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.
Friday 23 October 2015
Tuesday 20 October 2015
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.
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.
Thursday 15 October 2015
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 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.
Sunday 11 October 2015
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.
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.
Thursday 8 October 2015
Deficit denyer Dave and the 'Nasty Party'.
Teresa May, the originator of the description of Britain's Tories as the 'nasty party', and Britain's Home Secretary, has probably just skewered Tory millionaire Zak Goldsmith's bid for the London Mayoralty. Her savage attack on immigration (an appeal for future Tory leadership) went down well among the ancient ranks of the average Tory conference audience, but it will sink like a stone in the political life of London, threatening to drown all those associated with her ugly tirade.
Cameron concluded the conference with a speech that initially reminded everybody of Blair. He focused on what he thought were the intractable problems of British society that remained to be dealt with (inequality, poverty, Victorian prisons etc.,) and titled his regime as the 'turn around' decade. He did not talk about the deficit (now considerably larger than when he came to office, 5 years ago.) He did not refer to the frighteningly low levels of productivity in the UK (now 20th in the OECD) or the big-capital investment strike that is causing it. Last May ex Labour leader Milliband was denounced for missing out the deficit in his conference speech - by Cameron and the entire political and media establishment.
Cameron reserved his vitriol for Labour's new leader Corbyn. He did not pull his punches. Following his philosophical ruminations about the great problems of Britain that he would solve, (not including the deficit, investment, the housing bubble, etc., etc.,) he described Corbyn as a 'Britain hater.' Cameron's meditative puff, combined with his violent excoriation of Corbyn, gives pause for thought after the media's generally smirking denigration of Corby's political capacities - that Corbyn's generalities and abstract ideas might have rather frightened Britain' supremo.
One of the great truths of British political life for the last 20 years has been the enormous growth of the feeling among millions of voters that 'they' - the main Westminster based parties - 'are all the same.' Thoughtful and serious studies of this phenomena have drawn out the fact that the electorate are more inspired by politics when they see parties and leaders who identify with a larger vision for society and the future. Corbyn has successfully sketched out a clear and distinct line of advance; which left Cameron with the yawning horror of the absence of any such perspective which described his own office.
The role of the Tory party is to shore up and promote the status quo - particularly when it has to be defended in a crisis, when the people at large may challenge its basis. It is difficult, as Cameron's woolly and implausible meanderings illustrate, for the Tory party to do that in the absence of fighting for an expanding Empire or crushing an Irish or Miner's revolt. Holding on to the City of London, nukes, the wealth of the wealthy and reducing the social wage, do not inspire.
So yet again the British media have missed a trick here and underestimated Corbyn's response to an important trend in British (and European) politics. (Which Cameron felt but could not grasp.)
Cameron concluded the conference with a speech that initially reminded everybody of Blair. He focused on what he thought were the intractable problems of British society that remained to be dealt with (inequality, poverty, Victorian prisons etc.,) and titled his regime as the 'turn around' decade. He did not talk about the deficit (now considerably larger than when he came to office, 5 years ago.) He did not refer to the frighteningly low levels of productivity in the UK (now 20th in the OECD) or the big-capital investment strike that is causing it. Last May ex Labour leader Milliband was denounced for missing out the deficit in his conference speech - by Cameron and the entire political and media establishment.
Cameron reserved his vitriol for Labour's new leader Corbyn. He did not pull his punches. Following his philosophical ruminations about the great problems of Britain that he would solve, (not including the deficit, investment, the housing bubble, etc., etc.,) he described Corbyn as a 'Britain hater.' Cameron's meditative puff, combined with his violent excoriation of Corbyn, gives pause for thought after the media's generally smirking denigration of Corby's political capacities - that Corbyn's generalities and abstract ideas might have rather frightened Britain' supremo.
One of the great truths of British political life for the last 20 years has been the enormous growth of the feeling among millions of voters that 'they' - the main Westminster based parties - 'are all the same.' Thoughtful and serious studies of this phenomena have drawn out the fact that the electorate are more inspired by politics when they see parties and leaders who identify with a larger vision for society and the future. Corbyn has successfully sketched out a clear and distinct line of advance; which left Cameron with the yawning horror of the absence of any such perspective which described his own office.
The role of the Tory party is to shore up and promote the status quo - particularly when it has to be defended in a crisis, when the people at large may challenge its basis. It is difficult, as Cameron's woolly and implausible meanderings illustrate, for the Tory party to do that in the absence of fighting for an expanding Empire or crushing an Irish or Miner's revolt. Holding on to the City of London, nukes, the wealth of the wealthy and reducing the social wage, do not inspire.
So yet again the British media have missed a trick here and underestimated Corbyn's response to an important trend in British (and European) politics. (Which Cameron felt but could not grasp.)
Wednesday 7 October 2015
Labour's future under Corbyn
A short essay on the future of the Labour Party (LP) in Britain.
The dust has settled following Labour's conference. And the media's 'Corbyn hunt' has calmed down after Labour's new leader said he would never push the UK's nuclear button. Commentators like Andrew Rawnsley (see the Observer 4 October) have him installed for the long haul, despite the almost universal despair of Labour's parliamentary party. According to Rawnsley, Corbyn's huge and increasing following among the party membership will hold off any short term attempts at coups by Labour MPs. The vast bulk of Labour MPs are now left sincerely hoping for bad news in the coming elections in Scotland, London and Bristol to make their dirty work easier.
Meanwhile Corbyn's entirely genuine 'common man' persona continues to charm those who like the novelty of politicians in a human form. And some distinct political priorities have emerged through Corbyn's conference speech and in interviews, albeit not yet hardened into party policies.
At first sight Corbyn was cautious, inclusive, but a bit rambling at the party conference, as though still a little overwhelmed at his often mentioned 'mandate' from Labour members and supporters. The unsure commentators therefore sought in vain for Corbyn's analysis of Britain's deficit, or an explanation of Labour's recent defeat in the General Election. It is true that his speech did mainly focus on the future of the LP. It was therefore more significant than his absent thoughts on defeat at the General election and on the deficit, that Corbyn offered no explanation of his own dramatic success in the leadership race, despite the repeated reminders he gave of his mandate. His references to innate British values coming to the fore and the desire 'out there' for a new politics did not nail it. Yet he nevertheless drew out a most significant and dramatic political revelation for the future of the LP from his election as leader.
Corbyn, with a rare fire in his words, challenged those who argued that the social democratic British LP was going the same way as the 'hollowed out' European social democratic parties. In Britain, he enthusiastically insisted, social democracy was not only alive but was in a process of rebirth as tens of thousands of new members flooded into the party. The current LP was now the largest mainstream party in Britain for decades - and on its way to become a mass party and movement again.
There were therefore three key points that emerged out of Corbyn's first LP conference. First was opposition to austerity and the makings of a Keynesian type plan for growth; (undoubtedly a growing mainstream political and economic view in the world as the neo-liberal adventure remains stuck in the mud - especially in Europe.) It is common sense for Corbyn to stress the completely orthodox and coherent arguments against the Tory's fetish with austerity, especially as the danger of a burst UK property bubble increases. He judges, quite rightly, that the absence of the national presentation of a clear economic alternative so far, the failure to deal with the mantra that 'there is no alternative', is a major factor in the hesitation and retreat of Labour support in the country. Miliband's policy of 'austerity light' just encouraged people to think that as all British political leaders seem to agree austerity has got to be done, let's just get it done as sharply and quickly as possible. Second was an affirmation, both personally by Corbyn and more generally, that British warmongering would be curtailed. Even the small Corbyn team (borrowed in significant part from Ken Livingstone's back room) are acutely conscious of the impending public emergence of the Chillcott Enquiry report on Iraq. The Iraq fiasco is now a hated memory for the majority of Britons. Corbyn's team hopes he will emerge as the one Westminster leader without bloodstains on his hands.
These two themes, developed into policy, are designed to establish a new Labour Party based common sense across the wider population in the years leading up to the 2020 election. And it is true that most political observers in the main media have generally underestimated the potential strength of these ideas to win popular support.
But a third theme emerged from conference - showing where the new leader's strength of purpose now lies. It lies in his mission to (re) build the LP.
Growing the party is certainly the main immediate means of holding back eager Labour MPs from their regicidal purposes. It is a crucial measure to bring enough pressure to bear in the constituency parties and from the left unions to hold the ring for the new leadership. But there is a more general proposition being made here. The Corbyn leadership are arguing that a rebuilt LP, a British social democracy in their own image, is the decisive instrument to deal with the list of British cruelties and inequalities, imposed both at home and abroad and currently experienced to some degree by everyone outside the 1%. This is nothing less than a plan to reorganise the whole of British politics, based on a reborn LP.
Unfortunately there are blind spots in this rosy vision.
There is a curious paradox in the thinking of Corbyn's team in their optimistic projections on the potential future of their new Labour Party. For decades up until about three weeks ago, the aim of Labour's minuscule left was to hang on to what remained of the dregs of the LP 'for fear of something worse.' (From this thinking has stemmed some of the Labour left's continued sectarian approach to developments like the Greens or the SNP - thoughts that are now being triumphantly magnified by their new internal success.) Yet the cosiest of roads to a progressive victory in 2020 is being laid out for the Corbyn led LP in its solitary glory. If we can just hang on to the LP leadership apparatus they suggest, then the Scottish question, the Greens, austerity and war, UKIP and mass voter abstention will all wash away in the progressive tide of History.
What period are we living in? What is the real state of our social and political systems and parties (at least in Europe) and the ebb and flow of the social classes' multitudes of frictions, contradictions and antagonisms?
The period of relentless defeat of working class movements, parties and organisations in Europe, a period which started in the 1980s, is over. Left, progressive and new working and middle class movements have arisen, albeit in the context of increasing global, social, political and economic polarisation. The biggest traditional social forces in society and the ancient monuments of cold war architecture and western global dominance are all weakening. The political landscape shifts and grinds and constantly reorganises itself. The new movements and the shifting political terrain spark intense collisions and fractures; even wars and the destruction of nations and the collapse of whole populations, as in the case of Yugoslavia or the Ukraine. Meanwhile the West, more and more belligerently, exports its domestic crises to the periphery (Greece, Spain, Italy and Turkey) and overseas. New powers emerge as traditional imperialism no longer dominates the world. All this turmoil and recomposition is associated with rapid shifts and vicious struggles as the tectonic plates of the last half century tip over and split against each other.
New leaderships emerge. Some of the most powerful so far have been born from a reactionary radicalism that refracts the mirror images of long distance violence, hatred and poison of imperialism into a ruthless, personal brutality; and that will continue to expand in the absence of any substantive, alternative insurgent perspective. Their necessity is solely to express fury and revolt. The slide from what often looked like bedrocks of imperious stability to war is sudden and unfocused. In essence a social system is cracking and its associated politics are in convulsion, first, inevitably, at the edges of the most powerful nations. The weight of the world's difficulties are far too great for societies' current organisations to bear (as the current refugee crisis demonstrates.) The results from this turmoil are not inevitable. But major social, economic, political and military battles will have to occur to establish any new 'normal.' Whatever else is true a slow, gentle and steady evolution to a new social democracy is not on the cards. Even in Britain! A period of sharp turns and dramatic political shifts is already underway - so far relatively peacefully but that is only in the most developed countries and, with the growing alienation from the West's democratic systems - not at all guaranteed.
Focusing on the British LP in this wider context; it is first immediately obvious that Britain's social democracy has not at all avoided the 'hollowing out' of its European associates. The recent collapse of Labour's traditional base in Scotland; the loss of five million Labour votes since Blair's ten year dominance, the four million who voted for UKIP, half from traditional Labour areas; the million that voted Green; the literal and political hollowing out of thousands of Ward parties and Constituencies and their power to alter anything; all of it has left the British LP in a state of near collapse. It is as a consequence of the tremulous fragility of the LP that Corbyn has been able to win its leadership! In the now desperate creation of a new Labour hinterland, a direct result of its increasing collapse as a party, hundreds and thousands of a new left, that had already started to fight austerity, that was tired of Westminster and its lack of real power as well as its increasingly self seeking ways, voted for Corbyn.
This new internal Labour 'electorate', at least that part who are not old party members returning, do not want to 'fix' the Labour Party. They want to stop austerity, to stop war and they want to change the British political system into one that provides political and social justice. The returning old LP members and the left unions, by and large, do see the reform of the LP as the decisive means to remove the Tories and change society. Whatever the tastes and predictions of the political commentators and theorists an experiment in and on the LP is underway - but in the most convulsive times since WW2.
Labour's MPs are almost universally hostile to the current party's leadership. Some powerful trade unions likewise. The whole of the rest of the British establishment is against the Corbyn leadership. We have seen already the immense pressure on Syriza in Greece, which had succeeded in winning the Greek people and is now carrying out the Troika's plans, on Podemos, which in May was level pegging with Spain's two major parties and is now at 12%. Corbyn's Labour Party will go through much more. And if it is not 'restored' to its post Blair anchorage by internal manouver it will be blown in that direction by its initial collapses in the polls. Corbyn needs to prepare a tremendous struggle, not a 'gentle' type of politics at all.
It seems therefore that the next stage of the 'hollowing out' of British social democracy will, in this case, pass through the social democratic party itself, the LP. When change is afoot however, all the old clothes are dug out and tried on for size first. All the old banners are waved at the start. But history only ever repeats itself in fast motion and because Britain has no vast Bennite current of the 1980s, nor a trade union movement of twelve million, the old clothes and flags will be dumped very soon.
Three decisive preparations (assuming the continued oppostion to austerity and war) need to be made by the Corbyn leadership for the battle to come. First, it needs to help bring the new working class into action, in a movement at the base of society; a movement that campaigns against austerity and war. That is the real source of the new working class political leadership - a leadership that in time and through experience might propose itself as the leadership of the whole of society - a recomposition of a new social class drawn from its new types of labour. And that is the context in which old time Labourist sectarianism against the Greens or the left of the SNP has absolutely no place at all.
Second, the Corbynistas have to fight (again alonside the Greens and the SNP) for the root and branch reform of the political system - starting with the clearest possible call for a fair voting system. Whatever comes out of the impending battle of the LP, the Corbyn leadership must stand for the real representation of the people with meaning for all votes and voters and an end to their Lordships. That means if the right decide to wreck the party then a core, with some real purchase on the political system, would remain.
Third, Corbyn and his supporters should form an organised current, trend, society, within the party. The right have them already. There is no need for such a measure to be exclusive or secret in any way. But such organisation is an absolute necessity among the new and returning members from the start. (Most of them know that they will be in a fight to the finish inside Labour. They are right.)
If those who seek progressive change in Britain are to benefit from the developments now underway in and around the Corbyn led LP, they cannot stand aside from, or worse, dismiss, the Corbyn victory. There is enough work to be done both inside and outside the LP to push this development as far as it will go and to help a nation wide, left political mass movement, emerge - even if the right and the establishment are able to break up Labour's current leadership. This fact, the fact of Corbyn's internal LP victory, can prove to be a decisive experience in the regroupment of a new working class movement and its political formation in Britain.
The dust has settled following Labour's conference. And the media's 'Corbyn hunt' has calmed down after Labour's new leader said he would never push the UK's nuclear button. Commentators like Andrew Rawnsley (see the Observer 4 October) have him installed for the long haul, despite the almost universal despair of Labour's parliamentary party. According to Rawnsley, Corbyn's huge and increasing following among the party membership will hold off any short term attempts at coups by Labour MPs. The vast bulk of Labour MPs are now left sincerely hoping for bad news in the coming elections in Scotland, London and Bristol to make their dirty work easier.
Meanwhile Corbyn's entirely genuine 'common man' persona continues to charm those who like the novelty of politicians in a human form. And some distinct political priorities have emerged through Corbyn's conference speech and in interviews, albeit not yet hardened into party policies.
At first sight Corbyn was cautious, inclusive, but a bit rambling at the party conference, as though still a little overwhelmed at his often mentioned 'mandate' from Labour members and supporters. The unsure commentators therefore sought in vain for Corbyn's analysis of Britain's deficit, or an explanation of Labour's recent defeat in the General Election. It is true that his speech did mainly focus on the future of the LP. It was therefore more significant than his absent thoughts on defeat at the General election and on the deficit, that Corbyn offered no explanation of his own dramatic success in the leadership race, despite the repeated reminders he gave of his mandate. His references to innate British values coming to the fore and the desire 'out there' for a new politics did not nail it. Yet he nevertheless drew out a most significant and dramatic political revelation for the future of the LP from his election as leader.
Corbyn, with a rare fire in his words, challenged those who argued that the social democratic British LP was going the same way as the 'hollowed out' European social democratic parties. In Britain, he enthusiastically insisted, social democracy was not only alive but was in a process of rebirth as tens of thousands of new members flooded into the party. The current LP was now the largest mainstream party in Britain for decades - and on its way to become a mass party and movement again.
There were therefore three key points that emerged out of Corbyn's first LP conference. First was opposition to austerity and the makings of a Keynesian type plan for growth; (undoubtedly a growing mainstream political and economic view in the world as the neo-liberal adventure remains stuck in the mud - especially in Europe.) It is common sense for Corbyn to stress the completely orthodox and coherent arguments against the Tory's fetish with austerity, especially as the danger of a burst UK property bubble increases. He judges, quite rightly, that the absence of the national presentation of a clear economic alternative so far, the failure to deal with the mantra that 'there is no alternative', is a major factor in the hesitation and retreat of Labour support in the country. Miliband's policy of 'austerity light' just encouraged people to think that as all British political leaders seem to agree austerity has got to be done, let's just get it done as sharply and quickly as possible. Second was an affirmation, both personally by Corbyn and more generally, that British warmongering would be curtailed. Even the small Corbyn team (borrowed in significant part from Ken Livingstone's back room) are acutely conscious of the impending public emergence of the Chillcott Enquiry report on Iraq. The Iraq fiasco is now a hated memory for the majority of Britons. Corbyn's team hopes he will emerge as the one Westminster leader without bloodstains on his hands.
These two themes, developed into policy, are designed to establish a new Labour Party based common sense across the wider population in the years leading up to the 2020 election. And it is true that most political observers in the main media have generally underestimated the potential strength of these ideas to win popular support.
But a third theme emerged from conference - showing where the new leader's strength of purpose now lies. It lies in his mission to (re) build the LP.
Growing the party is certainly the main immediate means of holding back eager Labour MPs from their regicidal purposes. It is a crucial measure to bring enough pressure to bear in the constituency parties and from the left unions to hold the ring for the new leadership. But there is a more general proposition being made here. The Corbyn leadership are arguing that a rebuilt LP, a British social democracy in their own image, is the decisive instrument to deal with the list of British cruelties and inequalities, imposed both at home and abroad and currently experienced to some degree by everyone outside the 1%. This is nothing less than a plan to reorganise the whole of British politics, based on a reborn LP.
Unfortunately there are blind spots in this rosy vision.
There is a curious paradox in the thinking of Corbyn's team in their optimistic projections on the potential future of their new Labour Party. For decades up until about three weeks ago, the aim of Labour's minuscule left was to hang on to what remained of the dregs of the LP 'for fear of something worse.' (From this thinking has stemmed some of the Labour left's continued sectarian approach to developments like the Greens or the SNP - thoughts that are now being triumphantly magnified by their new internal success.) Yet the cosiest of roads to a progressive victory in 2020 is being laid out for the Corbyn led LP in its solitary glory. If we can just hang on to the LP leadership apparatus they suggest, then the Scottish question, the Greens, austerity and war, UKIP and mass voter abstention will all wash away in the progressive tide of History.
What period are we living in? What is the real state of our social and political systems and parties (at least in Europe) and the ebb and flow of the social classes' multitudes of frictions, contradictions and antagonisms?
The period of relentless defeat of working class movements, parties and organisations in Europe, a period which started in the 1980s, is over. Left, progressive and new working and middle class movements have arisen, albeit in the context of increasing global, social, political and economic polarisation. The biggest traditional social forces in society and the ancient monuments of cold war architecture and western global dominance are all weakening. The political landscape shifts and grinds and constantly reorganises itself. The new movements and the shifting political terrain spark intense collisions and fractures; even wars and the destruction of nations and the collapse of whole populations, as in the case of Yugoslavia or the Ukraine. Meanwhile the West, more and more belligerently, exports its domestic crises to the periphery (Greece, Spain, Italy and Turkey) and overseas. New powers emerge as traditional imperialism no longer dominates the world. All this turmoil and recomposition is associated with rapid shifts and vicious struggles as the tectonic plates of the last half century tip over and split against each other.
New leaderships emerge. Some of the most powerful so far have been born from a reactionary radicalism that refracts the mirror images of long distance violence, hatred and poison of imperialism into a ruthless, personal brutality; and that will continue to expand in the absence of any substantive, alternative insurgent perspective. Their necessity is solely to express fury and revolt. The slide from what often looked like bedrocks of imperious stability to war is sudden and unfocused. In essence a social system is cracking and its associated politics are in convulsion, first, inevitably, at the edges of the most powerful nations. The weight of the world's difficulties are far too great for societies' current organisations to bear (as the current refugee crisis demonstrates.) The results from this turmoil are not inevitable. But major social, economic, political and military battles will have to occur to establish any new 'normal.' Whatever else is true a slow, gentle and steady evolution to a new social democracy is not on the cards. Even in Britain! A period of sharp turns and dramatic political shifts is already underway - so far relatively peacefully but that is only in the most developed countries and, with the growing alienation from the West's democratic systems - not at all guaranteed.
Focusing on the British LP in this wider context; it is first immediately obvious that Britain's social democracy has not at all avoided the 'hollowing out' of its European associates. The recent collapse of Labour's traditional base in Scotland; the loss of five million Labour votes since Blair's ten year dominance, the four million who voted for UKIP, half from traditional Labour areas; the million that voted Green; the literal and political hollowing out of thousands of Ward parties and Constituencies and their power to alter anything; all of it has left the British LP in a state of near collapse. It is as a consequence of the tremulous fragility of the LP that Corbyn has been able to win its leadership! In the now desperate creation of a new Labour hinterland, a direct result of its increasing collapse as a party, hundreds and thousands of a new left, that had already started to fight austerity, that was tired of Westminster and its lack of real power as well as its increasingly self seeking ways, voted for Corbyn.
This new internal Labour 'electorate', at least that part who are not old party members returning, do not want to 'fix' the Labour Party. They want to stop austerity, to stop war and they want to change the British political system into one that provides political and social justice. The returning old LP members and the left unions, by and large, do see the reform of the LP as the decisive means to remove the Tories and change society. Whatever the tastes and predictions of the political commentators and theorists an experiment in and on the LP is underway - but in the most convulsive times since WW2.
Labour's MPs are almost universally hostile to the current party's leadership. Some powerful trade unions likewise. The whole of the rest of the British establishment is against the Corbyn leadership. We have seen already the immense pressure on Syriza in Greece, which had succeeded in winning the Greek people and is now carrying out the Troika's plans, on Podemos, which in May was level pegging with Spain's two major parties and is now at 12%. Corbyn's Labour Party will go through much more. And if it is not 'restored' to its post Blair anchorage by internal manouver it will be blown in that direction by its initial collapses in the polls. Corbyn needs to prepare a tremendous struggle, not a 'gentle' type of politics at all.
It seems therefore that the next stage of the 'hollowing out' of British social democracy will, in this case, pass through the social democratic party itself, the LP. When change is afoot however, all the old clothes are dug out and tried on for size first. All the old banners are waved at the start. But history only ever repeats itself in fast motion and because Britain has no vast Bennite current of the 1980s, nor a trade union movement of twelve million, the old clothes and flags will be dumped very soon.
Three decisive preparations (assuming the continued oppostion to austerity and war) need to be made by the Corbyn leadership for the battle to come. First, it needs to help bring the new working class into action, in a movement at the base of society; a movement that campaigns against austerity and war. That is the real source of the new working class political leadership - a leadership that in time and through experience might propose itself as the leadership of the whole of society - a recomposition of a new social class drawn from its new types of labour. And that is the context in which old time Labourist sectarianism against the Greens or the left of the SNP has absolutely no place at all.
Second, the Corbynistas have to fight (again alonside the Greens and the SNP) for the root and branch reform of the political system - starting with the clearest possible call for a fair voting system. Whatever comes out of the impending battle of the LP, the Corbyn leadership must stand for the real representation of the people with meaning for all votes and voters and an end to their Lordships. That means if the right decide to wreck the party then a core, with some real purchase on the political system, would remain.
Third, Corbyn and his supporters should form an organised current, trend, society, within the party. The right have them already. There is no need for such a measure to be exclusive or secret in any way. But such organisation is an absolute necessity among the new and returning members from the start. (Most of them know that they will be in a fight to the finish inside Labour. They are right.)
If those who seek progressive change in Britain are to benefit from the developments now underway in and around the Corbyn led LP, they cannot stand aside from, or worse, dismiss, the Corbyn victory. There is enough work to be done both inside and outside the LP to push this development as far as it will go and to help a nation wide, left political mass movement, emerge - even if the right and the establishment are able to break up Labour's current leadership. This fact, the fact of Corbyn's internal LP victory, can prove to be a decisive experience in the regroupment of a new working class movement and its political formation in Britain.
Thursday 1 October 2015
Corbyn touches a nerve!
We have all learnt something about the British nuclear deterrent thanks to Labour's new leader, Jeremy Corbyn. (If you haven't, then you are probably reading this as part of your job.) But for the rest of us it came as news that any new Prime Minister has to write a letter (it was shown as written in long hand) to the Captain of the nuclear submarines that carry the Trident missile. This is placed in the sub-mariner's on-board safe and is to be opened in the event that the PM and his representatives are 'unavailable.' (Wiped out.)
Corbyn got into trouble sticking to his traditional anti-nukes position. What's the point in Corbyn's principles - railed his angry fellow shadow cabinet members - as his public statement that he would not use these weapons removes the deterrent effect of Trident to our enemies? And that is very dangerous.
What should the PM's letter say?
'Dear Captain,
Whatever you do, and for the sake of the continued existence of humanity, do not fire your missiles at anybody. I'm gone and a great swathe of our population is already wiped out. Your duty is clear. Use your wits, your technology, your communications, to preserve whatever you can of the human population wherever it is to be found.
I remain ... etc'
Seriously; who are likely to use nuclear weapons against Britain? And if the UK got rid of them would that make the threat greater? In the past Britain's nukes were meant to protect Western Europe and the UK from Russian invasion. It turned out that Russia did not invade the West - even including nations not under the West's (the US's) nuclear umbrella. So that was not it. Today Britain has joined the West's war against Islamic fundamentalism. Certainly, some of the fundamentalists' military groups would use nuclear weapons to murder millions - if they could get them. Is Trident a deterrent to that? Where would the Trident missiles be aimed in retaliation? The paradox of nuclear weapons in the 21st century is that those mad or bad enough to use them - cannot be deterred. In this century nukes would be a 'first use' weapon.
So what exactly is the safest thing to do 'in defence' of Britain's population? Get rid of the bloody things. Remove as many of them as possible from the face of the earth. And start up a campaign, like those organised by the UN to eradicate polio or small pox, to end them across the globe. If they did not exist then neither the Middle East's fundamentalists, nor those of the Barry Goldwater / Donald Trump hue in the West would have access to them.
But the British 'powers that be' are not idiots. With the exception of some really loopy Generals the arguments against Trident (leaving aside its truly enormous cost) are well understood. So the public are fed mainly on a diet of fear about nobody knowing what might happen in the future to maintain their support for the nuclear status quo, as though it has any relation to keeping the peace. (At the same time, the British establishment have commissioned the Chinese to build the UK's next nuclear power stations - decades into the future!)
What is really at stake for Britain's rulers in their defence of their 'independent nuclear deterrent'?
Leaving aside a seat in the Security Council of the United Nations and the prestige aquired to sell enormous amounts of arms round the world, Britain's nuclear weapon is a decisive keystone in the political and economic structure and ambitions of its ruling class. There is no doubting Trident's 'global reach': or its integral relationship to the military and political power of the US. Its existence was a part of the underpinning, up until 2008, of the biggest bank in the world, the Royal Bank of Scotland with its assets of £1.9 trillion. Trident was and remains a decisive part of the military wing of Britain's political and economic power across the globe.
Corbyn wants a different country. So do the SNP in Scotland. When they challenge Trident, Britain's rulers know that in their guts. And they will fight by all means that they can bring to hand to break the anti Trident, anti-war movement.
Corbyn got into trouble sticking to his traditional anti-nukes position. What's the point in Corbyn's principles - railed his angry fellow shadow cabinet members - as his public statement that he would not use these weapons removes the deterrent effect of Trident to our enemies? And that is very dangerous.
What should the PM's letter say?
'Dear Captain,
Whatever you do, and for the sake of the continued existence of humanity, do not fire your missiles at anybody. I'm gone and a great swathe of our population is already wiped out. Your duty is clear. Use your wits, your technology, your communications, to preserve whatever you can of the human population wherever it is to be found.
I remain ... etc'
Seriously; who are likely to use nuclear weapons against Britain? And if the UK got rid of them would that make the threat greater? In the past Britain's nukes were meant to protect Western Europe and the UK from Russian invasion. It turned out that Russia did not invade the West - even including nations not under the West's (the US's) nuclear umbrella. So that was not it. Today Britain has joined the West's war against Islamic fundamentalism. Certainly, some of the fundamentalists' military groups would use nuclear weapons to murder millions - if they could get them. Is Trident a deterrent to that? Where would the Trident missiles be aimed in retaliation? The paradox of nuclear weapons in the 21st century is that those mad or bad enough to use them - cannot be deterred. In this century nukes would be a 'first use' weapon.
So what exactly is the safest thing to do 'in defence' of Britain's population? Get rid of the bloody things. Remove as many of them as possible from the face of the earth. And start up a campaign, like those organised by the UN to eradicate polio or small pox, to end them across the globe. If they did not exist then neither the Middle East's fundamentalists, nor those of the Barry Goldwater / Donald Trump hue in the West would have access to them.
But the British 'powers that be' are not idiots. With the exception of some really loopy Generals the arguments against Trident (leaving aside its truly enormous cost) are well understood. So the public are fed mainly on a diet of fear about nobody knowing what might happen in the future to maintain their support for the nuclear status quo, as though it has any relation to keeping the peace. (At the same time, the British establishment have commissioned the Chinese to build the UK's next nuclear power stations - decades into the future!)
What is really at stake for Britain's rulers in their defence of their 'independent nuclear deterrent'?
Leaving aside a seat in the Security Council of the United Nations and the prestige aquired to sell enormous amounts of arms round the world, Britain's nuclear weapon is a decisive keystone in the political and economic structure and ambitions of its ruling class. There is no doubting Trident's 'global reach': or its integral relationship to the military and political power of the US. Its existence was a part of the underpinning, up until 2008, of the biggest bank in the world, the Royal Bank of Scotland with its assets of £1.9 trillion. Trident was and remains a decisive part of the military wing of Britain's political and economic power across the globe.
Corbyn wants a different country. So do the SNP in Scotland. When they challenge Trident, Britain's rulers know that in their guts. And they will fight by all means that they can bring to hand to break the anti Trident, anti-war movement.
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