multimillionaire recuperator "situationist" businessman Tony Wilson has died
Aug 12 2007 12:40
Multimillionaire businessman recuperator and mogul of the music industry Tony Wilson has died.
Wilson was one of the sharp investors who made a killing out of promoting central Manchester as a leisure venue, being the owner of both the record company called the Factory and the nightclub called the Hacienda - the former being named after Andy Warhol's artistic association, and the latter after the writing of Situationist Ivan Shcheglov.
Although one can be sure that posher and limelight-avoiding types made even more of a killing (for a comparison, consider Ann Gloag and Brian Souter's profits from rail privatisation, and then the role of the City of London in said privatisation), not for nothing has Wilson been called "Mr Manchester".
His marketing of his personality as a crucial asset of his business activity can be compared with that of Richard Branson, Alan Sugar, Nicola Horlick, and of course, all of his fellow media stars.
The business acumen of this "collector of Situationist art" was evident in his purchase of Guy Debord's Psychogeographical Map of Paris, showing red arrows on a city streetmap. The value of this asset has risen hugely since the 1980s, not least due to its owner's astute financial backing of the talking up situationism in the commercial and artistic arena. Situationist-themed art exhibitions are now running at about one per year, and a number of galleries list Situationist-themed works as among their major specialisms. Wilson truly rode, and helped create, a rising wave of speculation. In purely business terms - i.e his own terms - he must be judged to have been successful at a much higher level than his fellow recuperator Malcolm Maclaren.
In the film "Twenty-Four Hour Party People", he is recognised as one of the businessmen who played a major role in promoting the consumerist weekend hedonism which has been evident for nigh-on 20 years among a large proportion of the faction of urban youth in the UK who have some disposable income in their pockets.
In the political arena Wilson was one of various leading business figures who helped the government promote its programme of regional government, when he took part in marketing the project of a regional assembly for Northwest England. His particular contribution was to call for a referendum. In the end it didn't take place (after the authorities lost one in the northeast), but the assembly was created nonetheless, and one assumes his pals at the top of the government-backed northwestern business "enterprise" scene were pleased with their member's efforts.
Truly a man of his time.
bbbbb
Aug 12 2007 19:19
#2
Tony or Anthony Wilson as he liked to be called was a cunt. His use of the term Hacienda for his club always disgusted me. As did much of his mutterings on anything. He was first and foremost a capitalist who saw a way of making money for himself while devaluing the concept of the ideas he sought to exploit and recuperate. Total utter cunt who won't be missed by anyone but overgrown indy kids who should know better by now.
Aug 12 2007 20:19
#3
Tedious grievances such as hating capitalists? Do you think he was OK then, guydebordisdead? Have you heard it all before, this "hating multimillionaire recuperators" stuff? 
I'd be interested to know what in particular you disagree with, or believe shouldn't be said on an anarchist board, or...???
bbbbb
Aug 12 2007 20:26
#4
I just don't see what you're trying to prove with this 'attack' on him, regardless of his class. I have no love for the ruling class but I don't mistake individual capitalists, or failed petty bourgeois entrepreneurs for that matter, for the system itself.
I don't see what you're trying to prove by bitching about him on here, who cares? Are you trying to redeem the situationists perhaps? On a wider point it seems these days that whenever anyone dies, no matter how inconsequential ,some anarchist launches an attack on them (even the croc-hunter ffs) it reeks of crankism to me.
Aug 12 2007 20:33
#5
i'm with the GDID on this one.
Aug 12 2007 21:14
#6
So what.
Aug 12 2007 21:20
#7
Quote:
So what.
soon you will learn that revol expressing an opinion is not only good as, but better than, an actual reasoned argument for the same conclusion. Not only that, but pointing this out is logically equivalent to saying "please insult me like a twelve year old". When you pick up on the sub text, it makes these forums so much more fun.
Aug 12 2007 21:31
#8
Thanks, it seems I have much to learn from a belfast graduate who can't even change a tyre on his little boy bike.
Aug 12 2007 21:41
#9
Tony Wilson was cunt, but fuck it, Joy Division are awesome. 24 Hour Party People's pretty shit though.
Aug 12 2007 22:37
#10
Quote:
I just don't see what you're trying to prove with this 'attack' on him,
Why the inverted commas? I'm saying no more than I'm saying. Since he doesn't exist any more, you could say it isn't an attack, I suppose. Otherwise in the usual sense of the word, it is an attack, rather than an "attack".
Quote:
regardless of his class.
Dunno about you, but my views are not "regardless of his class".
Quote:
I have no love for the ruling class but I don't mistake individual capitalists, or failed petty bourgeois entrepreneurs for that matter, for the system itself.
The ruling class is made up of individuals. It is meaningless, or more exactly, impossible, to hate the class without hating the individuals.
Quote:
I don't see what you're trying to prove by bitching about him on here, who cares?
You care enough to call it "shite" in public without expressing your own view. I've had my say. The floor is yours!
Quote:
Are you trying to redeem the situationists perhaps?
I can understand that you might think so, especially given the importance you ascribe to pointing out that Guy Debord, who died 13 years ago, is dead, but the answer is no. Except if to call someone a recuperator is to refer to the fact that some of what they used did have some oppositional weight. Yes of course it makes me want to vomit that capitalist scum recuperate revolutionary ideas, whether in the Kremlin, the Forbidden Palace, or the lucrative moneymaking clubs of Manchester where water is sold at a fiver a pint, or whatever it was in the Hacienda. Wilson was no better than Jeffrey Archer or any other ruling class cunt you might mention.
Quote:
On a wider point it seems these days that whenever anyone dies, no matter how inconsequential ,some anarchist launches an attack on them (even the croc-hunter ffs) it reeks of crankism to me.
"Whenever anyone dies"...well it's not exactly true, is it? I don't want to be rude, but if you or I have got something to say, surely we should try to be rigorous in what we actually do say?
"However inconsequential"...OK, there were certainly bigger fish in the growth of capital in Manchester, as in fact I said (third paragraph), but nonetheless this cunt has been called "Mr Manchester" all over the newspapers
"Some anarchist"...nope, I'm not an anarchist in any way, shape, or form. In this particular context, why would it matter if I were, though? Any anarchist who agrees with my basic drift who may be reading this: greetings!
"Reeks of crankism"...all I'm going to say to this is:
yeah, sure, if you say so, guydebordisdead...and you haven't even replied to any particular thing I said...and surely if we want a 'general point' in connection with Wilson, we can do better than just not liking it when someone says rude things about a capitalist who is recently deceased?
I've found the responses in this thread quite interesting though. It may be one of those many things where someone either gets it or they don't.
bbbbb
Aug 12 2007 23:41
#11
yeah i found op interesting enough i dunno myself but i think gdid is a bit "cranky" thinking it is either interesting or has a point to "constantly" "attack" "unconventional" posters. not an insult tho
Aug 13 2007 01:01
#12
posi wrote:
Quote:
So what.soon you will learn that revol expressing an opinion is not only good as, but better than, an actual reasoned argument for the same conclusion. Not only that, but pointing this out is logically equivalent to saying "please insult me like a twelve year old". When you pick up on the sub text, it makes these forums so much more fun.
you got a working class job yet or what?
Aug 13 2007 01:39
#13
admin - abuse deleted. More like that and you're getting a temp ban
Aug 13 2007 04:46
#14
revol68 wrote:
wah
What have you done???!!!!11
Aug 13 2007 08:26
#15
I thought the rule was "no flaming" in the news threads?? Personally I'd welcome someone trying to oppose the view that Wilson was what I said he was. Not that I think they'd get very far, which may explain comments like "that's a load of old shite" and "stick your head in the oven", and accusations that the original article was just "bitching".
Do some people, rather than merely disagreeing with what I said, perhaps not like the raising of the topics in the first place? If so, why?
I'm not trying to "redeem" the Situationists, although I didn't know they'd been damned. Is anyone saying a critique of culture – of the big stuff in culture, its historical movement, and how culture (in both small and big ways) works and moves – is an irrelevance? That that's something only cranks try to get a revolutionary handle on?
If so, maybe they could explain why the level of working class struggle has come to be so extremely low? Maybe they could explain why what working class people do when they're not at work (for a factory owner wearing a top hat, maybe?) is irrelevant to the class struggle? Aren't people dominated when they're not at work?
bbbbb
Aug 13 2007 08:32
#16
Quote:
The ruling class is made up of individuals. It is meaningless, or more exactly, impossible, to hate the class without hating the individuals.
I have very little hate for individuals that happen to be capitalist. The capital relation is not inherently evil, it's just fucked up. Some capitalists are worth hating, others aren't. In any case hatred towards specific members of the capitalists class, or a group of them such as a corporation, only deflects attention away from the capital relation and how to overcome that. Politically it has serious implications, and IMO this kind of thinking is the reason behind the impasse of the arrested development of the anti-glob movement at the moment.
Aug 13 2007 08:47
#17
bbbbb wrote:
The ruling class is made up of individuals. It is meaningless, or more exactly, impossible, to hate the class without hating the individuals.
That's pathetic. And slagging him off as a "recuperator": juvenile situationist balls. Not to mention just starting a thread to slag off someone who's just died prematurely is pretty out of order on a human level.
Aug 13 2007 09:54
#18
what pisses me off most is the idea that he recuperated the situationists, they always already were recuperated.
Quote:
In the film "Twenty-Four Hour Party People", he is recognised as one of the businessmen who played a major role in promoting the consumerist weekend hedonism which has been evident for nigh-on 20 years among a large proportion of the faction of urban youth in the UK who have some disposable income in their pockets.
What a bastard! lol!
Atleast that doesn't reek of the worst kind of moral leftism, oh wait. Working class kids more interested in getting pissed and enjoying themselves than protecting a bourgeois art students stale pontifications.
Aug 13 2007 10:01
#19
If one of your main sources in a rant is 'Twenty-Four Hour Party People' you know you're on a winner bbbb.
bbbb wrote:
It may be one of those many things where someone either gets it or they don't.
Aug 13 2007 10:19
#20
Quote:
I have very little hate for individuals that happen to be capitalist.
I've little in common with you, then.
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The capital relation is not inherently evil, it's just fucked up.
It is inherently evil, i.e. anti-human.
It's not fucked up; it works very efficiently and in accordance with its nature.
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Some capitalists are worth hating, others aren't.
Wrong, but having said that, you go on to say:
Quote:
In any case hatred towards specific members of the capitalists class, or a group of them such as a corporation, only deflects attention away from the capital relation and how to overcome that.
So this means that when someone hates even a capitalist who's "worth" hating, they're deflecting attention away from the capital relation? What do you think working class struggle is?
As for a corporation, it is not a group of capitalists. It's a fictitious person, just as a local god is a fictitious person. Used by one or more capitalists. Don't judge capitalists by what they say about themselves.
You say 'relation': relation between what? Capital is a classist category, as are wage-labour and the state.
Critical revolutionary consciousness comes from one place and one place alone: proletarian experience - the experience of being shat on and trying to resist, fight, avoid, band together.
We don't appear to agree on very much at all that's important.
bbbbb
Aug 13 2007 10:24
#21
bbbbb wrote:
We don't appear to agree on very much at all that's important.
Yes, the most important thing for class struggle is hating a small businessman and insulting him on the internet when he's died. If only the public sector workers in dispute now realised this, they'd get their above-inflation pay rise in no time.
Aug 13 2007 10:26
#22
Oh god, it's him again isn't it.
Aug 13 2007 10:29
#23
The hilarious thing is that the hatred for him comes not from his class position (afterall how many business men snuff it each day and don't get a mention on Libcom?) but from the fact he had a fondness for situationist artwork and apparently led working class youth away from the revolution by promoting hedonistic consumerism.
Aug 13 2007 10:41
#24
The hatred comes from the op's misunderstanding of what class struggle is, probably from an uncritical reading of 'the circled a and its parasites' or class war's newspaper. So a mildly successful businessman who was sympathetic towards an elitist strand of marxist thought based around art and film becomes an easy figure of resentment for someone who lives in a ken loach fantasy world of 'being shat on and trying to resist, fight, avoid, band together'.
Aug 13 2007 10:42
#25
guydebordisdead wrote:
The hatred comes from the op's misunderstanding of what class struggle is, probably from an uncritical reading of 'the circled a and its parasites' or class war's newspaper. So a mildly successful businessman who was sympathetic towards an elitist strand of marxist thought based around art and film becomes an easy figure of resentment for someone who lives in a ken loach fantasy world of 'being shat on and trying to resist, fight, avoid, band together'.
if only i could drag you away from that uncaring WSM bastard, we could be happy together!
Aug 13 2007 10:45
#26
revol68 wrote:
if only i could drag you away from that uncaring WSM bastard, we could be happy together!
Just join us man, I'm waiting for your negation. 
Aug 13 2007 10:50
#27
guydebordisdead wrote:
revol68 wrote:
if only i could drag you away from that uncaring WSM bastard, we could be happy together!Just join us man, I'm waiting for your negation.
I may love you my lady but I will never fight for your court!
Aug 13 2007 11:01
#28
guydebordisdead wrote:
Oh god, it's him again isn't it.
No it's not yelt. bbbbb's been registered here ages. he asked us to delete him after a big row about people being friends with spooks, which was pretty funny:
http://libcom.org/node/8409
edited to add - revol yeah it's a shame, GDID would be good, if he didn't run about trying to nationalise everything.
Aug 13 2007 11:05
#29
You guys need someone to be to the left of. lol @ the andrew gilligan thread - I stole his bag at the g8 in scotland 
Aug 13 2007 11:13
#30
Quote:
revol yeah it's a shame, GDID would be good, if he didn't run about trying to nationalise everything.
I heard he once tried to nationalise a girl in a really uncomfortable place!
What a load of shite, it seems nobody can die these days without some hack with a number of tedious grievances heading straight to the nearest anarchist board.