File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9709, message 60


Date: Mon, 8 Sep 1997 17:21:50 +0200
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: M-TH: A time to Di -- The Floral Revolution


Chris B goes way over the top in his M-I summary of his reflections
elsewhere in Spoon's labyrinthine corridors.

I agree that we've seen a "cascade of psycho-social responses, but that's
about it.

In the first place the death was hardly "shocking". Dramatic, yes,
shocking, no. John Lennon's death was shocking, because there was a killer
out to murder him. Also he was creative and was right at the start of a new
surge of creative energy. Di went in a banal car accident, in which the
chase of the paparazzi hardly seems the most lethal factor.

Di was indeed a "most dramatic character in" a "soap opera".  But to go on
and characterize it as "our national" soap opera is wrong. "Ours" is
begging the question, and it was international.

>Shock, incredulity, indignation. [snip] Anger,
>blame, guilt, and determination. The simple primitive acts that people made
>in other countries as well, do not necessarily imply that the motivation
>was also simple or servile.

The acts were highly mediated. They had huge elements of fetishism and
projection, as the immediate material interests of those performing them
were not involved. I don't know why Chris drags in "servility", something
qualitatively new in his list of reactions, except that he's got a guilty
conscious about his own responses. I think servility is a very necessary
factor to explain the popular responses to this upper-class media incident.

>The anti-monarchist potential of the situation became manifest yesterday at
>the funeral. The crowds were not assuaged by the Queen's all too carefully
>polished speech. She did not show grief, as indeed it would be difficult to
>do towards her rival. The first sign was as the royal party left Buckingham
>Palace for the funeral. The Union Jack was raised for the first time to
>half mast, and the crowd, previously silent, applauded.

The anti-monarchist *potential* (so far completely unrealized) has been
seething all week under the surface and sometimes on the media surface too.
It's obvious that all through the week the Windsors were forced to give in
to popular demands.

Chris's assessment of the impact of the Queen's speech is quite wrong. She
came bouncing back into the ring and landed some good punches. A polished
performance was necessary for her and she delivered one. She may not have
shown grief or sorrow or whatever, but she expressed sufficient for the
occasion and did it better than people expected. She took the edge of the
gutter press attacks on her. She promoted the Windsor absorption of the
dead Di very well.

>The decisive step was when Diana's brother defiantly spoke quite separately
>from the House of Windsor, pointedly noted that she did not need the royal
>title which had been taken away last year at the divorce, "to generate her
>particular brand of magic" and that her blood family would stand guard over
>the future royal functions of her sons.

Here again Chris overreacts. The bruvver scored a couple of points, but the
Spencers have nothing like the standing in the people's fetishized world
that the Windsors do. And the Earl was wrong about Di not needing the royal
title. It's what made her. Of course she took on a mythical life of her own
during her royal stint, but it was as a Princess she became a myth, and she
was still Princess of Wales even without the Royal Highness bit. What was
going on was that the Royals couldn't strip her of the mythical royalty she
had acquired in the fetishized popular imagination. But the Earl shot wide
of the mark. He's a whinger and a loser, so his effort, characteristic as
it was of the funeral, will fade fast. In fact it reinforced the Windsor
strategy of a "state-but-not-state" send-off. The Windsor's won on protocol
(in terms of guests, etc), and the Earl fucked up his own position by going
too far with the personal whining. Whatever else they might have done, the
Windsors were out in force. They were lined up in the church in their
parasitical dozens, they were there. They'd assessed the situation, gritted
their teeth, eaten shit, and done what they had to do. They swallowed the
insults and rolled out the royal standards, flew the flag at half-mast,
appeared on telly and gave Di Westminster Abbey. And they kept out of the
way -- this "restraint" will benefit them in the long run.

The service worked for the Windsors too, because it was cheapened and
vulgarized by the twin highlights of self-indulgent mediocrity, the
vindictive Earl Spencer and utterly unmemorable Elton John. Chris might not
think applause in church matters, but it added a tawdry touch that only
served to highlight the Windsors' professionalism when it comes to solemn
ceremonial.

The "blood family" bragging regarding watching over the sons was also more
than the Earl will be able to manage in reality. In the first place he's in
South Africa (of all places). In the second, the Windsors have the boys and
Charles is their father. The Spencers on the other hand have the coffin and
remains, not in a country churchyard as I first expected, but on a suitably
Avalonian island on their huge country estate. One less headache for the
Windsors probably. As for Charles's performance at the funeral, he looked
suitably cut up, and most people won't expect much more.


>What can the Earl's threat mean, as he lives in South Africa and would have
>little influence over the boys? Most likely to reinforce absolutely the
>impossibility of Charles living with the woman he really does love, whom
>they would never call mother, while they are still children. And this woman
>Charles was preparing to say, is a non-negotiatable part of his life. And
>he has already made the mistake of marrying one woman whom he alone out of
>the whole of the country, does not love. His harrowed face to be fair may
>very probably have reflected his grief for his sons, but few suppose it
>necessarily also reflected grief for Diana rather than grief for Camilla
>and his throne.

"The one woman whom he alone out of the whole of the country does not
love". This is straight out of the Lickspittle Library. And who knows
what'll happen in the next few years as far as Charles and Camilla are
concerned.  Official mistress status?

>While the press probably will hold off William and Harry, the degree of
>latent anger is such that it may turn on the monarchy even more explicitly
>in the next few weeks. Meanwhile Blair, who has played his hand through
>this stormy week in a masterly fashion, busily continues to sound helpful
>to all sides and will seek a compromise solution that nevertheless moves
>the agenda forward in terms of real structural change. Probably with the
>exhausted and willing cooperation of Charles.
>
>We are half way to a republic already.

More nonsense.

As for Blair, he's probably angling for a much more important role for
himself as combined head of government and co-head of state, but he'd
better bring home some bacon for the Windsors if he wants some of their
place in the sun. His two great insults to the Queen of the past week --
"people's princess" and the arrogance of "they feel grief as we do" -- will
take some making up for, and he may have gone too far to pull it off.

What might happen if the spin doctors are up to their job, and Charles is
to be made over as a human being, is that a down-market coffee-table book
is brought out pretty damn quick entitled The People's Princess and
chock-full of pictures of Di and Charles looking "happy", smoothing over
the unpleasant bits towards the end. You know, Di as we remember her in her
radiance etc. Text by David Dimbleby, production by appointment to the
Queen, and foreword by Sir Tony Blair.

>I am of course critical of the superficial and sectarian marxist analysis
>that has just dismissed the democratic component of these phenomena. Even
>without understanding more exactly what the people were doing, a
>dialectical analysis of the contradictions among the different interest
>groups would have shown the glibness of treating them as one
>undifferentiated capitalist enemy. Neither Diana nor her brother are
>proletarian revolutionaries, but that does not stop them acting in ways
>that seriously destabilise the existing way of running the country.

If this has been serious destabilization, I'm a pair of Di's knickers.

Neither is Chris a proletarian revolutionary. And this makes it natural for
him to act in a way that seriously stabilizes the existing way of running
the country. Funny how all these grab the gun, long live Mao and the
Shining Path etc, types all end up as puppy dogs wagging their tails behind
them when it comes to national politics at home.

The democratic component has been in the imperative desire of the public to
be informed (long live the paparazzi and Rupert Murdoch) and their will
that the royalty they are consuming should be prepared according to a more
down-market recipe.  Otherwise the whole thing has been played out well
within the bounds of fetishized ruling-class ideology.

>More fundamentally I think you can see a degree of cultural change has
>penetrated even the privileged strata of the establishment. ... Discipline
>among the >ruling caste has broken down apparently irretrievably.

More nonsense. In the first place, cultural change penetrates everywhere
anyway, and in the second the ruling caste is always in a state of civil
war within itself and I've got a hunch the Windsors'll get more out of this
than they lose.

Chris quotes the Observer's >Class Analysis of Demonstrators/Mourners

>The London Observer this Sunday quotes foreign correspondents interviewing
>mourners, saying that the deepest disillusion with the monarchy was among
>the "petite bourgeoisie"
>(presumably French reporters) who had previously been keen royalists.
>
>This is backed up a systematic survey by an opinion poll company of a
>random sample of 433 people who had queued to sign the books of condolences
>at St James's Palace during the day of Thursday 4th September. They were
>disproportionately middle class (56%) and very disproportionately women
>(80%). 43% were aged between 25 and 44.
>
>Their newspaper readership reflected the middle strata derivation. There
>was an under-representation of semi- and un-skilled workers and people on
>benefits. 27% read the Daily Mail ahead of 21% who read the Sun.

So who's surprised?

>When asked "Who should inherit the throne", 21% said Prince Charles. 72%
>Prince William.

And if we're half-way to a republic, how many said "nobody at all"? -- or
perhaps that's the "half" that's left?? How many gave an opinion as to how
the throne should be allocated? By the constitution, by parliamentary vote,
by plebiscite, by an international televised royalty contest with viewers
voting by phone?? And how often? When the incumbent dies or is declared
insane, at retiring age, at fifty, forty, or once a decade? Why not once a
year? Should there be rules about gender quotas -- a Queen this year, a
King next?

>So a culture shift has spread into the lower middle classes who have
>demanded that the crown bows its knee to them, rather than vice versa.
>
>This is part of a much wider culture shift that swept through this last
>week in  a chaotic, but not hysterical form.

If even the putrid mindset of the Daily Mail feels it can and should bully
the monarchy, then it just shows what a thoroughly rotten and over-rotten
institution it is in the imperialist epoch.

>Gone is the idea that the British do not show emotion. This was one of the
>core demands. Blair wisely let his voice break when genuinely distressed,
>the previous Sunday morning he let the remark drop about Diana being the
>people's princess.

If Blair was genuinely distressed, I'm the Ghost of Christmas Past.


>Well over a million flowers have been placed or thrown. An openly gay
>singer, whom Diana embraced most recently at the Versace funeral was chosen
>to deliver a pop song in the middle of one of the most formal Anglican
>churches in the country. Where is homophobia now? The messages left with
>the flowers, that I saw yesterday, frequently encouraged the idea of
>Diana's friendship with a muslim.

Homophobia is alive and well, thank you. As is anti-Muslim racism and
xenophobia.

>Was this a floral revolution or a feminist revolution?

Neither. It was a windfall for the flower trade and for newsprint
manufacturers (good for Swedish export earnings).

>Diana had strength
>for her decisive television interview with Martin Bashir in 1995 from the
>psychotherapy she had received from the feminist therapist Susie Orbach.

Just to clear up possible ambiguity here, therapy isn't a pill you can
take. My old friend Dunja, before she went psychotic, used to hand me all
sorts of ginseng and vitamin capsules saying "Eat, Hugh, is healt".


>She had absorbed the outlook and propagated in an intelligible and popular
>manner. She also did it, members of the intelligentsia on this list should
>note, without being an intellectual herself. Her intelligence was
>intuitive, and one of the demands of this revolution is that everyone
>should respect people without power or intellectual education, because they
>are people

Gush, gush, gush.

Chris quotes Jacques, the ex-"Marxist":

>>Diana, in redefining the
>>nation, redefined each and every one of us.

Thanks, Di, for teaching me what I am.

>>I for one feel at ease with a
>>nation whose icon is Princess Diana and whose revolution takes place around
>>the royal palaces, along the streets of central London and on the motorway
>>between the capital and Northamptonshire, in a mood of the utmost dignity,
>>maturity and compassion."

As Dunja would have said: "It is to unbelieve!"


>This may overstate it and none of this in any direct way threatens
>capitalism,

Well, Chris is right here.

>but
>
>a) something big has happened and things will not be quite the same again

Bold claims!

>b) we should use the marxist method to analyse it perceptively

And when should we *not* use the Marxist method or analyse things
perceptively???

>c) it has strong democratic and tolerant elements that should be valued by us.

What exactly does Chris mean here by "valued"?? We can "value" aspects of
bourgeois culture and still want to dump the bourgeoisie on the rubbish tip
of history. I somehow think Chris means something else and more tolerant of
class society and exploitation and fetishized delusive ideology.


>d) some of the positive features are international

How so? Will imperialism be democratized by any of this? Will the
scapegoating of Islam cease??

Dream on.

Cheers,

Hugh




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