Since 2008, and the beginning of the present phase of the crisis, growing austerity has developed everywhere. This policy was supposed to reduce the debts and relaunch growth. And then, like a rabbit out of a magician's hat, a new alternative was flourished which was supposed to cure all ills. It was called recovery. It is called for throughout the press, the television and radio. There's a real magic to it: growth could come back and generalised debt reduced. The debt could be “monetised”, i.e. paid off by printing money. What does this jargon of the bourgeois specialists mean? In reality, a few quite simple questions are posed: why this sudden turnaround by the great majority of the leaders of the euro zone? What is the reality of this policy? Has generalised austerity finished? Will the crisis continue to deepen or not in the near future ?

Austerity only generates recession

In Greece, Ireland, Italy, and most dramatically in recent weeks Spain, the population has been attacked on all sides during the last years. Workers at work, the unemployed, youth, the retired, each and everyone has seen their quality of life collapse. Hospitals, schools and all the public services have been butchered. The political justification of this economic war against all the exploited was clear. Listen to all the governments that were in power and they said ‘accept these sacrifices today: reduce state and public debt while lowering the cost of labour in order to easier sell the goods produced and thus growth will be re-launched’. Despite the struggles that developed in reaction to this policy,  which looks at the working class like a sheep to be mercilessly fleeced, austerity continued to accelerate. But, to the great confusion of the capitalist class, so did the crisis.

Since 2008, the GDP of the euro zone has remained around the same and close to 8900 billion euros. On the other hand total public and private debt has continued to accelerate and has now reached  8000 billion euros. It is incredible to see that all the wealth created through a year of labour practically corresponds to the existing debt and we are only talking about the official part which is recognised as such. Worse than this for the bourgeoisie is that the economy has now settled into recession. In 2012, Germany alone could show a small 0.5% growth. For the other countries of the zone the collapse is evident. In Greece and Spain activity is rapidly retreating and mass unemployment is an established fact. Debt is exploding and practically out of control in these countries – at the very moment when their GDP is collapsing. As to France, which is just managing to avoid the worst, it is now paying its state employees by borrowing money on what is called the financial markets.

So, the bourgeoisie is simply verifying a fact which has been evident for a long time: generalised austerity and the crisis of credit leads to recession and the deepening of debt. What to do then?

An apparently brilliant idea: recovery

The current debates within the bourgeoisie are basically still those that have been going on since 2008: how and when will we be able to repay the debt? It's then that an idea was presented as if it were new. In order to repay the debt, it will be necessary to create wealth. It was just a matter of  thinking about it. This idea which has existed at least since the economic crisis of the 1930s has come to the surface once again. We could ask why it wasn't thought of earlier, for example since 2008 when the bottomless pit of debt made its most spectacular appearance.

How do you revive growth? That’s the question which is haunting the bourgeois class. For some, it is necessary to make production in the euro zone more competitive and thus lower the cost of the goods produced. To put it bluntly, it is necessary to look to lowering wages in order to effectively compete with Chinese, Indian, or Brazilian production, or with the countries of central Europe for example, and thus prevent production being moved abroad. Claiming to revive activity through the sharper competitive edge thus obtained would be laughable if it didn’t involve such suffering for the working class.

For others, the states of the euro zone should directly take charge of the recovery of growth. Here the idea is the following: since banks close to bankruptcy cannot lend enough, either to businesses or individuals, it is the state which has to directly take command. From here would come road construction, high-speed rail lines, etc. The companies concerned would get to work, hire wage earners and participate thus in re-launching growth. The problem is the following: where does the extra money come from that must be invested for such a result? Once the funds are used from existing sources, which represent about 450 billion euros, there has to be recourse to further debts taken on by states already at risk of bankruptcy. At present, in the western countries,  in order to produce a euro of wealth, it is necessary to go into debt for 8 extra euros. In other words, a recovery plan implies this: a debt which increases eight times more quickly than the GDP. But goods produced are not goods sold. How much supplementary credit will it be necessary to distribute to bled-dry “consumers” so that they can buy these goods? This is absurd and unrealistic. The capital engaged has become too significant for the profit to be  made. Given that capitalism can no longer deal with its current levels of debt, how will it be able to do it in the scenario described here?  How does it prevent the public deficits exploding and the financial markets demanding exorbitant interest rates in order to continue lending to states? Behind all the ideological and media campaigns at present, this so-called recovery will have to make do with funds presently available and not yet utilised, which can only have a marginal affect on activity.

Monetisation and mutualisation of the debt is indispensable but ultimately unmanageable

The new president of France, Monsieur Hollande, has joined in with many other leaders in the euro zone, except Germany of course, in singing a new tune which is supposed to fill us with hope. The title of this song that he hopes will become popular is: monetisation and mutualisation of the debt. Which if nothing else is very poetic. Quite simply monetisation means the printing of money. The central bank is in charge of it and takes in exchange acknowledgements of the debts of the state or the banks, and in general that guarantees the obligations. Mutualisation means that all states of the euro zone take collective responsibility for the debt. The states that are in less difficulty pay for those in more difficulty.

When enough wealth is no longer created and such wealth no longer sold in order to prevent debt dragging the system into the abyss, the financial markets gradually turn away. A recovery without real effect and a still greater debt makes borrowers more and more rare and borrowing more and more dear. Then comes the time to tap the savings banks, the first stage of the monetisation of the debt to come. The state becomes a thief on a grand scale. The increase in taxes of all sorts and compulsory loans have their effect. This borrowing is evaluated as a percentage of taxes paid by everyone. It must be repaid after a certain period and that gives rise to interest payments. It is this that they are currently looking into in France as for the whole euro zone. A responsibility for the state to pay us back tomorrow with the money that it no longer possesses today! It is quite evident that faced with the vast ocean of the bottomless pit of debt all this can only be a droplet . This however feeds into the austerity that we are already suffering from.

But again the general alert is out. Greece and Spain are sounding the alarm. Only a few months after the Central European Bank injected 1000 billion around the banks, the whole public financial system is wavering.

For 2012 alone in the euro zone, and so as to be able to face up to the part of this debt whose payment is now due, it will be necessary to find between 1500 and 4000 billion euro. These figures have nothing to do with reality of course since the Bank of Spain alone is claiming 23 billion. The sums are enormous and out of capitalism's reach. There only remains a road full of pitfalls for capital in its attempts to avoid immediate bankruptcy. In mid-June, Greece holds new elections. If a party refusing the austerity of the euro zone comes to power in this country, the exit of Greece from the euro zone is a possibility. For the population in Greece this would mean a return to their original money and a devaluation of the drachma by about 50%. This country would sink into autarky and  misery. Which changes nothing much of the fate that awaits it. On the other hand, the bill for the banks and for the central bank of the euro zone will be pricey. In the accounts of the banks there are still many acknowledgements of Greek debt, close to 300 billion euros. But the fundamental question is not that. If the euro zone lets Greece come out of it through its impotence to keep it in, what will happen with Spain, Italy, etc?

The monetisation of the debt or the moment the bill is due

And now it’s Spain’s turn: all its banks in real bankruptcy and its regions all financially unmanageable. The mouthful is enormous, too big to swallow. The financial markets and all these institutions which get together the private money available in the world are not mistaken when they claim still more interest to borrow to this country. Presently, the rate over a ten-year state debt is approaching 7%. This rate is the maximum that the state can bear; above it, it can no longer borrow. Mario Rajoy, in a devious manner, appealed for help from the Central European Bank. The latter put up a deaf ear. The Spanish government then announced that it was going to try to finance its banks by going to the market. Soon after that Spain’s banks were given a very substantial lifeline of 100 billion euros. But all this is very odd. Banks in the world have to lend money to the insolvent Spanish state so that it can lend to its insolvent banks which, in exchange, will return with acknowledgements of insolvent debt. The absurdity is total. The impasse manifest.

Then, at one moment or another it will be necessary that at least part of the debt is monetised and mutualised. Paper money will have to be created that Germany will guarantee in part with the wealth that it produces. It is the Gross National Product of Germany that will authorise a certain degree of money creation. Germany impoverishes itself and slows down the general impoverishment of Europe. Why does it do this? Quite simply because it sells a great part of its goods in this zone.

Monetisation of the debt, a recognition of impotence

Monetising part of the debt shows in reality that capitalism can no longer develop, even on the basis of credit. This is the official moment when capitalism tells us: “I am going to create money that is progressively losing its value so that my debt will not explode immediately” I would like to invest it better, create wealth and sell, but I can no longer do so. The debt is too immense. It has me by the throat...  quick paper money, more paper money and some time is gained”.

Money, including credit, should represent the wealth produced and the production that will be sold at a profit. For decades, growth has been maintained with credits which they have said would be repaid one day. When? No-one knows. This deadline is always pushed away in time. The wealth produced in ten years is already destroyed in production and sale today. What remains except for debts and still more debts?

Monetisation is the triumph of fictitious capital to the detriment of real capital, that which contains within it real wealth. To create massive amounts of money in order to buy your own debt comes down to the destruction of capital. That provokes galloping inflation of prices, despite the recession. This path also leads to austerity. Because how can you survive if the price of goods is going up every day?

And if monetisation and mutualisation hadn't taken place?

Can capitalism accelerate its own descent into hell? And if Germany was to refuse monetisation thus paralysing the European Central Bank? No-one can totally dismiss such a possibility even if it would lead to a collective suicide. For some months, the German bourgeoisie has made some well-informed calculations in order to evaluate the costs of the break-up of or the financing of the euro zone. In both cases, in time, the bill is too much and unsupportable, but in the short term, what is the most  terrifying perspective?

In any case, Germany will demand austerity. For German capital austerity is the hope that through a reduction in the acceleration of public debt, the slate will be a little cleaner. In reality all this is only a tragic illusion which means that proletarians everywhere will face increasingly uncertain living conditions.

The impasse for capitalism at this point is so great that it wants to launch a recovery of the economy at the same time as increasing austerity; to embark upon massive money creation while also reducing debt. Capitalism is becoming mad. It is losing its direction. It no longer knows now how to go forward nor how to manoeuvre in order to avoid the dangerous reefs that surround it on all sides. The euro zone has never been in such a dangerous crisis. The months to come will be those of great economic tempests which will lead to still more devastating shipwrecks, demonstrating the generalised bankruptcy of  world capitalism.

Rossi 30/5/12

“The Marxian method affords an opportunity to estimate the development of the new art, to trace all its sources, to help the most progressive tendencies by a critical illumination of the road, but it does not do more than that. Art must make its own way and by its own means.” (Trotsky, Communist policy toward art, 1923)

 “Art, which is the most complex part of culture, the most sensitive and at the same time the least protected, suffers most from the decline and decay of bourgeois society.” (Trotsky, Art and politics in our epoch, 1938)

1. Art in capitalism

The rise of capitalism unleashes unprecedented, hitherto unimaginable forces of production that bring into being new feelings and new ideas, together with new means for artists to express them. The extension of this new mode of production over the entire surface of the globe and its penetration into all areas of human experience dissolves the barriers between national cultures and local fixed styles, creating for the first time a single world culture.

By constantly revolutionising production and raising productivity, capitalism also destroys old, rigid social relations and turns everything, including art, into a commodity. From being a hitherto ‘revered’ and ‘honoured’ artisan producing directly for a client, the artist is more and more reduced to a paid wage labourer whose products are thrown onto an anonymous market and subjected to the laws of competition.

Beyond its use as an investment or embellishment to the private life of the individual capitalist, capitalism is inherently hostile towards art as a diversion from its single driving force: the accumulation of capital for its own sake. Moreover, as an exploiting system, capitalism is fundamentally antagonistic to the interests of humanity and therefore to the humanist ideals of the best art. The more conscious art is of this, the more it is led to protest against the inhumanities of capitalist society. In this way, the best artists are able to transcend the limits of their epoch and class origins to create powerful condemnations of the crimes and human tragedies of capitalism (Goethe, Balzac, Goya).

This antagonism between capitalism and humanity is not fully apparent in the earliest stages of the new mode of production when the bourgeoisie is still engaged in a revolutionary struggle against feudal absolutism. The best art is able to reflect the progressive moral and spiritual values of this new exploiting class, whose energy and confidence – and generous patronage – enables the artistic achievements of the Renaissance long before its own rule is established.

1. Art in the era of bourgeois revolutions

In the era of bourgeois-democratic revolutions (c1776-1848) art is still able to express the revolutionary aims of the bourgeoisie, but the sordid realities of capitalism are already becoming clear. Romanticism (Blake, Goethe, Goya, Pushkin, Shelley, Turner) reflects the contradictory nature of this period, rejecting feudal and aristocratic values in art but also passionately protesting against the brutal effects of capitalist industrialisation on art and the individual. 

Against the ‘rationality’ of the new exploiting class, romanticism argues for the power of subjective experience, imagination and the sublimity of nature, drawing its inspirations from the Middle Ages, mythology and folk art. Politically it often takes a reactionary, backward-looking form, but it also gives rise to a definite revolutionary tendency which expresses an internationalist, communist vision (Heine, Blake, Byron, Shelley).[1] The most profound poetic insights of this tendency anticipate not only the later artistic ideas of Expressionism and Surrealism but also the theoretical developments of Marxism and psychoanalysis.

Once it comes to power and the proletariat appears on the historical stage, the bourgeoisie sheds its progressive values and buries the whole idea of revolution as a mortal danger to its class rule. From this point on, the attempts of art to understand reality and express the interests of humanity inevitably come into conflict with capitalist ideology.

1. The birth of modern bourgeois art

The defining characteristic of bourgeois modern art is that it appears just as the conditions for capitalism’s further progressive development are reaching their zenith.

The decisive victory of industrial capitalism by the mid-19th century in the most advanced countries of Europe and America is reflected in the growth of rationalist, positivist and materialist ideologies in the sciences and philosophy, and realist or naturalist approaches in the arts. Marx and Engels consider realism in literature (Flaubert, Balzac, Elliot) to be the supreme achievement of world art. Realism in the visual arts, (Courbet, Millet, Degas) is a reaction to both classical art and to the emotionalism and subjectivism of romanticism, affirming instead the goals of truth and accuracy and depicting scenes of everyday life, including hitherto ignored harsh realities of working class life. To the bourgeoisie, any art that accurately depicts the ugly realities of life in capitalism is by definition revolutionary and to be rejected.

This period also sees the growth of the workers’ movement, and it is therefore unsurprising that realism gives rise to a revolutionary tendency that explicitly identifies with the working class and the struggle for socialism. Courbet, leader of the realist movement in France, affirms: “I am not only a socialist but also a democrat and a republican, in a word, a partisan of revolution and, above all, a realist, that is, the sincere friend of the real truth.”[2]

Impressionism (Pissaro, Manet, Degas, Cézanne, Monet) is an artistic response to the growth of industrial and urban society; to new technological developments and scientific discoveries (photography and optics), the globalisation of trade (seen in the influence of Japanese prints), and the growth of the middle class as a clientele for new art. It retains a commitment to truth and accuracy but focuses on the subjective perception of movement and light: “Whilst the old academic style said ‘here are the rules (or images) according to which nature must be depicted’, and naturalism said ‘here is nature’, then Impressionism said ‘here is how I see nature’”.[3] Impressionist themes and influences can also be seen in music (Debussy, Ravel) and in literature (Lawrence, Conrad).

As a genuinely modern bourgeois art movement, impressionism is a contradictory development. Whereas the classical art of the Renaissance expresses an underlying sense of unity that derives from the vision and confidence of the revolutionary bourgeoisie, impressionism reflects the victory of capitalism and the atomisation of the individual in industrial society. By basing itself on subjective or sensory perception it correspondingly represents reality as a patchwork:

“And so Impressionism was, in a sense, a symptom of decline, of the fragmentation and dehumanization of the world. But at the same time it was, in the long ‘close season’ of bourgeois capitalism ... a glorious climax of bourgeois art, a golden autumn, a late harvest, a tremendous enrichment of the means of expression available to the artist.”[4]

1. Art at the end of capitalist ascendance

The period between c1890 and 1914 – the so-called ‘Belle Époque’ or ‘Gilded Age’ – sees capitalism apparently at its most optimistic and technologically advanced, with particularly powerful economic growth that creates fertile conditions for artistic and scientific developments (Freud’s theory of the unconscious, quantum and relativity theory). But beneath the surface this is also a period of gnawing uncertainty and doubt, with the rise of militarism and imperialist tensions, increasing state intervention in society and massive working class struggles: all signs of a growing crisis at the heart of capitalism.

The artistic movements that emerge from this period (cubism, expressionism, symbolism) inevitably reflect these contradictions, expressing both a final flowering of progressive bourgeois art and the first symptoms of its end. Cubism (Picasso, Braque), showing the influence of the latest scientific and philosophical theories, abandons the depiction of objects from one viewpoint, analysing, breaking up and re-assembling them in abstracted form from multiple viewpoints. Expressionism rejects realism altogether, depicting subjective meaning or emotional experience rather than physical reality. It is also influential in literature (Kafka), and in music (Schoenberg, Webern, Berg) where it rejects traditional tonality for a-tonality and dissonance. Symbolism (Baudelaire, Verlaine) is a poetic reaction against realism and naturalism in favour of mysticism and imagination, which is later described as “a dreaming retreat into things that are dying”.[5]

A radical tendency within bourgeois modern art sees itself as the avant garde of a new progressive society with new artistic values, arguing that art has a role to play in modernising capitalist society. This ‘modernist’ avant garde appears just as the possibilities for reforming capitalism from within are about to end. Futurism (Marinetti, Mayakovsky, Malevich), which is influential in painting, poetry, architecture and music in the early 20th century, especially in Italy and Russia, glorifies themes and symbols of capitalist progress such as youth, speed, dynamism, and power. But other modernist elements, especially in Germany, are more critical of capitalist ‘modernity’ and express the alienation of life in bourgeois society (Munch’s ‘The Scream’).

5. The death of bourgeois modern art

The outbreak of the First World War divides this Modernist avant garde into the glorifiers of capitalist progress like Marinetti and the Italian futurists, who enthusiastically side with barbarism (and later with fascism), and more radical tendencies like the Russian futurists and German expressionists who oppose the war and, in a more or less confused and partial way, begin to relate to the proletarian movement.

The first specific artistic response to the war is dada. An international anti-war and anti-capitalist movement, dada sees the slaughter on the battlefields as proof of the bankruptcy of all bourgeois culture. Its ‘programme’ is close to anarchism: the demolition of culture and the abolition of art, and its practice embraces chaos and irrationality (poems made from randomly-assembled words clipped from newspapers, etc). The Berlin dadaists (Heartfield, Grosz, Dix, Ernst), closer to the anti-war struggles of the working class, take up more explicitly communist positions, even forming their own political party and actively supporting the German revolution.[6]

The October 1917 Russian revolution is the high point of the post-war revolutionary wave and of the attempts by the modernist avant garde to create a liberating art. For a brief period following the soviets’ seizure of power there is a huge surge of artistic experimentation and activity, much of it explicitly identifying itself with the revolution. With the protection of the young soviet state and critical support from the Bolshevik Party, sections of the Russian avant garde (futurists,productivists, constructivists), inspired by Mayakovsky’s declaration “The streets are our brushes, the squares our palettes”, abandon ‘pure’ art for industrial production, embracing architecture, industrial design, cinema, advertising, furniture, packaging and clothes, with the stated aim of using art to transform everyday life. There are heated debates about culture and the future of art. The influential Proletkult movement, tending to reject all previous culture, wants to create a new revolutionary, proletarian aesthetic, while others like Trotsky reject the whole concept of proletarian culture but support the emergence of a new revolutionary art, expecting this to appear imminently.[7]

In the context of the revolutionary wave that shakes capitalism to its foundations in the years from 1917 to 1923 this does not appear unrealistic. The sentence passed by dada on all bourgeois culture and art seems about to be carried out by the world proletariat, in Germany, Britain, America....

But with the isolation of the Russian bastion, and the defeat of the proletariat’s revolutionary attempts in Europe, the Bolsheviks’ initial backing for modernist experimentation is replaced by the suppression of dissent and increasing state control as the Stalinist counter-revolution tightens its grip. Internationally, modernism eventually ends up by being co-opted as an official architectural style by reactionary state capitalist regimes, whether Stalinist, fascist (especially in Italy) or social democratic.

6. Art and the capitalist counter-revolution

In the deepening bourgeois counter-revolution, the Russian artistic avant garde essentially faces the same choices as the surviving communist opposition: either submission to Stalinist totalitarianism with its enforcement of ‘socialist realism’, silence or exile. With the rise of fascism the European artistic avant garde is also increasingly forced into exile and/or takes up an explicitly political oppositional stance.

Surrealism (Breton, Aragon, Ernst, Péret, Dali, Miró, Duchamp) emerges from dada but only becomes a distinct movement when the practical opportunities for revolution are already receding. It is an explicitly revolutionary artistic movement which becomes closely associated with political opposition to Stalinism.[8] Surrealism draws its ideas from Freudian psychoanalysis as well as Marxism and emphasises the use of free association, dream analysis, juxtaposition and automatism to liberate the unconscious. Its attempt to maintain a permanent revolutionary artistic practice within capitalism in a period of deep defeat leaves it prone to decay and eventual recuperation, but surrealist ideas are a huge influence on the visual arts, literature, film, and music, as well as philosophy and political and social theory.

With the triumph of the bourgeois counter-revolution in the 1930s – “Midnight in the century” (Victor Serge) – we see a full flowering of all the classic symptoms of decadence in capitalist culture:

“Ideology decomposes, the old moral values run down, artistic creativity stagnates or functions in opposition to the status quo, there is a development of obscurantism and philosophical pessimism. [...] In the sphere of art, decadence has manifested itself in a particularly violent way [...] As in other periods of decadence, art, if it does not stagnate in an eternal repetition of past forms, seeks to take up a stance against the existing order, or is very often the expression of a cry of horror.”[9]

Decadence makes the need for a genuinely liberating art all the more pressing but the deepening crisis of the system and its effects on bourgeois society mean that the minimum conditions for the appearance of such an art are progressively undermined, while the traditional social base of art in the radical petty bourgeoisie is even further eroded and isolated from the life of the mass of the working class.

In these conditions, art which ‘seeks to take up a stance against the existing order’ finds itself increasingly isolated, or is recuperated for use as propaganda by one reactionary political faction or another (Picasso’s ‘Guernica’). Art that expresses a cry of horror at capitalist barbarism similarly finds itself rendered increasingly impotent by the sheer scale of its atrocities:  World War Two (over 60 million dead, mostly civilians, compared to 20 million in 1914-18), the Nazi death camps, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hamburg, Dresden, Stalinism’s mass crimes... To paraphrase Adorno, after Auschwitz it becomes impossible to write poetry without contributing further to an already barbaric culture.

But capitalist decadence does not mean that the productive forces come to a halt. In order to survive the system must continue to try to revolutionise production and raise productivity. Rather, we increasingly see what Marx termed ‘development as decay’. Similarly in the sphere of art we continue to see a progression of artistic schools, partly in response to new technological developments and changes in society, but this is increasingly characterised by a frantic recycling of previous styles, violent mood swings between hope and despair, fragmentation, and the splintering and disappearance of each school before reaching its complete development. Human creativity never ceases, but it does find itself increasingly stifled, channelled, blocked and corrupted. We still see artistic developments (jazz), and the introduction of new techniques and styles, but increasingly these developments reflect the decay of a society that has avoided its appointment with its executioner and only survives by cannibalising itself.

This is illustrated by abstract expressionism, the most influential artistic school (at least in painting and sculpture) to appear in the ‘post-war boom’. Abstract expressionism is partly a reaction to the explicit political content of 1930s social realism (Rivera). Influenced by Surrealism and the European avant garde it emphasises the expression of unconscious ideas and emotions through spontaneous, improvisatory or automatic techniques to create images of varying degrees of abstraction (Pollock, Rothko, Newman, Still). Influenced by the trauma of WW2 and the repressive post-war climate in the US, it avoids openly political content, turning to primitive art, mythology and mysticism for inspiration. This and its pursuit of pure abstraction facilitates the promotion of abstract expressionism by the US state in the Cold War as a cultural weapon against the ‘socialist realism’ of its Russian imperialist rival.

Art and the ‘culture industry’

If art by the mid-20th century displays the classic symptoms of decadence in all class societies, there are also specific developments, especially in the ‘post-war boom’, which transform not only the way that art is produced and distributed in capitalist society but also how it is ‘experienced’ by the mass of the working class. The cumulative effect of these developments is to further undermine the conditions for the emergence of revolutionary art and hasten the disappearance of the surviving artistic avant garde. Many of these developments are themselves symptoms of decadence or attempts by capitalism to overcome the contradictions of its historic crisis. They include:

• the development of the ‘culture industry’ and the application of mass production techniques and assembly line principles to the commodities it produces (music, films, television programmes, etc);
• the development of state capitalism and in particular of a sophisticated ideological apparatus in order to better control the working class and recuperate any sign of revolt;
• the rise of the ‘consumer society’ based on a relative increase in real wages for the working class in the post-war period and the increased production of commodities for mass consumption (partly financed by an expansion of credit);
• the growth of unproductive expenditure and activity, eg. in marketing and advertising.

As a result, for the first time in history capitalism is able to cheaply produce artistic commodities (music, films, etc) for consumption by the mass of the working class, in so doing overcoming its inherent hostility to art as an unnecessary diversion from its drive to accumulate. This greatly facilitates the use of artistic commodities for ideological purposes, not just to help ensure the reproduction of labour by providing means for ‘amusement’ in workers’ ‘leisure time’, but also to recuperate any artistic expression of dissent.

When the proletariat returns to the stage of history in the struggles of ‘May 68, we do see the appearance of radical art movements (Arte Povera) but not on the scale that one might expect. Instead, the most radical descendents of the European artistic avant garde, the Situationists, are distinguished by their critique of ‘the society of the spectacle’, ie. bureaucratic capitalism’s commodification of culture and its use of the mass media to recuperate subversive ideas, and by proposals for practical actions to “bring a revolutionary reordering of life, politics, and art”. The Situationists exaggerate the power of this ‘spectacle’ just at the moment when capitalism’s historic crisis returns, but they are closer to reality in identifying the inability of even the most radical artistic activity to avoid recuperation unless it is explicitly political; that is, in this period, revolutionary.

7.Art and decomposition

With the entry of capitalism into its final phase, that of decomposition, the very real possibility exists of the destruction of all human culture, along with art, which will, in Trotsky’s phrase, inevitably rot away “as Grecian art rotted beneath the ruins of a culture founded on slavery”.[10]

By the 1970s modern art is part of official state capitalist culture in America and Europe, supported and subsidised by corporations and government agencies and safely enshrined in museums. Despite successive waves of working class struggle right up to the collapse of the Russian bloc in 1989-91 we see only a further decay of art, accelerated by the spurious economic boom of the 1980s and fuelled by an explosion of debt that leads to a gold rush of speculative investment in art as bullion. The excesses of the market finish off what the counter-revolution, the post-war boom and the rise of the ‘culture industry’ have begun.

The appearance of ‘post-modernism’, especially from the 1980s, is in one sense only the final inevitable recognition of this long drawn-out death of modernism. ‘Post-modernism’ has its origins in the arid regions of the leftist intelligentsia (Derrida et al) as a ‘democratising project’. It theorises the abandonment not only of any further avant garde role for art but also of any concept of forward movement in history itself. It therefore fits perfectly with all the bourgeois ideological campaigns in the 1990s about the ‘end of communism’ and the ‘end of history’, only adding to general demoralisation and despair.

Even before the entry of decadent capitalism into its final stage, that of decomposition, we can therefore point to the advanced decomposition of art, ie. “the vacuity and venality of all “artistic” production: literature, music, painting, architecture, are unable to express anything but anxiety, despair, the breakdown of coherent thought, the void...”[11] In fact this description does not go far enough. We can add to it by identifying a trend in art to destroy itself, to become, in the words of the German artist Anselm Kiefer, ‘anti-art’. In decomposing capitalism, even anti-art is ... art: “Art has something which destroys its own cells. Damien Hirst is a great anti-artist. To go to Sothebys and sell your own work directly is destroying art. But in doing it to such exaggerated extent, it becomes art ... the fact that it was two days before the [2008] crash made it even better.””[12]

Beyond the cynical manipulations of ‘artist/entrepreneurs’ like Hirst, whose exploits now appear as one more symptom of capitalism’s pre-2007 speculative bubble, there is a more fundamental truth. The expressionist poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) compares the artist to “a dancer whose movements are broken by the constraint of his cell. That which finds no expression in his steps and the limited swing of his arms, comes in exhaustion from his lips, or else he has to scratch the unlived lines of his body into the walls with his wounded fingers.”[13]  If the artist is indeed like a prisoner in a cell, then in decomposing capitalism the best artists are more and more forced to revert to the equivalent of a ‘dirty protest’ at the intolerable conditions of capitalist life and the impossibility of genuine artistic expression. But even smearing the cell walls with your own excrement is no longer enough, it seems, to avoid commodification and recuperation. In 1961 the Italian artist Manzoni produced a work consisting of 90 tins of his own shit. In 2007 Sotheby’s sold one for 124,000 euros. 

MH 6/12

We are publishing here an article written by one of our very close contacts in collaboration with ICC militants.  We want to salute the comrade’s willingness to contribute to the ongoing discussions and clarification of one of the burning social issues of the time—gay “rights”-- from a working class perspective.  We also want to express our appreciation for the focus the comrade chose to give in writing this article.  We think it is refreshing to approach the issue from the angle of human emotions.  We also agree with the comrade’s political understanding and argumentation.  We invite all our close contacts to work in collaboration with ICC militants to write about issues of concern for the clarification and emancipation of working class thought.

The “debate” over whether gay and lesbian people should enjoy the “right” to legally marry and draw from such legal recognition all the financial benefits granted to heterosexual married couples –survivor’s benefits among the most hotly contested— has long been one of those hot button issues the ruling class periodically pulls out of its hat, most notably around election time.  In this article we would like to highlight the hypocrisy of the ruling class left, center, and right in taking up the issue from either a “humanistic” point of view—the left’s and center’s—or a moralistic/religious standpoint on the right.  The Obama administration likes to show itself as “liberal” and “progressive,” hence its call to reverse the anti-gay marriage laws passed at the state level (most recently by referendum in North Carolina), without, however, attempting to make gay marriage a constitutional “right.”  The right needs to satisfy the fears and quell the insecurities of its particularly conservative electoral base, hence the Republican Party to-be-nominee Mitt Romney’s anti-gay marriage stance.  The whole “debate” is really a ploy by the Obama administration to appeal to the youth and “independent-minded,” besides the gay electorate itself, and push Romney to discredit himself with the Evangelists if he does not clearly and forcefully come against gay marriage.  Romney’s further move to the right risks further alienating the undecided and independent sector of the electorate.  It is clear that this legalistic posturing is completely hypocritical.  It aims at utilizing a situation which is certainly experienced as dramatic and humiliating by gay and lesbian people by fueling divisions, animosity, and further misunderstandings for the purpose of political gains.  Further, the at times vehement opposition to gay marriage expressed by the rights should not confuse us as to the fact that the legalization of an aspect of personal life would do nothing to challenge the established system of capitalist exploitation.

Today, if you turned on the television set and surfed over to any mainstream bourgeois news channel, chances are headlines about the “debate over gay rights” might assault the screen. It is interesting how the bourgeois media is insistent on highlighting our personal human differences, in showing us where we disagree the most as people. But the bourgeoisie and their mouthpieces in the press are highly hypocritical. Especially when “partisanship” is so frowned upon in the current political climate. Now, certain factions of the ruling class claim to support gay marriage. Even further, they claim to do so out of a sense of deeper humanism, often referring to the gay rights struggle as a struggle for “equality” or “civil rights.”

It is at this point we have to ask: “equality” in the name of what? And for which people in society? Is “marriage equality” even an appropriate working class demand? Is sexual freedom even possible under capitalism? As workers, we have to say the answer to both of those questions is negative. Building a world free of homophobia and heterosexism, where each individual is viewed and treated as a human being, rather than a category, is impossible under capitalism.

For some time now, elements of the bourgeois political class have advocated the legal recognition of same-sex marriage. Often times their arguments are coded in language that appeals to workers. They say that legalizing same-sex marriage would improve the quality of life for gay and queer workers, as they would gain access to insurance benefits, divorce and property rights, etc. But under capitalism, human relations are reduced to a matter of exchange.  Emotions are nothing but mere commodities and finances to the bourgeoisie. So we can see the economic need of legalizing same-sex marriage, but what about the concept of marriage itself within capitalism?

Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto that, “The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.” They later continued, “The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations...On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie.”

So according to Marx and Engels' definition of marriage under capitalism, we can begin to understand that “equal marriage rights” is a term which only applies to those who can afford the benefits of marriage. Rights which only apply to the propertied classes, the people who can even afford to legally marry in the first place. Marriage is fundamentally about property rights and inheritance. It has historically defined which people the ruling class deemed acceptable to own property, and even which people could be owned themselves! Originally of course, marriage meant the possession of the wife and her property by the husband. In the eyes of the bourgeoisie marriage is not at all about mutual respect and love—it's about possession, ownership, and property rights.

But why do we need a ruling class to tell us what marriage is and who we can and cannot marry? As we previously said in Internationalism #130 and in other places in the ICC press, a communist society would instead “be a society beyond the family in which human relationships will be regulated by mutual love and respect and not the state sanction of law.”

The bourgeois democratic state and its agents never pose the questions surrounding gay rights in terms of human need. What are the needs of gay and lesbian folks? Or even the basic needs of human beings in general? There is no question that the repression of the gay and queer community is real. We see homophobia, heterosexism, and patriarchy manifested everywhere in capitalism; anyone saying otherwise is simply in denial. The bullying of gay and queer youth for example has recently been referred to as an “epidemic” in the bourgeois media. Many of these traumatizing events where gay and queer people are bullied lead to depression, and in some cases even suicide.

But does the bourgeoisie focus on solving these issues? What about parliamentary legislation? Do any of the bills and amendments touch on any of these social issues? No! The debate is almost always framed in the context of religion, or moralism. Especially in the mainstream media, especially in the rhetoric of the ruling class. For all the vaunted talks—all the legalistic gibberish—about “human rights,” receiving the capitalist state’s approval and recognition under the guise of the law can do nothing to extirpate centuries long religious and moralistic bigotry. Religious people are “blamed” for their backward attitude, which further contributes to the polarizing, witch hunt-like atmosphere. In situations like these, legalizing same-sex marriage only helps portray the capitalist state as a “just” and “beneficent” entity.

If there is even a grain of sincerity in the ruling class' support of same-sex marriage, it comes from their need to distract workers and immerse them in the circus of electoral politics and legalism. Of course it is true that growing support of sexual freedom is part of humanity developing a deeper scientific understanding, and a greater sense of general human solidarity. But the ruling class cares nothing about these things, and why should they? If you have money your rights are never at risk, or up for debate. “Marriage equality” does not equal a good relationship or economic equality; it equals further class domination from the bourgeoisie.

Social struggles which only partially address the fundamental problems of capitalism, while expressing real social problems that exist in our society, distract the working class from revolutionary tasks and discussions. We have discussed already how the bourgeoisie can become fixated on the debate over gay rights, almost to the point of obsession. But this fixation happens among so-called “revolutionaries” as well.

Many people use language exclusively directed at workers in order to “organize” them around what is in essence a cross-class, broad social issue. The argument that gay rights will bring us “closer to full equality” is completely irrelevant, when it is a basic tenet of communists that full equality is impossible under capitalism. Why as revolutionaries should we be fighting to get “closer” to an egalitarian society? We need to stand against all of capitalisms injustices at once! Many of these same “revolutionaries” would call the legal and electoral decisions in favor of gay marriage rights “victories” for the workers. But these victories do nothing but bolster the appeal of bourgeois civil society.
 

The politics of legalism and democratism have nothing to offer the working class. True human emancipation can only come from working class revolution. Workers should always support gay and queer people themselves, especially in a society where they are alienated and ridiculed in such terrible ways. But we have to remain careful of the bourgeois campaigns which surround these debates. Often times they distract and mislead us from our ultimate goal—ending all forms of repression and exploitation for everyone on earth.

Jam 06/11/12

Due to pressure of work and other factors, the June issue of World Revolution was delayed and combined with the July/August issue. We did however continue to update the website with new material. Subscriptions will be extended to cover the issue that has been missed.

This year is the third time that London has staged the Olympic Games, and each occasion has shown something about the changing state of capitalist society.

The dominance of a global power

The 1908 Olympics were originally going to be held in Rome; however, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in April 1906 meant that resources were needed for the reconstruction of Naples. As a global power, with an empire covering nearly a quarter of the world’s land area and a fifth of the world’s population, the UK was in a position to take on the Games at short notice.

In ten months it was possible to organise the finance, find a site and build a state-of the-art stadium. Financially, costs amounted to about £15,000 and receipts were £21,377. The first London Olympics made a profit, and in that sense were a success. What The Times (27/7/1908) regretted was that “The perfect harmony which every one wished for has been marred by certain regrettable disputes and protests and objections to the judges’ rulings. In many newspapers, the whole world over, national feeling has run riot, and accusation and counter-accusation have been freely bandied about.” This is hardly surprising, bearing in mind the growing conflicts between nations as imperialism became capitalism’s only way of functioning, from the Spanish-American War of 1898, the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, and all the antagonisms that led up to the First World War.

In 1908 the judges were all British and there was a complaint from the US team, on average, every day. It started with a refusal to dip the American flag to the King at the opening ceremony and continued throughout the events. In the tug-of-war the Americans complained about the heavy service boots of the team from the Liverpool police. When their protest was dismissed the US withdrew from the event. Or, in the 400 metres, the British officials decided that the final would be re-run because a US runner had elbowed a British runner. The US boycotted the re-run. In the end the UK team won more gold, silver and bronze medals than all other countries. Against teams from 22 countries, involving 2000 competitors overall, the UK won more medals, 146, than it has in any other modern Olympics. As The Times (13/7/1908) had said in advance “This year it may be hoped that we shall do our foreign competitors the compliment of showing them that we have not lost our cunning.”

The austerity games

In the forty years that passed before the London Olympics of 1948 a lot had changed for British imperialism. The Allied imperialisms of Britain, Russia and the US had won the Second World War, but the US was now dominant in the West, with Britain in a far more secondary position.

Britain had been uncertain about taking on the Olympics. With a devastated economy, with rationing (including food, petrol and clothing) being more severe than during the war, with high unemployment, widespread homelessness and many workers’ strikes, the UK was desperate for the US funds it received from the Marshall Plan, but not clear what impact the Olympics would have.

Only a month before the Olympics began there was an unofficial London dockers’ strike during which newly conscripted troops were drafted into the docks. For the first time a government used powers introduced by the 1920 Emergency Powers Act to confront the strike. This was not the only time that workers came up against the austerity regime of the post-war Labour government.

There had at least been two years of preparation for the Games. Although no new venues were built the forced labour of German prisoners or war was used on some construction projects, including the road leading to Wembley Stadium.

Not for nothing have the 1948 Games become known as the Austerity Olympics. Other countries were encouraged to bring their own food, although competitors were allowed rations increased to the level of miners’. Male competitors were put up in RAF camps, female in London colleges. British competitors had to buy or make their own kit.

With 4000 competitors from 59 countries, the 1948 Olympics cost £732,268 (coming in under budget) and took receipts of £761,688. It made a modest profit, but the UK only came 12th in the medals table, and everyone knew the US was going to come first before the Games had started.

Debt and repression

Although some countries have claimed to have broken even, or made a profit, for example the dubious claims of Beijing in 2008, the Olympics have been a financial disaster for most recent venues taking them on. Montreal’s dept was so great that they didn’t finally pay it off until nearly 30 years later. The original budget for the Athens 2004 Olympics was $1.6 billion: the final public cost estimate as much as $16 billion, with most venues now abandoned or barely-used and millions still needed for upkeep and security. It’s clear that the Olympic Games were one of the factors that contributed to the scale of the crisis of the Greek economy.

For London 2012 the initial budget estimate was for £2.37bn, but, in the seven years since the bid was won, the guesses on the final figure have ranged from 4 times to as much as 10 times the original cost. Not that the organisers are not planning to do everything to recoup the expenditure. The prices for admission, food, drink, and everything else to do with Olympic venues, are mostly outrageous, even for an expensive capital city. And the interests of the official sponsors are being very fiercely guarded. There are very strict rules on “ambush advertising”, that is, the display of anything (including items of personal clothing) that includes the name of a company that is not an official sponsor.

But the area where it seems that London2012 is keenest to break records is in repression. On the busiest days there will be 12,000 police on duty. There will be 13,500 military personnel available, rather more than the number of 9500 British troops in Afghanistan. It’s also planned to have 13,300 private security guards. They will spend a few days training with troops. A spokesman for the security firm involved said “ part of the venue training was to ‘align values’ between the two groups, so games spectators had the same security experience with military and private guards” (Financial Times 24/5/12).

On top of this there have been well publicised plans to install a high velocity surface-to-air missile system on a block near to the main Olympic site. Presumably this is intended to blow planes out of the sky over a heavily populated residential area.

The organisers of the London Olympics, in conjunction with the British state, seem to have thought of everything. Although they might not be able to cope, the Home Office intends to do security checks on all the anticipated 380,000 athletes, officials, workers and media personnel in any way connected with the Olympics. There will be special Games Lanes on roads that will be reserved for Games-accredited vehicles. You will be fined £135 if you stray into one of these lanes. When entering venues you will be searched and not allowed to take any water past security. It will be against the rules to tweet, share on Facebook or in any other way share photos of events.

There will be more than 200 countries represented in the London Olympics, and the organisers will be doing everything to provide a setting suitable for the usual orgy of nationalism, and an advertising opportunity for Coca Cola, McDonalds, Panasonic, Samsung, Visa, General Electric, Procter and Gamble, BMW, EDF, UPS and all the rest of the gang.

That has become the menu for the modern Olympics: nationalism and commerce. Meanwhile, in the preparation for London2012, the local council for the area where the Olympic Stadium is situated, Newham, has tried to ‘relocate’ 500 families to Stoke-on-Trent, 150 miles away. Local tenants are being evicted so that private landlords can let properties at massively inflated rents. The Olympics are supposed to be an inspiration for young people. Newham has the youngest age structure in England and Wales, with the highest proportion of children under the age of one. It also has the largest average household size, the highest rates of benefit recipiency in London, as well as high rates of ill health and premature death. For children living in the shadow of this year’s Olympics their future is not going to be improved by the spectacle of the battle for medals.  

Car 5/6/12

British broadcasters win a High Court ruling against the police, a former Murdoch editor is arrested and the Leveson ‘inquiry’ into Press Standards meanders on: JJ Gaunt peeks behind the headlines and reviews two recent books critical of the media

On an 1886 tour promoting marxism and working class organisation in America, Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling took time out to ridicule and denounce the US press in general and the Chicago Times and Chicago Tribune in particular for their lynch mob coverage of the trial of eight anarchists who had been fitted up by the state of Illinois and faced execution following the infamous Haymarket bomb incident.   

More than 125 years and many technological leaps later, modern mass media remain at root little more than megaphones amplifying the ruling class’s ‘values’, its lies, its propaganda, when they are not simply selling its commodities.

Much effort is expended on the part of the ‘fourth estate’ to deny this reality and turn it on its head. Commenting on the High Court’s May 17 decision to overturn a Crown Court judge’s order to hand over unseen footage of the violent police eviction of ‘travellers’ from Dale Farm, Essex in 2011, ITN (Independent Television News) chief executive John Hardie said: "This landmark decision is a legal recognition of the separate roles of the police and independent news organisations. We fought this case on a matter of principle - to ensure that journalists and cameramen are not seen as agents of the state ...”  Lawyers for other interested parties – they included the BBC, BSkyB and Channel 5 –  had said their clients risked being seen as “coppers’ narks” (police informants) if they had complied with the original order. That would never do, as M’lud wisely agreed.

It also won’t do to have the working class and the rest of the population tune-out of the Murdoch ‘Hackgate’ scandal of criminality, bribery and corruption with the erroneous impression that the media, police and politicians are ‘all in it together’.

It’s to restore public faith in the media mafia that the Leveson Inquiry into Press Standards has been protracted long after the original British state objective of clipping Murdoch’s UK activities had been achieved. (1) With hoards of ‘witnesses’ either denouncing the ‘Evil Empire’ (viz ex-Sunday Times editor Harold Evans) or clumsily attempting to defend the indefensible (viz the testimony of the News International clan itself or the self-serving testimonies of former PM Blair and current Culture and Media Secretary Jeremy Hunt), the ‘inquiry’ has turned into a modern Inquisition to exorcise the devil Murdoch, the better to redeem the rest of the media.

In the same manner, it’s to demonstrate the state’s due ‘impartiality’ and incorruptible nature that the very particular friends of PM David Cameron -  former News International golden child Rebekah Brooks and her husband Charlie, Cameron’s old school chum - were arrested and charged with the very serious offence (with apologies to AA Milne) of perverting the course of justice. (2)

Understanding the media: Marxism not moralism

These recent events featuring the UK state and its media apparatus are of course merely moments in an historic pattern – one long recognised by critics of the capitalist system. As Marx and Engels often argued, the ruling class’s particular interests are falsely presented as those of society as a whole. It’s the primary function of mass media to reflect and reinforce the resultant ‘dominant ideology’.

This material reality is illuminated and fleshed out in a recent and recommended book called Beyond the Left: The Communist Critique of the Media by UK lecturer Dr Stephen Harper (3).

His ‘Introduction: to guide and bind the world’ grabs the subject by the kishkas: “Having abolished scarcity and made communism possible by the early twentieth century, capitalism today is an obsolete system whose continuance offers humanity only increasing misery. As the social symptoms of this retrogression – poverty, starvation, holocausts, environmental degradation and economies increasingly based upon drugs, arms and gangsterism – become more difficult to disguise, the media play a vital role, it is argued here, in concealing their systemic origins.”

To this egregious end, the 1928 publication of Propaganda by Edward Bernays, American nephew of Sigmund Freud and known variously as the ‘king of spin’ and ‘the father of public relations’, constituted “a direct response to the socio-economic impasses of US capitalism in the 1920s, as a dearth of new markets, a crisis of over-production and the lingering menace of proletarian revolution forced capitalists to devise ever more ingenious methods of mass persuasion...”

One of the media’s most enduring successes in this regard is revealed in the chapter ‘Normalising the unthinkable: news media as state propaganda’ in which Harper notes how the very notion of wage labour – once widely understood as “an outrage against humanity whose essential continuity with earlier forms of bondage found expression in the now antiquated phrase ‘wage slavery’” - is today throughout the mainstream media “accepted as a fact of life”. “Thus, in a period of austerity, the BBC’s Sunday morning television discussion programme The Big Question asks ‘Is It Time For A Maximum Wage?’ (13 March 2010); but it cannot question the legitimacy of the wages system itself.”

Within this marxist framework, which draws on the analyses of past and present day revolutionary organisations (including the ICC and ICT) and recognises both the decadence of capitalism and the primacy of the nation state over ‘supra-national corporations’, Harper’s other chapters include ‘Not neoliberalism: why the state is still the enemy’; ‘Blaming the victims, eroding solidarity: two media discourses on immigration’; ‘”The only honourable course’’: the media and ‘humanitarian’ war’ and ‘Beyond the news: popular culture against the working class’.

Under such headings he utilises the insights of social critics, media researchers and academics from Althusser to Žižek whilst acknowledging their limitations: Harper both quotes approvingly from Herman and Chomsky’s seminal Manufacturing Consent (1998) while roundly denouncing Chomsky for “the statism of his concrete political attachments” (today, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez; yesterday, North Vietnam’s Stalinist Vietcong).

Before dissecting specific events and gauging what the ruling class accomplished from them (the chapter ‘Bogeyman at the BBC: Nick Griffin, Question Time and the ‘fascist threat’’ is exemplary in this regard) Harper insists that “The power of media propaganda to shape our perceptions of the most fundamental aspects of our lives is exercised neither haphazardly nor clumsily”, thus underlining that the bourgeoisie acts consciously against the proletariat, its potential gravedigger.

For the working class, the author insists that there’s nothing to choose between different media ‘slants’: “...the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels ... was excited by the BBC’s ability to maintain the trust of the British public and to have secured a worldwide reputation for the British media as ‘honest, free and truthful.’ Goebbels understood that this made the BBC the perfect propaganda vehicle. Today, as then, the left-liberal media act not as a foil to capitalism but as its last ditch defence, preventing those who reject conservative political positions from accessing or developing radical ideas. In fact, right-wing and left-wing media can be argued to work not in opposition to each other, but in tandem.”

The role of the media and the ‘pluralistic’ division of labour within it as cheerleaders of imperialist war and mystifiers of the gravity of today’s ecological crisis are also explored and expanded upon. For communists and activists of all stripes, Harper’s work is both required reading and an encouraging sign that proletarian perspectives are today spreading to and being embellished by wider layers of society.

Critical criticism required

Another book – there’s a veritable overproduction of them! – attempting to critique the media is NEWSPEAK in the 21st Century (4), a title recalling George Orwell’s 1984, a satire of mind control by an omnipresent state apparatus.  This work also insists that media such as newspapers – including and particularly those which claim to be ‘independent’, ‘left’ or just righteous and liberal – all owe their origins, development and continued survival as vehicles for corporate advertisers on whose revenue they depend and whose patronage they cannot truly offend. Similarly, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has since its foundation in the 1920s been first and foremost an obedient servant of the state’s overall interests as it demonstrated in the 1926 national strike and ever since.

The work is penned by two co-editors of a an organisation called Media Lens which challenges journalists, editors and broadcasters to justify their censorship, sins of omission and downright war-mongering, while providing e-mails to subscribers which highlight examples of the media’s latest outrages.

Indeed, NEWSPEAK reminds us all that facts are not ‘sacred’ but chosen according to taste and ideology while ‘objectivity’ is a nonsense – “nothing is neutral”. In addition it provides a salutary reminder of the depth and extent of the lies, dissembling and patriotic cheerleading around the build-up to the ‘allied’ invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation. It recalls how, as “a shoal of fish instantly changes direction ... as though the movement was synchronised by some guiding hand,” British journalists “all trained and selected for obedience by media all seeking to maximise profits within state capitalist society ... appeared [in 1999] to conclude independently that war on Serbia was a rational, justified response to a ‘genocide’ in Kosovo that had not in fact taken place. In 2002-03, many journalists concluded that war was necessary to tackle an Iraqi threat that did not exist. And yet, to our knowledge, in 2009, not a single journalist proposed military action in response to Israel’s staggering, very visible crimes against the besieged civilian population of Gaza.” The authors demonstrate how the media is again banging the drum for what they say is to be ‘the West’s’ next imperialist adventure: the bombing and possible invasion of Iran.

Similarly, this well-researched and documented work points out the staggering hypocrisy of media demanding ‘action’ over climate chaos as they carry adds promoting cheap flights, powerful motor cars and oil company claims to be forging a ‘cleaner, greener, fossil fuel-free future’.

However, such valid observations are undermined by NEWSPEAK’s own contradictions: despite declaring that ‘democracy’ is “a charade serving privilege and power” its description of the Iraqi slaughter as “an illegal war of aggression” (aren’t all wars ‘aggressive’ and exactly what’s with the fetish of bourgeois legality?); the references to ‘consumerism’ rather than capitalism; to ‘the people’ rather than the working class, etc, speak of an incoherence which ultimately favours the status quo.  Equally problematic is the tendency to deal with countries, rather than classes. For example, irrespective of the nuclear issue (the pretext for ‘the West’s’ aggression towards Iran), there’s no mention of the Tehran regime’s own regional imperialist aims and incursions, while the praise lavished by the authors on the state machine of Venezuela’s Chávez is frankly an embarrassment.

These and other elements indicate a set of analyses that fall within the framework of capitalist social relations as do the proposed solutions: the alleged need for ‘awareness, compassion and honest journalism.’  They are not truly radical because they do not go to the roots of the issue. Let’s end with Stephen Harper: “... the radical task is not to ‘work with’ the media industries and their regulatory bodies in order to campaign for ‘better’ media representations of the working class, or to defend so-called ‘public service’ media organisations against the encroachments of the market, but – through what Marx called ‘ruthless criticism’ – to expose the ruses of capitalism’s representational apparatuses until such time as they can be overthrown.”

JJ Gaunt 6/12

Footnotes

1. See Murdoch scandal: The lies of the rich and famous in World Revolution 347, 2011, https://en.internationalism.org/wr/347/ni-murdoch-scandal [20]
2. Whether this well-connected couple will actually experience any substantial jail time is another matter.
3. Beyond the Left: The Communist Critique of the Media, by Dr Stephen Harper, published by Zero Books, 2010, ISBN: 978 1 84694 976 0 Harper’s media criticism blog ‘Relative Autonomy’ can be accessed at www.relativeautonomy.com [21]
4. NEWSPEAK in the 21st Century by David Edwards and David Cromwell, published by Pluto Press, 2009, ISBN: 978 0 7453 2893 5 Media Lens can be accessed at https://www.medialens.org/ [22]