Thoughts on reading Chantal Mouffe

This seems to me to have real relevance to my recent diatribes on Dick Smith and other big 'philanthropists' making symbolic gestures of benevolence while having accumulated wealth on the backs of working poor. Dick Smith is a particularly good example because he appears so benevolent through so many aspects of his life – his political participation and his charity.

First, I'd like to think through what is happening with this 'charitable' gesture. Dick Smith and his wife see, from their train window, a young girl apparently so poor she can't afford clothes. They determine to offer her a better future. Rather than postpone a trip home, work through local organisations or attempt to use local experts (or even film-makers) to assist them, they employ an Australian film-maker to track down the girl and present her with their life-changing offer. They are bemused at the reluctance of local people to engage with the Western film-maker, but eventually track down the girl and begin changing the life of her and her family.

This does not strike me as a charity, it strikes me as publicity. Why engage a film-maker? Who has no experience of the country or the language? Even in the unlikely event that the film-maker, and assistant, were not being paid, how much were the expenses incurred in sending them over to India to undertake this excursion? There are a host of better candidates, including some who may have been able to point out that there could have been unintended social and psychological ramifications from this act of charity.

(I also have very little patience with the bemused attitude displayed. If a stranger came up to my neighbours with a photo, naked or otherwise, of my daughter, I hope they would call the police, rather than point her out to them.)

Further, apart from stereotypes that this confirms of the poor brown girl dependent on white male wealth, I also think we need to interrogate how genuine the gesture is, by looking at the source of the wealth. A businessman, dealing with electronics doesn't seem particularly exploitative – in fact, it's not. It isn't in the more problematic fields of say mining or timber. Yet, by examining the chain of supply that ultimately ends up in his wealth, exploitation undoubtedly occurs – one that we as consumers almost intentionally refuse to see. Even if we assume he has a 'right' to a return to risk-taking behaviour, is this really more of a risk than that faced by the workers in electronics factories in China faced with a lottery of safety conditions? The risks of those who mine the minerals necessary to the working phones and computers we all rely on.

So how could he have done things differently? And still offered consumers the satisfaction they want?

Perhaps, rather than creaming off super-profits, that money could have been put into the factories where the goods being sold were made, to improve 'efficiency' while improving the living standards for the workers, making them model factories to work in.

What would the consequences of this been in terms of downstream effects? What would have been the effect on the children of the workers, on other workers and other factories? Surely all far better consequences than spending money to send a team of film-makers to India in order to provide for one girl for the rest of her childhood?

Further, the commitment to increased social justice would almost certainly have had paybacks in terms of consumer loyalty, at least among certain segments of society.

I think it's also important that we think hard about what we term 'ethical' behaviour. We live in a world where ethics seems to be strangely divorced from everyday life, particularly in as far as everyday life is determined by purchasing decisions. In the not-so-distant past, food was imbued with ethics. It was the sacred nature of food that was celebrated in near-global rituals of thanksgiving, at harvest, and at meals. Consumption as partaking of the divine, not the mundane. But today's consumer society cannot afford to think in those terms, of the origins of what is consumed, whether of food or other goods. Yet, the costs of this 'lack of affordability' are real, even if they are not directly borne by the consumers themselves. Is it really ethical to live a life where you are able to devote massive resources to improving the life of one family, while those who produce the goods that allow this largesse receive only marginal benefit?

Further thoughts, more related to the reading....

1. Laclau and Mouffe say that in order to deal with the antagonisms raised by the defining idea of democracy, that of equality (which I have no argument with), then we need to deepen democracy. This does not mean that we need to deepen democracy as it exists today. The assertion that democracy as it exists today (which isn't made here) can help to peacefully negotiate constitutive differences between individuals and groups seems to me to be blatantly absurd.

Rather, this deepening commitment to democracy must include discussion of forms of democracy that go beyond representative Parliamentary systems, but look at decentralisation, a decrease of bureaucracy (which is evident in the writings) and improved ways of negotiating difference – not overcoming, not eliding, but finding ways by which people with fundamentally incompatible modes of political imagination can live peacefully, and equitably, together.

2. Would it be possible to have a binding contract with politicians? There should be some things (primarily negative) that if they do them, they are automatically perceived to have resigned, that they are not permitted to stand for public office in future, and that they have to bear a proportion of the costs of the ensuing by-election. There should be further 'commitments', in writing, that they will aim to achieve. If they wish to stand for re-election, they must persuade an electoral committee of say 25 diverse people that they have made serious effort on these issues, or have been successful in pursuing. These contracts could be individual or party-based. Not a solution, if such is possible, but perhaps an interim measure...