Dan Hind Profile picture
29 Dec, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Philosophers hitherto have only pronounced 'rentier' in various ways. The point is to strip rent, interest and monopoly pricing out of the economy. This is why I warble on about media reform the whole time. Control of public speech is the cornerstone of rule ...
... Michael Gove and Boris Johnson both rose to their current eminence in the state via service to billionaires. The situation in the UK isn't hard to understand, once this is said out loud. And that's why a vast industry is dedicated to saying something, anything, else ...
Our liberation can only happen through a thorough-going reorganisation of the state, in the face of media that will insist that such a project is a distraction from the real concerns. I write up some of what that re-organisation looks like here - thenextsystem.org/learn/stories/…
I mean, they aren't wrong, are they? We really do have to grasp that our opponents have nothing to offer, nothing to say. It really is up to us, all of us. There's no one else, there never was.

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More from @danhind

28 Dec
In 2021 do we really want normal service to be resumed in the UK media? Normal service is going to divide us and rule us, centralise authority, and marginalise anyone who doesn't glorify the status quo. That's what normal service means.
wordpress.com/stats/day/ther…
We'll go in to the new year with thousands of underemployed journalists and researchers, pools of unspent income, and an existing media regime that is very clearly not up to the job. No one is going to put these pieces together for us; no billionaires, no foundations.
Either we build a cooperative media regime, or we resign ourselves to permanent defeat. The first step to that is realising that no charismatic political leader or media celebrity will do this for us. It only going to be us. It's always only us.
Read 4 tweets
6 Dec
Here's the former editor of the Sun asking on Saturday why so much of the British press supported Brexit: "serious questions have to be asked."
Is it such a mystery? On Thursday the same former editor of the Sun had already cracked the case.
It's been 10 years now since I took time out of my busy schedule to explain why media system based on public service values or market forces are bound to mislead the populations they pretend to serve. As a treat I set out the principles that would underpin an alternative.
Read 8 tweets
1 Dec
This week @CarysJHughes @samcoatescymru and I are setting up Citizens for a Democratic Society @C4DSoc - an attempt to help democratisation efforts throughout the UK, across local government and in the institutions of civil society. opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocra…
It's in part a response to the challenge this by @jemgilbert in September. If we weren't big enough to win last year, how do we grow to become big enough? We think we need to create collective bodies that are committed to radical equality. opendemocracy.net/en/we-lost-bec…
It's based on the premise that civil society and the state in much of the UK operates as a collection of rackets. Even when there is voting, the many are starved of information and opportunities to discover themselves as collective agents. The few prosper.
Read 5 tweets
28 Nov
If CLPs had passed motions of no confidence in a Corbyn-appointed General Secretary in 2019 I imagine that the BBC might have found time to mention in its broadcast news. Has anyone heard anything about what's happening in Labour on BBC TV or radio?
I listened to @BBCr4today this morning and while I heard about the welcome return of a Norfolk pond flower, long thought extinct, recent developments in the Labour Party didn't make it on the agenda.
Politics is what happens in Westminster, and economics is what politicians in Westminster say it is. If you can get these ideas into your head, and ignore all evidence to the contrary, a golden future awaits you as a political correspondent for the BBC.
Read 5 tweets
17 Oct
There's lots of "should I stay or should I go?" on my timeline at the moment re. Labour. It's important to bear in mind that the new arrivals in 2015 form part of a large, floating constituency of people who grasp the implications of the 2008 crisis, the climate crisis and ...
... were drawn to direct action (UK Uncut, Occupy) and electoralism (remember the Green surge?) at various times. Labour's establishment left the door open to these people and they rushed in to support Corbyn, along with existing left members, and re-joiners.
This floating constituency includes a number of different traditions - red, black and green. But if it has a core commitment it is to democracy, however that's glossed. It doesn't identify with Labour necessarily and seemed to treat Corbynism as something else to try.
Read 7 tweets
23 Sep
Just caught up with this excellent interview on everyone's favourite tech podcast. The point @doctorow makes in it about the urgent need to stop using private sector operators to deliver public goods is absolutely spot on.
This applies very obviously in the tech sector, where we are leaving key elements in the systems of political communication and material distribution in private hands, instead of acknowledging their constitutional significance and creating public institutions.
(Much the same can be said of the traditional media, where the state has given private sector institutions a privileged position to describe the political and they have exacted a horrendous piece for the service they provide.)
Read 5 tweets

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