I then flipped through a few of my friends feeds, seeing what interesting people they were following. Added a few people I know, a few people whose work I value, a few people whose commentary I admire.

Suddenly this extreme sense of boredom, isolation and tiredness overcame me. I don't want to follow these people. I don't want to know what they think about a recent events. I didn't want to add more.

Let's start again. Some of these people are my real and closest friends. I absolutely and in an ultimate sense do want to know what they think about everything. I don't want to see what they think about things arranged in a column, measured in characters.

The spell of the feed is broken. I don't care to engage in it. At all. Not really.

Will Davies once said that when setting up a new smartphone, installing apps is like putting up postcards on a prison wall  (ironically on Twitter). I thought about this when I recently set up a new smart phone, after six months with a flip.

I felt this again today. You don't need to engage with the feeds. It actively harms both thought and good conversation. You are going to occasionally come up with something that is, in terms of genre, a tweet. You are just going to have to accept it's a dead genre, like telegraph love notes.

This is a low count, coming off the back of doing the big 100. This quantity of films is strictly amateur, I have learnt.

I think overall, it feels like I watched far more really good and relatively contemporary films. I don't think I strayed past 1972 all year.

I would say that with the exceptions of Megalopolis (2024) (say no more), A Man on The Moon (1999), Piercing (2018) (stylish but vapid and needlessly edgy neo-giallo) and Secret in Their Eyes (2015) (wholly unnecessary remake) I would recommend any of the films on the list. Hence writing them all out.

Best films seen

Rustin (2023)

Biopic of gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, organising up to the March in DC, where Martin Luther King gave his "I Have A Dream" speech.

There are few films that I can think of that are about the real mechanics of organising. As well as being a portrait of a brave, brilliant and fascinating man, Rustin really gets into the nuts and bolts of it all, with a bracing realism.

A lot of Rustin's time is spent in the film persuading other "institutional actors" to back his initiative: the NAACP, trade unions, and even King himself, who is a friend and comrade. These groups and persons disagree on timing, effectiveness, cost of the action, the personality and capabilities of Rustin as an organiser and his moral standing specifically, the lack of need for this compared to an inside game with mainstream parties: familiar things. Almost every aspect of what is now celebrated as a major event in the civil rights struggle is shot down. There is depiction of how some of the action of the march blunts the initiative of more radical groups. There is a sequence where Rustin workshops with other organisers what they would do in Washington, reviving their commitment to the work through the process. He then has to "sell" back to them essentially what betrays the contents of this workshop, as it isn't approved by the wider parties of the coalition. This is disempowering but people rattle on regardless. Familiar.

It is really clear eyed regarding a vital and incredibly boring aspect of social action, which is: money, fundraising. As well as discussing and executing a strategy, Rustin spends an inordinate amount of time trying to hustle together enough cash to get the thing to actually happen. There is a great sequence where he sends some organisers up to the upper middle class white areas to shake down guilty richer folks, which is depicted with the no-nonsense "gotta be done" attitude that I've seen from the best fundraisers. When responding to a press attack, Rustin commissions someone to write a sequence of increasingly aggressive press releases against a variety of opponents. This "write press releases for all positions in an escalating sequence and in advance" is a move I have taught organisers and press officers for years. There is also a piece on how after the march, they need to stick around to clean up. It's a great film.

If any commissioners for prestige streaming services are reading this blog, allow me to pitch: Organisers. In this anthology TV show, we follow a number of individuals and groups organising significant campaigns or actions. We follow the before and the aftermath. The action is rarely depicted, only spoken of, or reported. It probably runs across 1,000 years of history. It could run for multiple seasons. It is going to cost a lot of money. The episode on the Haitian revolution, the match girls' strike and the Luddites are spectacular. It is frank when campaigns are significant losses.

The Eternal Daughter (2022)

I think Tilda Swinton is one of my favourite actors. In this she plays two roles: as herself – a film-maker no less – and her mother. Who are staying at a hotel. The hotel is a character. Mystery abounds. Why are they there? Who are the other residents? Why is everyone acting so strangely?

The skill required to play these interactions is off the charts. Playing multiple parts is something Swinton has done a fair bit, quite recently in Suspiria (2018). But here, these two characters are the main ones. You sort of begin to forget this.

I also watched Swinton in Young Adam (2003) this year, which is a remarkable performance in a slightly forgotten and underrated film.

Scala!!! (2023)

This is a documentary about the arthouse cinema that had its most famous incarnation in King's Cross in London. It showed an incredible and eclectic range of films, and was instrumental in the general alternative arts scene for as long as it lasted.

The film is really fun, but made me nostalgic for an alternative, cheap, freer, post-punk London which I have never really experienced, but was clearly crucial to a whole range of people.

Variety (1983)

Kathy Acker wrote the screenplay for this drama about escalating sexuality, autonomy and obsession. Featuring peak pre-neoliberal New York. The final shot is as good, and as enigmatic, as they say.

Footprints on the Moon (1975)

A very strange and low key Italian film about a woman who is searching for a origins of a mysterious message she receives, and realises she seems to have lost some time. The soundtrack, locations and cinematography are really brilliant and the whole mood of the film is elliptical and mysterious.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2008)

Two brothers, brilliantly portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman and (I think often very underrated) Ethan Hawke, decide on a last ditch heist to solve their money situation. In terms of tension, atmosphere and portrayal of family dynamics, this film is incredible.

Arrival (2016)

Aliens come to earth and reveal something of ourselves. It is about language and time and trust and memory. So human, but so philosophically rich and interesting.

I don't think I've cried before for a sci-fi film, but this one made me. The whole film's palette has this combination of beauty, space and coolness that is Denis Villeneuve's signature. I am not one for making diminishing comparisons, but Villeneuve makes Christopher Nolan look like a hack.

The End We Start From (2023)

Climate sci-fi apocalypse road movie. London is drowned by storms, and a family have to escape to the countryside, initially ending up at the beautiful rural home of their parents. Difficult to imagine a better film for serious engagement with the climate crisis.

The Secret in Their Eyes (2009)

Argentine crime drama about a police investigation of a particularly violent crime, taking place over multiple decades. The violence of that act is intertwined with the wider violence across Argentinian society.

This all sounds intensely troubling and it is. However, alongside this there is a multi-decade love story between the two central lawyers involved in the case. It is moving and beautiful.

She's Gotta Have It (1986)

Spike Lee's second film, a masterpiece of kinetic filmmaking and very funny. However, there is a quite horrible and disempowering final quarter, for a film that is sympathetic and empowering for its central character. I am glad to see that Lee later said he regretted this and revised it when he revisited the material. Still, worth seeing.

Together (2000) / Together 99 (2023)

A pair of well-observed comedy dramas. The first film is about a commune in 1970s Sweden. As someone pretty familiar with radical spaces, it is a very funny look at the way they often work out. The sister of the commune's quiet and sensitive founder Göran, Elisabeth, escapes her violent husband with two children and joins in with the commune's experimental living arrangements. She is profoundly changed by the radicalism of the space, but in turn the introduction of an outsider breathes new life into the stifling seriousness of the commune's politics.

Together 99 revisits the commune, which is still running, Göran still living there. The original gang re-unite. The returning characters run the gamut of reactions to youthful radicalism: from continuing lower-key commitment to those ideals while occupying elite positions, to mental health crises, to a full blown declaiming of that mode of life, to simply carrying on with the same structures regardless, as the world changes. Has a happy ending.

La chimera (2023)

Probably my film of the year. Its a beautiful ramble through 1980s Italy. A crew of eccentric grave robbers, including Arthur, a British archaeologist and diviner, steal priceless artefacts from tombs they discover and attempt to evade the authorities. Overcome in his dowsing, Arthur has visions revealing things about the graves they rob. Arthur seeks his lost love, and considers something new. It has an inverted shot of Arthur, inverted shots being such a common filmic trope now that I suspect it is due to recent camera technology making this camera movement much easier. The way the ending works as a sort of coda is brilliant. Of course, dream-logic film making makes one think of Fellini, but that feels a bit cheap. The director Alice Rohrwacher puts Fellini in as direct reference point, so maybe it is fine. She also recommends Rossellini's Journey to Italy (1953), which is stunning.

When I was a child I seemed to be able to dowse, a very strange thing.

The Hypnosis (2023)

This is an offbeat but really funny comedy about a couple involved in a pitch weekend for a start up. But due to a misfiring hypnosis programme to stop smoking, one half is not really herself.

Obviously the world of start ups, especially "tech for good" start ups is something I know very well, so the film works on that level. But it is also as an observation of relationship dynamics, within and outside families and power, and the corrupting influence of money, it is pretty good.

Baltimore (2023)

A portrait of a young heiress who becomes involved in an IRA plot to steal and ransom artwork. There is lots of tension as she seeks to escape, which is interleaved with her life story. There is an incredible recruitment scene.

Return to Seoul (2022)

What is really interesting is how it deals with such a long span of time. The unfolding of the protagonist's various relationships, the changes in them, the changes in her happen so cleanly. There is a sort of episodic character of the film, as she moves between different countries and cities.

Evil Does Not Exist (2023)

While billed sometimes as a horror film, it is more a eco-drama. A rural, forest-bound Japanese community cope with the intrusion of developers intending to create a glamping site. Tthe pure waters they use to irrigate their land and make their food will be poisoned and their ancient customs interupted. Sent from Toyko, the developers themselves are not unaffected by the situation.

Centred around beautiful shots of nature, this is a film where slowness, mystery and ambiguity abounds. Probably in my top three films this year. The title alone is provocative enough.

The opening is the camera facing upwards, looking through tree canopy for several minutes straight. Stunning.

Anatomy of A Fall (2023)

Courtroom drama that I've only watched once, but is the kind of film where it invites multiple viewings. The playing with perspectives is great.

The Deep Blue Sea (2011)

I think increasingly that Terence Davies is the greatest English director. I saw Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) a few years and it still stays with me. The Deep Blue Sea is film of intense longing. One little touch that Davies features is people singing old songs in pubs collectively and joyfully, then stepping outside into the cold to (probably) argue with one another. The final shots are a really profound way of ending a film.

The Substance (2024)

A really fun but interesting film. Much has been said of Demi Moore's central performance. It is incredible: the sequence where she gets ready for a date is brilliant. Less has been said about the final 20 minutes, where you begin to think "I can't believe this is happening and what I am watching", for a solid chunk of time until the film ends. The only comparable scene I can think of is the last 20 minutes of Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria (2018) where he just floors the accelerator and off you go.

Love Lies Bleeding (2024)

A lesbian body-building horror-drama. As a film about body-building, it gets it really right: the joy of working out, changing your body, the power, solice and self-possession it brings. But also the considerable downsides of performance enhancing drugs. The pure obsession with the results body-building can bring. The relationship between the two central characters is sweet. Get someone who understands precisely why you take the yolks out of your omelettes, and can prepare your vials. Who understands why you had to leave home.

The Beast (2023)

A sci-fi film, with occasional brief shades of horror and melodrama. In the near future, emotions are considered dangerous, and people can undergo a procedure to eliminate them, which involves purifying their DNA and effectively reliving past lives. A woman undertakes the procedure and we follow her. It is a compelling film, held together by intense performances from Léa Seydoux and George MacKay. Oh and unlike me: scan the QR code at the end...

The Full List

1. Foe (2023)
2. I Hired a Contract Killer (1990)
3. Hidden (2006)
4. Rustin (2023)
5. The Kitchen (2024)
6. The Eternal Daughter (2022)
7. Scala!!! (2023)
8. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
9. Infinity Pool (2023)
10. Variety (1983)
11. American Fiction (2023)
12. Footprints on the Moon (1975)
13. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2008)
14. Promising Young Woman (2020)
15. The Housemaid (2011)
16. Reality (2023)
17. Dune: Part Two (2024)
18. Late Night with the Devil (2024)
19. Torso (1972)
20. Arrival (2016)
21. A Man on The Moon (1999)
22. The Talented Mr Ripley (1999)
23. The Secret in Their Eyes (2009)
24. Secret in Their Eyes (2015)
25. Wild Men (2021)
26. The End We Start From (2023)
27. She's Gotta Have It (1986)
28. Manhunter (1986)
29. On The Road (2012)
30. Together (2000)
31. Together 99 (2023)
32. La chimera (2023)
33. A History of Violence (2005)
34. The Hypnosis (2023)
35. Rita, Sue and Bob Too (1987)
36. Baltimore (2023)
37. Return to Seoul (2022)
38. Cosmopolis (2012)
39. Evil Does Not Exist (2023)
40. A Most Violent Year (2014)
41. Megalopolis (2024)
42. Anatomy of A Fall (2023)
43. Silence of the Lambs (1991)
44. The Deep Blue Sea (2011)
45. Starve Acre (2023)
46. The Substance (2024)
47. Love Lies Bleeding (2024)
48. One False Move (1992)
49. The Psychic (1977)
50. A Bittersweet Life (2005)
51. Kneecap (2024)
52. Piercing (2018)
53. The Beast (2023)
54. Young Adam (2003)

I watched 86 films in 2022. This is up from 82 films in 2021 and 70 in 2020. Here are some highlights.

Martin Eden (2017)

A loose adaptation of Jack London's novel, it the story of a working class auto-didact who rejects the Napolitian socialist culture of his environment, becoming a Nietzsche influenced individualist anarchist. This in turn means rejecting the writerly circles he gains access to through his literary brilliance. In the process, finally ending in a quite lonely place.

It is sumptuously filmed. I watched it off the back of going through the Paolo Sorrentino back catalogue and feeling like I'm missing Italy. Sorrentino is a highly derivative director, of Fellini and the whole canon of Italian brilliance. However, he is still very good indeed, as he processes out those influences well. The Great Beauty (2013) is obviously incredible, Il divo (2008) is a gripping political drama (and presumably quite controversial) and Hand of God (2021) is a profound piece of auto-biographical cinema. For me his greatest work is The Consequences of Love (2004). A brilliant multi-layered film that has stayed with me since I saw it. Even the title hits very hard.

The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty (1972)

A strange film about a strange man operating strangely. It has a very odd pacing, but is quite brilliant.

Toyko Sonata (2008)

After watching a lot of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's horror films in the last few years, I decided to watch this family drama from him. Suffice to say, it was utterly amazing.

One day, the authoritarian patriarch of a middle class family in Toyko loses his job. Instead of telling his family, to save face he decides to just continue pretending to go to work. Meanwhile, his son takes his lunch money and secretly pays for piano lessons.

This combination of family drama with secrets kept and social criticism regarding precarious work recalls Parasite (2021). Apparently Bong Joon-ho is a fan of Kurosawa, so it is possible the two films influenced one another.

The final scene is completely beautiful and made me cry.

Possum (2018)

Possum is amongst the best horror films I've recently seen. Possum is pure creep: set in an unnamed grim English town and its surrounding woods and marshes, filled with spidery dread, strangeness and psychological turmoil. Sean Harris in the central role is taut and spinderly. Apparently he remained in character throughout the shoot, which must have been horrifying. The puppet at the center of matters is a brilliant creation.

The director Matthew Holness is best known for his work on the extremely strange and very funny TV programme Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, which follows in the canon of British comedy with undergirded by horror and the surreal like The League of Gentlemen. Holness takes the comedy distancing filter off and the result is very unsettling. Not since watching Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse (2001) have I watched a film where there have been sequences where I've considered stopping watching because I didn't want to see what happened next. Suffice to say, it's great.

Rose Plays Julie (2019)

A recent Irish film about repressed violence and people pretending to be other people. The soundtrack is also great.

Wild Tales (2014)

This Argentinian anthology film is truly wild and completely brilliant.

Lift to the Scaffold (1958)

An incredible piece of noir, which features some incredible scenes of double meaning and a long time stuck in a lift. It has a brilliant Miles Davis soundtrack also, which uses delays to brilliant effect.

Don't Look Now (1973)

This is rightly a horror classic. Study of grief and the supernatural with a famously shocking ending. It is as good as they say, but said ending feels diluted by parody. In the following there are spoilers, but I think we have handle it for a film released 51 years ago.

A review I read called it a difussion of giallo - the lurid Italian thriller genre that preceded and influenced American Slasher films, associated with directors like Dario Argento and Mario Bava. Though this doesn't really do justice to the film, it is an interesting way to think about it. It seems to be the case in terms of sound design, the Italian locations and the use of the shocking red throughout. Thematically ESP and precognition are common things to find in the more supernaturally inflected types of Giallo. One interesting thing to observe is several scenes that are impossibly tense would now be non-problems, by the fact everyone is chained to their phones.

I read the short story on which the film is based by Daphne du Maurier. Some people have been puzzled by the film's title, but in the short story, it's the first line where the wife says "don't look now" to try to get her husband to not stare at the two sisters looking at them. What the film brilliantly adds is that their daughter's death is by water, which makes the Venice setting more powerful. In the short story, their daughter dies of meningitis. What the short story implies more heavily than the film, but one can also pick up, is that John the father himself potentially has psychic powers.

Originally released as a double feature with The Wicker Man (1973). What an afternoon at the cinema! The Wicker Man was the "B" film, but it is difficult to say which way round they should be.

Brute Force (1947)

This is a prison set film noir, that pitches the brutal governer against a cell of inmates As an anti-prison film it really hits home and applies the time worn "prison as reflection of wider society" trope. But I read it more as a tragedy in a near Shakespearean mode.

I also watched the same director's The Naked City (1948). Which is also excellent.

The Wind That Shakes The Barley (2006)

Loach is often framed as an overly didactic director, but I think there is a political honesty to his films, where real and complete human beings confront political events. Ideologies do exist, but there is a complete realism to how they map onto actually existing political realities, and how people hold them more or less lightly when confronted with those realities.

Land and Freedom (1995) his Spanish Civil War film is also excellent. Like this film, no one comes out looking incredible, and there is a truth to it.

Force Mejeure (2014)

Very very funny, very sad.

No Country for Old Men (2007)

I didn't see it when it came out and entirely unfairly I have always mentally sorted the Coen Brothers under "quirky". The themes were well rehearsed on release and in particular, chance stands out.

Like many films and TV series that are adaptions, there is something about how a novelist does themes that increases the richness of films when that translation is made. The final scene – a discussion of dreams over breakfast that cuts with perfect timing to black – is sublime. I clapped.

While a violent film, in three instances, we arrive at the scene in the aftermath of terrible violence. A lesser set of directors would have shown what happens. But it is worse that we don't see it - we arrive on the scene as the characters do.

A perfect film. Apparently the Coen Brothers spent most of the film thinking it was going to turn out quite badly: a lesson to take!

The Untamed (2016)

This film is a lot: it needs a strong stomach but I think overall, it works in the general canon of "elevated horror".

Genre-wise, it is a science fiction body horror: a meteor brings an alien to Earth and we deal with the fall out, which involves sex. Think Species (1995) [which I've never seen], The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) or Under the Skin (2013). It's a film about sexual desire and obsession and the liberating and corrupting influence it can have, but also loneliness, class, homophobia and family.

I read that it was influenced by Possession (1981) and having now watched that film, I was slightly disappointed how similar they were, as I felt The Untamed was really original.

However, Posession trades in a very disturbing Lovecraftian vision saturated by a weird metaphysics. I loved the inversion of the classic privation theory of evil in the dialogue about "Goodness is only some kind of reflection upon evil. That's all it is". The Untamed is, by contrast, quite grounded in the real world.

Long Day's Journey Into Night (2018)

Last film watched in 2022, this Chinese film is about time, memory, homecoming and loss.

It is basically in two parts, the second part being an almost hour long unbroken cut, filmed to be watched in 3D. This sequence is strange and infused with unfolding, looping dream-like logic, that continuously references the previous section of the film but in a way that both distorts, obscures and clarifies it's referents. Like dreaming itself, filled with hidden passageways and places that are familiar, but look different.

To my mind, it recalls Tarkovsky; there is a even a sequence of raining inside.

Of course some desire to prevent existential risks (x-risks) is sincere. I think that many x-risks are live possibilities, but the risks of AI are primarily around the ways it will reshape labour markets and entrench existing inequalities and power relations. These changes and the technical unemployment that is the result are already occurring. Preventing any brake on these changes is what is really at stake here. Realistically replacing jobs is the business model of artificial intelligence, allowing individual people to do substantially more and reducing reliance on costly specialist expertise. Energy consumed by preventing x-risks will absorb attention from these other more near-term risks. But asking for regulation is also a form of political terraforming.

Asking for regulation around AI risk allows the current players in AI to shape the institutions which form the market and the political environment in which they will operate. The boards of these government stamped or internationally formed organisations will be stuffed with known quantities - even highly critical - whose views are well known and remain within a known envelope of criticism. The agenda, shape, powers and concerns of these institutions will be set by AI companies. Government expertise in technology in general and advanced technology in particular is shallow. Governments are used to this sort of corporate co-writing of laws and here AI companies genuinely are subject matter experts, given the closed nature of their research. Shaping the market allows existing players to prevent new technology surpassing them. Licensing AI means increased visibility on emerging technological innovations and trends. It levels the playing field and permits “fair” competition, by making the landscape more known. It also permits AI companies to control intellectual property and ensure open source models can be regulated out of existence if they truly become a threat to their proprietary models and downstream services.

The shaping of the political environment is more profound. The writer’s strike is a portent of things to come: those near-term risks of AI will doubtless come under heavy scrutiny from trade unions and other political actors. By having forums in which these sorts of concerns can be arbitrated allows these questions to be sharply referred to the relevant body to be firmly kicked into the long grass. This is a form of depoliticisation, similar to how in neoliberal governance key elements of economic control are taken out of politics and handed to independent institutions. For example, the World Bank or the IMF, or more locally the independence of the Bank of England. Quinn Slobodian calls this "market encasement", where institutions protect markets from substantial political oversight.

Silicon Valley seems to have learnt lessons from regulation of startups that intervened in existing markets like Uber, Deliveroo and Airbnb. Increasingly, these services find themselves in lengthy legal disputes as to their operating model, for example between Deliveroo and trade unions. In the longer tail, we can think about the anti-monopoly court cases directed against Microsoft, a substantial investor in OpenAI. The disruption to labour markets as a result of AI will be far greater than any individual start up. Better to get ahead of regulation by setting it yourselves.

First that the team used the wonderful phrase "working hard for each other" in interviews. This is a lovely phrase, that is especially pertinent to working in a co-operative where you are literally working for each other, as well as for one's collaborators.

Second that the team were consistently respectful of opponents and humble even in victory. Rather than falling in love with themselves, the message was "one beer to celebrate, but as soon as we are in the dressing room we are thinking about the next match". In talking about opponents, the line was "they are a good team, playing at the top of their game - you don't get this far without being good - we will take a careful look at how they play".

In political conflict - big and small-P - from community organising up - one of the most obvious errors to make is to underestimate one's opponents and allow hubris to set in. I think we really saw this when Boris Johnson became PM in 2019. The Labour Party at the time underestimated his potential popularity and the skillsets of those around him, like Dominic Cummings and Vote Leave and Issac Levido and team. I thought in 2019 a General Election with a Brexit framing was going to be a disaster for Labour. One of the fundamental reasons people didn't perceive this was a lack of respect for opponents. Thinking that the situation would be a re-run of 2017 and that Johnson was an easily framed and disorganised charlatan, instead of the leader of the most effective electoral force in world history. The Tories made the same mistake in 2017, believing the press line on the Corbyn movement, rather than considering their strengths and the advantages provided by a distributed mass membership. Labour made a mistake having an extended movement-wide victory lap after 2017. As soon as you get in the locker room, it's focussing on the next match, against a good team, at the top of the game. Though it's for kids, I’ve bought Southgate’s book, so will see what other interesting stuff is in it.

I was thinking that I’ve had experience in bands and in kitchens but never in sports teams. Then I remembered this wasn’t quite the case.

I never played much football at school but the thing I did play was Rugby. I had a South African Rugby teacher called Mr Jardine. Mr Jardine had a ringing accent and in my memory looks like The Rock.

He taught me two important lessons. First that regardless of the size of someone, they can’t run without their legs. I played Rugby Union. I was on the second row of the scrum for a while but had a better time as a full back - the last line of defence before a try can be scored. As a full back, sometimes you can make the difference with a well-timed tackle even when someone is much larger than you. There is probably something here also about campaigning or political struggle: no matter the seeming strength of an opponent, if they have a weakness and maybe if they can’t move, they also can’t win.

Second that for him, rugby was not about strength but about courage and commitment. This was a drill, a mantra for the team he coached. He’d ask us “what is Rugby about” and we’d say “courage and commitment sir”. “That’s right”, he’d say. I told my Dad about this. He’s from Hull. Rugby League is in their blood up there. He said “that’s right”. Courage and commitment, not physical strength. That's what Rugby is about.

I think about this quite often. I'm a big fan and user of the scrum agile project management methodology. One of the scrum values is courage and another is commitment. People who’ve worked with me know I’m keen to say courage is one of the most important scrum values to me. As a teenage Manics fan, I was always a bit taken by the Futurists, who were quoted in the liner notes for their debut album Generation Terrorists. This is despite the Futurist's openly misogynistic, anti-feminist and proto-Fascist bent, which I was aware of and uncomfortable with at the time. In Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto they say "the essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt". This I had pinned to my bedroom wall as a teenager, if not actually, then at least mentally.

Between Marinetti and friends and Mr Jardine, my teenage self was pretty set up. The thing is, reflecting now, they come as a pair. Commitment to causes, to others, to teams comes with courage. Courage requires commitment. And vice versa.

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Yesterday I attended the #NovaraIRL event on Money For Nothing, an event on automation, work and the universal basic income with panelists Jeremy Gilbert, Joanna Biggs, Alex Gordon and Aaron Bastani, chaired by Eleanor Penny. The standard of debate was very high and I thought that it was really interesting to see an open space for in-depth debate of issues, not simply a top-table chat followed by a Q and A. There were only a few “more a comment than a question” but when there were it was actually an interesting comment! The person with the most lengthy “more a comment than a question” was Barb Jacobson, an activist actively campaigning for UBI at the European level. Considering her considerable expertise on the subject, someone shouted out “she should be on the panel”, which caused a big round of applause and Novara Media to pull her up a chair alongside the other panelists, where her contribution was really valuable. Which was really nice to see. It would be interesting to see Novara try and incorporate this into future events. Maybe if you turn up and think you have relevant experience or just fancy it you should be able to be put into a hat and then one random audience member joins the panel. Or use alternative models of how to arrange the room or the flow of questions for such events. It was a lot less “academic” than the last #NovaraIRL on populism. It was far more as if the whole room was talking, rowdily, partly because questions were accepted from the floor pretty much from the start. So this was good. It was stimulating, serious without taking itself seriously but never dull.

Although the event was billed as being Keynesian full employment versus UBI, the former didn’t really get a look in at all, which was good because UBI is enough to be getting along with. I haven’t watched the video so this is from memory and notes and I think it might be interesting for others to read. Pretty much all the standard objections to UBI were heard from either the panel or from the floor throughout the night.

The most obvious objection is that it has neoliberal precedence and was favoured by the likes of Milton Friedman. Jeremy Gilbert was right to say that the neoliberal version of the UBI is more of a negative income tax and has significant structural differences to any version advocated now by the left. Contemporary right wing advocates of basic income like the Adam Smith Institute still recognise it as a negative income tax. This always seems to me not an especially strong argument in the field where there are significantly better arguments against the UBI and plenty of left wing counter examples. The current enthusiasm for it in Silicon Valley amongst both market libertarians and (to be honest) nudge-wink social democrats cough socialists wasn’t talked about, especially the enthusiasm of the former. But as with any omissions here there is only so much time in such an event and I am sure conversations continued into the night as there was a party afterwards.

A major concern with UBI is it would gut existing welfare provision by removing it and replacing it, effectively throwing everyone to the market. Panelists responded that no one thinks a UBI is a the silver bullet and that it must form part of an ensemble of left wing demands and that current welfare provisions and services must be maintained. This was replied to by the idea that in current conditions the left would have no way of imposing continued or improved service provision and the “version” of the UBI got would be the one that is designed to remove existing gains. In turn the reply was that UBI may provide a better basis — a platform if you will — which will enable people to organise better to defend those provisions as it loosens the stranglehold of waged labour over all human life. Much of the argument, this included, focussed on the current position of the left right now, which is taken as being historically weak, which seems true. Given the weakness of the left right now, it was argued, it seems difficult to imagine getting a version of UBI on “our” terms, being properly universal, properly basic and a proper income. This being the case pro UBI people argued that it is a demand to revitalise the left around, reach out beyond the bases of the left (i.e. people in that room), more suited to the conditions of low union participation (for example) for organising, more open to the imagination of a better and richer life not dominated by work, a fresher demand that fits naturally in our current context. There was also some consideration towards the end of the fact that some version of the UBI was likely and that therefore the left needed to “get its shit together” and organise for a version of it on our terms rather than on the terms of the right. Some kind of basic income was thought to be on the way and the terms of that income were up for political contestation. I actually think that in the UK context the likelihood of a version of UBI from the right seems highly inplausible although someone said that they could see it in the lifetime of Theresa May’s tenure! There was also a question of if UBI would continuously have to be fought for to keep in line with inflation: it is never a done deal compared to other gains. To which it was replied that the same is true of any state benefit.

Related to this was I think a strong line of questioning about the question of borders and the UBI. Couldn’t the UBI, especially given decades of anti-immigrant and anti-benefits sentiment, serve as a further punitive tool to aggressively assault immigrants and people who tend to live on its auspices? Wouldn’t widespread consent for the UBI be more likely if it was attached to some version of citizenship, further creating an “us and them”? This slippage is already evident, say, when the Green Party talk about a “citizens income” not a UBI. In order to make the extravagant if not utopian dynamics of the UBI more palatable for actually getting it done, people tend to restrict its scope, making a nativist version more plausible. In short, immigrants would be portrayed as “coming over here, taking our UBI”. In reply to this and a cluster of other points regarding the possible weaponisation of UBI against the left and against marginalised groups in society, the not unfair point was raised that this is the case with any historic demand of the movements. The welfare state can be used highly punitively as a method of discipline. Indeed for these reasons leftists at the time of the implementation of the welfare state argued against it: the welfare state was a sop, some pocket money, a sticking plaster that would buy off the working class and mollify them, disempowering their civil society institutions in favour of the state; a distraction compared to the real work of social revolution. But at the same time, it is difficult to argue the welfare state was not a concrete gain for working class movements and the population as a whole, even if it could be weakened or removed. Jeremy Gilbert noted this is a general problem related to all welfare state provisions, not restricted to UBI. It was interesting that no one brought up provisioning anything by the means of the state as being a problem in itself.

Again the point was raised about the likelihood of the punitive version not falling out given where the left was. It was also noted that even if the left “got its way” the provision would be highly fragile. Unlike, say, a reduction in the working week or hours, it would be easy for an incoming right wing government to either reverse the UBI (as we have seen with reversal of other benefits) or transform it into a punitive and disciplinary version, as they have done with the move from “the dole” to workfare. Which seems fair, but the argument in opposition is clear also: of course any gain can be reversed or made punitive but one has to hope that you would be organised enough to prevent this and/or have a constituency of people who, having received the UBI, will now fight for it being removed. Okay, but it seems to me we have little evidence in the UK context that people would organise against it if it was going to be removed. Many benefits have been stripped, but the level of social unrest around these issues seems relatively low considering the scope of the changes. I am not saying this is a good thing or blaming the victims but it seems to be the case. I am sure if UBI was implemented in contexts where kicking back against changes was more common (a society less deferential or conservative or with more leftist organisations or social solidarity at scale and so on) then this would happen, but it is hard for me to imagine in the UK.

Naturally the question of paying for the UBI arose. There seemed to be a few proposals on the table. A increase in general taxation and a tightening of existing loopholes in the tax system. An automatic right to dividends from a corporation for employees paid into the pot for UBI. A tax on robotics and automation. A tax on land, which unlike other assets could not be moved around to avoid it. A heavy tax on financial centres like the City of London. The financial transaction tax, the Tobin tax, was mentioned but for Jeremy Gilbert it was probably left to its original intent, redistribution from the global north to the global south if implemented internationally. Aaron Bastani suggested an aggressive consumption tax on expensive goods and services that would only hit the rich. Alex Gorton — who was the only panelist totally opposed to the UBI — made the very strong point that any implementation of UBI that raises taxes will cause problems with capital flight, with companies implementing a “spatial fix” to route around taxes and thus underfunding the UBI, as they did in the movement of production away from the global north in the 1980s and 90s. A strong point, but applicable to any left-wing demand within the parameters of a single state.

This raised two further questions. First, it should obviously be kept in view that the rest of the world exists (!) and that if we are thinking of a nice UBI for us in the UK, it may well be at the expense of others in funding it, in the same way — for example — the welfare state in the UK was part funded by colonial expansion and so on. Given that no one was arguing that UBI means the end of capitalist social relations and capitalist relations tend to globalised and exploitative supply chains and neo-colonialist extraction this seems plausible. Here defenders of the UBI were keen (as the alter-globalisation movement as similarly keen) to emphasise that all demands should be in a spirit of expanded international solidarity and a centring of struggles elsewhere: to which I am inclined to say, sure, but will this really happen? One speaker noted that numerous groups outside of Europe and North America advocate for the UBI, which is a fair point, as, again, UBI seemed to be one of the few “policy demands” of the alter-globalisation movement which made a go of trying to ensure demands from the global south were privileged. Secondly, the environmental and in some sense anti-productivist case for UBI is not clear. Some say that UBI will be a step in removing the relentless drive for growth in capitalist economies which will have knock on effects for carbon reduction with more people doing less work. However other advocates of the UBI claim it will make society more productive by allowing richer more creative work, which seems to push in exactly the opposite direction. So: difficult.

There were also several questions considering the relationship between a demand for the UBI, care work and the feminist demands in the wages for housework movement. The problem with UBI is that is doesn’t specifically target care work or “women’s work”, valuing it specifically and compensating for it in the way the wages for housework movement does. Its universality is perhaps a flaw, because its subject is everyone, not targeting to ameliorate structural inequalities in existing society in an empowering way. However, as the recent school meals debacle shows, universality in benefits generally is also a important principle worth defending. Again, complex. Both Aaron Bastani and Joanna Biggs made the point that UBI would precisely permit people to have their care work paid for. Bastani made the point the oncoming crisis in geriatric care with an older population would necessitate people being freed to care for their older relatives. Biggs said that wages for housework was one way of thinking of UBI or presenting it to newcomers as a whole. This is a point made by Kathi Weeks in her 2001 book The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries, repeated in later interviews and echoed by the likes of Selma James. Jacobson mentioned she saw her work on UBI as in continuity with her earlier work on wages for housework in the 1980s. Some pointed out that the likelihood of simply handing out cash will change gender relations seems slim, but others said that given women’s financial independence would enable them to leave situations of domestic violence there were immediate pragmatic gains.

Naturally, there was the most direct question: given the left’s todo list of things that require defence — basic provisions, rights, defending people against heightened racism and so on — would it not be better just to concentrate on these burning dangers rather than some potentially destructive decision that is highly ambitious and speculative and perhaps not even achievable? Is this not a waste or resources? Indeed, wouldn’t an expanded and refined version of welfare provisions and free services be better and less of a complex political orchestration to navigate? Alex Gorton noted that the UBI was both a subsidy for employers for low wages, a common accusation from the left on the Swiss referendum debate on the UBI. Gorton saw it as a total desertion of the left’s consistent desire for democratic control of the means of production: let the capitalists have everything, every control of work, just give people a handout from a benevolent dictator. To which most other panelists replied that, again, UBI wasn’t to be seen in insolation and no one would argue for it to weaken trade unions, indeed, the time freed up might allow more time for organising and the ability for workers to hold out longer before taking jobs with reduced pay and conditions. They also made the point, especially in the light of automation, that it was a useful tool to change the way people thought about work as their primary reason for existing, sundering the relationship between activity and the wage, enabling free time and a more rounded existence. Points commonly made in the debate, repeated in Kathi Weeks’ above mentioned book.

Overall I thought the debate was wide-ranging, very interesting and covered off most of the arguments for and against a UBI from the perspective of the left. Having been a strong advocate of UBI, moving into a more agnostic mode more recently though still leaning towards it, reflecting now, the event opened more questions than it answered, even having heard most of the arguments on either side before I came along. I don’t know if this is a good thing or not! It was striking that the voices both for and against were not very homogenous. The idea still has a strong pull for me imaginatively, but my pragmatic side doesn’t know and my strategic side recognises quite a few dangers of it outlined above (as it did before the event). Think I am going to have to reflect a good while longer.

Having recently returned from her visit to the USA, Theresa May has failed to take any decisive leadership on the issue and has not condemned Trump. Her office produced a tepid statement saying that such an order was not their policy while other international leaders did not mince their words. May’s own MPs, including Boris Johnson and Nadhim Zahawi — who himself would be subject to Trump’s ban — have condemned this order.

Several people have noted the glaring contradiction between MPs like 
Chuka Umunna, Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham and so on rushing to condemn Trump in the strongest possible terms while having spent years endorsing stronger border controls and saying that Labour should spend more time addressing the “legitimate concerns” of Labour voters around immigration. A particularly egregious example was today on Sophy Ridge’s show on Sky, where Dan Jarvis did the typical line on these issues, seemingly jarringly out of place in the public mood.

The Conservatives, particularly in the Brexit wing, are much the same. Nadhim Zahawi himself, indulged in the same rhetorical tropes as Trump: that it is necessary to prevent crime to secure the borders.

It is worth noting that May’s weak condemnation of Trump is of a piece with her own views on immigration, which may explain her slowness to condemn Trump. May is alleged to have suppressed positive information on immigration in a report during the referendum campaign. As Home Secretary, May endorsed the notorious “go home” vans and presided over what campaigners called “state-sanctioned abuse of women” at Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre and this is the tip of the iceberg with regard to her attitude to those seeking asylum. Her attitude to those seeking student visas is well documented both as home secretary and prime minister.

These people have talked up hardening borders for years. They are now condemning Trump when he actually does it and does it in a decisive, albeit appalling manner. Trump’s executive order is only the extreme case of the general tenor of UK public discourse on immigration. The same is the case for the vast majority of the UK media, now playing shocked and appalled when previously they had stressed the centrality of the issue.

While he has made strong statements against Trump, Jeremy Corbyn, who left his first victory speech to go immediately to a rally for refugees, has seemingly allowed himself to influenced by this overall atmosphere. For example, against his own views a line goes out that he is no longer “wedded to freedom of movement for EU citizens as a point of principle”, even when he is personally incapable of delivering this point without significant qualification when the speech is delivered. Clive Lewis, the presumed leader in waiting, has been even more problematic on this point. The less said about Len McLuskey’s diversions into this issue, the better. As Rachel Shabi has argued this is a total dead end for Labour for political strategic as well as ethical political reasons, one that demobilised and demoralises Corbyn’s base.

I think it is useful to point out this glaring contradiction, but it is more useful to use this as a moment in which this dominant frame can be broken or at least, loosened. The move is not “how can you be concerned about refugees one day, then return to business as usual migrant bashing the next?”, though this has its uses. It is rather to get inside why people are capable of being appalled by this case and then to push outwards. People feel sympathy for the plight of these people trapped in airports, or unable to see loved ones. The border is seen as a negative thing, highly rare in public debates. The point is extend the reach of their sympathy to the general immigration debate. All migrants are people who, like the people trapped in the Trump case, are rounded human beings much like yourself, attempting to seek a better life for themselves, driven by forces that do violence to the possibilities of their happiness and flourishing. There will be attempts to divide between “good” refugees and “bad” economic migrants, which must be resisted. Once you have begun to think the border is wrong in this case, this view can be overturned or at least softened by centring the migrant in articulating a new overall “story” about borders and migration. This will be tough going, as anyone who has can these conversation in real life before will attest. There will be some who do not sit in this moment of moral contradiction and instead think Trump’s measure legitimate. But it is wholly worthwhile to make some ground.

Chances to change the public imaginary on migration from that of nameless (racialised) hordes crossing borders to do damage to “our” country to something other come very few and far between. Moments when the national press are in a mode that can be opened up on this issue are rare. The last moment was arguably the publication of the horrible photo of Aylan Kurdi. Psychologists Steve Reicher and Alex Haslam analysed public reaction to this image in a very interesting (but in my mind not entirely correct) blog post. The image troubled the categories of the migrant that had hitherto been common and allowed them to be seen differently. It allowed at least some space to open up around the issue.

There must be not return to “concerns on immigration” as usual after the condemnation of Trump’s border policies. There is an opportunity to change the weather on this issue while providing the necessary solidarity to those effected by it. It must be grasped with both hands.

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The most commonly highlighted sentence in the post runs:

Rather than stopping to ask why people may think the way they do, to think about how their material conditions, their relationship to capital and forms of work and social reproduction, may affect their understanding of the world

This is sound methodology and part of the best traditions of Marxism to which Matt aims to subscribe. However, I want to suggest that if this is the standard to which analysis is to be judged, this piece of writing fails.

There seem to be two major points of the piece which Matt is glad to continue defending after some clarification on Twitter and in comments. First that Corbynism is a “simulation of a social movement”. Second that the situation now is so grave that Corbyn must go and be replaced by another Labour leader more able to win elections. I will respond to these points in turn and conclude with an examination of the virality of this piece in accordance with this same methodology.

the vast majority of ‘new members’, joining the party was not a promise of future activity, but a gesture of general support — perhaps similar to signing a Change.org petition — for whatever they thought Corbyn as Labour leader symbolised […] It is rather a simulation of a social movement — a form of clicktivism, of gesture politics based on an identification with ‘what Jeremy stands for’. It makes people feel like they are part of a ‘social movement’ without having to engage in the tricky, boring work of actually building one.

That Corbynism is a simulation of a social movement seems to rely on an unspoken account of what a “real” social movement would look like. Matt maintains that the sheer numbers joining the Labour party should not be seen as indication that a social movement is on its way and that on the ground the tricky work is being abandoned. At the most basic level I agree that people joining the Labour party is no indication of a social movement, though it might be one indicator, but feel this criticism is part of a genre of criticisms that are not especially valid.

Such critiques should be highly familiar to anyone who has been involved in anti-austerity activism since 2008. The Arab Spring, (especially) the Occupy movement or the student movement in the UK in 2010 attracted significant criticism that it was filled by fly by night clicktivism or, more carefully, was a politics without a left; an individualised and atomised politics blundering around without ideological coherence, lacking significant institutional support or wider framing from a left decimated by neoliberalism. One can see similar criticisms offered against online intersectional feminism or safer spaces activism on campus: that this is lightweight false politics compared to the nitty gritty “real world” politics or activism. With Black Lives Matter, outside of ever present reactionary racism, critiques attempt to police activists in the name of an imagined past of “good” struggle. Why are these protesters blocking roads (which Martin Luther King did) as opposed to adopting the peaceful (which were at the time seen as violent and disruptive) tactics of the classic civil rights movement? Why can’t they be like the “real” civil rights movement? These criticisms often veer significantly into what is called “digital dualism” — that there is a hard and fast distinction between the digital and “real” worlds. These politics we are told represent a flight into fantasy because of their digitisation or represent a typical “millennial” lack of personal discipline, laziness and serious commitment. These critiques pre-date 2008 of course. In 2007 Slavoj Žižek was busy telling anti-war protesters to remain in their homes because their presence only reenforced the logic of freedom endorsed by George W. Bush’s imperialist adventures. Better for “materialists” to have a nice long think about things. Like asking where all the “real” protest music has gone despite the clearly fertile atmosphere for such artistic production, asking where the “real” social movement is, as opposed to the fake ones on offer, is a perennial of critique.

It seems to me that what is really needed is what some formulation a social movement looks like now. I am highly sympathetic to criticisms that simply calling something a social movement does not make it so. Well constructed criticisms from Corbyn’s left, echoed by classic criticisms from the likes of Ralph Miliband and within the anarchist movement, opine that the problem is that all this effort with Labour, even for a much better project like that which surrounds Corbyn, is a waste of time when a social movement could be built instead (or in Miliband’s case an alternative left-wing party). Some critics would extent this to say that all involvement in parliamentary democracy or electoral politics is a similar distraction from the task. It seems completely necessary therefore to ask what the shape of a social movement really is like, one that is capable of at least of moving us beyond neoliberalism and austerity and into some other social formation. And relatedly, what the intellectual hegemony that accompanies it might look like, if this is something worth seeking.

Some of the work here would involve looking back at older social movements. I think we would see that they were perhaps not characterised by the high levels of commitment and “strong ties” that Matt’s (absent) account of “real” social movements seems to suggest. People had a range of levels of support and participation from voting for left wing parties, to buying left wing papers to arguing about left wing ideas down the pub and attending cultural events. There is a reason that there is a category of “fellow travellers” in any social movement. Due to “digital dualism” people tend to think that commitment to a political project is less because it is “virtual”. I think it sometimes commitment and its power can be more due to the specific character of contemporary life and capitalism. Offering an account of what a social movement is like in 2016 and where it might be effective would need to consider carefully a situation where there is digital saturation of the whole means of communication, production and exchange. This isn’t to suggest a simplistic analysis here that conjures fantasies of unending victory because everyone has Twitter. But the changes in the relations of production in the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism and the opportunities and risks this terrain provides should be carefully examined. Perhaps the social movements under post-Fordism look different from those under Fordism, the era, more or less, of the “classic” social movement?

I do not seek to offer such an account here but would nod to the literature in social movement studies on the subject that might be helpful. Particularly The Logic of Connective Action by W. Lance Bennett and Alexandra Segerberg is a point of reference. This suggests that we should consider peer to peer networks in a hybrid political landscape as part of a new account of “organisationally enabled networks” where organisation light the blue touch paper but the large scale work is carried out in “personalised communication mechanism” both through groups of existing friends and via online communication. I would want to suggest that social media and technology accelerates and speeds up some of the factors which were already present in “classic” social movements while shifting their structures and opportunity costs considerably. While total technological optimism is a foolish stance, equally given to ignorance of the dynamics of classes and particularly the neo-colonial extractive supply lines for all digital technology, that digital technology has changed the dynamics of political action is undeniable.

While one should be clear sighted regarding the limitations of the digitalisation of political campaigning for almost all causes, one should also acknowledge their power. Certainly mainstream accounts of the last election suggest that digital campaigning of a particular kind by the Conservatives aided their victory immensely, while poorly thought through and resourced campaigning damaged Labour. The Conservatives knew what any digital marketer will tell you: that if you want to reach a broad base of people Facebook is where its at, Twitter is tiny niche, yet this was the concentration of Labour in the last election. The advantages conferred by digital and data led campaigning is confirmed by literatures looking at the case in US democratic politics. While one should, again, be cautious of an instantaneous transfer of these kind of forces into a potential Corbyn electoral victory, it seems probable that if properly organised a combination of a well run digital strategy with an effective and well organised “ground war” could deliver victory. The Conservatives ground war was extremely unsophisticated in technical operation but was highly effective. The Tories simply bused activist into key marginal seats, no questions asked if they were even party members and did this work carefully without the glare of the media of talking to people, backed by huge amounts of targeted mail shots to key marginals. Correctly tooled and resourced by an enthusiastic and diverse base of working people brought in by Corbyn, Labour could do much better than the Tories last time on these fronts, even while they are still likely to struggle in the “air war” of the national media. The neoliberal media are always going to be fiercely opposed to Corbyn’s project, just as they were fiercely opposed to Ed Miliband’s. It is difficult to know what to do here.

Therefore I think it is wrong to drive a hard and fast wedge between the difference between ‘extra-parliamentary activism’ and a ‘political party’ and think the literature on the subject shows this. In today’s world it seems difficult to suggest that there is a sharp edge between a “real” social movement, a single issue campaign and an electoral vehicle. The claim that digitally mediated single issue campaigns or single issue campaigns generally are totally useless to either an electoral campaign or a modern social movement seems to be false. This is evident even anecdotally. The same person will sign the occasional petition, attend protests and even take contentious action and vote for an anti-austerity party. People are capable of doing both/and if the procedures attain their political ends. For good materialist reasons, the political terrain is ripe for such an assemblage to have considerable success. Indeed, these materialist reasons regarding the constitution of digital capitalism are rather unappreciated by the accounts of mainstream political science. It is useful when fighting on a terrain that the whole of contemporary life is also on that terrain.

Part of the the reason why people don’t participate in the imagined activities of “traditional” social movements is that work now dominates so many of the hours of human life. I think Matt would admit he was a little unfair in declaiming people’s levels of political activity and to be fair, he does try to hedge this in the piece. After a long days work and completing the tasks of just being able to continue this work (the unwaged work that is part of what Marxist feminist inspired critiques call social reproduction), what time is left for political activism? One of the major critiques offered in the aftermath of the alter-globalisation movement from 1999 onwards was that there was an “activist mentality”. This critique — Give Up Activism — is always worth revisiting generally. The “activist mentality” is whereby people would become “activists”, political professionals inside their own groups divorced from the day to day struggles of communities. One could of course abstract this criticism and use it in other contexts, as it is a common one within anarchist circles: the union leaders are their own group apart from their worker (the radical union critique of mainstream unions), the PLP are their own group with their own internal culture apart from their membership or constituents. But though Give Up Activism does reflect on the reasons for this being something to do with isolation and the destruction of the broader political left, what it fails to capture is perhaps why you would need to “go pro”. It is partly because while in the “classic” labour movement one could be part of certain types of political activity openly during the working day, now this is impossible or likely would result in disciplinary procedures under neoliberalism. Union activity where permitted is highly squeezed. Now you don’t have the time or space to a union branch meeting, or go to a Labour branch meeting but you can probably sneak a look at that 50 comments deep Facebook argument or get involved in that WhatsApp group with fellow Corbynistas around your town. Additionally Matt seems to not appreciate that, for better or worse, people are going to meetings now. They are turning up to rallies and talks and events. They are prepared for a long struggle and are detaching themselves quite deliberately from the “MSM” narratives around Corbyn and attempting to diffuse these narratives where they exist peer to peer. Momentum are standing candidates for local office and winning them, there are increasingly “well-organised new members embedded within their local parties, taking up positions of power, standing for office”. Which leads to my next point.

It is clear that something is going on that is unprecedented and it is worth stepping back and taking stock. The Labour party has the most left wing leader of all time, significantly to the left of any other leader in its history. It seems to be some of the criticisms offered by Ralph Miliband as to why this was impossible no longer work because it has happened. When this leader is attacked, the response has been for many thousands to move to defend him. I don’t think it is fair to say that most of these people are only about Corbyn as a person. I think the vast majority seek something like the shape of Corbyn’s politics: an anti-war, anti-racist politics that dispenses with neoliberalism and its formulation as Blairism inside the Labour party. A politics attempts to offer a re-imagined social democracy distinct from its neoliberal variants in New Labour. Vitally, what Matt doesn’t offer is a material account of why Corbynism and why now? An account of “why people may think the way they do, to think about how their material conditions, their relationship to capital and forms of work and social reproduction, may affect their understanding of the world”.

Lacking this Matt is left to his own politics of truth against the supporters of Corbyn who he presumably seeks to bring to his cause or persuade to his view. Matt’s piece simply asserts what the truth of what Corbyn “really is” once we cut the crap and “people who disagree just haven’t been exposed to the ‘truth’ enough yet”. There is no account here of the “objective conditions or the workings of commodity fetishism” that lead to Corbynism which is the recommended tactic for establishing political change. That Matt’s piece falls into the same kind of politics, just to state The Truth over and over again and we are over the hill, tells us something about how commonplace this politics is. Yet, again, there isn’t anything to say why this particular politics of truth is now so commonplace, why even conspiracy theory arises. This would include talking about other politics of truth and leaking — Wikileaks and Snowden for example- as well as other actors who make this their stock in trade who are very important on the left like Noam Chomsky.

Such an material account of Corbynism would be complex but worth establishing. It would include:

• the Peter Mair Ruling The Void style hypothesis of the hollowing of traditional social democratic parties of the West as they made friends with the neoliberal consensus. The economic reasons why this was the case.
• Some account of Pasokification and why it has not and cannot happen under first past the post.
• the above the exhaustion but continuation of the various networks of struggle since the 1999 alter-globalisation movement and the anti-war movement that flows through activism like Climate Camp, through to the anti-austerity activism of UKUncut et al and the student movement of 2010
• the wider global context that includes the enthusiasms for Bernie Sanders and his insurgency in the US Democratic party
• the rise and then defeat of SYRIZA and the emergence of Podemos from the 15-M Movement
• the power of communication technologies in social movements since 2008
• the institutional defeat of the left from 1979 onwards
• at the same time the failure of capitalism to solve its various crises from the 1970s onwards
• the shaping of the UK economy by various spatial and other “fixes” by capital to solve these crises, resulting in the severe geographic uneveness of the that economy
• stagnant or declining wages
• that the Conservative party offer is premised on a UK economy floated on cheap credit and house prices and that the aftermath of Brexit and the destruction of these sources of wealth seems likely to attrophy the basis of their support
• the failure of a soft-left option like Ed Miliband
• the rises of various forms of “populism” and its meaning and the hatred of elites and the mainstream media it accompanies
• the fact people are making a last throw of the dice with parliamentary politics in Corbyn
• the fact that Corbyn is seen by activists as significantly closer in attitude and politics to them than to the technocratic elitism of much of the PLP
• the continued biting of austerity into the fabric of daily life especially for marginal groups like the disabled who are emerging to defend Corbyn
• that the light ties to Labour might be a strength as well as a weakness as they might prevent being bogged down in internal politics for decades

This is not an exhaustive list. But lacking this, even a left wing politics opposed to Corbynism or to its left will surely fail by lacking it by its own materialist lights. One does not need to be a fan of Corbyn to recognise this is an unusual phenomena that requires detailed analysis. Without explaining the material basis of its appeal left anti-Corbynism faces a significant challenge. Moreover, it seems that a better strategy, rather than cast aspersions towards Corbyn’s supporters as passive participants in an ersatz social movement, to ask why this is the case and develop strategies to remedy it. The effort to bind the ties and channel the enthusiasm around Corbyn seems a necessary step even if one is a critic. While Corbynism is said to have a “complete lack of strategic thinking” and be “utterly devoid of cunning” is there an alternative set of strategic proposals here?

The extreme urgency of the situation seems to be a point where Matt is very strong on practicing this methodology. While I think an early general election is unlikely at this point, I do think the clarity around the stakes here is important especially given the post-Brexit right-wing regrouping. But unfortunately, Matt’s attitude seems to mis-recognise the conjecture which we are at around Corbyn. It seems clear that if Corbyn goes, the door will be locked on any genuinely left of centre Labour party for many years. Matthijs Krul argues this point quite plainly (the whole piece is very much worth reading):

The most important consideration is that the opposition to Corbyn has sabotaged him from the beginning and has never been willing to accept his huge mandate to lead Labour to the left, regardless of circumstances. To concede even a millimeter to the opposition is therefore to concede not just Corbyn’s leadership, but the very possibility of a left leadership in Labour, ever. That is what is at stake. This is also why the Unite/Tom Watson brokering of a ‘peace deal’ and the chatter about a unity candidate is hopeless: the fight is about whether the left is allowed to have any chance, however democratically legitimate within the party, at leading Labour at all.

Like Blair before and during 1997 centralising party control to his offices, Corbyn’s critics will lock all the doors afterwards. They are already attempting to do everything in their power to ensure he loses: from endlessly briefing stories to the press to inserting a prohibitively expensive fees that will price out Corbyn’s most marginalised supporter to dirty tricks with reviving old membership lists. There will doubtless be a round of purges for new registered supporters. None of the other candidates have sufficient base within the membership or personal fortitude against being leant on by the right and drifting to match the Tory party wherever they lead, or attacking benefits claimants or immigrants, both of which seem highly unlikely from Corbyn. This fact was ably shown during Ed Miliband’s premiership, where any reforming zeal he had was diluted by these kinds of critics bending his ear and endlessly launching attacks on him, leaving his desired policies to one side and him to engrave “controls on immigration” in a stone and propose hugely destructive policies like contributory welfare. It is well known that Miliband’s “did not get into politics to wrtie controls on immigration” but yet he still did. It seems highly unlikely that despite currently cleaving left on a number of matters neither Angela Eagle or Owen Smith will genuinely adopt Corbyn like ideas once installed and the forces in the PLP are assured they have regained control. The fact that the “big beasts” and favoured candidates of the neoliberal rebooted Blue Labour triangulation wing of Labour, for example, Dan Jarvis and Tristam Hunt have remained incredibly silent shows that this contest is largely about wresting control of the party back, before yet another right leaning leader is installed prior to 2020.

There is a wider discussion of electoral prospects here, best saved for another day. Yet as noted earlier accounts of the election show quite clearly that Miliband’s lack of a defining narrative and internally badly organised campaign lost him the election, due to his team’s triangulation against a very clear narrative from the Tories. It is clear from recent speeches that Corbyn is now attempting to forge a narrative around the levels of inequality in the UK and disparities of political and economic power. I don’t doubt this will be full throated and will likely deepen during this campaign. Certainly there needs to be much more “flesh on the bones” here. But to say that Corbyn’s team offer nothing more than re-heated Ed Miliband seems not to recognising the interior political dynamics within Labour and to truly understand what Ed Miliband’s “pre-distribution” offer looked like. Given the above accounts of how these politics might work, it seems within the realms of possibility that, if given a fair crack of the whip and with a now refreshed media team in place, Corbyn would be able to translate this into successes.

It seems then that if you believe it is important for the UK or for the left to have a left wing leader of the Labour party, putting forward social democratic ideas then Corbyn is the only game in town. Owen Smith is not going to offer anything like this and he is the only other option. If as Matt claims Corbyn is offering only re-heated Miliband with a radical veneer, we can I think conclude that Owen Smith is Milibandism 2.0, this time its Normal, really bloody Normal

This is, of course, not the only perspective to take. In a very perceptive piece for The Occupied Times, an account is given of the limitations of this kind of project from Corbyn’s left. It is certainly worth reading and the points out that the new Labour members must exercise solidarity towards efforts at community organising for those attacked by the new waves of racial violence in the aftermath of Brexit and, vitally, oppose their own Labour council administrations vicious decisions when they occur. Those on the left who are opposed to Corbynism as such, either because they are opposed to representative democracy as such (in favour of forms of direct democracy, saying formal politics is a mystifying sphere of power) or that they are opposed to the Labour party as such (because they believe that structurally Labour is impossible to change or for any political party to reform society as needed) or they are opposed to the state, social democracy or reformism as such (for a whole host of reasons, some of which form whole political traditions), can still learn some things from the Corbyn phenomena. Particularly, if we imagine a network or extra-parliamentary organisation scales to nationwide coverage enough to cause media attention (we can think of the Camp for Climate Action or UKUncut as examples), this media coverage is likely to be as vicious if not more vicious than that extended to Corbyn, as are the manner of dirty tricks exercised to sabotage this movement. This would be even more the case if it was not simply a “fluffy” already mediatised protest but rather a force of real material change that did not directly attempt to self-meditise. Attention also to how things are or are not a social movement is also important.

Finally, though I have said more than enough, I want to reflect for a moment on the “material constitution” of the piece itself. Pieces of writing rarely change minds. Normally they are used as a placeholder to demonstrating allegiance to an existing set of views or as further evidence for those views as a way of deepening them. Though the analysis might make occasional allusion to radical means, utilising a sprinkling of Marxist jargon, it ends with conventional conclusions, conclusions that are indistinguishable from those of the plotters and their media out-riders. It contains none of the usual methodological tropes or tools of Marxist analysis — the critique of political economy, the analysis of class antagonisms, political hegemony, the material basis of relations, capital and labour, ideology and so on. Of course, Matt never claimed this was an explicitly Marxist analysis, but did claim (as mentioned in the introduction) that Corbynism lacked some of the resources of such an analysis. Given this the gesture of the sharing of this piece by those who have considerably less radical politics than Matt was to say “look even this person significantly to my left agrees, Corbyn must go”. The epistemic power wielded by the title “academic” multiplies this effect as does the title “Marxist”, a set of ideas and methodology given to cool rational analysis. That the piece also begins with a preamble concerning a number of canards of contemporary commentary regarding the ill informed nature of online commentary (in proximity to ideas of the “online mob”) also makes it a comfortable read for those happy with convention. Thus it was widely shared as a definitive account despite its weaknesses highlighted above. Of course Matt cannot help this and it is impossible to totally control the reception and political use of your writing once published. But one should be aware, particularly in the age of the internet, that every piece of persuasive writing is a political intervention.

How short are these journalist’s memories? Have they been wiped clean by a summer of wall to wall Jeremy Corbyn? This is the man whose entire project has been to detoxify the Tory brand. He replaced the authoritarian torch with a lovely green tree, only to row back when the policy themes changed a little and more “security” themed fonts were required. He told us that young people wearing hoods were not a danger but should be given a hug. He went on a jaunt to Norway to see the impact of global warming and hugged a husky. He embraced the work of the Tory think tank the Centre For Social Justice (the name alone!) whose reports (for example Breakdown Britain) formed the basis of the key themes of the 2010 election campaign, fixing what Cameron defined as “Broken Britain”. The creator of this think tank, Iain Duncan Smith, enemy of disabled people up and down the land, was encouraged to tell stories of his conversion to the themes of social justice in centre-left magazines, to endlessly repeat that reduction of child poverty was a key theme. In 2009, Cameron turned up at the Demos think tank for the launch of its Progressive Conservatism project and said that

progressive conservatism — the idea that today, conservative means are the best way to achieve progressive aims will be the underlying philosophy of any government I lead.

And went on:

The ‘progressive’ half of progressive conservatism represents the ends we are fighting for — our vision of the good society and the good life. This vision is not exclusive to the Conservative Party, or any other party. I’ve always thought it’s silly to deny the truth — that in politics most of us are actually fighting for the same things.

The Demos project was led by one Phillip Blond, who eventually moved on to establish his own think tank Respublica — Cameron attended the launch — whose whole ethos was to provide a relatively intellectually sophisticated account of how Cameron could articulate and implement this vision — how Cameron could be a “Red Tory”. In turn other think tanks sprung up — Bright Blue and The Good Right being amongst them.

This is not to begin mentioning the key Steve Hilton inspired policy platform The Big Society. Here Cameron and his team said that Thatcher was directly wrong and there was such thing as society, it was not just not the same as the state. Voluntary organisations and community groups would redistribute power to the people. Cameron even said that, alongside London Citizens, he would train community organisers! The 2010 manifesto was called “Invitation To Join The Government Of Britain”. It talked about reform of the banking system and building a greener economy and reduce youth unemployment. People like Jon Cruddas and Maurice Glasman and those they influence started panicing that this was Labour’s natural territory and that they should embrace this whole platform.

David Cameron recognised this in his attempt to define a pro-social politics that was concerned about people’s well-being, mental health and resilience. His idea of a “big society” was a recognition of the way our social relationships have become more impoverished … We in Labour made a mistake by dismissing Cameron’s pro-social politics. We now have the opportunity to develop our traditions of reciprocity, mutualism and co-operation. The party grew out of collective self-help and popular movements of self-improvement. Labour’s social alternative must be about rebuilding Britain from the ground up.

I could go on at length for some time. I really could. The simple fact is this. As commentary journalists your job is not to take Cameron’s word at face value but to contextualise and interpret them in the wider context of his party, their beliefs and the whole of political history. It is not to transparently pitch his lines as natural facts but judge them against empirical reality with precision.

The amnesia concerning Cameron’s key projects is quite spectacular. Like every speech comes totally shocking and new.

Several themes interlock. First, that Blair tells us that the primary duty of the Labour party is to win power by shaping their policies to the desires of the electorate. Without power, Labour is nothing. This may mean advocating policies that are opposed to their general long term ethical orientation, but realise the short term goal of achieving power to “keep the Tories out”. Second and relatedly, in this manner that Blair’s platform was aimed at pure electability — a claim made by his supporters as often as his opponents. Finally that Blair represented a total refutation of the socialism of the past. A decisive break.

In contrast to this view, I hold that Blair’s policies were advocated because this is what he believed was the best direction for the country. They won, in Blair’s view, because both he and the electorate believed in the same things. Blair’s politics were formulated through an underlying and relatively systematic set of principles. One of Blair’s key strengths both within the party and at the ballot box was articulating what he believed to be a correct reading of the socialist tradition as passed to him. This too was because he genuinely believed this reading of socialism to be correct and that his policies were the best means to pursue this goal. Blair narrated this direction as the only possible means of socialism in the 20th century.

For Blair, New Labour was a reform of the party’s socialism along broadly communitarian lines, a communitarian ethos that he held to be the true core of socialism. This is confirmed by his colleagues. Discussing the reforms he put into place alongside Gordon Brown and Blair, Peter Mandelson comments that Blair’s “vision for Britain was rooted in the Christian socialism he had embraced while at Oxford. It extolled community and family above an all-knowing, interventionist state […] It held that individual rights had to balanced by social responsibilities”.

Writing in his memoir A Journey, Blair describes the formation of this outlook in more detail. Blair names Peter Thomson, an Australian Anglican priest whom he met at the University of Oxford, as “the most influential person in my life”. Thomson influenced Blair to take his faith more seriously as a comprehensive social vision informing his politics. Thomson suggested books by Scottish Christian philosopher John Macmurray. By Blair’s estimation the influence of Macmurray was profound. Asked in an interview by Scotland on Sunday Blair said “If you really want to know what I’m all about you have to take a look at a guy called John Macmurray. It’s all there”. Through Macmurray’s writing and the influence of Thomson, Blair

developed a theory of socialism being about ‘community’ — i.e. people owed obligations to each other and were social beings, not only individuals out for themselves — which pushed me down the path of trying to retrieve Labour’s true values from the jumble of ideological baggage that was piled on top of them, obscuring their meaning…[socialism]wasn’t about particular type of economic organisation, anchored to a particular point in history.

Blair would go on to provide the forward to the collected works of Macmurray. In this forward, Blair’s debt to MacMurray is felt by him to be pervasive. The personalist basis of Blair’s ethics is clear — “I begin with analysis of human beings as my compass; the politics is secondary”.

In his pre-1997 election book of interviews, My Vision for a Young Country, Blair notes the theological basis of this commitment to community. In an essay first published to controversy in the Sunday Telegraph in Easter 1996, ‘Why I am a Christian’. “The problem with Marxist ideology”, Blair opines, “ was that in the end, it suppressed the individual by starting with society. But it is from a sense of individual duty that we connect the greater good and the interests of the community — a principle the Church celebrates in the sacrament of communion”. In his highly embarrassing 2006 speech to the Women’s Institute, Blair stated that:

At the heart of my beliefs is the idea of community. I don’t just mean the local villages, towns and cities in which we live. I mean that our fulfilment as individuals lies in a decent society of others. My argument to you today is that the renewal of community is the answer to the challenges of a changing world.

The vision of New Labour was not intended to be one that liquidates the central values of the Labour party, but re-bases them: “the ‘new’ [in New Labour] was necessary in order to ‘re-new’ the old; that the values — fairness, solidarity, social justice — lost relevance unless applied anew to a changed world. I believe the same of community” and the need for the country to “rebuild these core values of community; but only by renewing them for the modern world; the old and new together”.

Blair’s 1994 Fabian pamphlet Socialism fleshes out this vision of a re-founding of socialism on ethical and communitarian grounds. Blair’s calls for “not a break, but a re-discovery” of the true meaning of socialism, re-grounded in its roots in ethics and community. The history of the 20th century for Blair begins with a wave of collectivism, creating opportunity in the form of the welfare state. While causing widespread prosperity, states become unpopular, not as such but in response to the “manner their power was exercised”, in what people viewed as excessive taxation and regulation. In the aftermath of Thatcherism’s failure to produce both economic well-being and social cohesion, “The public is once again ready to listen to notions associated with the Left — social justice, cohesion, equality of opportunity and community”.

For Blair, two dominant forms of thought informed socialism in the 20th century: Marxist influenced forms of ‘scientific socialism’ and ethical socialism tied to social democracy in Europe. In the aftermath of the collapse of communism the Marxist strand was no longer credible. The ethical strand is the only “serious view” of the Left, but one that must be given “clarity and content”. Marx’s supposed emphasis on the centralised state controlling industry was false and that the the state and public sector were “vested interests capable of oppression” as much as capital. Inflexible Marxist views of class were too simplistic to have any diagnostic, let alone visionary power. The basis of socialism is found in “certain key values and beliefs” and “ethical and subjective judgement[s]” that “individuals are socially interdependent human beings” that “cannot be divorced from the society to which they belong” — two ideas that could have found their basis in Macmurry’s relational ethics. Socialism is a “social-ism”, where “collective power of all used for individual good of each”. The ethical impulse of “enlightened view of self-interest” is tied to the interests of society as a whole.

Socialism is then a set of principles not bound to one particular conception of class or structure of the political world. Vitally, it does not confuse means with ends. The ends of nationalisation, productivity and fairness were just, but the means limited their possibility. Rather than “fit the world to the ideology”, socialists must understand the real world of a competitive global economy where knowledge and the development of skills are a key factor. Blair writes: “society, through government but in many other ways, is acting to promote the public good” significantly further than “a Tory economy with a bit of social compassion”. Thus socialism has no specific economic or political programmes, but is rather “having a central vision based around principle but liberated from particular policy prescriptions that became confused with principle”. The ultimate aim is “A strong united society which fives each citizen a chance to develop their potential to the full” and “not power at the expense of principle, but power through principle and for the purpose of the common good.”. Simply “The ethical basis of socialism is the only one that has stood the test of time”.

Blair’s recreation of the Labour party’s Clause Four orientated it to ‘community’ or ‘society’. Blair’s re-wrote of the clause personally adding the words “democractic socialist” into the Labour party consistution for the first time but allying it to a distinctively communitarian flavour. Labour seeks “to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe”. The content of commitment to a socialist politics was a commitment to a particular type of community inasmuch as community enriches and increases the power of the individual. This forms the locus of Blair’s politics and his parallel commitment to values such as “aspiration” adn “opportunity” alongside opposition to politics based on traditional points of reference for socialism like class. Speaking at the 1998 Blackpool Labour party conference, shortly after New Labour’s landslide election victory, Blair’s reiterated that:

The challenge we face has to be met by us together: one nation; one community; social justice; partnership; co-operation; the equal worth of all; the belief that the best route to individual advancement and happiness lies in a thriving society of others. These were words and concepts derided in the 1980s; these are the values of today, not just here but round the world. At long last, ‘It’s up to me’ is being replaced by ‘It’s up to us.’ That crude individualism of the 1980s is the mood no longer. The spirit of the times today is community. Consider the Tories in their 18 years. How was it that a Tory party that in 1979 came to power as the party of law and order, of attacking welfare scroungers, of the family, ended up presiding over a crime rate that doubled, welfare spending that tripled and the family in greater decline than ever before? Because they really did think there was no such thing as society. That is why.

Writing against Corbyn in The Guardian as recently as last week, Blair holds that the policies of the “old Left” of the 1980s(i.e. nationalisation et al) were rejected by the electorate because they, like him, had realised they simply wouldn’t achieve their stated aims:

These are policies from the past that were rejected not because they were too principled, but because a majority of the British people thought they didn’t work.

The ends were sound, but the means were lacking — as was the case for Blair with Clause Four. I see almost nothing of power first then values here. Or Polly Toynbee’s line that it would be nice to be further left, but the nasty public won’t let us in if we are. Blair believed his policies were right, not simply that they would get him elected. He believed that his instincts aligned with wider social forces and other political actors were incapable of bringing about this coordination as he was able to do. He did not believe he was taking policies to the public that were simply what they wanted to hear as a route into power against the Tories.

Contemporary Blairites are correct that their politics is primarily about “values”. But in contrast to Blair, where his values and politics seem to be the products of a genuine process of thought and analysis and are articulated vividly and with passion, their values seem superficial, unreflective. It appears they cannot even articulate why the ends of their values would not be technically achieved by Corbyn’s Keynesian policies. They are not able to articulate themselves within the broader traditions of their party in any meaningful sense — a key success of Blair in building internal alliances with those to his left. Corbyn, while significantly to the left of Blair, is even able to draw on the same communitarian language that made “early Blair” (the Blair rated by Blue Labourites such as Jon Cruddas) successful.

Perhaps most vitally though, unlike Blair, contemporary Blairites seem systematically unable to read the wider social forces and note how politics has been changed by them. In this sense, in aligning with a wider public anti-austerity mood, Corbyn is a superior “heir to Blair” than his own self-appointed followers who think the world is unchanged since 2008 and think it barely changed since 1997.

No, a whole list of centre-right politicians are pragmatists not neoliberals.

I want to examine one figure chosen at random from Tim Montgomerie’s list of centre-right politicians and simply show that a decent case can be made that they are neoliberal. I chose the Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, partly because until a day or so ago I was largely ignorant of him and his policies. I really don’t know much about the Canadian political scene. I do know a lot about neoliberalism. I wondered if with no prior knowledge I could connect the dots with a couple of evenings research.

Now it is certainly the case that one could point to Harper’s policies as distinctively neoliberal, I am going to instead prove my case by linking Harper directly to one of the characteristic aspects of neoliberalism: the way in which neoliberals sought to propagate their ideas and their characteristic institution for doing so — the advocacy think tank.

In terms of overall strategy here the neoliberals borrowed from the left. Hayek had noted that the left had managed to make the cause of socialist politics broadly popular by placing intellectuals in significant positions and influencing the general climate of public opinion so that socialist policies simply appeared common sense. To promote neoliberalism, therefore, whar was needed was not simply policies but an inspiring and exciting overarching utopian vision:

The main lesson which the true liberal must learn from the success of the socialists is that it was their courage to be Utopian which gained them the support of the intellectuals and therefore an influence on public opinion which is daily making possible what only recently seemed utterly remote. Those who have concerned themselves exclusively with what seemed practicable in the existing state of opinion have constantly found that even this had rapidly become politically impossible as the result of changes in a public opinion which they have done nothing to guide.

To spread these ideas, as is now well documented, on the 1st of April 1947 Hayek founded the Mont Pèlerin Society, the ur-think tank of think tanks. Friedrich Hayek’s explicit model was The Fabian Society. The idea was to develop neoliberalism and propagate these ideas outwards through the various contacts and institutions the international members of the society had access to, generating the “professional secondhand dealers in ideas” for neoliberalism that Hayek believed had been so successful in pressing the case for the socialism.

One of the first successes was the establishment of the Institute of Economic Affairs by Antony Fisher, a battery farm magnate, under the direct tutelage of Hayek in 1955. The size and success of these networks is comprehensive and there have been attempts to map their size. Their decisive impact on government policies, especially in the United Kingdom under Thatcher, has been extensively documented. While non-neoliberal think tanks exist and the whole concept preceded the Mont Pèlerin Society, the success and power of the networks Hayek began constructing is undeniable.

So, what about Stephen Harper. Can we relate him to any neoliberal think tanks and organs of policy? Well, it just so happens, that we can and pretty easily. In 1997 Stephen Harper resigned as a member of parliament and joined the National Citizen Coalition, which he became president of in 1998, only to leave in 2002 to seek leadership of the Canadian Alliance.

Is the National Citizen Coalition a neoliberal think tank? Founded in 1967 by Colin M. Brown, its first direct aim was to oppose publically provided healthcare in favour of private medical insurance (Brown was in insurance). Harper Index lists that the National Citizen Coalition has been involved in the following:

campaigns to “de-unionize” the workforce;opposition to fair tax reform;
privatization and/or elimination of public sector services;
discredit any activity carried out through the public sector such as education or health care;
court challenges to social unionism;
“closed shop” provisions in Canadian labour law;
lobbying campaign to have “right-to-work” legislation implemented in Alberta;
legal and advertising support for challenges to Canadian Wheat Board;
court challenge to annul election of BC NDP government, advertising campaigns against targeted politicians and parties;
media campaign attacking MP pensions;
court challenges to electoral laws that would limit third party spending;
media campaign attacking grants for the arts, advocacy organizations, and social science research;
attacks on public funding for what it calls “interest groups” such as human rights or women’s groups.

In the 1980s, Brown took a delightful turn in using the National Citizen Coalition to encourage the Government of Canada not to take in 50,000 Asian refugees from the Vietnam war by publishing a series of ads. This was the same point Stephen Harper signed up as a member.

Taken as a piece, this policy advocacy makes for a convincing case for putting the National Citizen Coalition in the neoliberal bracket Twenty years after his death in 1987, the son of the founder of the National Citizen Coalition, Colin T. Brown, writes:

The National Citizens Coalition remains an important voice for more freedom and less government in Canada. A former president of the NCC is now Prime Minister of Canada. And the NCC is not alone. Today many organizations give compelling arguments for the small-c conservative cause — The Fraser Institute, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, the Dominion Institute to name a few. Media has changed too, with major publications like the Western Standard, Macleans, and the National Post proud to present and champion the conservative viewpoint.

This desire to change the climate of public opinion could be straight out of Hayek’s own mouth.

Regarding the think tank company the National Citizens Coalition keeps we can certainly draw links direct to the Mont Pèlerin Society: Brian Lee Crowley from the Atlantic Institute of Market Studies, Michel Kelly-Gagnon from the Montreal Economic Institute, Peter Holle, from the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and Michael Walker from The Fraser Institute.

Celebrating their 40th anniversary in 2007 Peter Coleman writes:

we have said that as an organization we do not believe that big government and big unions have all the answers. We still believe in that today…we look forward to many more years of standing up for the little guy as we continue to push for more freedom through less government.

Well, is Stephen Harper personally acquainted with the work and ideas of the neoliberals? Studying at the University of Calagary for a masters degree, Harper’s biographers recount him reading Friedrich Hayek varacuously. His thesis concerned how governments intervene in the economic sphere for short term electorial gain to the determinent of long term economic health, a perenial neoliberal theme that could have been extracted direct from Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. Indeed, Harper met Hayek during his time there.

I could go further. Donald Gutstein has written a book length work, Harperism: How Stephen Harper and his Think Tank Colleagues Have Transformed Canada, the extracts from which many of the above facts regarding him and the Canadian think tank scene are drawn.

So is Stephen Harper a neoliberal? Well, if he spent a good portion of his time directly advocating as president of a neoliberal think tank, I think the case speaks for itself. Whatever compromises that may have occurred during his tenure as prime minister, this “pragmatism” is set against the background a series of assumptions and general views about the political world that are best described as neoliberal. The same goes for David Cameron, Angela Merkel or Tony Abbott. And certainly the US republican presidential candidates. Indeed it is plausible to be a neoliberal first and a pragmatist second. For example, in examining the influence of ordoliberalism (one species of the larger family of neoliberalism) on German reactions to the Eurozone crisis three researchers from the Walter Eucken Institute (named after a founding ordoliberal) find that some of Germany’s policies are distinctively ordoliberal and some were pragmatic. However, when one considers some of the terms offered in the recent agree with Greece, the neoliberalism is stronger now than it was when their analysis was performed. In particular on can think of the 12th of July statement by the Euro summit on Greece calling for the “de-politicizing the Greek administration” — the depoliticising of the political and then the use of the strong state to pursue sweeping market reform.

Neoliberalism can be a slippery term and is often used meaninglessly to mean “something I don’t like”. This is why it is important to render neoliberalism as a historical movement, grounded in the texts of it actors, network analysis of their relationships and considerations of the institutional forms it takes. Using the term fast and loosely is neither analytically nor politically useful. It is important also, as with any political movement, to analyse the times at which its parameters were in flux and the differences between neoliberalism in theory and its actualisation in practice. Over the last few years we have come a long way in understanding it though.

Philip Mirowski’s essay “The Political Movement that Dared not Speak its own Name: The Neoliberal Thought Collective Under Erasure” has a great treatment of the methodological problems of taking neoliberalism as an object of historical study. It does well to expose the timidity of those even at the cutting edge of research, seemingly unable to call a spade a hegemonic spade, drawing micro-distinctions where substantial agreement and considerable evidence exists. I am indebted to its methodological insights here. Its bibliography updates Will Davies only slightly older summary and bibliographic review of material. This podcast with Davies is also instructive if you have a spare hour.