This is our second extract from Darren Allen’s book 33 Myths of the System. The first extract can be read here, while the full work is available as a free download here.

A protest march is one of Gemma Arterton’s favourite things. ‘Oh, I love going on marches,’ she beams. ‘They’re such an amazingly galvanising, brilliant community.’ She brought her mum along on a women’s march recently, ‘and she loved it, too. She just loved the energy you get off it. It’s like carnival, people really together, and they’re singing and they’re chanting.’ She throws her head back, exhilarated by the memory. ‘It’s like, you feel power!’

Interview in The Guardian

Reform is the lightning rod and pressure relief valve of the system. Reform deflects desire for a different system into negotiations for changing the scenery, the actors and the script of the current system · · · The key player in reform is the professional, or ambitious, stagversive, the proto-typical example of which was Karl Marx · · · Stagversives may be good people, and their work may lead to more people living in more comfortable cells, but they have no interest, whatsoever, in freeing men and women from the prison.

Occasionally workers get cheesed off with carrying out meaningless tasks for a meaningless system, with being systematically exploited and robbed of the power to determine how they work, with dragging themselves back to the storage units they call ‘home’ in order to dream of more classrooms and corridors; and they begin to express their frustration and anger in indifference, resistance to scheduling, sabotage, high turnover, neglect, abseenteeism, presenteeism (working to rule; doing no more than is contractually necessary and precisely following all regulations), hostility, rage or madness. The entire purpose and meaning of management is to devise ways to counter such rebellion, to replace the people the system uses with machines, to make men and women satisfied with their alienated confinement, or, at the very least, unable to effectively resist it.

And yet, still, periodically, even the most ‘efficient’ management system falters and the servants threaten their masters — then it is time for reform.

Reform is the emergency mode of the capitalist system when faced with widespread radical opposition; a means of releasing the steam of revolutionary pressure without changing the mechanism which produces it. It comprises three stages, each of which is carried out with great fanfare:

Wave money. The simplest and, in the long run cheapest solution to discontent is to chuck a few more bananas at the monkeys. Most men and women will swallow their principles for a pay rise. Grant limited or superficial reforms. The second stage is to make a few limited concessions, pass a few laws that ease the burden, allow clients to fill out complaint forms, put a comments section on the website and hand out a few upbeat stickers. Grant temporary reforms. Finally, if nothing else works, give in and wait. As long as the system itself is unaffected, it remains in charge and can bide its time until a more opportune moment comes to ‘roll back’ freedoms and traditional, contextual rights.

The key actor in the process of reform is, naturally, the reformist (aka stagversive or professional leftist). This is a corporate or institutional employee, usually a journalist or elite academic, who makes a wage or diffuses her frustrations by pushing for change without criticising the host organisation (the company or government he or she works for), without seeking to remove the state and, critically, without attacking the root of the system. This she does by focusing on secondary solutions to secondary problems.

Intolerance, the glass ceiling, violence towards women, the erosion of civil liberties, digital addiction, bad science, corruption, financial speculation, paedophilia, unpleasant working conditions, the decline of the honey-bee, unjust politics, ‘churnalism,’ anti-Semitism and the rise of modern fascism are all fair game for, generally, the system opposes these things too. Redistribution of wealth, systemic exploitation of land and labour, thought control in a democratic society, radical self-knowledge, truthful utopia, genuine revolution and profound insurrection, unconditional love, the reality of death, consciousness and other terrifying ‘subjectivities’ are well off the menu for the ‘radical’ and her system.

Likewise, giving workers the power to vote for employee of the month, beer in the office, gay bosses, community spirit, bean-bags in the coffee room, amusing posters, family days, staff discounts, limited control over production, anarchist-trousers and, for the miserable millions building the profits of Amazon, Apple, Walmart, Primark, Cargill, Bechtel, Aramco, Ikea and Tesco, a slightly higher wage than they could find elsewhere — yep! Allowing workers the chance to control the entire production process, as men and women once did by mastering craft, allowing them control over surplus, allowing them power over management, allowing them to take back control of their fates back professionalism, meaningfully integrating the company with the environment, and genuine, human generosity — no, no, no, no, no.

Although those in power make an immense fuss about the slightest stagversive activity, the system actually requires reformists in order to effectively function. It needs, above all, obedience (which it calls non-violence, community spirit, etc.) from everyone, whatever their colour, gender or sexual preference, and privileged ‘radicals’ are happy to serve by campaigning for tolerance, inclusion, trans-rights, equal pay and whatnot. Left-wing journos, market-friendly radicals and career leftists provide and even police the limits to acceptable discussion; any idea left of the liberal press is, ipso facto, insane. They are a lightning rod for genuinely revolutionary unease, channelling demands for a different system into inconvenient but, ultimately, harmless, amendments to the current one, such as endless bickering about the number of crumbs the poor should be served on the welfare table; a ‘debate’ which keeps left-wing politicians, trade-unionists and liberal journalists nice and busy while society slowly, but safely, rots.

A similar function, on a smaller scale, is played by everyday cynicism, fantasy and even comedy. Ordinary men and women, living entirely conventional and brutally predictable lives of domesticated subservience frequently deal with their inhuman routines and herd-like consumption of spectacular drugs by mocking them — and mocking them, the others, those fools out there. ‘We’re different,’ say the suburban couple, ‘we can laugh at the world.’ ‘I’m different,’ says the bank clerk, ‘I’m really an artist, a dreamer, a revolutionary, mad!’ Such attitudes strengthen the power of the system, which panders to a sense of specialness and actively encourages the irresponsible, ironic or marketable distance from the world that daydreaming[1], escapism, cynicism and irony open up.

Without the eco, female, ‘radical’, artistic, comic, cynical and philanthropic veneer of free speech created by stagversive concern for minority rights, the environment, working conditions, corrupt politicians, fat cats and so on, the fundamentally repressive and iniquitous nature of the system would be easier to perceive. As it is, elites can point to their pinko chums in the newspapers and movie studios and say, ‘look how free our society is!’ That stagversive columnists also help pull potential radicals into the advert saturated pages of The Guardian and the New York Times just happens to be by-the-by.

If reformists ever do reach positions of power they find themselves forced, by the structure of society, to subdue and oppress those they dominate and to serve the needs of the system. As Michael Bakunin noted, this explains how ‘the most raging rebels become the most cautious of conservatives as soon as they attain to power.’ It matters little whether the power is in a capitalist corporation, a professional hierarchy, a democratic parliament or a socialist trade union. Authority (the authority of power, that is, not the authority of character, intelligence or experience) corrupts. A little work is required to deal with the bad dreams and guilt that authority entails — crusading convictions must be shaped, whispers of conscience suppressed — but no biggie. A marvellous sense of mission, a swollen pay-cheque, and the arousing energies of mass attention all carry the newly promoted effortlessly through their midnight doubts. For a while.

Some stagversives gain their power by being granted it from the ruling elites they oppose. One of the most terrifying sights for authority has long been a large, violent crowd, or the prospect of one. Rioting mobs intent on upturning the system can be suppressed, but a far more effective technique is to appoint powerful leaders and spokesmen, which automatically funnels attention towards tractable, manageable interactions.

Naturally though there is always the danger of the wrong kind of leadership arising — one that refuses power, inspires the people to listen to the voice of their own conscience and freely act on it for themselves. That won’t do! What authority wants is the right kind of revolutionary; someone who will negotiate; or, failing that, someone who, if they gain power, will keep the basic structure of the system intact.

The archetypical reformist, who gave his name to the quintessential reformist movement, was Karl Marx. Marx was a brutal authoritarian, famously manipulative, an industrialist and enthusiastic proponent of war, work and progress, all governed by classically Graeco-Judaic deterministic laws, filtered through the totalitarian scholastic jugglery of Georg Hegel. His attitude towards nature was domination, his attitude towards the peasantry and the urban poor was contempt[2], and, crucially, his attitude towards an organised, central state was… that he was in favour of it. He simply added, to his contradictory declarations about the state, the proviso that it should be run by workers and should vaguely aim to ‘wither away.’ Marx detested those who actively opposed the principle of statism (that is to say, anarchists) and who sought revolution beyond its authoritarian bounds[3]; upon one of whom, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Marx performed one of the most disgraceful hatchet-jobs in intellectual history, and then stole his ideas (notably the surplus theory of value). Finally Marx had absolutely nothing meaningful to say about any matter of real importance to men and women outside of economics and the effects of capitalism.

Marx would not be revered as he is if what he had said had not contributed so much to the human library. Marx’s critique of capitalism contains a great many peerless observations, and the Marxist tradition contains some veritable masterpieces[4], but Marx’s plan for revolution (communism that is; hatched with his capitalist friend, Friedrich Engels), was the very model of self-seeking reformism, which explains all of its salient features; its record of catastrophic failure, megalomaniacal corruption, enervating compromise, state-capitalist exploitation of the working classes[5], obliteration of nature, cockeyed priorities[6], conspicuous disinclination to make the slightest change to the basic structure of the bureaucratic[7]/technocratic system and rampant, unconscious groupthink and egotism.

All forms of communism, trade-unionism, authoritarian, democratic, fabian and parliamentary socialism, along with syndicalist forms of anarchism, are, in these respects, identical to capitalism, feudalism and fascism. If one evolves into another, nothing changes. That socialist movements often comprise decent folk; that socialist states, trade unions and syndicates do occasionally offer vital protection against extreme forms of [private] capitalism; that communist critiques of capitalism are often superb; all this is, ultimately, irrelevant. None of the political systems of the so-called left have, despite lip-service, any interest in doing away with the entire system, nor are their ideological priorities fundamentally in any kind of conflict with it. The left wishes to preserve property rights, professionalism, money, progress, work, iniquity (either centralised state power or artificially distributed corporate-technocratic power) and all the other foundational components of the anti-world. This is why kindly, fair, compassionate socialism so frequently ends up looking like a classic totalitarian nightmare.

You would have to be raving mad to oppose Uncle Corbyn or Good Old Bern, or the NHS, or higher pay for teachers, or more welfare for the poor, or higher corporation tax, or more council homes, or more jobs for the working classes — indeed it usually is nutters who do oppose them — but all of these initiatives strengthen the second most totalitarian institution in world history; the state. That the most totalitarian institution in world history — the corporation — makes precisely the same criticisms, and rushes into the breach when states are dismantled, does not make them any less true, or any more right wing. The fact is that, despite their protestations to the contrary, their individual good-nature and sympathy for the poor, the good they do fixing people’s teeth[8] and providing bike-lanes, and, in many cases, their enthusiastic flashing of radical credentials, socialists are engaged, usually from positions of extraordinary privilege, in the task of organising, from the top down, a bearable system. They are thus bound, forever, to futility, contention, repression, exploitation, ruinous technical progress and stultifying compromise with technocratic power, constant interference in people’s lives and proliferating bureaucracy; in short to fascism.

A fact of history which socialists are keen to forget, or to excuse, is that fascism originated in Italian socialism. It was first branded ‘right wing’ by the soviets in Russia in order to distance the ‘right’ kind of socialism (their own; Lenin’s and Stalin’s) from the ‘wrong’ kind (Hitler’s and Mussolini’s), a definition taken up, with added emphasis on distasteful hyper-nationalism and morbid romanticism, by Roosevelt (a fascist himself) and Truman; but all these polities were based on powerful states, nationalised welfare, unionised workplaces[9] (Mussolini’s unions were called fascio, hence fascism), social justice, democracy[10] and other such left-wing initiatives.[11]

‘Oh, but that’s the wrong kind of socialism!’ cries the reformer, who wants a national health service, a professional-class, mass democracy, heavily unionised workplaces, money markets, industrial technology and a state, but also, magically, a reality in which these unnatural, anti-human techniques and institutions somehow give power to nature and to human-nature. It doesn’t matter what reformists say, or how nice they are, when their actions inevitably strengthen authoritarian, hierarchical systems, radical monopolies and dehumanising tools which create forms of fascism that, functionally, are no different to those which private capitalists, centrists, [neo] liberals and company-stooges brazenly extol. Leftoids either do this unwittingly, or, with varying degrees of shiftiness, they suppress their awareness of the disastrous consequences of what their instincts to do good end up producing when channelled through the state, or through technocratic institutions.

When the socialist state or academy or guild has completed its work, it is, firstly, entirely run by the kind of people able to force their way up the immense authoritarian hierarchies that states entail, and eliminate opposition (such as Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Kissinger and Blair) and, secondly, and more importantly, it is still an institution; which is to say, a system-integrated conglomeration of enforced habits. Institutions control by creating and compelling people into pre-defined patterns of conduct; system-friendly clichés. The specific laws, processes and players are irrelevant. The institution, by forcing people into institutional habits, automatically destroys spontaneity — which is to say conscious response to the context, which is to say humanity — by simply existing within the system, making reform futile.[12]

Think of it this way. You can have the kindliest old captain imaginable in charge of an oil tanker, but to what end? Oil tankers are vast machines, which can only run on and transport vast quantities of poisonous crude-oil. While we are forced to work on oil tankers, only a fool would vote for a capitalist captain; but what good can a socialist captain actually do with this ship? Can he use it to transport people? Fish for crabs? Can it be ‘scaled back’? Can he use it for anything on a human scale? No matter how fair and friendly the captain is, the time comes when we need to stop listening to what the company tells us to do, take our tanker to a country where people know what to do with scrap metal, and then smash the damn thing up.

In opposition, reformists, who are either keen to essentially preserve the system or are simply too cowardly to radically oppose it, tend to extol entertaining, celebratory, largely passive forms of protest (in the Gemma Arterton sense, rather than the situationist sense; ‘we had a great day out at the march! Twitter storm tomorrow guys!’) along with quietest philosophies of pacifistic acceptance; an approach which has always been tremendously popular with power. Quiet reflection, meditation, godliness, good-hearted simplicity and the like have been praised by princes and kings — and, obviously, their professional, priestly, employees — since the dawn of history. Pacifism and ‘being nice’ are, in their place, terribly good for business, although nowadays mindfulness is the thing; using ancient (and potent) techniques of self-mastery and acceptance to suppress the conscience, rage, fear, despair — and, most horrifying of all, the urge to dispel them with action — which prostituting oneself to a dystopian cyborg evokes. Much better to do a bit of yoga than blow up a dam. Co-opting such techniques, and the perennial philosophy they are built upon, also persuades would-be dissidents of their ‘self-indulgent,’ ‘introspective’ uselessness, and deprives potential miracle workers of the incandescent essence of revolution; their own conscious — and utterly subversive — experience[14].

Such experience, despite being the well-spring of actually effective revolution, plays at best a secondary role in reform. For reformists it is, first of all, society which must change — through the actions and plans of states and professionals. Those with a yen to change society through law, policy and command, like to believe that society is relatively simple thing, that the effects of tinkering with it can be predicted, that there will be no unforeseen side-effects of their actions, that it is possible to gain actual, meaningful power over large numbers of people, and that entrenched self-interest and the power conferred by money, property and institutional status can be overcome while ego, money, property and professional institutions continue to exist.

Most absurdly they believe, or act as if they believe, that the dominance of the technocratic system is a secondary concern, and need not be considered when campaigning for political change. History, science, the wisdom of people who understand how the world works, all available evidence and common-sense say otherwise, but nevermind all that. Reformists aren’t interested in seriously considering reality, or the ultimate point of their activity, any more than doctors are, or teachers, or politicians, or academics, or journalists. The lovely sense of purpose they get from their work, the day to day hustle and bustle, the system-friendly ideology they base their articles and even their personalities on; all of this would crumble if they turned their minds to ‘paradigm disputes’. That it is the system which is in charge of society, that society can never be rationally controlled, shaped, planned or designed without unforeseen catastrophe, that the most powerful autocrats, the fastest computers and the most benevolent and moral crusaders are completely impotent before the forces of society, nature and the global system in which they are constrained [15], that it is rank futility to appeal to kings, governments, ceos, bureaucrats and other leaders to solve the problems of their system; all this is heresy of the first order for the reformist, and to even suggest such a thing in her presences makes her quake with anxiety.

Reformists and leftists have no interest whatsoever in discovering what the system really is or how to actually overcome it. They have no real awareness of their own conscious self, nor do they have any interest in allowing humanity to create, from the bottom up, a world formed by its own hands. The prospect of allowing the intelligence of nature to intelligently guide ordinary people terrifies them; and it will continue to terrify them until they are on the bottom, and forced to use their own conscious self to build something meaningful with their own hands.