Friday 30 May 2014

What we might learn from the May elections


The European elections merit their own thorough study. What follows does not imply that the British developments are ‘specially’ British. Ultimately they are part of European and global trends but of course those trends combine in unique ways at any given point. The council and European Parliament elections held in Britain have their own characteristics, and they are not the ones that were expressed in Britain’s mainstream media. Indeed the media’s obsession with the rise or otherwise of UKIP, coupled in the broadsheet press and in the musings on Radio 4, with worry about the resurgence of the European right – and how pleased we should all be that we have Farage rather than Le Pen – are classic examples of the appearance of things contradicting the essence of the matter.

What is happening in the UK is a political crisis. The years of Coalition government to an extent have, up to now, covered up this crisis of establishment politics that has been maturing since Blaire’s premiership. It has taken an inordinate amount of time, but Britain’s universally and historically famed political stability – is losing its shape.

Before looking at the precise content of Britain’s current political crisis we might ask the question; what has provoked it? For this will surely give an insight to its specificities.  What has caused Britain’s political instability?

The answer is the deepening economic and political polarisation of society. There is growing disparity between the rich and the rest; between North and South; between London and the rest of Britain; between Scotland and the rest of the UK. (One note should be made regarding Scotland’s September 18 vote on independence in this context. Even if independence loses, the margins will be narrow, having the effect of holing any allegiance in Scotland to Westminster below the waterline.) Britain’s political class has never been more alienated from British society on the ground. And these polarizations work also within our institutions. The Labour Party, run by middle class, professional politicians are on a completely opposite journey to Britain’s rapidly evolving working class.

Turning back to the political character of Britain’s crisis, the focus on the success of UKIP looks at things from the wrong way round. What is interesting from any point of view is that UKIP’s vote was a couple of percentage points less than its equivalent vote which it received during the last council/euro elections. Yet its impact on the system was so much greater. This time for example the UKIP effect appeared to destroy the Liberals. (Not so. The Liberals are the most fragile and accessible and most obvious turncoats in the coalition. They have wiped out their own base in society.) UKIP will not form a government. But this time, because national politics are so brittle, it is likely that they have guaranteed another coalition government after the 2015 election. The general political crisis is so deep that even Britain’s failsafe ‘one past the post’ electoral system cannot hold back the tide. Mainland European coalition governments used to be a byword in British politics for continental instability and the wretched Presidential autocracies that therefore had become essential to run these benighted countries. Not any more.

The collapse of the popular vote in Britain mirrors the rest of Europe in the May elections (with some notable exceptions) and the signs are not good from the point of view of those that would seek some real alternatives to the consensus on austerity that stretches from the saloon bar racists that lead UKIP to Miliband. (Even Cruddas, erstwhile darling of what remains the of the left of the LP is sounding more like Farage on immigration these days.) The LP is committed to the Coalition cuts for the first two years of any new Labour government. The problem with seeing Labour as any kind of ‘alternative’ is that it has rooted itself more and more at the heart of the political and economic consensus that is now in crisis.

There are some serious forces that do face the political (and economic) crisis with a new face. The Green party in Britain have (albeit unevenly) radicalised in Britain. They certainly captured what there was of the radical vote available in the May elections and have advanced their councilors by 23 while increasing their MEPs to double the size of the Liberals. (The largest far left party effort in the council elections, the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition – TUSC – scored an average of 116 votes per candidate. And the euro wing, backed among others by the Morning Star and called No2EU, despite its 1980s hip nomenclature got nowhere.)

The national movement against austerity is another sign of an answer emerging to Britain’s political crisis. The Peoples Assembly has achieved its goal of uniting the major actions and campaigns against austerity. It has over 30,000 supporters and 100 branches. Solid Trade Union support has also emerged. A genuine mass movement is being born. Born into a period of significant political instability and change.



Thursday 22 May 2014

The future in revolt

Capitalism did not invent oppression. Some of the most profound and inhuman injustices predate the emergence of capitalism by millennia. The capitalist social system, that overthrew both feudal and Asiatic social relations, often reorganised older oppressions; recreated them; gave them new clothes.

In addition, the accompanying political revolutions intendent on the capitalist social and economic breakthroughs, were often partial, incorporating significant aspects of the old regimes. This compromise over the political dispensation was designed to form a bloc which would counter the emergence of another cycle of revolutionary activity by the plebeian mass of the population.

In sum, the capitalist system (already dominant in key sub-sectors of economic life) was ushered in still wreathed in the old oppressions and with a diluted politics suborned by the new rulers great fear of the revolutions they themselves had previously led.

The most radical capitalist revolution was achieved through the war of Independence and then advanced by the civil war in the USA. This made no political concessions to any 'ancien regime'; there had been none to parley with. And it finally brought to an end modern slavery - at least in the capitalist centres of the west. Nevertheless toilers, women and all peoples of colour remained shackled in the US, albeit in social, economic and cultural chains that were nevertheless reflected in and confirmed by the legal system. So the capitalist essence of society was still obscured by previous traditions of bondage even in the US, let alone in western Europe, and, at the same time, all this (albeit limited) progress in the west stood (and still stands) on the oppression and subjugation of half of the rest of the world through empire. Unemployment, underemployment, subjugation, bond slavery and violence on a mass scale were all 'exported' out of the capitalist centres into the formal or informal dominions of 'the great powers'.

Despite this historical reality, western capitalism has taken on a special if contradictory place today among some radical political movements outside the west. The west's image for example in northern Africa or in Eastern Europe is that western capitalism has produced the most advanced societies in the world. This mirage remains unrelated to history and to the immense burden on the whole of humanity represented by the continued machinations and structures of western Imperialism. In the western countries themselves, the great, indigenous mass struggles for real political democracy, often led by women, the emergence of welfare reform and huge effort, organisation and battles conducted to create more bearable living conditions for those that had to sell their labour, are forgotten in this view. And the fundamental impact on the west of the 20th century popular workers and peasant revolutions, initially in Russia and then expanding across the globe, that threatened revolution at home if there was not reform, is entirely absent from the picture.  

It is not hard to see why this confusion has arisen among some radical forces in North Africa or the Middle East or even in places in Eastern Europe. The collapse of the USSR and the Chinese adoption of 'the capitalist road' implies that only capitalism now has the historical energy to create new societies. Yet here lies a profound contradiction. Egypt is the centre and the fulcrum of the Arab Spring. The radicals in Tahir Square understood perfectly well that capitalism was going through deep crisis in 2008/9. They knew that the US financed the Egyptian Army. They were aware that the west had set up Saddam. And that Qaddafi had recently been laundered by the US and the UK. But they cheered Obama while loathing how big money controlled US elections. What they wanted was a reformed capitalism. Their proposed reforms were radical. They called for a Scandinavian health and welfare service, for an end to the secret police, for 'free' elections. They applauded Edward Snowden's revelations and most of all they wanted a hi tech freedom to move across the globe for their own future. This huge lower middle class layer, represented in all the second rank developing societies where, unlike in the BRIC countries, the factory stage, previously centred between work on the land and service in the cities, has been by-passed, believed it was possible to escape capitalism's ancient horrors, because they had already apparently escaped them for themselves.

Radicals in Egypt linked up with Los Indignatos in Spain and Occupy in New York. All these groups saw themselves as the new global citizens; not least the heroes and heroines in Tahir Square who were risking their lives daily. They imagined a new global reality where space could be wrested from the avaricious market, in city squares or in cyberspace. Modelled on ideas developed by the Zapatistas who took over and successfully defended territory from the Mexican government, and vitalised by the possibilities of instant global communication, they imagined an 'ideal' capitalism, shorn of its political deformities, with space allowed for a world wide 'commons' in which people could develop their own politics and economic activity. (After all were not 35% of the German population producing their own energy?)

The tragedy was that capitalism is going in absolutely the opposite direction. It is ransacking history for models of exploitation and control that might benefit its bloody progression. It is re-imagining and then recreating tyrannies led by autocrats and billionaire gangsters, mass producing new means of oversight and control, throttling the fragile shoots of democracy, creating client political classes and parties, reducing all examples of independent politics, economics, sexual life and even individual imaginations to commodities. And Egypt was and is a key part of the structure that modern capitalism is constantly creating. A partially and unevenly developed country with a military guarantee card for western imperialism in the middle east.

Egypt has 27.2 million in work (2012.) This breaks down into Agriculture (32%), Industry (17%), Services (51%) (2001 figures.) The unemployed are 20.5 million (2012 figures.) Agriculture accounts for 14.7% of Egypt's GDP; industry: 37.4%; services: 47.9% (2012.)

It was this difficult and murky Egyptian reality that was not faced by the bulk of the radicals that bravely made their political revolutions to overthrow Mubarak and then Morsi. Ideal capitalism was not available to them or their country - even via elections. Instead the brutal reality was a society ruled by (often military) millionaires in hock to the US with a vast security apparatus; where the bulk of workers are small farmers; where the unemployed are nearly equal to all those with employment; where a small industrial working class play a large role in the country's GDP and where the obstacles to progress can only be broken at the social and economic as well as the political level.

The bloc that needed to be created was to unify the political rebellion in the city with a social and economic policy for employment, for the land and for industry. In practise, instead of the Tahir radicals dividing their enemies, their enemies divided off the radicals from their essential friends. The army appeared to the radicals as the exact opposite to its essence. Presenting itself as a guardian of modernity and progress the army's actual rule, even at one removed after the coming elections, is the fundamental bloc to any real progress. The army is Imperialism's life breath in Egypt. It is a murder machine that will provide a new platform for millionaires and billionaires to buy up more of Egypt's resources.

For sure a far reaching contest with the Muslim Brotherhood for the leadership of the unemployed, for the allegiance of the rural poor and the industrial workers was needed. But after the fall of Morsi, better the turmoil of a new Constituent Assembly, and immediate elections and of a country thrown into debate and argument than the peace of the graveyard.







Tuesday 20 May 2014

Life in the shadows

A friend recently returned from Crete. He had a great time but was a bit depressed by the rash of new casinos and the signs of prostitution that he saw. He was he said reminded of the history of Cuba under Batista, before the 1959 revolution. (Anybody unfamiliar with this period in Cuba could do worse than watch Godfather 2. Cuba was turned into a brothel for the US's 7th Fleet and financed by the Mafia as a playground for the US's super rich.)

Between 1995 and 2006 Crete's authorities estimated that their 'black' (read unregulated, untaxed and super exploited) economy represented about 4.2% of their overall GDP. In 2012 new estimates made by the World Bank gave the equivalent figure as 25.6%. A German report of 2013 stated that unregistered Russian holdings in Cypriot banks amounted to $26 billion. (This was/is Russia's largest foreign capital investment.) The Germans were interested as it looked as though they would have to bail out Cyprian banks.

Processes like this are integral to globalisation. In fact, the unregulated economy is the most dynamic part of the modern capitalist system, with all of its effluent outwash among huge sectors of the world's population.

The UK's 'informal' economy has also grown. The UK's figures for '96 to 2006 are 2% of GDP created by the 'black' economy. By 2012 the UK was admitting to 10.1%. That was the equivalent to £150 billion a year. But the UK has its own particular twist to this picture. It has created a vast 'semi-regulated' economy, which acts as a porous, osmotic and over-inflated superstructure above the unregulated economy. 4.6 million in the UK are now officially self employed. This is the largest part of the 'new jobs' that the government has been announcing since 2010. And among other things the self employed receive on average a 40% lower income than the employed. Even Vince Cable said he was worried. The Guardian reported on the 14 May that he was concerned that employers were taking on these bargain bottom 'outsourced' workers rather than investing to create more productivity in the economy. Capitalism it seems will never do what's right by Vince.

What's happening in Cyprus is one side of an accelerating trend in global capitalism as it detaches itself from any claims that it naturally twins with democratic systems (always laughable), or with welfare, or, in the end, with any sort of social or human responsibility. It is not some moral accident that world slavery involves greater numbers today than those who were were victims of the 18th and 19th century 'slave trade.'A database compiled in the late 1990s put the figure for the transatlantic slave trade at over 11 million people. Siddharth Kara has provided an estimate of 28.4 million slaves at the end of 2006 divided into the following three categories: bonded labour/debt bondage (18.1 million), forced labour (7.6 million), and trafficked slaves (2.7 million). (Columbia Press; 2008.)

Sunday 11 May 2014

The Peoples' Assembly and the 'Great Recession.'

The Peoples' Assembly* held its first interim (between conferences) Assembly delegate meeting yesterday. It was a productive meeting. The movement is growing very fast with 30 thousand supporters and 100 branches already. More importantly it is beginning to make waves in mainstream politics and popular culture.  (For example Russell Brand will be speaking at the PA's national demonstration on 21 June.)

The agenda was packed and a series of solid practical decisions were made - essential against the background of rising militancy and action challenging austerity across the country over the next 6 months. (June 21 PA national demonstration; July 10 huge new wave of one day industrial action; September 18 Scottish referendum; 18 October national TUC demonstration and a possible further industrial day of action.) In national politics this represents the biggest mobilisation yet against austerity in the first sixth months of what will be a year long General Election campaign, following the May 22 European elections.  And the PA are (rightly) front and centre.

It was therefore a shame that there was little time available up to the scheduled end of the meeting to enlarge the discussion on the political context for the PA's work beyond some tangential points made by reporters on business items. Specifically, what has the mainstream discourse about austerity become? Who is leading it? Are there some key messages that the PA and its allies in the unions and other campaigns, need to focus on to become part of that national argument? Such a discussion does not have to mean that factional war has to break out, nor that the priority of agreement on action is disturbed. In a meeting like the Assembly, (political) maturity, the general commitment to action and the achievements of the movement so far, all act as stern reminders that discussion is designed to elaborate on and to build and arm the movement. If the PA is to become the major political actor that it has the potential to be, then it must be able to address the terms of the national debate in the area on which it campaigns.  

From that point of view it is more than interesting to note that Osborne and his Tory allies have begun to insist that we call 2008 plus 'the Great Recession.' This is more than casuistry. Serious and well paid advisers, and other 'thinkers' have worked on this move by the Tory leadership, probably for months. There are obvious advantages that flow from their 'reformulation.'

First, what is being reformulated? Most of us think that 2008 was a banker's crisis and that the Coalition Government (and their friends) decided on a policy of austerity for the vast majority of us as the means to deal with this crisis. Many already understand that austerity means shifting huge amounts of our wealth (including the cost of the services we need) to the super rich (who 'owned' all the debts in the first place). A Great Recession on the other hand does not mention bankers. Rather it is more suggestive of an act of God or nature, something we have noticed in the past, in history; one of those destructive cycles that unseen and unknown forces unleash every generation or so.

Additionally, it avoids austerity as the definition of what is happening now. We are working our way out of 'the Great Recession.' This is not so much a matter of cold and deliberate policy decisions, made by a class in their own interests when faced with a disaster. We do not define what is happening by reference to the living standards and services available to the vat majority. No. That no longer defines our political debate. Instead we can discuss which countries have emerged faster and fitter from the great recession. We get back to a (fictional) place where we can all take pride in the number of billionaires per head that the UK can boast.

Finally Osborne and co have laid a great temptation in front of the Labour leadership. Lose the emphasis on unfairness and inequality and in return we offer you a definition of the crisis which does not (solely) centre on Labour's economic failure. The debate can be about how we think we should get out of the great, global recession. There is no doubt that this shift in accent by the Tories is designed in part at least to provide weapons for the Labour leadership to use to defy Cruddas's self styled 'radical' alternative - which he presents to his party at the end of this month. We are not fighting austerity; we are fighting the great recession.

The Tories' political initiative has significant meaning for the PA. In the run up to the June demonstration, in press releases and in social media, the PA should pick up the Tory's challenge frontally. The PA should call things as they are. We are suffering because bankers nearly destroyed the capitalist system and because the remedy to fix the system that was decided by the super rich and their politicians was austerity for the many. It is quite possible that the majority of the British population believe the same.


*The PA held a founding gathering of 4000 at Westminster and a delegate conference of 700 delegates  last year. The Assembly's aim is to counter austerity. Follow this link. the peoples' assembly