The phone hacking
scandal has reached a new level of intensity. James and Rupert
Murdoch’s appearance before the Leveson inquiry, followed swiftly
by the publication of a report by the culture, media and sport select
committee, has renewed the crisis for News Corp and the government.
In the attempt to
apportion and avoid blame, there will be much argument over details.
It seems to me the essentials are:
- James and Rupert Murdoch are now branded guilty of, at best, “wilful blindness” towards hacking at News International.
- Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt seems unlikely to retain his job. By shielding him David Cameron risks appearing to condone his cosy relationship with News Corp; but if he dumps Hunt the waters will start lapping around Cameron’s heels.
- The key line in the culture, media and sport select committee report states that Rupert Murdoch is “not fit to lead major international company”. This puts pressure on Ofcom to consider revoking BSkyB’s broadcasting license, which requires them to be a “fit and proper” company. The fact that all the Tory MPs on the committee objected to this wording looks set to compound the government’s woes.
- The police investigation is still ongoing. There may be more revelations of police corruption to come.
The twin crises
This crisis has proven to be dangerously contagious. At every turn
politicians, the police and News Corp have attempted to limit
the damage. But each time they do, more of the web of corruption has
been revealed. Each piling up of fresh allegations has led to a
qualitative worsening of the scandal’s implications for the
establishment.
Phone hacking has
obliquely mirrored the economic crisis: like the trails of toxic
debt spreading from insolvent banks, the creeping revelations about
phone hacking have dragged all sorts of ruling class figures
into the scandal. Indeed these twin crises, though they seem quite
removed from one another, are infact subtly connected.
Rupert Murdoch has
clearly relished his position exercising his power behind the scenes. Listening to
his evasive, casuistic testimony to Leveson and parliament has given
millions an insight into the machinery of power that is normally well
hidden.
Writing in an abstract
register, Marx described a capitalist as “capital personified”.
Watching Rupert Murdoch at the Leveson enquiry I could not think of
any other individual who more precisely embodies the impulses of
capital than he.
Murdoch’s story is
the story of contemporary capitalism. Though palpably corrupt, he has
been successful because he has perfectly embodied the traits that
drive capital forward. His success has been the success of
neoliberalism; his demise is contingent upon its failure. Having been
finally repulsed by much of the political establishment, Murdoch is
out to bring his former allies down with him. He wants to hurt
Cameron’s government. But it’s more serious even than that.
The crumbling
establishment
The phone hacking
scandal has become the fulcrum for a broader crisis of legitimacy for
key institutions of the state. [1] It has concentrated the anger that
erupted over the MPs expenses scandal, the corruption and
institutional racism of the police and the brazen arrogance of
Murdoch’s media empire. In a rare moment of insight, Nick Clegg
told the Independent last year that “the pillars of the British
establishment are tumbling one after the other”. [2]
The Italian Marxist
Antonio Gramsci explored the idea that the capitalist class rules
through a combination of coercion and consent. Each particular
country may have a different balance between the two, but both will
apply to some degree.
The British police
claim to operate “policing by consent”. This is true to an
extent, although it probably doesn’t feel like it for Alfie
Meadows, the student who had to have emergency brain surgery after an
encounter with the police on a student demonstration in 2010. [3]
Nonetheless, tactics like “kettling” (mass imprisonment of
protesters without arrest) are indicative of the British police’s
focus on containing, rather than immediately smashing, dissent. They
are able and willing to behave violently, but the balance is tipped a
little less in favour of outright coercion than in some other Western
countries like France or the US.
Producing consent
Clearly the media plays a key role in the production of consent.
The media does not
drip-feed us ideas - although they often think they do. The Sun’s
headline after Neil Kinnock’s unexpected election loss in 1992, “It
woz the Sun wot won it!”, was fallacious. I don’t mean the
headline had no effect, or that newspapers can’t shape people’s
opinions. They do. But people are capable of thinking critically,
even if they don’t do so all the time. Moreover, people are prompted to think
critically by the divisions manifest within ruling class opinion -
think of the vile Tory MP Nadine Dorries’ castigation of Cameron
and co as "arrogant rich boys", for example.
The media reflects,
shapes and polices the boundaries of “public opinion”. It is the
echo rather than the voice. We do not live in a neutral society into which
nefarious media moguls enter with their corrupting influence. The
class divisions in capitalist society generate real conflicts which
find expression in specific arguments, ideas and structures of
feeling. These ideas do not always cleave into straightforward
divisions of progressive/reactionary etc. It is at this level that
the power of the media asserts itself. The media helps shape the
ideas produced by material schisms. This is often as much about what
is not said, than what is.
But if we accept Marx’s
proposition that the ruling ideas in society are the ideas of the ruling class [4], we must add: but they often can’t make up
their minds. The ruling class is, by its nature, fractured. There is
no monolithic “capital” - there are instead “many capitals”.
If anything, the growth of huge multinationals like News Corp has
intensified, rather than weakened, the competition between them.
Here we can return to
Murdoch’s difficulties.
The problem is not just
that he has outraged the parents of murdered children, or provided an opportunity for his commercial rivals,
although he has done both. He has compromised the role of the state, especially the British state, in reproducing capitalism.
The state’s role, in
a nutshell, is to secure the long term exploitation of workers and thus
the production of profit. It must act to secure what it sees as the
priorities of its domestic capitals - which in practice means
occasionally treading on the toes of some businesses in favour of
others. Through this process, the state develops myriad link with the
owners and controllers of big business, who have an interest in
influencing state policy. In this way, what we call “corruption” is
in reality part and parcel of the normal functioning of the system.
But there are limits to
this. For one single company, largely controlled by one man and his
immediate family, to have what virtually amounts to a “state within
a state” sustained by illegal payments to police, officials and
politicians undermines the state’s broader role. It creates
resentment among Murdoch’s rivals and, crucially, it damages
the legitimacy of the state in the eyes of working class people, who
often think the state is basically neutral.
Crisis in the
shadows
Corruption,
institutional racism, media bias and so on, exist under normal
circumstances. Phone hacking was evidently rife for years. The MPs
expenses set-up dates back to Thatcher. The flurry of accusations of
police racism, typified by the recording of an officer racially
abusing a handcuffed black man [5], are aberrant only in the sense that
they are not usually widely reported.
A deep economic crisis
reveals these goings-on to a wide audience, in the same way that a
torch shone into a darkened room reveals the filth that has festered
for ages in its shadowy corners.
This is why Murdoch’s
difficulties matter. Certainly, as an individual he had, and
continues to have, a corrosive effect on journalism and politics. But
his real significance is as the sublime embodiment of neoliberalism,
the king of “crony capitalism”. [6] As such, his fall is punching
holes in the legitimacy of capitalism itself. This creates an
important opportunity for the left to articulate alternatives to the
whole system.
[1] See Estelle Cooch,
The Crumbling Pillars of the British Establishment in
Socialist Review
http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=11748
[3] Astonishingly, it
is Meadows who was eventually prosecuted despite nearly dying. For
details see http://www.defendtherighttoprotest.org/
[4] Karl Marx, The
German Ideology
[6] “Crony
capitalism” is a term to be used with caution however. See my
article in Socialist Review, The Myth of Crony Capitalism, http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=11906
