Welcome to the New EcoLogics blog
The New EcoLogics blog will publish short articles that analyse common sense and everyday life in the twighlight of neoliberalism.
At present a selection of the original posts (EcoLogics Mk I) are available in the blog’s archives.
Thank you for your interest.
Please note that the posts in this blog reflect its author’s personal interpretations, and so are a matter of opinion.
All blog contents Copyright © 2007-2011 Ecologics All Rights Reserved
About the New EcoLogics blog
From 2007 to 2010, this blog published articles concerned with what I described as the nocturnal connections between neoliberalism and the political cultures of the UK and the US. I spoke of ‘nocturnal’ connections because, at the time, at least the corporate media representations of our political cultures were in a state of denial about the links between ostensibly ‘free market’ economics and politics, ‘free market’ economics and corruption.
Many of the corporate media continue to be in a state of denial, but by mid-2011, the links between the free market policies and economic, political and moral corruption are so explicit that they cannot be plausibly denied. To continue using the earlier metaphor, they are now entirely ‘diurnal’. In England, for example, it is no longer possible for the Liberal Conservative coalition to deny that it has taken the steps to put an end to the policy of equal and open access to higher education. It is also increasingly evident that a primary motivation for this change is not the financial crisis (how to justify a billion dollar war in Libya, if that’s the case?), but the pressure of private investors. In the US, the failure to close Guantánamo, and now the summary execution of Bin Laden make it plain that the ideal of the rule of law, at least as it had been represented and/or observed until the end of the 20th century, no longer applies. I focus on the US and the UK, the leading nations in the neoliberal ‘revolution’, but of course similar points might be made about Berlusconi’s Italy, Merkel’s Germany, Sarkozy’s France, and what will almost certainly be Rajoy’s Spain.
In these and many other contexts, it is as clear as daylight that what is often described as ‘the West’ is no longer the kind of democratic space that it once was. That is not to say that democracy, and a certain separation of powers associated with it, has come completely to an end. In the US and in the UK, as in Italy, France, Spain and Germany, we are nowhere near the kind of stereotypical authoritarian state associated with naked dictatorship. But equally, we cannot pretend that we enjoy the kind of freedom of speech, let alone the egalitarian, or demi-egalitarian policy structures that predominated during the postwar period. Nor can we deny that what is in place now is a plutocracy – also known as a ‘plutonomy’, i.e. government for, and by, the very richest 1% of the population. The ideological bubble has, in this sense, well and truly burst, and so now it seems pointless to write posts that critique what is becoming increasingly obvious to one and all.
And yet… a second reason for a change in the substance and style of this blog is found in my sense that, despite the transformation I have just described, despite the looming environmental catastrophe, despite a future that seems increasingly like something out of the darkest science fiction, many ‘progressive’ and ‘liberal’ people still live their lives in ways that reproduce aspects of the neoliberal ideology. I speak of other people, but the same is true of my own life. Our lives are riven by a huge contradiction between a bona fide willingness to find a different way forward, and an inability to see past, or at any rate act past the social and cultural formations that have long served to legitimise the claims of the free privateers.
Such a contradiction points to the huge importance of the most implicit practices of everyday life, and with them, the role of common sense. It seems increasingly clear to me that, whatever macro political structures may be holding up the nakedly corrupt status quo in political circles (Politics with a capital P), it’s everyday practice that is holding the current form of society together, and this almost regardless of what the politicians do or don’t do. So long as this dimension, if we can call it that, is not interrogated, elucidated, and more generally engaged in a meaningful manner, then it seems clear that nothing is going to change in England, and in other countries where democracy is gradually (and in some cases, not so gradually) being eroded.
Given this perspective, I would like to use this blog to focus from now onwards on analysing a variety of forms of common sense, a variety of formations of everyday life. As part of this change, readers familiar with the older posts will notice that the new EcoLogics posts will be considerably shorter (usually no more than about 1000 words), and will appear regularly. If all goes to plan, I hope to publish one post each month, on or soon after the first day of the month.
The first full post will appear on July 1. In the meantime, I will be working to republish a selection of ‘old’ EcoLogics posts, many of which will be accompanied by brief contextualising introductions.
Thanks in advance for your interest.
EcoLogics
BP, ‘Knowledge Exchange’, and Corporate Control over Research
Since 2007, this blog has warned about the dangers of handing over research in universities to private corporations. This is the idea at the heart of so-called ‘knowledge transfer’, or ‘knowledge exchange‘— code names for an attempt to eliminate the relative autonomy of university researchers.
I began my last series about this process (see Big Society, Big Oil, Muzzled Universities) with an account of the way in which BP was alleged to be trying to buy the work of whole university research departments in a bid to control the outcome of research about its disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Today the Guardian has published information obtained by Greenpeace that appears to confirm the fears concerning possible efforts on BP’s part to undermine the independence of scientists researching the spill:
BP officials tried to take control of a $500m fund pledged by the oil company for independent research into the consequences of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, it has emerged. Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show BP officials openly discussing how to influence the work of scientists supported by the fund, which was created by the oil company in May last year. Russell Putt, a BP environmental expert, wrote in an email to colleagues on 24 June 2010: “Can we ‘direct’ GRI [Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative] funding to a specific study (as we now see the governor’s offices trying to do)? What influence do we have over the vessels/equipment driving the studies vs the questions?”. The email was obtained by Greenpeace and shared with the Guardian. The documents are expected to reinforce fears voiced by scientists that BP has too much leverage over studies into the impact of last year’s oil disaster.”
David Cameron and institutional racism
A couple of weeks ago I concluded a post on David Cameron’s war in Libya in the following manner:
“The problem for David Cameron, and for his sidekick Nick Clegg is that, unlike the case of the Falklands, in this conflict there is no neat end that can be engineered, a la carte, for the public relations calculus at the heart of the operation. As Milne notes, public support for the Libya adventure is low, and whatever support there is can only be lost as more and more people become aware of the operation’s hypocrisy, and of its failure to secure any of its own stated objectives.
This raises a worrisome question: what stunt will the ConDems engineer next to try to keep the British public in a state of distraction from the real issues of our time?”
Today we have the answer: Cameron appears to have decided to replay the ‘race’ card, making statements about immigrants which, in my view, make it difficult to distinguish his discourse from at least the official discourse of the British National Party (BNP). Here again, we see a striking similarity between Cameron and Thatcher—if Thatcher used the war on the Falklands to distract public opinion from her neoliberal policies, many believe that she also played the ‘race’ card by stoking up fears of immigration.
The only slightly positive news is that the Lib Dems—or at least Vince Cable—appear to be distancing themselves from this new move on the part of the Conservative Party towards the far right.
One other thought: let us not forget that it was David Cameron who was willing to travel to Poland to establish a pan-European pact with extreme right-wing parties. For more on this, see
What does David Cameron have in common with the Kaczynski twins?
See also my piece on the nature of institutional racism:
The DHS and the nature of institutional racism
Update 18:00 BST. A good article by Daniel Trilling lays out the hypocrisy of Cameron’s, and the Liberal-Conservative Coalition’s position when he notes that:
on Thursday Cameron showed that he is happy to invoke the rhetoric of Enoch Powell when it suits him, railing against the threat to society posed by the “largest influx” of immigrants in British history. In his speech, delivered to Conservative party members in Hampshire, Cameron declares he wants to “cut through the extremes” of the debate on immigration. He makes a ritualistic sop to the benefits of immigration (tasty food, nice clothes, good music), but the focus of his argument is that immigrants don’t make enough effort to integrate and to learn English; something that has “created a kind of discomfort and disjointedness” in neighbourhoods across the country.
This is an utterly hypocritical position to take when the government is about to make harsh cuts to teaching of English for speakers of other languages. In 2007, Labour restricted free English lessons to people on benefits; now, these will only be available to those on “active benefits” such as jobseeker’s allowance. Low-paid workers on income support, asylum seekers and spouses – the very people Cameron devotes his attention to in his speech – will no longer be eligible. The hypocrisy is compounded when one considers Britain’s appalling track record where learning other languages is concerned. Of the 900,000 Britons who live in Spain, how many speak reasonable Spanish? Do all of the 500,000 British people living in France speak French?
A shared language is vital to good social relations, but lacking one is a threat to the migrants themselves, not surrounding society.”
Was even Gordon Brown hacked by News Corp?
It is a sign of the times that one of the most serious corruption–and–criminality scandals in the British postwar era may be quietly put to rest by an offer of more money by the very organisation at the heart of the scandal. In this post I would like to quote in some length a piece by Henry Porter which appears today in the Observer. The article may give the reader a sense of the extent of the rot which is now shaking the very foundations of British democracy, all that our society reportedly rests on and stands for. It also forces a re-appraisal of traditional critiques of conspiracy theories. The quote is taken from an article titled ‘It is hard to imagine a more dangerous breach of trust by a public corporation’, and is well worth reading, along with the more general coverage of the issue by the Guardian.
It is a measure of James Murdoch’s failure to understand the gravity of the phone-hacking scandal that in answer to a question from the US broadcaster Charlie Rose, he replied: “You talk about a reputation crisis – actually the business is doing really well. It shows what we were able to do is really put this problem into a box.”
One of the most serious post-second world war scandals to affect British public life cannot be placed in quarantine and forgotten simply by means of a late apology and millions in damages. It is already clear that admissions made by News International raise huge questions about the competence and ethics of the company’s management, including James Murdoch, as well as profound doubts about attempts to quash the police’s inquiry into allegations of widespread criminality.
But much more important is that the News of the World operation has penetrated to the heart of the British government and may even have intercepted Gordon Brown’s messages. We know that Labour’s culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, who was the minister overseeing the media, was hacked, as was her husband David Mills; the former deputy prime minister, Lord Prescott, has been told that the News of the World was listening to his messages; and it seems likely that Tony Blair’s communications director Alastair Campbell was also a victim.
Two weeks ago I wrote formally to the former prime minister Gordon Brown to ask if he had received confirmation from the police that his phone was compromised by the News of the World. He has yet to reply..
