Anti-Bank Holiday to Remember

Climate camp was a delight. The whole event has been planned and executed with what I hardly dare call military precision, perhaps most of the all the 'swoosh' to the chosen site on Blackheath common, which was completely unexpected by local residents. Apart from the absence of uniforms, hierarchy, and meals-ready-to-eat, of course. Instead we had communally cooked organic veggie fare, available on time and for a nominal (and voluntary) charge. The level of organisation was immensely impressive.

Campers are encouraged to join 'neighbourhoods' which, with the exception of the Thames Valley (an in-joke at the expense of our friends in navy blue) are based around regions of the country. So we had our dinner in Wales and our lunch the following day in the Thames Valley. When our massive saucepan was empty, news reached us that there was still food in Yorkshire. It did begin to feel rather Medieval. Each neighbourhood meets at 10am to plan the day, share out work and raise any concerns about the camp as a whole. It then sends a representative to the spokes meeting so that the whole camp can share planning and decision-making.

I always find camps and festivals the most vibrant source of creative and informed discussion about the world's problems and solutions. The site was well chosen, with an excellent view of the skyscrapers of the city which could be seen beyond the perimeter fence draped with slogans such as 'the planet doesn't do bail-outs', 'soul not coal', and 'capitalism is crisis'.

My own contribution was the Friday night plenary on capitalism and climate change. It began with a camper explaining to a marquee packed with about 500 people, and in pictoral form, Marx's analysis of the crisis of capitalist production. The theory had been brought up do date by the inclusion of 'loadsamoney' and 'shitloads of cash' but otherwise would have been easily recognisable to the man with the beard. Aside from the proliferation of four-letter words, which I probably wouldn't get away with, I might follow this tack in my university teaching next year. As occupation of universities was the theme of one of the workshops over the weekend, I may not need to.

My journey home was chaotic and discordant in contrast to the smooth harmony of the camp. The Blackheath site passed its health-and-safety inspection. My First Great Western train would not have done since there was no water to wash your hands after using the toilet. Given a choice between 'business' and the campaigners I know who I would have running the country, and not just because of the standard of the WCs. Tweet

What is a Brumaire anyway?

At the risk of sounding like a Marxist I can't help noticing that the struggle between capital and labour over the value in the economy is becoming more pronounced every day.

While the economy was growing, politicians could conceal the fact that, since the heady days of the 1970s, they have responded more and more to the concerns of 'business' and less and less to those of 'ordinary people'. The pie grew larger, the environment was more stressed, but even those who had the smallest slice tended to get a slightly larger slice each year. Inequality was ruled irrelevant, in spite of evidence showing that it is intrinsically very bad for a nation's health. The fact that the labels 'capital' and 'labour' have been replaced by those of 'business' and 'hard-working families' has not changed the essential power dynamic in the economy.

But with the recession, the fighting over the spoils is beginning to intensify. Unusually, although unsurprisingly, it is the leaders of the trade unions who are speaking up (finally) on behalf of their members and asking very reasonable questions. Such as why should energy companies like British Gas see their profits rise by 500% while bills soar and a significant minority of poorer people will struggle to keep themselves warm.

I'm enjoying what the unions are up to just now. Campaigning for a windfall tax on energy profits to be given out as winter fuel payments is a good start. So is there persistent campaigning to close the scandalous loopholes around the tax treatment of private equity companies. Longer term the attempts to build international unions is the only serious political resonse to the globalisation of production and the way this has reduced the power of organised labour in the West.

Once, while I was giving a talk, a woman got terribly excited and clapped her hands together squeaking 'Oh, this is just like the Sixties!' I'm feeling rather that way about the return to the 1970s. Actually they were a grim decade with Glam rock and playing scrabble by candlelight, but at least there was some honesty about the struggle over economic value. Tweet

You are what you make, not what you buy

A famous critique of the nature of work within a market system is to be found in the writings of Karl Marx. One of his central concerns was the social and psychological effect on the individual of life within the market. As expressed by Terry Eagleton, Marx’s view was that ‘Under market conditions, individuals confront each other as abstract, interchangeable entities; working people become commodities, selling their labour power to the highest bidder; and the capitalist does not care what he produces as long as he makes a profit.’ So there is nothing original in the critique of the anti-globalisation protestors, although they may not recognise the source of their complaint.

Marx reserved a special place for work in his analysis: he considered it to be the central expression of what he referred to as our ‘species-being’. It is because what we do as a species is to work that the mutation of work into its capitalist form is so socially and psychologically damaging. It is this process which Marx refers to as ‘alienation’, meaning that the items which people produce with their work are appropriated by the minority of people who own the means of production, i.e. the employers or in today’s terms the global corporations. Marx related this sense of alienation to our estrangement from nature. His conclusion was that the process of work and the creation of products that are bought and sold by others, destroys the individual sense of self and radically undermines her or his identity.

This loss of identity has been massively extended by the globalisation of the international economy. Think of the work of Adam Bede, the eponymous carpenter-hero of a novel by George Eliot. His work links him directly to the other members of his community. He makes an intricate kitchen cabinet for the employer of the woman he loves, in the hope that this will catch his beloved’s eye and win her heart. How distant this portrayal of identity and relationship in work is from the life of the person who tends the machine that turns the thing, that makes the pin, that joins the leg to the bed, that they sell on the industrial estate. S/he has no idea where the item will be sold or used, never mind by whom. And similarly, when we shop we have little idea where or by whom the items we buy were made. We lose our sense of connection and the producer loses her sense of identity.

In response to this loss of identity, and particularly for those who are too poor to adopt brand-based consumer identities, we see a rise in identity groups based on gender and ethnic identities. This unfortunate response to globalisation has long been predicted and yet appears to surprise and horrify the Establishment when it expresses itself in terms of large numbers of votes for politicians who base their appeal on the offer of an identity. In spite of radicals and environmentalists warnings of the imminent depletion of natural resources or the collapse of the financial system, it seems that the most dire threat to globalised capitalism is actually posed by the loss of identity created by the meaningless and exploitative systems of both production and consumption that it feeds off. Tweet