Many experts on green issues in general and climate change in particular have made their comments on the Paris Conference (30 November - 12 December 2015.) Radicals in the green movement and wider have criticised the conference's absence of concrete and binding commitments. They have blown away much of the delirium of the liberal mass media in its talk of
'The world's greatest diplomatic success.' (Guardian).
It is a great achievement that a global, mass, green movement exists and that it is growing. The women's movement of the 1970s and 80s, reborn in this century, acted and acts as the centre of knowledge and expertise on gender issues, and therefore can concentrate the globe's conscience on these questions. Similarly the massive green movement today, vastly outstripping its formal representation in the political forums available to it, is a critical repository of wisdom and understanding on the fate of the planet under late capitalism - as well as a huge political and social movement that forces key questions on to the world's agenda.
While the world's leading politicians have to balance the impact of global movements with the interests of the great corporations and networks that they serve, preferably neutralising the first to defend the second, nevertheless, they still have to act. They have to meet, they have to make promises, they have to give immense global airtime to the issues. They have to present themselves and their governments as the place to return to if the promises are unfulfilled; if the world keeps turning to the worse. This, in itself, is a tremendous political achievement for the green movement and its supporters, which started in the US a few decades ago from a position that, fundamentally, the greening of the earth was the responsibility of individuals, while simultaneously harbouring an underdeveloped critique of the dominant social and political systems.
Equally, the tangent that emerged in politics and economics that was created from that original baseline has closed up. Earlier some greens insisted on the need to stop growth, even to reduce it, in order to save the planet. Now a sophisticated analysis of social and economic systems has replaced this call on all, regardless of their poverty or their wealth, to 'stop being too greedy'. And while all sorts of experiments are blooming across the West about how to live a satisfying life without the drive to endless consumption, the centre of the green argument has become the deep inequality of a system of society that dominates the world and is simultaneously destroying its future. Concrete propositions for green energy, food production and global communication have supplanted the notion that technology is itself an enemy of humanity.
These developments are not even. Parallel to the history of movements on race or relating to women's rights, green politics is also now socially, even economically diverse phenomena. The biggest profit machine in the world, Apple, flirts assiduously with an anti-establishment projection that incorporates 'Green' as well as 'people' power. Some green politicians in Germany are distinctly part of the political class there, no doubt 'working from within.' Nevertheless the larger green movement at its base has already added an enormous impulse to positive change and made a major contribution to the blue print of a new society.
It is the critical activity of the green movement that has created a practical experience of struggle that underpins the dramatic evolution of their thought. And the new thinking has broken through many of the old silos in its encounter with some older revolutionary political initiatives. For example Ernest Mandel, a major marxist thinker and writer in the later part of the 20th century, had, among others, already challenged simplistic views of some schools of marxism who mechanically insisted on the need for universal abundance as the material basis for any eventual communist society. According to such thinking, super abundance was needed so that 'from each according to their ability - to each according to their need' might move from a slogan to reality.
Mandel argued for a new concept of 'rational abundance', a condition of essentially free housing, education, chiuld care, medical aid, power, transport and essential foods for all. Such a material platform would provide the basis in the world for people to decide what additions they might voluntarily and socially, personally and sexually create to best meet their needs for self expression. Hunting and fishing in the morning followed by an afternoon of Aristotle (Marx's personal desires) would not be most peoples' choices today!
It is the global perspective, the system wide challenge, the vast range of activities which the greens have launched, that have inspired much of the best of the new left. A courage to take on the whole world, to insist that its current social and political systems are stagnant and dangerous, that they must be challenged - in detail and in the most general terms, already provides tens of millions with a first coherent alternative to late capitalism's globalisation burn-out. Paris was a reaction to its force. That is the real contribution to humanities' future made in Paris.
Tuesday 15 December 2015
Wednesday 9 December 2015
Labour MP's consciences.
When the British Parliament voted to bomb in Syria, Labour MPs were allowed to use their votes 'according to their consciences', which meant that they did not have to follow any particular Labour policy, or vote according to the views of the leader or his shadow cabinet. It is worth remembering that both the majority of the shadow cabinet and the majority of Labour MPs voted against bombing, but the 66 Labour MPs who voted for bombing made Parliament's majority decision in favour of extending the war much more credible.
During and after Parliament's vote on military action in Syria a secondary debate started in the media (and wider) about MP's 'right' to vote according to their consciences on matters of war. MPs right to vote at all about war is a consequence of the public opprobrium felt for Bush and Blair's bloodbath in Iraq. There were many socialists and other radicals, inside and outside Parliament, during and after the Syria debate, who also believed that MP's consciences should be the basis of their vote (eg, shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and Green MP Caroline Lucas.)
It is likely that Corbyn drew back from arguing that Labour MPs should vote against the bombing and that there would be a Labour whip, because it might have provoked several resignations from his shadow cabinet. It is also argued that if he had insisted on the whip, then the Labour vote for the bombing would have been much less and the result would have meant that the bombing campaign would have been seen as less acceptable among the wider population.
But MPs voting according to their own determinations is a generally popular idea among voters, and not just for votes relating to war. Breaking from party orthodoxy creates the impression that MPs are challenging the old party structures thereby undermining the endless preservation of Britain's despised political status quo. It is a definite sign of the enlivening of political interest and understanding, as decisive questions are now debated and fought through in Parliament, when for decades there was little distinction between the programmes of the mainstream parties. All the major issues of wealth and power were not just glossed over by the main Parliamentary parties, they were denied as issues of any substantive contention across the whole of society. Today, Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party has changed all that. People are getting more interested in politics and, as a result, look for personal initiative from MPs and reject the 'political machines.'
The popular enthusiasm for voting by conscience maybe a reflection on the decay of the major, traditional, mainstream parties. They are not seen as trustworthy vehicles to express the public will, especially in this new acerbic and substantive political contest in Parliament. The public's political understanding turns to the most private part of politician's personalities to attempt to find its true reflection! But there is a deep paradox at the heart of this argument.
Not for the Tories. They were 'whipped.' Behind that fact is the coalescence around the idea in the last months, of the Generals, the main scions of Britain's media, the international rich, as reflected in the City of London and elsewhere, and most of the rest of the British establishment, that bombing Syria was about getting Britain's feet firmly under the international negotiations table, about joining the counter-front to the Russian's intervention, about dumping the dangerous toxic shame bequeathed by Blair and, most of all, about what sort of country Britain should continue to be. Accordingly, with the establishment marshaled, the Tory MPs were organised to deliver. In the good old days Parliamentary votes would never have been involved in this sort of very serious stuff about foreign policy. For the time being that has changed. So be it. The Tories unite to go to war.
On the other hand, those in British society that deeply distrust its establishment, and the bombing of Syria, are not politically coherent or coalesced. Many have not yet seen the great divides, of interests, of foreign policy, of the nature of the country that Britain is, and that might change to become. Bombing Syria is seen by some as a 'personal' judgment. 'Even if my MP votes to extend the war to Syria, and I do not accept that policy, I will nevertheless accept her or his 'right' to represent me - when they vote for the opposite!'
And so a radical lack of confidence in the traditional mass parties, building up for a generation into an important part of Britain's political crisis, becomes transformed into its opposite, as the lack of confidence in the significance of peoples' own political rights to have their views acted on - in society's main political forum - ends up by expressing itself as a judgment of the superior morality of the individual MP. And the reliance on MPs consciences then becomes another part of the dissolution of the voice and of the impact of the views of the majority of the people in the national and international political context.
Why are there political parties? What do they do?
Political parties are the summary of the historical experience of humanity since the emergence of politics. Human beings discovered that collective organisation was indispensable for production and extended their social organisations into the political field. Social groups, clans, factions and ultimately classes required political expression - especially when politics (states, armies, government) was set up by other, socially dominant classes. Parties - at their most basic - battle for the social, economic and political interests of the classes that set them up and adhere to them. Like any other human institution they can be overwhelmed by the power of the interests of their enemy, by the divisions among their own social base and, more recently, by the emergence of a distinct political class that serves its own social interests simply by becoming highly privileged politicians.
The continuous integrity of political parties, especially those that serve subordinate classes in society, comes exclusively from two conditions. First the degree of collective behaviour, action and thinking which they observe, as that is most likely to lead to stronger policy, just as strong social unity of a class best protects its interests in society. Second the deep and continuous accountability that parties demonstrate to the classes that form them. Without the second, politics begins to separate individual interests from the requirements of the people as a whole. Politicians begin the search for distinction, within their supporting classes for particular support, and for themselves, among others in their party.
In this context, the individual conscience of an MP as a platform for their political decisions is absurd if not unhealthy. A political system may be set up to obscure that fact, like the one-past-the-post constituencies in Britain's corrupt and labouring political machine. The division of the rich and their party from those who are poor and who work to live and their party, maybe hidden behind shared flim-flam about the national interest - when one of the parties has effectively collapsed. These screens may all provide a backdrop for the 'sacred conscience of me. An individual MP.' But the essence of the matter is unavoidable. A genuine political party of the majority, including all its members, would thoroughly debate its policy on Syria, thoroughly study and debate the views of its voters, come to a social, collective decision, then vote together. It does not exist to express a large selection of individual thoughts and feelings.
Of course a minority, despite the full and unconditional debate and collective thinking, might still decide a different route to that of the majority. That might be a minority of one. So be it. Even the deepest, widest and most accountable of democratic exercises are not 'truth proof'. They are, in the absence of God's thoughts, simply as good as human organisation can get. But to accept the worth and significance of that opposition, and not to repudiate it, it has to rest on a unique interpretation of the wishes and needs of the party's base, including the international implications of that base's interests in society, and not on the unique thoughts and fears of A. MP.
Some MPs argue that they are representatives and not delegates. That is to say they represent people by making their own decisions. They are not delegates who have to follow the decisions of those who elected them. They have been elected 'to use their own conscience.' Of course their background, their wealth, their associations, their upbringing and their social context will probably give most people a clear enough idea of where such an MP's conscience might lead. Even something as personal as a conscience cannot be abstracted from the pressures of the mundane matters of the world. The overwhelming majority of people across the world seem to know that. It looks as though this undertsanding is even more hard-wired in the human brain than an MP's conscience.
Sunday 6 December 2015
Will the Labour Party split?
Both 'no' and 'yes' would be the wrong answers. A split does not describe it. Something new is on its way.
When Western European, Russian and US socialists who were in favour of the overthrow of capitalism first looked at the British Labour Party at the beginning of the 20th century they thought it very odd indeed. They thought that a mass working class party, set up essentially by trade unions and clearly establishing itself as the political expression of the (privileged and relatively secure) trade union bureaucracy, with a distinct leaning towards the defence of Empire, was anything but an anti-capitalist party. There was an argument about whether the UK Labour Party should be allowed to join the Second International.
The new International was a precious gain according to its members. Not only was it spearheaded by the immense German Social Democratic Party, but its resolutions included the emphatic decision that in the event European rulers began to look for war, an international General Strike would be called by the International to stop it. Looking at the rise of militarism across Europe and the growing international tensions, the Second International's resolution was an immense relief for millions.
Members of the International, like Lenin, spoke amd wrote in favour of admitting the British Labourites. He argued that the Labour Party was part of an international process, albeit thoroughly infected by the British capitalism's immense advantages through Empire, of mass working class movements becoming organised not just economically but also politically.
Even after the Russian revolution, and the setting up of the 3rd International by those who had opposed WW1 and supported the Russian revolutionaries, Lenin suggested to the new British Communist Party that they should seek to be part of the growing and inevitable division between the working class base of Labour and its leadership in Parliament and in the headquarters of the trade unions. It was, he argued, 'a bourgeois/workers party.'
Trotsky and others who followed Lenin, when they had time to consider internal British politics, emphasised the need to exploit this contradiction, running like a fault line through the British working class movement.
The greatest achievement of the Labour Party was its reform programme following WW2. British and European capitalism was so weak, and the pressure of the victorious USSR so strong, that a Labour government delivered. Their initiatives were never driven forward. Never developed as part of an organised population beginning to sort out the big problems for themselves, but still immensely valuable in the lives of ordinary people.
In the modern period the conditions for a reforming Labour government have collapsed. Labour governments have managed, here and there, to catch the tail end of a more liberal international wind in favour of important social reforms, abortion rights, more recently equal pay and the extension of marriage, opposition to racist attacks etc. They have (reluctantly) spent more on upholding social provision and maintaining the status quo against increasingly fierce attacks on living standards and the social wage. But since the 1980s they have not ventured to reverse any anti-union laws, or the de-nationalisations, or the use of the private sector in state activity. They have accepted, in every chance of government that they have had, the defence of what is, even when 'what is' has come about as a result of a ferocious attack on working class people. They have never reversed, once in government, any prior retreat or a defeat for the class whose votes they have depended on.
And then there was Blair. There was nothing special about Tony Blair as such. He dealt with the decline of the trade unions by abandoning them and rooting his political operation in the vast new management apparatus of the social sector. He adopted the status quo established by Thatcherism and he destroyed Clause 4 of Labour's constitution, the last symbol of the idea that the working class, a separate and exploited class, should have their own independent economic and political programme from that of capitalist society. Blair's Labour Party was the final, political part, of the social and economic destruction of the traditional working class that had been wreaked by Thatcher and the general, international offensive by international capitalism. And, as a result, he destroyed the remnants of the Labour Party as a bourgeois/workers party.
Blair's Labour Party dissolved its own internal structure and its mass support among an increasingly demoralised and socially atomised working class. Instead it placed itself as the real representation of the new 'white van men' (while the self-employed are still only 17% of the labour force) and defined itself in government as a predominantly classless new management.
The curious consequence, today, of this break up of Labour's traditions, policy structure and organisation at its base has been the emergence of the 'unity of opposites'. Blair and his followers carried through the attack on the working class in Britain by consciously dissolving the material basis for the old Leninist, contradiction at the heart of the Labour Party. In the course of which it left a largely empty shell topped by a parliamentary party. But that empty shell at the base has, in turn, suddenly become a new vehicle for the current political resurgence of the left. The new left in Britain has found itself in a largely vacant, but still, apparently, politically mainstream vehicle, as a means of expressing its political opposition in society. The bulk of the old parliamentary party now sit on top of a base, with its own leader, drawn from a new left. And the result is chaos.
Whatever this is, it is not the replication in modern life, of Lenin's original view of the Labour Party and how it would resolve its central contradiction. The new left in Britain, with important trade union links and the capacity of effective mass action, is not yet anywhere near the day to day leadership of the still scattered, still disorganised and super exploited British working class. And what remains of the Labour Party in Parliament is in an increasingly unlikely condition to form any sort of government. It is neither an attractive political proposition for large hunks of what is the working class movement (eg in Scotland or who support the Greens, or who are against war) nor for the establishment, because in the absence of their ability to lead labour in general, they bring nothing (but crisis) to the table. Already, without Corbyn's victory, right wing Labour MPs twig their uncertain future. It is literally only because they have no sight yet of an independent project that prevents their shift to more hospitable circumstances now. Certainly, in a potential world of coalitions, many of these MPs would offer themselves like a shot to work with a new minority Tory government under the right conditions (like Lord Adonis.)
Blair has done his damage. He summed up the change in the Labour Party from a bourgeois/workers party, to a fully bourgeois (but weak) party, still supported in part by more and more alienated working class votes. The fragility he bequeathed coincides with a moment of a new eruption and growth of the British left. The old mass Labour Party died. The question is, will a new mass Labour Party, with the principle and purpose to re-gather and re-animate a political working class movement and a new anti-capitalist vision, now be born?
Some of the preconditions for such a development are obvious. For example there needs to be a mass movement, working in action, rooted among the ordinary people - that is mobilising and drawing society together in a challenge to the way we are all expected to live. Alternatives to our economic and political system have to become a new common sense. More narrowly and concretely in the scope of this article, there needs to be a direct challenge to those MPs who want to defend the status quo and yet who also wish to be part of the new party and the movement it allies with. It is not a question of whether there will be a split in Labour to build this new party; there has to be a split. It is another precondition.
Taking one example; Constituency Labour Parties and affiliated unions will soon be discussing their resolutions to the 2016 Labour conference. When the Tory government calls on Parliament to vote on Britain's nuclear weapon, Trident, and its renewal, the Tories will hope for Corbyn's isolation among his own Parliamentary party, which will certainly happen. The bulk of current Labour MPs will vote for renewal. Corbyn, representing Labour's new base, will not. The new members will want to deal with Trident in their resolutions to Labour's conference in two ways. First they will want to stop Trident's renewal and second they will want a conference that is allowed to force Labour MPs to carry out their conference decision in Parliament. Some of the delegates will call this resurrection of the old rights of Labour conferences. In reality difficult conference decisions were always sabotaged by Labour's leaders. This time, for the first time ever, because of the new base in Labour, because of Corbyn, that will not happen. Labour MPs who support the sort of country which flourishes nuclear weapons will need to decide where their allegiances lie. And, of course, Labour's right wing know this, and although toppling Corbyn will not solve the problem of Labour's diminishing power to form a future government (it will make it worse) it will make their future leverage with those that can that much more solid.
What can solve Britain's political crisis - in favour of the majority? The Labour Party question is now at the heart of Britain's general political crisis - and energetic socialist initiatives can be a giant step to resolving it. Labour can take a turn backward to the already declining party, already unable to create a majority in society or even form a government. In reality the old Labour Party right wing embraced the reality of medium term dissolution. Or, instead, a grand new party might be built. When Blair brought the Labour Party's historic contradiction to its end, he inadvertently cleared the ground for something new. Lots of little left parties tried their hardest (and some are still trying) to get themselves 'sucked up' into prominence by the vacuum that Blair left behind. It did not work. While, in Lenins' terms Blair had pushed out the 'workers' bit from the 'bourgeois/worker' party, there remained only a social and political hiatus and nothing inevitable about the future politics of a shattered (economically, socially and even geographically) working class movement in Britain.
Today, mass movements, headed by the Peoples Assembly have been built and are knitting together a new voice of hundreds of thousands of the left. And the real vacuum inside the Labour Party's dying organisation (an organisation that had to allow non members to elect its leader) has, finally, 'sucked up' this new left. And, now, a new set of alliances in politics and a new mainstream party heading them, can be built. There is no prospect of resurrection here. Just like the reality of the old Labour conferences, the old fantasies surrounding Labour's history in 1945 - 8, cannot be repeated or even sought out. Labour is not 'returning' to its history. It is breaking from its history or it will fail. A new government, headed by the left, requires linking with the left of the SNP and opening to Scottish independence and a UK federation, allying with the Greens and their base, and drastic reform of Parliament and on, and on. Britain's current political crisis cannot be resolved by Britain's establishment. It can only be resolved by a new mass party, creating new alliances and striking out in the direction of an entirely new and different sort of country.
When Western European, Russian and US socialists who were in favour of the overthrow of capitalism first looked at the British Labour Party at the beginning of the 20th century they thought it very odd indeed. They thought that a mass working class party, set up essentially by trade unions and clearly establishing itself as the political expression of the (privileged and relatively secure) trade union bureaucracy, with a distinct leaning towards the defence of Empire, was anything but an anti-capitalist party. There was an argument about whether the UK Labour Party should be allowed to join the Second International.
The new International was a precious gain according to its members. Not only was it spearheaded by the immense German Social Democratic Party, but its resolutions included the emphatic decision that in the event European rulers began to look for war, an international General Strike would be called by the International to stop it. Looking at the rise of militarism across Europe and the growing international tensions, the Second International's resolution was an immense relief for millions.
Members of the International, like Lenin, spoke amd wrote in favour of admitting the British Labourites. He argued that the Labour Party was part of an international process, albeit thoroughly infected by the British capitalism's immense advantages through Empire, of mass working class movements becoming organised not just economically but also politically.
Even after the Russian revolution, and the setting up of the 3rd International by those who had opposed WW1 and supported the Russian revolutionaries, Lenin suggested to the new British Communist Party that they should seek to be part of the growing and inevitable division between the working class base of Labour and its leadership in Parliament and in the headquarters of the trade unions. It was, he argued, 'a bourgeois/workers party.'
Trotsky and others who followed Lenin, when they had time to consider internal British politics, emphasised the need to exploit this contradiction, running like a fault line through the British working class movement.
The greatest achievement of the Labour Party was its reform programme following WW2. British and European capitalism was so weak, and the pressure of the victorious USSR so strong, that a Labour government delivered. Their initiatives were never driven forward. Never developed as part of an organised population beginning to sort out the big problems for themselves, but still immensely valuable in the lives of ordinary people.
In the modern period the conditions for a reforming Labour government have collapsed. Labour governments have managed, here and there, to catch the tail end of a more liberal international wind in favour of important social reforms, abortion rights, more recently equal pay and the extension of marriage, opposition to racist attacks etc. They have (reluctantly) spent more on upholding social provision and maintaining the status quo against increasingly fierce attacks on living standards and the social wage. But since the 1980s they have not ventured to reverse any anti-union laws, or the de-nationalisations, or the use of the private sector in state activity. They have accepted, in every chance of government that they have had, the defence of what is, even when 'what is' has come about as a result of a ferocious attack on working class people. They have never reversed, once in government, any prior retreat or a defeat for the class whose votes they have depended on.
And then there was Blair. There was nothing special about Tony Blair as such. He dealt with the decline of the trade unions by abandoning them and rooting his political operation in the vast new management apparatus of the social sector. He adopted the status quo established by Thatcherism and he destroyed Clause 4 of Labour's constitution, the last symbol of the idea that the working class, a separate and exploited class, should have their own independent economic and political programme from that of capitalist society. Blair's Labour Party was the final, political part, of the social and economic destruction of the traditional working class that had been wreaked by Thatcher and the general, international offensive by international capitalism. And, as a result, he destroyed the remnants of the Labour Party as a bourgeois/workers party.
Blair's Labour Party dissolved its own internal structure and its mass support among an increasingly demoralised and socially atomised working class. Instead it placed itself as the real representation of the new 'white van men' (while the self-employed are still only 17% of the labour force) and defined itself in government as a predominantly classless new management.
The curious consequence, today, of this break up of Labour's traditions, policy structure and organisation at its base has been the emergence of the 'unity of opposites'. Blair and his followers carried through the attack on the working class in Britain by consciously dissolving the material basis for the old Leninist, contradiction at the heart of the Labour Party. In the course of which it left a largely empty shell topped by a parliamentary party. But that empty shell at the base has, in turn, suddenly become a new vehicle for the current political resurgence of the left. The new left in Britain has found itself in a largely vacant, but still, apparently, politically mainstream vehicle, as a means of expressing its political opposition in society. The bulk of the old parliamentary party now sit on top of a base, with its own leader, drawn from a new left. And the result is chaos.
Whatever this is, it is not the replication in modern life, of Lenin's original view of the Labour Party and how it would resolve its central contradiction. The new left in Britain, with important trade union links and the capacity of effective mass action, is not yet anywhere near the day to day leadership of the still scattered, still disorganised and super exploited British working class. And what remains of the Labour Party in Parliament is in an increasingly unlikely condition to form any sort of government. It is neither an attractive political proposition for large hunks of what is the working class movement (eg in Scotland or who support the Greens, or who are against war) nor for the establishment, because in the absence of their ability to lead labour in general, they bring nothing (but crisis) to the table. Already, without Corbyn's victory, right wing Labour MPs twig their uncertain future. It is literally only because they have no sight yet of an independent project that prevents their shift to more hospitable circumstances now. Certainly, in a potential world of coalitions, many of these MPs would offer themselves like a shot to work with a new minority Tory government under the right conditions (like Lord Adonis.)
Blair has done his damage. He summed up the change in the Labour Party from a bourgeois/workers party, to a fully bourgeois (but weak) party, still supported in part by more and more alienated working class votes. The fragility he bequeathed coincides with a moment of a new eruption and growth of the British left. The old mass Labour Party died. The question is, will a new mass Labour Party, with the principle and purpose to re-gather and re-animate a political working class movement and a new anti-capitalist vision, now be born?
Some of the preconditions for such a development are obvious. For example there needs to be a mass movement, working in action, rooted among the ordinary people - that is mobilising and drawing society together in a challenge to the way we are all expected to live. Alternatives to our economic and political system have to become a new common sense. More narrowly and concretely in the scope of this article, there needs to be a direct challenge to those MPs who want to defend the status quo and yet who also wish to be part of the new party and the movement it allies with. It is not a question of whether there will be a split in Labour to build this new party; there has to be a split. It is another precondition.
Taking one example; Constituency Labour Parties and affiliated unions will soon be discussing their resolutions to the 2016 Labour conference. When the Tory government calls on Parliament to vote on Britain's nuclear weapon, Trident, and its renewal, the Tories will hope for Corbyn's isolation among his own Parliamentary party, which will certainly happen. The bulk of current Labour MPs will vote for renewal. Corbyn, representing Labour's new base, will not. The new members will want to deal with Trident in their resolutions to Labour's conference in two ways. First they will want to stop Trident's renewal and second they will want a conference that is allowed to force Labour MPs to carry out their conference decision in Parliament. Some of the delegates will call this resurrection of the old rights of Labour conferences. In reality difficult conference decisions were always sabotaged by Labour's leaders. This time, for the first time ever, because of the new base in Labour, because of Corbyn, that will not happen. Labour MPs who support the sort of country which flourishes nuclear weapons will need to decide where their allegiances lie. And, of course, Labour's right wing know this, and although toppling Corbyn will not solve the problem of Labour's diminishing power to form a future government (it will make it worse) it will make their future leverage with those that can that much more solid.
What can solve Britain's political crisis - in favour of the majority? The Labour Party question is now at the heart of Britain's general political crisis - and energetic socialist initiatives can be a giant step to resolving it. Labour can take a turn backward to the already declining party, already unable to create a majority in society or even form a government. In reality the old Labour Party right wing embraced the reality of medium term dissolution. Or, instead, a grand new party might be built. When Blair brought the Labour Party's historic contradiction to its end, he inadvertently cleared the ground for something new. Lots of little left parties tried their hardest (and some are still trying) to get themselves 'sucked up' into prominence by the vacuum that Blair left behind. It did not work. While, in Lenins' terms Blair had pushed out the 'workers' bit from the 'bourgeois/worker' party, there remained only a social and political hiatus and nothing inevitable about the future politics of a shattered (economically, socially and even geographically) working class movement in Britain.
Today, mass movements, headed by the Peoples Assembly have been built and are knitting together a new voice of hundreds of thousands of the left. And the real vacuum inside the Labour Party's dying organisation (an organisation that had to allow non members to elect its leader) has, finally, 'sucked up' this new left. And, now, a new set of alliances in politics and a new mainstream party heading them, can be built. There is no prospect of resurrection here. Just like the reality of the old Labour conferences, the old fantasies surrounding Labour's history in 1945 - 8, cannot be repeated or even sought out. Labour is not 'returning' to its history. It is breaking from its history or it will fail. A new government, headed by the left, requires linking with the left of the SNP and opening to Scottish independence and a UK federation, allying with the Greens and their base, and drastic reform of Parliament and on, and on. Britain's current political crisis cannot be resolved by Britain's establishment. It can only be resolved by a new mass party, creating new alliances and striking out in the direction of an entirely new and different sort of country.
Thursday 3 December 2015
Parliament's finest hour?
Britain's Prime Minister, David Cameron said some pretty odd things in his speech (2 December). He was one of many MPs to rehearse his Churchilian side in the debate in the House of Commons about whether to send a handful of jets to join in the bombing of ISIS.
'ISIL is a terrorist organisation unlike those we have dealt with before' he listed some of the the murderous depravity committed by ISIS. Then he said
'In the space of a few months, ISIL has taken control of territory that is greater than the size of Britain...It is not a threat on the far side of the world. We will face a Caliphate on the shores of the Mediterranean and bordering a NATO member ... This is not the stuff of fantasy; it is happening in front of us, and we need to face up to it.'
The UN had sanctioned it. International 'partners' were falling over themselves to get stuck in. Britain's immediate local best friends, the French, had begged for UK support.
But, Cameron (tried to) thunder, there is absolutely no commitment to ground troops in Syria!
Why not?
Anti - fascist Hilary Benn, son of the main leader of Labour's left (1979 - 2008) who quips 'I am a Benn and not a Bennite' to the media, decided that ISIS are the new fascists. He listed the honourable history of European Socialist parties against fascism (muddling them up, on at least one occasion, with European rank and file socialists, when he praised the volunteers who joined the International Brigade during Spain's civil war.) He ended by calling on his comrades in the Labour Party not to walk by, but to
'Do our bit in Syria', and was clapped for his pains by both Tory and Labour MPs who want to bomb it. BBC commentators were convulsed by this extraordinary show (?) of bi-partisanship. Parliamentary speeches had risen from third to second rate.
But the mental pictures of Dad's Army evoked by the junior Benn's oratory, putting on their helmets at the end of a LP Constituency meeting and, after a sit-down and a cup of tea, ready to strike the foe, can be put aside. He, just like the Tory MP who was voting 'yes'
'For the refugees and for the security of Twickenham', insisted on - no ground troops.
Why not?
The ISIS horror, everybody in the debate apparently agreed, would not disappear until a war on the ground was waged. Well, it was part of Britain's 'strategy' the PM told the House, for locals to do this particular 'bit.' There were 70,000 of them rearing to go according to the PM's military advisers. Nobody, not in Syria, nor in the US, nor Russia, nor the French, nobody in the whole world (except Hilary Benn, Labour's Shadow Foreign Secretary) believes this. So what is the point of all the hollow hyperbole and rhetoric designed to allow 6 or 8 British bombers to add their little slice of death to tens of thousands of 'sorties' already crowding the skies of Iraq and Syria?
Starting with ISIS; they have joined that dishonourable band of new Nazis that the British establishment have identified at various points since 1945. ISIS joins the Mau Mau that fought the Brits for Independence in Kenya (1952 - 1960). Nasser, of Egypt was he new Hitler when he nationalised the Suez Canal. Idi Amin, a Ugandan leader set up by the Brits but who turned and was then accused by Britain's media of eating the hearts of his opponents, was another new Hitler. The Palestine Liberation organisation were fascists when they kidnapped aeroplanes and killed Israeli athletes. Saddam Hussain, brought to power by the West also turned into a new Hitler, with his terrible tortures and murders, which, before he was Hitler, he never did. On the other hand, fighting the ISIS fascists today includes the Saudis, who have a whole judicial system dedicated to murder and torture. The new Benn however is absolutely nothing like the old Benn. Dragging out the standard bullshit about the latest version of the fascists who alarm the British establishment as a way of legitimising the latest piece of British warmongering means he should be ashamed of himself.
ISIS may not be the latest incarnation of Hitler's fascists, although they are certainly murderers and torturers. But they have much bigger brothers when it comes to murdering and torturing, some of which Britain's 'intervention' is actually designed to defend.
If, for a moment Cameron or the junior Benn believed their own statements, then they would immediately embrace the Russian call for a grand alliance against the terrorists. A new Caliphate in the Med? A new rise of fascism in the Middle east? Everything, including Assad's immediate future in Syria, would be utterly subordinated to the main threat of the rise of ISIS. A new, united UN led army would be built, with large battalions recruited from surrounding states. The Kurdish Peshmerga fighters would stop getting their supply of western arms through an eyedropper.
Benn minor maybe an over-enthusiastic fool, with his eyes diverted by the prospect of the Labour leadership, but Cameron's military boys (and they are boys) are not. The aim of the West, a goal that is completely tied hand and foot to the Saudis, is the removal of the old Syria which offered its own brand of leadership to the Middle East. Indeed the Saudis helped set up ISIS as a means to weaken Syria. Their frankenstein has got out of hand. They need to kill it off or at least neutralise it, but the West and the Saudi's main problem now are the Russians. That's why the Typhoons and Tornadoes are flying tonight. Britain's political and military leadership are fighting, together with their allies, for influence over the future of Syria and that contest is with Russia.
McDonnel, Labour's shadow Chancellor, astutely commented that Blair had 'risen to the occasion' when he made his great speech in favour of war in Iraq. It was the best he ever gave in Parliament (where he was judged as a mediocre speaker.) Fine words do not always equate to solid truth.
Next: will Labour split?
'ISIL is a terrorist organisation unlike those we have dealt with before' he listed some of the the murderous depravity committed by ISIS. Then he said
'In the space of a few months, ISIL has taken control of territory that is greater than the size of Britain...It is not a threat on the far side of the world. We will face a Caliphate on the shores of the Mediterranean and bordering a NATO member ... This is not the stuff of fantasy; it is happening in front of us, and we need to face up to it.'
The UN had sanctioned it. International 'partners' were falling over themselves to get stuck in. Britain's immediate local best friends, the French, had begged for UK support.
But, Cameron (tried to) thunder, there is absolutely no commitment to ground troops in Syria!
Why not?
Anti - fascist Hilary Benn, son of the main leader of Labour's left (1979 - 2008) who quips 'I am a Benn and not a Bennite' to the media, decided that ISIS are the new fascists. He listed the honourable history of European Socialist parties against fascism (muddling them up, on at least one occasion, with European rank and file socialists, when he praised the volunteers who joined the International Brigade during Spain's civil war.) He ended by calling on his comrades in the Labour Party not to walk by, but to
'Do our bit in Syria', and was clapped for his pains by both Tory and Labour MPs who want to bomb it. BBC commentators were convulsed by this extraordinary show (?) of bi-partisanship. Parliamentary speeches had risen from third to second rate.
But the mental pictures of Dad's Army evoked by the junior Benn's oratory, putting on their helmets at the end of a LP Constituency meeting and, after a sit-down and a cup of tea, ready to strike the foe, can be put aside. He, just like the Tory MP who was voting 'yes'
'For the refugees and for the security of Twickenham', insisted on - no ground troops.
Why not?
The ISIS horror, everybody in the debate apparently agreed, would not disappear until a war on the ground was waged. Well, it was part of Britain's 'strategy' the PM told the House, for locals to do this particular 'bit.' There were 70,000 of them rearing to go according to the PM's military advisers. Nobody, not in Syria, nor in the US, nor Russia, nor the French, nobody in the whole world (except Hilary Benn, Labour's Shadow Foreign Secretary) believes this. So what is the point of all the hollow hyperbole and rhetoric designed to allow 6 or 8 British bombers to add their little slice of death to tens of thousands of 'sorties' already crowding the skies of Iraq and Syria?
Starting with ISIS; they have joined that dishonourable band of new Nazis that the British establishment have identified at various points since 1945. ISIS joins the Mau Mau that fought the Brits for Independence in Kenya (1952 - 1960). Nasser, of Egypt was he new Hitler when he nationalised the Suez Canal. Idi Amin, a Ugandan leader set up by the Brits but who turned and was then accused by Britain's media of eating the hearts of his opponents, was another new Hitler. The Palestine Liberation organisation were fascists when they kidnapped aeroplanes and killed Israeli athletes. Saddam Hussain, brought to power by the West also turned into a new Hitler, with his terrible tortures and murders, which, before he was Hitler, he never did. On the other hand, fighting the ISIS fascists today includes the Saudis, who have a whole judicial system dedicated to murder and torture. The new Benn however is absolutely nothing like the old Benn. Dragging out the standard bullshit about the latest version of the fascists who alarm the British establishment as a way of legitimising the latest piece of British warmongering means he should be ashamed of himself.
ISIS may not be the latest incarnation of Hitler's fascists, although they are certainly murderers and torturers. But they have much bigger brothers when it comes to murdering and torturing, some of which Britain's 'intervention' is actually designed to defend.
If, for a moment Cameron or the junior Benn believed their own statements, then they would immediately embrace the Russian call for a grand alliance against the terrorists. A new Caliphate in the Med? A new rise of fascism in the Middle east? Everything, including Assad's immediate future in Syria, would be utterly subordinated to the main threat of the rise of ISIS. A new, united UN led army would be built, with large battalions recruited from surrounding states. The Kurdish Peshmerga fighters would stop getting their supply of western arms through an eyedropper.
Benn minor maybe an over-enthusiastic fool, with his eyes diverted by the prospect of the Labour leadership, but Cameron's military boys (and they are boys) are not. The aim of the West, a goal that is completely tied hand and foot to the Saudis, is the removal of the old Syria which offered its own brand of leadership to the Middle East. Indeed the Saudis helped set up ISIS as a means to weaken Syria. Their frankenstein has got out of hand. They need to kill it off or at least neutralise it, but the West and the Saudi's main problem now are the Russians. That's why the Typhoons and Tornadoes are flying tonight. Britain's political and military leadership are fighting, together with their allies, for influence over the future of Syria and that contest is with Russia.
McDonnel, Labour's shadow Chancellor, astutely commented that Blair had 'risen to the occasion' when he made his great speech in favour of war in Iraq. It was the best he ever gave in Parliament (where he was judged as a mediocre speaker.) Fine words do not always equate to solid truth.
Next: will Labour split?
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