ayça on fairer society
What Would a Fairer Society Look Like? | LSE Festival – (june 17 2023) – 60 min video – [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlds-v8_eug&t=23s]:
Have inequalities become so entrenched that we can no longer imagine a fairer society? Whilst many are dissatisfied with the status quo, it is surprisingly hard to find a coherent vision of what a better and fairer world would look like. In the Festival’s closing event, leading thinkers put forward their suggestions #lsefestival Speaker(s): Daniel Chandler, Lord Willetts, Dr Ayça Çubukçu, Swatee Deepak Chair: Professor Neil Lee Full details/attend: [https://www.lse.ac.uk/Events/LSE-Festival/2023/events/20230617/society]:
Have inequalities become *so entrenched that we can no longer imagine a fairer society? Whilst many are dissatisfied with the status quo, it is **surprisingly hard to find a coherent vision of what a better and fairer world would look like. In the Festival’s closing event, leading thinkers put forward their suggestions.
*i don’t think we have been able to do that to date (no longer?).. we have no idea what legit free people are like.. black science of people/whales law et al
**need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature as global detox/re\set.. so we can org around legit needs
imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling)
Meet our speakers and chair
Daniel Chandler (@dan_chandler) is an economist and philosopher based at LSE and author of Free and Equal: What Would a Fairer Society Look Like? He has degrees in economics, philosophy and history from Cambridge and the LSE, and was awarded a Henry Fellowship at Harvard where he studied under Amartya Sen. He has worked in the British Government as a policy advisor in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit and Deputy Prime Minister’s Office, and as a researcher at think tanks including the Resolution Foundation and Institute for Fiscal Studies.
daniel tweeting about the book [https://twitter.com/dan_chandler/status/1648983490078146561?s=20]:
My book ‘FREE AND EQUAL: What Would a Fair Society Look Like?’ is out today! It sets out a vision for how we can reinvigorate democracy & transform capitalism, drawing on the philosopher John Rawls
need to let go of any form of democratic admin.. c.. et al.. any form of m\a\p.. otherwise same song
rawls main theory: In A Theory of Justice, Rawls argues for a principled reconciliation of liberty and equality that is meant to apply to the basic structure of a well-ordered society.
oi.. carhart-harris entropy law et al.. aziz let go law
Ayça Çubukçu (@ayca_cu) is an author, academic, and editor based in London. In her scholarship, she has explored the themes of humanity, violence, internationalism, racism, and solidarity, and has written on legal and political theory. After leaving Turkey at the age of 17, she was educated in the United States and began teaching at Columbia and Harvard universities. Ayça currently co-directs the human rights programme at LSE, where she is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology. Ayça’s writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Guardian, Al Jazeera, Jadaliyya, Thesis 11, Law & Critique, London Review of International Law and other academic publications. Some of her work has been translated into Portuguese, Italian, and Turkish. Ayça has lectured widely in North America and Europe, and has appeared in BBC’s Newsnight programme and other BBC productions. She has also served as an editor for a number of publications, including The Cobbler, Jadaliyya, Humanity Journal, and the “LSE International Studies Series” at Cambridge University Press.
ayça on david’s possibilities from m of care – feb 23.. et al
Swatee Deepak (@Swatee) is a Practitioner in Residence at LSE’s Marshall Institute. She works with private and public foundations in strategy development and design, with individuals and families of wealth on their redistribution strategies and oversees a portfolio of businesses and start-ups across philanthropy, socially minded businesses and the arts. Swatee was previously Director of the With and For Girls Collective, the world’s only participatory fund by and for adolescent girls and prior was Director of Stars Foundation, a private philanthropic foundation focused on funding grassroots organisations working with children and young people around the world. She is a founding member of several collectives working across philanthropy and social justice movements including Closer Than You Think, Healing Solidarity and Shake the Table and is a Board Member of the Global Fund for Children and EMpower – The Emerging Markets Foundation.
David Willetts is the President of the Resolution Foundation (@resfoundation). He served as the Member of Parliament for Havant (1992-2015), as Minister for Universities and Science (2010-2014) and previously worked at HM Treasury and the No. 10 Policy Unit. He is Chair of the UK Space Agency, a Board member of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), and a visiting Professor at King’s College London. He is the Chair of Innovate Cambridge and an Honorary Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. Lord Willetts has written widely on economic and social policy. His book A University Education is published by Oxford University Press. A second edition of his book The Pinch on fairness between the generations was published in 2019.
Neil Lee (@ndrlee) is Professor of Economic Geography in the Department of Geography and Environment at LSE. He convenes the Cities, Jobs and Economic Change theme in the International Inequalities Institute and is Director of BSc Geography with Economics. His research considers economic development, innovation, public policy, and inequality. He is Chair of the Policy Committee of the Regional Studies Association and has worked with public and private sector organisations including the World Bank, the OECD, the European Commission, NESTA, the Kuwaiti Government and the UK government.
via ayça’s tweet [https://twitter.com/ayca_cu/status/1672139706719404032?s=20]:
Here is the video of the closing panel of the #LSEFestival 2023, where I had a chance to speak about “corporate anti-capitalism” (of the LSE, no less), practiced within the ideological borders of capitalist realism. Dedicated to the memory of Mark Fisher [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlds-v8_eug&t=23s]
mark [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Fisher]:
Mark Fisher (11 July 1968 – 13 January 2017), also known under his blogging alias k-punk, was an English writer, music critic, political and cultural theorist, philosopher, and teacher based in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. He initially achieved acclaim for his blogging as k-punk in the early 2000s, and was known for his writing on radical politics, music, and popular culture.
Fisher published several books, including the unexpected success Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (2009), and contributed to publications such as The Wire, Fact, New Statesman and Sight & Sound. He was also the co-founder of Zero Books, and later Repeater Books. After years intermittently struggling with depression, Fisher died by suicide in January 2017, shortly before the publication of The Weird and the Eerie
In the late 2000s, Fisher re-purposed the term “capitalist realism” to describe “the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it”. He expanded on the concept in his 2009 book Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, arguing that the term best describes the ideological situation since the fall of the Soviet Union, in which the logics of capitalism have come to delineate the limits of political and social life, with significant effects on education, mental illness, pop culture, and methods of resistance. The result is a situation in which it is “easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism.” Fisher writes:
Capitalist realism as I understand it … is more like a pervasive atmosphere, conditioning not only the production of culture but also the regulation of work and education, and acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action.
As a philosophical concept, capitalist realism is influenced by the Althusserian conception of ideology, as well as the work of Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek. The concept of capitalist realism also likely stems from the concept of Cultural hegemony proposed by Italian theorist, Antonio Gramsci; which can generally be described as the notion that the “status quo” is all there is, and that anything else violates common sense itself. Capitalists maintain their power not through violence or force, but by creating a pervasive sense that the Capitalist system is all there is. They maintain this view by dominating most social and cultural institutions. Fisher proposes that within a capitalist framework there is no space to conceive of alternative forms of social structures, adding that younger generations are not even concerned with recognizing alternatives. He proposes that the 2008 financial crisis compounded this position; rather than catalyzing a desire to seek alternatives for the existing model, the response to the crisis reinforced the notion that modifications must be made within the existing system. Fisher argues that capitalist realism has propagated a ‘business ontology’ which concludes that everything should be run as a business including education and healthcare.
Following the publication of Fisher’s work, the term has been picked up by other literary critics
Fisher popularised the use of Jacques Derrida’s concept of hauntology to describe a pervasive sense in which contemporary culture is haunted by the “lost futures” of modernity, which failed to occur or were cancelled by postmodernity and neoliberalism
At the time of his death, Fisher was said to be planning a new book titled Acid Communism, excerpts of which were published as part of a Mark Fisher anthology, k-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004–2016), by Repeater Books in November 2018. Acid Communism would have attempted to reclaim elements of the 1960s counterculture and psychedelia in the interest of imagining new political possibilities for the Left.
Fisher critiqued economics, claiming that it was a bourgeois “science”, that molded reality after its presuppositions, rather than critically examined reality. As he stated it himself:
From the start, “economy” was the object-cause of a bourgeois “science”, which hyperstitionally bootstrapped itself into existence, and then bent and melted the matter of this and every other world to fit its presuppositions — the greatest theocratic achievement in a history that was never human, an immense conjuring trick which works all the better because it came shrouded in that damp grey English and Scottish empiricism which claimed to have seen off all gods.
oikos (the economy our souls crave).. ‘i should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.’ – gaston bachelard, the poetics of space
Fisher argued that “the pandemic of mental anguish that afflicts our time cannot be properly understood, or healed, if viewed as a private problem suffered by damaged individuals.
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notes/quotes from video:
4 min – daniel: on raul – (daniel’s) book trying to get raul’s ideas out of academia.. raul’s thought experiment on designing alt as if we didn’t know what kind of person (*names some labels) we would be in that society.. i think that’s an intuitive way to think about fairness.. and wouldn’t have to org like we do today.. where some have to rely on food banks et al.. raul’s argues we would choose 2 fundamental principles of justice 1\ basic liberties, personal/political (equal role in **decision making et al) 2\ a) fair equal of opp to develop talents b) fair equal outcomes.. so diff equalities but only if benefit everyone.. he also argued.. ***not just distribution of money that matters.. so i think what is exciting about raul’s .. get a ****very comprehensive idea of what fairer society would look like.. to resolve some of the false binaries.. unfortunately raul didn’t talk about what that would look like.. so that’s where my book picks up where raul left off.. to achieve his vision
*label(s) ness
**decision making is unmooring us law.. any form of democratic admin
***if still holding onto money (any form of m\a\p) .. not about equity – everyone getting a go everyday
****still part\ial ness.. so still same song
9 min – daniel: those ideas (in my book): 1\ *overall demo process.. **money out of politics, proportional rep, direct participation 2\ equal of opp.. ***early ed, role of private schools et al 3\ transform econ institutions.. ie: ****bi 4\ change balance of power in ***work place
*again need an alt sans any form of democratic admin.. sans **any form of m\a\p.. otherwise.. not really an alt
***oi.. supposed to’s of school/work et al..
****perhaps let’s try/code money (any form of measuring/accounting) as the planned obsolescence w/ubi as temp placebo.. where legit needs are met w/o money.. till people forget about measuring
10 min – ayça: i would like to begin by observing how the question posed for us today what would a fairer society look like refrains from conjuring an ideal society.. it invites us instead to a limited seemingly grounded comparative framework..t it demands we imagine not a just society.. but a fairer one.. fairer than what.. every hitherto existing society.. or this one.. of hereditary rights/privileges/property.. fairer than this common wealth of food banks.. billed thru colonial dispossession and slavery..t nevertheless.. implicit in the question of a fairer society.. is the possibility.. even the desirability of transformation.. but if something needs to be changed.. that something falls short of *everything we would need to transform to live in a just society.. economically, politically, ecologically, ethically, globally, t.. that everything includes ‘realistic questions’ which strangle the imagination.. rendering our yearning for revolutionary change and justice unrealistic.. not merely for now but forever.. t
*aka: any form of m\a\p.. huge
this is why we have not yet gotten to global equity.. we haven’t let go enough to see (what legit free people are like)
12 min – ayça: yet it is in the nature of every revolutionary passion for justice as hannah arendt once named it.. to resist this strangulation.. *the longing for what appears to be impossible compels us into (?) of (?) to be realistic by demanding the impossible..t this revolutionary realism as i would call it.. contrasts sharply with mark fisher describes as capitalist realism ‘sense that not only c only viable political/econ system.. but now impossible even to imagine a coherent alt’..t thatcher ‘no alt’.. reps perfectly confining vision of neolibs.. who are capitalist realists par excellence..
*imagine if we just tap into that.. that which is already on each heart.. something every soul already craves..
need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature for a global detox/re\set.. so we can org around legit needs
imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling)
13 min – ayça: invested in drawing borders around the imaginable/possible.. their ideological work consists in shaping our sense of reality and w/it what is and is not seen as realistic and achievable.. fisher argues.. c realism.. not a particular type of realism.. more like realism in itself..t this realism seeks to provide a shield protecting us from perils posed by belief.. esp belief in anti c ideologies of past.. nevertheless.. c realism maintains prevalent and depressive belief today that all hope is a dangerous illusion..t
14 min – ayça: it renders any revolutionary desire for justice.. social/global/econ/eco.. not merely unrealistic.. but naively if not madly misguided.. c realism pens our imagination in colorless parades (?) of trouping pragmatism.. policing the limits of our capacities to act/live.. even to love one another differently..t in this situation.. the injunction to realistic by demanding the impossible requires *immeasurable experiments in imagining otherwise.. lola (?)’s formulation.. it is not incidental but essential to c however.. that it incorporates into the global market as consumable goods our own anti c desires for living differently.. t according to diff principles in a just society..
*or perhaps just one is enough (findings abstract) to try graeber model law.. which would then unleash infinitesimal structures approaching the limit of structureless\ness and/or vice versa .. aka: ginorm/small ness; experiments everyday in every way by everyone..
again for that.. need ai as nonjudgmental expo labeling
15 min – ayça: in this scene .. mark fisher finds.. alt/independent cultural spaces/attitudes become established styles .. in fact.. the dominate styles w/in the mainstream.. this insight allows him to observe how c realism is very far from precluding (prevent from happening) a certain anti c.. t
hari rat park law et al
ayça: here and now.. if that all sounded too abstract.. the lse festival w/its alt question of a fairer society can offer one ie of what fisher calls corporate anti c.. how else shall we explain the silence here around the strike wave that has been sweeping thru/beyond the academy.. as unionized workers at the lse.. the main (?) survivable workloads/conditions.. decent pay/pensions.. it becomes impossible not to question the profit making *calculus of c realism.. is this what a fair uni looks like..t
*literacy and numeracy both elements of colonialism/control/enclosure.. we need to calculate differently and stop measuring things
16 min – ayça: today.. well funded institutes examining ineq and well attended festivals curated to demonstrate impact and corporate social responsibility.. both evidence and cater to our desire for social change and justice.. they also offer corporations.. and i’m not excluding unis.. the opp to shape the world as the lse slogan has it.. *by confining revolutionary desires/energies w/in the borders of c realism.. t
*nothing to date.. has not confined us.. mostly because none of us are free ness.. has to be all of us
good news is (and we’re missing it).. today we have the means for a global leap/re\set
art (by day/light) and sleep (by night/dark) as global re\set.. to fittingness (undisturbed ecosystem)
we need a problem deep enough to resonate w/8bn today.. a mechanism simple enough to be accessible/usable to 8bn today.. and an ecosystem open enough to set/keep 8bn legit free
ie: org around a problem deep enough (aka: org around legit needs) to resonate w/8bn today.. via a mechanism simple enough (aka: tech as it could be) to be accessible/usable to 8bn today.. and an ecosystem open enough (aka: sans any form of m\a\p) to set/keep 8bn legit free
thinking restate/update 7.18.. and 2\ short findings restate in 2019
1\ undisturbed ecosystem (common\ing) can happen
2\ if we create a way to ground the chaos of 8b legit free people
17 min – ayça: in fisher’s words.. such undertakings perform our anti c for us.. not unlike disney films w anti c themes.. even this very speech.. they enable us to participate in c w/a clear conscience.. t
huge.. to leigh and all thoughts ness.. whalespeak et al.. keep us not-us
ayça: nevertheless.. there are moments/movements/networks/collectives as surrealist poetics.. where c realism cracks.. growing thru those cracks we become a spring.. the arab/occupy spring.. the movement for black lives.. spring to mind.. they find us mad at last.. justice.. that burning longing.. enchanting.. every mantra of revolutionary action opens the scene of our imagination.. we promise.. no justice no peace.. w/o c realism.. what would a just society really look like.. t
graeber make it diff law.. we need to try something legit diff..
ie: a nother way
19 min – swatee: insight mostly from adolescent girls.. so that not just focused on injustices.. asked if they woke up next day free.. what would they do.. walk free, dance, *things they haven’t been able to do.. **nobody free till everybody free.. indigenous insight – ***don’t come if going to help me.. but if see us inter-tangled and want to work together because of that.. come (paraphrase)
*to me.. this is huge ie that we all need detox first.. otherwise just diff degrees of whalespeak masquerading as our imagination/freedom
**none of us are free.. this is why humanity needs a leap.. to get back/to simultaneous spontaneity .. simultaneous fittingness.. everyone in sync..
***help\ing ness et al.. steiner care to oppression law et al..
23 min – swatee: we do need strong accountable *democracies to steer fair econ.. protect social/eco systems and redistribute abundance.. **need much more change.. comes not from critical mass but from critical connections
*any form of democratic admin cancerous distractions..
**not legit change.. if not legit diff.. ie: unless let go of any form of m\a\p
***let’s try these connections.. ie: imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling)
27 min – david: we do charts.. then goes into who’s better off via how much money they have.. don’t have to have a picture of a radically diff society.. what i say to think tanks and affluent people i meet.. in business or law.. if britain underperforming as econ.. total income lower.. why is burden to adjusting compared w other advanced western european countries born by least well off.. i want to see a reformed british c..
oi
33 min – (didn’t listen to here) – q&a
40 min – ayca: on colonialism – so one resonse would be to support movements for reparations
46 min – ayca: i’m fundamentally implicated in the criticism i raised.. i’m an advocate of being in the uni but not of it.. i don’t think the uni is the only place knowledge gets produced.. ed moten.. et al.. if question is about place of uni in knowledge production.. i would displace it as the sole
fred moten.. moten abolition law (interesting your reparation goes against this.. no?).. the undercommons et al
50 min – ayca: i don’t believe recommending dawn of everything.. which expands our imagination by showing in history we have imagined many diff ways of living.. much fairer/free.. than short history of c structures.. they note 3 freedoms humanity has always practiced freedom to: 1\ move 2\ disobey 3\ remake social institutions/arrangements.. i have to disagree.. i don’t believe there is a set human nature that limits our possibilities.. we make as humans ourselves
graeber and wengrow freedom law (to me at least 1&2 are still cancerous distractions)
51 min – ayca: *our very imagination is shackled thru demands to be realistic.. we need to clear imaginative space to begin building another kind of life/world.. t so the primary task.. and i’m not saying let’s sit and imagine as we’re sitting at the uni.. no.. imagination also emerges in political practices.. and in communion and union with others.. nobody has the answers.. the point is for us to come together and imagine together.. the ineq’s are utterly unacceptable and disastrous.. **we have not always been here and need not remain here..
*hari rat park law.. black science of people/whales law.. et al
need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature as global detox/re\set.. so we can org around legit needs
**graeber make it diff law.. though to me.. i think we have always been here (in sea world).. i think thinking there are ie’s in the past has been one of our biggest cancerous distractions
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be you. 