Trust a Hippy?

I praised William Davies once, I praise him again. He is a pleasant soul, who wants to see more idealism in politics. He has his doubts, though. Will the guardians of 10 Downing Street let an idealist through the door?

There is a more fundamental reason why, as far as many Westminster insiders and much of the public are concerned, Corbyn cannot become prime minister, and it has nothing to do with putting workers on company boards: he is ideologically opposed to the use of violence. This is why questions surrounding national security and nuclear war will always dog him, and why, when push comes to shove, even many centrists would prefer the chaos of no deal, overseen by a mendacious man-child, to Prime Minister Corbyn. At least that mendacious man-child will be willing to use the full range of tools at the state’s disposal.

Weber saw modern political leadership as a balancing act between commitment to ultimate goals, and responsibility for the potentially devastating tools that the state uses to pursue them. Too much of the former (‘an ethic of ultimate ends’) and you have delusional zealotry, oblivious to the harm that is done in the service of idealism. Too much of the latter, and you have machine politics, where energy is focused on questions of efficiency and delivery. But whatever the circumstances, the ultimate tool of the state is always violence, and a ‘responsible’ politician is one who keeps this brute truth in mind.

By Weber’s definition it isn’t clear that a pacifist can ever be a politician, let alone a national leader. Or rather, it isn’t possible to remain a pacifist once you have taken charge of a modern state. You either assume ‘responsibility’ for the violent operation you are leading, or continue reciting your dogma of ‘ultimate ends’ while turning your back on the consequences. It’s well known that on the day a new prime minister takes office their duties include writing a letter to nuclear submarine commanders, giving them instructions on what action to take in the event that Britain has been wiped out in a nuclear attack. There is a deathly substrate to the state and its highest offices that seems almost ontologically incompatible with Jeremy Corbyn’s image of himself. This is the reason his followers adore him, and the reason too that the (far larger) ranks of sceptics will never accept him as part of a compromise.

‘Pacifist’ is a loaded term, which also obfuscates the issue. Mr Davies is playing on our sympathy strings. It is Wagner on a child’s harp: like many political commentators he prefers the Wagnerian soap opera to the Préludes of Debussy or the simple ballads of Shirley Collins. The mundanities are not for him. We find them endlessly fascinating. So let’s put ‘pacifism’ in the cardboard box, and stuff it in the attic, where it’ll lose its shape to the gathering dust. Instead, I shall use a term that Mr Davies himself employs when he underplays Corbyn’s social class. Does the great British electorate trust a hippy to run the country?

We watch Mr D scampering across to his local library…. I prefer to speak to Max himself. I hear some interesting stories. There’s Mr D’s invite to the show. Max refused. Mr D wouldn’t listen, and threatened Max with exposure - he mentioned Professor Radkau’s biography. Max laughed, and quoted myself. Mr D mumbled away. Came back later, of course; and told Max he’d employ some actor to speak his lines. Still Max resisted. The reason for this provincial theatre. Max. Max. Speak to us please. He’s a mate, so he obliges.

If no social institutions existed which knew the use of violence, then the concept of ‘state’ would be eliminated, and a condition would emerge that could be designated as ‘anarchy’, in the specific sense of that word. Of course, force is certainly not the normal or the only means of the state—nobody says that—but force is a means specific to the state…. Today…a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory…. ‘politics’ for us means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state. (Politics as a Vocation, From Max Weber, edited by H.H. Gerth & C. Wright Mills. Emphasis in the original.)

Mr Davies is not only thin on politics, he’s sadly anorexic on sociology. Mr Davies has taken Weberian ‘violence’ too literally. He doesn't realise that Max is talking about ‘authority’ and ‘legitimate’ political action and how they control violent people. How is a territory made safe for its citizens, this is what interests him. It is the violence inherent in disorder (‘anarchy, in the specific sense of that word’) which is the problem. Not guns, tanks, ships and missiles per se; no, it is the authority to use them so as to protect the citizen from the violence of others that concerns our friend. Poor Mr D. He doesn't realise that Max is actually talking about peace not war. David Horspool has read his Weber:

In part, the story told in A Fiery and Furious People is one of England’s “retreat from violence”, how that homicide figure was so dramatically reduced over time. Sharpe is fairly sparing in his use of theoretical approaches to explain this phenomenon. When he does allow himself to offer overarching explanations, he reaches most often for the answers provided by the pioneering German sociologist (and long-term resident of a more tranquil twentieth-century university town, Cambridge), Norbert Elias. Elias’s “civilizing process”, in Sharpe’s exegesis, “traced a gradual transition from societies based on knightly concepts of honour, to the relatively pacified courtly societies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when the state, to employ [a] concept of Max Weber’s, achieved a monopoly of violence”. To my mind, the Weberian part of that analysis seems more convincing than the Eliasian.

Will a hippy intervene if a thug is beating me up?

This is the question that matters to most people. The nuclear button a synecdoche for this all important scenario. Will Jeremy save me from the fists of a thug? To doubt this in a leader…well, it means we think he is no leader at all.

Mr Davies hasn’t understood Max. Nor does he grasp the language of politics, its reliance on symbols and their interpretation. I expect it’s why he likes Corbyn so much. The zealot too is a literalist. The zealot too does not comprehend the political system, and the country it manages: a caricature drawn from an unskilled pen and seen from an all too narrow perspective. The zealot - comfortable in his ‘Cambridge’ - has no feel for the feelings and fears of most people, the real threats they face each day. When do you ever think about nuclear submarines, reader? But if you see a criminal on your street…. Symbols? Nah, says Corbyn and Mr D. It’s just about the nuclear weapons. They keep to the letter of their own zealotry, erasing the rest of the alphabet.