Friday 28 February 2020

The synergies of bureaucracy - where Left 'fights' Left to promote totalitarianism

One of the most astonishing and resistant blindspots of "radical" Leftism (the scare quotes are because progressive "radicals" actually serve the totalitarian agenda of global power and finance) relates to their role in promoting the growth of bureaucracy and management.

Since there is no genuine Right in mainstream politics (the only coherent definition of the Right being  those groups that favour religion as the primary basis of society) - modern politics is the Left battling the Left in many versions of the kind of inter-office politicking (struggling for domination) you get within any large bureaucracy such as the civil service.

Most obviously this is between priorities - should poverty be the priority, or equality, feminism, antiracism, the sexual revolution, carbon dioxide reduction... or what? All the different Leftist groups support each other in principle, but in practice each wants their pet-topic to be regarded as most important (this being both ideologically justified by their world view, and is - of course - self-serving).

The Left regards naked self-interest in a progressive cause as morally admirable; as when women support feminism, non-whites speak against racism, immigrants are active in promoting further immigrant privileges, and trans people become ideological leaders of the trans agenda. Such 'bloc voting' is regarded as natural and indeed ethically-normative on the Left; while being evidence of evil and conspiracy when seen in the pseudo-Right controlled-opposition. This is perhaps a major reason why poverty and inequality have lost influence on the Left - since the core Left leadership (throughout history) have been nearly all upper-class and/or wealthy people (Jeremy Corbyn but the latest example).

So the Left is divided and has internal opposition; but for Leftism inner-competition is a feature not a bug since it energises, feeds and serves the true, deep, covert Left agenda:

All the Leftisms converge on promoting totalitarian bureaucracy.


(Note: This promotion of totalitarian bureaucracy also applies to the small minority of anarchistic Leftists such as Noam Chomsky - in practice. Although in theory the Anarchist Left are in favour of 'grass roots', direct, participatory, bottom-up democracy, and against all large institutions; in practice, when the chips are down; their Leftism always trumps their anarchism. They always side with mainstream Leftism - and its multinational bureaucratic institutions and agencies - both against the mainstream fake-Right and the excluded true-Right-religious.)  

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A couple of decades ago I was involved in the (now defunct) university lecturers' trade union (the AUT - Association of University Teachers) as a representative and elected member of the senior university management committee (Senate). But I soon realised that in truth the union and the management were on the same side - or rather that their minor conflicts were serving a major, higher-level Leftist and bureaucratic purpose.


(Note: The union branch, like many, was substantially 'infiltrated' by a cell of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) - a smallish but very active and influential Trotskyite Revolutionary Communist outfit - of which Jeremy Corbyn the ex-Labour leader was a fellow traveller - whose modus operandi was provoke and escalate any dispute; with the aim of radicalising participants and thereby forwarding The Cause. This fed and energized the totalitarian Leftism with further pseudo-conflict/ actual-collaboration.)  


The union collaborated actively with management in the removal of all 'academic privileges' - by moving all 'employees' towards the exact same terms and conditions of service; mandatory on staff because union-approved. All employees from Deans and Professors to secretaries and cleaners should (the union believed) have the same status and (lack of) privileges - which was, de facto, to become Human Resources; interchangeable units to be hired, promoted and fired - and in general deployed - by Management; in line with managerial (and thereby governmental) goals.

This entailed - as all mainstream Leftist schemes entail - a vast bureaucratic apparatus of monitoring and control, to ensure that 'power was not being 'abused' by individuals - or, put into in other words, to ensure that all individual autonomy was crushed by diktat of the senior management committees.

This was a Leftist issue; because up to the 1990s, academic staff, but only academic staff (faculty, including researchers), had significant autonomy (and indeed, institutional leadership); but this inequality was seen as unfair (by Leftist understanding) therefore the system must be levelled (and, in practice, as always, levelled-down) so that cleaners and secretaries had 'the same rights' as faculty.  

The union also collaborated with management on such national policy goals as introducing group privileges (affirmative action) for people from on-average-poorer neighbourhoods (as a fake-proxy for being actually 'underprivileged' - which appeased the class warriors of the Old Left), then women, non-whites, immigrants etc.

All of this 'required' new higher levels, and new intrusiveness, of bureaucratic monitoring and control - in order to 'ensure' 'fairness'.


(It should be noted that these schemes were justified by the dishonest denial of group-differences - such as intelligence differences - that explained the reason for different 'representations' of different groups. Having lyingly denied such differences, the reason for inequality of outcomes 'must be' irrational and malign prejudice, justifying managerial takeover in order to implement detailed 'impartial' systems.)


Everything in the university was (including teaching, scholarship, research) was coercively reorganised into manageable, auditable, hierarchical and ever-larger 'teams' and 'collaborations'. And again unions and management actively-cooperated.


I could go on - but it can be seen that the unions and the management collaborated on the over-arching Leftist agenda - one predictable consequence of which was the 'proletarianization' of academic faculty. These became mere tools of management; to be hired and fired according to institutional 'needs' (i.e. current policy priorities). Academics lost all their 'privileges' (actually necessities for them to do their proper work) such as 'tenure' and freedom to pursue scholarship and research and publish autonomously.

Yet the unions still saw themselves 'on the progressive side' - and at deep-reality level they were. Having co-implemented a system of totalitarian surveillance and control; they engaged in those other favourite Leftist activities: destructive moral-preening and virtue-signalling.

That is, the unions 'collaborated' in making a permanent situation of internal conflict based on mutual-resentment (mixed with despair); recurring waves of futile protests and strikes - all directed against against the predictable consequences of the very system the unions had co-implemented; including managerial takeover, casualization of academic labour (non-secure short-term jobs), reducing pensions, external direction - and so forth.


This is the modus operandi of The Left. It is a negative programme of opposition; based on negative emotions especially resentment verging into spite (inflicting harm on others, even at cost to oneself). Leftism leads-to (actually-itself-is) permanent conflict, permanent 'revolution' and change; and then justification of top-down takeover to deal with the chaos. But always serving the overall goal of the subversion, destruction and (ideally) inversion of The Good (i.e. God and Creation - although these are never mentioned).

Universities have been hollowed-out and re-filled, their names and badges retained; but their functioning and activities utterly re-purposed. Their personnel have been replaced with obedient drones, their internal rules replaced, and their objectives redirected towards convergence with the continually-changing Leftist purposes of global bureaucracy.


In sum, thanks to the synergy of Leftisms; each university is now a microcosm of the totalitarian state of omni-surveillance and micro-control. They are institutionally moving close to the ideal of knowing, auditing and regulating what each manager, employee and student is doing, every hour of every day: the pre-requisite for control of all behaviour (including - ultimately - thinking).

...'Smart cards' are needed everywhere - monitoring and controlling access; classes are recorded and often videoed - hence auditable, the campus is studded with video monitors, work is broken-down into multiple tasks in linked flow charts.

Big Brother has been invited and installed; and he is watching, listening, recording - welcomed by all Leftists in order to protect against the prejudice, injustice, persecution and the rest of it - that characterise individual, free human beings.

The human being has become all-but dispensable; except to fill the gaps between the machines and the systems.

Truly the modern university is a Leftist paradise - and the predictable, inevitable, product of Leftist competition/ collaboration.

The fact that he Left hates its own-created paradise - and blames its problems upon a wholly-imaginary 'Right' - is entirely as predicted and was inevitable: it was built-in by design.

   

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