Penny vs. Callicinos

#2

Steven.

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Dec 27 2010 18:03

She doesn't mean literally streetfighting, she means people that do grunt work.

#3

klas batalo

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Dec 27 2010 18:33

what i don't get is this whole debate over decentralization vs centralization. i am assuming it is because it is happening between folks that have the Left as their reference point?

i guess what i am saying is i have been seeing the desire via NETWORK X and others that want to get some more formal stuff off the ground, but this does not mean it has to be centralized does it? or that formalizing networks (federations if you will) = centralization of the struggle? actually i think this is our moment to shine as anarchists/libertarian organizers and show that non-centralist modes of formal organizing are possible!

grin cheers!

#4

Mike Harman

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Dec 27 2010 18:42

Steven. wrote:

She doesn't mean literally streetfighting, she means people that do grunt work.

Ah OK. Calling them 'grunts' might have been better.

Callicinos called Penny a Marxist, she's apparently not a Trot so I'm wondering what kind. Generally her stuff has been very good, even if I feel guilty for liking it given the publications it's in.

(Reply to #2)

#5

klas batalo

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Dec 27 2010 18:48

She labels herself as a "Revolutionary Feminist and Socialist" on Facebook?

Maybe that can give you a clue to which UK far left group she has sympathies too?

O.o

(Reply to #4)

#6

GuyDeBord's Optician

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Dec 28 2010 12:16

Tedious egoism, but an opportunity to get 'anarchist' organising on the agenda and in the press, even if in watered down post-post-post modernist dictum. For those who've missed it, the 'debate' continues on Alex Callinicos' Facebook.

tl;dr
Penny is making overtures to the SWP as 'admirable comrades' who should be involved in a broader anti-cuts movement; whilst not wishing to accept the iron law of ,ahem, democratic centralism. Callinicos calls for a non-partisan anti-cuts organisation, and then deletes comments for 'abusing his party and his hospitality'.

Penny represents 'the new politics'; which is essentially liberal media-focused protest campaigns with some class rhetoric and no structure, Callinicos is continuing his slow and ponderous ambling TOWARDS OCTOBER and is CALLING FOR REVOLUTION.

#7

Angelus Novus

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Dec 29 2010 00:03

GuyDeBord's Optician wrote:

Penny represents 'the new politics'; which is essentially liberal media-focused protest campaigns with some class rhetoric and no structure

What's funny though is how old those "new" politics are starting to seem to me.

When the anti-WTO protests happened in Seattle 11 (eleven!) years ago, I remember all the blustering about a "new" protest generation organized via mobile phones and the Internet, while radical liberals like Naomi Klein waxed romantic about all those groovy, decentralized network structures and intersection of various social movements was leaving the traditional, lumbering dinosaur class-anchored left in the dust.

I mean, with the youngsters involved in the recent students protests (or the anti-pension reform protests in France), we are now a full one or two political generations further than the anti-globalization movement, but it seems like the emergence of every future protest movement is destined to repeat this ritual of praising it's totally awesome newness while distancing itself from some stodgy smokestack left for which groups like the SWP stand in. Only now mobile phones and Internet are as common as toasters and water boilers, so the "new" technology is social networking websites.

(Reply to #6)

#8

Joseph Kay

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Dec 29 2010 00:52

Angelus Novus wrote:

it seems like the emergence of every future protest movement is destined to repeat this ritual of praising it's totally awesome newness

the loyal opposition adequate to capitalist realism (fetish for ahistorical radical novelty etc).

#9

Khawaga

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Dec 29 2010 02:46

I blame Negri.

#10

Yorkie Bar

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Dec 29 2010 03:04

Joseph Kay wrote:

the loyal opposition adequate to capitalist realism

(Reply to #8)

#11

klas batalo

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Dec 29 2010 04:56

yeah i am glad someone brought it up. i was like dude REALLY NOW?

#12

vanilla.ice.baby

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Dec 29 2010 09:24

Penny is scum.

http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/threads/340312-Alex-Callinicos-SWP-vs-Laurie-Penny-New-Statesman-Facebook-handbags

#13

Joseph Kay

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Dec 29 2010 09:43

This article sparked a minor twitter row between Laurie Penny and the author. There may well be some subtext/spat i'm not aware of, but interesting point about infantilisation ihmo. when i refer to 'kids' i mean it positively; young people not yet socialised into boring ineffective leftist methods/rituals and with less to lose than their parents with regards to walking out and kicking off. but on the other hand i can see it certainly fits with a vanguardist approach that these enthusiastic youth just need the right leadership etc.

more generally i think it's worth thinking about why Laurie Penny's been getting the attention as 'voice of a generation' and whatnot. She hasn't just been appointed such by her employers, there's been a big resonance on Twitter etc. I think it's a case that she's a liberal who seems to be genuinely and subjectively involved in that which she reports, which puts here on something like a 'radical' trajectory. i think that contrasts with the 'objective' bias of the established media (Ben Browne anyone?) and probably resonates with thousands of people having their liberal assumptions tested by TSG batons. certainly when i first got politicised it was under similar circumstances, getting roughed up by cops on an anti-war demo as a teenager, starting an ideological break with received liberalism.

#14

Mike Harman

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Dec 29 2010 15:19

vanilla.ice.baby wrote:

Penny is scum.
http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/threads/340312-Alex-Callinicos-SWP-vs-Laurie-Penny-New-Statesman-Facebook-handbags

Quality from butchersapron on there:

Laurie Penny wrote:

It is for these reason that I am going to be voting, in my constituency of Leyton and Wanstead, for the Liberal Democrat Party. Not because of Nick Clegg's golden tie, and not even because The Guardian says so. Because I want a new, more representative parliamentary system in which citizens can feel like their voices actually matter. I like the Lib Dems; I don't think they were sent to save us. I'd prefer to vote for a third party that had stronger links with workers' organisations. But the Lib Dems represent the best chance this country has for transformation on a structural level. And, of course, I'm sick of the sight of Cameron's soft, evil face.

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2010/05/endgame-change-were-trying-to-believe.html

(Reply to #12)

#15

Mike Harman

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Dec 29 2010 16:09

Joseph Kay wrote:

more generally i think it's worth thinking about why Laurie Penny's been getting the attention as 'voice of a generation' and whatnot. She hasn't just been appointed such by her employers, there's been a big resonance on Twitter etc. I think it's a case that she's a liberal who seems to be genuinely and subjectively involved in that which she reports, which puts here on something like a 'radical' trajectory. i think that contrasts with the 'objective' bias of the established media (Ben Browne anyone?) and probably resonates with thousands of people having their liberal assumptions tested by TSG batons. certainly when i first got politicised it was under similar circumstances, getting roughed up by cops on an anti-war demo as a teenager, starting an ideological break with received liberalism.

I think this is about right, with the handy new information from the urban75 thread it looks like her politics are very liberal and also been a bit all over the place, whether she's bandwagon jumping or genuinely being radicalised by what's happening (or a bit of both) there are clearly a lot of people having assumptions challenged. Also I've said it on other threads but while all the crazy twitter traffic won't actually change things like shit BBC coverage, anything particularly bad is dissected and distributed a lot quicker, and a lot more widely than it would have been even 2-3 years ago, and this works the other way when people like things too.

Also while I agree there is a tendency (not just with Penny) to go on about how everything is *new and shiny* there have been some real changes IMO.

When I was a teenager about the only source of news I had for anything remotely radical, at least on a regular basis, was Schnews. If we look at the history of this site, it started around the same time as the 2003 anti-war protests - the context at that time was infoshop, indymedia, forums like Black Flag's and the various Trot sites - not many individual lefty/anarcho bloggers around then, not that much in the way of posting comments on mainstream sites either. So you could happily visit 2-10 different sites and that would give you a fair idea of what was going on, and what various political factions were thinking, and there would be a handful of places to discuss things with a somewhat consistent load of people.

The CPE stuff in 2005 was mainly on indymedia and discussion forums (as far as I could work out not really being able to read French now), the 2007 postal strike a lot of the communication was via royalmailchat.co.uk.

Now look at what's going on now, and as far as I can tell the only discussion forum dedicated to the cuts is http://www.anticutsforum.com/, and there's a similarly new and not very trafficked one which I can't find for ukuncut.

The shift to Facebook and twitter is very real, and it has a lot of implications. For a start there's nowhere to hold a discussion. Twitter can't hack anything remotely in-depth, facebook walls are also really bad for discussion - new threads with spam bump down older posts with active discussion on, and it's split across a tonne of different groups which can't be aggregated easily (or I just hate fucking facebook generally maybe).

So either discussion doesn't really happen - people just RT stuff around, or it does happen, but on the comments of whatever article is currently being RT'ed (the BBC editor's response to Jody McIntyre was an extreme example).

That means it's a bit easier for occupations to set up blogs and get traffic to them very rapidly.

But on the other hand sites like this, indymedia, discussion forums, and organisational sites as well are probably more sidelined than they were even 5 years ago - since the 'decentralised' facebook and twitter are actually very centralised, and twitter likely has even more of a bias towards promoting articles in the Guardian or New Statesman as authoritative than even google does.

So whereas there used to be an emphasis on 'independent media' or organisational publications, all the newness actually means a reliance on what are actually massive (new) media companies, which the Guardian and one or two other papers are just about getting the hang of (journalist accounts posted on twitter, live blogging etc.).

(Reply to #13)

#16

Mike Harman

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Dec 29 2010 16:18

Joseph Kay wrote:

This article sparked a minor twitter row between Laurie Penny and the author. There may well be some subtext/spat i'm not aware of, but interesting point about infantilisation ihmo

Same author shows up on http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/where_next_for_the_students_movement_an_nlp_roundtable/ - looks like she's from Counterfire.

(Reply to #13)

#17

Mike Harman

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Dec 29 2010 16:29

Also http://thoughcowardsflinch.com/2010/12/28/beans-factories-and-creeping-liberal-elitism/ - a bit mixed (very soft on Trots and the unions) but makes a couple of very good points. Particularly to what extent are the left journos going to be on form when it's people in their 40s and 50s out on strike instead of students.

#18

Joseph Kay

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Dec 29 2010 16:49

Mike Harman wrote:

- looks like she's from Counterfire.

I got the impression a random liberal (although lots of SWP-bashing would be consistent with either). I'm not sure how counterfire works, seems to be more like a publicity-savvy vehicle for the ex-SWP CCers rather than an SWP clone, so maybe it functions more like a front, incorporating liberals etc.

(Reply to #16)

#19

Mike Harman

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Dec 29 2010 17:43

Sorry I meant 'Ellie' of the infantilisation article is from Counterfire, not Laurie Penny.

#20

Joseph Kay

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Dec 29 2010 17:56

Yeah i know, she looked like a random liberal, contributes to liberal conspiracy etc. But I don't know.

#21

Caiman del Barrio

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Dec 30 2010 00:38

Odd, reading through all the links on that Urban 75 thread (I've never bother registering there btw, should I? Libcom's a little quiet nowadays...), and it seems like it's her who can't quite figure out which role to play: Carrie Bradshaw, the hackneyed humourless feminist (playing to the crowd there), the redbrick hipster grad living somewhere in East London, etc, etc...

She's also got a good, rhetorical writing style. Even if I don't agree with many of the conclusions, the asides add colour and it seems just about close enough to my daily life and experiences to induce a strange sort of narcissism: will I see something I recognise in there? She'll probably end up on Channel 4 soon.

EDIT and this blog post is fucking appalling, and pretty much plays up to the embellished stereotype Penny's trading off of the old left. Bevan quote? "Middle class students' movement"? lol...

http://thoughcowardsflinch.com/2010/12/28/beans-factories-and-creeping-liberal-elitism/

#22

Mike Harman

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Dec 30 2010 03:20

Sorry JK, now I get it.

@Caiman - yes that blog post is crap but I think the central point that the student protests have been getting positive coverage that strikes never have and likely won't if we see a lot of them next year is a good one. The Guardian editorials recently have been no different to what you'd see in the telegraph, which makes me wonder how long it'll take for them to reign in the coverage if things continue and expand into next year.

#23

cantdocartwheels

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Dec 30 2010 12:09

Caiman del Barrio wrote:

EDIT and this blog post is fucking appalling, and pretty much plays up to the embellished stereotype Penny's trading off of the old left. Bevan quote? "Middle class students' movement"? lol...

http://thoughcowardsflinch.com/2010/12/28/beans-factories-and-creeping-liberal-elitism/

Yeah, that was a pretty depressing read, the worst kind of miserable middle of the road shite. Ten to one says that just like most of the 16 year old kids fighting for their EMA, she suprisingly enough never went to wigan either.
Its typical labour party crap really, as if mentioning that she read about a strike once and giving a few hoots of ''up the workers'' gets some working class brownie points, not to mention the predictable divide and rule crap about the ''middle class''.

.

(Reply to #21)

#24

gypsy

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Dec 30 2010 19:02

Caiman del Barrio wrote:

Odd, reading through all the links on that Urban 75 thread (I've never bother registering there btw, should I? Libcom's a little quiet nowadays...), and it seems like it's her who can't quite figure out which role to play: Carrie Bradshaw, the hackneyed humourless feminist (playing to the crowd there), the redbrick hipster grad living somewhere in East London, etc, etc...

Its good. But abit too London orientated for my liking from what I remember?

(Reply to #21)

#25

Kronstadt_Kid

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Dec 31 2010 19:03

Angelus Novus wrote:

GuyDeBord's Optician wrote:

Penny represents 'the new politics'; which is essentially liberal media-focused protest campaigns with some class rhetoric and no structure

What's funny though is how old those "new" politics are starting to seem to me.

When the anti-WTO protests happened in Seattle 11 (eleven!) years ago, I remember all the blustering about a "new" protest generation organized via mobile phones and the Internet, while radical liberals like Naomi Klein waxed romantic about all those groovy, decentralized network structures and intersection of various social movements was leaving the traditional, lumbering dinosaur class-anchored left in the dust.

I mean, with the youngsters involved in the recent students protests (or the anti-pension reform protests in France), we are now a full one or two political generations further than the anti-globalization movement, but it seems like the emergence of every future protest movement is destined to repeat this ritual of praising it's totally awesome newness while distancing itself from some stodgy smokestack left for which groups like the SWP stand in. Only now mobile phones and Internet are as common as toasters and water boilers, so the "new" technology is social networking websites.

Good comment mate.

(Reply to #7)

#26

klas batalo

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Jan 3 2011 17:59

http://blog.ucloccupation.com/2011/01/03/leaderless-youth-will-not-bring-this-government-down/

oh gosh

#27

martinh

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Jan 4 2011 22:16

wrote:

The main thing that bemuses me about Laurie Penny is that her prose is *terrible*. Surely they could have found an Oxbridge graduate who could actually write to fill that role?

Most Oxbridge graduates can't write despite all that privileged education. That's why the "quality" press only recruits based on who you know and how long you can work for free as an intern, otherwise these clever people wouldn't get the jobs they deserve. The few working class journos left are never let anywhere near "comment" pieces unless they're sleeping with the editor.

Next thing you'll be telling me is that some area of life in Britain operates as a meritocracy.

cynical regards,

Martin

(Reply to #24)

#28