Re: <nettime> The Meaning of Boris Johnson

Message: 2
Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2022 16:06:14 -0600
From: Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>
To: David Garcia <d.garcia@new-tactical-research.co.uk>
Cc: "nettime-l@kein.org" <nettime-l@kein.org>
Subject: Re: <nettime> The Meaning of Boris Johnson
Message-ID:
<CANuiTgwKdvsK6NDuvRmgMjnyBpQjMdypAVH=dUVerrDVGzJi5A@mail.gmail.com>
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Obviously I agree with David in this thread. Global metabolic disruptions
like the pandemic (and the coming climate-driven storms, famines, etc)
require a renewed focus on large-scale collective action - not just
intellectually, but also existentially. This was obvious with the
production and distributions of the mRNA vaccines (an incredible feat of
science and technology btw). For the first time in my life I was glad to
see the US Army in action, because they were putting a shot in my arm, for
free, in an entirely desegregated collective facility that made me feel
like the resident of a city rather than an individual sheltering in a
private home. To this day, practically everyone in Chicago wears a mask in
public places, which is a rare and tremendously positive recognition of the
vulnerability of others.

I agree with Patrice too, except Patrice, I think you make a category
error. The relevant category is neither corporations nor government, but
instead the democratic capitalist state. From the get-go this is a
corporate state that develops social functions for the needs of enterprise.
But as a socially transformative force the state "comes back in" (as the
poly sci people say) whenever there is a collective issue such as war,
drought, systemic economic crisis that cannot be resolved through market
relations. It's the only way the state can retain legitimacy, and we will
not see that pattern ending anytime soon. The pandemic showed amply how
this collective actions works, as well as its contradictions and failures.
But so does much of 20th century history, as Joe Rabie pointed out.

I'm convinced that under the pressures of global inequality and climate
change, we are going experience many excruciating versions of this return
of collective agency. However, like Patrice and Joe too, I have serious
doubts whether the corporate state can fulfill its democratic promises. It
was amazing to see plans for transformative state investment come together
along with the vaccines during the early phases of the pandemic, then reach
the US legislative process in 2021. What next occurred was a breakdown of
that legislative process in the face of identitarian right-wing political
agitation, to the point where a US administration trying to fight
inequality and climate change through a comprehensive economic program
designed primarily by Bernie Sanders is now courting war with Russia as a
desperate attempt to hang onto power. And so, instead of gradually taking
apart and converting the oil and gas industry, the Biden government is now
trying to reboot North American natural gas production for LNG sales to
Europe. Nationalism then replaces social ecology as the (mistaken) focus of
collective action.

Still the entropic mess of the present is no excuse for evading the
overarching question of the 21st century. How to engage, both
intellectually and existentially, with the really existing democratic
capitalist state? How to generate collective agency at national, regional
and planetary scales? That's also the meaning of the science wars, by the
way. It's not just that you are "for or against science" - as though
science itself were one and unified. Instead the question is whether you
can engage with the most far-thinking scientists, indigenous leaders and
environmental justice activists to turn the corporate state into an
ecostate. What's missing, particularly in the cultural and intellectual
fields, is a fully fledged and broadly sharable vision of exactly what that
last word could mean in your own life - and in your own body.

best to all, Brian

On Sat, Feb 12, 2022 at 4:27 AM David Garcia <
d.garcia@new-tactical-research.co.uk> wrote:

> Many thanks Brian and Patrice? When Johnson came on TV as head of state
> and did not advise but ?instructed? me, my family and the rest of the
> country to ?lock down? I experienced the actual fact and reality of state
> power as never before. Much as I despise Johnson and all his works I
> supported this use of state power as a uniquely powerful means of
> supporting the value of mutual dependency over the value of individual
> freedom, (this was very difficult for Johnson as a libertarian Tory as we
> now realise in the wake of partygate). A new and intense awareness of
> mutual dependency and the collective agency of which we are capable was the
> great revelation of the pandemic and our only hope of survival.
>
>
>
> But the debate over state power and where we might seek to draw the line
> goes well beyond traji/comic Johnson sideshow. Anyone claiming, as Patrice,
> does that the state is merely an impotent ?conveyer belt? steered by
> corporate forces has to explain the effectiveness of Xi Jinping?s Hobbesian
> Chinese state in reigning in their own corporate giants. The last 18 months
> has seen Xi cracking the whip and imprisoning (and doing anything else
> required) to re-assert state sovereignty over corporate hubris. This even
> extends to legislating time allowed to kids for gaming not to mention
> tinkering with the education policy as Xi has decided that the tech and
> finance sectors are sucking too many talented graduates away from more
> tangible forms of manufacturing.
>
>
>
> Some European/western political actors are looking with envy at the
> perceived effectiveness of the Chinese (and other proactive Sth East Asian
> states) in their forthright nation-wide actions in containing Covid. The
> likelihood is that this is just a foretaste of an increasingly loud debate
> over the limits and role state power will play as the climate crunch really
> starts to bite. This is when we will return to the earlier postings on this
> thread that spoke about the science wars.
>
>
>
> David Garcia
>
>
>
>
>
> *From: *patrice riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>
> *Date: *Saturday, 12 February 2022 at 08:51
> *To: *<bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>, David Garcia <
> d.garcia@new-tactical-research.co.uk>
> *Cc: *"nettime-l@kein.org" <nettime-l@kein.org>
> *Subject: *Re: <nettime> The Meaning of Boris Johnson
>
>
>
> Aloha,
>
>
>
> Let me (allow me to) take Brian's rejoinder as an opportunity to address
> David's and his argument in face of the (dangerous) shenanigans in 10,
> Clowning Street (-Marina Hyde, TG) ... and beyond.
>
>
>
> There is absolutely no doubt that Boris Johnson is a very 'special'
> character and political animal (Rory Stewart too, btw - but then in a
> positive sense), but as David says, his clowneries are froth while 'his
> administration is less of an outlier than it appears' - and this with
> deadly consequences.
>
>
>
> I however do differ with David where he ascribe the current
> political-ideological imbroglio to the 'return of the state' as a
> consequence of the pandemic. According to me, to put it bluntly, nothing of
> the such has happened. The state has become more impotent than ever, and it
> are the corporate forces which have and are steering the decision-making
> process, with the state as mere conveyor belt. There is no confusion there,
> and even if it appears to happen more by default than by design, it is
> still entirely deliberate.We have truly and wholesomely entered the era of
> 'govcorp' where the administrative apparatus is merely, albeit
> indispensable, exo-squeleton of global corporate governance, with, in
> accordance with the spirit of the times, 'hyper' - and hyper rich -
> individuals at the helm. Welcome to neo-feudalism.
>
>
>
> I am afraid that is such a dispensation, clowns like Boris Johnson, and
> his exceptionally 'gifted' motley crew ('Jakey' Rees-Mogg, 'Mad Nad' -ine
> Dorries, & the many such) are mere props (the extent to which they are
> conscious of it is unclear) in the tragedy which are embroiled in for quite
> a while: that of post-politics, that is a system where the powers are not
> what they look and are not located where they seem to be, and the ongoings
> take, for the people at large, every appearance of a puzzle palace. I think
> this is one of the reason for populism: desperately trying to make sense
> where it has vanished from the political scene (which has vanished too in
> the process) .
>
>
>
> & With regard to Brian's derive of the unhappy pranksters towards a
> military expedient: he is completely right, while at the same time, to
> parakeet Jean Marie Le Pen's totally infame dismissal of the Shoah as a
> footnote, it is, 'ontologically speaking', a mere side-show. Even though,
> with a war in Europe at our doorstep, we might very well die in it for
> real.
>
>
>
> Yeah, it's a fine mess indeed.
>
>
>
> Cheers all the same , and happy week-end
>
>
>
>