Scene 3 - Abstract Wars:

Case 3- The Abstract war.

Perhaps it is because society is so complex that it does not make any sense even to make sense of it? Or perhaps, is the ‘savages’ revenge on Durkheim. Be that as it may, one of the oldest ‘truths’ in sociology and anthropology haunts us daily, albeit with a novel twist of its own. This truth ran that Gods are merely expressions of social facts. They codify something about a society, reveal a truth and allow it to be articulated. They are then abstract engines that allow one to loop up unlinked points, and bind then into a single figure a figure that means something. A description or definition that can be applied to almost all our ‘known; facts’ about society. Asylum seekers or the deserving poor, are great abstract devices, concepts, which float above society, and which we pay lip service to meta-truth. They are not then the stuff of flesh and blood, so much as a way of saying something about society.
However at this point the problem with complexity kicks in. our society (as Durkheim would have point out at this point) is simply too complex for simple social facts to operate in (perhaps all societies really are), our great abstractions are never then simple truths made plan so much as massive highly abstract construction, upon which individuals are invited to project their own truths. They are then definition awaiting their meaning perhaps at other times they are coagulations of very many factors and facets, some actual, but many virtual. Thee fantasy element of these construction very often resolving around easily, lazy, and very self justifying truths. We imagine others, unlike us, and so capture our relations (and condemnation) of that other crew. All of which is dandy in its way. And yet of course it is the case that increasingly, in a democracy it is these abstractions that are the stuff of politics. One weaves or captures abstract quasi-divinities to capture. The rule being that those who can stitch together a ‘narrative’ or create a single abstract engine capable of straddling many different lives, and much experience, but also of moving that experience forwards, win power. The caution for power has become then a matter of creating engines for beating and transforming time.
These engines are curious, for at every point they deal with abstractions and not real truths. So that the very raw materials of these machines are themselves abstract. Take the great myth that somewhere in some council there are (EU) officials plotting the demise of Christmas or else of else of quaint rural customers, in a ‘Health and safety gone mad- athon. No matter that this narrative is simply not true. The reason why there are real health and safety concerns with many rural events is that too many people now turn up. We ( I mean the public) have ruined them. The problem is then that many a health and safety bod faces, is how to manage large numbers of people in very same rural communities: A real problem. Or, to give another example, restrictions on customs such as conkers are often enough mere urban legend or quite frankly lies. They never were true, or not in the way they are reported. But of course known of that stops a tale growing go into a legend, a legend that no doubt articulates a deeper truth. This truth has been the very clear drive over the last few years to create a reflective public. That is a public who do not merely feel things, but who are also open to how that feelings effects others. This reflexivity comes then has cost. It makes the act of feeling tricky. It makes one feel one is always regulated, And bingo, one is caught in a world of health and safety gone mad. All of which is no doubt good fine fun - the trouble is that governments then want to join it, and start to daftly talk about stopping a world that was never ever true in the first place.
The trouble is that almost all government policy is in danger of founding itself upon much myth. Take the current massive debate about cuts versus taxes and spending. Behind this is a truth that does not really speak its name. Over the past ten years or so the west has been inhabiting a complex (and global) lie. It kind of assumed that it was somehow entering into the final stages of capitalism. The stage in which we here lives in a kind of utopia, where the fact they we never really made very much, and that most (but not all) of us were doing not very productive jobs (which might be my own urban legend though), did not matter - for we were by nature wealthy. We then spun stores about being at the cushy end of history an end that was then no doubt supported by the fact that other nations, who were aware that we were living the life of Riley for relatively little effort, and so whose very envy bolstered our delusion -and it made us feel like we had got somewhere. What was rather about this life or Riley was that we endless inhabited not ingratitude so much as irrational. We simply then assume the luxury and worried about anything that questioned it. The trouble of course is that worry about oil and world resources has blasted apart this myth of the drones. We have discovered to our horror that we were not the end of history after all, but merely it stooges. Or perhaps it Eloi, The trouble is then how does one move beyond this end.
This is of course where new Abstract engines need to take over. The politicians associated with the old ones (the one that promises endless growth for not real effort) have been forced the stage. It is now the task politician to build engines to navigate just this collapse the conservatives are then attempting (and being helped in their attempt) to build one engine, which blames the entire situation on the Labour party (well that had claimed the credit for the previous growth). They endlessly and ad nauseam then refer to the golden legacy they left New Labour and the mess they then have inherited. All difficult decisions (on say defence) becomes another fault. Well maybe. The point is of course as all good abstract engine builders they are attempting to ensure that as much blame is locked in the past at possible. What goes wrong then for a while, they will claim is not their responsibility. This then opens out a future line where if anything goes right they can claim it as part in their narrative Their engine had defined and riveted down a past, and sealed what is ‘bad; which that past, in order to allow it to twist facts into a future. Which is then necessarily favourable for them and their struggles. They are then as good politicians building a future with an open ended possible present. Anything good they are ensuring is theirs by right, and anything bad is someone else’s’ fault. What else is the big Society but such a gambit. In effect this Coalition names not a narrative - so much as the machine from which endless narratives to delight the media can spawn?
The labour parties counter machine is a far simpler gambit. They gamble that the future is too dark for this move and too complex. That is if their ids another downturn, they will be able to break the myth that this was their fault, and pin the blame elsewhere. The problem with this strategy is that us very dependent upon events. If things do not turn out as labour dreams it will be very hard to rock back from this poison. In this sense at least the labour party is moving itself to the left. That is it is positioning itself into the leftwing comfort zone of simply assuming hat capitalism undermines its own reality. The trouble is then not that capitalism does not, so much as it never does in straight forward and predicted manner.
Both these moves are then attempting to create an engine that spins out the endless narratives (that is easily explanations) that the media constantly demand. A demand that of course (as other crimes have looked at) warps our system. Politicians are very aware that it is more important to spin narratives to the media, and effectively do their job for them, then it a bigger part of their job, than is the attempt to solve any social problems. Actually though this move in a sense is fair enough. The real trouble with our society is that it is become very complex (perhaps it always was) that it does not make much sense. There is peculating society a fairly abstract and clearly unjust system of rewards and punishments. Some individuals are then made wealthy and other poor. Some and penalised and others are not, Unfairness is simply the norm. This by itself is much of a much-ness. We are simply used that fact and yet we also claim that we want to lie in society that is to some degree fair. The answer to this impasse is to build yet another generation of abstract social machines. These machines come in two types. Firstly we create great meta-machines, which stigmatises poverty and then the invent a reasons why it is just that this group is poor (why they deserve it) or else treats poverty itself as a social disease to be treated (and not merely an effect of the system). That is we create a machine to make poverty into something. The second ruse to build quite different machines to create little acts of abstract fairness. Our strategy then is to build a machine which acts to create meta-fairness which run counter to rhyme or reason or the norms of society: such machines then demand that ‘all parents then should be given the same benefit’; or we all ought to have equal access to healthcare’. We then fight unfairness with stigmata or sacred cows. The trouble then if of course that these two machine in a sense runs counter to each other (or at least inform each other progress). The idea the of the undeserving poor becomes very easily spliced to the idea of people who are attempting to get more that their fair share of the benefits that run counter to unfairness itself. They are then condemned by both machines, and as such can be vilified. A vilification that ignores of course the basic fact that most peoples’ lives are more complex that the mere abstract construction of media and politician allows. The minute then that one starts to conjure with these abstracts, one necessarily creates new very deep unfairnesses.
The last or so has seen a three threefold attack upon fairness; machines in the name of ‘undeserving poor’ machines. The first simplest was of course the ending of universal childcare. This of course was a dog tag policy designed to ensure the Tories were seen to be unfair to all. It was then done in the interest of another abstract machine. It was designed to be unfair (and so allow other deeper unfairness to feel more nature). What was so interesting was that it is clear the Tories did not hold their nerve. They will then subtly rewards the ‘supports who they now threaten – or at leas the abstract idea of parenting these individuals cherish. What of course will remind though is the fundamental breach in the counter-unfairness move that is child benefits. Its very power lay in its being universal. We were all together, all in something. To cut it is then to cut off one group of society from the rest. On the face of it this is the wealthiest in society; yet as we all are endlessly encouraged to identify with this group, with the wealthy, is will gradually be the case that those who cannot so identify, namely the poor will be cut adrift. .
The second main front than was opened recently was then attack once again on housing benefit, which has been shapely reduced – creating endless new poverty and problems. – and in effect making the dividing line between those who own there own home outright and the rest, even more deep, for it is now something the state feels no obligation on mitigating.
Finally it is clear on of the deepest of our abstract machines of fairness, namely pensions, has been under attack this week. Pensions matter because they allow individuals who have no right to wealth in this society of ours, and yet who sees others wealthy to dream of that golden tie of leisure to come. They might never be rich (and they not be) but at least they will have time off. Hence the problem of pension of reform to reforms pensions is to risk conjuring with peoples’ hopes and despairs. For it removes the right we all have at the end (or towards the end) of our lives to live as if we too were of the leisured classes. This is of course a right that has of course in a world of increased property prices become all the more pronounced in relation to the rest of society. Giving the right to be lazy to long livers was then a deep answer to the problem of talking fairness while actually making inequity dilemma of society. People will allow for poverty now in the name of wealth to come. Remove that hope and one is in trouble, all the more so as it is likely enough (in spite of the current rhetoric) that the wealthy will escape full effects of these changes. It will then be the dreams of people who cannot make it any other way that are likely to be trodden on in the process.
These moves, which reject the abstract machines of fairness, do so in the name of modern avatars of two of the very traditional abstract machines of capitalism. Firstly there is that myth we all have about the wealth of society. We all over estimate the amount we as a society is earning ,and so stand up for the right of the wealthy we feel we might join over the rights of the poor. That is we all live in a world where in some dream or other we are all wealthy,. Politics becomes then very easily about that dream, and anyone who wants to actually deal with the real world has to run counter to that fantasy first (and so puncture our dream) - politicians long ago of course discovered one cannot get elected that way. Secondly the effect of the banking crisis and our failure to think of anything other than banking has in effect made us all bankers now. We are all being encouraged then to think like traditional bankers (well we own the banks) and harry those who we us money, and are not part of this our recovery. We then worry at those with overdrafts and the rest. Nationalizing the banks has then created not socialist utopia so much as a society of abstract bankers. The effect then of these two machines will be to rip through an awful lot of the traditional machines for fairness, they we sacrificed in the name f producing something. And the real problem we in the left have, is that these are two machines the left have historically been very bad at countering (the lefts only real answer is climate change ,and that machine is currently clearly undergoing ‘repairs’, as it was suspected of being too leftwing). A fact that will in all likelihood haunt the left for years to come – as all it can do is dream with Marx, that the “Dead will bury their own Dead’ and the left will learn (and not merely yearn) for a new poetry from the future. A hope the first expressed 160 years ago or so, and one the left is no closer meeting.