The Thursday rant #5
This week’s ranters: Stuart and Dave are communists with a book habit. They blog at From Despair To Where .
A rant… against rant
Who doesn’t love a good rant? We certainly do. Indeed, as a socialist, almost the first thing you will have to learn is the art of the rant. And, in our founding father, we have a superb role model. Just take a look at the old boy tearing into Jeremy Bentham in Section Five of this chapter of Capital.
In fact, this rant was so good we were going to nick it for the start of this one. Because if you’re looking for a modern example of arch-philistines strutting about in a self-satisfied way with their list of homespun commonplaces, look no further than the so-called pro-war left. Not that the anti-war left is that much better. In fact, the whole debate between the anti-war left and the pro-war left only offers us the depressing prospect of choosing between Bush and Blair, or the Iraqi Resistance. Our advice is that if a polemicist offers you two options, you should always choose the third. (Click here and scroll down for a review that makes more or less this point.)
We could rant on and on about this, and we did plan to. But then we read an exchange between anti-war author Ken Macleod and pro-war lefty academic Norman Geras. Ken Macleod’s piece is the best contribution to the debate we have read. But — and here’s our point — it was the best because it wasn’t a rant. Geras’s replies were, in their own way, equally impressive.
People don’t move closer to a ranter’s position. They edge nervously towards the door. If this was just about slipping away quietly from bores like Hitchens and Galloway, then it wouldn’t matter. But we can’t afford to leave the debate to them, as it gives rise to the (already very strong) impression that politics is for weirdos and nutters. As Foucault points out , a search for truth — a whole morality — is at stake.
So, comrades, friends, and fellow bloggers, let’s do our best to give up the rant. It’s beneath us and the issues are too important. And if you disagree, then please do put your pointless ravings and ill-informed opinions in the comments box below.
How rational. I’m starting to think that trying to be clever is the real problem. If you argue as a child might, you tend to get further. So while the pro- and anti-war left lock horns over what’s better (mass casualties, regional instability and local insurgency; or suffering an insane dictator with a record of using non-conventional weapons – no child would ever coin the fatuous phrase “weapons of mass destruction” – and torture) I’m increasingly saying that both are bad, but I’m only potentially responsible for one of them. No rant, no pointless opinion-forming down the pub. And how wonderful of you to point out that one can easily dismiss both Hitchens and Galloway!
“…the whole debate between the anti-war left and the pro-war left only offers us the depressing prospect of choosing between Bush and Blair, or the Iraqi Resistance…”
I don’t care about the ‘left’ (empty, outdated term anyway) but there is a common viewpoint, rarely aired by any political or media busybody, which does not require us to choose anything.
The business of a British government is to defend the immediate, tangible and material interests of the British people, and not to waste one drop of blood or penny of treasure favouring one side or another in a remote foreign conflict. Make ‘defence’ do what it says on the tin and the question of whether, and on whose behalf, to meddle does not arise.
That is what the great majority of the British people prefer in their heart of hearts. One hundred years ago they were indifferent to the Empire and never mourned its slow passing. Today they are cold to the call of doing missionary work for ‘liberal democracy’ or whatever buzzword deodorises today’s brand of imperialist bullying and plunder.
As long as this sensible and natural partiality for one’s own hearth and home is denounced by the Great and Good as ‘selfish’ and ‘isolationist’, politics will indeed seem the preserve of nutters to most of us peons. We should envy the Scandinavians and continental Europeans who stayed out of the Coalition of the Wilting and the quagmire it has blundered into.
Richard: Any child can easily dismiss Hitchens and Galloway. We might be wrong to do so, but then that would only lead us into a rational and “clever” argument.
Luniversal: I see you have advice for the British government, but are reduced to telling us about it on this blog. It is not the business of a British government to defend the interests of the British people, but of British capital. British capital is tied up with the interests of American capital. So the war in Iraq is not at all a “remote foreign conflict” from their point of view. Not that remote from my (non-racist, internationalist) point of view either as I failed to see why the “British people” are of less interest than the “Iraqi people”.
Isn’t the whole difficulty about getting one’s voice heard in the hailstorm of ranting that infects the MSM? As you imply, ranting merely makes people batten down the hatches and put their fingers in their ears. That would be all right if people came to their own rational, thought-out, researched conclusions independently of what they hear. Unfortunately, some of the ranting does get through, by dint of sheer volume, and then people take a position which is opposite to whoever’s voice they dislike the most.
This isn’t to say that bloggers shouldn’t continue to point out, gently, their own perception of the truth – just that they shouldn’t be surprised if they find themselves whispering into the wind.
I’m a long-term reader and a fan of this site, but this “Thursday Rant” feature really isn’t working.
this “Thursday Rant†feature really isn’t working.
Rubbish
So, comrades, friends, and fellow bloggers, let’s do our best to give up the rant. It’s beneath us and the issues are too important. And if you disagree, then please do put your pointless ravings and ill-informed opinions in the comments box below.
Heh heh – but you’re overlooking an essential fact that every blogger knows: being nice and reasonable doesn’t get you anything like as many hits as ranting.