Books 2014: Just because you love your work...

...doesn't mean it isn't work. And consequently wearying.

I'm not going to count half-books read for research. But they'd bring the total up.

Books 2014: 7-9


7. Patricia Briggs, Night Broken. Ace, 2014.

Review forthcoming at Tor.com. Another installment in the Mercy Thompson series, continuing the pattern established in previous installments.


nonfiction

8. Carl von Clauswitz, On War. Everyman's Library. New York/London/Toronto, 1993. Translated from the German.

Why, you might ask, did I read On War? It is seven hundred and seventy-one pages (excluding the modern commentary) in this edition, and the print is not noticeably large.

Well, why not?

Clauswitz is one of those intellectual figures who's frequently quoted - "War is simply a continuation of political intercourse, with the addition of other means," and, "War is an instrument of policy," among the most famous quotes - but seldom read, and that's a shame. Because Clauswitz is surprisingly readable for a theorist of 19th-century warfare, and many of his points remain valid for today. Especially the first chapter of the first book of On War, entitled "What Is War?" - it should be required reading for everyone with a passing interest in politics and international diplomacy. (The second chapter, "Purpose and Means in War," and the seventh, "Friction in War," are likewise particularly illuminating reading.)

On War was unfinished at the time of Clauzwitz's death, and the complete rewrite that he indicates he intended was never completed. But it's still an immensely interesting look at war as phenomenon, in its context.


9. David Cressy, Dangerous Talk: Scandalous, Seditious, and Treasonable Speech in Pre-Modern England. Oxford University Press. Oxford, 2012. First published 2010.

I read unrelated-to-my-research history books for ongoing relaxation. Often it takes me some weeks, even months, to finish one. Cressy's, though, I finished inside a week: it is an interesting, engaging look at speech crime in England from the late medieval period to the 19th century.

Not at all crimes of speech, mind you. Just speech which went contrary to the established order. Scandalous speech, which affected the reputation of notables and nobles; seditious speech, an amorphous category, which touched slightingly upon matters of state and the royal person; and treasonable speech, which "compassed or imagined the death of the king," and for which people could at various times be executed - rather than the more usual mutilation, branding, fines, whipping, and imprisonment that applied to lesser speech crimes. (Depending on the type of speech, and the contemporary zeitgeist, of course.) The reigns of Henry VIII, Mary, and Elizabeth I were especially perilous times in which to grumble about the status quo.

Cressy reconstructs the speech crimes mostly from magistrates' records, records of judicial proceedings, and Star Chamber records. The spoken word is ephemeral, but when reported as a crime it could enter the record, bringing with it some fragment of how lower class people, whose words are not generally preserved, viewed the political issues of their day - and what kind of talk went on in alehouses, taverns, and the occasional gentry dinner gathering. (A common excuse for seditious speech was, it seems, to plead I was so drunk I didn't know what I was saying! I didn't mean it!)

All told, a really interesting book.

Disillusionment and Anger

I used to think it was possible to have ambitions. I used to think the ambition of having a steady job - permanent and pensionable - that paid a living wage and left time over for enjoying life was a modest ambition. Maybe not achievable by everyone,* but for someone with my advantages, my - not to be falsely modest - intelligence, and ability to fake middle-class socialisation, something I shouldn't worry too much about not achieving.

Today I saw this item in the paper. "Wanted: PhD grad to work for jobseekers' benefit + E50."

Two different companies have advertised internships as part of the Government's JobBridge initiative -- but want only highly qualified staff.

A pharmaceutical plant in Cork is seeking applications under the back-to-work scheme and a PhD in synthetic organic chemistry is considered to be a "base requirement".

A spokesman from Hovione said there "hasn't been that much interest" in the role.

However, another pharmaceutical plant in west Dublin, Clarochem, had a similar requirement for a PhD intern and has just filled the role for a full 39-hour-week programme for six months.

Clarochem Ireland, a custom manufacturing plant in Mulhuddart, asked that applicants held a minimum of a PhD in synthetic chemistry, and were capable of working on solo projects in a dynamic environment.

The oligarchy has won. There is no future for any of us not born to unmortgaged assets in this country - and maybe not in any other, either. Finance Minister Michael Noonan goes to Brussels to get his plaque with "Best European Finance Minister" engraved on it for licking the boots of unelected European eminences, for selling the poor of the Republic down the river and the middle-class after them, in service to the interests of global capital.

The European project is a humanitarian and democratic - and on any measure other than that of global capital's, an economic - failure, but we're still shackled to the corpse of all its fine promises. Our budgets will go to Brussels to be amended and approved by unelected, unaccountable men and women - carrion-feeders who will continue to demand the privatisation of state assets and state bodies (assets and bodies that by right and justice belong to the people of Ireland!) and to whose dictates our spineless, treacherous, two-faced "leaders" will cravenly bow.

The Irish government will not be able to reclaim the assets it has sold at a loss to corporate interests - corporate interests that will use them to make a profit at the expense of Irish residents. Nor will our government easily recover the powers it has so cravenly surrendered.

They call this a recovery. Who has recovered?

Who was responsible for this catastrophe in the first place? Who has benefited from it?

Not the people struggling to keep a roof over their heads. Not the people seeing their real wages - if they're employed at all - go down, and the cost of food and accommodation go up. Unemployment remains above 13%. Three hundred and thirty thousand people are out of work. (That is at least 7% of our total population, for comparison purposes: 13% of people between age 18 and 65 are signed on for benefits, which approximates to 7% of all the people of any age normally resident in this country.)

And, let's reiterate: the people who are in work have seen their take-home pay decrease under the burden of wage-cuts and changes in their tax and PRSI assessment. That particular trend isn't about to reverse itself.

Conclusion? The average person at work, or looking for work, in the country is comprehensively screwed.

Barring a sustained revolutionary change in the relationship between the citizenry and our government, between the nation and the European Union and the IMF - and going forward in an age of ever-increasing automation, in how we conceive of the relationship between people, labour, and capital - we're permanently screwed.

Because under the conditions presently obtaining and likely to remain in place, there will never be enough actual work to provide full employment at non-poverty-level standards of living. So we need to change how we think about the relationship between labour and money, between people and capital - and that is a change far more revolutionary than demanding democratic accountability from the Oireachtas and the EU.

*Which is another story, and a shame and a half.