Blood & Treasure

A bit of dystopian gloom

(Chris W here)

Unlike Jamie, I do have the hots for space exploration, big time. Thus, I get to point out to my mates that the real reason Neil Armstrong was a Right Stuff hero wasn't that he was so gloriously correct in his attitude to celebrity, nor was it that his crew found itself in line for the landing mission (Lovell's, Stafford's and Conrad's crews had missions which were if anything more difficult), no, it was his steely-eyed doing of the right thing when Gemini 8 went horribly wrong in orbit. See here for detail.

Today is a time for downbeat reflection on where the shiny dream all went wrong. Via Ken M's work blog I've just read David Graeber's attempt to work out the political economy of the strange dearth of flying cars. Following a neat recapitulation of the way that the jetpack future which we were promised shuffled out of range (is it a co-incidence, comrades, that he's identified the kitsch event horizon in a 1989 movie, Back to the Future?), he comes up with a diagnosis: those few technologies which have advanced are 'technologies of simulation'. Thus: 'The postmodern moment was a desperate way to take what could otherwise only be felt as a bitter disappointment and to dress it up as something epochal, exciting and new.' Graeber notes the 1970s 'end of work' thesis, and the way it spectacularly failed to come to pass as production was offshored and (in many cases) became less rather than more technologically advanced.

Clearly, he notes, something went wrong with the future. Was it result of faulty expectations, perhaps because these derived from two continent-spanning expansionist societies fighting a Cold War – or was it a failure of humanity to attain the vision? Regarding the former, Graeber nicely sticks the boot into Alvin Toffler, the futurologist whose predictions (like those of Malthus, sez I) became obsolete the year he published them; and who (also like Malthus, I note) ended up as a high-level purveyor of reaction to the likes of Gingrich. Regarding the latter explanation, he points out that Big Technology never went away, but since Apollo it has been pointed at enemies within and without, instead of disruptively fun technology. So we got drones but not automated factories. He neatly tags Neoliberalism as 'a form of capitalism that systematically prioritized political imperatives over economic ones.' Guard labour, howareya?

This essay could do with a few more numbers. It can be profitably read alongside MacLeod's 1998 essay Science Fiction After the Future Went Away and also David Edgerton's cautionary tale about the history of technology, The Shock of the Old. Insofar as Graeber talks about what's important about actually existing technology, he could probably have done with reading the latter himself. If there's a key weak point to this essay, it's that he's swallowed the hitech-centred view of what technology is (shorter: whizz for atoms, rockets, computers) which Edgerton neatly skewered in Shock.

Reading it, I'm left with two minor personal reactions. The first is another iteration of one of my current bugbears – why does Graeber have to hate on 'bureaucracy' so much, while apparently liking 'rational administration'? The second is an uneasy feeling that the Revolutionary Communist Party's one half-decent 1980s Big Idea - that we needed to get to the end of capitalism as soon as possible – wasn't all bad. So so far, I'm back at where I came in: maudlin introspection. On the other hand, I seem to recall claiming about 15 years ago, somewhere on USENET, that revolutionary syndicalism was the way to the stars, and it's nice to have Graeber join me on this.

idle pig

I might have blogged about this a few years back, whereupon it vanished.

Now a classic of North Korean children's literature has returned, extending the old moral of 'he who does not work shall not eat' in a new and interesting direction. I commend the last few captions in particular to your attention and ask you to imagine reading them with your kid.

in event of moon disaster

Regular readers will know that I'm not a fan of space programmes and the like, but in honour of the passing of Neil Armstrong, here is his premature obituary. I can't think of a greater motivation to get back than the fact that if you didn't President Nixon would be giving the bad news to your family. Didn't he end up using a bit of a broken biro to get the lunar module off the ground?

The stuff about him being reclusive was always nonsense, but I also admire the fact he came back from the moon and spent a lot of the rest of his life just thinking about the whole thing.

Anway, here's what his old comrade has to say.

dull but decent

Here's something you don't see much of, at least not translated into English: indigenous social-democratic thinking from China, in particular making the case for social security as freedom. Welfare in China is currently localised and largely restricted to urban residents, so levelling the playing field via a truly national system also ties in to hukou reform. 

I recall Qin Hui making similar points a few years back, but despite the obvious relevance of such thinking it doesn't seem to make much headway, maybe because of the fact that the issue in China is so overwhelmingly the problem of the state that the proposition that it suddenly comes over all Norwegian lacks a degree of immediate credibility. But that ties into the other point being made here, namely that how governments behave is at least partly conditioned by the political goods they provide.

Anyway, I hope we see more of this: current semi-autonomous political tendencies, going from right to left, start out from free market-liberal and then head straight over to altermondialist New Left and from there to neo-Maoism. There are also at least two active fascist strains (Han racial essentialism and a sort of Chinese pan-Aryanism put forward in books like Wolf Totem). Raising high the banner of Clem Attlee, apart from being something I'm personally sympathetic to, fills out the political spectrum nicely.

a difficult guest

An absolutely classic 'hosting the revolutionary' story here:

 "we had a really good housekeeper who made it all happen". Ain't it the way.

21st century election

'Enlightened' entrepreneur versus dictator's daughter. I'm leaning towards Ms Park on this one.

show parties

Interesting piece over here on the eight democratic parties, the leftover of the United Front period in China prior to 1949, which are not only allowed to still hang around but granted an ornamental role in China’s constitution:

It was only after Deng Xiaoping came to power, and sought to restore the Communist Party’s tradition of accepting remonstrance, that the non-Communalist parties began to be taken seriously again. For instance, the leaders of the eight non-Communalist parties joined the National People's Congress and the CPPCC (Chinese Parliament), albeit their members only held honorary positions, not the real power that the first President of the Supreme Court held. Even so, the Communist Party has continued to show them great respect, as evidenced by their willingness to always discuss significant matters and consult with them.

Aside from the fact that the head of say, the remnants of the left Kuomintang hasn’t been given the post of deputy Prime Minister, I’d say this puts them on a level with the Lib Dems in the coalition. And of course, the LIb dems can propose legislation. But then, so can I, and members of the Left Kuomintang.

Even better, members of the eight parties are guaranteed posts in various state institutions, which makes them a pleasant option for people who don’t want to rub elbows with all the Rotary Club types in the actual Conservative Communist Party.

on international friendship

So, there's a Conservative Friends of Russia.

Britain is in a difficult economic state and should be looking to remove barriers to trade and employment, particularly with a country bursting with natural resources. Currently, many businesses are struggling to trade because of visa complications that could be easily resolved by politicians, but few are prepared to sit down and listen to businessmen trading with Russia. We provide a forum to enable that engagement and to amplify the voices of the unheard.

Ah, the voice of business. That's what's missing from wider public discourse, too, the voice of business forever droning on about how wonderful it is and complaining that nobody loves it. If the Syrian rebels dropped all this are they-aren't they stuff about Islamism and told us they were a bit like Tesco, we'd be invading on their behalf tomorrow.

Having said that, the Voice of Doing Business with Russia could tell us some interesting things, like where to get good bulletproof vests, how to conceal diamonds for transport across borders without enduring rectal irritation and which cube in a suit is the actual businessman and which are merely his bodyguards. So yeah: educational.

Mr Conservative Friend of Russia tells us that he's will not be Putin's stooge. Maybe: but governments have ways of manipluating sincere enthusiasm for dialogue. The chair of the all-party China Committee during the eighties was a Tory MP called Robert Ardrey (as I recall the name) whose enthusiasm for China was inextricably involved with his devotion to steam railway, and may indeed have been inspired by it (obviously, this was back in the pre-high speed train era) So he would go to China and ride around on choo-choos for a while, and then he would be told what his hosts wanted him to hear. He would be left with the impression that greater openness and friendship between our two great nations would lead to more opportunities for pretending to be a stoker and having a go at the big whistle. Happy days.

 

much to do with tobacco

Some wonderfully brazen pro-smoking propaganda from China's tobacco museums, aka 'patriotic education bases':

In a tobacco museum in Shanghai, a group of teenagers are looking up at a picture of Lu Xun.

In the portrait, the literary great is holding a cigarette and smoke rings rise in front of his gaunt face.

The novelist, who died from lung problems in 1936, is very familiar to teenagers throughout the nation, as his works are among the most anthologized in primary and high school textbooks.

"Tobacco always accompanied Lu Xun during hard days," reads the note at the foot of the picture.

Depictions of many of China's greatest luminaries can be found in the China Tobacco Museum, almost all of them puffing on cigarettes or holding cigarette boxes.

"The great works, theories and leadership of these luminaries often have much to do with tobacco," reads a golden board in the museum.

What I particularly like about this is the focus on intellectuals: Lu Xun is roughly China's equivalent of Orwell. Imagine a musuem with the very dog ends Orwell smoked while writing Homage to Catalonia and a diorama featuring Sartre looming froglike behind a blue cloud of Gauloise smoke.

happiness politics

You'll all be fascinated to learn that the Bhutan government is allegedly punishing media critical of its record by withdrawing ad revenues, apparently a big thing in a country with 700,000 people and a private media sector consisting of "a dozen and and a half" publications. And this is suggestive:

The government is formulating advertisement guidelines that will reflect the country's unique policy of gross national happiness (GNH) - which is used to gauge national progress. Journalists fear that GNH as a criterion, requiring the media to promote the vague concept of happiness, will pave the way for the government to use discretion and exclude certain newspapers.