Tottenham: "A riot is the language of the unheard."

"The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air."

- Karl Marx & Freidrich Engels
The Communist Manifesto

It's the day after the night before in Tottenham and the process of analysing and understanding recent events begins, even though the full extent of what happened is as yet unknown. But, if any analysis of the events in Tottenham loots what happened of its political, historical and economic context then there is no way to make sense of any of it.

The process of getting to the essence of what lies beneath has to be done in an environment of doublethink and doublespeak in which politicians and the media champion the apparent popular uprisings against oppressive regimes in the Middle East -- the 'Arab Spring' -- yet simultaneously condemn and seek to suppress similar protests and uprisings against the illegitimate institutions of authority that they themselves represent. Remember too that condemnations of the violence in Tottenham that emanate from the political class come from the same people, organisations and entities who are responsible for commissioning and unleashing a decade of untold violence and barbarism on the peoples of Afghanistan, Iraq and more recently Pakistan (by drone) and Libya, the latter of which it is claimed is in support of a popular uprising but which is in fact no more than a reactionary CIA and NATO supported resource-plundering coup attempt against Gaddafi.

As is usual with any protest that flares up in some way, much of the analysis proffered comes from a place outside of any sort of wider context. In fact, the context of the analysis doing the rounds on the Idiot Lantern and radio networks only ventures as far back as two days in the whole of human history. So, if the media is to be believed, the history of Tottenham is just three days old and commences at the point at which 29 year old Mark Duggan was executed by police.

The events in Tottenham last night did not occur in a vacuum, nor are they an isolated example of the dire state and straits of peoples the world over.

A 16 year old girl meets 'community policing' in Tottenham

The Murder of Mark Duggan

Discussion of the shooting at point-blank range of Mark Duggan on Thursday night is, like the 'riots', totally devoid of any wider context. As is usual with police executions of members of the public, irrespective of who the victims are or what the underlying truth might be, details about the manner in which Duggan was killed are notably thin on the ground.

Eye-witnesses report that Duggan was lying prostrate on the ground when he was shot, that any weapon which may or may not have been in the cab was inside a sock rather than cocked, loaded and ready to fire upon teams of armed police officers, and the actual truth of the matter will inevitably be far more convoluted and 'nuanced' than that. Oh, and the bullet lodged in a police officer's radio which was apparently evidence of a shoot-out? Well, "Initial ballistics tests on the bullet... show it was a police issue bullet." Quelle surprise!

Those few details that are available are either sketchy, unverified and, without access to any of the evidence, completely unverifiable. This means that information available about the killing of Mark Duggan has either to be discounted entirely, or be taken on trust from a police, State and media that is still glimmering in the glowing embers of the News of the World / News International / Trinity Mirror Group / Police / Cabinet Office scandal that exposed the entire chain of governance and propaganda as thoroughly corrupt and rotten to the core. Fear not though because the entirely trustworthy Independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating.

Yet the context of recent events in Tottenham is still not wide enough to extract much in the way of meaning for we have yet to factor in the historical undercurrent of tensions between economically and opportunistically marginalised and excluded communities and the 'institutionally racist' police, or the specific history of police harassment and chastisement of Tottenham's ethnically diverse communities.

The history of police killings, and the extent of the lies propagated by the police as they collude to cover-up their crimes is long, detailed, bloody and shameful. Those days when anything announced by the police or the corrupt State in whose service the police operate is taken by anyone at face value are long gone, if indeed they ever existed among the working class and those members of society who have been all but written-off as the 'underclass'.

A Voice of Reason in the Chaos

"A riot is the language of the unheard."

- Dr. Martin Luther King

Haringey Youth Worker Symeon Brown interviewed by BBC News

Tottenham Youth Worker Symeon Brown, interviewed by BBC News, spoke of the "collective memory" of the people of Tottenham and how the events of 25 years ago on the Broadwater Farm Estate in Tottenham are ingrained in the DNA of the community, irrespective if they themselves were present at those events. The stories of police brutality and oppression, particuarly directed towards ethnic communities, have been passed down through the generations and serve as a cautionary tale of the nature of the oppression which they face by accident of birth and by dint of the same economic inequalities that see the State give handouts of over £1 trillion to banks that should by rights be bankrupt and confined to the graveyard of economic oppression, while seeing any forum of subsistence support for ordinary people and communities slashed and burned with equal speed in the name of faux austerity that does not apply if you happen to be an international banking corporation.

Brown continued, “There's a sense in the community that the police are 'not for us' and as we've seen with events this year like the student protest, there's a hostility between young people and police - and that has manifested even more so in 2011. The trigger for this was a young man being killed – this is the context that must not be forgotten."

Symeon Brown is correct in his analysis. The police are not for the people of Tottenham but rather against them in just the same way that the police are not for the majority of the people generally. That the police are against the majority of people has been repeatedly and amply demonstrated at various protests in recent years through the use of the illegal detention-without-charge tactics known as 'kettling', horse-mounted baton-charges and other violence meted out towards ordinary people peacefully protesting against a State entity that is equally acting and operating in a manner that is "not for us". The police are merely a sub-section of the bodies of armed men that form the barrier and buffer between the State, the ruling class of the 'haves' and the 'have-mores' and those who are ConDem'd to poverty, deprivation and squalor by the deliberate choices and actions of the State that clearly now only serves its own naked self-interest.

It is this collective memory of the people of Tottenham and people in the wider community that has resulted in what Symeon Brown termed the "removal of consent". The people of Tottenham, of all races, colours and creeds, and the students, workers and activists whose consciences and desire for greater social and economic equality inspires them to take to the streets in protest against the actions of the State have all collectively removed their consent, further adding to the illegitimacy of archaic and anachronistic institutions of authority that continue to believe it is their divine right to do whatever they like, whenever they like, without any equal and opposing reaction.

Whatever political capital any authority seeks to make from what happened in Tottenham on Saturday night, using emotive phrases such as "having the heart ripped out of the community", it is quite clear that far from there being any connection to that supposed heart of the community, what exists in actuality is an alienation from all that capitalism has lain before it and all that capitalism has subjected it to.

Opportunists, Provacateurs and Propaganda

The science of social deprivation

While the initial unrest and uprising may have occurred as a direct response to the murder of Mark Duggan and the lack of police response over the course of days to demands for answers from Duggan's family, friends and community, a degree of caution needs to be exercised with regard to what transpired when darkness fell. One needn't look too far nor listen too hard to discover information and accounts that suggest that at the very least the seemingly wanton destruction of property occurred as legions of police looked on without taking any action to prevent these events from occurring.

Worse yet, there are reports of 'outsiders' -- people otherwise unfamiliar to the Tottenham community -- appearing on the scene and exacerbating an already tense, precarious and highly-flammable situation.

For a State that is fully aware of its actions, the consequence of its actions, and the reactions likely to be provoked, in tandem with a State that is intent on seeking new methods and weaponry to add to its already wide arsenal to be used against the general public in the service of the unquestioning subservience it describes as 'public order', the escalation of events on Saturday night are a gift.

What happens next remains to be seen but we need only look as far as Northern Ireland to determine the State's preferred methods for suppressing popular opposition to its actions. And, as already outlined elsewhere on this blog, the prime movers in the establishment of the policing methodology and tactics used to suppress dissent in Northern Ireland are all now conveniently placed in the positions of authority to impose similar regimes on the people of the mainland.

If we are to learn anything from what has transpired it should perhaps be that the anger and energy that lay behind the unrest in Tottenham last night needs to be organised and directed into building the unity and solidarity of ordinary people to create that which the Ministry of Defence outlined as one of the greatest threats to the corrupt State; to build the very same thing that will help us all, collectively, find the way out of the mess to which we the people have been condemned by the ruling, property-owning and finance-capital classes:

The Middle Class Proletariat

The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx. The globalization of labour markets and reducing levels of national welfare provision and employment could reduce peoples’ attachment to particular states. The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat to social order and stability, as the burden of acquired debt and the failure of pension provision begins to bite. Faced by these twin challenges, the world’s middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.

Can you tell what it is yet? [1984 Version]

Factoring this trusty little quote from the MoD in to the equation:

The Middle Class Proletariat

The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx. The globalization of labour markets and reducing levels of national welfare provision and employment could reduce peoples’ attachment to particular states. The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat to social order and stability, as the burden of acquired debt and the failure of pension provision begins to bite. Faced by these twin challenges, the world’s middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.

Who would ever suspect that the story behind a nice gentle headline such as NUS starts campaign to oust leading Lib Dems might contain a confirmation of the State's virtually tacit declaration of war on anyone with half a conscience? Probably not many - but it does.

As police face continued criticism for failing to control the march, the Observer has learned that defence firms are working closely with UK armed forces and contemplating a "militarisation" strategy to counter the threat of civil disorder.

The trade group representing the military and security industry says firms are in negotiation with senior officers over possible orders for armoured vehicles, body scanners and better surveillance equipment.

The move coincides with government-backed attempts to introduce the use of unmanned spy drones throughout UK airspace, facilitating an expansion of covert surveillance that could provide intelligence on future demonstrations.

Derek Marshall, of the trade body Aerospace, Defence and Security (ADS), said that such drones could eventually replace police helicopters.

He added that military manufacturers had discussed police procurement policies with the government, as forces look to counter an identified threat of civil disobedience from political extremists.

Meanwhile police sources say they have detected an increase in the criminal intentions of political extremists and are monitoring "extreme leftwing activity" in light of last week's student protest.

The office of the National Co-ordinator for Domestic Extremism (NCDE) said it was feeding information to Scotland Yard's National Public Order Intelligence Unit, which holds a database of protest groups. NCDE, which in turn works closely with the Confidential Intelligence Unit that monitors political groups throughout the UK, said it had already recorded a rise in politically motivated disorder.

- The Guardian

Delightful to learn that these private military corporations have identified the general public as their new targets, an added bonus that State officials think so too. More wonderful still to learn of the rapidity with which "senior officers", such as the lovely fellows of the Association of Chief Police Officers, have tendered a sympathetic ear or two.

The police even shut down a web site -- which sort of backfired somewhat, what with the Internet being the way it is for now -- but it's very important everyone remembers that censorship only takes place in China or Iran, and probably Somalia too. That'd never happen here.

Not long ago, you'd have been a 'conspiracy theorist' if you thought there was the remotest possibility of the State censoring web sites or arming itself in earnest against the people that happen to live under its jurisdication.

It might be fascism, but is it still a 'conspiracy theory'?

Britain's got fascists

The results of the UK tranche of the European Elections are in and everyone is left wondering how so many votes got doled out to a party of people who never go anywhere without adorning themselves in the tawdry bunting of the British flag.

Brainwashing: It's only subliminal if you don't notice

When fascism comes to town....

It will probably look a little something like this.






The expression, "a captive audience", redefined.

Welcome to the prison ship.

--
Edit: Compare and contrast (via amtte).

Antagonista TV: Grate Britain Vs Terence McKenna

Visionary, ethnobotanist, entheobotanist, writer, linguist, shaman, philosopher, psychonaut and psychedelic explorer Terence McKenna, speaking in Seattle -- at the time of the infamous anti-capitalist inspired Battle of Seattle -- spoke the following words and advised in no uncertain terms, "Culture is not your friend". McKenna was of course talking about corporate culture, the type which seeks to hold hostage and keep from you sounds, shapes, patterns, colours and images that would otherwise be free for all to share.

What civilization is, is 6 billion people trying to make themselves happy by standing on each other's shoulders and kicking each other's teeth in. It's not a pleasant situation. And yet, you can stand back and look at this planet and see that we have the money, the power, the medical understanding, the scientific know-how, the love and the community to produce a kind of human paradise. But we are led by the least among us - the least intelligent, the least noble, the least visionary. We are led by the least among us and we do not fight back against the dehumanising values that are handed down as control icons.

This is something -- I mean I don't really want to get off on this tear because it's a lecture in itself -- but culture is not your friend. Culture is for other people's convenience and the convenience of various institutions, churches, companies, tax collection schemes, what have you. It is not your friend. It insults you. It disempowers you. It uses and abuses you. None of us are well treated by culture.

Yet we glorify the creative potential of the individual, the rights of the individual. We understand the felt-presence of experience is what is most important. But the culture is a perversion. It fetishises objects, creates consumer mania, it preaches endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understanding in the form of squirrelly religions and silly cults. It invites people to diminish themselves and dehumanise themselves by behaving like machines - meme processors of memes passed down from Madison Avenue and Hollywood and what have you.

How do we fight back? It's a question worth answering. I think that by creating art -- art -- man was not put on this planet to toil in the mud. Or the god who put us on this planet to toil in the mud is no god I want to have any part of. It's some kind of gnostic demon, it's some kind of cannibalistic dema urge that should be thoroughly renounced and rejected.

By putting the art pedal to the metal we really, I think, maximise our humanness and become much more necessary and incomprehensible to the machines.

Terence McKenna - Culture is not your friend

The following is, in all likelihood, exactly the sort of thing to which McKenna was referring when he suggested the creation of art as part of the fight back against corporate culture and the mass psychology of fascism:

EMBED... Grate Britain featuring LOKI... Release date: 25-03-09

"What price for freedom? Fascist martial law."

As the man says, don't give up on solutions.

Thanks to Bridget in the comments here for the pointer to Grate Britain.

No Fifth amendment, "No Comment."

Still think Orwellian, Big Brother style, police state fascism isn't in operation? Open your eyes.

You may not have the right to silence, but you certainly have the right to "No comment." Lessons in why from America via Professor James Duane.

European Court of Human Rights DNA retention ruling

At last! We've found something that the British government has a track record of managing successfully over an extended period of time, breaching human rights.

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the British government has breached human rights, over a million times, through the retention of DNA belonging to innocent people.

The unanimous verdict was delivered by a panel of 17 judges from around Europe after a couple of Sheffielders took their case to the European Court. The judgment means that any person hassled by the increasingly voracious police force, whose DNA was taken irrespective of being charged or convicted of a crime, has had their human rights breached, unlike the 2.3 million people "with a conviction, caution, reprimand or final warning", who are not on the database.

The ruling places the British government in violation of international law. Again. From a BBC News report:

The judges said keeping the information "could not be regarded as necessary in a democratic society".

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said she was "disappointed" by the European Court of Human Rights' decision.

So, a "unanimous judgement by 17 senior judges from across Europe" ruled that the British State's policy of retaining DNA in a giant database "could not be regarded as necessary in a democratic society" and Jacqui Smith is "disappointed".

Another perfect example of the true gangster nature of the State.

"Terrorist" Damian Green & Antagonista Radio Pick of the Week

Nobody listened much to the protestations of those who raised their objections to the manifold proposals of loosely worded "anti-terrorist" legislation of the last seven years. Nobody cared enough to do anything when that loosely worded "anti-terrorist" legislation was passed into their law books. Nobody cared enough to do anything when loosely worded "anti-terrorist" legislation was used to justify Muslims being lifted off the streets for the crime of being Muslim or possession of a CD, the contents of which they had never looked at. Nobody cared enough to do anything when the true scope of the loosely worded "anti-terrorist" legislation was realised again as the assets of an Icelandic bank were frozen under the same anti-terrorist legislation. Or so it seemed.

But when a member of the establishment, Tory front-bencher Damian Green -- in an operation overseen by the most senior "anti-terrorist" officer Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick -- then becomes a target of the State bootboys and their "anti-terrorist" laws, liberal middle-England sits up and takes notice.

BBC Radio 4's Any Answers, presented by Jonathan Dimbleby, received a bit of coverage here before when a member of the unruly and unwashed masses placed Dimbleby on the back foot with regard to the truth about The Troubles. Last Saturday the incensed outrage of telephone-calling Middle England gave Dimbleby another run for his money. Listen again while you can:

• Any Answers Homepage | Listen Again until 06/12/08

John Simkin over at the excellent Education Forum -- the very same place at which the embodiment of all leftist personality crises, George Monbiot, was taken to task over details outlined in a post here on Reason.... -- noted the comments of Tony Benn.

Tony Benn, the Labour former cabinet minister, said this on BBC Radio today: "I may sound strangely medieval, but once the police can interfere with parliament, I tell you, you are into a police state. Parliament is a safeguard against the abuse of power and once you start clamping down on it you are saying goodbye to the freedom that parliament gives you."

Gotta love Lord Tony Benn, his words sound emptier and hollower than ever before. Unless of course when he says "you" he means "us" and is referring solely to serving members of parliament. The rest of the general populace is afforded no such comfort by the "safeguard against the abuse of power" that is fondly held by some as the Palace of Westminster, quite the opposite in fact.

For the "lower orders", it is more than a little amusing that the Metropolitan jackboots have ruffled a few feathers in the selectively-bred ruling class nest. Turf wars between ruling class factions and groupuscules.

When all is said and done it is the State that removes our freedoms by word and it is the police that removes our freedoms by deed. The bootboys busting the boot polishers confirms with renewed vigour and finality that the State entity, of which the police are an intrinsic part -- in the midst of the global, manufactured economic crisis that is the last capitalism in its current incarnation will ever see -- offers the greater majority of people nothing other than further subjugation and ever greater wage slavery in the subservient interests of the only thing that matters to the rich; the system; the economy.

This is a round up, who will speak for you?

--
Further reading:

• No Treason - The Constitution of No Authority

And, courtesy of J7: The July 7th Truth Campaign:

• Capitalising on Terror: Who is really destroying our freedoms?
• Human Rights Abuses & The Demonisation of 'The Enemy' in Secret Britain

An unexpurgated message from Dr. Goldstein

A brief message from the much maligned Emmanuel Goldstein courtesy of (as with On Terrorism and the State) those wonderful folk over at NotBored. Lessons in life, history and political analysis for everyone.

Publisher's note: Chapters 1 and 3 of this book were previously published in George Orwell's 1984 (London: 1949). This edition is complete and unexpurgated.

Contents

Chapter 1: Ignorance is Strength

Chapter 2: Freedom is Slavery

Chapter 3: War is Peace

Chapter 4: God is Power

Chapter 5: The Proles

Chapter 1: Ignorance is Strength

Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude toward one another, have varied from to age to age; but the essential structure of society has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibrium, however far it is pushed one way or the other.

The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim -- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives -- is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal. Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves, or their capacity to govern efficiently or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High. Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over again. Of the three groups, only the Low are never even temporarily successful in achieving their aims. It would be an exaggeration to say that throughout history there has been no progress of a material kind. Even today, in a period of decline, the average human being is physically better off than he was a few centuries ago. But no advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer. From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters.

By the late nineteenth century the recurrences of this pattern had become obvious to many observers. There then arose schools of thinkers who interpreted history as a cyclical process and claimed to show that inequality was the unalterable law of human life. This doctrine, of course, had always had its adherents, but in the manner in which it was now put forward there was a significant change. In the past the need for a hierarchical form of society had been the doctrine specifically of the High. It had been preached by kings and aristocrats and by the priests, lawyers, and the like who were parasitical upon them, and it had generally been softened by promises of compensation in an imaginary world beyond the grave. The Middle, so long as it was struggling for power, had always made use of such terms as freedom, justice and fraternity. Now, however, the concept of human brotherhood began to be assailed by people who were not yet in positions of command, but merely hoped to be so before long. In the past the Middle had made revolutions under the banner of equality, and then had established a fresh tyranny as soon as the old ones were overthrown. The new Middle groups in effect proclaimed their tyranny beforehand. The new movements, of course, grew out of the old ones and tended to keep their names and pay lip-service to their ideology. But the purpose of all of them was to arrest progress and freeze history at a chosen moment. The familiar pendulum swing was to happen once more, and then stop. As usual, the High were to be turned out by the Middle, who would then become the High; but this time, by conscious strategy, the High would be able to maintain their position permanently.

The new "spectacular" doctrines arose partly because of the accumulation of historical knowledge, and the growth of the historical sense, which had hardly existed before the nineteenth century. The cyclical movement of history was now intelligible, or appeared to be so; and if it was intelligible, then it was alterable. But the principal, underlying cause was that, as early as the beginning of the twentieth century, human equality had become technically possible. It was still true that people were not equal in their native talents and that functions had to be specialized in ways that favored some individuals against others; but there was no longer any real need for class distinctions or for large differences of wealth. In earlier ages, class distinctions had been not only inevitable but desirable. Inequality was the price of civilization. With the development of machine production, however, the case was altered. Even if it were still necessary for human beings to do different kinds of work, it was no longer necessary for them to live at different social or economic levels. Therefore, from the point of view of the new groups that were on the point of seizing power, human equality was no longer an ideal to be striven after, but a danger to be averted. And so the idea of earthly paradise -- which had haunted the human imagination for thousands of years -- came into discredit at exactly the moment when it became realizable. Every new political theory, by whatever name it called itself, led back to hierarchy and regimentation.

As compared with their opposite numbers in past ages, the new aristocracy was less avaricious, less tempted by luxury, hungrier for pure power, and, above all, more conscious of what they were doing and more intent on crushing opposition. This last difference was cardinal. By comparison with that existing today, all the tyrannies of the past were half-hearted and inefficient. The ruling groups were always infected to some extent by liberal ideas, and were content to leave loose ends everywhere, to regard only the overt act, and to be uninterested in what their subjects were thinking. Even the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages was tolerant by modern standards. Part of the reason for this was that in the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance. The invention of print, however, made it easier to manipulate public opinion, and the film and the radio carried the process further. With the development of television and the personal computer, and the technical advances which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end. Every citizen, or at least every citizen important enough to be worth watching, could be kept for twenty-four-hours a day under the eyes of the police and in the sound of official propaganda, with all other channels of information closed. The possibility of enforcing not only complete obedience to the will of the State, but complete uniformity of opinion on all subjects, now existed for the first time.

Nothing the citizen does is indifferent or neutral. His or her friendships, hobbies, behavior towards his or her spouse or lover, facial expressions, gestures, characteristic movements, tones of voice, words muttered while asleep -- all are jealously scrutinized. Not only any actual misdemeanor, but any eccentricity, however small, any change of habits, any nervous mannerism that could possibly be the symptom of an inner struggle, is certain to be detected. Endless purges, arrests, tortures, imprisonments, and disappearances are inflicted both as punishments for crimes which have been actually committed and as the systematic wiping-out of any persons who might perhaps commit a crime at some time in the future.

And so today the determining factor in perpetuating a totally obsolete hierarchical society is the mental attitude of the ruling class itself. The problem, that is to say, is educational. It is a problem of continuously molding the consciousness both of the directing group and of the larger executive group that lies immediately below it. Skepticism and hesitancy among the ranks of the rulers must be prevented. (As will be seen in Chapter 3, the best method of molding consciousness is continuous warfare.)

The consciousness of the masses (the "proles"), by contrast, needs only be influenced in a negative way. The masses could only become dangerous if the advance of industrial technique made it necessary to educate them more highly: but, since military and commercial rivalries are no longer of primary importance, the level of popular education is actually declining. What opinions the masses hold, or do not hold, is looked upon as a matter of indifference. They can be granted intellectual liberty because it is thought that they have no intellect. In a member of the ruling elite, on the other hand, not even the smallest deviation of opinion on the most unimportant subject can be tolerated.

All the beliefs, habits, tastes, emotions, mental attitudes that characterize our time are really designed to sustain the mystique of the rulers and prevent the true nature of present-day society from being perceived. A member of the elite is required to have not only the right opinions, but the right instincts. Many of the beliefs and attitudes demanded of him or her are never plainly stated, and could not be stated without laying bare the contradiction at the heart of modern-day hierarchical society. To maintain this regime, a continuous alteration of the past is necessary. Both the elites and the masses will tolerate present-day conditions because they have no standards of comparison. Everyone must be cut off from the past, as well as from other countries, because it is necessary for one and all to believe that everyone is better off than his or her ancestors and that the average level of material comfort is rising. But by far the most important reason for the constant readjustment of the past is to safeguard the validity of the system itself. It is not merely that speeches, statistics, and records of every kind can and must be constantly brought up to date in order to show that the fundamental principles of society are sound. No change in these basic principles -- work, commodity production, private property, the State -- can ever be admitted. For to change one's mind is a confession of weakness, and weakness cannot be tolerated in a "perfect" system.

If human equality is to be forever averted -- if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently -- then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity. And so, in our society, those who have the best knowledge of what is actually happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is. In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion: the more intelligent, the less sane. This is the inner meaning of the slogan IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

Chapter 2 : Freedom is Slavery

Given this background, one could infer, if one did not know it already, the general structure of modern capitalist society. At the apex of the pyramid comes Big Brother. Big Brother -- in whose person the functions of military commander-in-chief, political leader and religious figure are combined and integrated -- is infallible and all-powerful. Compared to him, the average person (the human individual) is absolutely powerless, even nonexistent. Every success, every achievement, every victory, every scientific discovery, all knowledge, all wisdom, all happiness, all virtue, are held to issue directly from Big Brother's leadership and inspiration. Despite the fact that Big Brother is always watching everyone, nobody has ever seen him. Strictly speaking, Big Brother does not exist and thus can be "replaced" at any time. The personality and image of Big Brother is a merely a composite of several unusually ambitious and charismatic people. He is a silent pair of eyes, an inscrutable face on billboards, televisions, and computer screens. We may reasonably be sure he will never die, and there is already considerable uncertainty among his many biographers as to when he was born. Big Brother is the spectacular guise in which the ruling class chooses to exhibit itself to the world. His function is to act as a literal focusing point for love, fear, and reverence -- emotions which are more easily felt toward an individual than toward an organization.

It is important to note that Big Brother is not Big Father: The parallel with the Christian myth of Jesus Christ (the Son of God) is striking and intentional. Big Brother is not God the Patriarchal Creator; he was created by God the Father, as were we all. Fraternal and earthy, Big Brother fought the revolution against the oppressive Father with us. If Big Brother rules with an iron fist and a boot upon the back of the neck, this is because he knows what is good for us, for all of us, because he is one of us. The immense global oligarchy at whose apex he stands is a collectivist one. Big Brother was democratically and unanimously elected, and is democratically and unanimously re-elected every time he runs for office. As long as there is a hierarchical society to be ruled, Big Brother will always be in office.

And yet capitalism -- let us not forget that Big Brother presides over an integrated, global capitalist system -- must be democratic, because it cannot be anything else. Capitalism could only grow hand-in-hand with democratic society. To deploy itself fully over the face of the whole planet, capitalism must even now permanently assure everyone of a choice, the outcome of which it has determined in advance. One must be able to choose between two indistinguishable politicians or two indistinguishable political ideologies because one chooses between two indistinguishable commodities. If there is no appearance of political democracy, there can be no sustainable capitalist system. This has been proven to be true by the permanent atrophy of the merchants in oriental despotism, by the ultimate defeat of Hitlerian and Mussolinian fascism, and by how poorly bureaucratic capitalism was managed by Stalinism.

Every commodity -- whether it is a brand of shampoo or a brand of political ideology -- fights for itself, cannot acknowledge the validity of the others, and attempts to impose itself everywhere as if it were the only one. What can be called the spectacle is the epic poem of this machinic struggle, an epic which cannot be concluded by the fall of any Troy. The spectacle does not sing the praises of men and their weapons, but of commodities and their passions. In this blind struggle, every commodity -- pursuing its totalitarian passion -- unconsciously realizes something higher, which is the becoming-world of the commodity, which is also the becoming-commodity of the world. Thus, by means of a ruse of commodity "logic," what's specific in the commodity (the use-value) wears itself out in the fight, while the commodity-form (exchange-value) moves toward its absolute realization.

What hides under the spectacular oppositions between commodities and political ideologies is a unity of misery -- the misery experienced by wage slaves, by people who have always worked and must continue to work for a living, no matter what product they buy or who wins the election. Behind the masks of total choice and total freedom, different forms of the same alienation and oppression confront each other -- all of them built on real contradictions which are repressed. The fraud of satisfaction exposes itself by being replaced, by following changes of products and changes in the general conditions of production. That which asserted its definitive excellence with perfect impudence nevertheless changes; it is the system alone which must continue. Stalin as well as the outmoded commodity are denounced precisely by those who imposed them. Every new lie of advertising is also an avowal of the previous lie. The fall of every figure or object with totalitarian power reveals the illusory community which had approved of it unanimously, and which had been nothing more than an agglomeration of fragments.

And so the satisfaction which no longer comes from the use of abundant commodities is now sought in the recognition of their value as commodities: the on-going use of totally unsatisfactory commodities becomes sufficient unto itself; the consumer is filled with religious fervor for the commodities' sovereign freedom. Waves of enthusiasm for a given product, supported and spread by all the media of communication, are thus propagated with lightning speed. Just when the mass of commodities slides toward puerility, the puerile itself becomes a special commodity; this is epitomized by the gadget.

We can recognize a mystical abandon to the transcendence of the commodity in free gifts, such as "I love Big Brother" watches which are not bought but are included by advertisers with prestigious purchases. The fanatic who collects these watches, which have been manufactured precisely for collectors, produces a glorious sign of his or her presence among the faithful. The reified person advertises the proof of his or her intimacy with the commodity as such, and not merely with certain commodities. This fetishism -- and Big Brother himself is nothing if not one big fetish-object -- reaches moments of fervent exaltation similar to the ecstasies of the convulsions and miracles of the old religious fetishism. The only use which remains here is the fundamental use of submission to a "higher," external power.

The unreal unity proclaimed by the society of the spectacle (the modern war-machine) masks the class divisions -- Low, Middle and High -- on which the real unity of the capitalist mode of production rests. What obliges workers to participate in the construction of the hierarchical world is also what separates them from it. What brings together people freed from the constraints of local and national boundaries is also what pulls them apart. What requires a more profound rationality is also what nourishes the irrationality of hierarchic exploitation and repression. What creates the abstract power of society creates its concrete unfreedom. This is the inner meaning of the slogan FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.

Chapter 3: War is Peace

War is no longer the desperate, annihilating struggle that it was in the early decades of the twentieth century. It is a warfare of limited aims between combatants who are unable to destroy one another, have no material cause for fighting, and are not divided any genuine ideological difference. This is not to say that either the conduct of war, or the prevailing attitude toward it, has become less bloodthirsty or more chivalrous. On the contrary, war hysteria is continuous and universal in all countries, and such acts as raping, looting, the slaughter of children, the reduction of whole populations to slavery, and reprisals against prisoners which extend even to boiling and burying alive, are looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed by one's own side and not by the enemy, meritorious. But in a physical sense war involves very small numbers of people, mostly highly trained specialists, and causes comparatively few casualties. The fighting, when there is any, takes place on the vague frontiers whose whereabouts the average person can only guess at, or around the military bases which guard strategic spots on the sea lanes. In the centers of civilization war means no more than a continuous shortage of consumer goods, and the occasional crash of a rocket bomb which may cause a few scores of deaths. War has in fact changed its character. More exactly, the reasons for which war is waged have changed in their order of importance. Motives which were already present to some small extent in the great wars of the early twentieth century have now become dominant and are consciously recognized and acted upon.

The primary aim of modern warfare is to use up the products of the spectacular machine without raising the general standard of living. Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the surplus of consumer goods has been latent in industrial society. At present, when few human beings even have enough to eat, this problem is obviously not urgent, and it might not have become so, even if no artificial processes of destruction had been at work. The world of today is a bare, hungry, dilapidated place compared with the world that existed before 1945, and still more so if compared with the imaginary future to which the people of that period looked forward. In the early twentieth century, the vision of a future society unbelievably rich, leisured, orderly and efficient -- a glittering antiseptic world of glass and steel and snow-white concrete -- was part of the consciousness of nearly every literate person. Science and technology were developing at a prodigious speed, and it seemed natural to assume that they would go on developing. This failed to happen, partly because of the impoverishment caused by a long series of wars and revolutions, partly because scientific and technical progress depended on the empirical habit of thought, which could not survive in a strictly regimented society. As a whole the world is more primitive today than it was fifty years ago. Certain backward areas have advanced, and various devices, always in some way connected with warfare and police espionage, have been developed, but experiment and invention have largely stopped.

From the moment when the machine first made its appearance it was clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had disappeared. If the machine were used deliberately for that end, hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy, and disease could be eliminated within a few generations. And in fact, without being used for any such purpose, but by a sort of automatic process -- by producing wealth which it was sometimes impossible not to distribute -- the machine did raise the living standards of the average human being greatly over a period of about 50 years at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction -- indeed, in some sense was the destruction -- of a hierarchical society. In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed an automobile or even an airplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared. If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction. It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged elite. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance. The problem was thus how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they need not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare.

War, it will be seen, not only accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way. In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labor of the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them. But this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society. What is concerned here is not the morale of the masses, whose attitude is unimportant as long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale of the elite itself. Even the humblest bureaucrat is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he or she should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he or she should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist -- and so we have been confronted with the war on poverty, the war on crime, the war against drugs, the war against international terrorism, etc. etc.

Modern war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture and a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of global society intact. The effect would be much the same if the world's ruling classes, instead of (pretending to be) fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed forever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This is the inner meaning of the slogan WAR IS PEACE.

Chapter 4: God is Power

The heavenly masters -- the gods -- were cast in the mold of the ruling class (the "High" of Chapter 1) and require similar sacrifices. Because the rulers were themselves the product of alienated thought, the heavenly masters -- even God himself -- could not hope to be anything other than alienated. What were honest, self-respecting people to think of these "gods," who are supposedly robed in omnipotence and yet are beholden to human beings and their stupid prayers as if the "gods" were not fundamentally different from the earthly masters, who are answerable to their human slaves? Are these Gods -- is God -- then merely the sum of absent life? No, not even that. God is merely the gaping void that swallows up the impotence that we call the "power" of the strong and the rich, and all the despair that we call the "hope" of the weak and poor. God is merely the totalitarian projection of the economics of exchange and survival. "He" is nothing more than the false illusion of life.

And yet many people blithely proclaim that God is dead, and therefore powerless. It is quite true that the death of God created the chaos out of which both the person of and the need for Big Brother came. But even the self-avowed atheists continue to genuflect. God is "dead" as a sovereign entity, as master of the world, but he lives on in the very power structures that originally gave birth to him by submitting humanity to economic alienation, to thought separated from life, and to human bodies weakened, mutilated or broken in the name of labor. There is no God whose power is not based on the negation of life and on the inversion of pleasures; there is no power that is not based on God and the oppressive and hierarchical "natural order of things" he both created and was created by.

And so it remains true that the first critique is the critique of religion; the first revolt is against the supreme tyrannies of theology and the phantom of God. Ever since the fantasy of a Divine Being took shape in humanity's imagination, God -- all gods, and among them above all the God of the Christians -- has always taken the side of the strong and the rich against the ignorant and impoverished masses. Through his presence, he has blessed the most revolting privileges, the basest oppressions, and the vilest of exploitations.

As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth, and our reason and ability to create our own lives will be annulled. As long as we believe that we must unconditionally obey -- and, vis-a-vis God, no other obedience is possible -- we must of necessity passively and totally submit, without the least reservation, to the holy authority of all his agents, messiahs, prophets, divinely-inspired lawmakers, emperors, kings, and all their functionaries and ministers, representatives and consecrated servants of the two greatest institutions which impose themselves upon us, and which are established by God himself to rule over men and women -- namely, the Church and the State. All temporal or human authority stems directly from spiritual and/or divine authority.

Authority is the negation of freedom, of human self-determination and self-management. God, or rather the fiction of God, is the consecration and the intellectual and moral source of all slavery on earth, and the freedom of humanity will never be complete until the disastrous and insidious fiction of a heavenly master is annihilated. To annihilate totally hierarchical power and thereby bring about human equality, it is necessary to annihilate God; to "kill" God, it is necessary to annihilate totally hierarchical earthly power. This is the inner secret of the slogan GOD IS POWER.

Chapter 5: The Proles

Very little is known about the proles. As far as Big Brother is concerned, it is not necessary to know much. So long as they continue to work and do not riot in the streets, their other activities are without importance. To keep them under control is not difficult. A few police spies always move among them, spreading false rumors, and marking down and eliminating the few individuals who are judged capable of becoming dangerous; but no attempt is made to indoctrinate them with political ideas. It is not desirable that the proles have strong political feelings of any kind. All that is required of them on occasion -- on the "occasion" of continuous warfare, that is -- is an alienated patriotism which can be appealed to whenever it is necessary to make them accept longer working hours or less pay.

And yet, if there is hope, it lies -- it must lie -- in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses -- eighty-five percent of the population -- can the force to destroy hierarchical society be generated. The society watched over by Big Brother can not be overthrown from within, or by partial revolutions: the revolution against it must come from without and must be total. Unlike those we have called the High and the Middle, the proles -- if only they can somehow become fully conscious of their own strength -- have no need to conspire, no need to become members of secret revolutionary brotherhoods. The proles need only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. For the proles are loyal to each other. They have stayed human; they have not become hardened or dead inside; they have held on to the basic instincts and emotions which the power elites and their bureaucratic priests have to re-learn by conscious effort.

The uprisings in Russia in 1905 and then again in 1917 -- the uprisings in Germany in 1918, in Kronstadt in 1921, in Spain in 1936 -- all these historical events show that the proles are quite capable of revolting against both the Middle and the High, of organizing on their own to fight for their own interests, and of attacking hierarchical society at its root. In all these uprisings, workers refused to work, but their refusal was made outside of the traditional, hierarchical structures of the trade union and the "alternative" political parties. The workers spontaneously organized themselves into autonomous and deliberately anti-hierarchical councils and committees, and began to plan and execute the re-organization of all of society in accordance with the principle of total human equality. It was precisely as a result of these uprisings -- and their ultimate likelihood of success -- that Big Brother fought and won the revolution in the first place. Given the fact that the material bases for a non-hierarchical society have now existed for decades, it is inevitable that Big Brother will continue to be challenged by the proles and their "spontaneous" uprisings for some time to come.

[Publisher's note added 1998: it would seem that history has indeed continued to prove that Dr. Goldstein's analysis is correct. Since the publication of this book in 1949, there have been proletarian uprisings in East Germany in 1953; in Hungary and Poland in 1956; in Belgium in 1961; in the United States in 1965; in France, Czechoslovakia and Mexico in 1968; in Italy in 1969; in Poland in 1970; in Portugal in 1974; in Italy again in 1977; in Romania in 1989; in Russia in 1991; in Mexico again in 1994; in France again in 1995, in Albania in 1997, etc. etc. And yet Big Brother is still watching us.]

Banks against the wall

What is the crime of the bank robber compared with the crime of those that own the bank?

Humanity short-sold. Coloured by numbers. For a large bonus. Northern Rock nationalised. Bradford & Bingley nationalised. Fannie and Freddy, may and might. All cost more than ever before, yet they are all worth less than worthless. Private interests bailed out by "financial socialism". Socialism for the rich, socialism for the few. Which isn't really socialism at all. Socialism for the rich few is better called fascism. All empires end. But no empire dies unless it is first killed.

The Middle Class Proletariat

The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx. The globalization of labour markets and reducing levels of national welfare provision and employment could reduce peoples’ attachment to particular states. The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat to social order and stability, as the burden of acquired debt and the failure of pension provision begins to bite. Faced by these twin challenges, the world’s middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.

Source: The DCDC Global Strategic Trends Progamme 2007-2036 [PDF, 7MB]
Published by the Ministry of Defence

How to suck nest eggs: A good indicator of the reality of the "socialist" or "communist" operation of the thing called capitalism is to ascertain precisely what is being "socialised" in a "communist" way. If profits, rewards and benefits are socialised, it may well be communism or socialism. If, however, costs, debts and downsides are socialised, it's fascism.

Things can only get better

The greatest acts of financial terrorism for almost 80 years play out as banks are bailed out to the tune of billions of invented numbers while bailiffs repossess more real houses and material wealth than ever before. Banking power is concentrated and consolidated further and the working and middle class pick up the tab for the privilege.

Meanwhile, the people begin to remember that almost a million properties sit empty on prison ship Britain as Chancellor Alistair Darling makes a surprise announcement from the steps of 11 Down-down-down-downing Street....

"Darling, Boom/bust is officially over"