A Strange Point in Strange Fruit

In his 2008 book Strange Fruit: Why Both Sides Are Wrong In The Race Debate Kenan Malik makes what I consider to be a strange point. Taking a lead from historian Jonathan Israel, Malik distinguishes two strands of the Enlightenment: a mainstream strand and a radical one. Why should he do this?

Prior to reading Strange Fruit the only distinction I had made within the rich thought of that period in human history was between anyone who even loosely associated themselves with the project of human progress (with its attendant themes of education, science, deism and atheism, liberty, equality, etc), and those conservatives (De Maistre, Burke et al) who were firmly against it. Of course there were certainly differences between the Enlightenment thinkers (for the period was extended in time and place) but to introduce a more formal division between these thinkers as a key to understanding them is, I think, a bad move.

I can see the appeal of the division. A great many Enlightenment thinkers - especially those in France for obvious reasons - developed the ideas that had begun with the religious scepticism of Descartes in the early 17th century and took these to their logical political conclusions: atheism, absolute equality, and eventually revolution. In more recent times the extremist nature of this philosophy has been dismissed as 'reason gone mad', and so it is a worthwhile task to reclaim such ideas as being entirely appropriate to the conditions of the time, and perhaps to outline the conditions of their becoming appropriate again.

So there is a case for favouring the radicals as Malik does here:

The mainstream Enlightenment of Kant, Locke, Voltaire and Hume is the one that we know and that provides its public face. But the heart and soul of the Enlightenment came from the radicals, lesser-known figures such as d'Holbach, Diderot and Condorcet.
(Strange Fruit, Oneworld Publications, 2008, page 88)

Now, I've nothing against celebrating these "lesser-known" thinkers, but the danger is this: in aligning ourselves with them, and against the thinkers of the so-called mainstream Enlightenment, we potentially cut ourselves off from an even more radical philosophy: dialectical materialism. Much as I admire and agree with the remark attributed to Diderot that "Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest", Rousseau's "Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains" (from The Social Contract) is altogether more shattering, locating the contradictions highlighted by the philosophes not in religion or the monarchy but in the very structure of society. Malik doesn't say whether he considers Rousseau as belonging to the radicals or the mainstream, or whether he had a foot in both camps, but at the time Rousseau clearly distanced himself from the salons attended by the radicals. He was hardly a man of action; more the solitary walker.

Ditto Kant, whom Malik does label as "mainstream". Admittedly, Kant never left Konigsberg his entire life, and didn't write his famous Critique of Pure Reason until he was nearly 60 years old, but he was an admirer of Rousseau and the philosophy that was born of his transcendental idealism revolutionised the relationship between the subject and the object – after his Critique of Judgement no longer were these to be seen as separate spheres with problematic links but as two intimately related aspects of man's existence.

To dismiss Kant as mainstream – notwithstanding the adoption of much of his philosophy by conservative thinkers in later years – is to deprive oneself of a key to understanding the development of dialectical philosophy and Marxism. There is much more to revolution than the evisceration of priests and the throttling of monarchs.

It is strange that Malik makes this distinction because the argument in Strange Fruit doesn't rely on it. Had he claimed that the Enlightenment in general was characterised by a commitment to equality and a refusal to see indigenous peoples as 'alien', I'm quite sure that no one would have challenged that point. But by separating out the radicals he is at one point forced to make the rather silly claim that David Hume was a conservative and that he was “forced to acknowledge” the importance of political equality and human unity (page 91), as if the Hume's philosophy would naturally have been that of Burke were it not for the threats of Diderot.

Strange Fruit is an important book for understanding the scientific and political history of the race debate, and for arriving at a view on how racism and anti-racism should be treated today. But that section on the two Enlightenments sticks out like a sore thumb. What we need instead is an argument that links both these strands, bringing together both its radical and dialectical characteristics.

Good for Goodwin

Some pretty harsh words have been exchanged between Sir Fred Goodwin (ex chief of Royal Bank of Scotland) and the rest of the world (led by HRH Gordon Brown and his non-suave crony Lord Myners) over the decision by Sir Fred to not fall on his sword and surrender his "obscene" £650,000-a-year pension (according to Shadow Chancellor George Osborne, although personally I think it would be "lovely") . It was, I suppose, inevitable that both sides would sink to the level of calling each other's behaviour "inappropriate", "unjustifiable" and "unacceptable", but that's the executive class for you: they don't pull punches.

No need to ask whose side you are on, because these days no one likes a banker, eh? But before we all dance on the grave of HBOS and side with Lord Myners in expressing distaste, let us ask what it is Fred Goodwin is being accused of. Not overseeing the disastrous-in-hindsight takeover of ABN Amro (all sides agree on that), and not for being a massively-paid executive (as Myners can claim to have been), but simply for not "listening to the public's pleas" (according to Gordon Brown on the BBC's new website, as if great swathes of ordinary people have been falling on their knees before Sir Fred, asking him to reconsider) and for having "no sense of shame" (according to Liberal Democrat Vince Cable on same page).

So, in Gordon Brown's eyes the problems of the UK economy are reduced to the problems of bank lending, and the problems of the banks are reduced to the remuneration of their directors, and the problem of remuneration is reduced to the low moral sense of those in receipt. I suppose if Sir Fred wept as he collected his pension (not from the Post Office) every month, then we would all feel a little better, and the economy would start to get 'back on track', delivery prudent year-on-year growth!

And, by the way, what good is this sense of shame? What good does it do us to feel guilty about taking home the money we feel we have earned? Once we sacrifice this, then we surely sacrifice that last ounce of self-respect that we need to defend the relative few pleasures we can afford for ourselves and our families. In October 2008, JCB workers in Rocester, Staffordshire sacrificed their salaries for the sake of saving 500 jobs, showing great "team spirit" by "looking after the needs of one another rather than the needs of the individual". In January 2009, JCB announced 700 job losses all the same. Perhaps senior management at the plant felt emboldened by the workforce's "team spirit"?

Coming back to the 'banking crisis', as a news item the whole thing is absurd - the UK Prime Minister publicly involed in a hoo-hah with someone who until quite recently was his man on the inside of the banking industry, hiding behind Lord Myners at the same time, while all around the productive economy - the thing that actually provides jobs, standards of living, a good excuse to get out of the house, etc - is failing. In such times, cowardly words such as "inappropriate" and "unacceptable" from the mouths of politicians smack of utter weakness in the face of larger forces that they have failed to understand.

So my 'plea' to Sir Fred is this: you may be a complete banker, deserving no more than 3% of your annual pension (and only then to be drawn at 65), but do not surrender it in the face of accusations of you having no sense of shame. Let your tight-fisted selfishness be a lesson to us all!

The Fourth Plinth

"It is important to say that simply standing for an hour is a worthy thing to do..."
(Antony Gormley, Today, Radio 4, 26 February 2009)

The problem here is that Antony Gormley does not merely want to say it; from July he wants 2400 people to spend 100 days trying to demonstrate it to the public on Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth. Sounds like a rubbish world record attempt but it is actually art, and Antony Gormley - like all rubbish world record holders - considers himself an artist. But can the worthiness of simply standing for an hour be successfully demonstrated?

Perhaps outside a well-known High Street fashion outlet on Boxing Day morning, just before the "SALE" begins, standing (in a queue) could be shown to be if not worthy then at least worthwhile. Quid pro quo. But what will the 2400 volunteers be offered for giving up their time? Nothing but an opportunity to put themselves on display before the London 'masses' that clearly spend all their time admiring the Fourth Plinth. What a senseless waste (especially for the poor individual who has to stand there between 4am and 5am on the 92nd day).

But wait! There is more to be got from this so-crazy-it-just-won't-work enterprise:

"Maybe we'll discover what we really care about, what our hopes and fears are for now and for the future"
(Antony Gormley, BBC World Service, 25 February 2009)

Hmmm. More likely we'll discover what we really just don't care about...another 'clever' art installation. (Even the title - One & Other - is 'clever', ie. a consumptive pun.) And how will we discover anything other than a few dance moves from the few exhibitionists who volunteer (myself included) and the unimaginative contents of Mr Gormley's surely burnt-out mind? The 2400 volunteers are hardly going to be allowed to thrash out a few ideas of their own. For one thing, they won't be together, in the same place at the same time. For another, they will be selected so as to be a 'representative' sample of all walks of life. Got an idea of what we should really care about? About hopes and fears for the future? Great! Oh, you're an unemployed construction worker? Sorry, friend. Got enough of those already. Next please!

If you really want society to discover something about itself, then the artificial constraints of the Fourth Plinth are simply not going to help. Assuming that plenty of people do have something interesting to say (and if they don't, why bother?), then the build up to the 'unveiling' will necessarily consist of an X Factor-style panel consisting of Boris Johnson, Trevor Phillips and Gormley himself turning people away on the basis of their 'walk of life'. At no point will those ideas be exposed to peer judgement. And at no point will a public debate about hopes and fears ensue.

I say it's time to turn off the waste of money that is the Fourth Plinth. Let's just stick a 50-foot statue of Nelson bloody Mandela there and be done with it once and for all.

God's Truth?

One of the better points made by Dawkins in The God Delusion is about how religious thought acts counter to the inquisitive spirit. Those who are determined to find God like to find Him in the 'Gaps' between scientific explanations. So if we do not fully understand the transition from ape to man, say, we posit God as providing the helping hand. Arthur C Clarke posited the black monolith, but the effect is pretty much the same: we stop asking questions about the important things concerning man's development and instead start asking questions about abstract and absent things such as God or super-intelligent extra-terrestrials. Never mind that scientists are looking into something and developing workable and even elegant secular explanations, God - we are told - got there before them and has already provided the answers. In His world, truth (or rather Truth) is given only to those who do not question.

Of course, real truth is never actually given; it is extracted out of the nature of things by those who ask and attempt to answer the right questions. Scientists know how to ask the right questions within the narrow confines of the laboratory, but who is asking these questions in the world at large? Who is asking, for instance, whether the current economic crisis is really the fault of a handful of bankers, or whether it symptomatic of a problem of manufacturing productivity? More to the point, how could such questions be tested and answered outside the controlled environment of the lab?

Here we must venture into the world of politics, but not your everyday, madam-speaker-type politics. Not the politics of the professional politicians, but a politics born of an idea that has the potential to change someone's mind (OK, for the moment we'll leave aside the notion of theory becoming a material force when it grips the masses). So outside the laboratory change is not measured by comparing the outcome of an experiment against a control; change is measured in terms of numbers of people who now see things otherwise.

The truth is a standard of man, not God. But it is not ours in any ornamental sense. It is what we must continually extract and consume through our engagement with the world and our fellow man. It begins in the simple act of conversation, especially a conversation in which one party suddenly interrupts the other and says "Actually, you're wrong..."

The Dawkins Delusion

"Isn't it always a form of child abuse to label children as possessors of beliefs that they are too young to have thought about?"
(Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, page 354, Black Swan edition, 2007)

"Our society...has accepted the preposterous idea that it is normal and right to indoctrinate tiny children in the religion of their parents, and to slap religious labels on them. ... Please, please raise your consciousness about this."
(The God Delusion, page 381-2)


Granted, religion is odd, and that the Creator, if He existed, would have better things to do than worry about me "not doing as I was told" and "fighting with my brother" (sins I officially confessed to many times as a child), but what is odder is Richard Dawkins's belief that he will win people over to his way of thinking by accusing them of abusing their children at the same time as being mindless automata, unable to throw off the chains of thought bequeathed to them by their parents. This is the Dawkins Delusion and let us pray it does not persist as long as the God one.

It does raise the question, however, of why religion (or rather the belief that there is more to life than THIS) persists? If all Dawkins can offer in its place is his marvelling at how we would find we are related to the merest insect if only we would take part in some feature-length episode of Who Do You Think You Are? then of course people are going to turn away from his teachings. With all due respect to Great Uncle Pond Skater, there is of course more to human existence than its evolutionary history and, it must be admitted, the utterly marvellous way we have come to be. There is also art and literature, language and science, socialism and barbarism, none of which can be explained by natural selection.

Moreover, there are also those twin, nagging feelings in the backs of my and (I hope) your minds that (i) other people are essentially the same as me, yet (ii) there is something that makes them alien to me. But that mystery is not God (and we are not 'fallen'); it is Man. Or, to bring things down to earth, it is the way that ordinary men and women have made their society. Let us commence, therefore, the proper study of mankind.