An apple day...

When it was revealed that 14 Chinese workers at a factory in China making I-pads had committed suicide due to unbearable working conditions, I guess we all thought ‘Huh?’

Details were depressingly familiar to those of us who try very hard to steer away from the worst excesses of corporate greed by voting with our wallets. Employees, according the Observer were being coerced into working as much as 98 hours overtime every month; talking during the 12 hour shifts was forbidden, as was sitting down. The workers were allowed only one day off every fortnight, slept 24 to a single substandard room within a dormitory with décor enlivened only by the anti suicide nets in the corridor. They were paid on average a disgraceful £5.25 a day and the suicides, a despair ridden cry for help if ever there was one were not met with any attempt to improve conditions. Foxconn opted instead to simply force workers to sign anti-suicide pledges thus ensuring bereaved families could not sue the company.

Apple computers posted $6 billion in profits last year, they are one of the most successful companies in the world and for reasons that have always escaped me, create products that consumers react to with an almost sexual fervour. Marx’s consumer fetishism comes into sharp focus before the glassy eyed proselytization of Mac fans, deliriously thankful that Apple has created a physical manifestation of their own self worth. They just have to share the good news do they not? Steve Jobs was eulogised with the kind of prose usually reserved for the death of a royal grandmother and this despite the fact that he was, by all accounts, an asshole of such grandiose proportions that even with personal assets in the billions if he’d ever chosen to use $50 bills as toilet paper, he’d have been broke within a month. [i] He died a saint, whilst Bill Gates, (remember him?)  the world’s largest contributor to charitable causes and certified nice- guy enjoys no similar popularity, an object of derision and contempt his philanthropic efforts wins him no laurels.  

And that’s where the ‘huh’ came in. When 150 workers gathered on the roof, of a Foxconn factory and threatened to jump off in protest of working conditions we were reminded of the world that we have built for ourselves… that the wealth of a nation is too often built on the back of slaves. Britain started the concept, the gray-grim hues of Lawry’s Manchester factories painted a picture of insipid uniformity, of a despair etched into the veins of a society that churned out misery on an industrial scale.[ii] The party could not go on of course, Engels realised before any of us that abject misery was an unsustainable non-renewable resource. Where he erred was his belief that the road to freedom could be predicted, it cannot but nevertheless, the destination remains the same. If capitalism is not increasing prosperity even on utilitarian grounds, then it has simply, got to go.

Apple having sequestered away some $80 billion on their balance sheet, (which by the way is illegal,) have created a battle chest that will no doubt protect them from any of the law suites currently heading their way for human rights abuses. But the sheer scale of their liquid assets raises interesting questions; they are one company one American company that could, if they so wished pay Chinese workers enough money to prevent mass suicide in their factory in the first place. They could go one better, and actually open some factories in the US!  They could do it you know.  Because the American economy, in free fall, with a £274 billion trade deficit between the US and China alone is no more a sustainable proposition than were Lawry’s  grim matchstick men; China makes, America borrows, America consumes, a bastard hypotenuse that those of us familiar with the great crash of 1929 might care to recognise.

The American economy should be dust by now anyway. General Motors had the brilliant idea of moving its factories down to Mexico. ‘Mexicans,’ they must have thought ‘Will work for lower wages!’ Sure moving a factory and training up a work force was expensive but think of the long term, think of the savings! Never mind that the primary consumers of American cars were Americans, never mind that Americans like to buy American-made products, never mind that GM and companies that followed suit denuded the US economy of jobs. Well actually, we should mind, because mass unemployment drove wages down, allowed politicians to ignore the elephant in the room (the military budget,) and pretend that the real problem with the economy was centred on welfare or health or whatever the right wing Zeitgeist flavour-of-the-month scapegoat was that week. General Motors saved so much money moving to Mexico that it spectacularly failed to notice it was impoverishing its loyal consumers; it, as the US was dragged deep into the silt of a global quagmire, went bankrupt in 2009. From a high of over half a million workers in 1979 they dwindled down to just 50,000 in 2009. Well done them. Six months later they had been bailed out; because a US without a GM would be like, well it would be like Britain without Rover…

Whilst corporate America worked hard to ensure that the virtues of the American economy were demolished one by one, politically America was shielded by just about the most enviable trump card you could imagine, its status as the sole possessor world’s reserve currency. The ability to print money in quantities that would have us Europeans making kites out of 100 euro notes shielded and alas blinded Washington to the failure of a neo conservative agenda to deconstruct hard-fought, post road to Wigan pier like advances to liberal democratic living standards, worker rights and values. The huge advantage that the US economy has enjoyed for the past 60 years or so was never unassailable but it was the devil you know for so long that no one really ever attempted to topple it. Well, no one clever attempted to do so at any rate. But  China is as we speak  hoovering up gold in huge quantities; they are already the world’s largest producer of gold and every ounce they dig up is being lovingly added to their reserves… not they would admit to that but then, this is China we’re talking about. If China successfully wrestles the reserve currency from the antediluvian craw of the American economy then we’re going to start seeing a ‘¥’ upon a standard QWERTY keyboard pretty darn soon.

The question we have to ask is, would it really be such a bad thing? China is a beastly place when you think about it, human rights are non existent, workers are literally worked to their death, liberty remains an unaffordable premium, well, unaffordable to most that is. As the US slips into a respectable third or fourth place, new opportunities will arise, opportunities born out of adversity or not that may yet paint a picture of a not wholly depressing nature. Whilst America will longer be able to afford to ‘police’ the world nor will they be so impoverished as to force them into the ruinous isolationism of the past. Maybe, just maybe, America will look to its own prosperity. After all 60 years of meddling in the affairs of others has categorically not increased the prosperity of the many, only of the few and its aggressive military posture created it far more enemies than friends. And China, no more in control of its own destiny than anywhere else will soon find that one billion disgruntled workers demanding rights in the streets will take it too to the inevitable destination.

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[i] [i] For some great examples of his  assholyness  the Jobb see .http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-jerk-2011-10

[ii] Those of you unfamiliar with Lawry’s genius should take a look at http://www.thelowry.com

WWII Is over and Germany won! ( Maybe.)

There are some things science cannot explain. Like why a lettuce and mayonnaise sandwich tastes so much better than it sounds. And just as science has been rendered mute and helpless in the face of such monumental culinary conundrums so too has political science reached something of an impasse in trying to predict what the future of Europe is going to look like.

Economists have a term for this as economists tend to, they call this particular branch of probability theory a ‘Martingale’ and it goes something like this; your expectation of a future value or state is equal to the current observed value at the time of observation. Or put more simply your best guess as to how much the US dollar will be worth tomorrow is how much it’s worth today and no number of fancy PhD’s from the London school of Economics can increase your ability to better what is at it’s heart a non- prediction.

Things used to be much easier for those of us studying politics. Emanuel Kant pretty much figured out what would be needed for lasting peace over 200 years ago[1] and it included, amongst other things the creation of a ‘Federation of free states’ or rather, disparate states inextricably linked via the user- friendly banter of fiscal interdependence. It was a good plan, a wholemeal plan, filled with roughage and it was duly put into effect, sans Kant's 'fiddly' imperative morality of course! That kind of thing was sure to get in the way of what promised to be a bloody good party. The Zollverine in 1818 was a Prussian-dominated customs union, cultured from the tatters of the Holy Roman Empire. It was designed to initiate German independence on the one hand and on the other hand to ensure that the centre of the German world would be Berlin and not Vienna. The Union became a Confederation, the Confederation a Federation and finally, after the odd war or two a unified German state emerged.

Yes ok, this new country was something of a problem and yes it would take Europe 120 years to sort that mess out, but the statesmen of the day in post WWII USA were neither oblivious nor indifferent to Kantian notions of peace; the solution was devilishly simple, more than moderately expensive and looked like altruism but smelt like self-interest. The Marshall Plan was, simply put, a thing of beauty. 'Here,' they said, 'Is $13 billion (about 5% of US GDP!)  which we give to you with absolutely no strings attached whatsoever aside from one tiny little detail… you won’t get a bean  unless you  join the 20^th Century equivalent of a pan European Zollverine.'  

Those in the know would have nodded very cleverly at one another. ‘Ah yes,’ they must have pontificated, ‘Positively Machiavellian old boy.’ For the United States, the real victors of WWII, the Marshall plan killed two birds with one cheque. Firstly, they re-built a Europe that they desperately wanted to sell shiny things to. That was good. Secondly they engineered the longest unbroken peace in European History. That was better. Yes, of course there was the small matter of  a cold war testosterone-soaked pissing contest.to deal with but hey, boys will be boys! Whilst détente  threatened to  make Sodom and Gomorrah look like the slapstick destruction of a Laurel and Hardy set, the thermonuclear sword of Damocles nevertheless came, in hindsight, at a bargain price. No French soldiers walked timorously across the German border, no Armada gathered of the coast of Flanders and  no Swiss mercenaries besieged European cities singing  'stand and deliver' at 4 O'Clock in the morning..  More importantly for our Yankee friends, American soldiers were left free to storm beaches in south East Asia where the enemy spoke in  unfamiliar tongues and had no air support whatsoever. Good times y’all!

The collapse of communism brought the whole plan into sharp focus. The 120 year question ‘What the holy-fuck are we going to do about Germany?’ was answered with a cry ‘Let’s all become part of Germany! Yes there were dissenters, yes people said it wouldn’t work; yes the right wing press screamed headlines at us like the Express’ ‘EU’s plan to liquefy corpses and pour them down the drain!’  But those of us who made it our business to pay attention to what was going on in Europe saw the writing on the wall. Inch by inch Europe moved towards a Confederation (although that word was never used,) the Kantian Federation (although no-one dared mention that F word either,) didn’t seem that far off. And the economic crisis did not change the eventual goal anyway, if anything it seemed set to accelerate it. Desperate times called for desperate measures. On the day that Poland gave the German Chancellor Carte blanche permission to ‘fix Europe’ it seemed that the deal was done. Germany would enter a fiscal Union with everyone else, they would check budgets, they would alter budgets and then eventually they would issue them. And then David Cameron issued something of his own, his rabble rousing veto. He walked out of the meeting hall looking like an Owl taking a shit; the thought bubble above his head read ‘What the shitting Crikey have I done? ‘

I didn’t see it coming, but then again neither did the Deputy Prime Minister. Though the intransigence of the French gained Sarkozy points towards the upcoming election that he’s liable to lose anyway and though Cameron regained the respect of the Murdoch press, the tangible effect of this single, stupid, selfish act was to effectively neuter the last desperate attempt to fix a quintessentially financial crisis via political mechanisms. Without the short term advantage of shoring up the Euro zone itself, old objections were raised to the fore, unsheathed and waggled in the faces of ancient enmities like a giant sulky nationalistic phallus;  a threatened referendum here an opposition party’s  denunciation there.

And so here we are, Europe is a martingale. What happens next? I have no idea. I can offer you a number of scenarios, the EU might disintegrate, it might Federalise, it might shrink, and it probably won’t expand… it might be a Federal Republic of 17 states, or 15… 26… 27? Sorry that’s all I’ve got; uncertainly has not only increased, it’s a virtual commodity nowadays, they've been trading it for Christ's sake! We're left with a world moving too quickly for anyone to make sense of it.  If Virilio’s examination of dromology (the speed at which things happen,) is anything to go on (and trust me it is,) soon we won’t be able to see further than our own noses, this blog post may well be moribund before I even hit the publish button. I’ll make one prediction though, Europe is almost certainly going to go broke, we've lived beyond our means for far too long now and that's the problem with being the historical masters of the world, it's an addiction, the financial crisis, an intervention; we need to kick the habit. Europe's star has fallen, America's is falling and there is some hope there. They have further to fall of course and though dromology dictates that they are falling more quickly than the British or Roman Empires ever did, but that too points to something hopeful. Europe parachuted into obsolescence, it was a slow fall and the ground rushed up towards us at a pleasingly gentile pace; no problem we thought, we have time to figure out what to do. But we hit the ground anyway, and gentile pace or not we folded up like an Ikea flat pack table.
The US is in free-fall, not quite terminal velocity but close to it. They have less time to react to the looming disaster but at least the threat has become plain to all, a palpable sense of urgency permeates the American conciousness; the US recently slashed it's military budget by nearly half and if that doesn't tell you that they are taking this seriously then there is no hope for you. At all.

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[1] You can read Kant’s rather brilliant essay here. http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kant/kant1.htm

Life, Art and the New 52

You can tell an awful lot about the world through comics.

Superman's formative years took place in a world suspicious of it's own institutions where only the plucky reporter could be trusted to bring low the anti trust mogul and the Washington skink. Iron man taught us that the world comes in Manichean hues, of crimson commie bashing cold war prose where only Yankee guile might prevail. The 70’s comic reflected the defiant introspection of the time, the land of the free suddenly revealed as a far from colour blind chimera. The 80’s lead us into a darker more complex world as we pondered the inevitability of Armageddon before giving way to insipid triumphalism and machismo; meanwhile makeovers, do-overs and reboots reflected both the changing pace of society and the new corporate reality of the comic book industry.

And now, the new 52.

A story can only be sustainable for decade upon decade if it remains unchanged in totality.  That’s why Tolkien works, you can read his epic once or a dozen times, the thrill of the novel will give way to the warm fuzz of the familiar or the nostalgic. To continue to tell stories indefinitely generates problems; back stories become too complex, flashbacks a nightmarish collection of half remembered back issues written years before your birth. But worst of all, especially from a publishers point of view, it requires prior knowledge of characters and plot; picking up an X- men comic book half way through Chris Claremont’s classic run would be like trying to watch the penultimate episode of Lost without asking anyone present for just a little clarification as to what the HELL was going on.  

So we reboot. I get it.

But I do not have to like it.

Much was promised; the old stories were gone, finished, the characters would be defibrillated, repackaged and renewed. Hell, you might recognise these guys if you squinted but not even that was guaranteed. Yeah man, dried pasta was out, fresh pasta in. 

Yeah right.

The New 52 is no year one,  no origin story retold. Perhaps for fear of having to rewrite a back-story in its entirety we enter our hero’s lives some time after they have adopted the alter ego persona that ultimately makes them an interesting read. Whilst the justice League’s Green Lantern seems surprised that Batman is real over in Justice League International it would seem that Bats and Guy Gardner go way back. Barbara Gordon is Batgirl and yes she can walk again but it seems was nevertheless shot by a Hawaiian shirt wearing joker meaning that… (So wait the Killing joke did happen… or what?) Green arrow is Oliver Queen the disaffected young CEO of a major corporation who fights crime with a bow, neglects his company and has a new haircut. Over in Action Comics we see an early superman sporting a home made costume of jeans and boots, his relationship with Lois is… hard to fathom (since technically we have never seen them interact before.) Over in Superman # 1 the end of an epoch is symbolically rammed down our collective throats as they destroy the familiar art deco contours of the Daily Planet and replace them with the sleek curves of hypermodernity. Whilst Perry puffs and pants his way through the struggling print format Lois our new Lois (who is nothing like the old Lois honestly,) barks orders about online feeds. It’s achingly hip agonisingly ‘now’, mentioned you tube? Check Mentioned Twitter? Check. Gratuitous shot of man using a Blackberry check! (Bleugh).

So what does New 52 tell us about the world we live in?

If there is one recognised rule to being cool and that’s that you must at no point be seen to be trying to be cool. Aquaman sans- beard( possibly because he doesn’t look old  enough to shave) remonstrates that he doesn’t talk to fish cause they don’t have very large brains and that would be stooopid (stooopid.)  The assistant director of Cadmus labs is about 20 years old because… you know all scientists reach such lofty heights early on in their career. Captain atom has something akin to a whisper of a Mohawk atop his head; the new Robin is just the old/new Robin, (Batman’s son Damian.)  and it makes sense because, hey, no-one under twenty wants to read stories about anyone over twenty and anyone over thirty wishes they were twenty. Right? The heroes are so ‘today’ that they abandon grammar in favour of street cred ‘O-M-G I’m liking these powerz!’

Don’t get me wrong, heroes always had to look the part, the sex appeal of a Greek god poured into Lycra with only the artists word that no ‘nip slips’ will ensue. I get that, we all get that. But why does Jimmy Olsen have to look like the offspring of George Clooney and Heidi Klum? The only person even wearing glasses is Clarke. And he doesn’t even need them.

And this is what the new 52 reflects; a society unashamed of it’s adoration of the superficial. Everyone’s got a cool pad; super science abounds yet exists paradoxically with familiar techno fetishism (‘Lois we’re getting flooded with cell phone video footage!’)  Everyone is young and everyone is pretty which brings with it a predictable lament; villains, ever mirrors of the heroes, are forced into the role of the grotesque. The Joker removes his own skin; Batwing’s enemy decapitates an entire police department, Dead shot is being devoured by rats and Grifter himself stabs punks in the eye with a scalpel. Hyper violence for hyper modern times because hey guys, the old world is turning to shit, the party is drawing to an ignominious end, everyone feels it, everyone is doing their best to ignore it. We’re reliving the 20’s we’re the beautiful people, looking down the barrel of the gun, lapping up the coming storm with all the augury of a ‘huh?’  

Some of the comics shine, Justice League is almost sublime, and Animal man of all titles forces the character into perhaps a new era of excellence. That’s not the point. The point is that the line itself leaves a foul taste in the mouth, the x-factor painstakingly inked and scripted by a middle aged facsimile of what the kids want to see.