The Great American Songbook

The standard reaction to the death of anyone famous divides into two parts: the attempt to neatly fit them into the historical record, with authoritative claims about their significance and legacy; and personal reminiscence, with precious first-hand anecdotes trumping "what he/she meant to me" solipsism. The passing of Lou Reed has been an object case study.

Most media outlets have wheeled out Brian Eno's quote to the effect that everyone who bought the first Velvet's album formed a band. The quote dates from 1982, and was apparently based on Reed claiming that sales were only 30,000 in the first 5 years (1967-72). In fact, it is likely the record sold nearer 60,000 in the first couple of years after release, may have reached six figures in the early 70s, and has probably topped a million since then. My own personal recollection (I warned you) from the mid-70s is that the Velvet Underground and solo Lou Reed were as familiar to rock fans as Jethro Tull or The Byrds, and this owed relatively little to the personal recommendation of David Bowie.

I also recall buying the NME C81 mixtape in 1981. A running joke in the booklet that accompanied it was how every band had been influenced by the Velvets, which was perfectly credible when you consider the album included Cabaret Voltaire, DAF, Scritti Politti, the Buzzcocks and Orange Juice, among others. In other words, Eno was reflecting the widespread and longstanding influence of the Velvets (which had reached the point of parody) while insisting that this was still an interest limited to discerning avant-gardists like himself. What a knob.

The band catalyst trope has fought for top billing with tales of Reed's obnoxiousness in interviews, which are just opportunities for saddo journalists to try and filch some stardust. Some have seen this as the careful creation of a brand ("just showbusiness"), directly influenced by uber-commoditiser Andy Warhol, though the more thoughtful see determined authenticity. Others interpret it as the deliberate evasion of an "unknowable and contrary" man who valued privacy. The claim that it was an act has the ring of truth to it. You're not likely to have a lasting relationship with an artist and musician of the stature of Laurie Anderson if you're an irascible and selfish egotist in private too. Reed's confrontational stance and unwillingness to play the PR game owe much to his own romantic notions of the role of the artist (historical record bit coming up).

Reed's love of the marginal and despised has its roots in late nineteenth century decadence (which explains his interest in Frank Wedekind's Lulu). The template for his provocative public persona can be found in the original enfant terrible, the French poet and all-round reprobate Arthur Rimbaud, whose Une Saison en Enfer was translated by another poet, Delmore Schwartz, with whom Reed studied in the early 60s. A feature of the New York music scene, from the Beats and jazz experimentalists to Sonic Youth, has been the centrality of poetry and the role of the poet as critic/outsider. In this regard, French and American poetry have a lot more in common than either has with the British variety.

Poetry was a marginal taste in the UK music scene up to the late 70s (and tended towards the fey), where the Glam avant garde, exemplified by David Bowie and Roxy Music, was more influenced by visual art and theatre (hence the Ramones had a bigger impact here than Patti Smith, despite supportive media coverage for the "punk poet queen"). But the influence of Reed & co on provincial post-punk bands, like the Postcard stable and The Smiths, changed all that, reasserting the primacy of the heartfelt lyric after years of London irony and cut-up mannerisms. The major legacy of the Velvet Underground in the UK is landfill indie.

Bowie and Reed shared an interest in Berlin and the Weimar era, and both identified in their own ways with Isherwood's observer: "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking". But while Bowie (like Eno) was influenced by post-war German music, from Stockhausen to Krautrock, Reed remained more sonically conservative and essentially American (Perfect Day could have been sung by Doris Day), despite his best efforts on Metal Machine Music to prove otherwise. In the original Velvets mix, Reed provided the pop and John Cale the experimentation. For all his literary ambitions, Reed never deserted Tin Pan Alley.

The C81 joke worked because the modern bands, though different from each other, could be harnessed to a specific song or period in the Velvet Underground's back catalogue. This was a testament to the range and mutability (and even instability) of the original band: their naive enthusiasm for trying something different as much as their artistic pretensions. It was this range and unpredictability that Reed carried forward into his solo years, though his finest releases would be the "classic" pop songs of Transformer and the Velvet's out-take compilation, VU. In truth, he was just doodling from the mid-70s onwards.

Russell Brand, Boris Johnson and Jesus all walk into a pub ...

Russell Brand has a new tour to promote (the "Messiah Complex World Tour", no less), and the New Statesman has found guest editors to be linkbait fairy dust, so it was predictable that the self-styled Essex Trickster should find himself treading in the footsteps of Jemima Khan, Rowan Williams and Ai Weiwei to one of the most highly sought-after, unpaid internships in the media. To add fuel to the fire, he also did an interview with Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight, where he called for the overthrow of the political system. Before anyone could point out the uncanny similarity in style and lack of substance with Boris Johnson (who has made the comic two-hander with Paxman a speciality), Brand made the connection himself, so reassuring Jezza that this would be harmless, knockabout fun. There was even a beard joke.

Brand's position can be summed up by Billy Connolly's crack about politicians: "Don’t vote, it just encourages them". He justifies his boycott thus: "Like most people I regard politicians as frauds and liars and the current political system as nothing more than a bureaucratic means for furthering the augmentation and advantages of economic elites". Given that every political system can be defined as the medium by which economic interests negotiate power, this is a bit like complaining that rain is wet. Brand has been widely pilloried by those who earn a crust pillorying, but his provocative style and rambling essay in the NS (the sub-editors clearly didn't fancy a fight) has also triggered some more interesting observations by the ideologically partisan and those willing to wade through the overflow of his fecund mind.

Uber-free-marketeer Tim Worstall takes him to task for misunderstanding that profit (a "filthy word", according to Brand) "is simply the proof that value is being created", and is therefore a good thing. Of course, this equivalence of profit with value is disingenuous, as profit is actually surplus value, not all value, and politics is about the struggle for control of that surplus. Brand, like Worstall, makes the mistake of investing profit with an ethical dimension (not unlike the popular trope about "good" and "bad" capitalism), which is of a piece with his religiose outlook (he talks of the "implicit spiritual principles" of the left) and weakness for hippy shibboleths (a "revolution in consciousness" inevitably wanders on stage).

From the left, Neil Schofield espies proto-fascism in Brand's cocktail of spiritual reconnection, organic community and love of the land: "his views are profoundly reactionary and, in the literal sense of the word, decadent". And that's without picking up on Brand's routine sexism (confessing to being a womaniser, like admitting heroin addiction, does not give you licence). Nick Cohen spotted the same fascist roots, but spoilt his analysis by indulging in the "each as bad as the other" vice that he accuses Brand of: "the similarities between far left and far right are more striking than their differences" (Cohen writes in the "democracy and liberty under threat from all directions" tradition of Orwell and Hitchens, so this sort of language is almost obligatory).

Cohen's chief criticism of Brand is that he is dangerously frivolous: "Today's crisis has left Europe in a pre-revolutionary situation ... Unfortunately for Brand, who sees himself a radical leftist of some sort, apparently, the greatest beneficiary of the nihilism he promotes is the radical right. Many people are surprised that the rightwing and neo-fascist movements have benefited most from a banking crash brought [about] by the most overpaid people on the planet ... Classic fascism movements borrowed from the left, and today's neo- or post-fascist movements follow suit. Mussolini emphasised that fascism was a third way between capitalism and socialism".

Fascism was reaction clothed in revolution. Cohen is essentially right in his critique of Brand's frivolity (the man's a paid entertainer, after all), but he misses the point that the encouragement of the "radical right" comes not from Brand's "nihilism" but from the establishment's flirtation with the politics of hate. It can never be repeated too often that Mussolini and Hitler came to power due to the manoeuvrings of conservative politicians and the (minority) support of reactionary voters stressed by economic change. The danger today comes from the divisive assault on the welfare state, growing inequality, and the emergence of populist chancers like Johnson and Farage. Brand is not a harbinger of fascism, he's just a very naughty boy.

Go with the Flow

There has been predictable chuntering, from both right and left, about the the government's decision to award the Hinkley C contract to a consortium of nationalised industries. A hyperventilating Allister Heath spies the dark legacy of corporatism, while John Harris wonders at the paradox of Tories, who decry the erosion of sovereignty by the EU, encouraging French and Chinese state ownership of British infrastructure.

Heath seems to genuinely believe that a free market in energy is possible, particularly if a "capitalist approach" is adopted - i.e. abolish renewable subsidies, ignore carbon reduction targets and go large on shale gas. Leaving aside the possibility that the last of these might prove disappointing (new sources of energy are always over-hyped, e.g. nuclear), his heroic vision assumes that the invisible hand will do its stuff: "This would allow prices to fall, improve customer service and allow innovation: at some stage, for example, solar panels could become so cheap that they genuinely make renewables competitive". You might wonder how falling electricity prices (presumably shale gas-generated) would trigger the innovation required to make solar panels as cheap as chips. History suggests that innovation will be stimulated by rising prices, not falling ones. The Jevons Paradox suggests we'll just leave the lights on and sod the planet.

The central flaw in Heath's argument is that a truly competitive energy market is impossible. This is because: a) the commodity is a basic need, which we all require for survival, so consumers have limited powers of market exit in protest at high prices (wearing an extra jumper is not a solution); b) the barriers to market entry limit suppliers (you can't easily start an energy business in your garage); and c) there is limited substitutability, i.e. most of us are not in a position to forage for wood any longer. Many commodities have one or two of these features, but few have all three. Where this occurs, you're looking at a natural monopoly. Energy, like its fellow utility water, is a natural monopoly cloaked by a fictitious market. There has not been a true competitive market in the energy sector since coal was delivered in sacks.

Heath proposes to "make it easier for companies to develop infrastructure", but the key infrastructure for retail is the "local loop", i.e. the pipe or cable into your home or office, which will always be a monopoly unless someone fancies investing in massive redundancy. In such an environment, ensuring there are half a dozen retail suppliers means the de facto creation of a cartel. This does not meet secretly each month in a bunker to fix prices, because it don't have to. The "conspiracy against the public", as Adam Smith called it, is quite open. The government will always underwrite wholesale prices because of energy's strategic importance (you can't have hospitals and factories closing due to a price bump), and the cartel will always inflate margins as far as it can. Energy company profits are in part economic rents.

In contrast, Harris avoids indulging in an alternative fantasy (if you ignore the implicit nostalgia for nationalised industries), but he also fails to point out why the apparent paradox of the Tories' antipathy to government intervention is limited to the British state. The answer is that Cameron, Osborne and Johnson owe their primary allegiance to finance capital, which means that the flow of foreign money into the UK, whether for large infrastructure projects or Central London property, is good in and of itself, regardless of whether it originates with a sovereign wealth fund or a rich individual. The movement of capital, and the opportunities it gives rise to for fees, speculation and leverage, is what matters to the City. For this reason, Cameron & co are equally happy for UK funds to be invested in nationalised industries abroad. They love doing business with the Chinese, not just because of the scale of the opportunities, but because an economic dictatorship is a reliable business partner, one that can better guarantee fees and returns without worries over regulatory restraint or market volatility.

The City is comfortable with nationalised industries and state planning where it can interpose as the facilitator for cross-border capital funding and other financial services. The one thing it does not like is state direction of capital domestically, as this diminishes its role as middle-man. The growth of the City as a global financial centre since the 1970s means that its fortunes are no longer largely dependent on the domestic capital market, but that market remains highly attractive in the areas of government-underwritten infrastructure and property due to the combination of high yields and low risk, the product in turn of privatised natural monopolies and, in the case of housing, induced scarcity.

Hinkley C, Royal Mail, HS2, mortgage subsidies and the continuing hostility to controls on City activity are all of a piece. It is all about maximising the flow of money, not the "march of the makers". While the Tory party will continue to champion deregulation, low wages and tax cuts for its small capitalist base, if only to drown out the siren call of UKIP, the cause of economic nationalism died with Margaret Thatcher and her obsession with British Airways' livery.

No News is not Good News

The news that Glenn Greenwald, the journalist behind the Snowden revelations, is leaving the Guardian to join a startup news service funded by Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, has been greeted with the usual mix of self-absorbed journo-jingo ("independent, ferocious, investigative journalism") and tech-titan hagiography (Omidyar's "tech background and his focus on communities should prove an invaluable asset to the new company").

Omidyar's thinking can be summed up in three quotes: "Companies in Silicon Valley invest a lot in understanding their users and what drives user engagement" (i.e. editorial policy should be driven by Big Data); "I have always been of the opinion that the right kind of journalism is a critical part of our democracy" (note right kind); and he has a "rising concern about press freedoms in the United States and around the world" (i.e. get government off our backs). Mutatis mutandis, these sentiments could have been expressed by Paul Dacre.

The published specifics of the new venture are few, which probably reflects a lack of actual development rather than an embargo. This is clearly vapourware at present. What we do know is that it will be digital-only and broad-based - i.e. the usual melange of human interest, sport and "the puffery of wares" masquerading as news, as well as in-depth current affairs (a liberal cliché) and investigative journalism. One characteristic is the foregrounding of established "brands" such as Greenwald, which is hardly a novel development. I confidently predict personalised news and advertising, which won't look too different to the Guardian online. As Christian Christensen has noted, Omidyar isn't just buying Greenwald, he is buying the left-leaning, educated demographic in the US (those liberals spend plenty big).

Coincidentally, a more sceptical review of Omidyar's business dealings was provided recently by Tom Slee, who noted that "Ven­ture cap­i­tal dam­ages commons-based shar­ing, and one name appears time and time again ..." Slee has also written a fine essay on the inherent pitfalls of Internet reputation systems, such as eBay, which has relevance to the wider topic of "citizen journalism" and how the Internet has impacted on news organisations. As the Huffington Post and other Web-based outlets have shown, journalism is becoming increasingly polarised: a few well-paid "superstars" at one end and a large reserve army of low-paid also-rans and blogtastic wannabes at the other. A return to the ecosystem of the nineteenth century and New Grub Street. It's just business.

This is part of a wider process of deprofessionalisation, also affecting sectors like teaching and nursing, which stems in part from automation and labour surplus, but also from the longstanding tendency of capital to commoditise labour and dilute craft skills. In such a situation, those who are vulnerable to being downgraded (the declassé) tend to insist more on the social respect that they feel is their due, hence the emblematic importance of investigative journalism and the nostalgia for the halcyon days of Woodward and Bernstein.

Meanwhile, John Naughton remains "baffled" by public indifference to the NSA/GCHQ affair and, more pointedly, the lack of concern from fellow journalists who "seem to have succumbed either to a weird kind of spiteful envy, or to a desire to act as the unpaid stenographers to the security services and their political masters". There is a bit of academic de haut en bas here, given that most journos have mortgages to pay and are as likely to keep their heads down as any other group. I've not kept a tally, but I suspect that NUJ strike action in recent years has largely focused on defending jobs and pension rights, not advancing civil rights.

Omidyar's initiative will be sold as pro-freedom and (implicitly) anti-state, but as with his involvement with the "open data movement", it is about privatising state assets and limiting the influence of government on business (but not vice versa). The Greenwald/Snowden revelations ultimately boil down to "you should not let the state access your data", but they say little about the rights of business to access and harvest that data for commercial profit. Greenwald is probably making a shrewd judgement that his interests will be better served by a rich patron in the US, rather than a fussy newspaper in a UK that has taken to victimising his nearest and dearest.

With the news that some sensible chaps will take a hard look at what GCHQ have been up to, we can now safely move on. Press regulation will once more become the bigger issue, though we will naturally avoid any vulgar reference to ownership. Meanwhile, the future of investigative journalism will depend on the indulgence of billionaires. It's hardly news, let alone progress.

Hartlepool no more, Hull no more

The Economist has suggested that the old industrial towns and smaller cities of the North should be allowed to decline, instead of being "propped up on piles of public money". This is in equal parts a free-market critique of government intervention, a dig at the fiscal transfer policy of the last Labour administration, and a recapitulation of the old trope of "managed decline". The analysis is a little more rigorous than that of David Howell (frack the lot), insofar as it distinguishes between vibrant regional service centres like Manchester and Newcastle on the one hand and "urban ghosts" like Hull and Hartlepool on the other. The solution: "Governments should not try to rescue failing towns. Instead, they should support the people who live in them. That means helping them to commute or move to places where there are jobs—and giving them the skills to get those jobs". 

The Economist was founded in 1843 to campaign for the repeal of the Corn Laws and economic liberalism more generally. As such, it was part of the industrial capitalist consensus that had earlier led to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 and the introduction of workhouses. While popular history has understandably focused on the human cost of this system, notably the callous principle of "less eligibility" and the lurid example of Oliver Twist, it is important to understand the economic calculation of the scheme's authors, which relates directly to the Economist's current concern.

The problem faced by capital in the early nineteenth century was a lack of labour in the growing industrial towns and a surplus of labour in the countryside, following the productivity improvements (enclosures, new technology) of the agricultural revolution in the eighteenth century. Many labourers willingly migrated from "rural idiocy" to the new towns to seek work, but found that the nascent factory system and commodity markets were volatile, leading to alternating periods of employment and unemployment. As many of the new towns were not even incorporated at this time, the local parish-based relief was inadequate to the task of feeding the growing population during periods of inactivity (wages were too low to allow saving). The consequence was that people drifted back to the villages, a challenge both to the rural poor law commissioners and to the urban industrialists who faced labour shortages once business picked up.

The solution to this problem was the workhouse, which meant that labour could be "warehoused" in the new towns during downturns, with the (minimised) cost being shared by all manufacturers (i.e. ratepayers). There is a direct thread from this pragmatic public provision to the support of the NHS (which inherited many of the workhouses) by industrial capital during the post-WW2 social democratic heyday. 1834 was the point, as Karl Polanyi noted in The Great Transformation, when the treatment of labour as a (fictitious) commodity crystallised. Whereas David Howell sees the North essentially in terms of its natural resource capability (i.e. land), the Economist sees it as a source of labour, which shows you that not much has changed. The problem then is a purely practical one of the transfer of the young and fit, with the old towns left as warehouses for the elderly and infirm.

Coincidentally, there has been a corresponding ripple of interest in the prospect that the centre of our large (and thriving) cities, notably London, may be evolving into a "dark inventory" (shades of Jean Luc Godard's Alphaville), with property increasingly bought up by absentee (i.e. foreign) owners. As many of them seek capital appreciation and a hassle-free asset, the attraction of renting the property out declines, leading to city centres populated largely by house-sitters and modern-day levites in the temples of capital.

There is an element of ahistorical nonsense about this dystopian vision. The foreign wealthy have been buying up central London property for centuries (Greek tax-dodgers are following in the footsteps of French ancien regime emigrés), while Mayfair and the like has always had a semi-resident population (in town for the season, in the country for the rest). That said, the idea that the use of high-value property as a safe asset is bad for both the city and the economy is incontestable. Townhouses are not a productive asset and a market that discourages their utilisation is not healthy. The problem is not that the centre of London is going to become deserted any time soon, but that capital is there rather than in Hartlepool or Hull.

The establishment response to this is not to question the mysterious ways of capital but to suggest that the fault lies in us, the people, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is surely obvious that once the idea of "work for your benefits" becomes fully established, the next logical step will be enforced relocation. Unlike the international migration of old, which was informally (and inefficiently) driven by land clearances and starvation wages, this will be an era of national directed labour (emulating Chinese best practice), with the surplus of the North being used to undercut low-wage, migrant labour in the South. Instead of a letter from America, you can expect a text from a relative gutting chickens in Norfolk or (assuming they've got a degree) serving coffee to yummy mummies in Kensington.

PS: The title of this post was inspired by seeing the film Sunshine on Leith the other day. Though "a Scottish Mama Mia by the Edinburgh Tourist Board" or the "anti-Trainspotting" does not immediately sound enticing, it was actually rather good. Well worth a decko.