Independence doesn't have to be about negativity and closing doors

Independence, devolution and autonomy are ideas starting to appear regularly in the public eye. In Scotland, there are citizens campaigning for independence (Wishart, 2014). In Catalonia too (BBC, 2014). In Italy, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is being upstaged in his wishes to devolve greater powers to the cities by the cities themselves (Adams et al, 2014).

As the opposing factions in Scotland debate tonight, the same main issue will circle the debate, as has circled the campaign thus far. From Scotland to Catalonia, the debate has come around and round again to the economic consequences (Hunter, 2014). Will it be disastrous? Can the provinces survive without the power of central government? Can central government survive without taxes being levied from the provinces?

As important as the impact of financial decisions will be, it only goes to reinforce one of the primary factors driving people away from politics in disgust. Economics drives the policy decisions, rather than policy setting the economic direction (Cave & Rowell, 2014).

Yet regional, provincial or city self-government can be about so much more than the money. Regionalism can be about bringing power back closer to the people (Gruen, 2014). There is room to give people a say in the running of the places they live, as individuals rather than always as part of some broader identity group. As such, it does not need to be about nationalism either. It can be about representation, rather than narrowing and retreating. At the moment, nation-states seem to be entirely too guilty of that themselves to be pointing fingers at the provinces (Seth-Smith, 2013).

Nation-states are scrambling to keep their grip. The political factions invested in them, and entrenched within their identities, are desperate to prop up systems that are no longer inspiring the confidence they once did (Orr, 2014). Nationalism once toppled imperialism and the politics of dynasties, all in the name of liberty - freedom for the people.

But somewhere along the way it has just morphed into yet another tool of the establishment for maintaining the status quo. Now we find central governments trying to wrestle with, or woo, globalised corporations and have stand-offs with multi-national political entities, while also telling local authorities what funding they can and cannot spend.

While central government hoards power it is either too small or too large to wield, autonomy is being lost. Open borders and globalised trade mean that progressive regionalism, bringing power back closer to individuals for the decision-making that affects their own lives, doesn't need to stymie their financial wellbeing.

That will be an important matter tonight. Alistair Darling, the former UK Chancellor on behalf of Better Together, and Alex Salmond, the Scottish First Minister on behalf of the pro-independence Yes Scotland, will debate Scotland's future on BBC Two at 20:30 (and BBC One Scotland), and the biggest issue will be whether autonomy or union will be better for each country and the individuals composing them, financially.

But the people of Scotland, and not just of Scotland, should not have to choose between the right to self-governing autonomy and co-operating with other people of other nations, in other countries or provinces. They can co-exist. If nation-states continue to force their provinces to make a choice between the two, it is likely Scotland's independence referendum will not be the last.

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References:
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+ Ruth Wishart's 'Scottish independence debate – time for the second TV ding-dong'; in The Guardian; 24 August 2014.

+ The BBC's 'Spanish parliament rejects Catalan independence vote'; 9 April 2014.

+ Eddy Adams, Raffaele Barbato & Francesco Carollo's 'Devolution, Italian-style – the cities forging their own futures'; in The Guardian; 30 July 2014.

+ Teresa Hunter's 'The true costs of Scottish independence: How it will affect your money'; in The Telegraph; 27 February 2014.

+ Tamasin Cave & Andy Rowell's 'The truth about lobbying: 10 ways big business controls government'; in The Guardian; 12 March 2014.

+ Peter Gruen's 'Leeds city council's radical step to give more power to the people'; on The Northerner Blog; in The Guardian; 30 June 2014.

+ Niki Seth-Smith's 'UKIP and the rise of English nationalism'; on opendemocracy.net; 17 July 2013.

+ Deborah Orr's 'There is a lot more to British democracy than Westminster – or there should be'; in The Guardian; 14 March 2014.

Economic Reform and the Ideological Defence of Capitalism

The latest failures of the capitalist system, the financial crash of 2008 and the subsequent worldwide recession, have led to calls for a rational reassessment, both of its theoretical value and of its practical application. There is rising discontent with what capitalism has offered, compared to the price it extracts in return, and people want to explore new ideas, and new possibilities and alternatives (Skidelsky, 2014).

In the beginning though, capitalism had all of the makings of a radically progressive economic system. As the merchants found resources and traded them, they broke the economic stranglehold held by the traditionally powerful landowning classes. Enterprising individuals could become wealthy, and free themselves from the strictures of social class, while also furthering the erosion of those class boundaries by creating paid work that distributed wealth.

Eventually, however, the power of the capitalists broke the power of landowners, and toppled their social order - but only to replace it. Capital has become the foundation of a new establishment, and its interests have become the new guiding motivation for the society that has sprung up around it.

Now, its failures have exposed it to criticism from which it was previously safe. While it continued to improve conditions for people in general, even in just a peripheral way, its excesses and inequalities where excused. But when those benefits cease to be generally seen, discontent swells and questions begin to be asked. Are there other ways we might go? Can we do better?

The call for new ideas

Economics students around the world have led the call for a fresh look at economic theories. They want broader studies of the impacts and flaws of present theories, and the freedom to study new or alternative economic ideas - and with good reason (Skidelsky, 2014). Inequality, failure to predict catastrophic crashes and the subsequent fallout all demand answers.

Andy Haldane, the Bank of England's former Director of Financial Stability, and the present Chief Economist, supported their announcements (Inman, 2014), saying:

"The crisis has laid bare the latent inadequacies of economic models. These models have failed to make sense of the sorts of extreme macro-economic events, such as crises, recessions and depressions, which matter most to society."

But the concerns of students go beyond theoretical and practical accuracy (Husnain & Parekh, 2013). There is also a belief that economics can be about more than exploiting conditions for immediate selfish profit. That the study of economics can be used to increase our knowledge of how systems work in order to develop more effective and more sustainable ways of supporting people, without flaws like massively unequal social stratification.

The Gift Economy

Lily Cole, through her website impossible.com, which promotes a vision of an economy based around gifts and reciprocity (Cole, 2014). Using the internet as a medium, Cole's site allows people to post the things that people need or want, and allows others to answer those needs for free - for nothing other than a thank you.

The idea of a reciprocal economy tie in with certain anthropological views on the role of reciprocity and exchange in human societies (Green, 2014). It seems that, rather than barter, early human social groups completed tasks and exchanged their product with others as needed. These exchanges were conducted on the understanding that, through gratitude and debt, they built trust and social cohesion, leading to those positive actions later being returned in kind.

While our communities are far less personal, and far more widespread, the internet certainly does have the potential to break down those barriers and distances. Lily Cole's approach is none the less, however, still a fairly extreme example and utopian in nature. As an overnight alternative to the capitalist economic orthodoxies, it would be outright revolutionary. In the short and medium term, simply reforming the present systems is the more practical alternative.

The John Lewis Economy

Back in 2012, Nick Clegg announced Liberal Democrat backing for what he called a John Lewis Economy (Clegg, 2012). Clegg vision has workers as stakeholders in a business, with an active shareholding that gives them a tangible investment in the well-being of the organisation. There is a hope that, through these means, the wider economy might benefit from the stability, productivity and long-term sustainability of employee-owned businesses (Ashton, 2012).

And yet, this is only a limited form of co-operative or mutual. Through the offering of a stake, the form of a material benefit, it only offers to include - at arm's length - the workers into the present system without the requirement of a major change in systemic habits. To find a fix for inequality and exploitation, co-operative and mutual models would have go further, and really embrace the right of individuals to autonomy.

In an economy where paid work is essential for survival, it is of the utmost importance that people receive a truly fair portion of the product of their own work. Part of that means protecting autonomy, and the right to an equal say in their working conditions, who their management are and how they behave, and in how the organisation's profits are used.

However, even the level of autonomy offered by co-operative and mutual models fails to address an essential lack of autonomy within mainstream market societies.

A Basic Income

One way of addressing the most fundamental lack of autonomy - the necessity of paid work for survival - is to introduce a Basic Income. At present, out of mainstream UK political parties, only the Green Party is offering the Basic Income as a real possibility (Fearn, 2014). Basic Income, also known as Citizen's Income, represents, within market economies, an expression of a belief in a person's essential right to live - counter to those value systems that demand people earn the liberty to live.

It offers to citizens a universal safety net to guarantee that, no matter their living conditions - working, retired, student, teacher, single parent or 'traditional' family - they will have the ability to support their most basic needs. In principle it eradicates poverty, and raises the baseline standard of living that we have a right to expect up from nothing, to the basic capacity to interact with the world, and to survive it.

Such ideas do however have the tendency of running into ideological barriers.

Economy & Ideology

The primary issue facing reform of capitalism has been ideology. In particular, conservative ideologies have defended the competitive and their segregation of society into 'strivers and skivers' (Coote & Lyall, 2013), with others going further still, to even praise greed (Watt, 2013).

These ideological views have protected capitalism from the attempts of students to study and test new theories, and from the attempts of reformers to change its selfish, greedy and accumulative motivations into more socially constructive attitudes. Economic theorist Thomas Piketty has criticised mainstream economic thought, stressing that rather than being a broken element, inequality is in fact an active feature of capitalism (Piketty, 2014).

Capitalist theories are usually defended against these attacks by pointing to its certain elements - stressing that it is a 'natural' system that replicates efficient 'natural orders', or by stressing the idea that capitalism represents the 'end of history', the end point to which progress has been heading. That capitalism has found the essential elements of society and economics, and that our material pursuits within its framework represent a pure and distilled lifestyle, of which other ideologies are only a distortion.

These are, however, extremely materialist views. A more idealistic perspective might demand a search in a different direction than financial accumulation for a societal focus. In the opinion of Oscar Wilde (1891):

"For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is. Private property has crushed true Individualism, and set up an Individualism that is false. It has debarred one part of the community from being individual by starving them. It has debarred the other part of the community from being individual by putting them on the wrong road and encumbering them."

Breaking through these barriers to reform is a vast challenge, of which reforming the study of economics is but one aspect. Other reforms will need to follow. Getting there will require understanding how economics works, but also how it can, and how we want and need it, to serve us.

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References:
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+ Phillip Inman's 'Economics students call for shakeup of the way their subject is taught'; in The Guardian; 4 May 2014.

+ Robert Skidelsky's 'Economics faces long needed upheaval as students demand right to dissent'; in The Guardian; 18 June 2014.

+ Mahim Husnain & Rikin Parekh's 'Economics students demand an education that reflects post-crash world'; in The Guardian; 13 November 2013.

+ Lily Cole's 'Lily Cole: welcome to the gift economy, where the kindness of a stranger rules'; in The Guardian; 19 March 2014.

+ John Green's 'Money & Debt'; Crash Course World History 202, on YouTube.com; 17 July 2014.

+ 'Nick Clegg calls for a 'John Lewis economy'' on the BBC; 16 January 2012.

+ James Ashton's 'Nick Clegg set for 'John Lewis' economy'; in The Independent; 28 October 2012.

+ Hannah Fearn's 'How about a 'citizen's income' instead of benefits?'; in The Guardian; 8 April 2014.

For other information on a basic income:
http://www.citizensincome.org/
http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/ec.html

+ Anna Coote and Sarah Lyall's 'Strivers v skivers: real life's not like that at all'; in The Guardian; 11 April 2013.

+ Nicholas Watt's 'Boris Johnson invokes Thatcher spirit with greed is good speech'; in The Guardian; 27 November 2013.

+ Thomas Piketty's 'Capital in the Twenty-First Century'; Harvard University Press; 2014. [Buy Now]

+ Oscar Wilde's 'The Soul of Man under Socialism'; London, 1891.[Buy Now]

Where are the Radicals? A short history of radicalism

At a time when protests are rife and the established progressive parties are disappointing, it is astonishing that no parties pushing a more radically progressive agenda have emerged to fill the obvious gap. Even existing progressive groups, such as the Green Party, are struggling to pick up more votes and seats (Sinclair, 2014).

The Left in Britain is fragmented, split between Greens, Trade Unionists, Co-operativists, Socialists, Liberals, Social Democrats and Democrats. That situation has been replicated in other countries as well. Globalism goes on apace, the state is whittled away by ideological cuts, and the nominally main party of the British Left, the Labour Party, are failing at being radical because they don't understand it (Behr, 2014).

Labour has, over the long years, become a centralised mainstream party, shaped by the system of majority voting. It has resigned itself to certain orthodoxies, and accepted conservative economic beliefs as definite outlines of a reality to which it has to conform - not necessarily because the party believes in it, but because that narrative has become so well publicised that it has been necessary to adhere to it in order to appeal to the majority.

That situation has driven radicals out to the fringes, away from electoral power and away from policy decisions. But it didn't get this way overnight.

A Short History of Radicalism

So why aren't there any radical parties?

Radicals first sprang up as a political and electoral force around Europe during the 19th century at the time of the liberal revolutions. The term came to refer to liberals who were not satisfied with gradual reform or small concessions gained from the old monarchic order, or with the limited 'free institutions' - elected parliament, protections of the freedoms of belief and speech, and protections of property -  that mainstream moderate liberals aimed to achieve and settled for (Collins, 1971).

While democrats pursued greater political power to place in the hands of the people, and socialists sought to represent and enshrine that idea in a dictatorship over the state institutions, the radicals pursued, ever persistently, each new social reform after the other: extending voting rights for men and women, worker's rights, pensions and more.

Radicals could be found across the political divides between democrats and liberals, between socialists, anarchists, and trade unionists. They found support for worthy progressive campaigns across the left, across party partisan divides. In the UK, suffragists like Fawcett and trade unionists worked with the Liberal Party in the late 19th and early 20th century to secure women's and workers' rights. The Poor Reports of Rowntree in York, and of Booth, Potter and Collet in London, produced rational assessments of society that informed and shaped Liberal and Labour policy throughout the 1900s.

Radicalism in Western Europe

The story in Spain, Germany and Italy largely followed similar scripts to one another. When the liberal revolts of the mid-1800s failed to take hold, and the mainstream liberals settled down within their 'free institutions', the radicals found themselves largely pushed to the fringes.

In Germany the failure of the 1848 revolutions was followed by a long and intense period of conservatism. By the time free institutions re-emerged after the Second World War, it was into a Germany with modern, and organised, mainstream parties. Spain's long period under the far-right Franco regime, after the divisions and civil war of the Republican period, served only to frighten the majority of the Left into the shelter of whichever was the largest and most stable opposition group. That same affect compounded the modernisation and centralisation of Germany's political groups.

Fear of the threat posed to liberty by the Far-Right has forced the Left to centralise.

In Italy, though, the various groups on the left, with their partisan fighters - who had joined the Republican side of the War in Spain and then fought against Mussolini's Fascists in their own country during the Second World War - came out of The War with their own wide spread support. Each of the parties of the left had their own backers and their own anti-fascist records with which to maintain their separate identities for a time.

Radicals by name found themselves at home in many groups, among social democrats and socialists, or with the Republican Liberal Socialists of the Partito d'Azione. That party even saw itself, however briefly, at the head of a post-war coalition government. But infighting and an unwillingness to co-operate with those opposed to progress, or who had associated with fascists, proved their undoing. Fear of the Far-Right struck once more, forcing the Left to huddle together under one conforming banner.

Only in France did radicals manage to achieve a persistent presence in the political mainstream. However, despite the Parti republicain, radical et radical-socialiste being a major player in governments across the first half of the 20th century, being in the mainstream led to the same problems as those faced by radical progressives in Britain and elsewhere. The demands of gathering support and retaining power hindered the drive for ever more reform.

Fear and Conformity

The same fear of the far-right had long affected Britain also, where the labour movement had fought long and hard to get a foothold within the institutions of government. To make sure that conservatives and those on the far-right could not undo their long work, Labour drew all the left and centre about themselves. But the demands of holding onto those supporters, and balancing and trading off their ideas against each other, and making sure not to alienate other potential voters, stifled any spirit of radical progress.

The political system has not helped. The same safeguards that protect a country from Far-Right usurpation and dominance, within modern western states, also makes sure that progress is difficult to achieve. This, it seems, is to be the crowning glory of the political capitalist model. Progress finds itself bundled in with extremism, and is restricted and restrained in the name of perpetuating a status quo.

Fear and hunger for power have bred conformity. Power coalesces around the most widely socially acceptable faction, regardless of reason. It is brought out into the mainstream, leaving the radicals behind in the shadows, marginalised. Today, these kinds of radical campaigners, thinkers and groups continue to exist. But they are scattered across a fragmented political left and our present, majoritarian, electoral systems assures that they remains so.

This had led to a rather distorted perspective within politics. Arguments and reasoning become financial rather social. We count the cost rather than the value of new ideas, regardless their social worth. The NHS continues to be privatised, despite the fact that polls suggest that most would pay more in tax in order to maintain its independent and comprehensive social spirit (Grice, 2014). The government even continues to pursue its heavily criticised welfare policies (The Guardian, 2014), even though there are radical policy options out there, such as Basic Income, designed to eliminate poverty and social insecurity altogether (Elliott, 2014).

When big ideas are not pursued, not looked into or tested, at the behest of fear - the fear of upsetting the status quo and ushering in change - we have really lost our way. If our present systems are not designed to let us improve our world, then we need to start arguing for something better. We need to argue for a system that protects us from ignorance and domination, by encouraging reason and progress, not settle for a system that stifles all change in the name of an imperfect, uneven and thoroughly poor compromise.

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References:
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+ Ian Sinclair's 'Why does the left ignore the true progressive party – the Greens?'; in The Guardian; 6 January 2014.

+ Rafael Behr's 'Labour doesn't know what radicalism looks like'; in The Guardian; 2 July 2014.

+ Irene Collins' 'Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe'; The Historical Association; 1971. [Buy Now]

+ Andrew Grice's 'Britain prepared to pay more tax to support the NHS, poll finds'; in The Independent; 30 June 2014.

+ The Guardian's 'Iain Duncan Smith to signal more reform of 'dysfunctional' welfare system'; 11 August 2014.

+ Larry Elliott's 'Would a citizen’s income be better than our benefits system?'; in The Guardian; 11 August 2014.

What made Star Wars good in the past, can be a guide for making it good in the future

As work on the new Star Wars film has gathered pace (Reed, 2014), there have already been a number of decisions that are likely to provoke varying reactions from the fans. On the one hand, there is the very popular return to physical effects of the original trilogy over the green screen effects of the prequels (Gilman, 2014). On the other is the controversial jettisoning of the expanded universe from the established Star Wars canon (starwars.com, 2014).

These two things, together, are promising start. By getting away from green screen, and loosening Star Wars canon into legend rather than history, there is room to tell stories. They offer the possibility of a relatable story, set in a more physically tangible world, but one with a rich mythology that informs and offers vibrancy but does not restrict. Screen time in movies is limited and time spent laying out to us the setting, is time away from telling us a story.

The return of physical sets (Gilman, 2014), itself can be seen as a statement of intent. An intent to return Star Wars to what made the original trilogy so beloved by so many. And the main thing that seemed to generate such love was not that it was a story about a fantasy world. Rather, it just happened to take place in one. It was story about real human concerns, which just happened to include lasers, cool spaceships, space bounty hunters and magical powers.

Despite all of the magical abilities on display, it was love that ultimately saved the day. The bond of love between family, and between friends. It was a tale of love, and integrity, and even a Nietzshean lesson about not meeting your enemies in battle with their own weapons - as well as something about the using the dark side, becoming a monster, and the dangers of starships containing a startlingly vast abyss.

That return, to the real and personally relatable stories set in a fantasy mythological universe, is being accompanied by the announcement that the expanded universe is no longer canon (starwars.com, 2014). However, though no longer accepted as the 'factual' history, like in the real world, the myths and legends of the expanded universe will always continue to play their part (Dyce, 2014).

Myths and legends always endure. They continue to inform the historical, in this case 'canonical', narratives in a million little ways. They are our frame of reference, our folk tales, and a living part of our many, vibrant, and diverse cultural perspectives. By becoming now just many histories and many interpretations, the Star Wars expanded universe just makes the Star Wars universe that little more real, that little bit more like our own.

Together these two factors bode well for what we can expect from JJ Abram's Star Wars Episode VII. A tangible story, set in a more tangible world. All within a vibrant fantasy world, with a rich and diverse mythology. One that speaks for itself, in so many little ways, that a movie doesn't have to spend its precious limited screen time doing anything other than telling us a story.

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References:
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+ Ryan Reed's 'J.J. Abrams Offers First Glimpse of 'Star Wars: Episode VII' X-Wing'; in Rolling Stone; 21 July 2014.

+ Greg Gilman's 'Kevin Smith Gushes Over 'Star Wars: Episode VII' Set Visit: "What I Saw Blew Me Away" (Video)'; on The Wrap; 7 July 2014.

+ Robert Yaniz Jr's ''Star Wars Episode VII' Will NOT Be Filmed Digitally'; on Screen Rant; September 2013.

+ 'The Legendary Star Wars Expanded Universe Turns a New Page'; on starwars.com; 25 April 2014.

+ Andrew Dyce's ''Star Wars' Creatives Explain Why Canon vs Expanded Universe Shouldn’t Matter'; on Screen Rant; July 2014.