Sad news today, Patrick McGoohan: The Prisoner actor dies aged 80.
For those who do not know, The Prisoner was a seminal 1960s TV
programme in which a secret agrent resigns, is kidnapped and is placed
in “The Village” and is assigned a number, namely Number 6 — hence
the warcry “I am not a number, I am a free man!”. His captors seek
to know why he resigned and he refuses to tell them:
Sad news today, Patrick McGoohan: The Prisoner actor dies aged 80.
For those who do not know, The Prisoner was a seminal 1960s TV
programme in which a secret agrent resigns, is kidnapped and is placed
in “The Village” and is assigned a number, namely Number 6 — hence
the warcry “I am not a number, I am a free man!”. His captors seek
to know why he resigned and he refuses to tell them:
“I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed,
or numbered! My life is my own.”
The series is then about his attempts to remain human and escape. This is
the start of each episode (and tells you all you need to know about the
theme of the series):
So remember folks, “Questions are a burden to others; answers a prison for oneself.”
When I frequented Newsgroups I did visit The Prisoner fan groups,
in which there were a few Objectivists proclaiming the series
as their own. Which is something I never could understand, but
then Objectivists are bad for trying to appropriate all sorts of
things. I remember a review by an Objectivist of, I think, the first
Culture
novel (Consider Phlebas) which failed to note that it
was a communist-anarchist utopia! As the protagonist in The
State of the Art noted, when visiting Earth in 1977, we would
have been surprised to discover the future was, in our terms, “red.”
McGoohan went on to do other things, such as direct and star in a few
episodes of Columbo. My partner likes those murder-mystery things,
particularly Columbo (my preference is for Scooby Doo, and
I’m sure she would agree!). Columbo I can tolerate, unlike Poirot, who I find annoying. Particularly
at the end when he explains how he thinks the murder happened and the person
then admits to it! Once I would like them to reply as follows:
“What, do you think I’ve not seen Scooby Doo? Do you really think
I’m going to say ‘I would have got away with it too, if it weren’t
for you meddling Belgian? If that is where you actually are from,
given your tendency to ‘logically’ deduct things from dubious
assumptions and with little regard for evidence… Are you sure
you are not really
Austrian?”
Or something along those lines…
The star of Columbo, Peter Falk, also happened to
be in The Princess Bride which is a charming little film. Here is a
snippet:
The Prisoner was filmed in the lovely village of Portmeirion, in south
Wales. I love Portmeirion and have visted a few times (not recently though).
What really strikes you is just how small it is. They managed to
make it seem much bigger in the TV series — the power of imaginative
editing and directing! And it does have a nice atmosphere — and it
is hard to resist running down the beach and shouting out “I am
not a number, I am a free man!”
There has been talk of film version of The Prisoner for ages, but nothing
has appeared (perhaps we should be grateful, given how remakes tend to gut the
source material). Saying that, there has been a a remake of the TV show filmed
recently by ITV, which is due to be transmitted later this year. So let us hope
it does not suck… And talking of hopes, the trailers for the Watchmen
movie look good. Here is one:
I know, V for Vendetta looked good as well, V did look like the comic hero
but the film was a bit of a disappointment
(as I’ve blogged before
when discussing anarchist films).
But I’m optimistic — unless it goes for the common fault of modern cinema, namely
the stupid notion that looking good makes up for a bad script. I mean, Tim Burton’s
Planet of the Apes looked great but it was not a patch on the original. That
had ideas and a script which expressed them, as well as looking impressive. While
presentation is important, content counts. Sadly, in this age of cheap CGI this is
lost on producers…
Why do I like the series? Simple, because The Prisoner raises key questions
on individuality in society, and the need to defend your freedom against all sources
of oppression. Including social pressures and people thinking they know better than
you what is best for you (which is, of course, a key problem with
the Leninist notion of the vanguard party).
And genuine socialism is about ensuring individual freedom and creating an
environment where individuality can flourish. Those who contrast communism to
“individualism” make, in my opinion, a massive mistake. After all, what is
the comment in The Communist Manifesto about “the free development
of each” being “the condition for the free development of all” mean,
unless it is a call for individual freedom and individuality? As I mentioned in
my critique of a Leninist attack on Emma Goldman,
attacks on anarchists for being “individualists” just highlights the state capitalist
nature of Bolshevism.
Here is Kropotkin on this issue:
“The want of development of the personality (leading to
herd-psychology) and the lack of individual creative power and initiative
are certainly one of the chief defects of our time. Economical individualism
has not kept its promise: it did not result in any striking development of
individuality.” (Ethics, p. 28)
And:
“communism will become quite normal (it already is in a
thousand ways), and as for knowing what will be the essence of individual
development, I do not think it could be along individualist lines. Individual —
yes, without doubt, but individualist — I have my doubts. That would
mean: narrow egoism — regressive evolution and even that would be
limited to a certain number” [quoted by Ruth Kinna, “Kropotkin’s
theory of Mutual Aid in Historical Context”, pp. 259-283, International
Review of Social History, No. 40, p. 268]
I think that it is important to stress the issue of freedom, as the
right has successfully (in part thanks to Stalinism) associated freedom
with capitalism, with “economic liberty” becoming an alternative
expression for capitalism. And so a key socialist argument against that
system, at least a key libertarian socialist one, is that it restricts freedom
— both directly (in that we are wage slaves during work) and indirectly
(in the inequality reduces liberty to the freedom to pick a master).
I think a major contribution of anarchism to socialist theory is its
ideas on association, namely that freedom is about how we associate rather
than the liberal notion we are free outside of society (a position, somewhat
ironically, shared by Engels
— at least when he was bashing Bakunin). This means that free association is
not enough to ensure freedom, we must be free within our associations. In other
words, free association for groups needs self-management within groups to ensure
genuine freedom.
Which explains the anarchist principle of self-management, which dates from
Proudhon’s comment in 1840 that property was both “theft” and “despotism”.
As Bakunin argued, “man in isolation can have no awareness of his liberty.
Being free for man means being acknowledged, considered and treated as such by
another man. Liberty is therefore a feature not of isolation but of interaction,
not of exclusion but rather of connection.” [Michael Bakunin: Selected
Writings, p. 147] Proudhon put it like this:
“Since the Reformation and especially since the French Revolution
a new spirit has dawned on the world. Freedom has opposed itself to the State, and
since the idea of freedom has become universal people have realised that it is not
a concern of the individual merely, but rather that it must exist in the group
also.” [quoted by Martin Buber, Paths in Utopia, p. 28]
I do think that Rocker was wrong to maintain that anarchism is socialism informed
by liberalism while Marxism is socialism informed by democracy (Rousseau). Quite the
reverse, I would say. Liberalism, in its Lockean classical form, is deeply elitist
and hierarchical. Carole Patemen is particularly good on this, arguing persuasively
that contract theory is a “theoretical strategy that justifies subjection by
presenting it as freedom” and has “turned a subversive proposition [that we
are born free and equal] into a defence of civil subjection.” Little wonder,
then, that contract “creates a relation of subordination” and not of freedom
[Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract, p. 39 and p. 59] I should also note
that Locke, by arguing that labour was the property of the labourer, allows
exploitation to be justified
as the labourer can sell his labour to a capitalist, who then gets to keep its product.
More correctly, of course, the labourer sells their liberty (as labour cannot
be alienated as it is part of the person in question) to the boss and it is
this hierarchical relation of domination which allows the capitalist to get the
worker to produce more goods than their wages represent.
If you want to get philosophical about it, liberalism is based on an abstract
notion of individual liberty, idealism in other words. Anarchism, in contrast,
recognise that individuals life in society and freedom is a product of how we
associate (as noted). This Bakunin: “Materialism denies free will and ends
in the establishment of liberty; idealism, in the name of human dignity, proclaims
free will, and on the ruins of every liberty founds authority.” [God
and the State, p. 48] Unsurprising, then, that liberalism (via “consent”)
justifies social relationships marked by hierarchy and inequalities of power.
Hence the importance of freedom to association and freedom within associations.
(Did I mention I was a big Bakunin fan?)
All in all, the issue of “individualism” verses “collectivism” confuses the
real question, namely do you advocate a social system which will encourage the
development of individuality? As such, non-anarchist “individualism” and
“collectivism” are just two sides of the same statist/capitalist coin (as
argued here: A.2.13 Are anarchists individualists or collectivists?).
The former is private capitalism, justifying the autocracy of the property owner,
the latter is state capitalism, justifying the autocracy of the party leadership.
Real freedom lies elsewhere…
Some good news in terms of Wikipedia. We
genuine libertarians are now in the entry on
“Libertarianism”,
where it now it finally notes that anarchists (the left) used the
term first! While the emphasis is obviously still for the right, at
least the first usage in political circles is acknowledged — and
at the start… Which is an interesting social phenomenon, how in
one country a term (libertarian) has managed to totally swap its
meaning (from being anti-property to pro-property) in a space of
three decades. As Noam Chomsky
put it:
“Libertarian in the United States has a meaning which is
almost the opposite of what it has in the rest of the world traditionally.
Here, libertarian means ultra right-wing capitalist. In the European tradition,
libertarian meant socialist. So, anarchism was sometimes called libertarian
socialism, a large wing of anarchism, so we have to be a little careful
about terminology.”
Which, I suppose, just shows you the power of money on the so-called
“marketplace of ideas”!
Lastly, a few links. Most obviously,
How the Entire Economics Profession Failed
by Jeff Madrick. Don’t expect a major apology, or rethink, from the economics profession any
time soon… although the crisis may allow more realistic schools of thought (i.e.,
post-Keynesianism) to get better. That muppet Thomas Friedman is advocating war crimes
in Gaza (see Educating Thomas Friedman),
as Orwell and Chomsky has long argued, most are blind to war crimes their
favoured states commit. And, finally, a good report on events in Oakland,
Oakland on Fire:
Anarchists, Solidarity and New Possibilities in the Oakland Rebellion.
until I blog again… be seeing you…