This IS the compromise
Thinking of protest, unions and nonviolent action as extreme is dumb. Those in power should support these alternatives. [haha not the illustration on the webpage. That is not much of a compromise lol]
I always find it amusing when billionaires and captains of industry oppose unions and proposed minimum wage increases (I’m looking at you, Elon). Partly it’s amusing to watch an army of folks who will never be rich defend the billionaires as if they gave a damn about them. ‘Simping’, I believe the kids are calling it these days. But mostly I’m amused at the rhetoric.
‘Can’t we find a compromise between this hard left extremist position (that huge numbers of people working for a living might be able to afford to, you know, live) and the alternative (that people who couldn’t spend all their wealth in a lifetime might continue to hoard)? Why can’t reformers see the value of compromise?!’
Cue sad faces and appearances on SNL/marrying pop stars to humanise the rapacious and greedy. And hey, I’m for humanising them. I don’t want to see guillotines return. Hence the middle way of reining capitalism in dramatically in all areas of life. Before it’s too late.
What billionaires and their hopeless fanboys fail to recognise is that moderate changes to legislation are the compromise. Workers organising so that they have some degree of leverage (rather than having to ‘bargain’ as individuals with megacorps) is compromise. In the old days, as several memes have pointed out, oppressed workers didn’t organise and come to the bargaining table. They beat the hell out of the oppressor and burned down his house.
I don’t know if Warren Buffet and Bill Gates recognised this at some level when they made their statement a few years ago that the rich should pay more taxes, but I suspect they did. Despite what Facebook will tell you in their new ‘snitch on extremists’ campaign, history is littered with examples of radical change through violence. One only needs to think of the French and Russian revolutions to realise that when the vast majority are suffering because of economic hardship and they can see the rich enjoying luxuries, people have a tendency to want to kill the rich. That, as capitalists are fond of saying about greed, ‘is just human nature’.
Hence unions. The drive for better pay and conditions. Higher wages. Higher taxes on the rich and wealth being redistributed to the poor and spent on things that make the whole of society better.
As a 98% pacifist, I hate the injustice of capitalism, but I don’t actually want to see the rich dragged into the streets and killed. But I fear that this is inevitable if, for instance, people in the richest country in the world don’t stop dying of treatable illnesses because of lack of funds. I fear that, in a world of yachts and luxury cars and mega-mansions, those who work several jobs and can’t manage to afford rent, childcare and some things that make life more enjoyable will seek a truly radical solution.
This little clip is being shared as a GIF a lot in some circles. That worries me, even if I chuckle sometimes.
It represents a rhetorical outpouring of frustration and the vast majority of those sharing it mean nothing more than anger by it. And comic-hypothetical/historical violent imagery is entirely legitimate when people are literally dying because they are poor or dispossessed. But there are those who mean it. And their number will grow if they are given cause.
I think if we want to save the lives of billionaires, we need to act soon, before the public anger and sense of disillusionment with civil structures (that are the compromise between status quo and revolution) becomes too great to be expressed through voting or online rants or protests.
Protests themselves are another compromise.
Politely standing or marching in the street and demanding justice is significantly different from revolution and armed struggle. Growing up in Apartheid South Africa I saw that when people feel like politicians refuse to listen and are uninterested in improving the lot of the majority, some activists will give up on politics, at least for a while, and start planting bombs.
I can’t condone it, but neither can I pretend not to understand.
Which is why I find the UK Government’s proposed Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (which is getting a third reading in the Commons today) so frightening.
I’ve been on a fair number of demonstrations and even I have very little hope that they will achieve much. We march and speak out because it is the right thing to do. But when the vast majority of the population believes that their vote doesn’t matter, that petitions are largely ignored and that demonstrations don’t change the mind of Government, we should all be worried. Because that sense of disillusionment with the legal structures doesn’t do away with the anger and frustration underlying activism. It doesn’t take away the rage of ordinary non-activists. It just tells them that stronger methods will have to be employed.
Just like billionaires who should frankly encourage unions and fair labour laws for their own ultimate safety, so politicians should encourage mass protest that can give as much catharsis and as much of a sense of power to the people as possible. They should rejoice at mass gatherings disrupting traffic and the heads being cut off the heads of statues, because the alternative is not hard to imagine. And when enough people are angry enough, it will be very hard to stop.
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill proposes a lot of things, including:
making life much harder for Roma, Traveller and Gypsy communities (many campaigners say it would criminalise them)
increasing police stop and search powers a year after BLM showed how these powers are already used oppressively
give police the power to limit protest drastically, essentially cooling the ability of ordinary people to express their political opinions
The last point is what I’m mostly talking about, though the other two are appalling as well.
The Bill essentially wants to treat protest not as a right we all have in a free society, but as a gift to be granted to us at the whim of some of the most entrenchedly conservative and status-quo defending people in our society.
It really shouldn’t happen.
So what can we do? Well, we can sign a petition. We can write to our MPs asking them not to let it pass. How much good that will do, I don’t know.
So I’m afraid and angry at the prospect of what it will do to our society in the medium term, quelling the movement of God towards a just world in the medium term. And inevitable backlash in the long term.
But I am also worried by recent steps by Facebook to curb ‘extremism’. Their actions have been intended, mostly, to curb the Nazi filth whose ideology is being adopted by more and more (stupid/hateful) people who feel disempowered by global capital. But recent and ongoing instances of communists and pro-Palestinian accounts being Zucced have led to a righteous outpouring of derision on the idea that Facebook is equipped to make ethical or philosophical decisions for literally anyone.
The word ‘extremist’ is both vague and worrying (and always was when it was applied to Muslims, though Christians just ignored this). Who decides what is extreme? And if society as it is tends to injustice all across the centre, then any real alternative will seem extreme. The key is to interrogate the content of beliefs, not their intensity. Being lukewarm is no guarantee of being right.
I hope politicians can see that it is in their interests as well as the interests of goodness and justice, to drastically limit this bill. If they don’t, extremism (both real and imagined, both positive and negative) will grow as a direct result.
True compromise would be killing the Bill altogether. I hope that happens. But hope is in short supply, politically, these days. Perhaps compromise is the best we’ll ever get.
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Anyway
Ohai. You made it to the end! Thanks, hey! I hope you liked it! I also hope this newsletter hasn’t got you onto some police list. Or given you too much of a sense of shock at getting two in as many weeks. Hope you’re doing okay. I’m doing pretty well. Been an intense time recently for a number of reasons. I really loved the Bo Burnham Inside special on Netflix, btw. It’s beautiful. And funny in places lol. All eyes on me made me cry like balls.
Anyway, I hope you’re doing well, thanks for reading. Let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to cover some time. And listen to the podcast! the last episode is hilare, I think!