In the second of this blog series on ‘Britology’ (the cultural project to define and unite around ‘British values’), on 3 December, I listed one of the most important contemporary British values as ‘free competition (of ideas, individuals, businesses, economies)’. This is the form that freedom takes in modern
This is not to say that freedom in the pure meanings defined above is not also thought to be an essential British value. But, strictly speaking, freedom is not a value in itself: it is the very condition for objects, desires and actions to be of value to us, and to be perceived as good or bad, because then they are things that we have chosen. Cultures endow freedom with their own meanings and ‘purpose’: freedom is the possibility of choosing and embracing something that a given culture or society holds dear. In modern Britain, the exercise of ‘choice’ has become associated more with consumer choices (choice as a fundamental condition and characteristic of the market-society), rather than with informed moral choice, or even with choosing a form of society on the basis of some notion of the collective good or other ideological belief.
In this context, in contemporary British culture, the value or merit of ideas, individuals or physical objects is increasingly not perceived to be intrinsic (related to their moral status, beauty or ability to serve real human needs, for instance) but depends on their desirability and marketability: their ability to appeal to our free choices, to compete successfully in the market (to ‘participate fully in society’), thereby vindicating the efficacy of the free market itself to deliver what we want (to ‘realise our aspirations’). This model for society admits of an egalitarian dimension when it is allied to the goal of bringing about the inclusion of previously marginalised and disadvantaged groups, such as gays and lesbians, ethnic minorities and disabled persons. In the society-as-market paradigm, the condition of these groups is transformed when they are ‘freed’ – enabled – to participate in the market as fully as any other groups or individuals: trading themselves and ‘what they have to offer’ in exchange for society’s recognition that this has a value.
But there is an amorality and randomness about all this: the value of something becomes equated with the extent to which we want to have, do or be it; and the principal criterion by which we judge the merits of a person or action is by how they are rewarded, or not, with market / social acceptance = economic success. The reason why ‘celebrity culture’ has taken off in the way it has is because celebrity (popularity and commercial success, fame and fortune) has acquired pseudo-intrinsic value as a symbol of the power of the market to realise the dreams of nobodies (people of no value) and turn them into somebodies (valuable commodities).
Big Brother is in this sense a microcosm of modern
If the value of individuals, lifestyles and social groups is measured in terms of their right and ability to participate on level terms in the social market, what this means is that the morality of those individuals and lifestyles becomes secondary to their socio-economic value (their ‘contribution to society’). Moral choices become a series of ‘lifestyle options’, and the moral good is equated with what is ‘good for society’: with whatever contributes to greater social inclusion; greater participation in the free (and liberating) market; and the encompassing of ever more aspects of life within the market, resulting in their legitimisation. Ultimately, this leads to a sort of moral neutrality or equivalence: the moral good converges with the concept of equality, such that the good is no longer a factor of differentiation (setting apart right from wrong), but, on the contrary, the good is whatever contributes to the greatest lack of ethical discrimination between ‘competing’ choices and lifestyles. In this context, the ‘common good’ (associated with the idea that that there are certain actions and choices that can be of benefit to the whole or greater part of the community and of society) is replaced by a belief that all individuals and choices are of equal value (equivalent, ‘equally valid’, as good as one another). Instead of the qualitative idea of the common good, we have a quantitative notion of the ‘best’, which is whichever lifestyle, product or individual is most successful in the social market – whichever becomes the most widely adopted and most commonly accepted (common goods, indeed). The reversal of traditional morality is completed when it is the centres of resistance to this commercialisation and equalisation of values – such as the Catholic Church, nationalism and Islam – that are vilified and morally condemned.
The recent row over gay adoption was a case in point. One of the most interesting – and least commented – aspects of the controversy was the way adoption was framed as a sort of commercial service offered by adoption agencies to would-be parents. The whole context of the discussion was the sexual orientation regulations in the forthcoming Equality Bill, which set out the bases for ensuring equal access to goods and services irrespective of sexual orientation. But is adoption a commercial service in this way? If that is the case, then adopted children become a sort of product that gay couples are allowed to purchase on the free market on equal terms with straight couples, married or not; and adoption agencies’ ‘services’ are offered to the parents, not the children, and consist essentially of matching children with suitable parents in rather a similar way to the pairing of individuals carried out by dating agencies or the matching of potential employees to vacant positions provided by recruitment agencies.
But this is not really what adoption is all about: it should be a service of love towards the children, whereby the agencies are dedicated to finding parents who in turn will serve the children with their life-long love and support. Beneath all the rhetoric and position taking on both sides of the debate, the issue was very much one of a conflict between a traditional Christian ethic focused on the needs of the children and the demand of the market society for an equal supply of children to fulfil the desires of all would-be parents, irrespective of their lifestyle choices. This in part accounts for the fact that the perspective of the needs of the children was relatively absent from the arguments of the pro-gay adoption side: these needs were secondary to the demand for equal ‘rights’ to access adoption services – the rights of adopters being implicitly prioritised over what is right for the children. Maybe also, as most of the people defending the cause of equality for gay people in this area were straight, there was an element of not wanting to delve too deeply into the question of the needs of the children; as the majority of straight people perhaps secretly feel that adoption by a stable heterosexual couple is in fact the best option for children, despite the social market-equality agenda.
The row over the supposed racist bullying of Celebrity Big Brother (CBB) participant Shilpa Shetty by Jade Goody and other contestants was another example of a clash between the Big Brother model of social-market equality and more traditional ideas of cultural separation. I’ve written about the CBB controversy in previous blog entries. In brief, Shilpa was not a victim of racism but of a sort of jealousy and bitchiness that is capable of being read, to some extent, as representative of a not uncommon English-nationalist resentment and resistance towards people of other nationalities and races taking advantage of the British free market-society and competing successfully within it, to the apparent detriment of those who were born here. In the discussions on the show, Shilpa was clearly seen as a representative of the ideals of social-market integration: that people of all nations and races should be allowed to compete freely, equally and fairly in British society and its cultural-economic extension – the global market. But Jade Goody’s behaviour – for all its aggression and crudeness – could be seen as the expression of a wish for
Similarly, Shilpa Shetty’s own aspiration to compete and achieve success in a Western market (symbolised and actualised by her participation in CBB) could be seen as symptomatic of how the success of ethnic Indians and of the nation of India in the global economy is actually contributing to a loss of distinctive aspects of Indian culture, rather than being an affirmation of them. Shilpa Shetty – the Bollywood star – was not setting out to bring Bollywood to a mass market in the West, but rather to leave behind her Indian background and to forge a career in Western films and TV: on Western terms. This is perhaps one of the meanings of Jade’s suggestion to Shilpa that she should go and visit some of the slums in her country: not so much an insult to India as a poor and backward country, but an implication that Shilpa was so concerned to make a career for herself on the global market that she was indifferent to the continuing hardships faced by the people – Indian filmgoers – who’d given her the opportunity in the first place. In this context, Shilpa could be seen as representative of an individualistic, free-market-competitive notion of equality superseding a true concern for social equality, opportunity and solidarity on a more collective level.
Shilpa Shetty was a convenient symbol of ‘pure’ racism, uncomplicated by other factors that might have made the unpleasant language directed towards her more recognisable: appearing to have more in common with generally held opinions and ordinary behaviour. Ethnic Indians constitute one of the most successfully integrated racial minorities in British society, and this is what made it easy to view Shilpa’s treatment as simply racist: motivated by prejudice, ignorance and race hate rather than by broader socio-economic and cultural factors. But if a Polish or Lithuanian immigrant had taken Shilpa’s place and received the same treatment, would it have been possible to present it as racist? If so, then all the many people up and down the land who resent the way in which low-paid jobs have been given to Central and Eastern European immigrants – pushing down wages and, so the argument goes, reducing opportunities for British people – are also merely racist and bigoted. And how different the arguments would have been if Shilpa were a burka- and niqab-wearing Asian Muslim! Then her victimisation could not have been described as racist, not only because it would have been more obvious that it was more accurately viewed as the expression of socio-cultural insecurity and defensiveness; but also because many of those decrying the ‘bullying’ of Shilpa Shetty would actually agree with at least the ‘philosophical’ basis for strong suspicion of the Muslim veil, if not the overtly aggressive expression of that hostility that might have been provided by Jade Goody! After all, what does the veil symbolise? One of the things it symbolises – at least from the point of view of Western onlookers – is the resistance of orthodox Islam to the Western market-society in which all have a right – indeed, a natural inclination – to trade themselves, their goods and services freely, openly and equally: women as much as men. And this resistance of course has a spiritual and moral foundation: ethical differentiation between right and wrong lifestyles, and between the expected roles and behaviour of men and women, versus the social-market-egalitarian view that all have a right – and therefore, it is right – to lead a full, independent and active socio-economic existence.
In this context, it was highly invidious when – in a speech on multiculturalism at the end of January 2007 – the UK Conservative Party leader David Cameron compared Muslim ‘extremists’ with members of the hard-right British National Party (BNP). Not many commentators seem to have pointed out how conceptually screwball and insulting towards Muslims this comparison is. Islam is one of the bugbears of the BNP, and the party’s supporters in its strongholds have been linked with campaigns designed to fuel prejudice and even violence against Muslim communities. It’s about as accurate as equating Nazis with Communists: OK, their actions might have been similar but not their philosophical justification. This is no better than when President Bush condemned ‘Islamists’ as ‘Islamic fascists’. It’s an example of just how prejudiced and extreme in its turn is the tendency for moral equalisation inherent within the social-market-egalitarian point of view. Just as any lifestyle and form of economic activity that promotes a dynamic free market is capable of being seen as ‘good’, anything that opposes the amoral, global market is seen as ‘evil’; and therefore, fascists and ‘Islamists’ are somehow equivalent.
The problem is the definition of what is an ‘extremist’, and Mr Cameron’s view appears to be that anyone who is in favour of the introduction of Shariah law is an extremist. Promoting such a thing through violence and insurrection could certainly qualify for the epithet of ‘extremist’; but holding Shariah law as an ideal for the whole of society is probably something that the majority of Muslims around the world regard as integral to their faith. So is it a form of extremism merely to be a devout, committed Muslim who attempts to structure his or her daily life around the dictates of Shariah; and who regards the commitment to Islam as fundamentally more important, morally and ontologically, than any commitment to a secular state and to the material benefits of economic life? The ‘racist’ (BNP) and the ‘Islamist extremist’ are facile categories with which anyone who resists the desired unification of
There is perhaps no more compelling symbol of the way the British political establishment is wedded to the idea that market forces are inherently good, and can always be channelled to serve the cause of economic regeneration and social inclusion, than the government’s enthusiasm to allow the development of so-called ‘super-casinos’: Las Vegas-style ‘gaming’ (=gambling) complexes. On announcing recently that the first of these casinos was to be built in a deprived area of the city of Manchester, the government attempted to justify this choice on the basis that the new gambling venue would bring employment and regeneration to a place where it was desperately needed. But no consideration was given to the broader harm to individuals and society as a whole that will inevitably come from more people being drawn into gambling addiction by the lure of such places. Instead, the emphasis was placed on gambling being just another form of entertainment choice, which consumers (gamblers) were entitled to have the opportunity to make or not to make.
In this way, gambling stands as another metaphor for the way in which the amoral market, and the random nature of success or failure in it, has come to replace traditional moral judgements of right and wrong, and of reward being linked to true merit (as opposed to success being viewed as meretricious in its own right). There are winners and losers in the lottery of the market society – but that’s just life, isn’t it? You pays your money and takes your choice. Just as gay couples, so the argument goes, have the right to choose – and it is right that they can choose – whether to spend their money on adopting children. Just as paying TV viewer / voters have the right to choose / it is right that they did choose to support an Indian Bollywood star who was trading on her sex appeal as the innocent victim of racism; rather than choosing a more random celebrity – Jade Goody – on whom those same viewers could vent their envy of the coveted fame and fortune they’d not been able to achieve. Just as senior politicians have the right to – it is right that they should – brand Muslim traditionalists as extremists because they resist the encroachment of the market into every aspect of life; thereby adding fuel to the fire of British-nationalist Islamophobia, and then adding insult to injury by comparing Islamic supporters of Shariah to their very enemies in the BNP.
After all, we live in a free society in
