There's no inflation in a graveyard

Whilst everyone's been fretting about which privately-educated white person will succeed David Cameron as leader of the Tory party, a significant economic statistic was published. The Consumer Price Index  was 0% p.a.  in February, down 0.3% from January, raising the spectre of deflation, falling prices.

This is the first time on record that the CPI has been zero. George Osborne's response was upbeat:

Osborne said zero inflation was “a first for the British economy” and good news for family budgets.

Is he right? Well, suppose the downward trend continues - you'll be able to buy more stuff in British shops for the same amount of money. In this very minimal sense Osborne's clearly correct. It's also pretty clear that interest rates aren't going to take a hike any time soon. So credit where credit's due, there's two positives for every family budget*.

But whenever I hear a multi-millionaire talk about something being good for 'families', I ask myself 'which families?' Suppose your family isn't so rich that no member of it will ever need to work or claim benefits in order to maintain a non-destitute standard of living.   That is, suppose you are one of the vast majority of people in Britain.

You have good reason to be worried by the inflation statistics. First, employers are far less likely to make wage concessions if prices are falling: they have an excuse handed to them on a plate by the economy - "you are already better off on the same amount of pay". Deflation weakens the bargaining power of labour. Likewise, political pressure to increase benefit payments, already minimal, will be muted.

More alarmingly, deflation can wreak havoc on an economy in a way that threatens jobs themselves. If deflation settles in, people defer purchases, in the hope that prices will fall. Why should I buy that new TV this month, if I think that it's likely to be cheaper next month? Demand for goods and services falls, and so does output and employment. Similarly, firms defer capital investment, and those structural weaknesses of British capitalism, investment and productivity, will take a hit they can ill afford.

Now imagine you're in debt - like most people, and for that matter most corporations. If prices are falling, the purchasing power of a fixed amount of money increases. In particular, the real value of debt increases. Once again, hardly good news for most families.

The line amongst orthodox economic opinion about the possibility of development in this direction seems to be relaxed. The line is that low unemployment will put upward pressure on wages, and thus prevent persistent deflation setting in. The problem with this way of looking at things is that 'unemployment' isn't simply a number in an economic model, which correlates in a law-like fashion with the bargaining power of labour. Behind these abstractions lie real human beings, in real jobs, in real power relationships with their employers. And the nature of the jobs that have decreased unemployment in recent years does not look encouraging for wage settlements - they are insecure, often part-time, zero hour contracts proliferate. This is not a situation that lends itself to confident wage demands. Once a general lack of confidence, low unionisation, low levels of strikes and successful (from a trade union perspective) wage settlements is factored in, the picture looks bleak.

Or at least bleak for families unlike Osborne's.



*And for the budgets of people who don't happen to have families, who seem to have fallen out of the political picture of late.

Total Eclipse of the Arse

So there was a total eclipse this morning. I wonder, I found myself thinking, what Richard Dawkins thinks about this. As luck would have it, he took to Twitter to tell us:

Solar eclipse visible in Medina, Jan 632. If only the true nature of eclipses had been Koranically 'revealed', that would be impressive!
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) March 20, 2015

My immediate thought was that this exhibits the philistinism of the man. Well, my first thought was in fact, "you utter wanker". But the philistinism one was definitely near the top of the list. The point is that the mirror-image fundamentalism with which Dawkins approaches religious texts betrays an incomprehension that people might use language to do anything other than communicate facts, or at least purported facts, about the physical world. There's nothing peculiarly religious to this line of criticism. For much the same reason you wouldn't want to read a critical essay on Middlemarch by Dawkins, and wouldn't bother to turn up to a rap-battle at which he was a contestant. In fact, when you think about the range of human endeavours that must for him be as baffling as the Quaranic text, the title of his autobiography An Appetite for Wonder seems about as apt as that of Mel C's little known memoir An Appetite for Twelve-Tone Serialism.

The purpose of this blog is to talk about left-wing politics, rather than to slag off Richard Dawkins, laudible though that activity always is. There is, I think, a political question along the lines of: what is it about our contemporary society that produces public intellectuals like Dawkins and how do we get rid of it as quickly as possible? But the real action is elsewhere.

Because what's really wrong with Dawkins' tweet is the Islamophobia. Because be in no doubt that is what's going on here. The irrational other, Islam, bays for blood at the gates of Western civilisation, whose only hope is that the beast be tamed by Reason, as dispensed by the likes of Dawkins. So far, so much a standard orientalist trope (I am so tempted to use the word 'meme' here, but I'd feel dirty). But this irrational dark-skinned other is a particularly dangerous one. For Islam, by Dawkins own admission, is a uniquely dangerous inhabitant of the religious zoo. So much so, that he has even flirted with the idea of supporting Christian missionaries in Africa to stem the tide of Islamicisation he, like his sound-alikes at the EDL, sees everywhere. He presumably thinks Islam is the most evil religion in the world, since he declared Catholic Christianity to be only the second most evil a few years back. I myself am devastated by this under-par performance by the home team, and am certainly hoping we can get our hands on Anjem Choudary before this season's transfer window closes. 

Islam, this non-too-subtle line of thought goes, equals irrationality, equals violence. For the slow learners amongst us, Dawkins spelled it out post-9/11:

It [9/11] came from religion. Religion is also, of course, the underlying source of the divisiveness in the Middle East which motivated the use of this deadly weapon in the first place. But that is another story and not my concern here. My concern here is with the weapon itself. To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used.

All of which conveniently lets imperialism, capitalism, and good old-fashioned racism off the hook. In any case the piece is disingenuous: by "religion of the Abrahamic kind", he means first and foremost Islam, as he makes perfectly clear elsewhere, and as his fellow New Atheist Sam Harris emphasises like a racist on speed. The political cash value of this is twofold. First, a bevy of impressionable followers are left with an utterly inadequate understanding of the contours of power in the world. Marx's plea to turn the criticism of heaven into the criticism of earth certainly wouldn't be out of place here. Second, Dawkins, Harris, et. al. (whatever their intentions) provide a secular variant of the clash of civilisations narrative that, in its Pentagon version, is normally littered with evangelical Christian theology. They supply a legitimatory weapon to the occidental warriors in far off lands. It's almost as though, well, they were littering the streets with loaded guns.

Friday video corner

Friday Video Corner

Too many Florence Nightingales, not enough Robin Hoods.

We need to talk about Jeremy

A wag on Facebook suggests that, with Jeremy Clarkson's suspension leaving the future of Top Gear in doubt, the programme's title could be re-used for a show that samples and rates legal highs. In a similar vein, I suggest, 'top gear' might well be the explanation for why the powers-that-be at the BBC weren't sufficiently compos mentis to get rid of Clarkson several years ago. After a series of racial incidents, and a bizarre call for striking public sector workers to be shot, it seems that in punching an underling Clarkson has gone too far.

What deserves comment is not the man's arseholery. Arsholes, like the biblical poor, are with us always, and the law of averages means that from time to time one or two of them will find their way into the broadcast media. Rather, what's interesting is the amount of support this particular arsehole has found in his adversity.

Top gear runs through this story like a thread, for a former prime mover in the acid house scene, Guido Fawkes, or Paul Staines as the man is in fact called, has started a petition calling on the BBC to reinstate Clarkson. In itself this is to be expected. There is honour even amongst aresholes, and it is almost touching to see one member of the arsehole community prepared to help out another who has got himself into a bit of a scrape. No, what demands attention is the fact that over half a million people to date have signed the thing. What on earth is that about?

It is not, one assumes, that half a million people are so devoid of any moral sensibility to think that it's OK to go around hitting staff who fail to supply you with hot dinners on demand. Instead, what the petition reflects is Clarkson's popularity. The man is well-liked by a significant proportion of the British population, much though it might pain the more pollyannaish kind of liberal to admit it. Why?

Well, since the 1960s British society has changed for the better, as well as for the worse. The past half century hasn't just been all about closing coal mines and selling council houses. There have been strides forward in opposing racism, in securing gains for women, for LGBTQ people, and in many other ways the adoption of more humane approaches to a broad spectrum of human situations. This is in no small part owing to the victories of liberation campaigns. And, guess what? Not everybody likes this.

However much I might be, and I am, signed up to the views that patriarchy is bad for men as well, that racism damages white workers by dividing them against black workers and so on, these positions are true  only, as they say, in the final analysis. Prior to that, men - #yesallmen - benefit from sexism. We are more likely to get jobs, and be paid more than women. We might well find ourselves in situations where we benefit from women's unpaid domestic work, and so on. White people - yes, all of us - benefit from racism. And so on. You get the idea.

Now it's by no means inevitable that someone who benefits from oppression in the short-run seeks to defend that oppression; things like experience and politics can play a part here. Never the less, it's entirely unsurprising that a good number of people who in various ways have done rather well out of unequal relations to others resent the fact that those relations have been eroded. Hence the backlash against feminism, hence the rallying cry 'political correctness gone mad', and hence Jeremy fucking Clarkson. He is a standard bearer for reaction against the trendy view that foreigners aren't all that bad, or the bleating communist insistence that women can drive sports cars too. He provides a voice for the unspoken resentments behind many a suburban front door. He is the arsehole of all our hearts.

And the fact that he is so popular serves as a timely reminder that there is a job to be done defending the gains of the last fifty years.

The rise of the political wife

The woman the media are calling "Justine Miliband", married to Ed, is not standing for election in May. She just happens to be the spouse of somebody who is. Why, you might then wonder, is she being subjected to pre-election interviews?

The political wife, and it is always a wife, has been a feature of the American political landscape for years. She exists to stand beside her husband, to express concern for him and stick up for him-  "I think over the next couple of months it's going to get really vicious, really personal, but I'm totally up for this fight," Justine told the BBC's James Landale. Above all she reassures us of the persistence that most feminine of spheres, the domestic, which lurks behind the front doors of even the most powerful. In possibly the most banal caption ever published on a reputable news website, the BBC tell us that "The Milibands share the family chores, such as loading their dishwasher". Look here, they are:

Notice that in order to make the, apparently weakly feminist point, that Ed does some housework, his wife is required. For the domestic is her sphere.

Now this is all so much sexist claptrap. It is no doubt a by-product, along with those wretched leaders debates we're hearing a lot about, of the presidentialisation of British politics during the Blair era. It is encouraged by a collective flight to the maternal and homely, of proportions large enough to keep Freudians in PhD theses for a generation, in response to the anxieties of the age. There may be recessions, Ebola, and the growth of ISIS, but at least we have cupcakes and the option to watch people decorating their dream homes on TV (even if we can't actually afford homes of our own).

Anyhow, the indignity of Justine Thornton, as she in fact calls herself, a barrister, having to talk to journalists about household chores is by no means the worst effect of the rise of the political wife. When Sally Bercow, married to the Speaker, did a photo-shoot for the Evening Standard, her husband is reported to have "read the Riot Act" at her. Certainly the none-too-subtle subtext of right-wing sniping about Bercow's Twitter activity and appearance on Big Brother is that the Speaker can't control his wife.

Welcome to Britain in the 21st century.

Bashing the Bishops

If it is true, as I think, that the class struggle is the revolution - not just a means towards it, but the thing itself - and if it is true that the Christian gospel of love is incompatible with this, then quite evidently the Christian gospel is incompatible with revolutionary liberation: one of the few positions shared by the International Marxist Group, Mrs Thatcher and Joseph Stalin.

Thus the late Dominican friar and socialist Herbert McCabe sets up the position he will argue against in his wonderful essay 'The class struggle and Christian love' (published as part of his book God Matters). Of McCabe more later. For now we must turn our attention to less sublime intellects. I refer to the Archbishop of Canterbury who, along with his fellow Anglican hierarchs, has offered his lucky flock advice on the coming General Election.

The earnest, aphorism sodden, tract will not be remembered as a great moment in political thought, and I would not trouble you with it - dear readers - were it not for the following  passage, which a friend draws to my attention:

Parties of the extreme right and extreme left have sometimes sought to rekindle the language of class – but by trying to tap into class resentments rather than speaking of the warmer virtues of mutuality and solidarity. Stirring up resentment against some identifiable “other” always dehumanises some social group or people. Ethnic minorities, immigrants, welfare claimants, bankers and oligarchs – all have been called up as threats to some fictitious “us”. They become the hated “other” without whose presence among us all would be well. It is a deep irony that the whole political class is often regarded as an alien “other” by many sectors of the population.

Where to start? Well, I'm very much in favour of extremism, and to that extent thankful to their Lordships for putting it on the political map - the no doubt thousands upon thousands of eager readers who download  "Who is my neighbour?" from the internet will know that there is such a thing as extremism. Like the Tree of Knowledge it lurks beyond the bounds of the permissible and is therefore tantalising. For this publicity for my political creed, I am profoundly grateful to the authors. It is curious that people, who presumably subscribe (as indeed do I), a religion brimful of claims about the eschatological overthrow of the existing order should think extremism a bad thing; refusing to stay dead when the State have killed you is, by anybody's standards, fairly extreme. But we'll allow these matters to rest there.

I must confess to being confused about which parties of the extreme right are rekindling the language of class. I must further admit to being surprised that TUSC and/ or Left Unity are even on the radar. Although perhaps  Ed Miliband is the 'extreme leftist' foremost in the mitred minds; he did after all appeal to the transnational unity of the working class in his bid to persuade the Scots to stay in the Union. Clarification would be welcome, but never appears.

The action is elsewhere in any case: for we are bidden to think of the victims of the world. Those castigated and ignored; those persecuted, slandered, and outcast. To such the Kingdom belongs. Lest we not be able to identify these abandoned souls, a list is provided: "Ethnic minorities, immigrants, welfare claimants, bankers and oligarchs".

Yes, the oligarchs. Will nobody think of the oligarchs? In the spirit of this admirable solidarity, one assumes, all of that awkward stuff about the rich being put down from their seats will be excised from CofE bibles for the duration of the election season. Anyhow. 

It is all too easy, if fun, to mock this tripe; and it wouldn't matter too much were it not for the fact that the pious appeals for class peace find echoes far beyond the walls of Lambeth Palace. Many people who want the world to be a better place, many who hate capitalism, many even who would describe themselves as socialists draw the line at the language of class struggle. It all sounds rather violent, and isn't there something worrying about picking out one section of society and blaming them? Anyway, surely bankers aren't evil ? So, with variations, I've heard numerous thoroughly sincere and committed political activists, amongst others, argue.

Well, yes. Class struggle isn't particularly nice. It would indeed be better if human beings lived alongside one another peaceful and united, were this presently possible. But here's the thing - capitalism is premised on conflicting classes (and for that matter on conflicting corporations and - as it progresses - on the bloody conflict of nation-states*). The form of society we inhabit is one in which the bulk of the population are devoid of the means to produce the goods necessary for their existence and are compelled therefore to work for others, who do own those means. There is, as an immediate consequence of this, a basic conflict of material interests between these two groups. That this is the case is a fact about our society, it is a fact that obtains independent of anyone deciding to dislike people in another class, independent of some group of conspirators sitting down and deciding to have a class struggle. This is why, amongst other reasons, the comparison between appeals to class and politics which demonises immigrants and welfare claimants is dishonest.

Nevertheless, the report is correct in at least one thing that it seems to imply. Bankers, oligarchs and the rest of the ruling class are generally not uniquely dreadful people. They no doubt love their families, help elderly people onto tube trains, listen to their friends' problems, and give money to charity. Conversely, some members of the working class are bastards. The point of class politics is not that of finding a moral scapegoat for society's ills. That is not to say there isn't an ethical imperative behind it. For the commodity trader who kissed his kids goodbye fondly before setting off to work, when he arrives at that work starves hundreds of other peoples' children with the click of a mouse. The CEO of the 'ethical' food chain, who prides herself on the work her business is doing with women's co-operatives in the developing world holds down the wages of her already hard-up staff to face down competitive pressure. The pensions of those of those staff lucky enough to have them are invested, amongst other things, in a firm that makes a good living supplying the bombs that rain down not far from some of those co-operatives. In these, and a myriad other ways, the lives of people who are in many senses morally unremarkable are tied up with carnage, oppression, forced starvation, and every other imaginable form of avoidable human misery. So talk of "dehumanisation" is profoundly applicable. It's just the dehumanisation is real rather than imaginary - the point is not, as Welby et. al. seem to think - that the cruel propaganda of extreme leftists dehumanises an otherwise saintly bourgeoisie. No, the dehumanisation is implicit in the very workings of capitalism itself. Real alienation, real constraints on human flourishing are necessarily features of the way we currently live as a species. The banker is dehumanised simply by being a banker. He is fortunate in being dehumanised in such a slight way; capital dehumanises many others in a quite literal sense, by robbing them of life.

This hellish reality deserves all the condemnation it can get. More than that, it needs to be done away with. Then we will be rid of class struggle. As McCabe put it, "the only way to win the class war is to win it".

And to do that one needs to choose sides. Failure to do so is simply to side with the currently dominant, exploitative side. That is the path the Church of England's leaders have chosen.



*An attentive reader adds: " conflict between people for work, within the working class itself."