In Defence of Education

“A riot” Martin Luther King Junior once said “is the language of the unheard”; the clamour of a disenfranchised people ultimately frustrated by those in authority that are not listening to or just plain ignoring. Regardless of legitimacy of the action, the last few months has witnessed British students’ attempts to have their utterances heard. However, the voice is a confused one, with the significance of the message diluted by each interested party and subversive group, this allows for media outlets to characterise these demonstrations as disorganised, capricious, irrelevant and anti-democratic. If the students are to continue to demonstrate against the introduction of shamefully high tuition fees and the scrapping of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), there needs to be a complete re-evaluation of strategy, leadership and message.

The education system in Britain is on the verge of returning to the elitist abomination that has plagued this country for centuries, a system that rewards privilege and patronage rather than ability and aptitude. If this is allowed to standBritainwill be a poorer country, not only economically, but also morally with people from less privileged backgrounds never realising their full potential due to economic barriers besetting them at every turn. John Wooden often quoted “try to be the best you can be” will be replaced by “try to be the best your parents can afford”.

There are many benefits of a formal education; the attainment of knowledge, the development of character and social skills and the acquisition critical analysis, all to the amelioration of the individual and society. However, the principal individual benefit of a formal education is the discovery of a larger world outside the classroom walls, a world of endless opportunity in which a person can, with sufficient effort, achieve their ambitions. This concept of social mobility is of vital importance in any equitable society and must be ingrained into the education system, because if it does not exist here, it is nearly impossible for it to exist elsewhere in society. Social mobility has stalled recently and, with the introduction of higher tuition fees and the scrapping of the EMA, it will doubtlessly further regress. Currently, most journalist, politicians and business executives are from a very narrow social group, most will have attended private school and studied at Oxford and Cambridge; for instance, 88% of students studying at Oxford are from an upper middle class background. The introduction of higher tuition fees will have little impact upon this elite social group, but it will on the majority of the population. Why should an unborn child have significantly less opportunities in life because their parents are working class?

The Coalition Government, including David Cameron, Nick Clegg, George Osborne and Vince Cable, are being duplicitous to the point of scaremongering, claiming that in order to ensure a “world-class” higher education system that these fees are utterly unavoidable and necessary. In one conceited breath the government claim that the introduction of these higher tuition fees are inevitable result of a mismanaged economy, whilst also revealing that they are slashing 80% of the universities teaching budget. This is not a pragmatic attempt to reduce waste in the current system, but an ideological attack upon the most basic rights of all people in Britain. Furthermore, according to the Times Educational Supplement in 2009, Britain has nineteen of the top one hundred universities in the world; this is an admirable performance considering the Prime Minister refuses to classify the higher education as “world-class”. Mr Cameron’s definition of “world-class” obviously differs significantly from mine. Education and the pursuit of personal development should not be a luxury that only the select few in society can attain, but a basic human right that is guaranteed at birth.

It would appear that the main crux of the Coalition’s argument is: why should society pay for something that only benefits the individual? As a society we make many informed choices, via our political representatives, which indeed do cost the collective a significant amount of money, but potentially only benefit one individual; from incapacity benefit to funding educational programs in prisons, there are countless examples of our society agreeing that the potential benefits simply outweigh the costs. For example, we may not personally benefit from a couple’s decision to undertake a cycle of IVF treatment on the NHS, which potentially costs in excess £8,000, or the use of a drug which helps a cancer sufferer live their last few months in bearable comfort, but as a society we acquiesce, the knowledge of these safety nets more than justifies the collective taxation and expenditure. It is the basis of our NHS and more importantly, the belief supporting our compassionate society.

However, it is wrong for the government to label higher education funding and the EMA as an expenditure, it should be considered above all else an investment in the future prosperity of Britain. It is inevitable that both the individual and society will benefit form a free higher education system. The immediate benefits maybe difficult to ascertain, even ten years from now the investment might not be easily recognisable, but a highly trained workforce will allow us, as a society, to meet the needs of a developing world and take advantage of new business opportunities that will doubtlessly arise.

Burdening today’s and tomorrow’s students with the prospect of crippling debt will only hinder society and the development of the country. Regardless of all the pithy reassurances by David Cameron that only those that can repay the £40,000 will repay, it is perception that determines reality not political posturing, and potential students from most social backgrounds will be deterred from attending higher education. Both the proposed system of higher tuition fees and the equally constraining ‘graduate tax’ are unfair taxations on knowledge, the current income tax structure already allows for the Treasury to benefit from a highly educated society, with higher earners paying significantly higher levels of tax than lower earners. Furthermore, the introduction of higher tuition fees will inhibit the amount of money that a student after university will be able to loan from banks and mortgage providers. In a letter that Vince Cable obtained from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML), it states that the new system of tuition fees will not inhibit an individual’s ability to obtain a mortgage, however, it then follows on to disclose that it affect the amount the individual is capable to borrow. The latter part of this letter was not so openly discussed as the former by Mr Cable.

This privatisation of higher education should be opposed by everyone. Britain should be an equitable country, with social mobility at the heart of government, instead I fear a maddening scramble to make all universities private companies, in which all ideas of equality are finally extinguished and no institution can be held accountable. Next it will be secondary education, then primary education and finally the NHS will be privatised. Then, and only then at the point of no return, will the government reveal that we are free of the deficit, but at what price?

“They came for the Communists,

And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,

And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,

And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they can for me,

And by that time no one was left to speak up.”

- Pastor Martin Niemöller (1946)

 

 

First Published on The Raconteur Website December 2010

First They Came…

For many years I attempted to avoid being pigeon-holed; a simple synopsis of my existence that could reduce me into a pithy short sentence. I despised the idea that my entire life could be condensed to a single epitaph that somehow allows strangers to easily surmise my thirty three years on this planet, and in doing so virtually dismiss my thoughts, ideas, emotions and achievements. Surely we all are more complex creatures that can be so concisely described; even a five year old child deserves more respect than a one dimensional description of their most overbearing characteristic. However, recently (and much to my chagrin) I have begun to realise that I can be pigeon-holed in a single epitaph, I can be summarized in a pithy sentence: my beliefs, my expectations, my perspective on the world can be condensed into nine simple words. I am a product of the late 20^th century. I am a product of the Miner’s Strike, of Debbie Harry on Top of the Pops, of the Cold War, of Thatcher’s Britain, of acid rain, of state education, of Glasnost, of the rolling back the state, of the fall of the Berlin Wall, of Italia 90, of Grunge, of the Gulf War, of Goodfellas, of Black Wednesday, of Tony Blair’s election victory and even a product of Princess Diana’s death. All these events and many more have somehow shaped me, made me the person I am today, for good or for ill. I am a child of the zeitgeist.

 

This individualistic example can be expanded to a greater truth. There is no revelation in the statement that the past has had a profound impact upon the present, since everything that has gone before has to some extent shaped modern society from the repealing of the Corn Laws to Robert Johnson’s choice at the crossroads. Everything in our society is derived from the collective memories and historical choices of individuals, groups and institutions – however, it is this collective memory that serves to not only advance our society by allowing us the advantages of hindsight, but also shackles us unhealthily to a bygone era that retards development. There is a dangerous common assumption that life and society was preferable at some other juncture in history, the concept that our ancestors knew better than us is a belief that is held by many in society. Apparently our forefathers were more moral, more philanthropic and more conscientious than their contemporary counterparts, an idea that utopia has existed in a historical context has been pedalled by too many politicians than to be healthy. Like the modern shaman, quick to invoke the spirit of our ancestors, these politicians assign a nobility to the past that it neither warrants or deserves, whilst continually perpetuating the myth that society ‘has gone to the dogs’. BrokenBritain, anyone?

 

For instance, recall John Major’s now infamous condemnation of modern society when he stated that “fifty years on from now, Britain will still be the country of the long shadows on cricket grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and, as George Orwell said, ‘old maids bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist’ and, if we get our way, Shakespeare will still be read even in school.” Indeed it conjures a warm sense of continuity that comforts many people, even those that never have experienced these worn and tired clichés. Obviously a future, no matter how enticing with promises of infinite possibilities, equality, and democratic opportunities, can not compete with the sepia tinted certainties of a past that was a reality for only a few.

 

There is an obvious question that is seldom asked when politicians, journalists or religious leaders invoke the past to denigrate the present: when? When were times so good that everyone in society wanted for nothing, that every baby born had an equal chance in life and every group or individual, no matter how marginalised, had equal access to work and public services? When? Surely it can’t be the 1980s when conspicuous consumption, mass unemployment, open discrimination and race riots were rife. No, it can’t be the 1980s, but could it be the 1960s after which paradise was lost. Beatlemania, the Summer of Love and many new social freedoms certainly help to cover over the cracks of a society that suffered the sort of institutional discrimination that affected everyone that was not male, from the south east ofEngland, white and middleclass. Also, the new fashion for drugs allowed the biggest expansion in organised crime that this country has ever witnessed, but as long as it was those loveable Kray Twins (who loved their mum) or that rogue Johnny Briggs, it was acceptable. It seems that the 1960s had a way romanticising every aspect of its character, even for the most brutal and violent men of the time. So it must be the 1940s, with its Blitz and Dunkerque spirit, that must be the golden age of society when everyone banded together to beat the Germans and create the NHS, right? Well, sadly no. The unconscionable suffering and lost during the war years, in which many hundreds of thousands of innocent people lost their lives surely negates the society in the 1940s being considered better than its current incarnation.

 

It is obvious the further we travel back in time the further we travel away from John of Gaunt’s assertion thatBritainis “This royal throne of Kings, this scepter’d isle… This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, thisEngland” and closer to Thomas Hobbes’ identification that life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” But it is of the utmost importance that we, as individuals and as a society, understand how our society has evolved into its present incarnation in order to prepare for all future struggles. Modern society is not by any means perfect, the list of our social ills, system failures and political corruption is long. Indeed this article potentially could be filled by the individual and societal errors that have been made; starting with alcoholism, institutional failure, hooliganism, workless lives, inequality, poor education and so on, but the list is exhaustive and we have hope. We, as a nation, have a choice; either we allow the continual evolution of society, attempting to eradicate poverty, inequality and discrimination, or we can retreat to a nostalgic utopia that simply can not exist, in which patronage replaces meritocracy and opportunity is limited to the select few.

 

Frederick Douglass, an American civil rights campaigner, once defined the struggle of all marginalised communities, when he observed “freedom is a road seldom travelled by the multitude” this speech inspired a generation of political leaders to guide their people out of the wilderness. At the heart of this statement are the twin concepts of equality and individual freedoms, similar to those described by JS Mill. It is a complete myth that contemporaryBritainhas an equal society, there is social and institutional inequality everywhere from gender inequality to race discrimination, potentially the biggest impact upon a person’s ability to succeed in life is not the content of their character, but the accident of their birth. There is a definitive correlation between a child born into relative privilege, who can pursue a life of education, choice and individual freedoms, and a child who does not have such advantages at birth, according to most statistical indicators this child will attain a significantly poorer standard of education, earn a lower average wage, more likely to commit crime and have a shorter life expectancy.

 

Therefore, it is my assertion that the ambition for any individual, politician or government should be equal access to all institutions and equal opportunities for all its citizens, since only in an equal and modern society can a nation attain its full potential. Furthermore, because we all heavily rely upon others in society for our own prosperity we should all wish to achieve this equality, whether it is entrepreneurs creating employment opportunities or refuse collectors maintaining street hygiene, everyone in society matters and should have an equal opportunity for participation. To paraphrase Barack Obama, at his eloquent best, ‘if there’s a child on the south side ofBirminghamwho can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandmother. If there’s an Arab-British family being rounded up without benefit of a solicitor or due process, that threatens my civil liberties… [Society] is what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single British family.’ It is my belief that the best instrument to create this modern, fair and equitable society is a democratically elected government, which is truly accountable and open to scrutiny. Currently this is not the situation.

 

So why write this blog? Presently Britainis politically and ideologically standing at Robert Johnson’s crossroads, blindfolded: the outcomes of our government’s policy decisions are not certain and even less clear, but one wrong step and millions of people will be signing a social contract with the devil. With the ambition of an equitable society, it is time for the government to undergo a process of reflection and renewal of itself and its primary institutions, this means creating new institutions that can meet and react to the needs of contemporary society, not attempting to conserve current departments due to their heritage. There is a time lag where institutions become outdated to meet the challenges of a modern society, these institutions represent solutions for problems that existed decades, and in some cases centuries, ago and have been kneaded and manipulated to continue the status quo. For instance, the House of Lords is a constitutional relic that has no real relevance to a modern nation, but due to its perceived historical significance it remains as a carbuncle on the face of British democracy. There is a more personal reason to write this blog, I am hoping that this becomes a cathartic experience allowing a political release for my ideas, thoughts and musings. I am hoping it will become a clear and unfussy record of how I believe the government should be reorganised in order to achieve this equitable society, I do not wish it to become a manifesto, but more an open discussion on the state of British society. There is little doubt that children growing up now will be products of the early 21^st century, I just hope that implies modernity and equality.

 

 

First Published on The Raconteur Website November 2010

JS Mill – Genius

Most political philosophers are a profound product of their time – they occupy and remain fixed in a specific era that easily identifies them as a child of a certain generation; it is easy to admire with hindsight, Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women or Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, but it is vital to view them from a historical context, if not to diminish their framework of understanding. However, there are a few political philosophers that can reach across the generations, they speak as clearly now as they did to our parents and grandparents – their ideas, writings and teachings have shaped (and continue to shape) all human endeavours. For the Western democracies, this tradition began with the classical philosophers of Aristotle, Plato and Socrates who instigated the debate concerning the role of man, society and the state. Their genius lies, not in the accumulation and reproduction of abstract knowledge, but in their identification of a legitimate blueprint of the human condition on which a society can develop and evolve; the truest test of their genius surely is whether a society has benefited from the application of their teachings. It is within the building blocks of the classic philosophical tradition that John Stuart Mill produced his groundbreaking work On Liberty, the classic liberal text that now defines the democracy and the society that we all currently inhabit. Benjamin Franklin once wrote “we should strive to either write something worth reading or do something worth the writing”, it is without contention that John Stuart Mill accomplished both of these conditions.

 

To understand the importance of John Stuart Mill and his writings in the canon of 19^th century British philosophical thinking, it is of vital significance to appreciate both the political and social climate that was prevalent in Mill’s society and his often-studied childhood. During his formative years, the young JS Mill received an extraordinary education from his father, the utilitarian philosopher, James Mill and their friend Jeremy Bentham, the founder of the utilitarian principle. He began learning Greek at the age of three, absorbing and studying classical Latin and European literature over the next several years; by the age of ten, Mill was fluent in Greek, Latin and other romance languages and had completed his studies of Plato’s six dialogues. It was not until the age of fourteen, once JS Mill had mastered economics, arithmetic and logic theory, that his father allowed him contact with children of his own age, due mainly to James Mill’s insistence that other children would only distract and dampen his son’s prodigious talents. His education is vividly described in his Autobiography (1873), which has taken its place alongside Plato’s Republic and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile as one of the best-known philosophical treatises on education.

 

Perhaps the romantic belief of a tormented genius is a cliché; a life spent in tortuous solitude, attempting to overcome their own self-doubts and personal demons, only to produce the hollow vessel of another masterpiece. But, the intensity of John Stuart Mill’s education partly attributed to the misery he endured as a young adult, suffering a nervous breakdown at the age of twenty two, he claimed that his teachings had failed him in two respects: it starved his emotional development and stunted his will; he feared he was a mechanical device, that was constructed to his father’s design, with no independent human power of thought or action. Conversely, it was these very traumatic experiences that helped him construct his radical concepts concerning the relationships between the individual, the state and freedom of thought and speech, in later life.

 

To understand the extent to which John Stuart Mill’s work has pervaded all the Western democracies, it is of vital importance to clarify the label ‘liberal’ on Mill’s terms. The concept of liberalism, as developed and discussed by JS Mill in On Liberty, revolves around the hypothesis that the individual may have the freedom to think, speak or act as they please within the rule of law. At its core, JS Mill’s idea of liberalism identifies that only the individual, not the state, has the right to decide what is best for themselves, allowing for elected representatives to exercise a certain degree of authority for the general good of society. This notion of liberalism has its theoretical roots in the social treatises of John Locke and Adam Smith; however, it is not to be confused with the modern media driven interpretation of liberalism as an alternate word for leniency and self-indulgence. For instance, allowing an individual to pursue happiness by living in a cave away from the rest of society is totally in adherence to liberal principles since they bring no harm upon anyone else. However, releasing a convicted murderer without completion of their prison term is not a liberal principle but a media aberration designed to blame someone less right wing than themselves for the state of a so-called “Broken Britain”.

 

A theme that develops throughout John Stuart Mill’s philosophies is the struggle for freedom, by the individual, against the twin threat of political and moral authority. Within this concept, JS Mill was less concerned with political authority, in the sense of a government’s ability to get its commands obeyed by the general public, since this was willingly given up to elected representatives on a pre-determined and limited timescale. Conversely, JS Mill grew increasingly agitated with the moral authority impacting upon the freedoms of the individual, insomuch that this is described as a society’s psychological hold and influence over its members. The connotations of the moral authority issue are twofold: the first is that if a democracy has too little moral authority, there would be no general standards in which the individual could judge whether one person’s idea and values were better grounded than their own, since there would be no reference point; secondly, JS Mill fear a society could suffer from an over abundance of moral authority. Here he was afraid that an oppressive public opinion would force a society to think and feel as a homogenised mass of humanity, in which no individual was allowed to think or speak against the moral majority for fear of exclusion and harm. Furthermore, JS Mill theorised that a government, which is dominated by public opinion, could hardly do other than enact public prejudice into law. This was the tyranny that JS Mill wrote On Liberty to combat and the rallying cry was simple “The only freedom worth the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way”.

 

Likening his moral authority assertion to despotism, John Stuart Mill theorised that if ninety nine percent of people adhered to a convention or tradition, they would have no rights in law to enforce their beliefs upon the remaining one percent, just as the one percent would have no legal rights to force their traditions and conventions on the majority. For individuals in Victorian Britain these conventions possibly could relate to anti-religious beliefs or unconventional lifestyles, but equally in a modern society these conventions could be substituted for sexual, racial or ethnic prejudice. To resist the tyranny of the despot or majority opinion JS Mill suggested the adoption of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s simple and inspired concept of ‘two sidedness’; a principle that states that all individually held beliefs, conventions, traditions, religions and knowledge must be argued against, on a personal level and in a public forum.

 

Rejecting the thesis of an absolute truth, JS Mill theorised that a person cannot claim to truly know something if they have not defended it from all forms of criticism. Even the papacy appoints a devil’s advocate when proposing to canonise a saint in order to hear all critical arguments against their potential selections; and JS Mill suggests that as individuals we must do the same, seek dissenting voices in order to understand what we do or do not believe. It can be ascertained that the individual must be able to attain freedom of thought and speech, not just to uncover new truths about any external reality, but also to discover new truths about how the individual may live their own life. The individual can only prosper if freedom of thought and speech are actively sought and encouraged in a tolerant and liberal society, in which all truths can openly discussed. However, the individual must accept that not all forms of speech can be free, JS Mill cites that lying or incitement must be prohibited. Using the example of the corn-dealers, JS Mill explains that a man waving a placard stating that ‘all corn-dealers are thieves’ before an angry crowd, in front of a corn-dealer’s house is not exercising his right to free speech but is maliciously inciting a mob to inflict harm on an individual – and is being “self evidently wicked”.

 

The use of the term ‘individual’ throughout John Stuart Mill’s theorises is a deliberate and conscious choice, since JS Mill believed in a completely equitable society, in which both men and women have equal rights to pursue their individual freedoms enshrined in law. It was not that the concept of gender equality was original when The Subjection of Women was released in 1869, there had been many treaties concerning the rights of women plus an active suffrage movement was beginning to develop, but the inclusion of complete gender equality in an overarching political tradition was truly groundbreaking. For instance, the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft were remarkably apolitical in nature, giving an abstract philosophical perspective rather than a grounded political treatises; even the great utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham and his own father James Mill did not believe in complete female emancipation. In essence, JS Mill stood alone in believing that equality, justice and a respect for individual autonomy should permeate all our relationships. To achieve this goal of an equitable society JS Mill proposed that women should be free of the constraints of organised marriages and “drudgery of child bearing and child rearing”; the woman’s mind and body is her own. Even though JS Mill never expressly placed this concept in his writings (for fear of the moral majority, perhaps), he believed that birth control was vital in a woman’s struggle for emancipation. ‘Respectable’ opinion haunted JS Mill; he had been arrested and placed in prison for a while as a youth for distributing pamphlets advocating the use of birth control, which ultimately prevented his burial at Westminster Abbey.

 

The implications for practical governance of JS Mill concepts concerning the rights of the individual, freedom of thought and speech, limits on state authority and gender equality, are quite simple. With echoes of James Mill’s ‘greatest happiness principle’, JS Mill stated that the individual must seek their own happiness; furthermore, the persons in authority must use their limited power to enhance the individual’s efforts to gain happiness, rather than obstruct it. Therefore, it follows that a liberal democracy must be the goal that all individuals in society aspire to; since only in a representative liberal democracy are the rulers and the ruled the same persons. For instance, due to the fact that the rulers and the ruled are the same persons, the individual in authority shall not exploit or fail to promote the society’s best interest, since the best interests of the individual and society are the same. However, in all other forms of governance, such as despotism, authoritarianism and an oligarchy, the rulers and the ruled are separate, in which the individuals in authority will pursue their own happiness rather than that of society. However, given the recent bloodshed during the French Revolution under the banner of democracy, JS Mill did elaborate on a number of caveats to this potentially overtly simple principle; he thought the type of government a society needs is dependant upon the stage of historical progress of that society. JS Mill argued that sometimes despotism might be the most efficient way to allow the individual to pursue their happiness in society.

 

The legacy of John Stuart Mill’s political, economic and philosophical theories can easily be identified in our contemporary society: since it pervades all aspects of our modern life. In Britain, there have been numerous Acts of Parliament which have been influence by, or directly attributable, to JS Mill and On Liberty.  From the NHS to equal pay legislation and from religious tolerance to universal education, these all have their roots inextricably detailed in JS Mill’s writings on the individual. Therefore, it is possible to make the assertion that the greatest contribution that JS Mill has given global politics is not an original concept or idea, but a framework of understanding in which to openly and freely discuss all original concepts and ideas. Furthermore, the unsurpassed achievement of On Liberty is that it is a truly contemporary book, with its issues and understandings just as relevant to a twenty-first century audience as it was to a nineteenth century audience. In reality, On Liberty has provided a blueprint for the world’s liberal democracies in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Now that is a genius.

 

 

First Published in The Raconteur June 2010

Noam Chomsky Article

Through the vast cascade of unfathomable chattering and half spoken truths of international politics, the individual is deafened to all but the loudest and most visceral. But cutting this grotesque clamour is a voice. Just a quiet, frail and unassuming voice, which imparts all the wisdom and confidence of a man that believes he is justified in his plight, struggling against the inequalities that beset this troubled world. From inspiring global activism to criticizing imperialistic foreign intervention, this voice has articulated and defined the counter-culture for the last half a century. Noam Chomsky has a voice that can be heard clearly across every city on every continent and that speaks to people on terms that they comprehend.

 

There are very few multi-disciplinarians that are given credence in modern society (much to the possible chagrin of other true multi-disciplinarians such as Bertrand Russell and Harold Pinter) everyone is allowed one area of expertise, with a few notable exceptions. Noam Chomsky certainly is a notable exception. As a Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology inBoston, he has redefined much of the pre-existing understanding concerning generative grammar, development of language and cognitive psychology through experimental research. The impact of these developments has sent seismic shockwaves through many related areas of study; computer science, verbal behaviour and linguistic relativity. However, for all his linguistic and academic endeavours, Noam Chomsky would have remained an obscure footnote in the public conscience (destined to be only being referenced by his peers and self help books) if he had not entered the gladiatorial arena of politics and political philosophy. It is here that Chomskyan became a byword for dissention and counter-culture.

 

What distinguishes Noam Chomsky from many other political philosophers, such as J. S. Mill, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, is that there is no overarching principle concerning the nature of the human condition or novel insight. Instead Chomsky’s political philosophy is established in the pragmatism of scientific hypotheses, in which all theories are tested and scrutinized via intricate study of all possible scenarios. On the surface this seems only too logical and routine; a hypothesis is developed and tested, with conclusions supporting all the data with in the framework of understanding. However, politics is power and perception, not facts, determine decision making. It is with this knowledge that Chomsky’s great contribution to politics is realised; his mastery of a huge wealth of factual information, and his prodigious ability to uncovering the deceptions of governments and institutions.

 

In trying to understand Chomsky’s political philosophies many critics and supporters alike have attempted to pigeon hole many of his core beliefs into bite size categories that oversimplify many of the intricate arguments he develops; social liberalist, anarchist and most inaccurately a communist, have all been attached to Chomsky. It is true that much of his work contains elements of all these labels, but the concept that underpins everything Chomsky produces is that no institution, government or person in authority can be self justifying in that position. Just because they exist in the present does not immediately entitle there continuing existence in the future. This sceptical attitude towards hierarchical domination and the consequential burden of proof that these institutions must provide can be reviewed in most of Chomsky’s political writings, from Failed States to Hegemony or Survival. It is with in these titles that Chomsky is devastatingly pre-eminent, when sounding a call to arms against the military-industrial complex, environmental crises, the modern media and American interventionist foreign policy.

 

It was with the release of the seminal work Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media that Noam Chomsky, along with Edward Herman, began to combine the many fractious elements of linguistics, psychology and politics to produce a truly ground breaking concept. In essence the study explores the relationship between the media, governmental institutions and public perception in an open democracy such as theUnited States. The results allow for the development of a ‘propaganda model’ of news, in which Chomsky asserts that the media, whether knowingly or unknowingly conform to a system of public control, in which the reporting of news supports requirements of the elite– that is “propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state”. Underlying this ‘propaganda model’ and many of Noam Chomsky’s subsequent works is the concept of freedom of thought of society and the individual. It is an unusual concept, in so much that it would initially appear counter intuitive; surely an individual can think freely, even if their freedom of speech is inhibited? The simple answer is no, Chomsky elaborates to explain that without a critical framework in which thoughts are developed, it is possibly to define an alternate reality; a reality that language defines.

 

An example of how a government can influence, and possibly change, the framework in which individuals understand and comprehend certain situations can be reviewed in the terrorist attacks on 11^th September 2001. George W. Bush announced that “America was targeted for attack because we are the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world”, this was mostly echoed in the mainstream media and subsequently the public began to regurgitate this overly simplistic refrain. In one guileless statement the American government had transformed the framework of understanding of a complex issue into an attack by the ‘childish bad guys’ against us the ‘innocent good guys’. In a contemporary society, that requires intervention by government at most levels in the community, from local to international, Chomsky endeavours to teach people that the individual has a voice which can be heard above the din of populist conformity. Criticism and scrutiny perform a vital function in any pluralist democracy, therefore, it is essential that philosophers, like Noam Chomsky, continue to produce work that both invigorates and reviles; they offer the checks and balances needed to scrutinise the institutions of power. It is little wonder that Chomsky, along with Karl Marx and the Bible, are amongst the ten most quoted sources in the humanities.

 

 

First Published in The Raconteur February 2010

Do We Get The Politicians We Deserve?

The Fourth Estate has always been a powerful force in British politics; the concept that the free press will serve as a watchman against the hubris of the political caste is as comforting as it is essential for democracy to thrive. Witness the checks and balances offered by the Washington Post during the Watergate scandal that ultimately led to the downfall of the Nixon Administration or the exposition of MP’s expenses by the Daily Telegraph and Heather Brooke. Political journalists can, and often do, offer a vital service to the public who rely upon their investigative abilities.

However, for every Heather Brooke or Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, there are many more political journalists that believe the only way to expose the truth from a politician is by claiming it from their cold, dead hands after besting them in an interview. This is a far cry from the political interviews of Harold Macmillan’s generation, a more reverential era in which journalists would allow the politicians to make any claim without any form of intellectual challenge, therefore it was impossible for politicians to be held to account by the general electorate. Now political interviews are more a game of cat and mouse, in which the journalist will attempt to trip up a politician by a series of “hard” questions, whilst the politician will attempt to stay “on message” for as long as possible. The end result is a less glamorous, political version of Gladiators, sadly without John Fashanu and Ulrika Jonsson.

The issue is – politicians in many instances can only speak in insincere, vague half-truths that have been dictated to them by the Communications Director or the Party Whip; the new policy initiative might be contrary to personal beliefs or previous statements but the individual politician has to support it. The interviewer is fully aware of any internal conflict that the politician maybe suffering and spends the whole interview labouring around one specific point. Often there is no winner and the general public are none the wiser about any new policy initiative that the politician is attempting to promote.

Furthermore, there is a great dichotomy for any politician – how much of the truth can you divulge? A major theme during the last General Election was the news reporting, via vox pops and radio phone-ins, people just wanted the truth, the unadulterated truth; the general electorate where ready to hear the Uncomfortable Truth. Sadly, the quickest way for a politician or party to become unelectable is for them to start telling the public how it is; if during the election campaign any of the three main parties said that Britain was going to suffer a prolonged period of austerity in which VAT will rise to 20%, inflation would pass 5%, unemployment would continue to increase and many thousands of public sector jobs would be cut, how many people would actually vote for them? How many media outlets would utterly destroy that politician?

People would rather vote for Mary Poppins telling them that a spoon full of sugar will help the medicine go down, than for Private Frazer from Dad’s Army tell us that “We doomed, I tell ye!”. It is only natural…

So why are there so many bland and inter-changeable politicians? Well, as Darwin’s theories on evolution state, the most successful species are the ones that are the quickest to adapt to their environment. The politicians we have now are the politicians that are the quickest to adapt to their environment, that is, they are the most electable – we get the politicians we deserve. As Jack Nicholson points out in the film A Few Good Men, “you want the truth, you want the truth… YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!”

And sometimes the politicians get the Paxman they deserve…..