Splinter Groups
Something interesting here from the Guardian. I’m not entirely sure (well not sure at all really) what to make of it, because I’ve heard George Monbiot say very silly things, and I’ve read very sensible things in spiked. That’s why we link to spiked now and then, and once at their invitation re-published an article of theirs. A good article it was, too. But then again, as I’ve said before, the free market agenda is not my agenda, and I’m not particularly eager to assist the agenda of people who want the market to decide all disputes in its own interest.
But I also don’t want such thoughts to inhibit me from linking to articles I think are good on their merits. So on the whole I try not to do that. But then it seems like a good idea to make the information available.
Philip Stott has a good post on the subject.
Well, one reason, George, is the fact that much of the left seems to have abandoned the Enlightenment completely, which has put many mildly left-wing scientists (like yours truly) in a bit of a bind…Indeed, I will write for most reasonable outlets so long as I can write honestly about what I believe and if my poor scribblings are not edited out of all recognition (and, I may add, Sp!ked has a better track record than The Grauniad on that front!). My ‘natural’ outlet would, in the past, have always been The Guardian – but that has become so emotive, so extreme, and so uncritical on the environment that I have been forced to migrate to more rational and tranquil waters. I hope I make up my mind on every issue carefully and on the evidence, an approach that seems to be at variance with the religious zeal of too many Guardian and Indy writers. Perhaps you and The Guardian might like to think about that a little.
One can even be more than mildly left-wing, as I think I am in some ways, and be dead set against abandoning the Enlightenment. In fact the Enlightenment was quite a radical phenomenon, and what one gets when one abandons it can be all too reactionary. Radical, yes, but them’s the wrong roots.
And an update for your favorites: Norm Geras has moved to a new site, so note new address.
The Monbiot article is actually really rather unpleasant (since much of it seems to be guilt by association or at least guilt by six degrees of separation) and more than a little censorious.
Spiked and the Institute of Ideas have always seemed to me to occupy a very distinct ideological niche, which doesn’t easily fit the conventional right/left dichotomy (or that of the third way for that matter); how many right-wingers do you know in favour of an open door asylum policy? Equally, does Monbiot really think that Fox and Furedi are ‘in favour of global warming?’ I don’t always agree with the Spiked worldview, but it is a distinct one and one I want to hear. If the far left could find better spokesmen than Monbiot maybe I’d want to listen to them too.
Good points. Though actually I do know of plenty of right-wingers – here in the US at least – who are in favour of an open door policy on immigration of all sorts, for reasons to do with the labour market. But just so, about the conventional left-right dichotomy – that really fails to describe so much. Not surprisingly, since politics is a huge and messy subject full of competing wants and conflicting goals, so two possibilities will hardly be enough to encompass the whole thing.
Well, I should certainly say that I cannot pretend to have a window into the right-wing mind, though as an anecdotal observation I’ve not come across many people on the right in the UK to hold such a position on immigration (I suspect it may simply be that libertarian, as opposed to conservative, views are not as common in the UK as in the US).
Full reply now at: http://www.logopolis.org.uk/weblog/2003_12_01_archive.html#107117790692516209
I think you’re right – libertarianism is very, very big here. A good thing in some ways, not so good (in my view) in others. And then so many people are so blithely unaware of any contradictions. I heard someone who has a new right wing something – magazine, radio station, I forget – talking about it on the radio the other day, and he said something about the conservative views of whatever it was – ‘Free markets and family values,’ he said cheerily, all in one breath. As if those two items blended seamlessly, as if there were nothing the slightest bit coercive about family values – as if he were (as he apparently in fact was) totally unaware of the coercive agenda behind talk of family values.
Well, quite. Free markets and family values was a good summation of the Thatcher government’s policies. The problem was that the economic policies had the effect of creating a much less collectivist society, one that was much less amenable to the idea of the state acting as a proxy for the church.
Monbiot labels them “libertarian right”. Two key planks of any “libertarian right” platform are low taxes and an attack on democratic politics. (The market, say libertarians, is better than democracy.)
But spiked has never to my knowledge run an article calling for lower taxes, and calls to bring back “real” politics are the main theme of spiked editorials.
The smear of being a corporate front works best on GM food. Monbiot pursues it because he sees the world from a green point of view, unable to believe anyone would rationally conclude society can benefit from development. But corporate sponsorship cannot explain why spiked defends abortion rights or the Institute of Ideas makes an issue out of repatriating bones, to name a few.
Just so. And another point is that spiked’s position on the repatriation of bones is the very opposite of many right-wing positions, because it’s a resolutely secular, pro-science view. Which just goes to show how unuseful the left-right distinction can be, sometimes. (The fact remains however that I will never ever vote for a [US] Republican.)