Matt Gets Political

This is meant to evoke false consciousness. I don't see it. "Certain agents within the society, are deluded about themselves, their position, their society, or their interests."  Geuss, The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas & The Frankfurt School, Cambridge University Press, 1981 This is what the theorist means when they say that a system of thought is ideological, or that an expression is one of false consciousness. What they are saying is that the system of thought contains a mistake about the truth status of the content of the system of thought. Essentially, that from time to time we hold beliefs that if we were able to step out of history and examine, we would recognise to be false. In the way that a seventeenth century slave holder, if removed from that context may be able to see that their actions, and the ideology that supported those actions, where not just ugly - but that their supporting reasoning was false. This is a notion that some people ...

 On freedom of speech "Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party — though they are quite numerous — is no freedom at all. Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters. The essence of political freedom depends not on the fanatics of 'justice', but rather on all the invigorating, beneficial, and detergent effects of dissenters. If 'freedom' becomes 'privilege', the workings of political freedom are broken."  Luxembourg, Die russische Revolution. Eine kritische Würdigung, 1920,  pp. 109 It has become a cliche at this point to suggest that the left has ceded its traditional commitment to freedom of speech to the right - who, in the eyes of some commentators, may now may be considered it's inheritors. There are some who would claim that one does not need to tolerate intolerance, and intolerant speech therefore does not need to be tolerated - and in such a way attempt to diminish the importance of the idea...

The Simpsons Get's Political  - SE01 E03 - Homer's Odyssey Script synopsis:  After being fired from the nuclear power plant for negligence Homer sinks into a depression as he struggles to find work. One evening he decides he is a drain on his family and goes to attempt suicide by jumping off a bridge. Discovering his suicide note just in time the family rush to stop him. They are almost run over as they cross a road to save him, leading him to run and sweep them out of the path of oncoming traffic. After observing that the bridge should have a stop sign Homer becomes a safety activist. Succeeding in having any danger in Springfield, no matter how minor signposted or made safe. It doesn't take long however for the safety elephant in the room to rear its head and he sets his sights on the Nuclear Power Plant - Homer faces a crisis of conscience when Mr. Burns tries to silence him with a new position and a raise. He takes the job, and this is how he becomes Safety Inspec...

"Theresa May, more like Theresa Bae, amirite?" - Anon, Daily Mail. "When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically. They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power, such disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission. Only a few had been aware of the rumbling of the volcano preceding the outbreak."  - Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom, 1942, Routledge Classics (Farrar & Rinehart) How does a country slide into autocracy? What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of authoritarianism? At what point is one allowed to be legitimately concerned about the excessive power being hoarded by those who already have far to much of it, and not be called alarmist? We typically think that authoritarian government begins with a constitutional crisis. It continues with attacks on the judiciary. There will be a figure at the head of the gover...

The aim of any industrial strategy should be to boost employment and growth in the economy. The question would then become about the kind of growth that is considered desirable and the type of jobs that the policy is seeking to create. That a sufficient focus on research and development (R&D) by the government has been sorely lacking since Labour was last in power is now recognised, if not in quite those terms, by the government itself. In the 2016 Autumn Statement the Chancellor announced his intention to review the tax environment for research and development spending by private enterprises. Given the Conservative Party’s tendency to use tax cuts rather than government spending to attempt to achieve their economic aims it seems that at this point the most likely outcome of this review would be to increase the amount that companies can remove from their tax liabilities when they commercialise patents arising from their R&D spending. The prob...

The Simpsons Gets Political - SE01 E01 - Bart the Genius R squared D R R, Har-dee-har-har. Script synopsis: After a night spent playing scrabble ends with Bart securing victory by making up a word and winning we cut to Bart taking an intelligence test. He cheats on this, swapping his paper with Martin Prince - the class genius. Hilarity ensues when as a result of the recommendation of the school psychiatrist Bart is transferred to a school for gifted children, a setting he feels out of place in. However, Homer and Bart begin to bond now that Homer believes Bart to be a genius. Bart begins to feel bad for deceiving Homer as well as being alienated by his friends now they consider him to be a nerd. Eventually Bart admits to the deception and all returns to normal - but not before Homer has chased Bart through the house in anger. Issue raised: Academic selection, or why it's inappropriate to divide students by school based on presumed aptitude. But surely, I hear you cr...

This image evokes the concept of praxis, apparently. I can't say I see it myself. Introduction  "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it."   Marx, 11th Theses on Feuerbach, 1845 Theory without practice is intellectual masturbation at best, and a serious obstacle to necessary social change at worst. Practice without theory is ineffectual folk politics at best, barbarism at worst. The 11th Theses on Feuerbach has been read to mean that, to change the world one must prioritise practice over theory - this is not what Marx is saying. A true revolutionary social theory is one that can hold theory and practice together without one diminishing the other, in other words it would be a philosophy of praxis - not an act of poeisis. Consider one of the more neglected of the Theses on Feuerbach; "The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are change...

Sundays are a time for family. But as mine live three-hundred miles away from me I've had to improvise. So on this blog at least. Sundays are a time for a specific family. Namely - The Simpsons. Basically, the idea is that each week I'm going to take an episode of the Simpsons, working through from Season One, Episode One - and ending whenever they decide to give up the ghost or more probably about Season Eleven after which is gets pretty unwatchable, and relate a political issue via the medium of a Simpsons episode. This combines my two greatest passions, gassing on to anyone who'll listen/read about my political beliefs and The Simpsons. Perfect? No? Starting with, as I said; SE1 E01 - The Simpsons Roasting On An Open Fire Script synopsis:  It's Christmas time in the Simpsons household, and to hide the fact that he didn't get his Christmas bonus, Homer takes a second job as a store Santa. When his employers as Santa deduct ridiculous fee's and ch...

Against the work ethic Stock Photo of a man looking frustrated as he works. Apparently. "Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. [...] But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself."  -  Engels, Unfinished Introduction to  Die drei Grundformen der Knechtschaft  We live in a culture that values paid labour over any other kind of activity. Work, or paid work, has become the sole means by which most people define their existence, their place in society, their view of themselves and the means by which they evaluate their own existence as a success or a failure - it has become the sole means by which many of us relate to the world beyond ourselves. But given that automation will in the near future make most jobs, from menial to technical and managerial, obsolete, is it not time to re-ap...