Talking about sex obviously.
There is something very technologically modern and something very ancient about the form this political struggle takes. When the contradictions are too severe to be contained within the established social order, the personal space is invaded, and especially in the area of intimate sexual relations where part or all of the body is exposed to someone else, in private. To hold that up in public, or even to watch it, or talk about it, calls into question the social standing of the individual.
The previous British Conservative govenment was undone as much by sexual scandals as financial. The shine has been taken of New Labour similarly. Charles Parnell was broken as a parliamentary champion of Irish independence in the 19th century for doing what most British prime ministers did in secret.
Currently the battle between national capital and neo-liberalism in Malaysia has been fought out not just on the stock exchanges, but symbolically over the sexual life of Anwar, or, as with Clinton when the struggle moves on a bit, his right not to be interrogated too closely about it, whether the accusations are slanderous or true.
So the Republicans need some further sexual degradation of Clinton in the form of videotape as part of a deal if they cannot win impeachment. And while this videotape will never show the act of sacrilege and irreverance he committed with one of the quality products of the tobacco industry, in our imagination, which is sometimes more vivid, we will be entitled to see it all at its most intimate detail.
Sex and videotape. So long as lies fit in somewhere, their exact scope is not the point.
Clinton will survive this ritual psycho-social degradation in a way the moral majority Republicans cannot understand: because he is more in touch with the needs of capitalism as a whole to manage a modern imperialist consumer economy. He knows that, and they are merely frustrated by it.
Chris Burford
London