Hope and Fear.

Despite the significance of the UK May 7 General Election, which points up the dangers of the political crisis for the country's establishment (see blog 22 April), it is still a moot point whether the majority of the people of Britain have the means to exploit their foes' weaknesses.

A genuine, democratic and socialist model of society is, of course, not an option for the mainstream  majority in this election. Among other things, the conditions for such a choice include a developed political understanding among the majority. Positive political understanding in the working class of Britain has, as a product of major defeats, including in and by the Labour Party, been rolled back since the 1980s. Yet in the modern age all great progressive change requires heightened political consciousness among the mass of the people. When South African apartheid fell, the black majority understood their oppressors better than they understood themselves. Even in the recent Scottish referendum vote, the result and then the continuing enthusiasm and mobilisation of a large, younger and poorer sector of Scots, mainly in and around the SNP, reflects a year long argument in that country and the experience of decades of a democratic deficit.

Socialism is a qualitatively higher ambition. Tremendous change has and does happen very rapidly. But achieving socialism can only result from the conscious act of the majority. It is not available through simply reading books or by luck or through the will of 'great men and women', much as all that might also be required. It comes through deep understanding of society's contradictory forces and its clashing events, and the organisation of the people embedded in that experience, who, through the collective energy released are therefore able to seize on the practise of their own and others' lives as the basis for revealing society's essence and its meaning and its potential alternatives.

Socialism may not be available but anti austerity politics are on offer in the coming UK election. And here lies the question of hope and fear. Because none of Britain's anti-austerity parties offer a coherent image of a world where austerity - and all of its associated conditions - of growing inequality, of the collapse in useful production, of the dominance of finance capital, of endless savage wars, of the fright and horror released by the collapse of underdeveloped counties, of the apparent fragility of the West, are addressed and a confident alternative offered, then voting 'anti austerity, can seem itself a fearful and short term, not to say utopian act. In this context, driven by fear, those who sound most relentlessly defensive will, in the end, and with their reluctance, attract the most support. While the fight for a separate, small, modern, social democratic nation seems, in the context of Scandinavia, a feasible, coherent and therefore hopeful possibility for a considerable proportion of the Scots, such an image is not projected by the Miliband Labour Party. The Labour leadership has no hopeful, new nation, new image, proposition to offer. You vote Labour because you are more frightened by the Tories, that's all. And that is a very weak vantage point. You wonder; if I vote this way will a weak Labour Government mean the big powers who run the world make things worse for me?

Obama called together a huge mass movement before his first election. How did that happen? Because, despite his empty phraseology and his bedrock commitment to the traditional Democratic Party machine and capitalist America, he seemed to represent the real end of slavery; he seemed to speak for the disenfranchised and for a welfare state and for the end of endless wars. People believed he was going to build a new America. And with that country's immense wealth it seemed feasible. In other words he seemed to offer a realistic alternative future. Anti-austerity alone is not a future.

What is available from this election is the platform of credibility and legitimacy that millions of votes for the SNP, for Plaid, for the Greens, for the handful of well known independent anti-austerity candidates, will create for the ongoing struggle against austerity. An outright defeat for the Tories would also help -  by forcing the issue right into the heart of the new Labour led government's day to day prospects of survival, which is by no mean a small matter! Nevertheless, unless the anti-austerity movement in Britain can bring together those voters who made the first step in the direction of hope and away from fear, and begin to enlarge, together with the parties and organisations who fight austerity, on a model of a country and society that looks credible and could be successful and worth a fight, then the gains possible from this election will dissolve.  

A Howl of Tory Terror

Cameron and his assorted hangers on are ramping up their rhetoric over the SNP. John Major, a Grammer School oik, previously assigned court jester status by the Bullendon boys, gave a speech in Birmingham (21 April) denouncing the SNP as
'A clear and present danger.'
He obviously thinks that he's being Churchillian. It sounds more 'Hollywood' to the rest of us. But it was  Cameron who fired the starting gun.

Most of the media and the Labour leadership, see all this as Tory tricks designed to sink Miliband's chances and increase the Tories' vote. In Scotland (a strange, uncomfortable territory for Tories) this will increase, goes the media analysis, the local Nationalist venom and help topple Labour seats. In England, it will warn doubters that they need the Tories to win to prevent being 'taken over' by the Scots - as any Labour government will depend on them!

The story of the mistakes made by the Tory strategists in this election campaign is deeply interesting. But in the case of their attack on the SNP, there is more to this than has so far met the media's eye.

This election has, for the first time since the 1970s, a deeply strategic significance for Britain's ruling class. Important figures in Britain's political and economic establishment are sorely concerned by the turning point that the British political crisis has produced. Ex military leaders, key (both Dom and non-Dom) bankers and corporate scions are speaking out. They are not stupid (or at least not as stupid as most of Britain's political class.) Like the working class in the UK they see that Parliament has long been a very shrunken force in the actual direction taken by the country. They know that if the election 'goes wrong' in their eyes that will only be the beginning of a potential disaster. Great resources and forces remain to be mobilised in the ruler's interests, should Parliament start to prove a problem.

Nevertheless a critical thing has happened in this election campaign. The post Thatcher political consensus has broken open. There is something to vote for; and something to vote against. And that is a deep problem.

Our rulers do not blame Miliband or the Labour Party. On three absolutely critical issues Labour continues, albeit more and more desperately, to toe the line. On Scottish independence and the 'break up' of Britain (ie should Britain be composed of small and medium sized nations with the ambition to serve their people); on the question of austerity and, most significantly, on the issue of Trident, Labour and Miliband do their level best to suggest that we should not even be talking about such things. They sincerely believe that such truths are this Island's inheritance. Bigger than politics and unavailable to the voter these questions constitute our unwritten constitution. What our real rulers object to about Labour is their failure to banish from sight any controversy on such decisively important matters.

Because all of the the main Westminster parties are still hanging on to yesterday's elementary common sense, the access to voters to real change in Parliament is limited. And there has been some muddy thinking on the left in response to that situation. Inside Labour, from left to right, there is visceral hatred of the SNP, Plaid and the Greens. But what has been busted open will not be simply healed. There is a hint of the argument over which deckchair as the Titanic founders, about all this.

There are some far left parties and fronts that have approached the problem by standing their own candidates that represent very little to most people. With the odd possible exception in the case of personalities with a known history, whatever the intention, such efforts go little beyond exercises in recruitment to the particular group involved; the only exception being independent representatives of particular struggles and campaigns.  Others have puzzled over knotty tactical assumptions, ending with a broad appeal to vote Labour and to prepare the battle outside Parliament: Which, in effect, abstains from the battle now being fought out, albeit in the half light of Britain's fading democracy.

For sure the political crisis will not come to its fruition on May 7. Nevertheless, it is now crucial to call on all to support the four anti-austerity parties; the SNP in Scotland, Plaid in Wales, Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland and the Greens in England. In England, the Green candidates may suffer some of the same personal anonymity as their far left counterparts, but the number and proportion of votes cast directly, across Britain, for all the nationally known anti-austerity, anti-Trident  parties, will have deep significance in the legitimacy of various actions taken within Parliament after the elections, including inside the Labour Party itself.  

An Anti-Austerity Alliance?

Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood told BBC Breakfast (April 7th) that she now spoke fairly regularly to the Scottish first minister
'It's about politics and policies,' Ms Wood told the programme. She added that if the smaller parties hold the balance of power, SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens would work to -
'Present the alternative to austerity regardless as to who are the key people involved'. (Ms Wood was responding to an earlier barbed BBC question - aimed at Nicola Sturgeon -  about which Prime Minister the two leaders would prefer.)

The SNP have set a new agenda for the coming UK General Election. Unsurprisingly perhaps many English people who watched the April 3rd 7 party debate on television tweeted, messaged and phoned in to the relevant TV channels asking if they could vote SNP! It is undoubtedly a breakthrough in British mainstream politics that a group of serious and popular albeit smaller political parties are presenting an alternative to austerity, whatever the different guises for it that have been adopted by Westminster's 3 main traditional parties.

Some left groups, Left Unity, the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) and others have put up candidates who oppose austerity. There are also others, like the National Health Action Party, who are standing candidates to challenge the results of austerity politics in specific fields. (The NHS Action Party is standing in 13 seats including Cameron's constituency and Health Minister Hunt's constituency in Surrey - where successful Lewisham Hospital campaigner, Louise Irvine, is the NHS Action Party's candidate.) Candidates, however well meaning, but who are unknown quantities, are unlikely to retain their deposits. Most will be lucky to garner more than 200 votes. Up to now the Labour Party had only 5 MPs prepared to vote down the Coalition motion on the need to cut £30 billion in the first two years of the next parliament. This whole dismal scene has now been substantially altered by the initiative of the SNP.

The disproportion between the vast numbers of Britons who oppose austerity on the one hand and on the other, the tiny potential political representation of the anti-austerity cause in Westminster, remains cavernous. Nevertheless the political crisis in Britain has at least opened out the opportunity for a stronger radical voice in Parliament post May 7. The absolutely critical social question of course remains the need for a tremendous mass movement to join and to force the battle. The Peoples Assembly with its social and trade union alliances remains the decisive actor in that case. The National Anti-Austerity demonstration on Saturday 21 June will begin the mobilisation of the common people against any Westminster attempt to carry on cutting. Within that social context, a sharp political fight, provoked by the new anti-austerity MPs, will inevitably start inside Labour. At the moment it looks like Parliament will need to win its majorities issue by issue. A mass movement will have a big say in those circumstances. As will the growing handful of anti-austerity MPs.

Hold onto your hats. It will be a bumpy ride in these first big movements that the Westminster Parties and Parliament are forced to make in order to look as though they are aligning themselves more accurately with the people they pretend to represent.

We work: they gamble: we pay.

According to the latest Office of National Statistics (ONS) figures, UK productivity growth is the weakest it’s been since the second World War. Productivity decreased by 0.2% in the third quarter of the last financial year, leaving output per hour worked 17% lower than in 2007.

The poor performance in recent years has widened a longstanding productivity gap between the UK and other countries. UK GDP per hour is currently around 17% below the G7 average. (See March 2015 IFS data on UK productivity.)

An ONS paper (20 February 2015) measured output per hour (how much had been made or value created) by workers in 2012 and 2013. Italy measured a 9% higher value per working hour in 2012 and 2013 than in Britain. French workers produced 27% more value in both years and German workers produced 28% more value. The US produced 28% more and 31% more value across the two years.

In fact Britain has a century long history of poor investment and poor productivity compared with its main competitors.

Productivity is important because, in a capitalist system of economics, it helps determine whether you can compete with other countries when it comes to selling your goods and therefore whether or not there is a gap between the goods you buy from others and those you sell. If there is a gap, and the gap for Britain is enormous, then down goes your country's wealth. Today several significant political parties, led by the SNP, are calling for an end to austerity. But if productivity remains weak then the demand from employers that workers must work still longer hours for even less wages will increase and resources to close the gap between exports and imports will need to be found - whether or not official austerity continues.

So where can more productivity come from?
 
It comes from labour and it comes from capital. Labour can work harder and capital can invest in new machinery and technology, infra-structure etc.

So how does UK labour compare with its comparable neighbours? The OECD Better Life Index (working hours) shows the following; The % of workers who officially work over 50 hours a week in the UK is 12.3%. In the US it is 11.4%. In France 8.7%. Germany 5.6%. Belgium 4.4%. Canada 4%. The Netherlands, 0.6%. All these countries have much higher productivity than the UK. Leave aside the scabrous contracts, the instant dismissals, the comparatively very low pay 'enjoyed' by large parts of the UK workforce, the decline in real wages for 6 years and the sheer hours workers are putting in, the figures demonstrate that labour in the UK is being squeezed for the maximum production and the maximum value that can be extracted for the least possible price.

Examining the role capital plays in the UK is another matter entirely.

Another paper from the ONS (24 April 2014) gives a snapshot of capital investment as a % of Gross Domestic Product (all the goods and services that are produced in a year) across a range of countries. The UK invested 15% of its GDP in 2013. France, 20%; Germany 17%, Japan 21%, the US 19%  and India and China 36% and 49% respectively. Since the early 1900s domestic capital investment in technology, machinery and infrastructure in the UK has consistently lagged behind all the other large developed countries. The UK's shortfall of capital investment is the cause of Britain's poor productivity.

And yet British profits are very high.  British companies were the most profitable in almost 16 years in the second quarter of 2014 (Guardian 14 November 2014.) For those companies involved in the North Sea oil and gas industry, profitability in the second quarter was the lowest since records began in 1997, at 16.9%!

To continue the snapshot, profitability among both manufacturing and services sector companies improved in the second quarter of 2014 , to 12.1% and 15.6% respectively. Profitability among firms outside the financial sector and North sea activities – measured by their net rate of return – was 11.6% between April and June. It was the highest since late 1998 according to the Office for National Statistics. Yet, as we have seen, investment continued to decline.

If they don't invest in new machinery, technology and infrastructure, what do the owners, shareholders and senior managers do with their profits? They go for short term gambling either on the international stock exchanges or in the international banking, sale and loan business. Why? Because it will make them richer quicker.

And now we get closer to the very heart of the matter. The German and French capitalists are not sentimental nationalists. But they have not grown up in the shadow of the City of London, Britain's great legacy of Empire.

On the 14 March 2013 the lead story in 'City A.M.' proudly boasted
'London’s share of the UK’s economic output has just reached an all-time high of 21.9 per cent. Yes, that’s right, despite the crisis, and the City’s woes, London accounts for more of Britain’s economy that at any time in recorded history. The last time it came close was in 1911, when London was a manufacturing, shipping and imperial centre ...'

One fifth of the British economy, more powerful than ever, that does not produce anything but money, that does not invest in anything but profit, whose canvas is the whole world and whose time frame is now measured in nano seconds, dominates the UK economic system.

So; no matter how hard the workers work, how meagre their wages, how shredded their services, they will still not 'compete' with their continental and cross Atlantic neighbours in productivity. The City is the engine room of British capitalism (and not the EU as some well meaning leftists would have it.) The City blights the future of British society, grinds down labour, provides open all hours casinos and tax havens for the rich, diverting capital from investment into speculation. It will leave a big wound when it is destroyed. But amputation is still the only treatment for gangrene.

A democratic debate or a debate about democracy?

Did you see last night's 'debate'? It was, to say the least, a curious affair. Seven party leaders stood behind their podiums and talked and shouted to us and at each other for two hours. Prime Minister Cameron looked uneasy, as though he had ended up at a wedding where the rest of the guests were not quite the right sort. He also had real trouble managing Deputy PM Nick Clegg, as Clegg tore into him and the Tories for being soft on the rich. After all he and Clegg had been to the same sort of school and Clegg was just being beastly and Cameron went quite pink with shock at his disloyalty. Farage from UK Independence Party also swelled up with fury at various unconnected points, as though the whole room was just not quite getting it. Labour leader Miliband just looked ill. Even when he tried to smile it appeared as though he might be sick at any point. You could go on.

The debate was supposed to enhance Britain's democratic understanding in the lead up to the May 7 General Election. And as such it was an interesting exercise in what all the party leaders, the media hosting them, the spinners ready to interpret the event and the goggle box extras who gave initial opinions from 'the general public's point of view' actually understood about what is Britain's modern democracy. It turns out to be about selling; selling and buying. Electing a new government on May 7 the political leaders tried to proclaim, is one of the most important purchases that you will ever make. Here's what you will get if you buy me! Or me. Or lose if you buy from her, or from him. 

More austerity (Tories, UKIP) austerity light (Labour and Lib Dems) and no austerity (Greens, Plaid Cymru, Scottish National Party) was the theme of the evening. Within that frame (and Farage entirely failed to make the EU or immigration the baseline) there were the individual policy pitches. Undoubtedly as reflected in some of the early polls, the SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, emerged as the overall winner of this particular game - and from the outside! Her ability to speak to English voters about the decisive role that the SNP Westminster MPs could play in supporting a new government against the Tories was masterful. With a difficult brief, the SNP leader was the clearest, the most personable and the most professional of the lot. Farage's 'common man' shtick did not come off at all - except to his devotees. His big moment passed, as the voice from the saloon bar sounded out of place in the rapid-fire sound bites and fervent promises. 

But although Green Party leader in England and Wales, Natalie Bennett, made a couple of stabs at it, the real big issue never really surfaced. Without it the politicians' dialogue remained at the level of platitudes and competitive 'offers'. In the end the big 'leaders debate' was remote and the promises were stale and, as they were not based on much, seemed incredible. Real democracy was not served. The 'choices' put in front of the potential voting consumers were abstractions without any weight, where they were not simple repetitions. 'But no, but we really do want to save the NHS.' In the end, the ordinary people who commented after the debate could not find much contact with the policies and programmes batted around by the party leaders, instead they discussed personalities and who they liked. Why? 

When millions of working class men and women fought for the right to be represented in Parliament, to have a government that supported the majority, they did not do it so that they could come to the political market every 5 years and choose their goods. They did 'politics' because they wanted to use politics to shift the centres of wealth and power away from a tiny minority and to put them in the hands of the whole society. That was the potential power of the vote. Virtually nothing in Westminster remains of that cause. 

British politics does not do that anymore. There is a solid argument that it never did under its own steam. Certainly a government today doing the types of reforms carried out 1945/8 is unimaginable. And last night none of the party leaders used their time to state the obvious. In 2008 the western capitalist world was on the brink of collapse. Was that because you and I maxed out our credit cards? No. It was because banks were were making countless £billions from buying and selling debt. The west was making less and less goods. Since the mid 1970s wages had shrunk but the rich just got richer. The poor were allowed to use some debt to bridge the gap, but they were hammered if they did not pay the interest. The rich sold their debts to banks, who sold them on. And in 2008 the whole crazy carnival collapsed. So what do the majority of us need politics for now? We need it to help us start to build a new system of society where the all the resources of the rich are put to use on behalf of the majority. Then we can make things again. God knows we need a new, green and healthy world. What should leaders and parties do?  We need leaders and parties to help us, the majority in society, to do it for ourselves. So politics becomes our politics; so the political class is dissolved; so the roots of privilege and entitlement are dug up. 

Democracy is the participation of the majority in their own rule. To change a system that nearly destroyed our world will be a life's work. There is nothing more important. And it needs all of us to succeed. It would be a good life and real political leaders that want to connect with the real world need to start spelling that out.