Andrew Rawnsley, the main political commentator for the British Observer newspaper (22 February) tells his readers what the coming British referendum on EU membership means and then completely contradicts himself. His argument is full of sonorous phrases about Britain's future. Prime Minister Cameron he opines,
'Was absolutely right when he declared that "the choice goes to the heart of what kind of country we want to be"... the decision will be much more epic than choosing a tenant for number 10 ...'
But earlier in his piece Rawnsley has a different explanation of the meaning of Britain's EU referendum. He writes
'It is certainly correct that this (the referendum) will be a climactic struggle for the soul of the right that has been brewing for so long...' He then goes on to worry that the campaign of great and good that will call for a yes vote might serve as a lightning rod for the floating anger that the British have with their establishment. He denounces the 'Outers" as he calls them for having no vision of Britain's future at all, and hopes it will be that particular weakness that eventually sees them off.
The truth is that neither Rawnsley's 'Inners' nor his 'Outers' have any 'vision' for the future of Britain. Rawnsley was instead right on the mark when he described the referendum as a decision that will be a 'climactic struggle for the soul of the right' (if they have a soul - and all with proportions guarded!) The referendum is not about 'visions' or otherwise of Britain's future, it is about the fate and future of the right. (Significantly Rawnsley himself offers no concrete description of anybody's vision for Britain.)
That was not always the case. In 1975 a weak Labour Government (and Britain's establishment) were pondering what to do about a fragile ruling class whose authority (and Empire) was bleeding away while facing the frightening rise of a huge and combative trade union movement. Membership of the Common Market (and the 'Outers' have always been right about the political character of the European project) was seen at that time as a political as well as an economic means of strengthening Britain's ruling class against the threats they faced. The left and the trade union movement who broadly opposed entry and who were led by Tony Benn and Michael Foot, were clear about this. The left lost. It set the scene for a decade of struggle which ended with the defeat of the British working class movement as it was organised then.
2016 is not a rerun of 1975. Would that politics and history were so simple. The economics of the EU were designed to create big multi-national corporations to challenge US and now Chinese economic strength. The 'contribution' that the UK makes to this European aspiration is the City of London. The City brokered most of Europe's loans to Greece, to Spain and Portugal and to Ireland for example. They circulate Russian thieves' money from Russia's oil and gas into German industries (and political parties) and London property. Now it seems the City of London will be promoted even more in Europe by the 'Inners' (Cameron won new assurances) and 'defended' from EU banking rules or taxes by the 'Outers.' In practice the City will carry on doing what it pleases either way. Why? Because the City and the other great corporations that originally sprang from Europe are now globally based, taxed in tax havens, producing 100 new billionaires a year and, from a strictly economic point of view no longer need the EU. They are no longer attached to the old geo-political competition between Europe, the East and the US.
As for the politics of the EU they remain as corrupt and undemocratic as the politics of the nation states which they claim to unify. The leaders of the EU embraced the drastic neo-con remedies first espoused by Reagan and Thatcher and have ruined whole nations and populations as a consequence. They are not reformable, in fact barely accessible as far as the vast mass of the European population is concerned. However a new European left has arisen and now moved in several countries into the mainstream of politics and are beginning to debate openly what a new Europe could look like. Central to the future of this new left Europe is the reaction to war and the refugee question.
These brief sketches of European ruling class economics and the accompanying political responses are enough to demonstrate that neither entry nor exit of Britain into or out of the EU as it exists has anything like the same stakes as those involved as in the 1975 decision. The fact of the massive refugee/immigrant crisis across Europe is actually more likely than anything else to influence British referendum voters. From that point of view (and whatever George Galloway and others might want) a vote 'no' would be a racist vote. And this is not unconnected with the other fact. Andrew Rawnsley is wrong. The coming British referendum is not at all about contesting visions of Britain's future. That has not been an option via a pro or anti EU vote for a decade or more. It certainly is about the strength of racism and the recomposition of Britain's right wing. And while visions for Britain's future will be effected by decisions made about refugees and immigrants they depend on what happens to Trident, about welfare and austerity, about joining in America's wars and what should be done about the City of London' global web and about Scottish independence. The referendum is important for working out who the Tories are now and how powerful are the British racists. Big questions, but not the same thing as Britain's future.
Monday 22 February 2016
Tuesday 16 February 2016
Who do Labour MPs represent?
There is a growing confusion, both in the right and the left of politics in Britain, regarding what MPs should be and who is it that they are meant to represent. The British Tory Party is opening a debate about whether or not Britain should stay in the EU. 40 Tory Party Constituency Secretaries have already raised the question of who it is that MPs really represent when they attacked their Prime Minister, Cameron, for insisting that Tory MPs should vote on the matter ‘with their hearts’ and not according to the views of their constituency parties. (PM Cameron has done this because he knows most Tory constituency parties and their meager membership are opposed to the EU and Cameron is standing down before the next election.) The 40 local Tory Grandees feel affronted. Their MP belongs to them.
This sort of confusion is general. But it actually starts from a very unconfused and indeed popular sentiment that in Britain MPs have ended up representing themselves. From this generally held perspective MPs are miles away from the lives of ordinary people; they pursue their own interests via a privileged and well-paid career. This view is wide spread across Western Europe and the USA and therefore joins up with popular attitudes more associated in the past with colonial and semi-colonial regimes.
There are deep material roots for a jaundiced view of late capitalist parliamentary type politics. Currently 2000 Spanish politicians face corruption charges. Belgium has 7 separate Parliaments. Italian MPs have 5 times the average Italian salary and huge privileges and (perhaps not surprisingly) 169 parties and movements made it onto their last ballot papers. In Germany only the selling and buying of votes is actually a punishable offence. The UN, in its 2005 convention against corruption called for a greater distance between politicians and business. Ratified by 160 countries the UN convention would make it illegal to offer, promise or grant advantages to third parties, but not in Germany. There have been 15 major political corruption scandals in France since 2010.
And, of course, there is the largest parliamentary institution in the Western world, the British, unelected House of Lords. It is full of peers from all parties living within walking distance of the chamber who are able to claim up to £300 a day just to turn up. Baroness Wilcox, a former Conservative minister – lives in a £4.5m house a mere 200 yards away from the Palace of Westminster and received £74,400 from these payments over the last two years. Peers who have said almost nothing during House of Lords’ debates have received more than £1.6m in allowances and travel expenses during the past five years. The Tory MP who claimed moat cleaning on his MP’s expenses has been handed a peerage. The chair of the Lords’ privileges and conduct committee resigned in disgrace after allegedly taking cocaine at his London flat, in the company of prostitutes.
No wonder an average of 65% of western voters think their mainstream politics are corrupt and MPs or their equivalents are self-seeking. It is 75% of voters in the USA.
The popular and negative view of MPs is buttressed by a strong feeling that MPs in general and governments in particular are essentially ‘run’ in a way that supports the interests of big business. Elaborating the evidence would take several volumes and is sufficiently agreed by leading academics and researchers in the field to be taken as an obvious truth. The consequence is however more pertinent in that it adds to the picture of political corruption the fact that the power and influence of MPs and governments is strictly limited by the influence and power of big business. MPs are therefore taken to represent their own interests in a context, the context of the over-weaning power and influence of big business. MPs work for their own interests by working for the interests of big business, partly because they have no choice.
This picture of modern parliaments is of course fluid, depending on different large-scale moods, challenges and movements that sweep across society’s political life. But the ideas outlined are now well established in western populations – and it is difficult to see any substantive change to them without major structural change.
With this in mind it is possible to raise an essentially abstract generalisation to a more concrete level and explore how the British labour movement has addressed MP’s’ roles in the recent past. Inside the current British Labour Party there is a hot new debate about what Labour MPs should do and who it is they should represent.
Joe Haines, who worked for decades for the Labour supporting mass circulation Daily Mirror, explains
‘For every vote ... that Corbyn won ... there are 36 Labour voters, 9 million in total, who are represented only by the Parliamentary Labour Party.’ (NS 4 Feb.)
Haines is arguing that the big majority of Labour MPs should chuck out Corbyn as their leader, because the MPs (and not the Labour Party) represent the Labour voters in the country. But what is it that Labour voters voted for in May 2015?
Many Labour MPs who oppose the Corbyn leadership argue that the 2015 Labour Manifesto was what Labour voters voted for, and this is what they stand for, and that Manifesto is the baseline for any future Labour leader, policy or position. The paradox here is that Labour’s 2015 Manifesto was not even read by many Party stalwarts. It is absurd to say that 9 Million Labour voters voted on that basis. They voted Labour in the overwhelming majority of cases because of a vague but fundamental belief that the Tories were against them, that Labour should be the party for the less well-off, that the NHS was safer with Labour, that things in Britain were very unequal. All this is born out in attitudinal surveys of voters taken around the election. These ideas are distinct in British society and profound because they begin to define what it is that the Labour Party, including its MPs, should be representing – a profoundly distinct challenge to the status quo based on deep social and historical experience of a particular social group or class.
This comes closer to the original purpose of the Labour Party. It was to be a party, within a wider movement that would represent an up to then unrepresented class. There was always another side to this purpose as promoted by some of the Trade Union leaders of the time. They saw political representation as a narrow means to widen the power of the union, their union, their leadership of their union. At the time these differences of interest were not resolved, although their existence was to create a permanent fissure in Labour’s future. Nevertheless the distinct purpose of building a different sort of society, based on the experience and hopes of subordinated classes, was a prize won effecting (albeit mostly unsuccessfully) the Labour Party’s development through to Blair’s destruction of the famous Clause 4 of the Party’s Constitution.
What is it then that (Labour) MPs should represent? How can genuine ‘representation’ be renewed in Parliament given the experience of the last decades of the emergence of a political class, servants to the seduction of corruption and the power of big business?
To answer this question it is necessary to raise the argument again towards the actual, towards the concrete. Studying the Labour Party’s current internal conflict over the Trident question opens out the issue of the representation of Labour MPs.
Trident is a far bigger question for the future of British society than the EU. The EU referendum ‘The most important vote that British people will caste in their lifetimes’ (various politicians, including Nigel Farage, Duncan Smith etc, etc.) is in reality unlikely to change the direction of the British economy, or its society, which will remain tied to the City of London’s international (seamy) financial leadership, relentless (un)fair deals on international trade, a tax system designed explicitly to ‘attract’ foreign investment, continued depression of both the monetary and the social wage at home and slavish dependence on US led geo-politics. Removing Britain’s ‘independent’ nuclear weapon is another kettle of fish entirely.
Britain’s nuclear weapon is the main bridge in Britain’s ‘special relationship’ with the USA. Its presence assures Britain’s continued place on the UN’s Security Council. It defines Britain as a front line contender in world politics and war. It is the military arm of the City of London’s international financial reach. Britain would have to fundamentally redefine itself in the absence of Trident, as a medium sized country, perhaps as a federal group of nations, with an economy and political system dedicated mainly to the welfare and future of its citizens. A German or French proportion of national spending on Health; a Scandinavian based tax system closing the British owned, meaning most of the world’s, tax havens; a humanitarian view of immigrants; a totally new direction for Britain in the modern world.
How should Labour MPs represent us and make Parliament powerful and decisive again over the Trident question? It is unclear where the majority of the British people stand on the renewal of Trident. Most polls register a majority for retaining Trident in England but this not in any sense a debated issue in British society at large. If Labour MPs want to really represent those who are in the majority classes that do the work and who face roaring inequality for their efforts, they should start by opening a wide debate on the issue inside the movement dedicated to defend those interests, the wider labour and trade union movement, in alliance with all those committed to challenge austerity and war. The argument needs first to be taken there. Why? Because that movement is the organised kernel of those in the whole of society whose work, whose imaginations and creativity and lives are exploited.
If that movement, after as wide as possible debate, decides (as it should) to get rid of Trident, then Labour MPs who want to represent the people should direct the movement to take the leadership of the whole of society on the Trident issue. Labour MPs should demand a referendum and set one up if the establishment refuses.
Should Labour MPs who still believe in Trident do this? Of course. They represent the movement of which they are part and its battle to win society or they represent nothing but themselves.
Friday 12 February 2016
Peace in Syria?
Twenty nations, leagues of nations and national unions of nations, plus the UN, have signed the Statement of the International Syria Support Group meeting in Munich on February 11 & 12, 2016. The statement calls for free egress for humanitarian aid, for the 'nationwide cessation of hostilities' in the next week, under the aegis of a UN Committee chaired by the US and Russia - and for a new Constitution for Syria and a General Election in 18 months. Excluded from all this are the groups defined as terrorist by the UN.
This pocket World War is not over. But the unbelievable destruction of a nation and its people (half the population are displaced; a quarter are refugees and a fortieth - the equivalent of one and a half million in Britain - are already dead) has begun to create new and unbearable realities for the West. Since Russia took over Assad's war this moment was inevitable. Russian fire-power (7 ships, 65 bombers, 8 fighters 12 attack helicopters, 400 ground troops, one huge military base) has tipped the balance towards the Assad regime. Aleppo, the main city of the original opposition, is about to fall and still may do so. It has forced the hand of the western powers.
The reason why the Support Group face an uphill struggle is that while Putin can deliver Assad, the US and its hangers on cannot deliver all the Syrian opposition, let alone the wider forces that are conducting their own wars within the Syrian arena. Like all major wars, the Syrian war contains within it liberation struggles, cultural and religious battles, as well as geo-political power struggles. And while some of these wars, like the war of ISIS against all, and the Kurdish war for national survival against Assad, Turkey and ISIS, are plain to see - others, for example between different factions of the opposition, are more submerged. However, despite delays and disputes and further death and destruction, the ISSG agreement is a new medium term compromise and will form the road map for for the World's powers and that will of itself create a certain and steady pressure on unfolding events in Syria.
The US led West had had to drop any preconditions about Assad's regime. It seems the US is not going to be able to use an uprising to get a new client in the region. And this will be promoted in the West as the growing and increasingly dangerous strength of Putin's Russia. Republican candidate Trump will want to declare war on Russia - and Democratic candidate Clinton will add her denunciation of Obama's weak foreign policy. In Britain, fear and loathing of the old enemy will be ramped up by Trident lovers. Nevertheless, and without the slightest illusion in Putin's 'Great Power' objectives, it is Russian intervention that has forced the West to drop its imperial hopes in Syria for the time being and concentrate instead on consolidating an international crusade against ISIS.
Taken overall of course the various international military campaigns in Syria, initiated by the West, have been an unmitigated disaster for the Syrian people. They have magnified the initial brutalities of the Assad regime against the protesters a hundred fold. They have turned large parts of the country into a 'no mans land' and the Syrian skies into a playground for lethal military hi-tech. The hand-wringing terminology and carefully moulded paragraphs in the ISSG text about Humanitarian Aid are simply breathtaking hypocrisy in that regard. Nevertheless, the weakness of Western imperialism encountering new resistance from an emboldened Russia and unable to smother and choke the progressive and reactionary movements emerging across the whole region, has had to give way. The US will wriggle and squirm to find new means to advance against its obstacles, however the current deadlock between the powers who today loom over Syria and its people opens a small window of hope for Syrians that a space may yet emerge within which their own national and political wishes might visible again.
Tuesday 9 February 2016
A new stage in European left politics
Thomas Piketty, the famous economist whose seismic book demonstrated the dire consequences of an unfettered 'neo-liberal,' global, capitalism (Capital in the 21st Century; Harvard University Press) has written a new and trenchant article on the future of Europe. (Find it HERE.)
There is much in the piece to consider but two central ideas emerge with real force. As they sum up something of the current stage of left politics and its contradictions in Europe, particularly in Southern Europe, it useful to outline them here.
Flowing from a convincing critique of the back-to-front role of the Euro in the unity of Europe (or lack of it) Pikkety promotes the argument first raised by French President Hollande that there should be a new and much more powerful Euro-zone Parliament. The current European Parliament is powerless and does not fit with the actual lines of power and wealth in Europe and therefore it has become a part of the overall European democratic-deficit problem, remote and useless, rather than any sort of answer. He argues that by the means of a strong, new Euro-parliament, the populations of the Eurozone countries might have direct access to the the uses (and miss-uses) of their shared currency and its possible role in their collective day to day life.
Pikkety also makes the case for a new European Debt Conference; taking the issue out of the hands of the leadership of the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Council. (The troika.) He specifically refers to the enormous success of the London Conference of 1953 which removed 50% of Germany's debt burden and allowed the country to grow again. The immediate, parlous state of Greece is of course at the centre of his remarks, but he makes the broader case that Europe's economic swamp is the biggest problem facing Europe's future and that decisive intervention against debt is the only means to drain away the poison in the system.
These arguments appear convincing. And they also illustrate something of the nature of left politics in the European context at this moment. At the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016 in both the Portuguese and Spanish General Elections the pro-austerity parties scored the highest in votes and MPs of all the contesting parties. In Spain the 'Popular Party' won 29% of the vote, in Portugal, 'Portugal Ahead' won 37% of the vote. But they could not, and cannot in the case of Spain, form governments. In both Spain and Portugal the previously inevitable 'grand coalition' between the two Iberian Social Democratic mass parties and their right wing sisters, in favour of a German-lead austerity programme, has collapsed. And with that a new sort of Social Democracy is being wrenched into life. In both cases this can be put down to the emergence of a mainstream, popular, anti-austerity and radical left, in the shape of Podemos in Spain (21% of the vote) and the Left Bloc in Portugal (16%) who both came third in the popular vote. They have forced the reluctant, hesitating and fractious Socialist Parties to work on coalitions, based on anti-austerity and to their left.
All is still in the melting pot as this is written, but the case of Greece, of Ireland, and in its inevitably unhinged way, the case of Britain, all pose the question, is there a re composition of the remnants of a left European Social Democracy finding a way forward, albeit under different names and banners but all having to accept the influence and pressure of the radical movements and parties that have led the anti-austerity struggle up to now? Is this the new role of the Syriza government? Is it a repeat of the old role of the Spanish SP?
It would sound too much like a conspiracy theory to insist that such turns in political tactics are but classic means by which Social Democracy has, in the past, absorbed and finally disarmed popular forces that have emerged to its left. (See Germany 1918 to 1923 etc, etc.) Today's European Social Democrats are a ragged lot. They are steeped in such compromise and straight forward corruption that in countries like Italy and Greece they have already been wiped out, at least once! Which does not mean to say that their role in absorbing militancy and insurgency will not be again required from the mainstream political system in the future, albeit under different names and guises.
For today, what is the line that emerges between those whose politics are based on a new popularly managed and democratically controlled economy and society and those that are not? It is certainly not defined by whether or not Spain and Portugal's new left parties support key anti-austerity measures agreed by a SP led government in their countries. Let the new government's resolve be tested, in front of everyone. No. The concrete analysis of the concrete situation will determine each and every political turn in that context. But Pikkety's two proposals are something else.
Hollande and Pikkety's proposal for a new Euro-zone parliament is something of a reflection of the despair of most of France's current left leadership. It is, in a psychological sense, the search for a safety net given the desperate failure of French Social Democracy to challenge (let alone provide a French-based alternative to) German and indeed world wide 'neo-liberal' capitalist hegemony. The consequences of this SD failure in France border on the catastrophic. Le Pen junior has between 30 and 40% of French voters who tell polls that they now support her. Pikkety hopes that the Eurozone Parliament will be able to do something that a SD led UN Security Council Member, 5th largest economy and joint leader of the EU was unable to do; to find an alternative to austerity politics and economics. If France with a SD government was unable to lead on that, a new Euro institution is a fantasy solution. The sad fact is that (as Greece demonstrated in technicolour) there is no answer at the level of another EU institution - and little political will for it among those who do fight racism and austerity, even in France.
But a new Europe is urgently needed. The people of Europe need it. Where will it come from if not from EU institutions? Here Pikkerty's second proposal has much more relevance. We need action, supported by the mass of Europeans, which is independent of the existing EU. A Europe wide debt conference, totally independent of the Troika, illustrates a different path. The potential of such an initiative is to create a legitimacy, representing Europe's anti-austerity majority, which can express their will, against another, cooked up, unaccountable and up to now, unassailable (il) legitimacy, that represents nothing other than Pikkety's super rich.
Just as the new left in the Iberian peninsular may offer support to any genuine move by the Social Democrats in government to end austerity, so all sorts of tactics and initiatives will be taken by the left even within the confines of the EU's dusty halls. But what the left must offer European people should never be confused with necessary day to day political manoeuvres, the character of a particular vote or this or that campaign. The basic offer can only be the self built, brick by brick, of a Europe that is totally independent of the clutter and corruption of the billionaires EU that has failed. An alternative future that will overturn and replace the now.
There is much in the piece to consider but two central ideas emerge with real force. As they sum up something of the current stage of left politics and its contradictions in Europe, particularly in Southern Europe, it useful to outline them here.
Flowing from a convincing critique of the back-to-front role of the Euro in the unity of Europe (or lack of it) Pikkety promotes the argument first raised by French President Hollande that there should be a new and much more powerful Euro-zone Parliament. The current European Parliament is powerless and does not fit with the actual lines of power and wealth in Europe and therefore it has become a part of the overall European democratic-deficit problem, remote and useless, rather than any sort of answer. He argues that by the means of a strong, new Euro-parliament, the populations of the Eurozone countries might have direct access to the the uses (and miss-uses) of their shared currency and its possible role in their collective day to day life.
Pikkety also makes the case for a new European Debt Conference; taking the issue out of the hands of the leadership of the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Council. (The troika.) He specifically refers to the enormous success of the London Conference of 1953 which removed 50% of Germany's debt burden and allowed the country to grow again. The immediate, parlous state of Greece is of course at the centre of his remarks, but he makes the broader case that Europe's economic swamp is the biggest problem facing Europe's future and that decisive intervention against debt is the only means to drain away the poison in the system.
These arguments appear convincing. And they also illustrate something of the nature of left politics in the European context at this moment. At the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016 in both the Portuguese and Spanish General Elections the pro-austerity parties scored the highest in votes and MPs of all the contesting parties. In Spain the 'Popular Party' won 29% of the vote, in Portugal, 'Portugal Ahead' won 37% of the vote. But they could not, and cannot in the case of Spain, form governments. In both Spain and Portugal the previously inevitable 'grand coalition' between the two Iberian Social Democratic mass parties and their right wing sisters, in favour of a German-lead austerity programme, has collapsed. And with that a new sort of Social Democracy is being wrenched into life. In both cases this can be put down to the emergence of a mainstream, popular, anti-austerity and radical left, in the shape of Podemos in Spain (21% of the vote) and the Left Bloc in Portugal (16%) who both came third in the popular vote. They have forced the reluctant, hesitating and fractious Socialist Parties to work on coalitions, based on anti-austerity and to their left.
All is still in the melting pot as this is written, but the case of Greece, of Ireland, and in its inevitably unhinged way, the case of Britain, all pose the question, is there a re composition of the remnants of a left European Social Democracy finding a way forward, albeit under different names and banners but all having to accept the influence and pressure of the radical movements and parties that have led the anti-austerity struggle up to now? Is this the new role of the Syriza government? Is it a repeat of the old role of the Spanish SP?
It would sound too much like a conspiracy theory to insist that such turns in political tactics are but classic means by which Social Democracy has, in the past, absorbed and finally disarmed popular forces that have emerged to its left. (See Germany 1918 to 1923 etc, etc.) Today's European Social Democrats are a ragged lot. They are steeped in such compromise and straight forward corruption that in countries like Italy and Greece they have already been wiped out, at least once! Which does not mean to say that their role in absorbing militancy and insurgency will not be again required from the mainstream political system in the future, albeit under different names and guises.
For today, what is the line that emerges between those whose politics are based on a new popularly managed and democratically controlled economy and society and those that are not? It is certainly not defined by whether or not Spain and Portugal's new left parties support key anti-austerity measures agreed by a SP led government in their countries. Let the new government's resolve be tested, in front of everyone. No. The concrete analysis of the concrete situation will determine each and every political turn in that context. But Pikkety's two proposals are something else.
Hollande and Pikkety's proposal for a new Euro-zone parliament is something of a reflection of the despair of most of France's current left leadership. It is, in a psychological sense, the search for a safety net given the desperate failure of French Social Democracy to challenge (let alone provide a French-based alternative to) German and indeed world wide 'neo-liberal' capitalist hegemony. The consequences of this SD failure in France border on the catastrophic. Le Pen junior has between 30 and 40% of French voters who tell polls that they now support her. Pikkety hopes that the Eurozone Parliament will be able to do something that a SD led UN Security Council Member, 5th largest economy and joint leader of the EU was unable to do; to find an alternative to austerity politics and economics. If France with a SD government was unable to lead on that, a new Euro institution is a fantasy solution. The sad fact is that (as Greece demonstrated in technicolour) there is no answer at the level of another EU institution - and little political will for it among those who do fight racism and austerity, even in France.
But a new Europe is urgently needed. The people of Europe need it. Where will it come from if not from EU institutions? Here Pikkerty's second proposal has much more relevance. We need action, supported by the mass of Europeans, which is independent of the existing EU. A Europe wide debt conference, totally independent of the Troika, illustrates a different path. The potential of such an initiative is to create a legitimacy, representing Europe's anti-austerity majority, which can express their will, against another, cooked up, unaccountable and up to now, unassailable (il) legitimacy, that represents nothing other than Pikkety's super rich.
Just as the new left in the Iberian peninsular may offer support to any genuine move by the Social Democrats in government to end austerity, so all sorts of tactics and initiatives will be taken by the left even within the confines of the EU's dusty halls. But what the left must offer European people should never be confused with necessary day to day political manoeuvres, the character of a particular vote or this or that campaign. The basic offer can only be the self built, brick by brick, of a Europe that is totally independent of the clutter and corruption of the billionaires EU that has failed. An alternative future that will overturn and replace the now.
Monday 8 February 2016
Should (and will) Labour split?
Removing the part of the heading in brackets, this question formed the title page of the British magazine 'New Statesman' (29 January - 4 February 2016.) A series of Labour Party politicians and various journalists linked to Labour, plus Dr Owen, from the 1980s Social Democratic Party split from Labour and Carolyn Lucas, the only Green MP, commented on the prospects of a schism in Labour.
With one exception, nothing very novel or imaginative emerged. Old arguments were rehearsed. The SDP split and now the Parliamentary failure of UKIP showed that without a fair voting system a new mass party could not be launched - at least a party that focused on Westminster. Therefore both the left, represented by Diane Abbot and the right, represented by most of the other contributors, regarded a split as unlikely. Only one journalist suggested that a split might be in order if Corbyn could not be removed in two years because the electorate were far less congealed by the traditional political parties as had been the case in the 1980s and a new party with the bulk of Labour MPs would start from a far stronger position than the old SLP or indeed UKIP today.
A couple of Labour's erstwhile officials argued that Labour MPs, who had an electorate of 9 million voters in 2015, never mind Corbyn's internal Labour Party membership mandate, should separate themselves from Labour in the country and instead elect their own leader in Parliament. This 'dual power' arrangement would turn the traditional Labour Party into another pressure group and Corbyn into an 'outsider.' Most however focused coming on electoral results. The London Mayoral vote, the Council votes and the Scottish Parliamentary vote in May would begin the determination of Corbyn's leadership.
Carolyn Lucas MP (all too briefly) offered a very different perspective. She argued that a great opportunity had opened up the British politics with Corbyn's election as Labour leader. For her the point was not whether there should be a split in Labour. It was rather what should Britain's new and radical left do with the leading role that they had now won. Lucas sketched in the lines of a new left coalition that was now posed across Britain. From her comments it is possible to imagine an alliance inside Parliament but with its roots among those who build the movements in the country to end Trident, to end Austerity, to make anti-austerity words in Scottish politics into a set of broad principles on agreed and progressive priorities of taxation and public expenditure by reaching out to the SNP's radical wing. It would stand for fair votes to get the new and unrepresented into Parliament and it would call for an end, now, to the current dismal Tory mess. This and more would create the foundations for a new political movement, spearheaded by Labour's new leadership, going towards the 2020 General Election.
What is blindingly obvious is the the 'old' Labour Party cannot be resurrected. Any notion that it will be possible simply to chop off its current head and then return to Blairism mark 2 and 'good old days' when the working classes knew their political places and gave the correct and inevitable Pavlovian response to the whistle, is the equivalent to refusing to open your eyes. A new working class movement has to be built, of which Corbyn's election is a positive sign. But this alone is nothing like enough. Vital trade unions need to be fought for (again) and the mass movement against Trident and austerity doubled, trebled, quadrupled. A new left inside and outside the SNP and the Scottish LP needs to be initiated and the utterly undemocratic Parliament needs to be torn down and rebuilt with fair votes. Lucas is right. A great new political alliance needs to be built across the country. Speculation about Labour spits (and any hesitation or retrenchment out of fear of such threats) will add to their weight and begin to mesmerise those who need to see the future clearly. Enough. There is work to do!
With one exception, nothing very novel or imaginative emerged. Old arguments were rehearsed. The SDP split and now the Parliamentary failure of UKIP showed that without a fair voting system a new mass party could not be launched - at least a party that focused on Westminster. Therefore both the left, represented by Diane Abbot and the right, represented by most of the other contributors, regarded a split as unlikely. Only one journalist suggested that a split might be in order if Corbyn could not be removed in two years because the electorate were far less congealed by the traditional political parties as had been the case in the 1980s and a new party with the bulk of Labour MPs would start from a far stronger position than the old SLP or indeed UKIP today.
A couple of Labour's erstwhile officials argued that Labour MPs, who had an electorate of 9 million voters in 2015, never mind Corbyn's internal Labour Party membership mandate, should separate themselves from Labour in the country and instead elect their own leader in Parliament. This 'dual power' arrangement would turn the traditional Labour Party into another pressure group and Corbyn into an 'outsider.' Most however focused coming on electoral results. The London Mayoral vote, the Council votes and the Scottish Parliamentary vote in May would begin the determination of Corbyn's leadership.
Carolyn Lucas MP (all too briefly) offered a very different perspective. She argued that a great opportunity had opened up the British politics with Corbyn's election as Labour leader. For her the point was not whether there should be a split in Labour. It was rather what should Britain's new and radical left do with the leading role that they had now won. Lucas sketched in the lines of a new left coalition that was now posed across Britain. From her comments it is possible to imagine an alliance inside Parliament but with its roots among those who build the movements in the country to end Trident, to end Austerity, to make anti-austerity words in Scottish politics into a set of broad principles on agreed and progressive priorities of taxation and public expenditure by reaching out to the SNP's radical wing. It would stand for fair votes to get the new and unrepresented into Parliament and it would call for an end, now, to the current dismal Tory mess. This and more would create the foundations for a new political movement, spearheaded by Labour's new leadership, going towards the 2020 General Election.
What is blindingly obvious is the the 'old' Labour Party cannot be resurrected. Any notion that it will be possible simply to chop off its current head and then return to Blairism mark 2 and 'good old days' when the working classes knew their political places and gave the correct and inevitable Pavlovian response to the whistle, is the equivalent to refusing to open your eyes. A new working class movement has to be built, of which Corbyn's election is a positive sign. But this alone is nothing like enough. Vital trade unions need to be fought for (again) and the mass movement against Trident and austerity doubled, trebled, quadrupled. A new left inside and outside the SNP and the Scottish LP needs to be initiated and the utterly undemocratic Parliament needs to be torn down and rebuilt with fair votes. Lucas is right. A great new political alliance needs to be built across the country. Speculation about Labour spits (and any hesitation or retrenchment out of fear of such threats) will add to their weight and begin to mesmerise those who need to see the future clearly. Enough. There is work to do!
Friday 5 February 2016
Bernie's Political Revolution
Bernie Sanders is calling for a political revolution in the US. And he is immensely popular with Democratic and unregistered voters. It is unlikely, to say the least, that he will get past the Clinton's billionaire war chest and win the Democratic nomination. However Bernie Sander's appeal gives the lie to any idea outside the US that there is not a widespread and deep current of left radical thinking among the most exploited social layers in the country who have been the losers in America's dash for wealth since the Reagan years.
Sanders centres his message on the class issues. This is of course the missing element in the normal 'liberal' democrat critique of racism in the US. It also frontally attacks the great myth of the 'American Dream', that getting rich and being rich is a realistic prospect for the average American citizen. Since the 1980s the US has been the least or near the least socially-mobile country in the entire western world. (Most years it competes for this 'honour' with the UK.)
'If Americans want to live the American dream, they should go to Denmark.' (Richard G. Wilkinson at a 2011 TED conference on economic inequality.)
Sanders rightly attacks US politics for the condition of his country. He describes modern American politics as 'bought and sold' by the big corporations. The only US President since WW2 to denounce these forces that lord over American society was Republican President Eisenhower, who coined the sinister phrase 'the industrial-military complex' when he was describing who really had come to rule the US. Since then no president from either party has done anything but praise and promote the real rulers of the 'land of the free.'
Hilary Clinton goes further in this direction than most of her fellow Democrats. She is on the extreme right of the Democratic Party when it comes to US foreign policy. Part of it is her fear that she will be tarnished with same brush that painted Obama 'weak' and 'conciliatory'. Another part is her sponsorship from, and her deep links with, the very industrial-military complex that Eisenhower denounced. Hilary has not even repudiated the generally accepted disaster of the invasion of Iraq for fear of undermining her campaign for the presidency among this group.
Sanders proposes the overthrow of the political power of the 'industrial-military complex', of big capital, in the US. That is part one of his political revolution; the proposal that those who rule politics should be turned out and replaced. Part two is his absolutely clear understanding that such a measure would rest for its success on the mobilisation of the American people.
'If somebody like me, or me, became president, there is no chance in the world that anything significant could be accomplished without the active, unprecedented support of millions of people' he said last September. He is right of course. The failure of the Obama regime to mobilise his electoral base in the battle he waged with a right wing Congress, meant his presidency has failed in his own terms. Sanders sees this and, without fear, proposes to call the people to be active in the politics of their country and remove their current political rulers.
Bernie Sanders is not calling for a social revolution. That is to say he is not suggesting the overturn of the social and economic systems of society. He certainly wants deep reform especially in health and education, but he is not proposing that the corporations or that the military be reorganised and reordered with the aim of creating a new way of running economics or a new way of building society. His political reform would be a revolution in American affairs but there are not yet additional political reforms proposed so that the working class and the middle class as a whole would move from the overthrow of the their political controllers to a position whereby they ran the political life of the nation. In Bernie's world, capitalism and the market stay, Congress, the Supreme Court and the Presidency stay, albeit tamed in the first case, and freed from influence and lobbying in the second.
Political Revolution is now much more than a theory developed by Leon Trotsky (as it is described in the Wikkipedia entry.) Trotsky used the term as a summary of his strategy to overthrow the tyrannical Soviet bureaucracy, under Stalin. A revolution, a rising of the population (and parts of the army) was required, but its objective was the destruction of the ruling caste and not the overthrow of the dominant property relations. The means of production etc, should stay in the hands of the state. (Such a policy of political revolution would not, for example apply to modern China, where capitalism and the market are the dominant social and economic principles albeit under the aegis of the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese model would better be described as a form of State Capitalism as both its rulers and their economy and society would need overturning if the majority of the Chinese people were to truly run their own society.)
Political revolution was first used by Marx describing French events where different factions of the competing ruling classes used revolutionary means, i.e. the mobilisation of the population, to win central power. In 1968 in France, then in 1969 in Italy, in 1974 in Portugal and then in 1974 in Spain, despite the 'pre-revolutionary' phraseology used at the time to describe what was going on, a series of political revolutions broke out across Europe. Ancient fascist orders fell in the Iberian peninsular, but so did De Gualle in France. New sectors of the ruling class seeking modernisation and reform, mainly expressed through Social Democratic parties and the burgeoning power of the European Common Market forced the old order out. They needed revolutionary movements in the population to do it. The European political revolutions of their day were successful in that limited sense, but have not managed to sustain the minimal reforms distributed to the population as a whole at the time and mean little today to the mass of the insecure and exploited. They instead, under constant attack, have had to search for, to find and to build new instruments to defend and promote their own interests.
In today's context and in the USA, the most powerful nation on Earth, Bernie Sander's political revolution does not face the fragility of ancient fascism or a worn out autocracy. But its power as an idea, as a necessary, indeed desperately required change for the country is already formidable and growing. It will create new thinking and new action. It is pointless to speculate on whether such a political revolution would be forced by the circumstances to 'go all the way' or be snuffed out by the tremendous reactionary reserves that the US rulers could call on. What is essential is that new leaders are needed to give shape to new directions for society, which is turning, even the previously most prosperous places in the world, to barbarism and workcamps.
One pleasant quirk of Bernie's campaign is the emergence of some of his supporters. Benn and Jerry (of ice cream fame) have just called for support and made a new ice cream called 'Bernie's Yearning'. Sweet.
Hilary Clinton goes further in this direction than most of her fellow Democrats. She is on the extreme right of the Democratic Party when it comes to US foreign policy. Part of it is her fear that she will be tarnished with same brush that painted Obama 'weak' and 'conciliatory'. Another part is her sponsorship from, and her deep links with, the very industrial-military complex that Eisenhower denounced. Hilary has not even repudiated the generally accepted disaster of the invasion of Iraq for fear of undermining her campaign for the presidency among this group.
Sanders proposes the overthrow of the political power of the 'industrial-military complex', of big capital, in the US. That is part one of his political revolution; the proposal that those who rule politics should be turned out and replaced. Part two is his absolutely clear understanding that such a measure would rest for its success on the mobilisation of the American people.
'If somebody like me, or me, became president, there is no chance in the world that anything significant could be accomplished without the active, unprecedented support of millions of people' he said last September. He is right of course. The failure of the Obama regime to mobilise his electoral base in the battle he waged with a right wing Congress, meant his presidency has failed in his own terms. Sanders sees this and, without fear, proposes to call the people to be active in the politics of their country and remove their current political rulers.
Bernie Sanders is not calling for a social revolution. That is to say he is not suggesting the overturn of the social and economic systems of society. He certainly wants deep reform especially in health and education, but he is not proposing that the corporations or that the military be reorganised and reordered with the aim of creating a new way of running economics or a new way of building society. His political reform would be a revolution in American affairs but there are not yet additional political reforms proposed so that the working class and the middle class as a whole would move from the overthrow of the their political controllers to a position whereby they ran the political life of the nation. In Bernie's world, capitalism and the market stay, Congress, the Supreme Court and the Presidency stay, albeit tamed in the first case, and freed from influence and lobbying in the second.
Political Revolution is now much more than a theory developed by Leon Trotsky (as it is described in the Wikkipedia entry.) Trotsky used the term as a summary of his strategy to overthrow the tyrannical Soviet bureaucracy, under Stalin. A revolution, a rising of the population (and parts of the army) was required, but its objective was the destruction of the ruling caste and not the overthrow of the dominant property relations. The means of production etc, should stay in the hands of the state. (Such a policy of political revolution would not, for example apply to modern China, where capitalism and the market are the dominant social and economic principles albeit under the aegis of the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese model would better be described as a form of State Capitalism as both its rulers and their economy and society would need overturning if the majority of the Chinese people were to truly run their own society.)
Political revolution was first used by Marx describing French events where different factions of the competing ruling classes used revolutionary means, i.e. the mobilisation of the population, to win central power. In 1968 in France, then in 1969 in Italy, in 1974 in Portugal and then in 1974 in Spain, despite the 'pre-revolutionary' phraseology used at the time to describe what was going on, a series of political revolutions broke out across Europe. Ancient fascist orders fell in the Iberian peninsular, but so did De Gualle in France. New sectors of the ruling class seeking modernisation and reform, mainly expressed through Social Democratic parties and the burgeoning power of the European Common Market forced the old order out. They needed revolutionary movements in the population to do it. The European political revolutions of their day were successful in that limited sense, but have not managed to sustain the minimal reforms distributed to the population as a whole at the time and mean little today to the mass of the insecure and exploited. They instead, under constant attack, have had to search for, to find and to build new instruments to defend and promote their own interests.
In today's context and in the USA, the most powerful nation on Earth, Bernie Sander's political revolution does not face the fragility of ancient fascism or a worn out autocracy. But its power as an idea, as a necessary, indeed desperately required change for the country is already formidable and growing. It will create new thinking and new action. It is pointless to speculate on whether such a political revolution would be forced by the circumstances to 'go all the way' or be snuffed out by the tremendous reactionary reserves that the US rulers could call on. What is essential is that new leaders are needed to give shape to new directions for society, which is turning, even the previously most prosperous places in the world, to barbarism and workcamps.
One pleasant quirk of Bernie's campaign is the emergence of some of his supporters. Benn and Jerry (of ice cream fame) have just called for support and made a new ice cream called 'Bernie's Yearning'. Sweet.
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