have focused on the political Broadsheet print media to keep to a single example. However, most aspects of the model can be generalised to television, radio and to a lesser extent the internet. They can be further generalised (though the effects will be less direct) to non political media and indeed all mass culture.

The direct consequence of these filters is the reduction of openness. Their function is the narrowing of discourse, the exclusion of perspectives on the basis of the interests they threaten and represent. They ensure that the media present the picture of the world desired by the ruling class, that views critical of the ruling class are marginalised and that discourse conducive to the development of the CSB does not occur. Evidence documented by Herman and Chomsky, as well as others such as Media Lens and John Pilger demonstrates that they are very effective.

There is a substantial documentary record detailing how a media which functions in this manner was consciously engineered. In early 20th century Britain and America it was recognised that it was becoming less and less feasible to use force to control the population, so new methods had to be devised. On this topic, the ‘progressive essays’ of Walter Lippmann, the hugely influential liberal intellectual and member of Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information are very enlightening. Lippmann advocates “the manufacture of consent” (where Herman and Chomsky got the title of their book) as a “self-conscious art and regular organ of popular government”, by a “specialised class”, an “elite”, with the ability and virtue required to manage those “common interests” which “very largely elude public opinion entirely”. These noble shepherds must “live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd”. The general public, those “ignorant and meddlesome outsiders”, need to be kept in their place as “spectators” and prevented from becoming “participants”10. Such views were shared by Wilson and permeated his administration. Wilson and Lippmann very much represented the ‘liberal’ end of the ruling class spectrum, ‘conservatives’ were much more robust in their support for the active marginalisation of the public.

It is worth noting the difference between Herman’s approach to the media and that generally derived from classical liberalism. The latter concerns itself solely with official censorship, the right to free speech being all that is significant. The former concerns itself with the processes of the distribution of information and their practical consequences – freedom from official censorship being necessary but not sufficient. As previously argued, liberalism is an archaic worldview, designed for engagement with a political order built on naked force. The nature of the foe and the fight has changed, so if political theory is to be effective it must too.

The Herman-Chomsky model of the media precisely is the sort of analysis the Open Society Approach aims to produce and disseminate. A detailed account of the processes by which openness is inhibited and the CSA prosecuted. Significantly, it is not an ethical condemnation, but a practical account of what is happening. It is through such understanding and its dissemination that the CSB is activated and effectively prosecuted. This is effective in and of itself, as so much of the CSA consists of widely held false pictures of the world. A demonstration of the manner in and degree to which the information people are presented with is systematically distorted encourages a re-evaluation of worldviews and future scepticism like little else. Any serious proposal to make the distribution of information more open must be based on this understanding, and the dissemination of this understanding motivates the pressure required to get the proposal implemented.

1 Herman, Edward, The Propaganda Model: A Retrospective, Against All Reason, Volume 1: 1-14 ~ 9 December 2003
2 Curran, James, “Advertising and the Press,” in, The British Press: A Manifesto, Macmillan, 1978, pp. 252-55
3 Ibid p. 254
4 (Cited), Cromwell, David, Private Planet, Jon Carpenter Publishing, 2002, ch. 3
5 (Quoted) Ibid.
6 Herman, Edward and Chomsky, Noam, Manufacturing Consent: the political economy of the mass media, Pantheon Books, New York, 1988, p. 26
7 Latin American Studies Association (LASA), The Electoral Process in Nicaragua: Domestic and International Influences. , Latin American Studies Association, Austin, TX 1985, p 32
8 Santiago, Daniel The Harvest of Justice: The Church of El Salvador Ten Years After Romero, Paulist Press, 1993
9 Herman, Edward and Chomsky, Noam, Manufacturing Consent: the political economy of the mass media, Pantheon Books, New York, 1988, p. 75
10 (Various Sources. All Lippmann’s remarks Quoted in) Chomsky, Noam, Hegemony or Survival, Penguin, 2003, p. 6

CONCLUDING REMARKS

This dissertation has been about ways of looking at things. Mainly of course about ways of looking at politics and advocating one. I hope, at least, that I have demonstrated this to be an area worthy of serious discussion. While writing The Social Contract Rousseau is said to have cried out “All my ideas fit together, but I cannot articulate them all at once”. This reflects my sentiments exactly, particularly now I am concluding. Politics is peculiar as a field, in that received ways of looking at things have been especially structured for ineffectiveness. The development of the way people look at politics is heavily determined by political phenomena and these phenomena are heavily influenced by the way people look at politics. These phenomena are very many, extremely complex, non-linear processes with massive interdependence between them.

The upshot of this is that we need a holistic way of looking at politics. If political theory is to be democratic in anything more than name, its goal must be to provide an accessible understanding of the world with a focus on the means of effecting and influencing change. We find the effective function of the dominant liberal approach is the opposite. Thus its critique and the development of alternatives is an important project.

In many situations, it is basic tactics for activists to express themselves as far as possible in the prevalent language and way of looking at things, making their ideas more easily understood and more favourably received (for an example of the effectiveness of this, see libertarian socialist Noam Chomsky’s extensive reference to classical liberalism). Nevertheless, coming to actually think in these terms is counterproductive (reasons outlined earlier), as is reinforcing these modes of thought. To the curious reader, an exposition of a better way of looking at the world is more interesting and engaging than effective propaganda. So there is a perpetual trade-off, which it is worth being consciously aware of, and it remains well worth developing our own way of looking at things.

The way of looking at things I have advocated is a development of the ‘Open Society Approach’, taken from Popper and synthesised with Class Analysis. The Open Society Approach rescues the concept of freedom from liberal abstraction. It stresses its practical consequences. Class Analysis (the modelling of social struggles) represents the furthest development of accessible, holistic modelling of political phenomena. Engagement with this is the logical conclusion of the pragmatic bent of The Open Society Approach. The Open Society Approach is invaluable to understanding what constitutes effective class struggle, Class Analysis built on it shows us the importance of freedom to effective action and why the left should value freedom very highly.
The reaching of some final ‘conclusion’ would be antithetical to the approach I have advocated – every development of which should widen the scope for enquiry. I see this dissertation as a rough sketch of an approach to be developed. This development to consist not only of theory, but of practice (bearing in mind that openness and the CSB have been practiced since long before they were expressed as concepts) as for either to be truly effective it must develop through significant interaction with the other. I see the clearer formulation of the leftwing worldview, better demonstrating how it hangs together, as the main achievement here. For further development I have in mind the clear expression of some of the many invaluable insights into the nature of politics developed through the conscious practice of the CSB, which form the bedrock of the Left-Wing tradition. I hope the reader will see potential developments that I have not.

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