Harman on me on Harman on Latour on plasma ...

Graham Harman responds to my last post on Latour's 'plasma':

Following Jay Foster’s recent article, the Circling Squares blog claims that I’m overgeneralizing Latour’s plasma. ...

Here’s the central point where the critique goes astray: “[Plasma] isn’t something that is generalisable to all things and all relations since it pertains primarily to epistemic or social relations.”

This misses Latour’s entire point. “Society” for Latour has nothing to do with a social realm as opposed to other kinds of realms. The social for Latour contains absolutely everything, including fictional and nonexistent beings (as long as they have some sort of effect on other things).

The idea that the plasma isn’t inherently unformatted but simply not yet known to humans gives a central status to the human knower that is simply not part of Latour’s outlook.

In short, plasma is one of the most metaphysical concepts in all of Latour’s work. It cannot be tamed or decaffeinated by trying to claim that it’s just the harmless and tepid point that sociologists must humbly realize that they don’t know everything yet.

Instead, as explained in Prince of Networks, Latour needs to posit the plasma because his overidentification of things with their effects on other things leaves him with no way to explain change, and thus he ends up in the same position as the Megarians in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. It is an innate hazard of all relational ontologies, of which Latour has developed perhaps the most interesting version we’ve seen.

Another part I don’t like: “When talking about plasma Latour clearly has his sociological hat on, not his philosophical one.” (emphasis added) You can’t use the word “clearly” unless the case is actually clear; it shouldn’t be a clumsy battering ram used to assert that your opponent is so obviously off the mark that sustained argument is not even necessary.

Here’s a more general issue. To say that Latour sometimes wears a metaphysician’s hat and sometimes a sociologist’s hat is certainly true. But it is never true at those moments where he is in fact making metaphysical claims. The distinction between metaphysics and sociology cannot be invoked on an ad hoc basis simply to insulate Latour’s argument from extreme metaphysical consequences at the places where such consequences arise. The plasma is one of those cases. It is a striking invocation of something like the pre-Socratic apeiron, for reasons entirely necessary to Latour’s argument, and with the same difficult consequences we see among the pre-Socratics (and to some extent in contemporary arguments about “the virtual”.)

Okay, some of the above I can readily accept: my use of 'social' and 'epistemic' was rather imprecise and misleading. I apologise if my previous post came across as a "clumsy battering ram"; I hope this version of the argument is more incisive. I'm still working these points out, thinking them through and have yet to find anything like a satisfactory way of expressing them. I do, however, believe that I am right.

I fully understand that by 'social' Latour does not mean either a particular distinct realm or kind of stuff, nor does he mean anything purely human -- 'social' is not purely anything. As he defines it, 'social' simply means 'association,' which can occur between anything. However, whether or not "[t]he social for Latour contains absolutely everything" is another question entirely (and, happily, it gets to the heart of the matter). Personally, I could not disagree more and I find the contrary to be evident in pretty much everything Latour writes.

Again and again and again, throughout his works, Latour states that the social is fragile, narrow, particular and limited -- and he does this for very good reasons! It is because disconnection is the norm and connection is fragile and rare that tracing associations (the raison d'etre of ANT) is both (a) interesting and (b) possible (because associations are not infinite and unending). So, no, the social doesn't include "absolutely everything" -- it can include 'absolutely anything' but that is not the same thing at all. Profound disconnection is the (admittedly implicit) starting point for all his ANT, of which Paris, Ville Invisible, is, for me, perhaps the outstanding example. This text, along with others, leads me to understand the following:

The social only contains that which has been enrolled within the social. Without groundwater pH testing laboratories groundwater pH is not part of the social. With groundwater pH testing laboratories groundwater pH is as much a part of the social as handshakes or tennis. Without censuses peoples' ages or family sizes are not part of the social; with censuses they are. Before HIV was discovered and brought to public awareness it was not part of the social. It existed, it infected and killed people, it spread from person to person (or perhaps from hominid to hominid) and it was, therefore, both real and relational but it was not social.

'Social' does not describe everything altogether -- it only describes certain, narrowly defined areas of reality (which do not all overlap, themselves). These nooks and crannies are not 'realms' separate from the natural, the political, the economic, etc. but equally they are not coextensive with everything. By replacing the sociology of the social with the sociology of associations he does not make 'association' a synonym for 'relation' in a metaphysical sense. Asteroids bouncing off one another in another part of the galaxy are only 'social' if some techno-scientific apparatus ties them into the sociality of associations. That a collision is, in a manner of speaking, an association is true generally but not in the precise, technical sense with which Latour uses 'social.'

This is the impression of the social that reading Latour's ANT accounts give me. 'Social' here is certainly not anthropocentric in the sense of imagining naked humans talking amongst themselves with everything else existing as a mere backdrop -- non-human things are ontologically equal and they're everywhere. But equally it is not non-anthropocentric in the metaphysical sense of pertaining to assemblages that involve no humans whatsoever. To claim that it is seems to me to be an unjustified abstraction that diverts us quite a long way from what Latour actually writes.

So, what, then, of plasma? Let's take a look at what Latour says about that in Reassembling the Social:

I call this background plasma, namely that which is not yet formatted, not yet measured, not yet socialized, not yet engaged in metrological chains, and not yet covered, surveyed, mobilized, or subjectified. How big is it? Take a map of London and imagine that the social world visited so far occupies no more room than the subway. The plasma would be the rest of London, all its buildings, inhabitants, climates, plants, cats, palaces, horse guards. Yes, Garfinkel is right, ‘it’s astronomically massive in size and range’.
...
sociologists were right to look for some ‘outside’, except this one does not resemble at all what they expected since it is entirely devoid of any trace of calibrated social inhabitant. They were right to look for ‘something hidden behind’, but it’s neither behind nor especially hidden. It’s in between and not made of social stuff. It is not hidden, simply unknown. It resembles a vast hinterland providing the resources for every single course of action to be fulfilled, much like the countryside for an urban dweller, much like the missing masses for a cosmologist trying to balance out the weight of the universe.

So, plasma is indeed that which resides outside associations and serves as a resource for unexpected changes. However, it matters a great deal whether social associations are all encompassing, omnipresent, touching everything or whether they are narrow, particular, fragile, regional and so on.

If 'social' is a synonym for 'relation' in a metaphysical sense then plasma must be what resides outside all relation of every kind. It must be some ghostly, untouchable, literally unspeakable phantom lurking in the corners of the shadows of the fissures of reality (yet somehow dwarfing it, being the larger part of everything). I can see why Harman likes that notion but I really can't see it in Latour's texts at all.

If 'social' is not a synonym for 'relation' but is instead a particular kind, form or region of relation then plasma needn't be anything like this. Plasma instead becomes simply that which has not yet been socially enrolled, formatted, formalised and allowed to circulate in social networks. It is ghostly and unspeakable from the point of view of that network but that network is narrow, particular and partial and therefore that which is plasma with respect to it may be fully formed, formalised and circulating in other kinds of networks elsewhere. Plasma suddenly becomes much more earthly, boring and run-of-the-mill (for better or for worse).

To make this point clearer, let's take up an example from before:

HIV, prior to its discovery in 1981, was not enrolled in the social -- it was, therefore, part of the plasma. However, since HIV, we now know, existed as a particular viral type for decades before this date it was not some ghostly, formless, virtuality lurking in the shadows -- humans were simply ignorant of it. It wasn't formalised, there were no metrologies for it, it couldn't be socialised. It was real, it spread, killed and was therefore a relational entity but it was not social. It was not strictly, metaphysically (or, indeed, physically or naturally) speaking formless -- it was socially formless, socially unformatted. It didn't circulate in social networks. It circulated in OTHER networks -- it wasn't without relation or form entirely, it was simply unrelated to those networks we call social. After 1981 it was formatted, formalised and socialised so that it could circulate within human-centred social networks as a social entity rather than just circulating in human bodies as a viral infection; prior to such happenings it was plasma, but plasma with respect to the social (or epistemic) networks in which it would later circulate. It previously circulated in assemblages of blood, sex, bushmeat markets and so on so it was not plasma with respect to those networks. Therefore, plasma is not the same thing to all things, everywhere.

Phew. I hope this is now ... clear!

For Harman's Latour, plasma is plasma to everyone and everything everywhere. For Latour, as I understand him, plasma is only plasma to those networks that have not yet formalised and enrolled it. No network can enroll everything (c.f. irreduction), therefore every network has plasma outside it but what is plasma to one network isn't plasma to another. What Harman gets wrong (in my opinion) is that the 'missing masses' are not missing from all relation -- they are missing from social relations, which is only one very particular kind of relation among others. A thing that is plasma with respect to human-centered sociality is not necessarily plasma with respect to any other kind of thing or complex of things.

More poetically, plasma is the oil to sociality's water but it might mix and meld happily and freely with other substances -- which the universe is full of since 'social' is not a synonym for all kinds of 'relation.'

So, actually, I should slightly redress what I said before: plasma can be generalised on a metaphysical level but not as Harman does so. I shouldn't have said that "[plasma] isn’t something that is generalisable to all things and all relations since it pertains primarily to epistemic or social relations" -- upon reflection is is generalisable but only if one recognises that something that is plasma is not entirely formless but is formless with respect to a network in which it cannot yet circulate. In terms of human sociality this 'inability to circulate' is understood as a relation of ignorance, of not knowing. It is, therefore, an epistemic relation, as Latour articulates it. Hence I was not completely wrong in saying that plasma primarily pertains to social and epistemic relations -- it could be more than this but it is no more than this in Latour's own writings (since he's only talking about sociality).



I should finally mention, by way of long overdue conclusion, that I'm not claiming to know 'what Bruno really means' or anything like that (how could I? and why would I care?). You might be thinking -- 'so, Harman's Latour is not Latour's Latour, big deal.' Well, it's true, as I'm sure we're all aware, that there can be no translation without transformation. That Harman's account of Latour does not simply mimic Latour's own is not to be commiserated, indeed it is to be celebrated. Yet, while there is no translation without transformation, equally there is no translation without continuation. Transformation on its own is not translation at all. And there are elements of Harman's Latour that I really struggle to relate back to the original. Plasma is a case in point and this is the main reason why I brought it up. There's nothing wrong with the way that Harman abstracts from Latour's sociological metaphysics as such but on this particular point I think the rather huge transformation indicates an underlying misunderstanding, perhaps the misunderstanding demonstrated in The Prince and the Wolf where Latour freely admitted to not really understanding Harman's critique of him.

All I'm trying to do is reproduce an account of an idea as I understand it on the basis Latour's own writings. I'm doing this because I honestly don't recognise Harman's version of this idea in Latour's texts and I'd like to better understand the differences between these two philosophies as I find both to be fascinating.

Latour revisiting 'Paris: Ville Invisible'

I just noticed that this article by Latour: 'Paris, invisible city: The plasma' -- is now available from 'City, Culture and Society.' Or, rather, it is available in unfinalised form. The issue in question was seemingly meant to be published in March 2012 but, rather typically of academic publishing, it is months behind schedule. However, the papers are available in 'corrected draft' form and Latour's contribution makes for interesting reading.

He revisits (presumably at the editors' request) an electronic photo essay from some fifteen years ago: 'Paris: Ville Invisible.' This essay, co-produced with Emilie Hermant, was originally published in French in 1998. A later English translation, available on Latour's website, was never formally published and, consequently, has largely been ignored. This is a shame as it is some of Latour's best work and, in my opinion, easily the best single general introduction to Actor-Network Theory; far better in fact than 'Reassembling the Social,' which Latour wrote for that very purpose.

It is also the work that first introduced the concept of 'plasma,' which Reassembling develops more explicitly but without making especially clear. Graham Harman picked up on the concept in his 'Prince of Networks,' and highlighted its importance but, unfortunately, made a bit of a mess of articulating it (in my humble opinion).

Harman claimed that plasma is something that is totally unformatted, outside all relations, metaphysically, when it is fairly clear from the original Paris, from Reassembling and from this latest essay that plasma denotes that which is outside of relations with respect to a particular network. Typically, this means when something is outside the epistemic networks that socialise things and make them possible objects of politics. It is, therefore, more of a sociological concept than a metaphysical one; it "is what makes it possible to measure the extent of our ignorance concerning Paris" -- or the world in general. It isn't something that is generalisable to all things and all relations since it pertains primarily to epistemic or social relations.

Indeed, "ignorance" is the key word. Plasma is that which is unformatted (or formalised) and therefore cannot circulate in (our) networks -- this is what Latour claims in Reassembling. This doesn't mean that plasma is, metaphysically speaking, outside all relations. Plasma is a concept deployed to prevent premature formalism; the assumption that we already know how things hold together. It is precisely because of our profound ignorance with respect to how parts relate to wholes and how things go about their existence (and, indeed, how things affect our existence) that we mustn't prematurely shoehorn them into prescribed roles, lest we foreclose our ability to come to understand them and, in Latour's terms, to engage in composition -- i.e. politics.

It is the megalomania of the panopticon that presumes that we can sensibly speak of things that have not yet been enrolled in our networks. This is Latour's Kantian moment, however it differs from Kant as noumena are not forever, irrevocably 'out there' -- they can be enrolled, formalised and brought 'in here.'

Plasma may or may not be differentiated within itself but it is a mystery to us for as long as it remains formless, as long as it does not circulate within our networks. However, it is not so far flung and mysterious that it is forever beyond our grasp. And the first step in grasping it, it seems, is to admit our ignorance and avoid making unjustified assumptions as to what it's all about. Hence plasma.

When talking about plasma Latour clearly has his sociological hat on, not his philosophical one. Of course, there's nothing stopping anyone from extracting philosophy from a sociology and Harman does this wonderfully with Latour's work for the most part but the project falls apart somewhat when it gets to plasma. In fact it ends up with Harman completely misunderstanding Latour.

...

The above may not make a lot of sense if you've not read the essay (and perhaps still won't even if you have!). In truth, Latour still avoids really making the thing clear but it certainly adds a degree of clarification to his previous passing mentions of the subject. In any case, the essay is worth a read and Paris: Ville Invisible (in either language) is highly recommended reading/viewing if that has passed you by up until now.

Bryant on Being Qua Mechanism; the Baggage Thereof

Levi Bryant writes:

What we need is not a conception of being composed of objects, but rather of machines. Nor is it a pan-psychism, organicism, or vitalism that we need, but rather a pan-mechanism.

It's a very long and interesting piece that's still in development and is well worth the read. I'm sympathetic to the general thrust of it but what concerns me is whether mechanism is really a good metaphor for being.

Machines aren't generally understood as dynamic or evolutionary. They remain operational only within fairly limited ontological parameters. If a machine's composition changes radically then this generally means that it breaks down. In this respect, it is fundamentally brittle and necessarily reliant upon maintenance. Its ontology is highly dependent upon other things and it only remains what it is while it remains more or less ontologically consistent or stationary.

Real machines are a little too rigid, fragile and needy to serve as a metaphor for beings altogether. Moreover, machines as they are popularly imagined tend towards the other extreme and appear far too rational, coherent and solid (e.g. in Newtonian physics/metaphysics, which implies mechanical aspects of reality to be timeless, rational and holistic, like clockwork).

On the one hand, machines are too weak for mechanism to be a useful metaphor for being. And, on the other hand, machines, as they are often understood, are also too strong to be a useful metaphor for being. Being in general seems much more plastic than mechanical. (Plastic in the sense used by William James: "plasticity ... the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once.")

The machine metaphor may be as old as philosophy itself but I'm not sure that it does justice to things.

That said, there are, of course, only so many words that we can appropriate for thought and I struggle to think of any that are obviously better (e.g. being qua organism has its own problems) but mechanism certainly carries some baggage with it.

Carr, Cameron and Question Time

Richard Murphy writes about Jimmy Carr's tax affairs and Cameron's missteps thereover.

There was a pretty good discussion of this issue in the first fifteen minutes or so of Question Time last night. Unite's Len McCluskey was superb -- informed, articulate and seemingly familiar with the Tax Justice Network. Ken Clarke was surly, evasive and clearly uncomfortable with the subject matter. His strategy was simply to avoid the question and dismiss, for instance, the slashing of HMRC budgets as unimportant. Against McCluskey's facts, figures and evidence (for example, that tax collectors bring in far more money than they cost to employ) he just turned his nose up and snorted. I think the audience noticed the difference.

Besides a handful of steam-eared reactionaries the mood was very much suggesting that the Carr case has been overblown, that the government was massively hypocritical and that they should be doing more to enforce the law with regard to tax rather than just complaining about particular cases. In fact, that last point was agreed on fairly unanimously, across the benches, as it were. For that reason it was unfortunate that no one really challenged Clarke's claim that the Tories are implementing a general anti-avoidance rule because, as we know, it is that in name only. They're making noises about cracking down on tax cheats precisely so that they can let ever more of them off the hook.

Andy Burnham came across very well generally, although he had very little to say about the tax issue. It continues to puzzle me why Labour are so reluctant to pile in on this issue more seriously as it's clearly a significant Tory weakness.

Cameron has created a rod for his own back by admitting that tax avoidance, while legal, is immoral. He mustn't be allowed to forget it. I'm confident that the likes of Murphy, the TJN, UK Uncut and so on will ensure that he won't!

Arial Sharon, Nuclear Blackmail

This is a pretty terrifying news story that seems to have passed by the mainstream media (but not Juan Cole):

Alastair Campbell’s serialized memoirs contain a ... revelation that in conversations with President George W. Bush in late 2002, then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon threatened to nuke Baghdad if Saddam Hussein hit Israel with rockets again.

Those nuclear weapons that, of course, Israel will neither confirm nor deny that they possess! Is this really the behaviour of an ally?

whofundsyou.org

A very interesting new website has been buzzing through the blogosphere this morning:

http://whofundsyou.org/

They rate British think tanks and policy research organisations according to how transparent they are with respect to funding.

Their results are (with A being the most transparent and E the least):

A – Compass, IPPR, NEF, Progress, Resolution Foundation, Social Market Foundation

B – Demos, Fabian Society, Policy Network, Reform

C – Centre Forum, Civitas, Smith Institute

D – Centre for Policy Studies, Centre for Social Justice, Institute of Economic Affairs, Policy Exchange

E – Adam Smith Institute, ResPublica, TaxPayers’ Alliance

This shows an extremely strong correlation between left and right, perhaps unsurprisingly!  It'll be interesting to see how those rated badly react to their position (if they don't just ignore it).

Jodi Dean on Critique

Jodi Dean on critique:

There is a certain left intellectual position that holds out critique as an unadulterated good.

Critique is superior, more knowing, more responsible than action. Indeed, it's held up against action, support, enthusiasm, as the more responsible and mature position. What are the presumptions at work in such a vision of critique?

1. That one's opponent is uncritical--as if the ideas expressed had not themselves been products of critical reflection.

2. As if any and every space were the right space for critique because critique is always right.

The problems with such a view, particularly now, is that they neglect the characteristics of our setting:

1. Constant critique and cynicism.

2. The academy as industry.

3. The need for left mobilization, coalition, and hope.

I have never met an activist or intellectual who didn't live and breath critique. That's how we wake up, eat, drink, and go to sleep. We are constantly critical. But in our enthusiasm for critique we neglect the ways we become dependent on its displacements of responsibility and activity, as well as it inner satisfactions of knowingness. For activists and intellectuals, it's not a matter, now, of being insufficiently critical. It's a matter of courage and will to push forward. We are already critical, together, in various settings. We don't need to, and shouldn't be, critical of ourselves in every place and every time. We need to build ourselves, our confidence, and our mutual trust.

Absolutely. There is no concept in the academy that is taken as uncritically as 'critique' itself. I've thought and written about this a bit myself recently, albeit in a less cutting and succinct fashion!

Etymologically (my dictionary informs me) 'critique' and 'critic' derive from both Greek and Latin words for 'judgement,' with literary associations. The Greek 'krinein' means to separate or decide and is also the root of 'crisis.' I think it also helps to associate critique with two other meanings of 'critical' -- that is, ‘unstable’ and ‘important.’

On this basis we can say that to engage in critique is (or should be) to exercise incisive judgement to render unstable things that are questionable, or to separate, judge and better understand things that are in crisis. Such an endeavour is critically important.

Unfortunately, ‘critique’ itself has become the least incisively judged, the least unstable and perhaps even the most pointless of academic endeavours. It’s not even clear just what the word means much of the time. For some it seems to be little more than saying damning things about the state, or capitalism, or war, or patriarchy or whatever, which is all well and good as far as it goes but it doesn't go far enough. When discussed theoretically it usually turns out to be some half-baked admixture of Kant, Marx and Derrida, usually avoiding specifics by taking the opportunity to assassinate ‘uncritical’ straw men instead.

Being 'critical' has become more of a pose or a demeanour than anything substantial. It's a social signifier, a territorial marker, a pin badge, a way that people identify with a particular kind of academic self-identity.

I don't entirely agree with Latour's essays on critique but he's been saying something similar for a number of years. (e.g. his essay 'Why has critique run out of steam?'.) His basic point is that critique has become too easy, too cheap. It's like it's been 'miniaturised' and is now embedded in everything. The problem we face today is not a lack of critical mindedness or a lack of cynicism. On the contrary, we have a hyper-abundance of both, within the academy and without. But it is an unfocused, aimless, fetishised critique that does no one any good at all.

Everyone knows that politicians are corrupt and businesses are selfish and men treat women badly and the powerful suit themselves and subvert others. But this knowledge is politically paralysing rather than rabble-rousing or invigorating because the misery just seems too monolithic and impenetrable to ever be challenged. Critique as practiced at present tends to reinforce this impression as it finds power and manipulation everywhere, under every rock, behind everyone’s back, insinuated into every nook and cranny of our lives. People, quite reasonably, conclude that they might as well make the best of what they’ve got since, well, what’s the alternative?

More and more critique-for-its-own-sake won’t help this state of affairs; it won’t render these affairs critical. It may even make matters worse. That said, we mustn’t abandon the concept or throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater; we must reconstruct the concept and reclaim what is of value in the critical tradition.

Critique is no longer critical in three senses of that word: with respect to questioning itself, rendering things unstable or being important. We need to address all three of these failures, in order.

And perhaps it’s time to question whether the university is the best setting for these projects. After all, most good critiques were written either from prison or from poverty.

Niall Ferguson, the BBC's resident Austerian

Among all the malicious, self-satisfied, self-certain, smug, cretinous hacks to infect our public discourse in recent years Niall Ferguson holds his own against any.

I hesitate to write such words as this is precisely the kind of derision upon which Mr Ferguson thrives. Like all self-righteous, power hungry establishmentarians, the more widely and vehemently he is despised the more he is assured of his own profound, hardnosed acuity. Nevertheless, he truly is such a weasely, unscrupulous shit that there really is no other way of discussing him.

He was made famous by glorifying the British empire before being ushered into the American establishment by virtue of his cheerleading for neoliberal capitalism. He makes a fine living as a tweedy, professorial mouthpiece-for-hire for whatever right-wing, plutonomic, plutocratic meme is doing the rounds. Today he is the man who proves that BBC news has become little more than a cipher for naked, neoliberal, plutonomic interests.

Just as the right-wing austerity agenda is crashing and burning across Europe, both economically and politically, Ferguson has been granted BBC Reith lectures for 2012. From this platform he will preach the Austerian Gospel: government is bad, suffering is good and Europe's tens of millions of unemployed should be grateful.

And so to this article that the BBC have published:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-18456131

Bill Mitchell has written a far more surgical demolition of Ferguson's article but I will throw in my own two pence worth.

Among all the nonsensical, ignorant, fundamentally wrong ideas that Ferguson could have plucked from the plentifully undead throng of neoliberal dogma – that cornucopia of zombie economics – he has chosen the 'Oh, won't somebody please think of the children?!' meme. Or, more specifically, that we must slash public debt and embrace austerity not because tax cuts benefit the rich, or because selling off state assets for a pittance benefits the rich, or because deflating wages and creating an enormous pool of desperate labour benefits the rich, or because funneling vast quantities of public money into unaccountable bank-casinos benefits the rich, or because eviscerating the middle classes benefits the rich, or because slashing employment regulations benefits the rich, or because crippling inland revenue services benefits the rich, or because facilitating tax avoidance benefits the rich, or because crushing the state's ability to do anything against the wishes of capitalists benefits the rich – none of that, let's be clear; we must slash public debt (via austerity) today because otherwise future generations will be responsible for it instead.

The worst thing about this claim is that, intuitively, it seems correct. If the state is like a big family then if we run up debts and pass these onto our children then we are burdening our children when most of us would rather like to leave our children in credit, leave them an inheritance. Moreover, it seems intuitively correct since it portrays the whole scenario as one of collective guilt; we've all been very bad, we've all had it too good for too long and now it's time to pay the price. Naughty, naughty welfare state. The paternalists and masochists among us find themselves right at home in such a narrative.

Of course, contrary to popular belief, the state is absolutely nothing whatsoever like a big family, especially when you're dealing with a sovereign state that can issue its own currency. And the claim that it's the excesses of the welfare state that got us into this mess is just an outright lie; it's the private debt crisis and the resulting recessions that are the principle cause of the deficit/debt problems.

But let's just consider the economics of the children meme for a moment.

First of all, people forget that debt is only an outgoing expense from the debtor's point of view; from the creditor's point of view it is an income and an asset. A family in debt owes that debt to persons outside the family, therefore the family as a whole is a debtor. If the debt was owed internally, between the family members themselves, then each family member's debt would be the income of another family member and therefore the family may not be a debtor overall at all. This is much more like the situation with the state. Much of the debt is not, in fact, a liability at all; it is an asset that can be relied on for future revenue, both in terms of private income and consequent spending and in terms of taxation.

Secondly, state spending doesn't just evaporate into thin air. The children meme suggests that we're all kicking back and living it up today and having our children foot the bill, whereas what's really happening with most state spending is that it creates and maintains the very institutions and infrastructure that allow our children to have any kind of life at all. If we've borrowed from future growth to fund present day investment then all we've really done is borrowed from our children's adulthood to pay for their education, security and welfare when they're still children (and making it at least possible that they'll find jobs when they leave school). Hardly a tale of uncaring, selfish hedonism.

Thirdly, debt levels have been much higher in real terms. The British state managed to fund its twentieth-century wars with a far higher debt burden than today without turning into Weimar Germany. Of course, the kind of productive activity resulting from total warfare isn't strictly comparable to peacetime but nevertheless debts and budget deficits has been much higher in this country in real terms historically and, of course, are higher contemporaneously in other countries such as Japan too. In all cases mass unemployment and its associated miseries have been avoided. Japan, said for fifteen years to be on the brink of hyper-inflation and collapse by Ferguson and his ilk, continues to afford its citizens a very high standard of living. Not an economically perfect model but not Greece either.

There are many more economic fallacies embedded in the children meme but you get the idea.

You've got to hand it to Ferguson, he is as brass-necked as they come. To earnestly and unabashedly endorse austerity in the name of tens of millions of unemployed, young Europeans is jaw droppingly brazen. It's difficult to believe that such claims are made sincerely, although it doesn’t really matter if he honestly believes this stuff or not.

50% youth unemployment isn't just a 'hard price' that must be paid for the common good – it's a crime the social and economic destructiveness of which will be felt for generations. To not only endorse these crimes but to do so in the name of those who they harm most egregiously is not only ridiculous, it is profoundly offensive.

The brand of economics that Ferguson endorses is discredited more and more every day. The political maelstrom that their failure has inevitably lead to has barely gotten going but it has already taken down governments and brought the Euro to the brink on more than one occasion.

Ferguson begins his article by expressing concern for "Western democracy" – precisely the institution threatened by his agenda. He speaks of renewing "the social contract" between generations when really his whole ideology is about severing all social ties wheresoever they occur. The plutocratic agenda is actively hostile to democracy. When it isn’t installing technocrats in Italy it’s interfering in the Greek elections by fear mongering about the consequences of a leftist victory. It’s an agenda that shreds every kind of social tie, understands human beings as nothing but selfish individuals and justifies individual wealth and individual destitution as nothing more than the results of differing individual worth.

What Ferguson wants is a democracy where the vast majority of people consistently vote against their own interests. The only social contract Ferguson wants is the kind that justifies destroying the prospects of generations of young people all for the sake of some expansionary fiscal contraction that won’t ever happen.

Like all tyrannical regimes the neoliberal one wants everything its own way – it wants to break public institutions and then complain when they don’t work properly; it wants to act against the vast majority’s interests but still enjoy the vast majority’s support; it wants to destroy everything and be thanked for it afterwards.

We don’t need Ferguson’s zombie democracy whose citizens are so deafened by the din of wall-to-wall propaganda that they’ll vote for whichever party they despise the least. We need social democracy. We need to say that the welfare state remains both necessary and possible. We need to celebrate this, the single most productive vessel of human betterment ever conceived. We need to say that the welfare state’s best days are ahead of us, not behind.

A democracy that is not a social democracy is a contradiction in terms. There can be no meaningful political enfranchisement without social solidarity and vice-versa. Ferguson's 'social contract' is a farce; an excuse to shred society still further by playing the old and the young off against each other when, in fact, they are the ones most affected by Ferguson's agenda, when it is they who should be uniting against his clamourous, lecturing newspeak.

Taking a step back, by way of conclusion, what does the existence of this argument tell us? It tells us, firstly, that no claim is so stupid, baseless or corrupted as not to be enthusiastically expounded by our cherished media institutions if it benefits the rich and powerful. But it also tells us, secondly, that the rich and powerful need these lies. Why not just be honest? Why not just say 'We're going to shred the social safety net and claim all the power and wealth for ourselves. Why? Because we want to and don't give a damn about you or your needs.'?

This is the one weakness of the powerful: they have to maintain the pretence that the way things are is the best way for all of us. They have to do this even when all of the evidence clearly states the contrary and where the whole edifice is crumbling and collapsing all around us. They need would-be Atlases like Ferguson to prop up the un-prop-upable. If they are ever forced to admit the brutality of their naked self-interest then their rule will be exposed for what it is -- and their days just might be numbered.

The Archipelago Empire of Poststructuralism (The Beginnings of a Polemic)

The once vibrant and invigorating spirit of poststructuralism has ossified under the force of its own oscillations; flung to the 'margins' so far and so often, it has hardened into a dogma as sedimented and inflexible as any foundations that it once shook.  Indeed, the 'margins' once occupied by self-declared 'dissidents' no longer exist.  Today there are simply mainland empires and archipelago empires.

The cog-grinding, smog-belching industrial monolith of the positivist mainstream is as imperious, self-certain and xenophobic as ever; yet, fringing the shore, harboured on islets, cays and atolls, Lilliputian hegemons rule with fists no less iron than the grand girder-smelters of the mainland.  The poststructuralist’s archipelago empire can lay claim to no sprawling plains or ragged mountain ranges but within their own jurisdictions – certain journals, particular departments, chosen conferences and prescriptive seminars – their place is established, safe, proud, grey, boring, unquestioning, self-assured and fecund as dust.

The deterritorialisers have become territorialised.

The margins mirror the mainstream in miniature.

What once shook needs shaking.

Pre-fab Post-ies; More on Critique

Will of 'Untied Threads' just wrote a critical but also very generous comment on an old post of mine.  It was a post on critique and poststructuralism in International Relations discourse.  He suggests, among other things, that I treat Richard Ashley unfairly.

In response, let me say firstly that I like Richard Ashley's work; I think that it has been very important.  The work that he (and others) have done since the 1980s drawing on hermeneutics, deconstruction and so on was important at the time and remains of value today.  I was trying to write in quite a polemical style in that post so maybe I sounded a little more damning than I intended!

To be more clear: the problem I have with Ashley et al. from a contemporary viewpoint is that while hermeneutic or deconstructive critiques had a great critical impact in the 1980s they don't any more.  Those ideas have become, formalised, institutionalised, standardised.  As always happens, those angry, young academics grew up.  They went from 'sticking it to the man' to being 'the man'!

Today poststructuralism is one of a number of 'approaches' or 'theoretical frameworks' that a student can adopt or enact as a preconceived, prefabricated scheme.  It has become an orthodoxy of its own.  While the critiques were originally opening up 'thinking space' by taking apart hegemonic discourses, their own presuppositions have become naturalised, are not internally challenged and are frankly stultifying.  These presuppositions have become the entrenched dogma of Poststructuralism (with a capital P).

For this reason we desperately need critiques of those critiques -- and that requires that we think hard about what it means to be 'critical' in the first place.  That was the basic point of my post.  People throw around that word without ever making clear what it means.  For some it seems to be little more than saying damning things about the state, or capitalism, or war, or patriarchy or whatever.  Which is all well and good as far as it goes but it doesn't go far enough.

The two meanings of 'critical' should be drawn together much more closely.  If critique fails to make its object critical (i.e. unstable) then it's pointless.  It doesn't deserve to be called 'critique' at all.  Being 'critical' has become more of a pose or a demeanour than anything substantial.  It's a social signifier, a territorial marker, a pin badge, a way that people identify with a particular kind of academic self-identity.

What all of this results in is the endless the regurgitation of the same old arguments about hegemonic discourses, logocentrism, speech acts and the rest.  It's time for serious change in our modes of thought.  There are many virtues of the poststructuralist heritage that should be retained but there must also be deep rooted and damning investigation of the flaws and vices.  We shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater but equally we shouldn't hold back in our critiques.

Vis-à-vis science: my point was simply that, in 'critical' IR discourse, 'science' is often taken to be the epitome of un-critical, mainstream, hegemonic thought.  Science becomes a synonym for positivism or the grumpy kind of Enlightenment rationalism that poststructuralists so love to eviscerate.  On the contrary, in my view, science is inherently critical.  Scientific knowledge (in scientific practice, if not in the popular imagination) is very unstable, often changing and always vulnerable to change.

That was the general point but, more specifically, I was asking: what actually induces a 'critical state' in a natural scientific discourse?  What makes things critical?  What generates the critical energy, the destabilising force?  Well, the claims of scientists, for sure.  One scientist proclaiming or disclaiming the findings of another in the myriad ways they do so.  But the objects of science can also render a discourse unstable.

When a lab experiment yields unexpected results 99 times out of 100 this is the result of user error.  But very occasionally it is because of some hitherto undetected phenomenon, some real thing that is, unprompted, by its own powers, producing a result, a perturbation, an effect.  Of course it takes much careful work on behalf of scientists to distinguish error and noise from these little kernels of discovery but the point is that scientific objects have the power to render our knowledge about them unstable.  Indeed, this is the whole point of scientific discourse: to elicit information from things themselves, not from what we say or what we think we know about things.  This information never transcends our interpretation of it -- we must always, necessarily translate the findings -- but that doesn't mean that objects do not elicit this information or that we cannot be realists about them.

In my original post when I say 'object' I am of course playing on the difference in meaning between that word as a noun and a verb -- 'an object' and 'to object.'  It's Bruno Latour's play on words to say that an object is something that objects to forces that engage it.  Scientific objects are objects because they object to the 'trials' (another Latourian term meaning experiments or tests) that scientists put them through.  They act and react in ways that is irreducible to the forces placed upon them by human subjects.  Hence they are real.  Hence we really know things about them.  Hence endless discourse analysis cannot do them justice because such analysis can only ever examine the forces tht humans place upon things, not the things themselves.

And hence poststructuralism is inadequate.  Scientific objects are objects because they can object and as such render critical the knowledge with and through which we regard them.  They cannot determine what we come think about them but they are real elements in the epistemic process.  Contrariwise, there is no place for non-human objects in poststructuralism except as blank canvases for the projection of symbols, language or meaning.  Objects might be accepted to exist but they are of no real importance, of no real reality.  In discourse analysis or deconstruction the only real things that are permitted to object or to have effects are signs, signifiers, structural linguistic relations and so on.  This is idealism with an alibi -- things in the background that do nothing, are of no consequence and exist only so that people can say: 'Hey, look!  Over there!  I'm no idealist!'.

And that's what's wrong with it all.  That's why the 'thinking space' that they once opened up is now stultifying.  That's why they're 'agoraphobic' -- agora being etymologically associated with 'thing' meaning the space where people get together and work things through.


This is getting rather long now so I'll try and wrap things up by answering Wills points more specifically!



Objects demand interpretation precisely because they are irreducible to interpretation and possess realities and capacities of their own.  You mention that demand/interpret in this sense becomes a dichotomy.  I honestly don't think that that's a problem.  There's nothing wrong with dichotomies so long as they are acknowledged to be instrumental, useful things, not simply the way reality is structured.  I could articulate basically the same point without using those terms and so without that dichotomy.  I just think that it's one useful way of making the point.  We constantly dichotomise things in thought; the problem is not with dichotomies as such but rather with the notion that our ideas describe the very structure of reality rather than our ideas being real things that interact with other real things in a common world.

I am familiar with the Copenhagen school, yes.  I read that essay you mention but it was a few years ago.  I'd need to take another look at it to comment on it now!

Vis-à-vis Heidegger: from my Latourian perspective Herr Heidegger is more part of the problem than the solution.  It isn't enough to say that we exist with other things, that we cannot think of ourselves except as embodied beings, enmeshed in other beings, etc.  All of that is true and pertinent but Heidegger prevents us from going that step further and thinking about things apart from human being (which, for Heidegger, is basically being itself).  Of course we can never truly, certainly know what things are like apart from ourselves since we can never transcend interpretation or perspective but that should not stop us thinking about the autonomy of things, thinking of things as they may be apart from us.

Poststructuralism makes this extra step impossible.  That is why it must be destroyed!

More on Harman and In/Civility

Further comment on: http://itself.wordpress.com/2012/06/03/a-response-to-graham-harmans-marginalia-on-radical-thinking/

Baklazh, I can see where you're coming from with Graham's latest post -- it certainly doesn't exude temperance and it does come across as something of a missive. 'Idiotic' is rather an undiplomatic choice of words but then again he didn't call anyone in particular AN idiot, he called the particular idea under consideration 'idiotic.' Hence this was not strictly an ad hominem attack -- it was an attack on an idea. Contrast this with Alex's original post which was extremely personal and almost completely ad hominem...

It's worth bearing in mind that pretty much exactly the same critique that Alex constructs above has been leveled at these guys again and again over the past few years. Therefore, they're not necessarily responding to anyone in particular when they say things like this. It's the idea in abstraction, not any particular enunciation of it. It might be new for some readers but for them it's a zombie meme that just keeps coming back again and again -- hence the frustration and the terse responses.

It's unfortunate that that blogging lends itself so much to this kind of brusqueness. The 'filters' that normally crop up automatically in conversation by being in the same room as someone, looking someone in the eye -- basic civility -- often fail to arise when simply sat at a computer facing a bunch of words. That said, this isn't really an excuse. We shouldn't just say 'boys will be boys'. Bad behaviour is bad behaviour.

But then it's not always easy to judge beforehand where the line is between being pointed and being rude. I hope that my own choice of words from my post above -- principally 'maelstrom of nonsense' -- weren't taken personally by anyone but frankly I stand by the sentiment as nothing anyone has said has changed my mind. We all owe it to each other to be civil but not to the point where we cease to be honest.

And, in the spirit of honesty:

While I find a great deal wrong with OOO/OOP, etc., the above arguments are badly constructed. They stem from a refusal to examine the relationship between ontology and politics, taking the two to be fused, axiomatically, and assuming that anyone who says otherwise must be some reactionary, rationalist, 'liberal bourgeois' fossil.

The whole original post stems from making graspingly inferred assumptions about Mr Harman's personal political convictions, or lack thereof. Harman apparently had a 'better the devil you know' attitude towards Mubarak before the revolution. That is his sin. Fine. And we are to infer an entire worldview from this kernel. Very well.

However, a lot of the conclusions drawn from this just don't make much sense to me. For instance: "if everyone in Cairo were clones of Harman, the revolution would never have happened." What this fails to mention is that Graham is not Egyptian! He's a foreigner! He lives there but frankly Egyptian democracy is none of his business. He's not a part of it and from what I recall Egyptians weren't that keen on outside influence during the revolution. If he spent all his time spouting off about what Egyptians should or should not be doing I'm quite sure that the critique would be turned around by 180 degrees and he'd be accused of being an imperialist, forcing his ideas upon others!

In other words, while the hypothetical is undoubtedly true it's equally unfair and beside the point. For me, as a student of international relations, this critique (so typical of political theory) ignores the fact that we live in a world of political multiplicity. We're not embedded in a continuous, unbroken fabric of political solidarity and praxis. For better or worse, our actual political agency is relative to our membership of political collectives to which we are not necessarily geographically local. Judging a person for non-participation in a process that has no real place for them seems harsh.

Moreover, Graham's pre-revolution attitude ('better the devil you know') was shared by vast numbers of Egyptians -- including Egyptians who eventually participated in the revolution. So, sure, if absolutely everyone held that attitude nothing could have happened but, evidently, the prevalence of such an attitude is not necessarily an impassable barrier to revolution. Are we to label everyone outside the vanguard apolitical, bourgeois apologists? I'd advise against it.

That said, while Alex is probably reading a little too much into this one interview I think 'liberal bourgeois' probably does sum up Graham's attitude, at least judging from what he's published. He might not disagree. But, you know, so what? What difference does it make? Does that do anything whatsoever to discredit his philosophy? Not necessarily.

What Alex needs to specify is why political predilections are of primary importance in assessing the validity or verity of an ontological argument. That they are primary is simply assumed. There is no substance to this assumption at all. THAT is the crux of the philosophical disagreement, quite apart from the sturm und drang of personal slights, perceived and misperceived.

"Harman’s self-stated goal is to remove politics from ontology, creating a new kind of pure ontology in which, as he says in the interview, philosophy should not be the handmaid of anything else."

Does Alex mean to suggest that philosophy SHOULD be the handmaiden of politics? If so I'd genuinely love to read the reasoning behind that. I completely disagree but I'd like to read an actual argument specifically in favour of this position. I've heard it said many, many times but never heard anyone actually say WHY. Why is politics the master signifier? Why is politics the trump card?

If only someone would make this case rather than alternating between being rude to other people and complaining when they're rude back -- then we'd be getting somewhere.

As I've mentioned a few times, the critique Alex levels only makes sense if politics and ontology are fused -- if ontology is and must be determined by political considerations. If they're not fused then political reasons cannot in and of themselves sunder ontological claims. And if they're not fused then conflating political personhood and ontological object-hood is just a basic category error.

In my previous comment above I went through a few ways in which politics and ontology can be separated without pretending to create some impenetrable firewall between the two. I won't repeat myself too much but it suffices to say that the 'purity' of ontology is a complex question, not one to be hastily judged one way or the other without consideration.

Friends, some consideration, please!

Let's both be a bit nicer to each other and not take others' criticism of our ideas so personally.

Maelstrom of Nonsense

Comment on: http://itself.wordpress.com/2012/06/03/a-response-to-graham-harmans-marginalia-on-radical-thinking/

Wow. Quite a maelstrom of nonsense we've got going on here! Difficult to know quite where to jump in.

Might as well respond to Alex's last comment: "if ontology and politics are entirely separate domains" -- nobody seems to be making this claim. Ontology and politics aren't 'domains.' Ontology is the philosophical study of what is, politics is the process through which people form, contest and contest the formation of collective human being. 'Realm' [or domain] doesn't seem to be an appropriate term. It implies a divided spatiality that is difficult to conceive of and it implies a juridical separation that just misses the point. They are simply different practices practiced in different places for different reasons. They're different things.

The claim being made is that accounts of what is (i.e. ontology) should not (a) be determined by politics and cannot (b) determine any political position, practice or possibility.

This does NOT mean that ontology and politics are hermetically sealed realities, totally parallel to each other. In fact they meet in a variety of ways. To describe but a few:

-- Firstly, our accounts of what is profoundly shape how we understand ourselves, the world we live in and without an ontology all politics -- and all life, really -- would be literally unthinkable. Moreover, any political movement that lacked any grasp on reality would fail immediately. In fact it could never come together in the first place. Therefore, politics presupposes ontology.

-- Secondly, while accounts of being cannot determine any political thought or action that might derive from them there are certainly some ontological claims that are heavily politically loaded; e.g. Thatcher's claim that there is no such thing as society. Ontology can be politicised, it can be politically significant but that doesn't make ontology altogether political. You can only politicise something that isn't first of all political.

-- Thirdly, while we might say that there is being with no human beings there surely is no ontology without ontologists. Ontologists engage in ontology and produce this ontology, criticise that ontology, etc. Ontology is the name of their practice not their research subject (that's 'being'). Therefore, as fallible, embodied, emplaced, 'thrown' human persons no one should ever claim that their ontological pronouncements issue from a non-position, outside all social influence or historical particularity (or politics). Anyone claiming such a thing in this day and age would be a comical fossil at best and a tyrant at worst. Fortunately, neither Harman nor Bryant nor anyone affiliated with them make this claim.

Politics and ontology can be intertwined in many ways but they're still different things and one can quite easily talk all day about ontology without getting into politics. Ontology readily bumps up against politics and is easily politicised but that does not mean that it SHOULD be politicised -- and it certainly shouldn't be politicised all the time.

So, our accounts of what is (our ontologies) must be generated, influenced and informed by much, much MORE than politics alone. This doesn't make these things hermetically sealed discursive jurisdictions -- far from it. But it DOES mean that any given politicisation of ontology must be undertaken FOR A REASON. It is not the default position.

Ontology isn't always already political -- nothing is. Nothing is political which isn't first politicised.

And this isn't 'apolitical,' by the way. The really apolitical position is that which says that 'everything is political' as if politics were some smoggy, unbreakable shroud enveloping absolutely every being, everywhere from miserable cradle to wretched grave.

Politics is a pretty inglorious business most of the time. I really don't understand why so many people take it as the master signifier to end all master signifiers. I'm really rather GLAD that politics is not omnipresent. A world in which it was would be a true dystopia. Fortunately it only exists as a utopia of the foolish.

And as for the claims that granting reality to corporations justifies their political enfranchisement ... well, my mind boggles at that. That would only be the case if ontology and politics were fused. Only then would the granting of ontological thing-hood simultaneously be the granting of political personhood.

And they're not fused...

The future of European hegemony: "geo-economics"?

In the Guardian today:

On Monday the former president of Latvia, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, argued that the EU was becoming both dominated and neglected by Germany.

"Is the Europe that is emerging from the euro crisis a German one? During the euro crisis, power in the EU seems to have shifted towards one national capital in particular, Berlin," she wrote in Warsaw's Gazeta Wyborcza, together with Portugal's former European commissioner Antonio Vitorino. "Germany, it seems, is becoming a 'geo-economic power' driven by the needs of its export sector.

Britain in a nutshell: queuing and apathy

Truly vintage Brooker:

... The low turnout has been blamed on bad weather, which was almost certainly a factor – but on the other hand, if you won't vote because of drizzle, you weren't that arsed in the first place. People will queue in the rain to see Kasabian in concert. They'll queue in the rain to enter Abercrombie & Fitch. They'll queue in the rain for any old shit, as long as it isn't democracy.

Funny because it's so very, agonisingly true.

re: 'Can I tell the difference between the the objective and the subjective?'

Response to: Richard Murphy's 'Can I tell the difference between the the objective and the subjective?' - and subsequent comments

Too true(!).

The carving up of reality into the objective and subjective is a power play. Once you've made that incision anything that you can convince people is on the 'objective' side cannot be argued with -- it simply is, 'whether you like it or not.' Its propagation therefore no longer requires assent; it can be taught as fact and beaten into stubborn skulls if needs be.

While it's true that Austrian economics reacted against the scientistic and state-centric economic orthodoxy, which promoted central, 'objective' planning, it makes little sense to deny that Austrian economics, in many circles, has become the new orthodoxy and is treated as if it were the objective truth 'whether you like it or not.' For this reason it is regularly subject of such power plays that would seek to make its claims unassailable.

And this is terribly unfortunate since few scientific doctrines have ever been so thoroughly and consistently refuted by experience and kept on walking.

And that brings me to the undiminished importance of relative truth even in the absence of absolute truth (i.e. 'objectivity').

If your complaint, my namesake, is that Richard was implying possession of objective knowledge by saying that you are 'wrong' on matters subjective then I think that your objections are misplaced. Words such as right and wrong, true and false are still perfectly applicable in a world devoid of any hard and fast subjective/objective distinction. They represent not claims on correspondence to reality 'out there' but rather denials of reasoning and demands for evidence. Because we still have these things -- reasoning and evidence -- even if they can never give us 'objectivity.' They are devices of argumentation and are intrinsic to all scientific and political discourse.

If the 'subjectivism' of Austrian economics absolves it from defending the inadequacies of its own reasoning and evidence then this is a worrying thing -- objectivity or no objectivity.

38 Degrees Government Snooping Petition

Powers such as these, however they are intended to be used, are always abused.

Privacy, once given up, is almost impossible to reclaim. The power to suspend our privacy will be taken from us unless we refuse.

Bit by bit, little by little, inch by inch we are sleepwalking into a dystopia. Who will we have to blame when we wake up?

We like to imagine that evil invariably bursts into the world suddenly and through the media of specific actions by identifiably evil actors. The more unsettling truth is that evil often simply seeps into the world, curdling and coagulating, driven by the best intentions of quite ordinary people.

Well intentioned or not, we must refuse this power grab or we will only have ourselves to blame.

The 38 Degrees Petition

One reason not to get a Kindle

I'm not sure I like the idea of Amazon knowing everything I've highlighted!

Popular Prince and the Wolf quotes

No thanks.

Economics Makes Markets

An absolutely perfect example of how economics makes markets:

Policymakers' riposte to Keynes would be the same as it would be to Hayek: get real. If we take no action to rein in deficits, we will be slaughtered by the markets; bond yields will go up sharply, negating the impact of cheap money. Keynesian fiscal policy, in other words, will only be possible when the markets share Keynes's belief that jobs matter more than the level of national debt, and given the way economics has been taught in universities for the past 30 years, that moment may be a long time coming.

All these years of baseless, absurd, evidence-phobic econo-babble are killing us. And they call it science!

And furthermore:

[Tim Worstall argues] that we should not tackle tax evasion because to do so would reduce GDP. He says the existing rate of evasion is optimal and we should not address it as we are at an equilibrium state where we can afford this level of crime.
...
I utterly reject that argument.
...
There [are] no such equilibria. What there are instead are economists and those influenced by them like Worstall who believe in cost-benefit analyses that suggest there are such equilibria. But because they have believed that for so long they now actually think the equilibria exist and that we should positively promote them. They have made their model into the terrain – when it is at best a very imperfect model to start with. That explains so much of the predicament we are in. We are seeking something that is simply not there.

The Eyes of Gideon

He keeps his money in a mattress,
He doesn't trust the banks.
We used to think him cowed and strange,
But now we understand.

The eyes of Gideon,
Haunt him daily;
They chase him through his sleep.

The eyes of Gideon.
We used to laugh,
And now we reach for our glass,
Of air and debt, hope and imaginary things;

And we're told: this is what the good times bring;
And we wonder what a world it could be,
When Gideon's eyes can chase us through our sleep.

Perspicacity presupposes perspective

Perspicacity presupposes perspective.