Refugees, Referenda, and The Rugby-Industrial Complex

Looking back over this past week in politics, I struggle to find the words to describe my feelings towards the messy, incomprehensible, variegated swirl of events that have taken place. It's as if someone has pulled out that box in my cognition that processes events and deciphers them so the can be analysed at a later date and replaced it with a meat mincer. But is this just me, or is it the bizarre mix that has gone into it? In order to process what has possibly become the farcical peak of the Fifth National Government, it is going to need a rigorous break-down of its almost paradoxical parts.

Anybody who knows me personally, knows that my interest in rugby has waned to the point of oblivion over the last ten years. I can't remember the last time I watched a full game (perhaps the the 2011 World Cup final, but even then it was work, as I was a technician in the corporate audio-visual industry at the time—so that wasn't of my own choice). Firstly, it's not that I have anything against rugby per se, or even sport in general, but I just don't find it that interesting. I'm an odd person out: I don't mind cricket, in fact, I wish I had more time to watch cricket, but I just don't like rugby that much anymore. Secondly, and more importantly, I loath the ubiquity of the hyper-commercialised, hyper-masculine, alcohol soaked, and now politicised nature the game has become. I'm sure there are other sports worldwide that get the same treatment, but, what I'm going to call the Rugby-Industrial Complex, has become unique to New Zealand. I've derived this terminology from Dwight Eisenhower's warning to Americans in 1961 of a military-industrial complex that has since derailed the American political system. Eisenhower described the monetary relationship between legislators, the military, and the arms industry. Thankfully, New Zealand doesn't have such a war-mongering culture, but the political ties between rugby and the National Government are almost certainly discernible.

It was Robert Muldoon's National Government that insisted in 1981 that the national rugby team of a country that had openly racist and oppressive policies should not be stopped from touring in New Zealand because, obviously, sport and politics don't mix. Sure, different nations can come together at the Olympic games and compete for the spirit of the game, but below that semblance of unity there are often deep tensions and political motives. Why do all the rich countries win more medals? Surely sporting talent can arise anywhere on the globe? It was Aristotle that said man (just man) was, and still is, a fundamentally political animal. There is no way to completely depoliticise sport, just like every other action anyone takes, the motives for that action are linked to your moral principles, and hence, your political principles. The relationship the 1981 National Government had with rugby is one of convenience, just like the present National Government. Muldoon didn't want to upset his rural rugby-loving, liberal-hating constituents. To Muldoon, the tour wasn't going to become a political football—but in performing that do nothing approach it inherently was still politicised.

Fast-forward three decades and that switched has been flipped in its opposite direction, but as aforementioned, the relationship is a relationship of convenience. I'm not going to go terribly in-depth with the events of the 2011 Rugby World Cup because they have been highly publicised and scrutinised. But suffice to say, that is when the Rugby-Industrial Complex reached maturity. What other country has a Rugby World Cup minister? How about that awful political point scoring three-way handshake? As we descend on another traffic-stopping tournament the Rugby-Industrial Complex is stoking its boilers and exercising its political muscle. The rugby and politics train collided head-on on Sunday when John Key opened Parliament especially for the announcement of the 2015 World Cup Team. For the "sport and politics don't mix" attitude this seems the be a juxtaposition. This is the Key Government putting the spotlight on themselves as just as rugby-mad as the rest of New Zealand rather than on the mounting political failures of late. Also, I can't remember the last time there was so much media attention given to the players that didn't even make the team. Are we that obsessed?

Yet again, the telling influence of the Rugby-Industrial Complex has shown its ugly side this week with the bill rushed through Parliament allowing bars to be open at the early hours of the morning to coincide with games in the United Kingdom. I'm sure the political-business ties are many and numerous between the hospitality industry, alcohol companies, Sky TV, and the National Party. But would I, along with many others, be a killjoy by pointing this out? No, because it just seems so bizarre that this event gets such special treatment—and inevitably this is just the result of our socially destructive hyper-masculine, drinking, homophobic, rape culture. Will the roastbusters team be out during the world cup picking up drunk and vulnerable women? Why this event and not any other? Why do we need to drink to be a part of, or enjoy sport? Surely the unhealthy habits of binge drinking seem oxymoronic to the athleticism of rugby? This is obviously a complex relationship—again, a relationship of convenience—that runs deep and what I've mentioned is just food, or should I say drink, for thought.

This other week's farcical political sideshow was the dreaded flag referendum. Apologists for the referendum often suggest the $26 million spend is a drop in the bucket; welfare costs billions. Never mind that gutting the modern welfare state would be turning back the clock to the social Darwinism of Victorian Britain. However, Key was unequivocal in his reluctance to spend $9 million on the citizens' initiated referendum on the partial sale of important public assets. I'm sure the Taxpayer's Union had a collective moan at the money spent on the referendum whose result was arrogantly ignored. You'd think a referendum initiated by the people would set a democratic percent and warrant somewhat more budget attention. But this shinning example of direct democracy didn't suit the ideologically blindfolded agenda of a cynical and fundamentally anti-democratic government. Again, a relationship of convenience. Apologists will chime that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have a collective say in the future of our nation. But this horribly misses the mark. There was largely collective disgust or apathy when selection panel released its top forty flag choice, which was repeated again more vehemently with this week's release of the final four. It's quite clearly a politically motivated distraction and carefully planned money waster when the Prime Minister's pet flag appears in the top four. It might to interesting to follow any ties Kyle Lockwood has to the National Party and the Prime Minister. Again, the Rugby-Industrial Complex rears its head again when three of the four final designs feature the silver fern. Which is why I find it so perplexing that the NZRU is threatening legal action regarding the silver fern. Perhaps there will be some golden handshake for the boys at the NZRU courtesy of the tax payers. The National Government is not exactly averse to hook-ups for the boys.

As John Oliver has shown, the entire process has descended into internationally embarrassing farcical levels. Given most public opinion polls, people don't want this political pet project shoved down their throats. But no, the fruitcake-of-a sideshow must go on because it's democratic. Also, how exactly is having a say in the primary symbolic representation of our nation having a say in its future? It's akin to spending more time worrying about what colour tie to wear at a job interview than rehearsing answers to questions one might be potentially asked. One is quite clearly more relevant to your future economic outcomes than the other. We can have a politically sanctioned say in jingoistic semiotics, but how dare we have a say in the fundamental structures of political economy. It's the scraps of democracy left over for the masses from meal of the political and economic elites.

Finally, I move on to this week's equally farcical, but tragic event: the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Europe and the Middle East, and the New Zealand Government's morally vacuous response to it. They haven't lost their moral compass, no, they just threw it on the ground and stomped on it. There is a vicious hypocrisy appearing when earlier this year Key verbally insulted Andrew Little's carefully considered stance on sending New Zealand troops to Iraq by telling him to "get some guts". Despite our pittance contribution that could very well be ineffectual given the massive corruption in the Iraqi military and the surrender-inducing tactics of ISIL, Key insisted it was our moral duty, which was later revised to the payment for being part of the club—the FVEY alliance. How can we have this sycophantic behaviour but turn a blind eye to the other, inconvenience of the war—refugees? But the rugby mentality runs deep: it is more righteous to go to war, fight, and die than deal with the consequences. I can understand the response to criticism of such a woeful quota. Taking refugees does require money and infrastructure. But surely the quota could be doubled all for the cost of a flag-referendum? It is almost soul crushing nihilism that this government will rush to support legislation to extend public drinking hours for the Rugby-Industrial Complex but will not rush to support legislation for our moral duty to humanity. The same could be said for the $11 million paid to a disgruntled Saudi businessman; the same theocratic kingdom that has carried out hundreds of brutal public executions this year alone. There is some something horribly askew when we can throw money away at some quixotic sheep-deal in a nation that is not discernibly different from ISIL. The National Government had the audacity to claim that although they disagree with their human rights record, the Saudi judicial system is legislatively sanctioned and therefore legitimate. This is possibly one the most weakly ignorant arguments to grovel to a nation whose judicial system is medieval. The Third Reich in Germany from 1933 to 1945 was legislatively sanctioned as was the Final Solution at the Wansee Conference in 1942. The refugees from war-torn Europe were accommodated in New Zealand including our Prime Minister's mother. Imagine if New Zealand had not opened its doors. Also, we are not talking about immigration, we are talking about people fleeing for their lives. Surely when the morality of life or death is involved the initial concern is more pressing and the financial considerations become secondary. But the National Party does not think like this: its moral concerns are subjugated to the market, the primary moral reality. This is most certainly obvious when it comes to workplace health and safety legislation; that horrible red tape that actually stops people losing life and limb is not morally more important than letting the market do its invisible hand thing. As a myriad of commentators have already said, its time this government got some guts.

This is just scratching the surface of the beat-your-head-against-a-wall train wreak that is not just a third term National Government, no this is something truly spectacular, a third term Key government. A government run by ideological obsessive free-market fanatics that paint themselves as politically pragmatic with their Crosby-Textor spin-doctors. But in time the paint wears thin, and eventually the people will see the shoddy woodwork below. The social and culture rhetoric might be centre-right, but the fundamental structures of political economy are on a death-march to the far-right, surely, but slowly, where money talks, and morals walk.

———————————————————————————————————————— "... we can explore space together, both inner and outer, forever in peace." —W. M. Hicks.

Campbell Live and its Discontents: The Culture Industry, Repressive Desublimation, and Investigative Journalism in New Zealand

It beggars belief that in a liberal democracy there is such a passive acceptance of the inevitability of Campbell Live’s fate—why is a fundamental cornerstone of democracy being eroded away within a system that purports to actively champion it? I aim to offer a dual explanation for the general demise of rigorous news media under late capitalism by application of Theodore Adorno’s culture industry thesis, as well as Freudian psychoanalysis via Herbert Marcuse’s repressive desublimation thesis. These two theories when applied in tandem shed light on why this has not only willingly occurred by suggesting that it is in capital’s interest to orchestrate such a system, but that we accept this system because it caters for our deepest irrational desire for it.

There has been a plethora of media analysis of the situation Campbell Live is facing, and to trawl through all of them to give a comprehensive picture is beyond the theoretical application of this essay. However, I wish to draw attention to Gordon Campbell’s editorial that highlights the inevitable demise of investigative journalism on broadcast television as an inherent, and dangerous, reality in a market orientated environment. Campbell’s paraphrasing of Oscar Wilde to describe the market telling us the “price of everything and the value of nothing” should be to be considered pertinent rather than a mere quip.[1] Lord Darlington was answering the question: “What is a cynic?”[2] The Oxford English Dictionary defines cynical as:

Believing that people are motivated purely by self-interest … concerned only with one’s own interests and typically disregarding accepted standards in order to achieve them.[3]

Pay particular attention to these definitions in relation to the market—and both Campbell’s application of Wilde to the market, and how this relates to Adorno’s thesis (as well as Marcuse’s). Keep in mind that under capitalism producers and consumers are self-interested. The disjunction between intrinsic and exchange value touches at one of the contradictions of capitalism, both with regards to the aesthetic of culture highlighted by Adorno, as well as, more troublingly, the fundamental principles of democracy. While journalism can be said to have use value in terms of information content for consumers, at a higher level its relationship to maintaining a functioning democracy and distributing knowledge could be considered intrinsic.

                  The original aim of Adorno’s thesis was to show what we would perceive of as artistic culture—film, music, literature, radio, television—is being standardised in such a way as to increase its market value and well as undermine its critical element, all to the benefit of capital.[4] The underlying causal mechanisms that he exposed in doing so can be discerned, explicably, in every facet of late capitalist societies, including journalism. By using a more encompassing definition of culture within Adorno’s theory, investigative journalism (in this case within the context of broadcast television), has also become subject to the same marketability and standardisation that has subsumed artistic culture.^[5] The archetypal measure of success in business is sales volume, and in turn, repetition of the formula of success. The product is worthy only insofar as it can be sold to the largest possible market. It is beyond belief that Television New Zealand’s pseudo-journalistic venture Seven Sharp consistently has substantively higher viewer ratings than Campbell Live, nevertheless, the show has found a formula that guarantees higher advertising revenue than a more qualitative editorial enterprise. The show’s less contentious and predictable content appeals to a larger public and appeases advertisers. It is little wonder then that MediaWorks, Campbell Live’s producers, wishes to replicate this formula for its own commercial imperatives. Profit will always trump any higher value offered by journalism. This fusion of entertainment and information produces a muted critical thinking in its viewers that will feedback into supporting the capitalist media enterprise.

                  Surely within a highly educated society consumers would see this apparatus at face value and demand otherwise? It seems not. In order to understand this we must engage with Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis and Marcuse’s Marxist application of it. Freud suggests our deepest irrational desires for instant pleasurable gratification (the pleasure principle) is regulated by normative rules in our social sphere that we internalise (the reality principle).[6] Freud refers to the process of transformation of these desires into useful activity as sublimation. In addition to claiming civilization is driven by the process of sublimation, Freud argues that art as an end is a principle manifestation of sublimation. Marcuse, however, has suggested that late capitalism has reversed this notion. High culture, he claims, was originally a subversive dimension of society as the result of sublimation. However, the culture industry under late capitalism has flattened out any subversive element that it once had.[7]

While journalism does not explicitly fit the mould of art, and it can nevertheless be considered within high culture, as there is something to be said for the subversive element it can contain, namely, the critique of power. It is the changes in the mode of production under late capitalism that is rendering some forms of television journalism less antagonistic by blurring the distinction between its critical discourse, and trivialised news snippets and puff-piece journalism that satisfies instant gratification. This desublimation in turn generates the market demand that cynically demands this easy-to-digest and less subversive news content that capital, seeking to return a profit, is more than happy to supply.

A common critique of the trivialisation of television media suggests that the sphere of interactive discourse has shifted to the medium of the internet. While somewhat true, the desublimation hypothesis still suggests a required critical thought to actively engage with this sphere; a concerted effort is required to seek out and critically analyse news media and editorialised writing. However, a desublimated consumer will defer this critical thought via various modes of instant gratification: referring to websites of television news media such as TVNZ or 3 News; corporate dominated print media websites such as the New Zealand Herald or Fairfax; social media feeds such as Facebook or Twitter; or in an unfortunately increasing number of consumers, even the need for trivalised journalism is trumped by less critical forms of entertainment of which the internet offers an almost bottomless pit of. Any engagement with news media is still taken at face value uncritically, whether in agreement or not, instant gratification is satisfied and the matter is seldom engaged further than satisfactorily necessary.

Both Adorno and Marcuse had something important to say in the critique of late capitalism, and no doubt features of their theory are seen not just in artistic culture, but all culture. 'I don't want to think; I want to feel' is the epitome of the consumer under late capitalism. What Adorno and Marcuse have shown us is that the passive acceptance of this system, because of capital's manipulation of it, is destroying the 'think' supplied by investigative journalism, and exacerbating the 'feel' supplied by predictable and formulaic infotainment. The market becomes the measure of everything and offers the (intrinsic) value of nothing. We have become astonishingly self-interested and cynical as a consequence.

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[1] Gordon Campbell, "Gordon Campbell on the Demise of Campbell Live," Scoop Media, last modified April 10, 2015, http://gordoncampbell.scoop.co.nz/2015/04/10/gordon-campbell-on-the-demise-of-campbell-live/.

[2] Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan (Cambridge: ProQuest LLC, 1996), 95.

[3] Oxford Dictionary of English, Third Edition, 2013, s.v. “cynical”.

[4] Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (London: Verso, 2010), 120-167.

[5] Precise definitions of culture are numerous and debatable, and vary between sociological and anthropological disciplines. I intend to utilise Ian Buchanan’s definition of culture as a “set of beliefs, practices, rituals, and traditions shared by a group of people”, which within a democratic society would include journalism as valued for its contribution to political accountability. Oxford Dictionary of Critical Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), s.v. “culture”.

[6] Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, trans. David McLintock (London: Penguin, 2004), 16-20.

[7] Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (London: Routledge, 2002), 59-86.

———————————————————————————————————————— "... we can explore space together, both inner and outer, forever in peace." —W. M. Hicks.

A (Somewhat Brief) Critique of Historical Materialism

If one surveys the political landscape of the Anglosphere (United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand) one thing become apparent: all these governments operate from some form of capitalist, and indeed fiscally conservative, ideology. Even the Obama Administration in the United States is just capitalism-lite (or naïvely labeled socialism by far-right decriers) in contrast to its Republican critics. Nevertheless, any interventionist economic policy during the remaining years of Obama’s Presidency have been hampered by the Republican Party gaining control of the legislature in the 2014 mid-term elections. This turn in history could not surely be put down to mere coincidence? Despite what Karl Marx argued, capitalism seems destined to stay for the foreseeable future. Regardless of a brief Keynesian respite between the 1930s and 1960s, capitalism has become cemented as our mode of political economy. Even centrist labour parties have conformed to capitalism such as Britain under Tony Blair by adopting the acquiescent Third Way. So was Marx wrong about emergence of socialism and in turn communism? To answer this it is pertinent to understand historical materialism, Marx’s theoretical exposition of how we came to be in our present circumstances.

Marx developed his materialist conception of history not in a single work but gradually over several works, which makes it difficult to understand, and it can seemingly appear to be lacking coherence.[1] To find Marx’s roots for historical materialism we need to consider one of his forebears, Georg Hegel. In the Phenomenology of Spirit (as well as other works) Hegel developed a speculative logical system that served as the basis for his metaphysical and political thinking.[2] Hegel’s thinking was based on a dialectical methodology whereby successive categories are implicitly self-contradictory and give rise to a hierarchical evolution of categories: an initial thesis is contrary to its antithesis, and the two are united in a synthesis by the positive outcomes of each by avoiding both their self-contradictions.[3] Marx uses Hegel’s dialectical methodology but uses it within the circumstances of material conditions, not as an agent for history, but as a story of class struggle as defined by those material conditions. Marx’s history is therefore regarded as “materialist” in contrast to Hegel’s “idealist” history guided by the human spirit (Geist) that is directed towards freedom. In The German Ideology Marx elucidates how stages of material and productive development give rise to certain social arrangements related to division of labour and ownership of the means of production.[4] Certain antagonisms between modes of production have brought us from hunter-gatherer societies to primitive communal ownership, to feudal societies, and finally to capitalism. Capitalism however, has simplified class antagonism into two simple camps: the owners of production, the bourgeoisie, and those who must sell their labour to subsist, the proletariat.[5] When class is reduced to this definition it clarifies any grey areas that might suggest a fluidity between classes that is often the cornerstone of liberalism. This antagonism is still axiomatic in the same sense that aristocratic privilege was the defining feature of pre-revolutionary France. The repulsive aspects of capitalism’s contradictions would eventually create its collapse and give birth by way of revolution to a socialist society where the proletariat retain common ownership of the means of production.[6]

Class conflict because of material circumstances is inevitable; one class will always attempt to dominate the other whatever the historical circumstances.[7] Marx recognises this, however, the desire to overcome this relationship is tentative, especially in a world dominated by capital's hegemony. Marx's interpretation of class conflict suggests to the casual reader it is aimed at a specific end point: communism, or, a classless society. While idealistic, there is nothing to suggest that one system will triumph over another, and history will be drawn to an ideological terminus. Ideas will always arise from present material circumstances. But understanding Marx is more about the possible rather than the inevitable. Historical materialism is often misinterpreted or misappropriated as a historiographical methodology, as pointed out by Terry Eagleton, to explain the unfolding of history, especially in terms of class conflict.[8] What should be taken from Marx is a general theory of social change. Marx is not suggesting an internal determinist mechanism for history’s unfolding as well as its future, but putting forward an economic and well as technological argument for historical development of social formations. Humans are conditioned to execute a development in their productive relationships.[9]

The picture Marx paints however is not exempt from criticism: while Marx's explanation of the transition from primitive societies, to feudalism, and then to capitalism is plausible and well understood, his theory seems hollow when contrasted with the history of the twentieth century. The establishment of the Soviet Union after the 1917 Russian Revolution failed to follow the development of socialism according to historical materialism because it was a largely feudal society (in the loosest sense, especially in contrast to the industrialised capitalist economies of Germany, Britain, and the United States). The Soviet Union only heavily industrialised after transition to socialism, undermining Marx's logical development of communism. The collectivisation of agriculture and the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin cost millions of lives and failed to produce the means to create a classless society. Even China’s ruling communist party is gradually reforming its economy to what appears to be more capitalistic. This has led some commentators such as Francis Fukuyama, to suggest the inevitability of liberal democracy (and implicitly capitalism). Fukuyama has suggested the collapse of the Soviet Union has proved capitalism as the natural condition of human affairs and therefore the end of history.[10] Fukuyama is very much influenced in this regard by Hegel in an explanation for the unfolding of History. Marx also could not have foreseen to ideological power of the fusion of capital and technology to exacerbate what Fredrich Engles described as a false consciousness in the proletariat.[11] The ability of media corporations to distract and disseminate ideas that work in favour of capital is incredibly powerful.

Postmodern interpretations of history are dismissive of grand historical narratives whether they be materialist or otherwise.[12] However, the scepticism expressed by postmodernism towards any form of teleological inevitability need not undermine the theoretical basis for socialism or even the impetus to make all human lives better. A critique of Marx's historical materialism does not necessarily mean an outright rejection of all Marxist theory or socialism as a viable economic alternative to capitalism, but this also does not mean embracing Fukuyama's End of History thesis, which is teleological in itself being a derivative of Hegel.[13] There is nothing to suggest the present ideological epoch will not be undermined by some catastrophic event—say, anthropogenic climate change, or a dramatic financial collapse worse than the Great Depression, or a nuclear war—that will cause some regressive state of affairs to arise: one of the many flavours of anarchism or potentially a totalitarian government that derives its power from control of what little post-apocalyptic resources exist. So that leaves us with the question: if the historical march to communism is not inevitable, how does society overcome the vicissitudinous nature of capitalism? One can either wallow in the nihilism that Marx was wrong and we are all doomed to capitalism’s negativities, or we can use Marx as a theoretical impetus to critique capitalism without being locked into the dogmatism of inevitability. To quote Marx himself, "philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it".[14]

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[1]  Terrence Ball, "History: Critique and irony," in The Cambridge Companion to Marx, ed. Terrell Carver (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

[2] Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and J. N. Findlay, Phenomenology of spirit, trans. Arnold V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977); Allen Wood, "Hegel and Marxism," in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed. Frederick  C. Beiser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

[3] Hegel and Findlay, Phenomenology of Spirit; Michael Forster, "Hegel's dialectical method," in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed. Frederick  C. Beiser (Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 131-3.

[4]  Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, ed. C. J. Arthur (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1970).

[5] Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (London: Penguin Books, 2002).

[6] ibid.

[7] ibid.

[8] Terry Eagleton, Why Marx Was Right (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011).

[9] Marx and Engles, The German Ideology, 47.

[10] Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992).

[11]  Fredrich Engles, "Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1893," accessed March 27, 2015, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1893/letters/93_07_14.htm.

[12]  Jean-François Lyotard et al., The postmodern condition: a report on knowledge (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984).

[13] Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man.

[14] Karl Marx, "Theses on Feuerbach," in Early Writings. Introduced by Lucio Colletti. trans. Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton, ed. Lucio Colletti. translated by Gregor Benton and Rodney L. Livingstone (Harmondsworth: Penguin, in association with New Left Review, 1975), 423.

———————————————————————————————————————— "... we can explore space together, both inner and outer, forever in peace." —W. M. Hicks.