I agree that the occupations are extremely unlikely to achieve anything. In general the whole student movement seems pathologically disorganised, though it did start off well at Millbank. Frankly, what the movement needs is well-targeted, spectacular violence against property. Property that the public resents, or at least has no sympathy for: investment banks, party HQs, hedge funds, and the like. And it should be clear(er) that the protest is about more than tuition fees. The movement should create and 'us' and 'them' mood throughout the country, and also give the impression that the government isn't capable of maintaining order without militarising the country. Then maybe, just maybe, the public would wake up to what's going on.
Am I going to be arrested if I say that I think it?
Radicalism has always been much to my taste. I am a realist perfectionist consequentialist and I can't stand claims about procedural democratic legitimacy, rules for the sake of rules, and so on.
OK, fair enough. I'm not sure that this would actually work - usually the right suggests strategies of tension - but it is at least aimed at creating and exerting political pressure.
I suppose it's a mixture of the 'strategy of tension' and the 'double state theory', promoted by Italian right- and left-wing terrorists in the 70's, respectively.
I'm not at all sure that it would work. It certainly backfired in the above cases, but then again, their objectives were absurd to begin with. It's probably the movement's best bet though. With these things the devil is very much in the details. And in sheer luck, as with all politics.
Northern Ireland, which is the only example I can think of where the British state militarized in order to maintain order for more than a couple of days, hasn't turned out so well. Although I'm not a consequentialist, I think there are long-run costs to the resort to the kind of violence that would be needed to force the British state's hand that way. The other example that sprung to mind was the descent of the Met on Yorkshire in the miner's strike, but I don't know enough about that to say whether it'd fall under any plausible criteria of militarization - and it's not like the miners won either. The risk of going toe-to-toe with the state is not only that it's better equipped for violence, but that the changes you have to make to be able to sustain that kind of struggle are ones that both corrupt you and distance you from the majority of people who aren't prepared to take such steps or bear their costs.
It is right though that if you want to get institutions to respond to you, you need to do something that they actually care about. My sense is that UCL management is pretty uninterested in whether students are occupying one of their function rooms somewhere - although they are trying to get an eviction notice served. Occupying something that actually matters, like, off the top of my head, the fees processing office, would not only be genuinely disruptive to central admin but also give them access to data that they could use to bolster their case. Getting various bien pensant usual suspects in to give 'conciousness raising' talks is about as helpful as a whoopee cushion in a knifefight.
And of course the intellectual dishonesty of so much of the opposition only winds me up more. Analytical political philosophers praising Stefan Collini's apres moi, le deluge piece of apocalyptical nonsense had better be a case of the heart taking them where the head won't, since otherwise it indicates a depressing inability to see what it takes to vindicate a set of claims about how political institutions function amongst people who are supposed to be experts in thinking about how they ought to be structured. Which isn't to say that the proposals, now substantially worse than Browne, won't be a disaster. It's to point out that if you're going to oppose them, you could do it on grounds that at least have some evidence to support them, and particularly so if you're supposed to be part of a profession constituted by its ability to think rigorously.
7 comments:
I don't understand what the popes hat has to do with it, please enlighten me.
I agree that the occupations are extremely unlikely to achieve anything. In general the whole student movement seems pathologically disorganised, though it did start off well at Millbank. Frankly, what the movement needs is well-targeted, spectacular violence against property. Property that the public resents, or at least has no sympathy for: investment banks, party HQs, hedge funds, and the like. And it should be clear(er) that the protest is about more than tuition fees. The movement should create and 'us' and 'them' mood throughout the country, and also give the impression that the government isn't capable of maintaining order without militarising the country. Then maybe, just maybe, the public would wake up to what's going on.
Enzo,
I'm probably just being dense, but do you think this or are you mocking me? It does seem rather a radical strategy.
Am I going to be arrested if I say that I think it?
Radicalism has always been much to my taste. I am a realist perfectionist consequentialist and I can't stand claims about procedural democratic legitimacy, rules for the sake of rules, and so on.
OK, fair enough. I'm not sure that this would actually work - usually the right suggests strategies of tension - but it is at least aimed at creating and exerting political pressure.
I suppose it's a mixture of the 'strategy of tension' and the 'double state theory', promoted by Italian right- and left-wing terrorists in the 70's, respectively.
I'm not at all sure that it would work. It certainly backfired in the above cases, but then again, their objectives were absurd to begin with. It's probably the movement's best bet though. With these things the devil is very much in the details. And in sheer luck, as with all politics.
Northern Ireland, which is the only example I can think of where the British state militarized in order to maintain order for more than a couple of days, hasn't turned out so well. Although I'm not a consequentialist, I think there are long-run costs to the resort to the kind of violence that would be needed to force the British state's hand that way. The other example that sprung to mind was the descent of the Met on Yorkshire in the miner's strike, but I don't know enough about that to say whether it'd fall under any plausible criteria of militarization - and it's not like the miners won either. The risk of going toe-to-toe with the state is not only that it's better equipped for violence, but that the changes you have to make to be able to sustain that kind of struggle are ones that both corrupt you and distance you from the majority of people who aren't prepared to take such steps or bear their costs.
It is right though that if you want to get institutions to respond to you, you need to do something that they actually care about. My sense is that UCL management is pretty uninterested in whether students are occupying one of their function rooms somewhere - although they are trying to get an eviction notice served. Occupying something that actually matters, like, off the top of my head, the fees processing office, would not only be genuinely disruptive to central admin but also give them access to data that they could use to bolster their case. Getting various bien pensant usual suspects in to give 'conciousness raising' talks is about as helpful as a whoopee cushion in a knifefight.
And of course the intellectual dishonesty of so much of the opposition only winds me up more. Analytical political philosophers praising Stefan Collini's apres moi, le deluge piece of apocalyptical nonsense had better be a case of the heart taking them where the head won't, since otherwise it indicates a depressing inability to see what it takes to vindicate a set of claims about how political institutions function amongst people who are supposed to be experts in thinking about how they ought to be structured. Which isn't to say that the proposals, now substantially worse than Browne, won't be a disaster. It's to point out that if you're going to oppose them, you could do it on grounds that at least have some evidence to support them, and particularly so if you're supposed to be part of a profession constituted by its ability to think rigorously.
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