The politics of culture: the wharves and social reality.

Hinkson, John

Nathan Hollier's comment on my work and the work of Arena more generally arose out of a public discussion between Overland and Arena about the significance of class divisions in politics today. This discussion was a response to earlier commentary about the wharf dispute of 1998. A short piece by myself and an editorial by Paul James in Arena Magazine no. 35 argued that the class power involved in that dispute was not to be taken for granted. It was strongly affected by historic shifts that have occurred in the character of social relations, sense of self, and ways of life across the whole of society as expressed in technological change. We argued that these changes called for different responses to those which were appropriate at an earlier time. There was no good reason to see a revival of a more or less familiar class politics in that dispute, no matter how powerful the emotions of the moment.

What is it that disturbs Hollier in these arguments about structural change and the nature of the present, and their application to the Australian wharf dispute? No doubt it is partly because they do not affirm the optimism about the prospects for union and class militancy stirred up by the dispute. This requires discussion in its own right. But Hollier's considered view seems to go much further.

In particular, he has come to the view that writers from Arena engage in flawed argument of great generality; disagreement over the wharf dispute is merely a symptom of these larger problems. Firstly, he says, the theory we propound is devoid of empirical reference points. Secondly, this allows us to spin a web that is difficult to penetrate. This leads us down an elitist track, our ideas being closed off to ordinary people. Thirdly, Arena has no interest in practice. Rather than address how the social order might be different, we await 'the present perambulations of history to end' before getting our hands dirty. We engage in 'sophisticated analysis' without attempting to communicate with those directly disadvantaged.

This argument, a variation on a familiar theme, conjures up certain marxist figures who once actually defended such positions. Louis Althusser, who adopted such an approach in the face of the decline of the revolutionary Left, comes to mind. The Frankfurt School has been similarly criticized. But bearing in mind that Hollier's criticism hinges on an alleged absence of empirical analysis, it is hard not to ask what evidence he has for Arena's supposed descent into scholasticism. Certainly there is no explicit statement of any such approach in Arena. Indeed it would be the last thing we would wish to defend.

Of course, Arena writers, like any others, might become trapped in unintended positions. However, to show that this was so would require an argument, a mixture of 'empirical' material and substantial interpretation. In fact the evidence Hollier relies on to build his view is flimsy and wide open to other interpretations. Let me spend a little time on the claim that my writing in particular is flawed because of a lack of empirical reference points and analysis. Hollier states that he will not address this question (except in a long footnote), even though it is almost the only basis he has for his view of the Arena project.

The focus for his claim is an article 'The Global Crisis: Political Economy and Beyond' (1) which certainly does not engage in empirical analysis. The article is a critique of a book-length piece by Robert Brenner which took up the whole of issue no. 229 of New Left Review. (2) Empirical analysis is certainly not lacking in Brenner's article. And in my critique I went out of my way to acknowledge and express admiration for the sustained empirical work over many years that eventually issued in Brenner's analysis of world economy.

One way to evaluate Brenner's work would be to test the veracity of his empirical material, and no doubt this has already happened in more than one journal. My approach was different. While I generally agreed with Brenner's observations, I sought to call into contention his interpretation. Contrary to Hollier's apparent view, changes in political perspective do not simply emerge as a result of empirical analysis. Nor is political practice, as he suggests, predominantly an expression of the grievances of social groups which in turn seek social structural solutions to their problems, even if such disputes may be in the political foreground. All politics and political actions are framed by more or less developed systems of interpretation. Often for those who are politically involved they are implicit rather than explicit, just as Hollier's feelings about class analysis are predominantly in his 'bones' rather than spelt out theoretically. Such frameworks of interpretation suggest how one event relates to others, what form action might take, which actions are possible, as well as helping participants to see how they are part of a larger process of cooperation. Does Hollier really think so much like an empiricist that he views politics solely as a function of conflict between groups? Could he really think this was how Marx saw it? Capital is certainly more than a study of disparate disputes or a series of empirical analyses. More importantly, if the broad framing conditions of social life today have changed, is this not a matter for interpretation, for theoretical innovation?

As I have said, my article does not pretend to empirical analysis, but rather engages in social interpretation. That is, it takes as true enough certain empirical reference points accepted or argued by Brenner and attempts to show why they should be given a different interpretation, with alternative political implications. One gets the impression that this is embarrassing to Hollier. He refers to my article as a 'think piece', which, unlike his 'materialist' approach, he regards as 'idealist'.

To write an interpretive article is by no means a matter of doing what one likes. But quite apart from matters of method, the article in question is empirically grounded. This ground is not argued in the article in question because it has been taken up many times in the last twenty years, in the first series of Arena, then in Arena Journal and Arena Magazine. Some of the appropriate citations were given in the article. Indeed, the theoretical position articulated by Arena writers is grounded in empirical reference points, but these are not in themselves disputed--by Hollier, or by any other critic who comes to mind.

For example, it is a fact that media such as television and other more recent communications technologies are more important reference points for young people growing up today than they were a generation ago. There is, of course, room here for empirical analysis. But by and large the fact is widely assumed and, more to the point, in itself is usually of little basic interest. In other words it is largely taken for granted. The question that some of us at Arena have sought to bring into focus is what this fact means. In other words, what does it mean that social relations are increasingly structured in this way?

Marx always emphasized that markets are more than a means of the allocation of things. That is to say, he spoke of how they are social relations of a very special kind. What if high-tech media are more than transmitters of information but also carriers of social interchange of a distinctive and crucial kind? This is a cultural question ignored by most theorists, including most of those on the Left, those within cultural studies and, as far as I can tell, by Hollier himself. It may still be that this is a development of no significance and that it should be ignored. But it has been argued --not simply asserted--that such relations, by their very form, support, among many other things, a new kind of individualism, an issue the Left ignores at its peril. Here the onus switches to writers like Hollier to engage with the argument and critique it, especially as it claims to have a (new) materialist basis.

Hollier seems unready to take on board that the communications revolution is much more than media of communication. While he acknowledges my discussion of the role of the techno-sciences, he proceeds to reduce the issue to the question of subjectivity. I would defend arguments about the immense significance of changes in the nature of subjectivity for politics today. But that, nevertheless, is only one aspect of what I am arguing. We should keep in mind how those who see themselves in the nineteenth-century tradition of Marx have a reflex disposition to dismiss any emphasis upon subjectivity and the self. They think it steps outside the materialist tradition, as Hollier is keen to illustrate.

This tendency to tie the techno-sciences exclusively to questions of subjectivity has some major consequences. For one, it is blind to the full implications of the postmodern technologies for the economy (as well as the nature of the market). In fact the old divisions between subjectivity and the economy that Hollier relies upon break down in contemporary circumstances.

The role of the techno-sciences in the information revolution is profound. It is much more than a matter of computer technology. Witness the present boom in bio-technology which is one factor in the contemporary crisis on Wall Street. Generally, the centrality of the techno-sciences in the reconstruction of production, and the reconstruction of social strata responsible for the productive process, brings into question many of the categories of modern political economy. This reconstruction of economic practice demands a reworking of materialism itself. While Nathan quotes materials that deal with these processes he quickly negates their significance by categorizing them as non-materialist.

There are similarities here with Brenner's approach. The political economy he advocates does acknowledge the techno-sciences (technology) as a new element in economy today. In other words Brenner acknowledges certain empirical phenomena--but how are we to interpret them? If they are to be understood merely as technological change, then many of the assumptions of political economy can be preserved. If, on the other hand, we can see how distinctive forms of social interaction derived from intellectual practices underpin the techno-sciences, and that this signifies a historic shift whereby intellectual practice now directly works within the social structure, a radically different perspective on ethical and political practice emerges. If intellectual practice systematically displaces the work of the hand in economic production, does this not undermine some founding assumptions of political economy, raising fundamental questions about the role of the working class in production and social life, as well as the role of intellectual practice itself? This alternative interpretation, I believe, throws light on issues that are of grave importance to the Left, but for which the Left at present has no answers. It is a point of entry into both the problems besetting universities today and the decline in the capacity of working-class people to organize against capital. It helps to identify new ways in which contradictions emerge in social and economic life, providing some initial pointers for new forms of social practice.

So I would argue that Hollier's charge of 'elitism', and how he attributes this to Arena's supposed lack of empirical analysis, misses the point. But it is possible to take Hollier's argument about Arena and elitism in another way. The arguments generated by Arena writers could be judged simply to be too hard to understand. They shut ordinary citizens out of politics, providing no obvious guide to practice.

I think that some writing in Arena has been difficult, perhaps too difficult, although I do not believe it ever sought recognition through unnecessary obscurantism. It still has not achieved a form that allows it to be easily disseminated. This broader dissemination is certainly an aim, but with one rider: that we should not give up on what we consider to be the key dilemmas of social practice today. We have always welcomed assistance in what can only be a process of theoretical and practical development over time, unless we are to reduce social reality to the simplicities of taken-for-granted frameworks. Hollier perhaps does not know much about the history of the first series of Arena, but between that series and the next a considerable process of development can be seen. Writing which first emerged in a highly abstract form has been concretized progressively with the unfolding of events. For example, the emphasis on the role of intellectual practice in the rise of the social movements and the reconstruction of social class goes back to the Arenas of the 1960s. But this outline of a theory has subsequently been fleshed out in terms of concrete social institutions and political implications. The Dawkins reforms are one example, the advent of globalization another.

Obscurity for the sake of it is obviously elitist. But assume for a moment that there is real substance in what has been argued in Arena. It would not be surprising that readers would find a substantially different frame of interpretation hard to comprehend. No doubt there are problems here of relatively raw analysis. But the more crucial matter is that of unfamiliarity. In respect of social questions a generation is a short period of time. The established concepts we employ to understand and act on the social world are not easily changed. In some respects this conservatism, which is evident in Hollier's view, is to be valued. Where capitalism today works by way of producing fleeting realities, conserving concepts, amongst other things, helps preserve what is important in human affairs. Yet under the onslaught of this form of capitalism conserving the radical concepts of a previous period is shortsighted. They need modification in circumstances of real social transformation.

In summary, Hollier articulates his version of the arguments of what he speaks of as the 'Arena collective' but he does not argue with them. Up to a point he spells some of them out, but he then assimilates them to his division of the intellectual field. Arena, he concludes, belongs to 'cultural studies' rather than class analysis, and for him this classification does the trick. Arena, then, is concerned with the politics of the 'self' and not with how the economy is structured. Identity politics has little interest in class analysis, hence the apparent devaluation of social class in my argument.

But these divisions in Hollier's argument are far too schematic to be helpful. They are similar to his view that one can be ethical or one can be political. It is as though he cannot see that, especially today, a politics that is not grounded in the ethical is incapable of renewal. It cannot be denied that there is a version of theory today which has little apparent interest in the real world, but any reader would be struggling to place this tag on Arena. Let me return to the wharf dispute to illustrate this once more because here Hollier has more problems than he seems to realize.

The argument he seeks to critique is by no means limited to the wharf dispute. But even with this narrow focus, it is striking how Hollier, the empirical analyst, actually steers clear of a full analysis of that dispute. In the empiricist distinction he draws between 'think pieces' and 'empirical analysis, his comment is clearly a think piece.

While conceptualising reality, and building a politics through an accumulation of facts is not a viable approach--the building block theory of knowledge--finding a balance between interpretation and factual reality may have more going for it. Does the interpretation make sense in terms of what is happening? Does it help expand the meaning of events? Does it open up new ways to act in present circumstances?

Arena's argument is that the wharves have become like the broader economy. Increasingly the economy (and society) is shaped by an intellectual revolution. The social practitioners of high-tech, those who have had intellectual training, now stand in relations of power that, at least for the moment, tend to see the majority of them join with capital in the organization of production. This is only one aspect of a more general shift in our social settings related to the heightened significance of a particular form of intellectual practice. This, for the moment, supports a social order committed to globalization, as well as economic rationalism. Stage by stage these intellectually trained strata have displaced manual workers, who are weakened as a basis for political organization.

This is not to speak of what is desirable or to be valued. It is simply to address the question of objective changes in the social and economic order. There is no pretence that what these changes mean for political organization is crystal clear, but to see the wharf dispute as a reversal of the decline of class politics of a generation ago is not only unfounded, it seeks a form of clarity which will set politics back rather than contribute to a renewal.

For a start, the 'community' which came out in support of the Maritime Union, and was quite crucial to its 'victory', should not be taken for granted. It certainly was not simply composed of workers, unionists and their families. It was also joined by a broad and significant number of intellectually trained citizens who had become critical of the directions of a globalized society. In other words the contradictions of a society significantly composed of intellectually trained strata began to come into the foreground, and some responded. They acted ethically and to some degree they acted politically. The significance of this broad community-based support for future conflict has been radically underestimated.

But the other matter that Hollier ignores is the nature of the 'victory' itself. After all, a political defeat on the scale suffered by Peter Reith and the Howard Government was monumental and in other circumstances would have dealt a death-blow to their government. Yet what was the outcome? Even Reith has been able to renew his power and the union's victory has been converted into a further massive range of redundancies. There is no joy to be had in this outcome but political realities need to be faced. Broader forces now frame class relations and, at least for the time being, they place major constraints upon the agency of class. The wharves merely mirror the broader society in this respect. The larger picture overwhelmed the victory of the particular battle.

Where is the recognition of this empirical reality in Hollier's comment? A postmodern globalized society dominated by the world market and the commodity step by step marginalizes the work of the hand. In terms of its institutional supports and its social logic, this is to be expected. It is not necessary to outline other aspects of globalization to conclude that this form of technocapitalism is moving towards a situation in which half or more of its constituent population will soon no longer be citizens. This is not an illustration of the production of a 'reserve army of labour' according to the class structure of capitalist society. It is altogether on a different scale. To speak of the return of the neo-classical market, an argument which assumes a 'reserve army of labour', is to tilt at windmills in the face of profound crisis. This objective situation requires new social understandings and new policies if it is to be changed. It requires new ethical and political resources. And it demands a stronger engagement with social reality than is evident in Hollier's comment.

This is by no means to dismiss the prospect of class contradictions returning to the foreground of a future politics. The restructuring of capital in the universal form of globalization does however shift the terms in which this will occur. For this global restructuring only proceeds by breaking down the distinction between culture and economy, a process which triggers cultural contradictions which cut deeper than those associated with class conflict. Early expressions of these emerged with the green bans of the 1970s. Now they take a stronger form: environmental degradation, redundant populations, and multiple crises of meaning to name just a few of the expressions of the emergent system of power. If for the moment it seems as though a political vacuum has become an empirical fact, there are structural reasons why we will soon have to choose!

(1.) Arena Journal, no. 12, 1998, pp. 67-82.

(2.) T. Brenner, 'The Economics of Global Turbulence', New Left Review, no. 229, May/June, 1998, pp 1-264