No, Britain is not totalitarian
Posted on Thursday 17 June, 2010
Filed Under Theory
TOTALITARIANISM is the ultimate pejorative designation that anyone can direct towards a state. To describe a country with this word means more than to brand it a deficient democracy, or a petty semi-authoritarianism, or even a boring bog standard electrodes-on-the-genitals dictatorship.
The term is redolent of one party rule and the attempt to control every aspect of every citizens’ public and private lives in the name of an ideology. It smacks of propaganda ministries, torture chambers, the cult of personality and the gulag archipelago. The implication is that the rulers are right up there with Stalin and Hitler in the serious badass rulers’ league.
Off the top of my head, I can only think of a handful of regimes in the current world that are awful enough to come close to the benchmark. Saudi Arabia, certainly. North Korea. Although Iran and Zimbabwe admittedly endure damn nasty governments, I somehow doubt even they quite make the cut.
So I was frankly surprised to read the opening paragraphs in a column from Alex Callinicos, Professor of European Studies at King’s College London, in this week’s Socialist Worker:
We live, we are constantly told, in a liberal pluralist society.
Sorry, Alex, but what is meant by ‘we are constantly told’ in this context? Do you have any serious doubt that Britain remains a liberal pluralist society? How would you substantiate that throwaway contention? And exactly who is doing the constant telling on this one?
Unlike the totalitarian states of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, information and ideas aren’t monolithically controlled from above in these societies.
Well, sometimes it feels thoroughly totalitarian here. In the run-up to the emergency budget, you can’t switch on a news programme without being subjected to a lecture about the necessity of swingeing cuts in public services.
OK, the broadcast media have largely lined up behind the cuts consensus. But is that enough to make the UK feel not just totalitarian but ‘thoroughly totalitarian’, a category that assumes degrees of stringency in this matter? Is this vibe better or worse than, say, wussy Nicolae Ceauşescu’s Romania?
Yes, we live in a country with more CCTV cameras than anywhere else in the world, and a four million strong DNA database that contains details of thousands of UK residents who have committed no crime. It is accordingly arguable that not a single state in history that has possessed technology with such obviously repressive potential.
But potentiality is where it has stayed. Even though New Labour was determined to force through such tried-and-tested traditional dictatorship faves as ID cards and de facto internment in the form of 42-day detention without charge. it notably failed in these efforts.
Last time I checked, there were no banned political parties in Britain, leaving the SWP and organisations like it free to advocate the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. That sounds pretty pluralist to me.
It is not even true that there is no argument over economic policy. You can read other viewpoints in newspapers with large circulations, such as the Guardian and the Independent. You can even read them in newspapers with small circulations, such as Socialist Worker. The debate may be stacked, but it is hardly repressed.
Nonsense of this sort is more usually associated with the hard right wingnut squad at the Daily Telegraph. I particularly loved a piece by Ed West that appeared under the headline’ Is Britain the world’s first politically correct totalitarian state?’ No, West generously concludes. But it is only a matter of time.
The concept of ‘PC totalitarianism’ is frankly risible. There is, after all, a vast conceptual leap from official disapproval of jokes about homosexuals and badmouthing religious believers to the establishment of torture chambers in Islington that strive towards becoming equal opportunities death camps.
Is West seriously maintaining that there are mandatory quotas of gays and ethnic minorities inside the repressive apparatus of the state? Or that Harriet Harman’s secret policepersons are banned from discrimination in the selection of execution victims on the basis of race, sexuality, age or gender?
Sorry, Alex and Ed, but the very fact that you have been able to write what you have written without fear of a knock on the door at midnight is prima facie evidence against your underlying thesis.
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30 Responses to “No, Britain is not totalitarian”
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Great stuff Dave, one of you best.
I think you’re making too much of a word. Actually his article is quite measured. It points out that the cuts programme is not driven by economics but rather by neo-liberal ideology.
That’s quite right. Although it doesn’t sit too well with the SWPs, including Callinicos, predilections for catastrophist analogies with the 1930s.
What an utterly bogus piece of tripe. Should you care to read Callinicos with a little more care you would have noted that he wrote that Britain can “feel like a totalitarian state sometimes” not that it is one.
It did feel like it sometimes during Thatchers reign. But she was elected. I am sure that gave the old moo sone comfort! Some of the looney lefties, their Islamic allies and the BNP would certainly like a totalitarian state. I doubt it will happen but anything goes if there is economic collapse. But I suspect in such a case the extreme right would take power.
neprimerimye: Should you care to read Callinicos with a little more care you would have noted that he wrote that Britain can “feel like a totalitarian state sometimes” not that it is one.
Er, yeah. And should you care to read Dave with a little more care you might notice that what he’s saying is that Callinicos is inaccurate even in that sense. Why should reading the capitalist media’s analysis of the budget make you “feel” like you’re in a totalitarian state, unless you were actually being threatened with repression for openly disagreeing with it?
The irony here is that capitalist democracy in Britain (including its media) is probably more plural and democratic than the structures and ethos of the SWP. Do we see frank and open disgreements with the leadership articulated regularly in the pages of Socialist Worker, Socialist Review or International Socialism? Are members encouraged to openly engage in robust and critical debates on substantive issues such as the cuts, fascism and Israel/Palestine, and invited to challenge the party orthodoxy in the spirit of self-criticism and political clarity? No. They’re encouraged to put up or shut up.
Well, there are definitely some banned political parties, mostly ones with armed groups ‘linked’ to them, whatever that means.
D.B.- his point is that made by Dave,”the broadcast media have largely lined up behind the cuts consensus”. If there is no access to the mainstream political debate to ideas that challenge this consensus, then the terms of the debate are controlled as effectively as if there was monolithic control (in some ways more effectively, as the illusion of pluralism and democracy tends to lead to apathy among those who don’t share the consensus rather than finding alternative fora of discussion).And it’s not much of a shock that a political party should contain more agreement than society in general.
Yes, we live in a country with more CCTV cameras than anywhere else in the world, and a four million strong DNA database that contains details of thousands of UK residents who have committed no crime…But potentiality is where it has stayed.
The CCTV may not be used in an openly political manner, but that doesn’t mean it fails to serve a repressive function, just like the ban on photographing police officers.
What Dave perhaps misses here is that many of the formal freedoms accorded to ordinary people are far less meaningful when unaccompanied by any power over the operation of the state and economy.
And we have the national lottery now,when I first read 1984 I was glad we didn’t have the freedom here to be conned into believing “It could be you”.
Cf. Hobbesian liberalism.
DB is being very silly in telling us that a subjective feeling, namely the feeling of Alex Callinicos that living in Britain feels like living in a totalitarian state, can be refuted by argument. It cannot it is a feeling!
Bye the bye numerous debates, both between SWP members and with non-members, can be found in the pages of the International Socialism journal. Discussion betweenSWP members at all levels, including at branch level which is vital, also seems healthy from recent experience.
Heres the barn door for the left, the bogus argument about cuts and heres Dave Osler hoofing the ball off in the opposite direction at some random sectarian target which appears to be rant based on a misrepresentation in any case.
Bye the bye it took the British state 35 years and £200m to tell the truth about an event that was common knowledge to thousands and happened on ‘British’ soil in full view of the media. Lets not crawl up the arse of our pluralist democracy just yet.
“If there is no access to the mainstream political debate to ideas that challenge this consensus, then the terms of the debate are controlled as effectively as if there was monolithic control.”
But it is not self-evident that the reason that socialist ideas don’t make it into the political mainstream is because they are somehow excluded. It might well plausibly be argued that they are deemed pretty-much irrelevant due to their dubious historical associations or because of the general reluctance to clearly spell out how the whole socialist project is actually going to work.
Calling conspiracy whilst failing to make a practical and convincing left-wing critique of the current economic consensus just leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths.
Losing all the silly Bolshevik baggage, embracing political pluralism and not being so cagey about discussing what socialism would actually look like would be good starting points for the left.
fflp. If the people knew the truth which they did then the £200 million must have been wasted on lawyers. And it was because we all knew the truth! NEXT.
No doubt we live in a bourgeois liberal democracy, but one with some serious caveats. CCTV camera’s that would put the most despotic dictator to shame, a secret service that invests as much time in surveillance against its citizens as anyone else, save the USA, a media that is overwhelmingly biased towards the ruling class and getting worse as the years go by, counter terrorism legislation that is used against protestors, the rich in an untouchable position as David Duff admitted, they cannot be attacked economically as they can hold the country to ransom and take their ill gotten gains elsewhere, so democracy is superficial at best.
And this doesn’t even touch on the suspension of all rights and liberties for those who produce cheaply all the goods we consume, and all the people we lock up in the name of the ‘war on terror’.
Yes I think we need to keep a certain perspective and understand the freedoms we have, but we have to understand that those freedoms are built on sand and complacency is dangerous, especially considering the warnings signs.
Callinicos is not using totalitarian as a description but as a simile. It’s a stupid simile, not least because there are people who will use anything anyone from the SWP says to rubbish everything the SWP says, does and stands for. But it was ludicrous hyperbole and he shouldn’t do that.
He is arguing that the cuts programme is ideological, not economic. I don’t know if that’s the case. He seems to be saying that it would make more economic sense from a capitalist point of view not to cut government expenditure and that therefore the cuts are ideological. He then moves from that to saying that therefore the cuts are an exercise in class power. I think that bit is undeniable but it doesn’t negate the fact that they are unnecessary from a capitalist perspective. It’s possible that I am missing something but the “totalitarian” thing is an irrelevance to the rest of the article and doesn’t even tally with the rest of the article but it is the rest of the article that deserves to be discussed, not the ludicrous intro.
Ironically, second on the list of “Dave’s faves” is Harry’s Place which describes itself as “anti-totalitarian left” while policing the expressed thoughts of all sorts of liberals and leftists and at least one of whose bloggers actively tries to lose SWP members and supporters their jobs.
I should say, I’ll never stop being pissed off with the SWP over their association with and their sheer (persisting) dishonesty over Gilad Atzmon but it’s better to criticise them on substance rather than on the odd throwaway line.
When you “Wake up every morning to money” (BBC R5), hear the Today Programme (BBC R4) line up trust fund managers, financiers and their paid clones to provide impartial “business comment”, when no-one is assumed (or allowed) to challenge the consensus of “the markets” (the BBC with the rare exception of Paul Mason) …WELL, “Well, sometimes it FEELS (NB) thoroughly totalitarian here”
HONEST.
Dave – you are, and not for the first time, as Nye Bevan (Labour – Brown Boots) used to announce, “launching a canard to be shot”. Sometimes/often your blog feels like a blunt dart in search of a large dartboard.
Does anybody care what Callinicos and the SWP think anymore?
Pearney is right: it is a waste of time debating about Callincos’ simile.
If we care at all about the SWP it’s because some of them in a wider than party-hack capacity produce interesting stuff.
Surely we could at least expect some analysis of the Bonfire of Illusions. I have just opened it and it has some catastrophic tendencies. But I am not an economist or a journalist for a respected maritine daily paper that concentrates on economics (which they get in Ipswich Library btw, as we are a port). It’s a very substantial book in any case.
Meanwhile progressive humanity’s thoughts are elsewhere:
http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2010/06/18/18-juin-appel-de-18-juin/
@Alex Ross – you’re right that it’s not self-evident. But I think an argument can more plausibly be made that they are largely excluded because of the consensus that the job of the government is to manage capitalism efficiently, not because of dubious historical associations or because the socialist project is insufficiently articulated.
So I don’t see that capitalism is under-critiqued. And is calling conspiracy like declaring shenanigans?
@levi – aside from the totalitarian thang, he does seem to be arguing the same point that Dave was a little while ago, that the cuts are irrational from an economic standpoint. On last night’s HardTalk, Jim Rogers was putting forward a case that the markets are going to be coming after countries with a significant amount of sovereign debt.
I hate it when Capitalism behaves irrationally.
oh come on dave. he just said “it feels” totalitarian. which means “i’m a frustrated totalitarian and i wish i had my hands on the levers of state”. sheesh
Marcus – I think he meant that there are precious few public outlets for disagreement with the establishment consensus and where there are outlets a lot of people decide to focus on one insignificant word rather than an argument.
skidmarx – are you saying that Callinicos and Dave are broadly in agreement as to the economic situation and that both are arguing that it is economically unnecessary (rather than socially, politically and ideologically repugnant) to impose austerity when all could be better off, but the ruling class might render itself ideologically vulnerable, if pump-priming or at least no austerity was pursued. Sorry I need things so spelled out but I really find a lot of leftist arguments impenetrable and I don’t think I’m alone. If you think this discussion is best left to another post or another blog then please point the way.
Thanks
ps Re Rogers, I’m not sure if I understood him either. He seemed to be saying that Greece should be allowed to go bankrupt and suffer short sharp intense pain because if it is bailed out, others will tread the same path and everyone will suffer long drawn out but not as intense pain.
Honestly, it makes me a bit dizzy simply trying to say what it is I think I don’t understand. But don’t give up on me, I am keen to learn.
Cheers
Good article by Callincos, my only criticsm is that he is saying the bleedin obvious. The sad thing is that the bleedin obvious needs to said to cut through all the ruling class propaganda.
Fucking incredible piece of blogging from a so called socialist if you ask me.
Just for clarity, Osler’s article is a fucking incredible (in a bad way) piece of blogging from a so called socialist if you ask me.
levi9909 – yes they do seem to be broadly in agreement. I’m not sure if ideological vulnerability is the right term, it seems more that they share a view that fiscal tightening now is unnecessary, and in Callinicos case the closing reference to the exercise class power suggests that he thinks it is being done to re-assert the power of capital over labour.I don’t know if the argument over the actual level of debt is so important if we view things from the point of view of the speculators, I remember a few years ago when Argentina was defaulting, Brazil found itself in trouble even though it was not in such bad shape, once the markets sense weakness it can be all downhill. And Keynesianism means the working class has to pay for the crisis at a later date.
I missed the start of Hardtalk, and don’t have the time to review it now, I do recall that he suggested that the government in the UK would shrink from the sort of cuts he finds necessary.
I think Marcus is just enjoying himself. Good for him.
“And Keynesianism means the working class has to pay for the crisis at a later date.”
Typical economism of the left. Workers taking ownership of the means of production will ensure they have control of what is cut and what is not. In the meantime a good dose of Keynesianism would be most welcome!
JOHNNO. Is that the workers taking control of the means of production or the leaders of the workers that traditionally will rob the workers of what is produced!
Poor Alex. The ConDem alliance has usurped Labour’s role as hatchet man for the corporate sector. If Brown or his successors were implementing an identical set of fiscal policies we wouldn’t hear a squeak about totalitarianism.
skidmarx – thanks for that. I don’t think that people like Marcus and Dave for that matter, are simply enjoying themselves. I think they are wasting blog space by acting as determined anti-left appendages to the mainstream media.
JOHNNO – agreed.
Winston Smith – actually whatever we heard in terms of “squeak[s] about totalitarianism” the country would more resemble totalitarianism right now if New Labour was in power with many big unions supporting its austerity programme. You’re right if you are suggesting that if New Labour was in power there would be less fight back in terms of number of fighters back but I am sure there would be more allegations of totalitarianism than there are right now and they would be more accurate.
Dave is sane. So is Prof Callinicos. The differtence is that the Prof is a member of the SWP, so is programmed to be liar.
that’s rich coming from you. not rich as in bourgeois, rich as in sickly.