What is the UK election for?

In the end-of-public-school term jollies of Britain's inaptly named 'House of Commons', all three main parties signed up to no VAT increases, no National Insurance increases - and this all started with last month's main party agreement to cut £30 billion off government expenditure in the first three years of the new Parliament - whoever wins. (The SNP, for what it is worth, did not join the 'let's cut £30 bill' herd.)

Westminster parties therefore agree about the main tax and the main cuts picture after the election (given a few, marginal and minor scraps about mansion taxes and the rest.) And here is the second bit. This part also has to be 'locked in' by the main Westminister parties otherwise a further £30 billion cut is totally unobtainable. Here is how the BBC reported the Kings Fund's view of the future of the NHS. (26 March)


'Professor John Appleby, chief economist at the King's Fund, which specialises in health care policy, said: "The next government will inherit a health service that has run out of money and is operating at the very edge of its limits.
"There is now a real risk that patient care will deteriorate as service and financial pressures become overwhelming."
He said in terms of how standards were slipping - not how low they had reached - the situation was the worst it had been since the "early 1990s".
The report noted much of the deterioration has happened in the second-half of the Parliament with many measures of performance being maintained in the first few years.
It said the next government had to address the funding situation, adding the extra £8bn a year NHS England says is needed by 2020, was the "minimum" that would be required.'

There was no competition in the dieing days of Parliament about the desperate need for funding increases to meet this crisis in the nation's health service (and that is despite Labour choosing the NHS as its main flag for the election.)

The Institute of Fiscal Affairs (26 March) also produced a report on education spending.

Their report said

'Between 2010–11 and 2014–15, there has been a 0.6% real-terms increase in current spending per pupil, though capital spending has been cut by over one third in real-terms. Over the next parliament, current spending on schools could be squeezed harder. Although the commitments made by the three main UK parties are subtly different, they could all imply real spending per pupil falling by 7% or more between 2014–15 and 2019–20.'

And if increased staff wages and pensions commitments were not covered then the cut could be more like 12% per pupil.

Again, the 'subtle differences' between the parties do not deal with the basic facts. Both education and health will be brutally cut back per head of the population whichever main Westminster party gains control.

We could go on. But the question surely arises; What are we voting for? Simple. We vote for any candidate that genuinely opposes austerity and who does not scapegoat any part of the 99%. Anything else is truly a wasted vote. Note to self: we must make sure in the future that we scrap and reorganise a decaying and laughable political system that cannot provide for a debate just before an election about the need to defend and grow our key services; where none of the main Westminster parties feel able to challenge austerity.

A Labour of Love?

Two recent sets of comments have shone some more light on Labour's troubles with the May 7 General Election, especially about its understanding of Britain's political crisis. Milliband made a statement ruling out a coalition with the SNP.
'There will be no SNP ministers in my Government' he tried to thunder. (March 16.)

This was followed later in the evening by Newsnight, the BBC current affairs programme, that held an interview with Jim Murphy, the Scottish Labour Party's guardian angel, and which was designed to fill in Labour's thinking about the SNP. Kirsty Wark, the interviewer, tried to drill into what had been left unsaid by Labour regarding the SNP after May 7. In this she was just following the media pack. More interesting was Murphy's key message to her which he felt needed to be repeated. Of course Labour did not require a coalition with the SNP. It clearly gave him great pleasure to tell us all that in the deeply unlikely event that Labour did not win an outright majority, then surely the SNP would anyway want to vote for all the progressive measures that Labour had lined up and keep Labour in government. If they did not, he murmured silkily, they would have to take the consequences in Scotland of bringing down a Labour government at Westminster and letting in the Tories.

You can imagine the Labour Party 'thinkers' and 'political advisors' sniggering in delight at their coup. The Tories' fox shot. The SNP between a rock and a hard place. At least Milliband had the grace to wear his permanently shell-shocked expression when delivering his first half of the new policy. Poor Jim was unable, as he purred his new inspiration to a by now rather sickened 'Kirsty', to avoid looking like the cat who had got at the cream.

The day before, another Labour leader who has obviously thought harder than some of his colleagues on these matters was reported in the media:

'During a debate about digital democracy, he was asked whether Labour might in go the same way as social democratic parties in Greece and Spain which have been outflanked by radical anti-austerity movements such as Syriza and Podemos.
Asked whether the Labour Party might "not exist" within ten years, Mr Cruddas, a renowned free-thinker, replied':
“Yes, yes.”
“There is no safe ground for any orthodox parties and the stakes could be high potentially. They could just disintegrate in real time. And I include in that the party that I represent." (Daily Telegraph 15 March 2015.)

Jon Cruddas was made the Labour Party policy coordinator in the shadow cabinet in 2012. In a negative reaction to the Blair premiership he received the highest number of votes in the first round of the 2007 Labour Party Deputy leadership election. He has clearly been studyng the new realities of British political life. His latest thoughts seem at least to grasp something of the scale of Labour's crisis.

In contrast, Milliband and Murphy's reactions to the SNP feel like a desperate and utterly sectarian attempt to hang on to Labour's past. But now it is any old sort of past that will do. The last time the SNP were 'trapped' into support by a minority Labour Government was in the days of Jim Callaghan. And the lesson to be learned?  When that 'agreement' with Labour broke down, what happened next? -  demanded a flushed Jim Murphy on Newsnight. Why, the SNP action brought in Thatcher! Well; now we have got that clear let's all hope that sort of thing doesn't happen again! It is the SNP that is responsible for Tory success. In Jim Murphy's mind, Thatcher's victory had nothing to do with the combined failures of Wilson, Callaghan and the bulk of the trade union leadership to challenge Britain's ancient status quo with a real alternative. It was the knavish, parliamentary tricks of the SNP to blame. And, thank goodness for the rest of us as we struggled through 10 years of Thatcherism, that at least the SNP were 'exposed.' This is coming from top leaders of the Labour Party. You could not make it up.

Looked at from both the point of view of the interests of the vast majority of the British people AND from the interests of the Labour Party, of course Labour should form a coalition government with the SNP if there is no majority on May 8. A new alliance with the present leadership of the Scottish people against austerity would have tremendous force in England and in Wales as well as Scotland. The combination of the social forces on the ground around such a political alliance would have the real potential to isolate the right in Britain and could start the process of revivifying the whole left. This is not a claim that the leadership of the Labour Party or the SNP would be able to deliver and anti-austerity policy or even could lead the fight for one. But mass action and a mass movement would feel energised, legitimated and able to demand anti-austerity measures from the government.

It is painfully obvious that if the Labour Party does not regroup, both politically and organisationally around anti-austerity, it has no independent purpose or future. It becomes part, a more and more minor part, of the politics of austerity. That, Jon Cruddas is right, is what happened in Greece and will happen in Spain. And, we might add, is leading to the political disaster that is coming in France.

The Last Charge of the Labour Left Brigade?

'Labour List' is an on-line, pro Labour magazine, sponsored by UNITE, UNISON, the CWU and the GMB unions, and puts it this way:

'In short – Ashcroft has polled almost half of Scotland’s seats now and the picture is the same everywhere – Labour is facing a wipeout.

What does it all mean?

Essentially, Ashcroft’s poll appears to confirm the prevailing wisdom – that Labour is making gains in England, but those are offset by losses in Scotland. A hung parliament is coming. As for who comes out on top – Ashcroft himself says “this is the battle: can Labour fight back against the SNP faster than the Conservatives can fight back against Labour?”. The Tories aren’t on course for a majority according to this polling. But Labour’s collapse in Scotland is earth shattering, and doesn’t appear to be reversed so far under Murphy’s leadership.' (Mark Ferguson, 4 March)

Ashcroft is the Tory millionaire Lord who runs a constituency based polling system. His predictions have proved accurate in the past.

Ashcroft's polls also show that the largest single proportion of Scotland's traditional Labour voters, 39%, actively want a SNP / Labour coalition in Westminster after May 7. They are not voting in memory of the heady days of the referendum vote. They have a positive purpose in voting SNP in the Westminster elections. They do not trust Labour's leaders or policies. They support the SNP's anti-austerity message. They want organised pressure from the left on a Labour government.

Meanwhile the other, more traditional, more England based Labour Left are continuing to try and implement their own 'strategy'. At least recognising the feebleness of the Party's current left in Parliament (only 5 Labour MPs voted against the Tory motion to guarantee £30 billion of cuts in the first three years of the next Parliament) UNITE and some other anti-Blairite unions, have been digging away in tens of Constituencies to get new left candidates for Labour. Unofficial estimates vary but claims of over 50 new left wing MPs are predicted among the most optimistic circles as a result of this push spearheaded by the unions. This particular left is bitterly hostile to the SNP surge in Scotland.

Two thoughts come to mind:

First, which of these two 'strategies' has the greater chance of pushing Westminster in an anti-war, anti-austerity direction after May 7? (For surely the point of all this organising is to benefit the mass of the population in the UK, not to get a particular arrangement of party seats?) It is undoubtedly a 'good thing' to get as many left thinking Labour MPs as possible. They cannot be less influential than the current crop. But will the left's influence on key policy matters be any less or more if the SNP sweep Scotland? Is the English, and trade union left Labour strategy any sort of safeguard against austerity (and war) if their current Labour party line prevails? How would the the left Labour MPs vote on Labour's promised cuts? On the other hand the SNP leadership state they will end austerity, borrow £180 billion more over the next Parliament, and vote on proper funding for the English NHS - as the decision would effect Scotland. The SNP is not Syriza or Podemos, but (sadly) they are significantly to the left of the Labour leadership. They are rooted in a country that, in its majority, is significantly to the left of the Labour leadership, so they have to be.

Second, the Labour leadership have too been priming their constituencies. In a previous blog (the Guardian noted (23 June 2014) that 54% of Labour's candidates in their 90 designated marginal constituencies were political researchers by trade. 'The British Parliament has been Bought', March 3) so we already have an indication that Millbank has been hard at work. And if they have put nearly 50 of their placemen and women into the marginals, then we might imagine how many are in safer seats. The Labour leadership have been careful to build their substantial party majority in Parliament. And in Parliament you follow the party line. But if Labour is forced to make concessions to the left to form a government, then that would surely strengthen Labour's internal left.

Perhaps the real fear among sections of what remains of Labour's left wing is more fundamental. Perhaps they realise that the traditional Labour Party is coming to an end. That its slow demise is as much part of Britain's political crisis as the degeneration of Parliament, the collapse in support for the mass parties, the pressure for referendums, now on the EU, the rise of minority parties etc, etc.  The next election could be a qualitative point in the Labour Party's lack of a future. For once Labour can no longer form a government, its political attraction dissolves for the new layers and classes that have come to occupy its leadership positions. If the Tories lose then Cameron will fall and UKIP influences will strengthen, but the Tories will survive. They are a significant class party. In the past Labour could go through long periods of minority status in Parliament. Their survival and regroupment succeeded because the class base that they rested on survived and regrouped. No more. The Labour machine has moved on. The UK working class are also changing. The gap has never been wider.

Perhaps those new Labour left MPs will have a real political job to do in the next Parliament. To help start forming a real political coalition against austerity and war.

The 'gooder' Euro? Or the 'gooder' Europe

There was an energising, enlightening and sophisticated debate in Parliament on March 9. It was right on the button as far addressing some key issues of wealth and power in the world and how the mass of the people should and could deal with them.

The debate was held in Room 18. It was a Parliamentary Briefing convened by Jon Cruddas MP on behalf of the Greek Solidarity Campaign with the support of the Transport Salaried Staff Association to promote British support for a European conference on debt. The Greek alternate finance minister spoke, aided and abetted by Ann Pettifor and Paul Mason. Euclid Tsakalotos, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and responsible for the international economic relations of Syriza, explained in detail and in a frank and riveting way, the nature of the talks with the EU and the political basis of Syriza's position on continued membership of the Euro. His view on the Euro was challenged by another deeply analytical and historically referenced perspective, offered by Anne Pettifor. It soon became clear that besides the MPs and Peers present and the representatives of four different Greek media outlets there were some of Britain's leading economists among us too. The call for a European conference on debt seemed to have virtually unanimous support among those who spoke (although one Tory MP left without comment.) And all who did speak understood the enormity of the stakes in the Greek's government's struggle with the leading institutions of the Eurozone.

The minister shared the outlook of his senior, Yanis Varoufakis. (See Blog 'Yanis Varoufakis Erratic Marxist ...' 3 March.) He imagined the evolution, through struggle, based on the emerging radicalisation and mass mobilisations, in Spain, in Ireland and the early chances of new governments in those countries, the pressure on Italy and on Hollande in France, all this and the Europe wide realisation that there had to be a new economic dispensation in the Eurozone, creating 'the good Euro.' He argued eloquently that the disintegration of the Euro, perhaps starting from a Greek exit, would lead to the collapse of Europe among the world's new power blocks, and the victory of the radical right in several European countries. Endless austerity could only be managed by authoritarian regimes.

Ann Pettifor, while remaining a strong supporter of the Greek government, argued that history was replete with the destruction and dissolution of currency unions, without attendant social catastrophes, as much as any other reason, because they were normally set up under unjust and imbalanced terms between different nations, and their internal contradictions, like with those within the Eurozone, became unbearable. As this future was unavoidable, preparation for exit was essential. The 'good' Euro was a contradiction in terms. The currency had been set up in order to guarantee the superiority of 'lender' nations apropos 'debtor' nations, with the prospect of eternal austerity. A 'good' Euro would need to mean the that all Eurozone nations shared all Eurozone debt. That was precisely the opposite intention of the strongest European nations and their associated Euro institutions. The Eurozone for the weaker countries was the guarantee of endless austerity.

These different perspectives were laid out in an intense and deeply respectful, open and fruitful way. It was understood that the Greek people's interests were front and centre of Europe's battle with austerity. As those attending filed away from the room into the vast, crumbling halls of Westminster it felt like they were entering an alien and empty world. The mother of Parliaments seemed a sad, vacuous place. Real life and real politics was happening somewhere else.

Euclid Tsakalotos had emphasised the crucial victory of time that the new Greek government had won (spelling out the appalling, deliberate trap that had been set up between the past government and the European Bank to engineer Syriza's early fall.) The movement in Spain and in Ireland suggest that Syriza could be joined by other anti-austerity governments in months rather than years. That more and more realistic possibility evokes yet another option in the current discussion - of the beginnings of a 'good' Europe; a federation of anti-austerity nations, with a collective response on the debt issue, on social and humanitarian rights of their population, on taxation and restraint of the rich, on the role of the people in their own societies. The beginning of the 'good' Europe would confront the Eurozone and all its completely autocratic institutions, with a new reality. The argument in room 18 will ultimately be resolved in the struggle for a 'good' Europe that has now started across the nations.

The British Parliament has been bought

As we watch another two elder statesmen prepare their retirement from the hurly burly of important office in the British Parliament - via a couple of bribes offered, sadly for them, in a sting by TV station Channel 4, it cannot be any wonder that public faith in British politics is declining sharply. But, as a recent survey, conducted by an international anti-corruption think tank Transparency International, demonstrated;
'In Transparency International's Global Corruption Barometer 2013, 90 per cent of respondents believed that the UK Government is run by a few big entities acting in their own interest.'

If it were only a case of just (a few?) rotten apples ...

In the US, politics is conducted mainly by millionaires and votes in Congress are bought by lobbying and donation. But the centres of politics in the US are still significant centres of power.  The US still rules through the Presidency and Congress not in every case but still on many critical matters. US political institutions genuinely bring together the US's disparate and decentralised ruling elites, to hammer out a common line, in defence of the future of their class as a whole. When the rulers in business, in industry, in technology and finance and the military, and the East Coast bankers and the West Coast techies and the Southern nouveaus are split; then Congress is split.

Parliament has not held significant authority over wealth and power for decades in Britain. The House of Commons and the ever expanding, £300 per daily signature House of Lords, play with their corruption on the margins, as fascinated observers of how Britain is actually ruled. The magnificent personal scandals of the 18th and 19th centuries have been replaced by relatively tawdry expense frauds and the use of Parliament as the stepping stone up into the real world of influence and wealth on retirement. Tony Blair used his premiership to create the life his ambition really wanted. The understanding of the respondents to the Transparency International Survey seem to look beyond individual MPs and their foibles to something wider when considering the British parliament's corruption. So it is perhaps advisable when analysing it to work from the inside out; from the MPs and their shenanigans to the real forces that seem to move and shake society including the parliamentary tree.

The last Act of Parliament before the coming May 7 General Election will be the product of Prime Minister Cameron's 2010 pledge 'to do something about lobbying - the next, even bigger scandal, facing Parliament.' It turns out that his Act will do little or nothing even to ensure that all the lobbyists now working inside Parliament, in MPs' offices, will need to sign the planned register. Who are these people?

A study by the Guardian (5 March 2015) demonstrates that 1 in 5 of the staff employed in MPs and Peer's offices are lobbyists. 113 in the Commons, 206 in the Lords. These 'workers' are in their majority representing businesses. And while it is difficult to get an absolutely clear understanding of MP's external interests, the Guardian also claims (10 June 2012) that 1 in 6 Peers have paid links to the Financial Services Industry alone.

What arises from such glimpses of life at Westminster is an emergent political class without firm independent roots, with an already existing or with a developing osmotic relationship with a wide range of business. And this is reflected more and more in the background of the people who have started their climb up the slippery pole.

It was the Daily Mail that trumpeted that the new Cabinet in 2010 (see DM 23 May 2010) had 23 millionaires out of its 29 new members. (0.7% of the UK population are millionaires.) The Telegraph told us (5 March 2015) that the combined wealth of the Cabinet was £70 million. The Guido Fawkes website claimed that Ed Miliband (and his brother) had £1.9 million and that there were 7 millionaires in the Shadow Cabinet. (19 September 2013). 35% of UK MPs went to private school; over 50% of Tories. (7% of the rest of us.)  72% of Labour MPs are graduates (compared with 20% in the population at large.) There are 25 MPs who were manual workers and 90, mainly in the Labour Party, who were political advisers of one sort or another. All of these figures come from the HOC Library, 14 December 2010 and the Parliament.uk website. The Telegraph of 10 May 2010 adds that a third of MPs went to Oxford or Cambridge and most MPs in all three main parties came from a business, law, media, public affairs background. Looking specifically at the future of the Labour Party, the Guardian noted (23 June 2014) that 54% of Labour's candidates in their 90 designated marginal constituencies were political researchers by trade. (The equivalent figure for the Tories was 17%.)

So MPs as a whole certainly do not represent the people who elect them - which might be counted as a political corruption of a sort. But they do have predominant characteristics in which they either offer an open face to business and/or an absorption with the intricacies of political mechanisms and state functions. These 'talents' seem Ideal for an emerging political class that wants to lever itself into its own indispensable role within a shared preoccupation with business about the favourable fortunes of UK plc.

What do these people actually do? Some assiduously tend their constituencies. Some fiddle their expenses. Some systematise a high income (see published MPs register of interests. It is revealing.) But the day job mostly consists of the sort of list that follows. And here we come to the point. What is the essential corruption of the British Parliament? The examples below open up the heart of the matter.

These are drawn from various news items found in the Guardian in 2012 and 2013.

The government's subsidy system for gas-burning power stations is being designed by an executive from the Dublin-based company ESB International, who has been seconded into the Department of Energy. What does ESB do? It builds gas-burning power stations. (November 10.) On the same day we learned that a government minister, Nick Boles, has privately assured the gambling company Ladbrokes that it needn't worry about attempts by local authorities to stop the spread of betting shops. His new law will prevent councils from taking action.

The week before G4S's contract to run immigration removal centres was expanded, even though all further business with the state was supposed to be frozen while allegations of fraud were investigated. (November 8)

In fact there were systematic failures by government contractors.The monitoring which was meant to keep these companies honest was haphazard, the penalties almost nonexistent, the rewards fantastic. Yet since 2008, the outsourcing of public services has doubled, to £20bn. It is due to rise to £100bn by 2015. (February 7.)

Thanks to an initiative by Lord Green, large companies have ministerial 'buddies', who have to meet them when the companies request it. There were 698 of these meetings during the first 18 months of the scheme, called by corporations these ministers are supposed be regulating. Lord Green, is currently a government trade minister. Before that he was chairman of HSBC, presiding over the bank while it laundered vast amounts of money stashed by Mexican drugs barons. (24 July 2012). Now he is asked to answer (but doesn't) for the tax avoiding HSBC Swiss bank accounts.

The list is endless, and the last Labour government was a big part of the same story. Most recently, for reasons of politics, but not the politics of ordinary people struggling with austerity, rather the politics of UK plc, Miliband led his Labour troops into the same voting lobby as the Tories when they laid down the guarantee of a further £30 billion cuts in the next three years after the General election. Dianne Abbot, Katy Clark, Dennis Skinner, Austin Mitchell and Roger Godsiff were the only Labour MPs who voted against.

This is the story of the grand corruption of the British Parliament. It has been stolen from the people. It defends business and the status quo. It is riddled with machine men and women who have found a new 'industry' to serve their ambition and promotion. It is part of the armoury of the rich and the powerful and it attacks the already difficult lives of the millions who just want a decent life.

An anxious Osborne

The British Chancellor came onto the BBC Radio 4 'Today' programme to promote the idea that his coalition government's economic policy was vindicated by the latest report from the Independent Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS.) The IFS report apparently told us that 'median incomes' in the UK had now risen to their pre 2008 level. Osborne then lied that the report had also indicated that there was a reduction in income inequality. It actually says that, taking in to account both the rise in the poor's benefits in 2008 and 09 after the crash, which slightly decreased the inequality of income AND the rise in food and energy prices subsequently, which increased the income equality gap again, inequality of income remained roughly the same as in 2008.  Additionally, Osborne had nothing to say about IFS's Director Paul Johnston's comment from the same report that he had made previously on the same programme;
'Working age households' incomes' he noted 'are still less than they were prior to 2008.' If you are working, the chances are you are still at 2007 levels. Osborne was not asked about his plans for a further, deeper round of cuts should his party get back to power.

Nevertheless it is worth spending a little more time, just on the equality issue in the UK. The Chancellor's false claim about the IFS report shows some nervousness among the UK elites in this regard.

The whole political Internet is familiar with Oxfam's briefing on inequality put out for the Davros Conference earlier this year, that by 2016 the top 1% in the world will own more of the world's wealth than the bottom 50%. Even 'Fortune' (4 March 2015) the US mag promoting wealth, adds
'The richest 80 people on the planet doubled their cash wealth between 2009 and 2014. They now have as much as the bottom half of humanity put together. Whereas five years ago, it needed the 388 richest billionaires to rival the spending power of the poorest half, by 2014 that number had fallen to just 80.'

What about Britain. What is making Osborne anxious?

On the 15 May 2014 the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that 1% of Brits already owned as much as the bottom 55%.  (The measure was made in property, pensions and assets.) The Poverty and Social Exclusion Website, an independent research tool, noted on 17 March 2014 that 5 families were 'worth' more than the total assets and income of the bottom 20% in the UK. Credit Suisse recorded in its Global Wealth Report for 2014 that
'The UK is the only country to record rising wealth inequality from 2000 to 2014...Wealth inequality has risen by 4 times faster in the 7 years after the crash compared with the 7 years before. Wealth inequality' the report goes on, 'rose under Labour; it rose faster under the Coalition.' It concludes ' The rich in the UK are becoming richer faster than ever.'

A recent article (John Nickson 19 May 2014) in the Huffington Post is well referenced and worth quoting at some length.
'Wealth is news. the Sunday Times Rich List tells us the top 1000 have doubled their wealth in five years, the UK has more billionaires per head of population than any other country and that London is the world capital of the super rich...
According to the ONS, the number of millionaires has risen by 50% in four years despite the financial crisis. 9% of households have assets worth more than £1million...
The bad news is that growing inequality is approaching pre first world war levels. The richest 10% in Britain own 44% of total national wealth, five times more than the poorest 50% of the population who collectively own 9%. The figures for share of national income are even more startling. The share going to those on the lower half of earnings has fallen by 25% since the 1970's (OECD) whilst the slice going to the top 1% has increased by 50%. The most recent figures from HM Revenue and Customs confirm that the return of economic growth in the last year has overwhelmingly benefited the top 1% of earners.'

Returning to the IFS report, it puzzles over a problem that many mainstream economists and politicians have also worried at. Why is productivity (of labour) still so low in Britain? There are many suggestions on offer to explain this apparent paradox - low grade jobs; lack of government incentive; etc. What however turns out to be the most obvious and glaring reason for Britain's dismal record on productivity is the ingrained investment 'strike' by big capital in the UK. That 'strike' is intimately linked to the UK's horrific concentration of wealth which is constructed completely outside of the creation of new tecniques and new means of production. We will return to this issue, and also the direct and indirect effects of this economic gangrene for our political system. Suffice it here to say that inequality in Britain is a scandal and a disaster and getting worse. 

Them and Us

In the last blog the political situation in Western Europe was characterised as a growing polarisation between 'them and us' (as opposed to a Thatcher style defeat of the traditional organised labour movement, which the Greek finance minister thought was an appropriate guide to today's conditions and consciousness among ordinary people in the euro zone.)

But who in the 'post industrial society' in the West, are 'them'? And who, more significantly, are becoming 'us'?

'Them' is easy. Oxfam reports that by 2016 the richest 1% will own more than 50% of the world's wealth. (80% of the current world's population own just 5.5% of the world's wealth today.) In 2014 the 80 richest people on Earth already had the same wealth as the bottom 3.5 billion people. But does that effect western democratic politics and power? Are the rich also defined politically as well as economically? You bet your sweet bippy. In 2010, 800 000 Americans (0.26% of the US population) made 68% of the contributions to Congress. One group of people on the planet have never been more politically active. And you get what you pay for.

Ok. That's 'them'. Who are 'us'?

One thing that the new youth rebellion in the West, in the Middle East and North Africa has taught us is that people who hate the effects of their political and economic system and despise its rulers do not have to work out a theory about why they exist in order to act. In reality the character of the Western working class and its traditional movements has been evolving for decades - in some cases beyond the traditional left's recognition. In some countries trade unions remain important residues of organisation and defence and often it is the best militants from there who lead in the understanding of the vast changes in society and the consequent changed conditions of struggle. The industrial working class organisation no longer creates the political working class expression, as in the classic case of nineteenth century Britain. One might almost say the reverse, in that it is in the new political expressions of resistance and challenge that we find the grouping and then the regrouping of a new working class.

We should not be surprised. Since the dawn of capitalism the working class has gone through many evolutions, often associated with the most tumultuous struggles. The initial gathering of the British working class, conscious of itself as a class, with its own distinct interests, was in response to the explicitly political campaign of the Chartists for the vote. Weavers from rural hamlets and mining families scrabbling for coal in green valleys, as well as the boot makers and basket weavers and brewers and canal builders gathered at Peterloo in the name of the Charter to be hacked down by Britain's cossacks on the say-so of Wellington. History does not lay down a prescription about the right and the wrong movements of the workers, the toilers, the poor and the oppressed. A class becomes itself; it is not given its credentials by virtue of how the system decides it should be mustered today, tomorrow, next year.

The 'us' consists of all those who struggle with and against austerity. The students, the single mums, the health workers, the oaps, the disabled, those who challenge war, those who will not pay, those who face down racism. In action they seek redress. In action they find allies. They become a class for itself.

Right now such a new class coalition has already won a government in Europe, in Greece. By December this year it could win another in Spain. Ireland could follow. And the the rock of traditional British stability is shaking as Scotland too starts down the anti-austerity road. A new working class, a new 'us' is stirring, forming, acting, seizing a political life for itself, albeit in a dangerous world. How right that is; a light against dark.

Yanis Varoufakis - erratic marxist?

Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek minister of Finance, is not a member of Syriza. This ex Essex and Birmingham University student has written that some of his ideas, particularly about the EU, came from his experiences in Thatcher's Britain. He has now risen to international prominence in the battle with the EU over Greek's debts. As recently as December 2014 he recomposed a version of an earlier talk that he had given about his views on marxism and the future of the EU, and wrote it up in a blog. The title of the piece started 'Yanis Varoufakis, Erratic Marxist...' It was a 'confession' (his word) that he had been intellectually formed by Marxism, but that he had to amend Marx in order to resolve mistakes that Marx had made. Perhaps more significantly for Greece and Europe's future, he also used his article to lay out his surprising, Thatcher-influenced, policy on the EU.

There is no intention here to engage in a theoretical tussle with Yanis Varoufakis over Marx and his 'errors'. The minister has a fairly traditional critique that any interested people might have first encountered when the post 1968 'New Left (as opposed to the traditional Communist Party cannon) began to argue about the younger, more Hegelian, versus the older, more deterministic Marx. For example Yanis Varoufakis focuses on how a mistaken Marx elaborated a mathematical formula to 'prove' the labour theory of value in Capital Vol 3 which mistakenly attempts to quantify the inherently creative and dual nature of labour under capitalism. He also spells out his policy on the EU which is perhaps more pertinant to study in current conditions. His complete essay is short and clear and might be read here.

Yanis Varoufakis proposes that it is necessary to defend the EU, including against itself, in order to protect European civilisation. Although he is opposed to a capitalist EU in principle, he is convinced that any collapse of the EU in the foreseeable future will usher in a reactionary disaster for Europe. This lesson (to which we shall return) he draws from his experience of Thatcher. In fact he does not believe he will see any radical 'humanistic' transformation in Europe in his life time, but a civilised and progressive arrangement might be salvaged which would at least defend us from a carnival of reaction. The main political tactic that emerges from Yanis Varoufakis's schema is that wide ranging alliance needs to be built across the political spectrum, for a more succesful, more progressive, more innovative, capitalist EU. He has spent some years trying to construct such a bloc, most famously in the UK in his 2014 London meeting with Hedge Fund managers. Their collective reaction is so far unknown.

Returning to his brush with Thatcherism, Yanis Varoufakis tells us that at first he welcomed Thatcher's election, not because he supported her in any way. Her attack on organised labour he thought would shake up the politics and the ideas of her opposition and, in due course, reorganise and strengthen radical forces that would go on to make a big step forward. Instead he discovered that the labour movement and the left was progressively beaten down by Thatcher. Her legacy was not a new radicalism among her enemies but the establishment of Tony Blair! His 'lesson' from this experience was that recession and a major offensive to squeeze more profit out of labour does not creat conditions for a shift to the left, but rather it builds the right in politics. He sees the UKIPs and worse as the natural inheritors of a busted euro-zone. Therefore he sees its dismantling as a defeat. Therefore he wants to become 'the man with a plan' for a new euro-zone.

Sadly for Yanis Varoufakis the leaders of Europe do not want to play. Whatever his theories about potentially progressive capitalism, the strategic aim of big capital in the west is to reorganise the ever mounting debt in their favour. The US is attempting to reorganise the Pacific rim accordingly. The main economic power in Europe uses the Euro to do the same in Europe. Even the remaining Keynsians in the world now argue for the conscious anihilation of international debt as the only way to get new growth in capitalism. Yanis Varoufakis has things turned on their head. Today, escaping from the Euro is the only means by which Greece will be able to repudiate its debt burden - the volcano that permanently smokes and rumbles and threatens devestation across its economy.

And today popular opposition to the debt and its sister, endless austerity, opposition to our traditional rulers in Europe, to 'the way things are', is stronger than at any time since the 1960s. The left has reorganised and, unlike the 1960s, come in sight of government already in three important countries. The convulsuons of 2008 have not had the Thatcher effect. Of course radicalisation does not come out of the mouth of defeat. There is despair and reactionary moods sweeping through wide populations. But what has emerged since 2008 is a polarisation. 'Them and us' has never been clearer. If the left acts boldly and well they have a tremendous opportunity.

Buck up Yanis. You will see radical, 'humanitarian' transformations in your lifetime. Start by preparing  the repudiation of the debt and the defence of social conditions in the context of a Grexit.