[Marxism] My latest column (long)

[<g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxx>]

The Bin September 2005-09-03


1. Of the young and the oldâ

I remember well standing some years ago in the underground in 
London and opposite me was an advertisement for Irish 
whiskey.  The ad compared the beginning of Robert Burns poem 
To A Mouse: On turning her up in her nest with the plough, 
November 1785.

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie, 
O, what a panic's in thy breastie! 
Thou need na start awa sae hasty 
Wi bickering brattle! 
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee, 
Wi' murdering pattle.

with the opening lines from Yeatsâ  The Wild Swans at Coole

The trees are in their autumn beauty 
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

Poetry on an advertising hoarding might sound strange, but 
nothing is sacred to capital, when they wish to appeal to an 
audience that likes to have their sense of their own cultural 
capital acknowledged. The point being made was that Irish 
whiskey like Yeatsâ poem was much smoother than the rough 
Scotch. Though partial to a drop or two, I am not really 
enough of a connoisseur to pass judgment on the relative 
merits of Irish and Scotch whiskey.  Moreover it is a moot 
point of course which of Yeats and Burns is the greater 
poet.  Burns gets my vote, but I confess that I read him much 
less than Yeats.

For I have loved Yeatsâ poetry since first studying him 
nearly 50 years ago with Brother McGee at the Christian 
Brothers Grammar School in Omagh. McGee was a charismatic 
teacher, but also a man with the most terrible of politics.  
He was violently anti-modern and totally committed to 
Catholic dictatorships as the ideal form of government.  He 
and the late pope would have gotten on famously. 
Still he made an enormous impression on me and everyone he 
taught. 

I can see McGee now in my mindâs eye clearly, standing at the 
lectern declaiming the poem in that deliberately cadenced non-
prosaic style that Yeats himself favoured, because he hated 
poetry to be read like prose.

Here is the rest of the poem

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

Several things have brought the poem to mind today.  Recently 
I bumped into my old friend Howard Guille down in the city.  
Howard is the secretary of the NTEU and has spent a life time 
fighting for a society which is based on a sense of 
collective decency and care and one which is also committed 
to building up the common good. He seemed weary and hard 
pressed. The current burst of class war from above, namely 
the pushing of Australian Workplace Agreements by the Federal 
Govt was I thought taking its toll on him.  He lamented to me 
the fact that young Australians would never have known a 
society, which was not dominated by the dog-eat-dog values of 
the market. He worried that might have made them total 
strangers to the necessity of looking out for others.

The other experience that made me think of Yeatsâ poem was a 
couple of guest lectures I gave recently to aspiring 
journalism students. I spoke to them of the current crisis 
faced by journalists.  The almost absolute control of the 
media exercised by the corporate barons, has meant that the 
public in their desperation to learn the truth of such things 
as the Iraq war, had turned to independent documentary film 
makers such as Michael Moore.

How did I find the journalism students? Well as always with 
my students I did not find them besotted with market values.  
They hope of course to get jobs and to be able  to have a 
good life. That is entirely praiseworthy.  But their young 
hearts are also full of  the hope and desire for a better 
world.   They know things are not going well.  Every night on 
the television they behold the slaughter bench of history 
groaning under the weight of its countless victims. Every day 
the corporate media preaches to them the doctrine of TINA -
There is no Alternative. Yet the heart of the young is a 
lonely hunter, and the desire for a better world cannot be 
choked out by a thousand Murdochs or even a thousand years of 
neo-liberal economics.

So what then of Yeats and his swans?  The poem is of course 
about growing old and the loss of the animal-like vigour and 
energy that Yeats as a Nietzschean valued so much. Passion 
and conquest are the two qualities of the young that most 
inspire envy in the ageing poet. It should be clear from my 
remarks above that I do not see the young in the same way.  I 
do not doubt their energy and long may they enjoy it.  That 
however is a trivial matter compared to the qualities of 
hope, courage and generosity of spirit that the young have in 
such abundance, and which makes teaching them such a joy.

Contrast that with their elders.  Here I like to quote from 
Aristotleâs portrait of the elderly.

The old have lived long, have often been deceived, have made 
many mistakes of their own; they see that more often than not 
the affairs of men turn out badly.  And so they are positive 
about nothing; in all things they err by an extreme 
moderationâthey think evil; that is they are disposed to put 
the worse construction on everythingâ they are slow to hope; 
partly from experience â since things generally go wrong, or 
at all events seldom turn out well; and partly, too, from 
cowardice.

So Yeats as an ageing male of 54, lamented the loss of his 
energy and envied the young. My friend Howard worries how the 
young have not been exposed to the ideal of a society which 
values the common good: an ideal which he has given his life 
to. Myself, the oldest of them all, am quietly confident that 
the world belongs to the young and the young will make a 
better world.


2.  The meaning of the New Orleans disaster

My meeting with Howard Guille did however highlight how much 
the last 30 years have consisted on an attack on the common 
good.  If proof of this are needed one has only to look at 
the disaster of Katrina and New Orleans.  The media got into 
town three days before the hurricane struck.  Yet after four 
days of disaster, help had still not arrived to the 
beleaguered victims who have been forced to hunker down amid 
dead bodies and their own excrement by the Bush government.

Never since the Irish Famine of 1846-8 has the logic of the 
market been so starkly revealed. Millions died in Ireland, 
not because of the lack of food but because the British 
government wanted the land of the Irish peasantry to rear 
their sheep and cattle on.  Go to < http://www.hartford-
hwp.com/archives/61/010.html> for an account of how the likes 
of Nassau Senior, economic adviser to the British Govt, 
thought that a million deaths from the famine "would scarcely 
be enough to do much good".  In the end he got his million 
and many more.

The crime of the Irish peasantry was to be poor and in the 
way of Capitalâs plans. Similarly the crime of Afro-Americans 
is to be poor and in the way of Capitalâs plans.
In New Orleans the poor who are mainly blacks were abandoned 
in the city.  They did not have the cars to take them to 
safety. The authorities provided no means to get them out of 
the city. They were herded to the Superdome and left to rot 
without medications, clothing, water or food.  The mayor it 
seems was worried they might graffiti the dome, but he didnât 
worry about them starving. 

Meanwhile the President sat holidaying on his million dollar 
property, the Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, shopped 
for thousand dollar shoes, and the mayor declared a day of 
prayer even though the Governor had already urged people 
to âpray the cyclone down to a 2â. 

The poor broke into shops to get food for themselves and 
their families. The government and the media raised the 
spectre of black looters and dispatched the army to shoot 
them. Rescue operations were suspended so that property could 
be protected. The true victims, the black poor of New 
Orleans, were thus effectively criminalised, while the true 
criminals have been able to escape scrutiny.

The absolute truth is that this disaster had been foreseen. 
There have been warnings after warnings about the 
vulnerability of New Orleans to a hurricane. Yet money to 
repair the levees had been spent on the slaughter that is the 
Iraq War. The Louisiana Guard, which should have been 
mobilised to help the poor, has been busy in Iraq killing and 
being killed. Wetlands too had been cleared and developed and 
that left the city even more vulnerable.

I will not mention global warming and the criminal refusal of 
George Bush to do anything to alleviate the problem.

All in all there is a lesson to be learned in New Orleans.  
George Bushâs government is a government for the rich and the 
powerful American ruling class.  As he himself said 
the âhaves and the haves moresâ are his âbaseâ. The same rich 
and the powerful are determined to have everything their own 
way.  For them the poor are expendable and if they are black 
then they matter even less.  Yet this is the government that 
we Australians are so devoted to.  To placate this government 
we send our young into danger.

Our Prime Minister has told us we must not criticise America 
or âWestern Valuesâ for that will lead to terrorism.  Look at 
New Orleans and see those same âWestern Valuesâ in 
operation.  The Bush government has found a way to slaughter 
thousands anywhere in the world in a matter of moments.  Yet 
it will not bring aid and comfort to the sick and the 
starving poor of their own country.  For the sick and the 
poor do not have the money to become customers and so the 
disciples of the market think of them as worth nothing. It 
matters not to the rich and the powerful that the blacks of 
New Orleans have given the world a unique artistic culture in 
the form of its jazz.  What do the rich and the powerful care 
about working class culture?  In cultural terms they are only 
interested in how big a fool you are prepared to make of 
yourself on Reality Television. 

That is the true meaning of âWestern Valuesâ.


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