Marxist Moments

FEAR AND TREMBLING…

          When I was a child there was a widespread moral campaign against comic books, prominent in the United States and vigorously endorsed by various child psychologists especially by Dr Frederick Werth (satirised as ‘Werthless’ by Mad Magazine). Comics were said to undermine the mental and moral health of America’s children, though of course children (and many adults) continued to read them. Perhaps we would have turned out better if we hadn’t, but there’s no way of proving that now. Comics were especially feared because – unlike the movies with their elaborate codes of viewing-age – comics consumption was impossible to control. Though my wife remembers that as a small girl she and others of her age stood outside any cinema showing what we now call a PG, approaching adults about to go in and asking if they could go in with them. My wife recalls that adults so approached were always obliging, if one had one’s own ticket money. Goodness knows what today’s moral guardians would imagine if it was still common practice for children to ‘solicit’ outside cinemas! Obviously something that didn’t cross the minds of those on the British Board of Film Censors.  In any event, comic books are now collected with something like reverence having also become transmogrified first by Roy Lichtenstein’s massively telling panel blow-ups for the art gallery, and latterly into the art-form of the graphic novel.

          With television in the ascendant we had more moral campaigners fearful of its dire effects on ‘young minds’: one recalls (in the UK) Mrs Mary Whitehouse’s National Viewers and Listeners Association whom TV executives and the BBC ignored at their peril. And so we had the ‘nine o’clock watershed’ which is still more or less intact though I doubt if it had much effect after many children acquired their own bedroom TVs. But it was useful for parents to be able to take a stand when wanting their offspring out of their hair by nine o’clock. The TV moral panic came and went, with the world and its children much the same as before, except for a steep decline in the viewing by older children at least of TV-as-such what with so many alternatives becoming abundantly available.

          It’s easy to poke fun at these moral crusaders of yesteryear: the ‘threat’ they were attacking just came and went. Perhaps children’s problems had less to do with the media they were imbibing and more with matters closer to home. But with these moral crusades there may have been other things going on.

          Just as English revolutionaries of the 1640s wrapped biblical expressions around their social and political dissent because the Bible was the common currency of 17^th-century Protestants, so moral campaigners of our time may have used the language of child psychologists to vent a more profound social unease by focussing rhetorically upon the ‘corruption’ of children. For where did this putative ‘corruption’ come from? The children didn’t make it up themselves; it issued from forces out of the reach of popular control, as represented by the comic-book publishers and distributors, and the film and (later) television corporations, public and privately-owned. Did this indicate something much more mysterious and sinister?

          Socialists would call these manifestations of capitalism, the all-controlling and out-of-reach control ‘system’ not effectively beholden to democratic governance. And so to the simple equation: capitalism + children = manipulation, through tempting and addictive fads and crazes. And beyond the control of parents, educators and youth workers.

          The use in moral panics of the emotive and sensitive phenomena ‘children’ was also the most provocative and fear-making: ‘children’ here would seem to be the surrogates for the helplessness of us all in the face of menacingly anonymous and powerful forces of control and manipulation, and a word with an immediate populist appeal. The only problem in this case is and was that ‘children’ have never by themselves been an easily-identifiable socio-economic category. There are all kinds and ages of children, children from differing backgrounds, educations and social classes, children – in addition – as comprising humans in various phases of transition, physically and mentally, emotionally and sexually.  ‘Human nature’ is another such non- category: what, exactly, is ‘human nature’, and how can such a vague expression be in any way useful when theorising on society and trying to put theories into practice?

          And ‘women’ in all their many manifestations are a problematic for identity politics, though advances in consciousness and belatedly in practice have been made through a sharper focus on sexual and economic exploitation of women in general.

          Meanwhile, children may be diverse but they all have to breathe. Surely we should making it a priority to get the air cleaned up and at least lessening pollution to the extent that we can actually deal with presently rising levels of childhood asthma? Why are people seemingly more concerned with children’s morals than over whether their breathing is a danger to them or not?

          A newer moral panic has arisen over the exploitation of children on the internet. There are differences of concern between the current panic and previous ones, though the moral tone is much the same. The reason is that the newer media have something that comic books, films and TV (not to speak of radio) never had: they are interactive. If one chooses to, one may interact with TV and radio personalities in shows emphasising audience participation. But social media are interaction, and once children enter into it they are open to what can be, for them, distressing exposure. Like the rest of us children’s natural social range is limited to those they integrate with personally in the same space; when they find themselves potentially interacting with the entire world this is something many will find bewildering and frightening as these ‘relationships’ progress. It is the interactivity that allows for the toxicity of social media, but basically they are still uncontrollable.

          For another feature of the newer media is that whatever controls are eventually introduced they will only be effective for a time before other controls have to be brought in, and then others still. The war between those who create systems and those who subvert them is forever escalating. There is no end to it. Important crime is cyber crime, as with industrial espionage and war. Everything is potentially hackable, or soon will be. It is the whole principle of the medium that this be possible. Children appear to learn how to evade blocking, but blocking as such may turn out to be impossible, and for a plausible reason:

          Potential mega-rich investors might rub their hands, but I find the following truly frightening:

“Whoever gets the quantum computer first will have access to that unlimited power that will nullify classic cryptography,” says Colin Wilmott, a quantum computing expert at Nottingham Trent University. “Classic computers would be under extreme strain with quantum computing. Whether it is secure web browsing or digital signatures, they need to be aware that there is a tech out there that could put all this at risk.” In short, the online world as we know it would be transformed. (‘Tech giants battling to make the quantum leap’, by Natasha Bernal, Daily Telegraph Business 8 October 2018.)

The ‘giants’ referred to here include Google, Microsoft, Alibaba and IBM. I would hesitate before calling all this wishful thinking: it is already in hand as a real project backed up by vast resources in turn backed up by the limitless craving for lots more profit. Something that, as the article concludes, could ‘possibly put supercomputers out of business’.

          Of course such tech would not become immediately affordable – down to the likes of children. But give it time.

          And what is rarely mentioned if we return to the environment we are in along with our children, is that the more sophisticated and complex systems become, the more energy-hungry. Our smartphones of today use up huge amounts of energy, far more than the old mobiles; miniaturisation only increases the rate of their consumption. Where is all the energy for all the hoped-for endless and global ‘quantum’ expansion, on top of the energy we are already using (and wastefully) supposed to come from?  There may come a time when we will have more to preoccupy us than the moral security of children. But I believe that the moral concern shown so far is – as in earlier times – a means of unconsciously obscuring very much bigger anxieties, anxieties which are all too plausible.

          My hope is that a democratic, global socialism will have us harnessing the new powers in the interests of the planet, not in the interests of profit, and this – though people are strangely slow to realise it – is in the interest of us all.

          Meanwhile, if you worry about children on the games front, I would indulge in the one generalisation that children of all ages usually get bored in time with any current novelty and move on, for better or for worse! And if children find themselves in thrall to strangers on the Web, I suggest (1) that we stop being their adult role-models in this respect, and (2) coach children towards a fuller life away from screens altogether. One step (utopian?) would be clearing neighbourhood streets of cars. I did most of my playing and mooching with the gang in the street, as had countless generations before me.  All this tempered with discipline: as Silicon Valley executives deny their children easy and constant access, we have been warned!