Paris and green politics

Many experts on green issues in general and climate change in particular have made their comments on the Paris Conference (30 November - 12 December 2015.) Radicals in the green movement and wider have criticised the conference's absence of concrete and binding commitments. They have blown away much of the delirium of the liberal mass media in its talk of
'The world's greatest diplomatic success.' (Guardian).

It is a great achievement that a global, mass, green movement exists and that it is growing.  The women's movement of the 1970s and 80s, reborn in this century, acted and acts as the centre of knowledge and expertise on gender issues, and therefore can concentrate the globe's conscience on these questions. Similarly the massive green movement today, vastly outstripping its formal representation in the political forums available to it, is a critical repository of wisdom and understanding on the fate of the planet under late capitalism - as well as a huge political and social movement that forces key questions on to the world's agenda.

While the world's leading politicians have to balance the impact of global movements with the interests of the great corporations and networks that they serve, preferably neutralising the first to defend the second, nevertheless, they still have to act. They have to meet, they have to make promises, they have to give immense global airtime to the issues. They have to present themselves and their governments as the place to return to if the promises are unfulfilled; if the world keeps turning to the worse. This, in itself, is a tremendous political achievement for the green movement and its supporters, which started in the US a few decades ago from a position that, fundamentally, the greening of the earth was the responsibility of individuals, while simultaneously harbouring an underdeveloped critique of the dominant social and political systems.

Equally, the tangent that emerged in politics and economics that was created from that original baseline has closed up. Earlier some greens insisted on the need to stop growth, even to reduce it, in order to save the planet. Now a sophisticated analysis of social and economic systems has replaced this call on all, regardless of their poverty or their wealth, to 'stop being too greedy'. And while all sorts of experiments are blooming across the West about how to live a satisfying life without the drive to endless consumption, the centre of the green argument has become the deep inequality of a system of society that dominates the world and is simultaneously destroying its future. Concrete propositions for green energy, food production and global communication have supplanted the notion that technology is itself an enemy of humanity.

These developments are not even. Parallel to the history of movements on race or relating to women's rights, green politics is also now  socially, even economically diverse phenomena. The biggest profit machine in the world, Apple, flirts assiduously with an anti-establishment projection that incorporates 'Green' as well as 'people' power. Some green politicians in Germany are distinctly part of the political class there, no doubt 'working from within.' Nevertheless the larger green movement at its base has already added an enormous impulse to positive change and made a major contribution to the blue print of a new society.

It is the critical activity of the green movement that has created a practical experience of struggle that underpins the dramatic evolution of their thought. And the new thinking has broken through many of the old silos in its encounter with some older revolutionary political initiatives. For example Ernest Mandel, a major marxist thinker and writer in the later part of the 20th century, had, among others,  already challenged simplistic views of some schools of marxism who mechanically insisted on the need for universal abundance as the material basis for any eventual communist society. According to such thinking, super abundance was needed so that 'from each according to their ability - to each according to their need' might move from a slogan to reality.

Mandel argued for a new concept of 'rational abundance', a condition of essentially free housing, education, chiuld care, medical aid, power, transport and essential foods for all. Such a material platform would provide the basis in the world for people to decide what additions they might voluntarily and socially, personally and sexually create to best meet their needs for self expression. Hunting and fishing in the morning followed by an afternoon of Aristotle (Marx's personal desires) would not be most peoples' choices today!

It is the global perspective, the system wide challenge, the vast range of activities which the greens have launched, that have inspired much of the best of the new left. A courage to take on the whole world, to insist that its current social and political systems are stagnant and dangerous, that they must be challenged - in detail and in the most general terms, already provides tens of millions with a first coherent alternative to late capitalism's globalisation burn-out. Paris was a reaction to its force. That is the real contribution to humanities' future made in Paris.

Labour MP's consciences.

When the British Parliament voted to bomb in Syria, Labour MPs were allowed to use their votes 'according to their consciences', which meant that they did not have to follow any particular Labour policy, or vote according to the views of the leader or his shadow cabinet. It is worth remembering that both the majority of the shadow cabinet and the majority of Labour MPs voted against bombing, but the 66 Labour MPs who voted for bombing made Parliament's majority decision in favour of extending the war much more credible.

During and after Parliament's vote on military action in Syria a secondary debate started in the media (and wider) about MP's 'right' to vote according to their consciences on matters of war. MPs right to vote at all about war is a consequence of the public opprobrium felt for Bush and Blair's bloodbath in Iraq. There were many socialists and other radicals, inside and outside Parliament, during and after the Syria debate, who also believed that MP's consciences should be the basis of their vote (eg, shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and Green MP Caroline Lucas.)

It is likely that Corbyn drew back from arguing that Labour MPs should vote against the bombing and that there would be a Labour whip, because it might have provoked several resignations from his shadow cabinet. It is also argued that if he had insisted on the whip, then the Labour vote for the bombing would have been much less and the result would have meant that the bombing campaign would have been seen as less acceptable among the wider population.

But MPs voting according to their own determinations is a generally popular idea among voters, and not just for votes relating to war. Breaking from party orthodoxy creates the impression that MPs are challenging the old party structures thereby undermining the endless preservation of Britain's despised political status quo. It is a definite sign of the enlivening of political interest and understanding, as decisive questions are now debated and fought through in Parliament, when for decades there was little distinction between the programmes of the mainstream parties. All the major issues of wealth and power were not just glossed over by the main Parliamentary parties, they were denied as issues of any substantive contention across the whole of society. Today, Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party has changed all that. People are getting more interested in politics and, as a result, look for personal initiative from MPs and reject the 'political machines.'

The popular enthusiasm for voting by conscience maybe a reflection on the decay of the major, traditional, mainstream parties. They are not seen as trustworthy vehicles to express the public will, especially in this new acerbic and substantive political contest in Parliament. The public's political understanding turns to the most private part of politician's personalities to attempt to find its true reflection! But there is a deep paradox at the heart of this argument.

Not for the Tories. They were 'whipped.' Behind that fact is the coalescence around the idea in the last months, of the Generals, the main scions of Britain's media, the international rich, as reflected in the City of London and elsewhere, and most of the rest of the British establishment, that bombing Syria was about getting Britain's feet firmly under the international negotiations table, about joining the counter-front to the Russian's intervention, about dumping the dangerous toxic shame bequeathed by Blair and, most of all, about what sort of country Britain should continue to be. Accordingly, with the establishment marshaled, the Tory MPs were organised to deliver. In the good old days Parliamentary votes would never have been involved in this sort of very serious stuff about foreign policy. For the time being that has changed. So be it. The Tories unite to go to war.

On the other hand, those in British society that deeply distrust its establishment, and the bombing of Syria, are not politically coherent or coalesced. Many have not yet seen the great divides, of interests, of foreign policy, of the nature of the country that Britain is, and that might change to become. Bombing Syria is seen by some as a 'personal' judgment. 'Even if my MP votes to extend the war to Syria, and I do not accept that policy, I will nevertheless accept her or his 'right' to represent me - when they vote for the opposite!'

And so a radical lack of confidence in the traditional mass parties, building up for a generation into an important part of Britain's political crisis, becomes transformed into its opposite, as the lack of confidence in the significance of peoples' own political rights to have their views acted on - in society's main political forum - ends up by expressing itself as a judgment of the superior morality of the individual MP. And the reliance on MPs consciences then becomes another part of the dissolution of the voice and of the impact of the views of the majority of the people in the national and international political context.

Why are there political parties? What do they do?

Political parties are the summary of the historical experience of humanity since the emergence of politics. Human beings discovered that collective organisation was indispensable for production and extended their social organisations into the political field. Social groups, clans, factions and ultimately classes required political expression - especially when politics (states, armies, government) was set up by other, socially dominant classes. Parties - at their most basic - battle for the social, economic and political interests of the classes that set them up and adhere to them. Like any other human institution they can be overwhelmed by the power of the interests of their enemy, by the divisions among their own social base and, more recently, by the emergence of a distinct political class that serves its own social interests simply by becoming highly privileged politicians.

The continuous integrity of political parties, especially those that serve subordinate classes in society, comes exclusively from two conditions. First the degree of collective behaviour, action and thinking which they observe, as that is most likely to lead to stronger policy, just as strong social unity of a class best protects its interests in society. Second the deep and continuous accountability that parties demonstrate to the classes that form them. Without the second, politics begins to separate individual interests from the requirements of the people as a whole. Politicians begin the search for distinction, within their supporting classes for particular support, and for themselves, among others in their party.

In this context, the individual conscience of an MP as a platform for their political decisions is absurd if not unhealthy. A political system may be set up to obscure that fact, like the one-past-the-post constituencies in Britain's corrupt and labouring political machine. The division of the rich and their party from those who are poor and who work to live and their party, maybe hidden behind shared flim-flam about the national interest - when one of the parties has effectively collapsed. These screens may all provide a backdrop for the 'sacred conscience of me. An individual MP.' But the essence of the matter is unavoidable. A genuine political party of the majority, including all its members, would thoroughly debate its policy on Syria, thoroughly study and debate the views of its voters, come to a social, collective decision, then vote together. It does not exist to express a large selection of individual thoughts and feelings.

Of course a minority, despite the full and unconditional debate and collective thinking, might still decide a different route to that of the majority. That might be a minority of one. So be it. Even the deepest, widest and most accountable of democratic exercises are not 'truth proof'. They are, in the absence of God's thoughts, simply as good as human organisation can get. But to accept the worth and significance of that opposition, and not to repudiate it, it has to rest on a unique interpretation of the wishes and needs of the party's base, including the international implications of that base's interests in society, and not on the unique thoughts and fears of A. MP.

Some MPs argue that they are representatives and not delegates. That is to say they represent people by making their own decisions. They are not delegates who have to follow the decisions of those who elected them. They have been elected 'to use their own conscience.' Of course their background, their wealth, their associations, their upbringing and their social context will probably give most people a clear enough idea of where such an MP's conscience might lead. Even something as personal as a conscience cannot be abstracted from the pressures of the mundane matters of the world. The overwhelming majority of people across the world seem to know that. It looks as though this undertsanding is even more hard-wired in the human brain than an MP's conscience.

Will the Labour Party split?

Both 'no' and 'yes' would be the wrong answers. A split does not describe it. Something new is on its way.

When Western European, Russian and US socialists who were in favour of the overthrow of capitalism first looked at the British Labour Party at the beginning of the 20th century they thought it very odd indeed. They thought that a mass working class party, set up essentially by trade unions and clearly establishing itself as the political expression of the (privileged and relatively secure) trade union bureaucracy, with a distinct leaning towards the defence of Empire, was anything but an anti-capitalist party. There was an argument about whether the UK Labour Party should be allowed to join the Second International.

The new International was a precious gain according to its members. Not only was it spearheaded by the immense German Social Democratic Party, but its resolutions included the emphatic decision that in the event European rulers began to look for war, an international General Strike would be called by the International to stop it. Looking at the rise of militarism across Europe and the growing international tensions, the Second International's resolution was an immense relief for millions.

Members of the International, like Lenin, spoke amd wrote in favour of admitting the British Labourites. He argued that the Labour Party was part of an international process, albeit thoroughly infected by the British capitalism's immense advantages through Empire, of mass working class movements becoming organised not just economically but also politically.

Even after the Russian revolution, and the setting up of the 3rd International by those who had opposed WW1 and supported the Russian revolutionaries, Lenin suggested to the new British Communist Party that they should seek to be part of the growing and inevitable division between the working class base of Labour and its leadership in Parliament and in the headquarters of the trade unions. It was, he argued, 'a bourgeois/workers party.'

Trotsky and others who followed Lenin, when they had time to consider internal British politics, emphasised the need to exploit this contradiction, running like a fault line through the British working class movement.

The greatest achievement of the Labour Party was its reform programme following WW2. British and European capitalism was so weak, and the pressure of the victorious USSR so strong, that a Labour government delivered. Their initiatives were never driven forward. Never developed as part of an organised population beginning to sort out the big problems for themselves, but still immensely valuable in the lives of ordinary people.

In the modern period the conditions for a reforming Labour government have collapsed. Labour governments have managed, here and there, to catch the tail end of a more liberal international wind in favour of important social reforms, abortion rights, more recently equal pay and the extension of marriage, opposition to racist attacks etc. They have (reluctantly) spent more on upholding social provision and maintaining the status quo against increasingly fierce attacks on living standards and the social wage. But since the 1980s they have not ventured to reverse any anti-union laws, or the de-nationalisations, or the use of the private sector in state activity. They have accepted, in every chance of government that they have had, the defence of what is, even when 'what is' has come about as a result of a ferocious attack on working class people. They have never reversed, once in government, any prior retreat or a defeat for the class whose votes they have depended on.

And then there was Blair. There was nothing special about Tony Blair as such. He dealt with the decline of the trade unions by abandoning them and rooting his political operation in the vast new management apparatus of the social sector. He adopted the status quo established by Thatcherism and he destroyed Clause 4 of Labour's constitution, the last symbol of the idea that the working class, a separate and exploited class, should have their own independent economic and political programme from that of capitalist society. Blair's Labour Party was the final, political part, of the social and economic destruction of the traditional working class that had been wreaked by Thatcher and the general, international offensive by international capitalism. And, as a result, he destroyed the remnants of the Labour Party as a bourgeois/workers party.

Blair's Labour Party dissolved its own internal structure and its mass support among an increasingly demoralised and socially atomised working class. Instead it placed itself as the real representation of the new 'white van men' (while the self-employed are still only 17% of the labour force) and defined itself in government as a predominantly classless new management.

The curious consequence, today, of this break up of Labour's traditions, policy structure and organisation at its base has been the emergence of the 'unity of opposites'. Blair and his followers  carried through the attack on the working class in Britain by consciously dissolving the material basis for the old Leninist, contradiction at the heart of the Labour Party. In the course of which it left a largely empty shell topped by a parliamentary party. But that empty shell at the base has, in turn, suddenly become a new vehicle for the current political resurgence of the left. The new left in Britain has found itself in a largely vacant, but still, apparently, politically mainstream vehicle, as a means of expressing its political opposition in society. The bulk of the old parliamentary party now sit on top of a base, with its own leader, drawn from a new left. And the result is chaos.

Whatever this is, it is not the replication in modern life, of Lenin's original view of the Labour Party and how it would resolve its central contradiction. The new left in Britain, with important trade union links and the capacity of effective mass action, is not yet anywhere near the day to day leadership of the still scattered, still disorganised and super exploited British working class. And what remains of the Labour Party in Parliament is in an increasingly unlikely condition to form any sort of government. It is neither an attractive political proposition for large hunks of what is the working class movement (eg in Scotland or who support the Greens, or who are against war) nor for the establishment, because in the absence of their ability to lead labour in general, they bring nothing (but crisis) to the table. Already, without Corbyn's victory, right wing Labour MPs twig their uncertain future. It is literally only because they have no sight yet of an independent project that prevents their shift to more hospitable circumstances now. Certainly, in a potential world of coalitions, many of these MPs would offer themselves like a shot to work with a new minority Tory government under the right conditions (like Lord Adonis.)

Blair has done his damage. He summed up the change in the Labour Party from a bourgeois/workers party, to a fully bourgeois (but weak) party, still supported in part by more and more alienated working class votes. The fragility he bequeathed coincides with a moment of a new eruption and growth of the British left. The old mass Labour Party died. The question is, will a new mass Labour Party, with the principle and purpose to re-gather and re-animate a political working class movement and a new anti-capitalist vision, now be born?

Some of the preconditions for such a development are obvious. For example there needs to be a mass movement, working in action, rooted among the ordinary people - that is mobilising and drawing society together in a challenge to the way we are all expected to live. Alternatives to our economic and political system have to become a new common sense. More narrowly and concretely in the scope of this article, there needs to be a direct challenge to those MPs who want to defend the status quo and yet who also wish to be part of the new party and the movement it allies with. It is not a question of whether there will be a split in Labour to build this new party; there has to be a split. It is another precondition.

Taking one example; Constituency Labour Parties and affiliated unions will soon be discussing their resolutions to the 2016 Labour conference. When the Tory government calls on Parliament to vote on Britain's nuclear weapon, Trident, and its renewal, the Tories will hope for Corbyn's isolation among his own Parliamentary party, which will certainly happen. The bulk of current Labour MPs will vote for renewal. Corbyn, representing Labour's new base, will not. The new members will want to deal with Trident in their resolutions to Labour's conference in two ways. First they will want to stop Trident's renewal and second they will want a conference that is allowed to force Labour MPs to carry out their conference decision in Parliament. Some of the delegates will call this resurrection of the old rights of Labour conferences. In reality difficult conference decisions were always sabotaged by Labour's leaders. This time, for the first time ever, because of the new base in Labour, because of Corbyn, that will not happen. Labour MPs who support the sort of country which flourishes nuclear weapons will need to decide where their allegiances lie. And, of course, Labour's right wing know this, and although toppling Corbyn will not solve the problem of Labour's diminishing power to form a future government (it will make it worse) it will make their future leverage with those that can that much more solid.

What can solve Britain's political crisis - in favour of the majority? The Labour Party question is now at the heart of Britain's general political crisis - and energetic socialist initiatives can be a giant step to resolving it. Labour can take a turn backward to the already declining party, already unable to create a majority in society or even form a government. In reality the old Labour Party right wing embraced the reality of medium term dissolution. Or, instead, a grand new party might be built. When Blair brought the Labour Party's historic contradiction to its end, he inadvertently cleared the ground for something new. Lots of little left parties tried their hardest (and some are still trying) to get themselves 'sucked up' into prominence by the vacuum that Blair left behind. It did not work. While, in Lenins' terms Blair had pushed out the 'workers' bit from the 'bourgeois/worker' party, there remained only a social and political hiatus and nothing inevitable about the future politics of a shattered (economically, socially and even geographically) working class movement in Britain.

Today, mass movements, headed by the Peoples Assembly have been built and are knitting together a new voice of hundreds of thousands of the left. And the real vacuum inside the Labour Party's dying organisation (an organisation that had to allow non members to elect its leader) has, finally, 'sucked up' this new left. And, now, a new set of alliances in politics and a new mainstream party heading them, can be built. There is no prospect of resurrection here. Just like the reality of the old Labour conferences, the old fantasies surrounding Labour's history in 1945 - 8, cannot be repeated or even sought out. Labour is not 'returning' to its history. It is breaking from its history or it will fail. A new government, headed by the left, requires linking with the left of the SNP and opening to Scottish independence and a UK federation, allying with the Greens and their base, and drastic reform of Parliament and on, and on. Britain's current political crisis cannot be resolved by Britain's establishment. It can only be resolved by a new mass party, creating new alliances and striking out in the direction of an entirely new and different sort of country.

Parliament's finest hour?

Britain's Prime Minister, David Cameron said some pretty odd things in his speech (2 December). He was one of many MPs to rehearse his Churchilian side in the debate in the House of Commons about whether to send a handful of jets to join in the bombing of ISIS.
'ISIL is a terrorist organisation unlike those we have dealt with before' he listed some of the the murderous depravity committed by ISIS. Then he said
'In the space of a few months, ISIL has taken control of territory that is greater than the size of Britain...It is not a threat on the far side of the world. We will face a Caliphate on the shores of the Mediterranean and bordering a NATO member ... This is not the stuff of fantasy; it is happening in front of us, and we need to face up to it.'

The UN had sanctioned it. International 'partners' were falling over themselves to get stuck in. Britain's immediate local best friends, the French, had begged for UK support.

But, Cameron (tried to) thunder, there is absolutely no commitment to ground troops in Syria!

Why not?

Anti - fascist Hilary Benn, son of the main leader of Labour's left (1979 - 2008) who quips 'I am a Benn and not a Bennite' to the media, decided that ISIS are the new fascists. He listed the honourable history of European Socialist parties against fascism (muddling them up, on at least one occasion, with European rank and file socialists, when he praised the volunteers who joined the International Brigade during Spain's civil war.) He ended by calling on his comrades in the Labour Party not to walk by, but to
'Do our bit in Syria', and was clapped for his pains by both Tory and Labour MPs who want to bomb it. BBC commentators were convulsed by this extraordinary show (?) of bi-partisanship. Parliamentary speeches had risen from third to second rate.

But the mental pictures of Dad's Army evoked by the junior Benn's oratory, putting on their helmets at the end of a LP Constituency meeting and, after a sit-down and a cup of tea, ready to strike the foe, can be put aside. He, just like the Tory MP who was voting 'yes'
'For the refugees and for the security of Twickenham',  insisted on - no ground troops.

Why not?

The ISIS horror, everybody in the debate apparently agreed, would not disappear until a war on the ground was waged. Well, it was part of Britain's 'strategy' the PM told the House, for locals to do this particular 'bit.' There were 70,000 of them rearing to go according to the PM's military advisers. Nobody, not in Syria, nor in the US, nor Russia, nor the French, nobody in the whole world (except Hilary Benn, Labour's Shadow Foreign Secretary) believes this. So what is the point of all the hollow hyperbole and rhetoric designed to allow 6 or 8 British bombers to add their little slice of death to tens of thousands of 'sorties' already crowding the skies of Iraq and Syria?

Starting with ISIS; they have joined that dishonourable band of new Nazis that the British establishment have identified at various points since 1945. ISIS joins the Mau Mau that fought the Brits for Independence in Kenya (1952 - 1960). Nasser, of Egypt was he new Hitler when he nationalised the Suez Canal. Idi Amin, a Ugandan leader set up by the Brits but who turned and was then accused by Britain's media of eating the hearts of his opponents, was another new Hitler. The Palestine Liberation organisation were fascists when they kidnapped aeroplanes and killed Israeli athletes. Saddam Hussain, brought to power by the West also turned into a new Hitler, with his terrible tortures and murders, which, before he was Hitler, he never did. On the other hand, fighting the ISIS fascists today includes the Saudis, who have a whole judicial system dedicated to murder and torture. The new Benn however is absolutely nothing like the old Benn. Dragging out the standard bullshit about the latest version of the fascists who alarm the British establishment as a way of legitimising the latest piece of British warmongering means he should be ashamed of himself.

ISIS may not be the latest incarnation of Hitler's fascists, although they are certainly murderers and torturers. But they have much bigger brothers when it comes to murdering and torturing, some of which Britain's 'intervention' is actually designed to defend.

If, for a moment Cameron or the junior Benn believed their own statements, then they would immediately embrace the Russian call for a grand alliance against the terrorists. A new Caliphate in the Med? A new rise of fascism in the Middle east? Everything, including Assad's immediate future in Syria, would be utterly subordinated to the main threat of the rise of ISIS. A new, united UN led army would be built, with large battalions recruited from surrounding states. The Kurdish Peshmerga fighters would stop getting their supply of western arms through an eyedropper.

Benn minor maybe an over-enthusiastic fool, with his eyes diverted by the prospect of the Labour leadership, but Cameron's military boys (and they are boys) are not. The aim of the West, a goal that is completely tied hand and foot to the Saudis, is the removal of the old Syria which offered its own brand of leadership to the Middle East. Indeed the Saudis helped set up ISIS as a means to weaken Syria. Their frankenstein has got out of hand. They need to kill it off or at least neutralise it, but the West and the Saudi's main problem now are the Russians. That's why the Typhoons and Tornadoes are flying tonight. Britain's political and military leadership are fighting, together with their allies, for influence over the future of Syria and that contest is with Russia.

McDonnel, Labour's shadow Chancellor, astutely commented that Blair had 'risen to the occasion' when he made his great speech in favour of war in Iraq. It was the best he ever gave in Parliament (where he was judged as a mediocre speaker.) Fine words do not always equate to solid truth.

Next: will Labour split?

Syria, a moment of truth - for Britain

Diane Abbot, a British MP and opposition Cabinet member for Overseas Development was interviewed on the leading radio news programme, Today programme (30 November) following a weekend of massive anti-war protest across the UK.

Abbot pointed out that British attitudes towards PM Cameron's plan to join the bombing in Syria, were moving fast towards a resounding 'No'. The 'Independent' newspaper reported a nearly 60% majority against bombing after polling on 28 November.

But the key question for the interviewer was whether or not Labour leader Corbyn would put the 'whip' on his fellow Labour MPs to vote against the Tory government on this issue. Some Labour MPs, including John McDonnell, the shadow Chancellor and a Corbyn supporter, have called for the vote to be 'a matter of conscience.' But what the interviewer really wanted to do was to open up - again - the splits between the bulk of Labour MPs and the Corbyn leadership. That has been the issue of the hour for the last three weeks in the British political media. What she got was a rebuttal of the priorities implied by her question in favour of a different priority. Abbot firmly suggested that what was involved here was a decision that would have immediate and deadly consequences for some and that added more obstacles to any chance of peace. Abbot continued to underline the necessity to stop the war-mongering. If 'whipping' the Labour MPs to vote no meant that Cameron would withdraw his proposal (he requires a big majority after his spectacular failure 2 years ago, when he wanted to bomb somebody else in Syria) then if leader Corbyn decided to whip she felt stopping more war was the priority, that it was the best thing that the UK could do to end the war - and therefore much more important than any other consideration.

Corbyn has emailed Labour's new membership to check their views. His novel approach breaks entirely with the history of British war mongering. In the past, including in the case of two world wars, the British establishment have started their wars by the decision of the smallest possible clique of the 'great men', and they were all men, who believed that they ran the country. Part of their scheming included how best to engineer popular support. War was always too important to leave to the public. The issue today, the moment of truth for Britain's future as a country, is whether that legacy is overturned; whether a new branch of Britain's war and its deadly effects can be stopped by the decision of its people.

Blair started this avalanche with his foul war in Iraq. He and his successors had to agree, after the stench of the lies and the deaths had settled, that the MPs would have a vote on future wars. (It is astonishing that this simple act was never previously considered necessary!) Today, Labour leader Corbyn can take a further step in elementary democracy. His party will overwhelmingly oppose Cameron's bombing. And so should his MPs. This is an important test. Whether Labour represents its base, its supporters (and now the majority of the population) or whether a collection of individual MPs represent their establishment consciences. Firm action, like Abbot's firm words this morning, based on the real priorities, will have the greatest chance of success both against the bombing, and also against the coming internal rebellion by some Labour MPs.

Osborne, the settlement and the 36%ers

In the UK, prior to World War 1, government spending was around 15 % of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Then, after the war it rose to 25 % of GDP and remained at that level, except for a surge at the start of the depression in the 1930s. After World War 2, public spending returned to a steady 35 % of GDP and this level was maintained through the 1950s. By 1960, state expenditure began a steady rise that peaked in the early 1980s at 45 % of GDP. This period coincided with the highest point of trade union strength and organisation ever achieved by the British working class movement.

During the 1980s public spending declined from 45 % of GDP to 35 % by 1989. But then, with the ERM sterling crisis and associated recession, it rose back to 40 % of GDP before reducing again to 36% in 2000. After 2000, public spending increased rapidly, with a peak of 45.5 % of GDP in 2010 - in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008 - followed by reductions to 42.2% (2014-15.)

By way of comparison as a share of national income, German government expenditure was about 15% before World War 1, 25 % during the interwar period, 35% in 1960, 48 % in 1975, and 50% by 1980-81. The German share of government spending rose to well over 50 % during the early 1990s - but Merkel's government's main policy was to drive down public expenditure and Germany now spends 44% of its GDP which is described in leading German economic circles as 'healthy.' The government's share of spending in Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Austria, Hungary, Italy etc., all showed the roughly same gradual increase in spending as occurred in the UK the 1980s but in modern times they have all reached far higher levels of state expenditure relative to GDP than that of the UK.

In contrast to these European nations, in the most recent period, the United States government expenditure averages 37% and Japan, (before last year’s trillion dollar Quantitative Easing) around 33 % of GDP. (As a matter of interest Japan's QE spending now means that Japan's national debt has risen to 300% of their GDP, 180% higher than the national debt of Greece.)

The point of all this is to give a context to current and previous Tory strategic economic goals since WW2. It is no surprise that by 2020 George Osborne mostly hopes to be Prime Minister but he is also certainly expecting (as a result of his current spending review) for government spending to have reduced to 36% of GDP or less by 2020. Starting from where Thatcher left off, and already with a record of cutting government expenditure by 10% in the course of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, George has high hopes of triumph on both counts. With a another round of privatisation of state assets including air traffic control, he expects to be leading the final charge towards lean US government spending levels as the new norm and therefore to reach the, thus far, elusive Tory economic Nirvana.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies (27 November) put it this way:

Total government spending (is) due to fall from 40.9% of national income in the last tax year to 36.5% by the end of the decade. As part of that, spending on non-pension benefits (is) being cut to the lowest level in 30 years relative to national income. Also that 'the 3% cumulative increase in health spending over the next five years is not far off the average annual increase in spending in the last 50 years.'

But George has some problems.

First the entrails of his magic trick in the Spending Review are quickly being exposed. Most people interested now know that Universal Credit - less than 2 years away - is going to make nearly 2 million of the poorest people in the UK a lot poorer. Second, stating last July that the cuts in Tax Credits were essential to Britain's successful economic future Osborne reversed himself in November apparently as a result of listening to those Liberal Lords he previously lambasted and threatened with sorting out. Third, Osborne's assumptions rest on the creaky predictions of the Office of Budget Responsibility's figures for government income over the next 5 years. These people have the worst record for predictions since Chamberlain gave the British 'Peace in our Time.'

The real problem for Osborne is of course that there is an entirely new factor in British politics - and it keeps pushing into the previous settled life of the mainstream. Osborne had to retreat because a mass movement, that has so far successfully stopped a Tory PM from bombing Assad's Syria, that most recently occupied the empty Labour Party and set up its new leader, had started the most holy of public rows and public actions about Osborne's latest attacks on the poor. This is the new and nerve racking reality that would-be PM Osborne faces. That there is now a genuine anti-austerity (and anti war) alliance in society, the latter about to be tested once again, that stretches out from the streets, across parties like the Greens and the SNP and now the Labour Party leadership was not expected. These new alliances face a Tory Party that achieved barely 37% of the vote. The real relationship of social forces in British society are beginning to show themselves, and Britain's ancient, corrupt and overweaning political system is feeling the strain. It cannot contain the new person on the bloc.

This weekend Tory grandees are ringing right wing Labour MPs to set up their own alliance - to counter the anti-war movement and sentiment in the country. And so the emergence of two great coalitions is gathering its momentum as British society begins to decide where it stands and starts to polarise on the great issues of War, Wealth and Power. The Tories, leading a (big) section of the Labour MPs on the most critical questions, supported in the county by 9/10ths of the media, the rich, sections of the middle classes, the Generals and the key officers of state; face a new Labour leadership, a growing movement in the streets led by the Peoples Assembly, a range of the more radical parties, most of the unions and the social campaigns and movements and most of the young, in what will be the only fight worth having for the future of Britain.

This is strong stuff and Osborne's petty ambitions are begining to melt away, as the Scots will have it, 'like snow off a dyke.'

The real origins of ISIS.

A reader has chided this blog for adopting an out of date and simplistic view of ISIS in particular, and of Islamic fundamentalism in general. (See 'War on France', 16 November.) Imperialism's role in the Middle East, according to the reader's view, does not wholly or even mainly explain fundamentalism's emergence and its significant impact on world politics today.

The specific origins of ISIS and the unrolling of its etymology are detailed on many sites (see for example the 'Independent' 14 June 2014.) However, from the point of view of political analyses it is perhaps more tempting to start from the US President's assertion that ISIS emerged, albeit as an unwelcome consequence, from the US led Iraq invasion. But this statement could certainly lead to crude misjudgments. The modern resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism (its origins are in the late 19th century) predates the Iraq invasion and first surfaces, in terms of its global impact, from two events, the Iranian revolution and then the Mujaheddin's successful war, sponsored by the US, against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, 1979 - 89.

The USSR's defeat in Afghanistan was a progenitor of the unraveling of the Soviet Union. And it is common ground among commentators and political historians today to see the collapse of the Soviet Union as the final moment, if not the cause, of the slow motion car-crash of radical Arab nationalism that had been the dominant political form of insurgency against western imperialist powers in the Middle East from 1949 until the end of the 1970s. (The highpoint of Arab socialist-nationalism was best summed up by the brief United Arab Republic 1958 - 61 - a unification of Egypt and Syria until a Syrian coup brought it down.)  After Nasser, both Quaddafi in Libya and the Palestinian fight for nationhood started from the previous Egyptian model. The long term corruption and degeneration of the Libyan regime and the failure of the Palestinian leadership that had been schooled and supported by the USSR, meant that Nasser's 1950s victory against France and Britain was never enlarged into a cross Arabic 'solution', and the Palestinian cause never became, in practice, the prime cause of all the Arab nations. Instead, Arab nationalism, despite the brief unity between Syria and Egypt, remained stillborn.

As a result, from the late 1950s the US, aided and abetted by the British, installed and then continued to consolidate a series of pro-western regimes (including the Shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq as well as in Israel) across the region. So by the time the USSR collapsed there was no longer any Arab based, independent, radical and autonomous, mass political current, to give expression to the aspirations of one of the most downtrodden and badly ruled sections of the world's population.

In the absence of a nationalist/socialist perspective, and following the defeat of the US in Vietnam, the revolt against the domination of imperialist power and its local regimes finally found a way to erupt in Iran under the banner of Islam - as the only available means to express independence from the West. Meanwhile the Mujaheddin, fellow Muslims (albeit for some, members of the wrong sect) in Afghanistan, had started the long journey which would 'bring down' an 'evil empire' in the East.

The final collapse of the USSR stunned the world. The US century was announced. 'History' had apparently ended, and a third world guerrilla army (albeit with access to enormous funds) had defeated one of the monoliths of the 20th century - which - together with the Sunni Islamic victory in Iran, attracted most of the Middle East's attention. It is therefore no surprise that this world shaking event, coupled with the complete failure of the nationalist/socialist project, inspired a new cadre of leaders in the Middle East to return to the fantasy of the glory days of the Islamic Medieval Empire for their inspiration.

All this is relatively familiar ground. But the criticism of the reader remains unanswered. The absence of something, in this case a political current promoting Arab nationalism and socialism, does not explain what is it that comes to fill that absence or why that new force is seemingly so successful.

First though, the calumny promoted by Western 'Arabists', that the whole fundamentalist mobilisation in the Middle East is simply a return to the factional and sectarian wars equivalent to the wars of the Western European Reformation in the 16th and 17th century, should be challenged. The current divisions in Islam politically speaking are nothing to do with deep scholarly argument. In the modern world they are the factional response to a leadership crisis - both at the level of rulers of states and their influence, and at the level of the competition to build mass movements on the streets.

The key to this leadership crisis is how a mass movement can best be built and for what. Al-Qaeda, led by rich sons of a dispossessed western caste, understood their role in terms of the drama of violent political action, inspired by a God like figurehead, against the de facto Western domination of the holy centre of Islam. ISIS has such leaders but has moved beyond the Al-Qaeda model in favour of the creation of a physical and geographical base that is deliberately hostile and belligerent to all surrounding political entities. From this pole ISIS seeks to create an international mass movement with an equally polarising perspective where the world joins the army of the blessed or is annihilated.

In other words Sunni and Shiah hostility may exercise the ruling families in Iran or Saudi Arabia and may be used as a means to an end by ISIS, but ISIS has killed a virtually equal number of Shiah and Sunni Muslims, and many more of each branch of Islam than western Christians or Atheists. It is in no way parallel to the early modern European experience. It is not one sect taking on all the other local sects for dominance of its branch of Islam. It has a global purpose. It is a global phenomena emerging from its regional context. Its purpose is to change the whole world or to die trying.

ISIS has its own Sunni - Wahhabi version of Islam and, for example, uses Saudi books in its schools - but its main philosophy, and recruiting sergeant, is its continuous references to 'the End Times' which fill ISIS propaganda. It is particularly aimed at foreign fighters, who want to travel to the lands where the final battles of the apocalypse will take place. The civil wars raging in those countries today (Iraq and Syria) lend credibility, ISIS claims, to the prophecies in the Quran. ISIS has stoked this apocalyptic fire. For Bin Laden's generation the apocalypse was not the point. Governments in the Middle East two decades ago were more stable, and sectarianism was more subdued. It was better to recruit by calling to arms against corruption and local tyranny than against the unbelievers. Today, apocalyptic recruiting makes much more sense. (See William McCant 'The ISIS Apocalypse ...')

And the 'end of days' has a particular potency in the world of 2015.

At the beginning of the 20th century Lenin described imperialism as 'the highest stage of capitalism.' This idea got tangled up with the notion developed by Marx that social and economic systems continue to dominate when they continue to develop the productive forces. They falter when they reach the end of their potency in that regard. The subsequent combination of these two ideas often resulted in cast iron 'scientific' predictions about the inevitable fall of capitalism. And, in the middle of WW1 or the Great Depression the idea of the imminent collapse of capitalism was a great succour to many - and so the leaders who promoted this idea (like Kautsky) tended to receive a lot of support.

Instead capitalism survived, as did imperialism. And many thinkers and leaders in the West, the East and the South would claim today that capitalism is permanently revolutionising itself, and is therefore constantly capable of reorganising the productive forces of the planet. The process may be brutal. It may be profit driven. But China and other members of the BRIC, with the intendent reduction in absolute global poverty, are the latest demonstration of the constant emergence of novelty in the capitalist system of production.

At the same time the 'old' imperialism has been pushed back, militarily defeated in the case of India or more latterly SE Asia. The West still dominates the world economically, but the West's influence is reducing, dramatically. Western Imperialism's grip on the world (compared with most of the 20th century for example) seems to be progressively slipping.  So; we have the continued advance of the capitalist system at the same time as the continued decline of imperialism, which was supposedly capitalism's highest stage.

From the oppressed of the world's point of view however, this pleasant scenario seems deeply flawed. There is of course a connection between the weakening of Western imperialism and the tremendous growth of several of the major ex-colonial countries in the world. It starts from the fact that millions in the colonial part of the planet spent decades and their blood on an enormous scale to push the imperialists back. And there is no doubt that poverty was reduced when Western nations were no longer able to organise their own interests in these colonies and dependencies at the point of a bayonet. But the response to this weakening of global capitalism's political and military structures was not the renovation and renewal of its technological and productive forces. The ex-colonies could now have their own industrial revolutions. They could allow capitalist economics in; in the shape of the great multi-national companies while sharing their profits and technologies for the first time - a completely impossible state of affairs under the previous dispensation. And what commodity could they sell in return? Labour.

Globalisation is the capitalist system's response to the weakening of western imperialism. Globalisation, and even the new means of communication, are not at all the renovation of capitalism, not the renewal of technique and of all of the other productive forces. They are the expansion of the 'traditional' imperialist market, with its dependence on finance and the banks as the core or dynamo of the system, (as Lenin described) to the biggest ex-colonies. Imperialism has turned out to be the 'highest stage of capitalism' by virtue of ... the partial defeat of the imperialists!

This is the opposite picture to the idealised notion that capitalism has overcome its contradictions. The decline of capitalism's political and military global reach stands in stark contrast to its apparent economic success. And a moment's reflection about the nature of this economic 'success story' is enough to realise that our present dominant economic and social system is less able than ever to resolve the major problems our society faces. (By way of comparison consider the approach of the capitalist world and its leaders in 19th century Britain or in the 20th century US.) From global warming to economic and social polarisation, to the almost total absence of genuinely new technologies which expand the productivity of labour, the decline of invention and the failure of the 'electronic and digital revolution' to transform production, as opposed to the increased exploitation and concentration of labour in the creation of new and inessential or labour monitoring products, the absolute 'investment strike' by capital in the field of new forms of production - all these describe an economic system that is motoring down. And that of course is what is happening, first in the most developed countries.

The decline of imperialism and the gradual degeneration of global capitalism is, of course, reflected politically - most dramatically - in those places which focus the world's contradictions, like the modern Middle East. Western imperialsm failed in Iraq, failed in Afghanistan, failed in its project for a two state solution for the Palestinians, failed to defend the 'Arab Spring', is now bombing two Middle East countries and is likely to have to ally with Russia (and Assad) simply to gain some sort of stasis. Western populations are full of fear and open to any 'solution' to make the Syrian problem 'go away.'

This is the context for the emergence of apocalyptic and reactionary projects. It is the material base for irrational movements that are based on the belief of the coming end of the world. The strength of their appeal lies in the increasing barberism of daily life in countries like Syria or Iraq, now almost completely ruined by the West. Once this is seen as the cockpit, the meaning, the centre of the world, then the 'great conflict' between the saved and their enemies can begin. There are many parallel developments, even in the US, where the traditional Republican right has been transformed by a populist millenarianism which is also stowing away its machine guns and counting down the days - as well as promoting a racist, religious bigot, or two, for Republican President.

Reactionary populist movements are the sign of the breakdown of capitalist and imperialist 'rationality', or 'common sense.' When social systems began to labour and groan in face of the mounting contradictions of their world in past history, large sections of the population comforted themselves with ideas that the world would soon end. Christianity largely served that purpose as the Roman Empire fell. The ragged collapse of Fueudalism across Europe saw the same sublime madness break out of the insecurities of daily life and the toppling of the old world. The English Revolution of the 1640s produced similar ideas and organisations.

Today, when we understand that the world can only be turned to the better by the conscious action of the billions who inhabit it, where, since 1789, humanity has been struggling to find a rational and moral way to run society in the interests of the majority; succeeding here and there, driven back, leaving this question of question still to be resolved; those who have only seen the collapse and apparent failure of such rationalist purpose are still angry and still feel crushed. They also act, in their rage, and in their imagination such a world that they are in cannot possibly continue to exist,

The emergence of organisations like ISIS is a response to the weakning grip of Western Imperialism including its grip on its client regimes. It is also a response to the weakening world where the dominant social and economic system seems to have betrayed the future and polarised humanity. It uses the grandious and empty fantasy of the past to rationalise its own dead-end purposes. It is not simply a product of a 'hammering' by Western imperialists, nor the decline and defeat of the 1917 revolution and its sway across the world. Ultimately its flirtation with death and the final trump is but another torrid reflection of an economy, a politics, a society that has no answers and which seems to be shaking and cracking apart.

Blair's ghost riders in action

Yesterday (17 November) the British parliament saw a dry run in the construction of the new cross-bench war party. Tory leader, Prime Minister Cameron, was supported and praised by a selection of Labour MPs in his call for British bombing in Syria and the need to accept the use of deadly force when fighting domestic terrorists. In the background Westminster was speculating about the date that Cameron would put the Syria vote to Parliament to reverse his 2-year-old defeat. Behind that came the news that the Scottish National Party were putting an anti-Trident motion in 2 weeks while Labour MPs were queuing up to vote it down - despite the Labour leadership's call to abstain.

Labour's PARTY crisis is deepening. A new and separate Labour Party, a Labour Party completely independent of the bulk of its membership, is emerging in Parliament.

The argument over bombing or not bombing Syria has not changed. The killings in Paris have created an emotive edge in the debate in Britain, although terrorist bombings have been crashing through a swath of countries since the end of the summer. Paris makes it more local. But it was only 3 November when Britain's Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Select Committee, chaired by leading Tory, said no to bombing. Yet efforts are now in overdrive among Britain's political leadership to finally tear down and clear away the effects of the stinking remains of Blair and Bush's Middle East adventure in the minds of the British public.

As for 'shooting to kill', Cameron (and his Labour followers in Parliament) were careful to dissolve what is already common law in the UK into the argument about the British state's historic 'shoot to kill' injunction. It is has always been perfectly legal (and moral) for police personnel, or any person, to defend themselves from mortal danger - up to and including causing the death of their attacker. Of course this may be tested later in court but the principle is clear. Equally, if a member of the police force kills someone who is in the act of trying to kill another person, then that is also regarded as legitimate defense. If one of the Paris murderers who were killing people in a concert was shot and killed by the police, this would be entirely legal under British common law. But that is not, and has never been, Britain's 'shoot to kill' policy.

Under the British policy people were shot and killed who were carrying no weapons, which presented no danger to the public at the time of their death, who were not involved at the time in any action that could be identified as dangerous to public safety. These were the opinions and the statements of enquiries and courts not political 'appeasers.' When state authorities are allowed, even encouraged, to blur the key distinctions between a suspicion that someone is plotting harm, and the harmful action itself, as the basis of their response, in this case a deadly response, that is a disaster. Not only have they created a secret state beyond and above the law we all are required to live by, they have created martyrs and heroes, and destroyed families and trust across key communities.

The crisis in Labour's parliamentary party illustrates a modern fact of life. The old political structures are unable to contain the new political forces at work in our society. The traditional parliamentary lines of divide do not represent and therefore do not contain the attitudes and issues that animate increasing numbers of the British public. Labour's parliamentary right wing have started to take their leave. It is surely time for Labour's left leadership to reach out for those practical, day to day alliances, both inside parliament, Holyrood in Scotland and in the Welsh Assembly as well as to the movements outside the collapsing Westminster bubble, to begin the creation of a new, wider formation, with the combined strength of purpose to show a new way for the whole of society.

British media shoot Corbyn from the hip

A great row about killing has broken in the British media and among a large number of Labour MPs. The 'terrorist appeaser' as the Daily Mail called the new leader of the Labour Party said that he was not happy with a state policy of 'shoot to kill'. The demand has now been raised more generally that he must not attend the Stop the War Coalition Christmas fundraiser on December 11 as that might signal that he doesn't want to kill terrorists enough.  The British State's 'shoot to kill' (constantly officially denied) policy has a terrible history. But Jeremy Corbyn has a noble part in it.

The May 1984 Stalker enquiry noted that at least 5 Irish Republicans had been killed by British Special Forces without legal reason. The European Court of Human rights (1982 -92) echoed the lack of legal basis for 14 separate British killings. The Bloody Sunday Report (June 2010) meant that Prime Minister Cameron had to apologise to the Irish people for the exercise of a 'shoot to kill' policy by the British Paras on the streets of Derry. Corbyn fought long and hard for these enquiries, for the families who had lost their members, against the braying, jingoistic media, the legions of Tory and Labour MPs who's reaction to critical questions was to wave their union jacks more vigorously than ever and bellow 'hear hear' to the bellicose pronouncements of a string of pumped up Defence Ministers.

So, it turns out that Britain's 'shoot to kill' policy has nothing to do with the police defending people when someone is shooting at them. A moment's thought makes that clear. Even if the police were inclined to act in that way, it is virtually impossible that they would find themselves in the middle of such an incident. No. It is, in effect, the right of the state to kill people that it thinks might be dangerous to its interests without any evidence that could stand up in a court. (Hopefully when no-one else is looking.) Almost by definition the shoot to kill policy could only apply after a terrorist attack or worse, before a 'suspected' terrorist attack.

Sadly (for the police) the last time they applied the 'shoot to kill' policy in a 'suspected terrorist' situation they shot and killed Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian student at Stockwell Tube Station in July 2005, just after the 7.7. bombings - in front of everybody.

Next: more on Britain's political leaders and 'terrorism.'

War on France

Nabila Ramdani, a French journalist writing in the British ‘Observer’ (15 November) reminded her readers of the French victory in football’s World Cup in the Stade de France in 1998. A team that mainly consisted of working class boys from immigrant families won the cup for France. Ms Ramdani waxes nostalgically over the unity of the country expressed by that moment and now lost.

In 2005 the Paris (and many other French city’s) ‘banlieues’ erupted. But the subjects of the riots were the alienated and disengaged youth. The political, social and psychological investigations and polls that subsequently analysed and then re-analysed these ‘eventements’ disposed of the notion that their object had anything to do with a wish for a universal Caliphate.

Has this changed? When French president Hollande spoke to the nation on the night of the attacks, he told his fellow citizens that France ‘was at war.’ More than one commentator wondered in the acres of worldwide print and internet chatter that have followed Hollande’s speech, exactly who is this war to be fought with? Part of Hollande’s answer came on the Sunday 15 November when French warplanes ‘attacked’ ISIS in Syria. The raid, including 10 fighter jets, was launched simultaneously from the United Arab Emirates and Jordan. Twenty bombs were dropped. Revenge – even from a half mile high – is obviously sweet.

The terrible killings in France (and Hollande’s response) have wide and deep roots and will have similar extensive consequences. But it is better to look first at one significant detail to establish some solid ground before contending with the sea of fevered speculation now roaring across the western world. It was not widely reported in the western media but the internet reaction by ISIS to Germany and Sweden’s initially positive response to the wave of refugees flooding across Europe to escape the results of the Syrian war was entirely negative. ISIS has a global perspective (unlike the idiots in France, the UK and elsewhere who now turn their dream of closed borders into the apparent means required to prevent the influx of terrorists.)

Borrowing from Mao and Latin American revolutionaries ISIS has established its own version of ‘Red Bases’ across Iraq and Syria and is now looking for a population (an agency – in the terms of various Marxist theorists) to float its global boat. The ISIS leadership is well aware that it can already use some of the flotsam and jetsam produced by the friction of racism, economic and political polarization and alienation in the west. When the 5% of France’s population that are from North African heritage are dubbed ‘the Muslim community’ (when barely 50% acknowledge any religion at all) it makes it all the easier to badge the discontent of the most lost souls in the banlieue with a religious emblem. But these are a handful of people in a whole nation. The wells that ISIS wants and expects to draw from are the vast Syrian refugee camps in Turkey, Jordan, and the Lebanon. Here there are least 4 million  – without any of the facilities of modern civilization, teeming with boys and girls without education, without any economic life, with the experience of victimhood by way of war, increasingly without hope and yet full of a most furious energy.
It is the west’s imperial past and its consequent disastrous initiatives in the Middle East today that have produced the critical combination that exploded in France on 13 November (and in Syrian skies two days later, and in Turkey, the Lebanon, and over Egypt and in the Yemen, all in the last two months.) So racist responses in the west, like closing borders, will help turn the ISIS support in besieged communities in the west from the handful to the hundreds perhaps, but much more significantly produce a potential mass base in the Middle East that are able to find no succor in or from Western Europe.

Blair and Bush’s’ war in Iraq opened the gates of hell in the modern Middle East. First they destroyed Iraq. The US and the west’s staunch allies, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, created the initial nucleus of ISIS as a means of capitalising on the Iraqi regime’s weakness.  Of course the Saudis and the UAE still fund it. The west’s utter irresponsibility over Syria’s civil war, first arming and promoting their own opposition to the Assad regime – which opened the door to Sunni fundamentalism and now bombing – has destroyed a second nation and created the prospects of more millions facing the devastation of their country and society.

The old imperial connections to the Middle East in Britain and France led these two nations to simply assume their right to be a part of this US led horror story in the last decade and a half.  But their last-gasp imperial pretensions meant that all they have achieved is to share the blame for the Frankenstein monster that they, together with their leader in the US and the west’s ‘friends’ in the region, have created in the formation, the military successes and the consolidation of ISIS.

These are major events in human history. Millions of lives, perhaps a billion are now affected across three continents, in wars, in huge movements of populations, in the destruction of nations built by the last imperial settlement of the Middle East region.  It is no wonder that the entire mood music of the last 5 years in the west has changed, and now the west is willing to accept peace on its previous enemy’s terms. Why? To deal with its new enemy whose existence and success is a direct consequence of their own actions. Peace at any price in Syria is now the call. Except none of the Syrians are at the peace table: Except the Syrian war will continue even when the last western and Russian bomber leaves: Except there will be no new Marshall Plan to rebuild a country from the acrid dust And the seething discontent of millions whose lives are destroyed by the west’s wars and surrogate wars for oil, for geo-political influence, as a reaction to losing the Far East, because they are having to share Africa and Eastern Europe again, have created the opening of a new variety of barbarism of global proportions.

What can western European countries do? Get their war machines right out of the Middle East, immediately. Accept responsibility for the refugees from war that want to come to Europe. Prepare and promote a new Marshall Plan as part of the reparations required to rebuild a stricken part of the globe, with access premised on democratic conditions. Take on the racists at home. Simple enough. Of course the absence of the political and economic conditions in Western Europe to take these essential steps is yet another warning that the current politics and economics of these societies is sorely, even dangerously wanting.

Next; British views and intentions

Is Corbyn on the British Road to Socialism?

An anonymous member of the British Communist Party has sent polecon.blog an internal briefing titled 'Party Line', which tells members what to do about Corbyn's triumph in winning the leadership of the British Labour Party. Among the 'concrete priorities' it outlines, the briefing lists the promotion of the 'British Road to Socialism' as particularly important. 'The BRS alone' it states, 'sets out the revolutionary perspective in which the new political situation can best be understood and developed further.' It goes on, italicised for extra emphasis, that 'No CP member or supporter should be without extra copies of BRS to sell or to pass on.'

This 1948 CP programme has been re-endorsed by modern the CP as it seems to summarise to them the current left turn of the Labour Party and the wider movement in Britain against austerity - wherein such a predicted and worked-for left turn by the Labour Party was always the key to a socialist breakthrough under British conditions. The original BRS was of course based on a snapshot of the political circumstances in Britain in 1948 under the Attlee regime - extended as far as the limited imagination of the British Communist Party leaders (endorsed by their Soviet maestros) could reach. What exists now, they argued, is the actual and only road to British socialism, and all that was required to consolidate this victory would be more of the same!

The BRS has mesmerised parts of the British left for years, particularly inside the trade union movement of the 1960s, 70s and 80s (albeit while the Communist Party itself shrank.) Winning an apparently left leadership of the 'official movement' seemed to come close and then to fade away again over decades of struggle. But since the 1990s and the accent of the Blairites, as well as the partial collapse of traditional trade union movement, the BRS, as a practical plan to achieve socialism has seemed less and less relevant. Now, nearly 70 years after its origin, has Corbyn's victory revivified the relevance of the old CP programme?

Or is it a case of history repeating itself, 'first as tragedy, second as farce?' What has really happened since WW2 that might give some accurate guidance how, in an advanced capitalist country, political root and branch change in favour of the majority, might be secured? Has the sudden left turn in the Labour leadership opened once again 'the British Road to Socialism'? Before coming to any definitive conclusion about what the recent convulsions within the Labour leadership really mean, surely it is worth noticing some of the actual struggles, movements and even victories in the last decades since the BRS was written, that have occurred and that might offer a guide, even to Britain, on how to reach for a new society based on meeting the needs and wishes of the majority.

The greatest event in the world since 1945, perhaps ever in recorded history, is the victory of the Chinese revolution and the consequent movement in a thirty year span, of one sixth of the world's population out of abject poverty. This event alone effects everything in the modern world. But what are its underlying and crucial mechanics? And do they have any bearing on the possibility of a socialist future in general and especially in the advanced western countries?

First off the claims made about the merits of globalisation or the spread of UN programmes against poverty as the reasons for China's (or India's) economic development need to be unceremoniously junked. Russia, then the Soviet Union, was the first to break the ties and restrictions of western imperialism in the modern era. China broke the back of Japanese imperialism and fought off the power of the US in huge battles in Korea. The decline of the West, first with Cuba, then Vietnam and now with Iraq, North Africa, Syria, Iran and Afghanistan and the global economic crises of the 1970s and today have allowed an historically unprecedented space to open up for what were previously the world's biggest colonies. The Chinese leadership has used this opening to let its domestic market rip, first on the land - accompanied by the most stringent controls over foreign capital - and used a vast proportion of the enormous capital accumulated to raise living standards. It has created its own 'industrial revolution'. 100 years ago China (and India) would have been bombed and gassed into submission. Globalisation is a western response to the weakening of their traditional imperialist power and grip.

The point for the West in this remarkable shift of wealth and power is the increasing dependence  of western capitalism on its military and its finance sector for its continued global dominance, while it tries to manage the inherent weakness of its national capital accumulation from the industrial (now cut free from national taxation) and social sectors. Despite the continued existence of western dominated imperialism across large sectors of the globe, its decline in the second half of the 20th century, accelerated since 2000, means that Western Europe is weaker, globally speaking, than it has been at any time since the 15th century defeat of Moorish Spain. The US, similarly has started its long decline.

It is therefore not the 2008 based deficit that requires the British rulers to attack the historic gains of working class people in their unions, in their health, in their social security and standards of living. Blair sold hospitals before the 2008 crash. He kept Thatcher's union laws. It is simply that British and large parts of European capitalism, do not work in the old way, without their historic capacity to loot the world. To survive they must loot their own people. They can no longer export their domestic unemployment and social upheaval. And that is the fundamental fact that introduces the novel volatility in politics and the crisis of the political system - EU wide. It is the crisis in the way that people are ruled in Europe - in the context of the new international dispensation.

The Chinese Communist Party's 'experiment' with the market, launched not as idiotic apologists say, by globalisation and the benefits of the free international movement of capital, (never allowed by the regime) but by Chinese land reform, has had the effect of turning the Chinese bureaucracy and society inside out. China is now in the political grip of a vast, corrupt state-capitalist caste, crystallised by the communist party and the military leadership. But the effect on the rest of the world on the opening of a window of development in China (and India), especially on the politics of Europe, has been dramatic.

Western social democracy is the main loser in political terms. It has been squeezed almost to death. Social democracy has played less and less of a role in the bitter fights between capital and labour in the last two or three decades in the West because it has no role in organising the concessions to be garnered from what was the table of the western imperialists. In the absence of anything else it has tried, in societies like Britain, to offer its ability to manage the dismantling of previous health, welfare and social security provisions in a way most designed to avoid conflict. Blair 'renewed' the Labour Party in the UK on such a premise. Today the British Tories have dubbed themselves as 'the working peoples' party.' This is more than contempt. They now believe that they can dismantle Britain's welfare state very well, and without serious resistance, and therefore even better than a crisis ridden Labour Party.

The last chance for serious battle for social reform in Britain was the discovery of North Sea oil; a resource that was utterly squandered by the UK's political leaders, the oil giants, daft levels of military expenditure and the beginnings of the tumultuous rise of the City of London. So the new left in Britain, offered the keys to the leadership of a rocky Labour Party have stormed and conquered what has become, in effect, a political shell. Carrying on in some version of the old ways, even in with a BRS perspective based on Attlee's achievement nearly 70 years ago, is impossible. It will hit the buffers in the very short term. From the outset a new systemic solution to the way we live has to be built in the minds and in the actions of millions, albeit for now using the materials that actually exist and the political platforms that have been achieved. But only an utterly transformed Labour Party, built on and through an entirely recomposed, independent, self-active working and middle class, could replace the terminal social democratic project in the west.

What then can be learnt from some of the great movements and battles of the last decades that might offer a direction for such a cause?

Most immediately the struggle of the Greek people underlines the limits of the social democratic perspective for reform. The Syriza leadership manoeuvred with three elements in the campaign they fought to stop austerity in Greece. First was Greece's traditional masters. They rejected any possibility of any alliance with any sector of this decrepit oligarchy. Second was the Troika and the wider EU which Syriza leaders believed could be split both by the rationality of their arguments and by a mass movement's pressure. Third was the Solidarity Movement in Greece' which the front rank Syriza leaders had not come from but which was the engine room of Syriza's electoral success and which had created a large sector of the Greek population that were prepared to fight. It is traditional social democratic politics to seek out sectors of the ruling classes who will confirm the need for reform, albeit within the system (sometimes as its only defence.) In the event no section of Europe's rulers were prepared to support Syriza. Its social democratic strategy had failed.

In the event, it is the Greek people's Solidarity Movement that has kept their struggle alive (providing practical support, always demanding the state take its responsibilities while creating an image of a different sort of society.) This is the single biggest factor in the failure of Golden Dawn to capitalise on Syriza's retreat and, most recently, from the staggering impact of the refugee crisis. It is not an exaggeration to see this movement as the recreation of an independent working class social movement from the early seeds of the occupation of the squares. In the absence of reform in Europe, and the absence of any immediate insurgent possibility, the creation of a new form of social resistance can serve to help bridge the gap between this society and the next.

The experience in Latin America of the left's recovery has centred politically on the emergence of key leaders who have a direct relationship with the mobilised plebeian sectors of the population, often centred among the deeply oppressed indigenous cultures. This stems in part from the utter despair of the population for the standing political institutions and parties to achieve significant change. While in the West such views are less extreme, following the historical experience of gains previously made from these sources, this more organic and 'present' relationship between political leadership and an alienated population can imply a whole new meaning for radical politics and politicians, even in the West.

Political leaders have to be centred in the actual movements and concerns of those they seek to represent. They need to deliberately and publicly shun the day to day trappings of those political institutions and formalities that are despised by the public. They have to challenge, root and branch, the unfair character of the political institutions; unfair because they do not challenge wealth and power; unfair because millions of poorer peoples' votes are useless or lost. They must insist that their political lives will produce no privileges. Around such formulae a new political leadership can emerge, even in the parliamentary arena as well as in the social movements.

Alliances, blocs and agreements between left, green and nationalist currents have proved successful in the reconstruction of left political organisation following the collapse of social democracy and, in some cases the demise of large communist currents and parties, right across the globe. British Labourism (not helped by the outlook of the BRS) has often exhibited a deeply sectarian view of how politically to assemble the most progressive sectors of the population and their organisations. While the principle of refusing to mix working class politics with classically ruling class political organisations, particularly in government (a deadly mistake made by a range of popular front governments in the Europe of the 1930s) the concrete analysis of the concrete situation is always necessary to examine the character of different formations which present themselves as vehicles for the advancement of the people as a whole and often evokes the need to do constructive politics with them - in the interests of the whole of the subordinate social classes. From that point of view in will make the British Labour Party's disaster in Scotland worse unless the Corbyn leadership reverses the sectarian and triumphalist approach to the SNP that it has inherited from Blair and his children.  Similarly new political alliances need to be established with all of the UK parties that want to fight austerity, oppose Trident and seek reform of Britain's political system.

These and other key lessons are being practically lived out across the world as this is being written, by people who are battling for a new world and who are shaping and reshaping the means to get there. Corbyn's Labour Party is an immense achievement and produces hope across millions, not just in Britain. It must now learn the world's lessons; quickly.

Does Corbyn's Labour Party have a future?

Corbyn's Labour has more of a future than one run by the ex-Blairites, that is for sure. But thinking seriously about this question, 'what is Labour's future?'; involves more than asserting the will to make Corbyn's leadership work; more than the rehearsal of half-baked nostrums and theories from the past, and much more than manoeuvres, even of the most democratic kind, inside Labour itself.

Ultimately, the evolution of the Labour Party is rooted in the general, unfolding political crisis in British society.

British political institutions are more fragile today than at any time since the women's and the working class's franchise was won. The House of Commons is virtually powerless, corrupt and almost completely unrepresentative of the British population as a whole. (The current Tory government 'won' under 25% of voters.) The House of Lords is an international joke. Scotland is on the brink of separation. Against this background it is little wonder that Britain's vapid monarchy appears in better shape that the rest of its governance.

The Labour Party's development is part of this story. The brilliant Blair cost Labour 4 million votes in 2010 and 2015. His warmongering and flirtation with the City destroyed the credibility of Labour in large working class areas of Britain, most especially in Scotland. His Chancellor's PFI schemes cost the NHS £2 billion this year. It goes on and on ... But when a million marched against the Iraq war, and millions more through the years of Blair's reign, they managed to turn Blair out eventually, but they could not reform or revise the replacement leadership of his party. The Labour Party institution was still too solid and too safeguarded, as much by the affiliated unions as by anybody else, to allow such an upheaval.

And then things got a lot worse for Labour. In 2015 (and much earlier) they also lost Scotland, the base of their origins, their 'permanent' stronghold. This catastrophe questioned the meaning of the Labour Party in Britain's political system. Who did it represent? What was its purpose? And this is the structural weakness that meant a relatively small, active political current, that had emerged across society in the anti-austerity battle, was given access to the internal machinery of Labour in an act of desperation by the defeated and exhausted leadership of the 2015 election. Then this current of a couple of million people proceeded to topple the remaining Blairite epigones and installed Corbyn who has had no influence or power inside the Parliamentary Labour Party since he began as an MP in the 1970s. Without the anti-austerity and anti-war movement building up in the UK there was no possibility of change. But it was the dramatic vulnerability of the Labour Party, its weakness and fragility, its lack of purpose, of political energy, its inability to politically neutralise the movement given the front door key, the Party's would-be leaders left instead to watch in paralysed horror as it stormed the citadel, that decided its present fate.

Corbyn wants to build a new, reformed Labour Party from the political current that voted for him and that supports his political direction. For the moment the anti Corbyn bloc in Labour (the overwhelming majority of its MPs) cannot form an alternative party to Labour without ruining their own careers. But they are aware that they urgently need their own base to try to 'rescue' what remains of an alternative apparatus of government now in the hands of anti-capitalist mad men and women. They will try increasingly to use the 'views of the electorate' as their leverage against Corbyn. Coming elections (and Corbyn's failure in them) are seen as providing the ammunition for a future leadership coup. The 'electorate' will be systematically counterposed to Corbyn' Party mandate.

At this stage all that is completely certain is that there is no prospect of the Corbyn leadership winning over the Parliamentary Labour Party. Corbyn is not an organic development out of the last fifty years of the Party's history. There has been no long term, concerted, organised campaign inside Labour to reach this point (unlike the movement behind Benn in the 1980s.) There is no sizable group of MPs organised to promote a Corbyn future. His achievement is an accident, impelled by the combination of the weakness of the Party and the independent, emergent mass movement against austerity and war.

This means that Labour's crisis will deepen and is far from being resolved. Can the Labour Party, or at least some section of it, or as part of some wider alliance, emerge as a serious political, social and accountable representative of the new working class in all of its complexities? With a new programme for a new society built for the many, not the few? Or will the coming battle inside Labour mark its end; its decline into one of the the 'hollowed out' social democratic shadows apparent in much of modern Europe? We are now at the very beginning of the testing out of these questions.

In the meantime? In the meantime we need an independent anti-austerity, anti-war mass movement more than ever. We need Labour to start challenging the completely unrepresentative voting system and we need to help move the 75% into action and get the Tories out.

21 Labour Muppets and counting

George Osborne's little game, his charter for a balanced budget, attracted the abstention of 21 Labour MPs. This was despite the party leadership's decision to vote against the charter. The vote followed a ridiculously short 4 hour debate in the House of Commons (October 14.)

The Tory leadership had some fun with Labour Chancellor' John McDonnel's volte-face. (He had previously announced Labour's intention to vote for Osborne's charter.) But the main issue for the Tory leadership (and the quivering Generals running the armed forces) was how the figure of 21 Labour rebels would translate in the infinitely more crucial vote coming soon, for one sided war in Syria.

What goes for military thought in Britain is moving rapidly towards the view that the Russian intervention marks at least the start of the end game in Syria. Certainly their 32 planes based in the new Latakia 'Russian Zone' have made more 'sorties' in weeks than the US did over Syria last year. On Monday 12 October alone, the Russians flew 55 missions. And it seems that Assad's soldiers have now pushed ISIL and others out of the suburbs of Damascus. (It was the potential collapse of Damascus that provoked the Russian action.)

Nobody believes, which certainly includes the Russians, that ISIL can be destroyed in the short term. But everybody knows, including the Tory high command, that the new 'Great Powers' will need to agree a 'solution' soon in Syria. This is simply the growing acceptance on all sides that none of them can win their preferred outcome. Certainly Russia is acting militarily like the US in Vietnam, not to mention Western Bomber Command in WW2, which used its bombing offensive as a counterweight to Russian land advances in Eastern Europe, designed to create the maximum leverage at the victory talks. Sometimes it works. Sometimes, when you have a people and leadership like the Vietnamese had, it doesn't.

In any case, Britain's military marker is absent in the Syrian skies. That has to be remedied. Because the Tories have a slim majority (and some wobblers in the camp over Britain's past role in Middle Eastern wars) they need Labour's war faction to deliver a serious looking majority - so Britain can join the big boys club. The SNP MPs and the Green MP will, as with Osborne's charter, vote no to Britain adding their absolutely crucial bomb or two to the rain of death currently exploding its way across the Syrian landscape.

When these Labour warriors get to do their deranged and filthy business, they should be expelled from the Party.

The wars in Syria and Iraq produce a storm of blood.

Yesterday, 10 October, two explosions at a peace rally in the Turkish capital Ankara have killed at least 95 people and injured 245, according to officials. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has announced three days of national mourning, and said there was evidence that two suicide bombers had carried out the attacks. The government claims that these bombers were either from the Kurdish PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) or from ISIS (Islamic State).

At first sight these claims appear unlikely. The Turkish government have, up to now, focused their military efforts in Northern Syria and Iraq against ISIS's most effective enemy, the Kurdish PKK. Indeed, the Turkish army carried out air strikes on PKK targets in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq, 10 October. The Turkish military claim to have destroyed PKK shelters and gun positions during its raids in the Metina and Zap areas of northern Iraq. Fourteen PKK fighters were killed Saturday in air strikes in the Lice area of southeast Turkey, the army said. Gaining such help from Turkey's military, it is almost impossible to imagine that ISIS are to blame for the Ankara bombs. They know ISIS bombs would turn the Turkish population further against the government's current military incusions against the PKK, leaving the Kurds more free to develop their so far by far the most effective fighting forces against ISIS.

The bombs went off just after 10 am, two hours before the peace demonstration (that was calling for the government to stop attacking the PKK) was due to start. The bombs were let off in a large contingent of the pro-Kurdish HDP party (Peoples Democratic Party), that was assembling separately from the main march. The HDP said in a statement that it therefore believes its members were the main target of the bombings. The circumstances of the Ankara demonstration makes the government's claim that PKK militants might have set off the bombs equally implausible. Why should they attack the party which, like them, calls for peace between Turkey and the PKK?

It is therefore little surprise that the HDP leader Selahettin Demirtas has blamed 'the state' for the attack and has cancelled all election rallies in the coming, repeated Turkish General Election. Mr Demirtas angrily condemned the government as 'murderers' and said it had blood on its hands.

The pro-Kurdish HDP party has not blamed 'the state' wildly.  They are making a reference to the so-called 'deep state' often talked about across Turkey: a poisonous mix of right wing nationalist forces either colluding with or supporting the government in power.

Nato's vital ally in the Middle East is now facing a crisis: deep political polarisation at the coming round 2 election, the bubble of economic success on the brink of bursting, publicly initiating the resumption of ferocious violence against the PKK, the background threat of ISIS, and two million Syrian refugees and counting.

The terrible Ankara incidents demonstrate the expanding whirlpool of death and degradation swirling round the wars in Syria and Iraq. Both of these countries have been bombed by 12 or more nations. Iraq was occupied to create peace and democracy after some Saudi militants destroyed the World Trade Centre and now, nearly 13 years later, barely exists. The other, Syria, also faces dismemberment. The most recent plan by the Turkish government, to persuade the US to organise a 'no fly zone' in an area of north western Syria, to be policed on the ground by the Turks (and do doubt duly Incorporated) has been shelved after Russia's urgent intervention to save the Syrian Regime from the imminent collapse of Damascus and which has now led to the Russian domination of Syrian skies.

The Turks are bombing the Kurds. The US are bombing ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, have joined in (in Syria.) Britain, France, the Netherlands and Belgium have also joined in (Iraq.)  Canada has had a go (Syria.) And Australia too. The Assad Government bombs everybody except his own strongholds in Syria and now the Russians are bombing everybody in Syria opposed to the Assad regime as well - and warning off Turkey regarding prospective 'no fly zones' under Turkish suzerainty in the north.

This rain of fire (spectacularly ineffective in military terms against mobile forces without serious infrastructure on the ground) has produced 4 million refugees and 10 million without homes (with little impact on ISIS, except as a recruiting sergeant.) It stems, in its entirety, from the US led 'interventions' into Iraq, and then the actions of the West and Turkey 'seizing the opportunities' posed by the Syrian civil conflict. Everybody understands that the Syrian aspect of the war will only be resolved now that Russia has stepped directly into the fray, by an agreement between the main powers to get out of Syria, force Assad to negotiate and force and bribe everyone else to compromise with Assad. And ISIS? ISIS can only be beaten by an alliance of all of the peoples who inhabit the Middle East, untainted with the region's most recent imperialist masters. They will never be defeated by the West.

The horrible carnage in Ankara is a reminder to all that when a government exports violence it will need to use violence, including 'at home' to maintain that policy. The maiming and death of Turkey's marchers for peace is a direct consequence of the decision of Turkey's leaders to grap 'their opportunity' in the turmoil of the Middle east's widening war.