Politics for the Privileged

Firstly, a couple of questions. What do you mean by "privileged"? And what do you mean by campaigns like Palestine Solidarity?

I've not really read much on privilege the way it tends to be used in politics, only followed it through discussions elsewhere, so apologies if any of this seems off.

I do think there's some truth in the cliche of the white, middle class*, university-educated activist sitting down to patiently explain to others - women, ethnic minorities, unemployed, etc. - about the exact nature of their oppression and what they should be doing to fight against it. While none of these categories are concrete - a single mum on an estate doesn't have that much in common with Baroness Warsi despite them sharing a gender - it is fairly clear that people experience capitalism in different ways based in part on factors like age, sex, geography, race, education and so on, and that this can lead to problems with folks often (unintentionally) not being able to relate to one another's concerns or experiences. My impression is that this became a problem with some areas of the Occupy movement, for example, with predominantly white middle class activists insisting that "the police are our friends" and "cops are part of the 99%", while not really engaging with the experience of people from poorer and/or ethnic minority backgrounds who, being faced with police harassment on a much more routine basis, are less likely to buy into that point of view.

(* I realise the whole concept of "middle class" is quite muddled to be fair, and again, the boundaries aren't always clear.)

One thing I've been having to consider recently in relation to a lot of the stuff around Atos and so on is the role of non-disabled folks as regards disability movements. One frequent point I've come across when reading about disability has been the frustration of many with the way the debate can become dominated by people who are not disabled themselves, but have become their representatives through positions in charity, media, politics and so on. I think this can be an equal concern even when taken out of that institutional context, with people who are not disabled and have more time, physical and emotional energy, access to resources and fewer complications in general - people who are more privileged, if you like - participating and effectively drowning out the voices of disabled people themselves.

On the other hand, however...that shouldn't become an excuse for inaction, and it also shouldn't be a cause to try (and fail) to divide things up into neat parcels, as though only unemployed people can act on unemployment, only disabled people can act on disability, only people in employment can act on workplace issues and so on.

I guess to a large extent I find it difficult to propose any sort of concrete way of addressing this - formal procedures, rules for organisations or whatever. It may be more a matter of attitude than anything else; recognising that our background may make us blind to certain issues due to not having experienced them ourselves, and making an effort to listen to and learn from people's perspectives rather than assuming there's one "correct" way to deal with things. Coupled with that is a need to ensure that, wherever possible, struggles are engaged in and directed by the people who are directly affected, rather than being left to the same faces acting on their behalf.

I'm not sure if this is what you were going for, since again, it's not something I've had much exposure to in depth.

Do you mind if I ask what you do as a job? What I'd suggest you do is try to organise together with your colleagues to defend/improve your jobs and conditions.

And if you are really privileged you can give money to revolutionary organisations, like libcom.org!

Similar arguments are often advanced by those who want to guilt trip people into cheerleading for various nationalist rackets in the third world. Along the lines of "you rich white dudes at your keyboards have no right to criticise Hamas and their tactic of suicide bombings".

You may not have intended to but the following did seem to imply it:

In some cases, the "tactic of resistance" involves violence directed at their "own" population, including trade unionists, socialists, anarchists and human rights activists - such as the stabbing in Gaza earlier this year - which at the very least should imply it's a bit more complicated than having a blanket support, IMO. And that's without even getting into violence directed at the enemy.

That said, the wider point - that folks in the "west" can usefully spend time showing solidarity with popular movements in other countries - is obviously a valid one. There is however the issue that it can often become a sort of activist charity work, focusing on problems "over there" and ignoring more immediate issues (either your own, at work, in your area or whatever). Depends what you think will be most effective in your own circumstances really.

Not at all.

Capitalism causes and uses various gradations within society in order to divide us. Professionals with 'careers' against workers with 'jobs', white collar/blue collar work, culture, gender, race, skilled work, casual work or self employment, education unemployement and migrant labour and so on.

Logically thus I would say its a bit futile to go about excluding people on the basis of their background as you are suggesting since class is not a homogenous entity.

I think the only thing worth saying on it though is that people should always try and be aware of the gradations of privilige that exist within society, For example, i am 'in my mid twenties, single and a UK resident; if i get sacked, i still get benefit, if nicked on a demo, the worst i might get is a short sentence. Also i'm close to my folks and some of my extended family and while they are not rich, i know they'd generally help me out if i got into shit. However, if someone is say a migrant worker, or if they have a mortage and/or are supporting a family the potential consequences could be worse, thus we should always bear such issues in mind when talking to people about taking action.

In short while we shouldn't obsess over such things or purge people on the grounds of background in some attempt to be prolier than thou as your line of logic would inevitably lead to, we should on the other hand always try to be aware of privilige and think about the complexities of class and inequality rather than simply brushing them under the carpet. No-one wants to echo, for example, the left uncritically trumpeting the PCS as champions of left wing trade unionism* and barely even considering the bulk of us un-unionised workers.

*that doesn't seem to be working out so well at present i might add

its a problem though if libcom groups
dont reflect the wider community around them
on things like : immigrant workers,workplace,less intellectual etc

i actually think that there is an over representation in university educated white
people in some active libertarian communist groups
at least in the UK.
People can try and relate with each other but that still is not as
important as actually experience as a worker in the same workplace/community

I agree with you Joe that libcom groups should be more representative, but would broaden out the analysis of where the groups tend to be exlusive. It's worth adding in the lack of older people, children, parents, disabled people, women, people based in rural areas and probably a bunch more groups. It's also worth noting the generally excluded groups that do seem fairly well represented. This would be primarily be LGB and maybe T people, and also maybe un/underemplyed people. I think this tells us something about why certain groups are under-represented: It seems to have to do with time, capacity to undertake particular kinds of tasks, ability to attend meetings (physically and due responsibilities like kids) and stuff like that.

To me the implications of this are that we shouldn't just look at whether the groups and forms of organisation that do exist excluding certain types of people (though that's good too), but what other forms might be accesible to other types of people.

Unfortunately the libcom movement in the uk is tiny so there isn't much capacity to set up, for example, a libertarian childcare and women's action centre or something like that. But small steps in that sort of direction might be nice, and lots of people do take them, which is great.

This is a bashing post regarding disability.

I have suffered from so-called 'mental illness' for many years, and am more than used to the top-down, them and us scenario that exists in the NHS and Social Services bureacracy, and many of the voluntary and charitable organizations also.

I am a militant activist in the 'service user' movement, which seeks to facilitate a transfer of both funding and power, from statutory services and charitable bodies, and into the hands of service users and ex-service users. We the disabled have the lived experience, and are experts by experience. There are some initiatives getting off the ground, for example, the disabled receive funding to run their own peer support/mentoring groups, and their own (actual, not virtual) forums, to discuss and campaign on the issues that matter to us.

I am a least very critical of, if not anti-psychiatry. Chemical treatments (drug therapy) are prescribed for conditions that have no proven chemical cause. Many so-called mental illnesses, are in fact economic, social and interpersonal difficulties, that have become medicalized. We do not fit the mould of society, so we are labelled defective, and cast aside.

In rural, developing countries, those who suffer mental and emotional distress, have a far greater recovery rate and reassimilation rate into their communitites, than in the developed West. Yet they do not have the infrastructure we have. The nearest hospital might be 100 miles away, and will more than likely have no psychiatric facilities.

This is because they take a SOCIAL approach to mental distress, the only approach available to them, and not a MEDICAL one. Poor villagers are given time and space, their kids looked after, they are not ostracized, the burden of work is relaxed for a while, and the villagers take on their responsibilities. They are NOT pumped full of drugs. It is this humane approach that facilitates their recovery.

Psychiatry is a psuedo-science. It is to medicine, what alchemy is to metallurgy. I support a social model of handling mental distress, not a medical model.

care to elaborate? :/

Here's an essay by Peter Gelderloos dealing with privilege politics, maybe give it a read.

http://togettotheotherside.org/essays-and-short-stories/so-fucked-up/

Are you not promoting the same them and us mentality?
To be honest I don't know if this is the right thread for it, but while a lot of support should be managed by users themselves, I'm not so sure about treatment. I might know how I feel about my illnesses better than a Doctor but I don't necessarily know how to treat them better. Just as I might know more about my blister than the person who deigned my shoe, but I wouldn't say I knew more about shoe design.

Is this true? I've seen it asserted but no evidence, although I think that incidence of mental illness seems to be higher in the west.

A social model is certainly more helpful in many cases and doctors are a bit too eager to hand out anti-depressants but that doesn't invalidate psychiatry entirely.

@ jonthom. Thanks for your reply. By 'bashing', I meant a good post, in that you have understood the importance of disabled people managing their own affairs and campaigns. And I did elaborate lol. I went onto give good examples from the mental health 'service user' movement, which empowers service users.

@ jef costello. Thanks for your reply also.

The evidence that people deemed mentally ill in developing, so-called Third World countries recover more sunbstantially than in the west, comes from several cross-cultural studies carried out by the World Health Organization over several decades. The studies went to great lenght to ensure that like was compared to like regarding schizophrenia and related conditions. The studies found that the recovery rate of people with these conditions was approximately twice as good as in the west. It was found developing countries played far more emphasis on social approaches to treatment than psychiatric ones.

Dr Richard Warner is the Medical Director of the Mental Health Centre of Boulder University, Colorado. He wrote a comprehensive book, 'Recovery from Schizophrenia', and concurs with their findings. See also 'Beyond Prozac' by Dr Terry Lynch. Further evidence is contained therein, and many reports and studies cited.

Psychiatry is popularly regarded in the public imagination, as a science. But the fundamental criterion of a science is reliability. You have to be able to produce the same results in a test and re-test situation. Psychiatry cannot do this, in either diagnostics or prognostics. I have been told by different psychiatrists that I have the following: schizophrenia; treatment resistant schizophrenia; schizoaffective disorder; personality disorder; depressive ilness; acute social anxiety disorder; recurring acute psychitic episodes. One of the psychiatrists who treated me later went on to say I was a malingerer, and there was nothing wrong with me! lol.

There is a case cited in 'Beyond Prozac', where two psychiatrists, trained at the same medical school, at the same time, later in their careers saw the same patient, at different times, in different hospitals. Each gave her a different diagnosis, even though she reported the same symptomatology. Compare this to a broken leg, or diabetes. Any qualified physician in any equipped hospital, with the right diagnostic tools, will give the same diagnosis, and form a reliable prognosis. This is science. A doctor will not x-ray a broken leg, and say: 'That's a brain tumour right there' lol.

If mental distress is caused by chemicals and requires a biological and chemical treatment, then let it produce a definitive and reliable chemical test. And having done so, let it apply the chemical treatment, i.e. drug therapy, with consistent results.

Until that time, it remains a pseudo-science.

This is an interesting discussion, and one that relates directly to my everday life. Maybe a new thread for it would be good?

BTW, Diddy-D, one A&E psych who saw me when I was bought in during an accute episode blamed my medicine 'non-compliance' (gotta love that term) on laziness.

Ah right, thanks

(I'd read it as "bashing" in the sense of attacking - "Paki-bashing" etc. - and was a bit concerned lol)

@ RedEd. Hiya. Thanks for your reply. I avoid psychiatric medications like the plague lol cos I don't think they actually have any therapeutic application. Some of the minor tranquilizers (like Diazepam) are very effective at countering anxiety, but the problem with them is they are tablets of addiction. Anti-psychotics are totally horrendous, even the (supposedly) benign ones like Aripiprazole. And some of the opinions the state bureaucrats and lackeys who run the NHS and Social Services, come out with, is, well, utter rubbish. So far as I am concerned, they are (though well-meaning), tools of the bosses, and oppressors.

And @jonthom, again thanks for your reply. And no worries man. It's easily done. Your position on disability is well cool. I have total RESPECT for you, my friend.

This is going to be a perennial debate and has a large element of truth (especially the issue of whiteness). Just feel the need to point at a. 'University Educated' really means a lot less post New Labour and b. I'm not sure about the assumption that the university educated have no experience of being workers or being in communities. University students often have to juggle their time with really precarious labour and free labour (internships). I myself went to university but have also worked in upwards of ten workplaces, including factories. I feel we need to be more nuanced rather than just perpetuate the myth that the left are all university educated and thus completely completely divorced from the 'ordinary' (especially considering having a degree has become pretty ordinary now-a-days).

Thanks for that, I had a feeling the incidence was higher, but would be interested to read more about the therapy and recovery rates.

Not sure about the first part, most people regard psychiatrists as quacks obsessed with their mothers. To my mind mind that is one of the bars to getting help. Just as mental disorders aren't seen as legitimate by some because they are in the mind so they think it's about will, I think others think that you don't get real doctors because it's not a real disease.
I agree that science should be repeatable. I'm just not sure that with the complexity of the human brain, the infinite factors in play, the co-existence of conditions and the impossibilty of isolating any one variable for scientific evaluation it is going to be much harder to treat mental problems than physical ones. The understanding of brain chemistry is also far behind the study of other parts of the human body as you no doubt know.

@ Jef costello. Thanks for your reply, mate.

Another interesting point on scizophrenia, is that some psychiatrists maintain it has to do with genetic abnormalities in the brain. Terry Lynch in his book BEYOND PROZAC, cites studies of Afro-carribean immigrants into the UK. It was found that they were SIXTEEN times more likely to develop the symptoms of, and be diagnosed with schizophrenia, than their immediate relatives who had remained in the Carribean.

If schizophrenia is connected with genetic abnormalities or has a chemical cause, you would expect the incidence to be the same, or very similar, in both the immigrant communities and those who remained behind in their homeland.

Lynch concludes that the immigrants into the UK, cos they are subjected to racism, exclusion, poverty, harrassment and so on, experience more incidences of trauma (for example, violent racist attack), or sustained stress, due to ongoing poverty, dicrimination and do on. It is these economic, social and interpersonal difficulties, that give rise to peeps 'losing their minds', rather than inherited genetic traits.

It's not as if their genetics and brain structures underwent a massive transformation, cos they emigrated. The problems are social in origin, and require a social solution.

Surely an equally valid reading of the study you cite is that adverse social conditions made people with an existing genetic disposition to schizophrenia devellop schizophrenia to an accute level. There might also be differences in the way schizophrenia (a pretty broad term, almost to the point of uselessness, IMO) presents, differences in the way mental health is medicalised, the level of exposure of populations to medical profesionals, the readiness of medical professionals in different coutries to give a certain diagnosis or diagnose at all.

It seem to me to be obviously the case, in a trivial sense, that schizophrenia has a genetic basis, in that you need the genes to develop a human brain to devellop schizophrenia. It's also triviallly the case that schizophrenia has a nuerological and chemical basis, since brain work through their nuerology and nuerochemistry, you can't have any mental state without those things, from hapiness to pain to wakefulness or whatever. So the question is, what does the neurology and neurochemistry of schizophrenia look like, and what genetic factors predispose a brain to that state of affairs? The same question can be asked about any psychological feature*

The problem with psychiatry is not that it asks those obviously legitimate questions, but that it acts with too little knowledge and too much self confidence. Anti-psychotics obviously interact with most cases of schizophrenia, but then again, drinking alcohol pretty reliably lowers inhibitions in people with social anxiety disorder, but you don't see that proscribed (where as you do valium, which is just as addictive, if not more so). So psychiatrists aren't wrong when they say, 'we have mediactions that reduce certain symptoms of schizophrenia', but that doesn't mean they are necessarily doing anything useful.

What's more psychiatry structurally treats individuals, not societies, communities or usually even families. So does most clinical psychology, and, these days, mental health social work. Therefore psychiatry can only ever be very partially effective, since we don't experience our lives as isolated atoms (much as bourgeoise ideology wishes we did) but in terms of our relations to the people and world around us.

The problem is not that psychiatry doesn't have a role in treating mental ill health, it's that psychiatry tries to treat mental ill health on it's own, substituting itself for dozens of other factors and thus often doing more harm than good. In other words it's psychiatry as bourgeoise ideology and social control mechanism that's the problem, not psychology as a science, which is only a small part of what psychiatry is in today's society.

* these considerations obviously do not preclude dozens of other factors, such as nutrition in the womb and during development, mental stimulation during devellopment, and a myriad of social factors.

Wow,

Can we skip the popular imagination part and just straight up say psychiatry is pseudo-science?

The one valid point in your argument is that people sadly dismiss those experiencing mental distress. They shouldn't.

But the argument you've brought to the table for psychiatry being anything but a complete fraud is ... that people shouldn't believe that 'cause it stops them going to psychiatrists! In case you hadn't noticed, the unscientificness of much ordinary medicine is getting quite a bit of play in the mainstream press. But psychiatry is worse, much worse than that.

Perhaps they don't think they'll get "real doctors" (whatever that means) because psychiatry has been discredit multiple times and because scientific authorities under capitalism tend to be abusive assholes.

All that said, the problem of people experiencing mental distress of many sorts is sadly through predictably common in our fine capitalist society. It would indeed be nice if the solution was as easy as "get help". Unfortunately, you haven't provided even an argument that it is. I wouldn't even say that one should always refuse the rough ministrations of the fine Mental Health professions but I wouldn't dismiss those who offer fairly intense criticism of them.

To be fair, there are 'anti-psychiatry' psychiatrists. R. D. Laing for example. Also, Thomas Szasz, who wrote the excellent book 'The Myth of Mental Ilness', in which he postulates that 'mental illness' is almost a new form of demonology. And Peter Breggin, with his work 'Toxic Psychiatry'. Then there are sociologists such as Erving Goffman, who wrote the book 'Asylums'.

These are radical peeps indeed. But much of the criticism comes from within mainstream psychiatry itself. The founding fathers of modern psychiatry, even conceded that there was no reliability in their diagnostics and prognostics (Emil Kraepelin, for example). And the (British) Institute of Psychiatry reccognizes its own limitations.

I have nothing against psychiatry where they talk dimensionality. Whilst they cannot agree on a diagnosis or prognosis, they can usually agree on the 'severity' of someone's problems. If they make less use of the anti-psychotic medications and the ECT treatments, I would have more time for them. And to be fair, the culture (in the UK at least) has changed. There is mch less use of ECT. And the mega-dosing and 'polypharmacy' (administration of more than one anti-psychotic at the same time) is far less routine.

The social work and psychological side of the mental health initiaives, I do not on the whole have a problem with. Some peeps regard 'talking treatments' as a subtle form of mind control. Myself, I think Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Cognitive Analytic Therapy are helpful and uselful tools.

What I would like to see, is an extension of the service-user movement, where we 'do it for ourselves'. The more stable existing and ex-service users, already run projects such as mentoring their peers, funded with NHS and Social Services finance. I wish to see a far greater transfer of resources into this area.

The recovering and the recovered, with the lived experience under their belts, are in good empathatic position to help their suffering peers.

Some great posts here, especially from Diddy.

On a mental health front, I would say that for many conditions like anxiety, depression, etc, some mental health professionals, particularly psychotherapists, CBT practitioners etc can be extremely helpful for many sufferers.

Thanks Steven.

The anti-psychotic medications laid me to waste, and fucked-up my life for many years. Now I use them only as and when, and am very, very careful with them. Cos they creep up on you insidiously, and you do not realize the harm they have done, until they are withdrawn.

Cognitive Analytic Therapy I found very helpful. But I had to wait for years and years to get, and only by mounting my own personal 'campaign' if you like, did I get it. Many peeps are not able to put themselves forward like I do.

I would also add that many people find medication to be helpful, alongside CBT or other therapies.

Poor prescribing practice in some cases shouldn't put people off using medication altogether.

That's because most people don't know the difference between psychiatrists and psychologists. The "talk to me about your mother" cliché is from psychology (or even more specifically, psychoanalysis), not psychiatry.

Psychiatrists are Medical Doctors and the only mental health professionals that can prescribe psychiatric medication. And boy do they. There is a strong tendency here for them to focus on the biomedical model of mental illness (brain chemistry imbalances) to the exclusion of everything else. Often when a psychiatrist is talking to a patient, the conversation is instrumental in that they are just assessing what symptoms the patient is exhibiting, rather than paying any attention to the actual content of the conversation, or what it might be saying about problems that person might be having in their life, rather than just in their head. In the extreme, they can reject any theory of mind entirely.

Anti-psychiatry was a reaction to this biochemical reductionism, aiming to treat the person as a person, rather than necessarily just a blanket aversion to all medication per se.

There was a guy in one of our reading groups back in the day who was a health professional who'd gone into a psychiatry course thinking it was psychology, only to realise what a horrible mistake he had made. Psychology may also be unscientific for the same reasons given by Diddy D above, but at least they are listening to the content of what you're saying, rather than just calculating what drug to hit you with next.

@ tigersiskillers. I agree with you. Many of my friends say the medication helps them, and if that's fair enough and they are happy to take them, then that is their choice. But they usually report going through sheer hell before a medication suits, and often I think it's the social aspects of their care, such as the 'sick role', and having their problems at least addressed, that helps. It also depends on the nature of the drugs they're taking. If peeps are getting CBT, for example, then often it tends to be anti-depressants and/or minor tranquilizers such as benzodiazepines that they're on. These have their own problems (benzos are tablets of addiction for example). But they are relatively benign compared to anti-psychotics.

@ocelot. My psychologist was an excellent guy. I have never met a more patient, kind, considerate and understanding individual. He was as much in favour of the social model as I, but I didn't realize this until a few meetings with him. It was only when I made my reservations about psychiatry known, that he indicated the same. He lent me a brilliant book on the whole topic, and I got well engrossed in it. I can't even remember the title now. I've been discharged from psychological review now (but not psychiatric review lol). I might get in touch with him, and ask about the book, and purchase a copy myself.