Sunday 13 September 2020

The end of globalisation. A new conjuncture?

Among the words offered by the Thesaurus that fit with 'conjuncture' is the word 'apex.' In a political sense 'conjuncture' suggests a gathering of important political events and attitudes that summarise a moment (in time and/or place) and that creates a definition, or meaning, of the main engine of events. 'Apex' is better though, because it also suggests a pinnacle which, in turn, suggests a new slope ahead.

This short argument is going to try to identify the pinnacle and offer some comments about the slope.

In fact all over the left (and the more scary right) in Europe and the US, politicians, writers, reporters and speculators are focussing on the conjuncture. Why? Because it is obvious that globalisation is bursting. Despite Tony Blair's think-tank, etc, etc, globalisation has been bubbling up higher and higher for some years and now it is popping across the world. Blair (and many others) sincerely believed that globalisation was the ultimate story of capitalism and that it has decades, perhaps millennia, to go. This blog has often argued about the inherent weakness of globalisation. Many others thought so too. So we can leave that item aside for the moment. Whether you think that globalisation was a consequence of the weakness of western imperialism or you think it was all down to Corona, globalisation, as it stood, is over.

The main forces that are bursting the global bubble are the US and, latterly, the EU. China is still (desperately) trying to make tariffs go away. (Chinese economists are publicly hinting at the removal of their funds from the US if they do not pull back from current economic attacks.) But the massive U.S. financial system has assets of about $100 trillion as of the end of 2019, according to the International Monetary Fund. There is no doubt that the US still runs the world.

It’s not clear how large China’s financial system overall is. Chinese banking institutions had assets of 285 trillion yuan ($40.7 trillion) at the end of September 2019, according to state reports. Total Chinese investment in the U.S. economy has reached over $145 billion. And China owns about $1.1 trillion in U.S. debts. (This sounds big - and the Chinese are beginning to use it as a lever - but it is still less than Japanese loans in the US.)

The US, followed by Australia and now the UK and Germany, are pushing back against Chinese exports and their general, global, investment. This will deepen, regardless even if Trump is dumped or Boris is really back-stabbed by Gove or the EU mandarins start moaning at Merkel.

These terrifyingly facts (a massive economic war has always led to the real thing) are covered over in most of the West's population by (governments who are dealing with) Corona. It is apparently the Corona that is changing the world, shutting up the big shops in the City centres, stopping the lips-tasting Langdoc this year in the garden, destroying all those charming young peoples' cheery jobs. There are acres and acres of books, pods, blogs, programmes and conversations about how the western world will now change because of the Pandemic. Bollocks. What is happening is that the West is using their state powers to deal with the Pandemic but also (see Boris's denial of any more austerity) to create a new type of capitalist investment. Does anyone think that after Corona we will be just the same as 2019? That thought is enough to show that Corona is not the issue.

Everybody is in to it. Cummings, Boris's advisor-stroke-brain, wants the UK to build its own £2trillion version of FANG - (Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Google.) There are similar dreams across the Western nations as politicians starry eyes get-going by rooting up more and more breathless names of future tech that will provide a new centre of the globe (and another decade or two of stupendous wealth.) The UK's version is to be a signal part of the 'famous five' - of the US (big daddy), UK (first son), Australia, Canada, New Zealand - that will hopefully wrap up the wealth of Asia and Africa's demand for the new, Anglo-Saxon FANG.

Sadly, this momentum has been also picked up by parts of the left (Varoufakis, Paul Mason et al) who have begun to imagine that the new state-based initiatives will create some openings for state action that could be used to distribute wealth and reduce private ownership. But we have already seen how the 'new' state action works. Test and Trace, which is a mess particularly in England, gets called by Boris 'the NHS Test and Trace' when he is denying all of his mistakes. But Test and Trace in England was sold to SERCO, one of those most useless companies that has regularly failed in all their other 'public services. The Apex has provided state action mainly to hold up companies and to re-finance some of the NHS. But we have now reached the slope; a slope that will bring the fantasy FANG mark 2, and any other new version of capitalism, smashing to the ground as the state desperately delivers...to private enterprise. (Has everyone forgotten the first dot.com economic collapse in 2000?)

Nevertheless, the new champions of the would-be 'famous five', with their scruffy West Coast clothes and their false hatred of the 'deep state' and their pretences that they are the underdog, (eg.,Cummings, Boris et al) sincerely imagine that this vast new FANG is just there, an inch away from the treasure chest. Sadly, the tech revolution, tied as it is to future of capitalism, has already run out of substantial new tech! All the main super-future tech goals are already failing. And the idea that something elementally new is just around the corner but unseen by the current FANG lot, is simply ludicrous. Yet they are ready to dole out £billions to private firms that sound good. In reality, the only thing that can and will be extended and promoted is more and more surveillance, which is a definite 'yes' as far as the use of dominant state powers are concerned. Surveillance is particularly required in the West as the upsurges after Corona begin.

(And breaking treaties? The French described the truth of the 'perfidious Albion' centuries ago. The British state is known across the whole world for its history of lies and twists. Take the Middle East in only one example. The secret agreement between Sir Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot in May 1916 divided the Ottoman lands into British and French spheres – and came to light only when it was published by the Bolsheviks.

Boris is breaking the EU Withdrawal Agreement because, if there is no Canada style agreement over Brexit, and his power to use whatever state money to build new tech is diminished, he knows that the EU would be left alone, building new Customs at the edge of Southern Ireland. The Brits are not going to do it. Neither will the Unionists. Boris is of course hostile anyway to the Nationalists in Northern Ireland.)

Saturday 5 September 2020

How Scotland can win its independence.

There is a discussion in Scotland about setting up a new party. It is barely months away from the next Scottish General Election. Despite coronavirus continuing to dominate the agenda, more and more, party politics is coming out of lockdown. The idea of the new Party is that it would be organised so that the SNP (and their coalition Greens) could win all of their constituency votes, but the new party, coming from outside the constituencies and represented the list votes only, would be able to bring the single independence issue to a bigger, combined majority vote in the Holyrood Parliament. With its increased pressure (both on the SNP and Boris's Westminster government) the new party and the SNP vote would more likely force the second referendum for Scottish independence. This argument is the backdrop to the increasing hints and implications regularly surfacing against the SNP leadership and Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's first minister. 

1. For some months now the polls in Scotland have supported Scottish independence. The figures roughly show the same numbers delivered by the referendum in 2014 -  except it is now in reverse! The figures give a growing majority for independence. It is becoming Scottish society's new norm.

Since 2007 the Scottish Nationalist Party has been, and remains, the largest party in Scotland. The SNP is overwhelmingly dominant in Scottish government elections - despite the failed 2014 referendum result.

More dramatically, the SNP leadership are now, overwhelmingly, the most serious challenge to the UK's government. Not only has the SNP leadership out-managed and out-delivered the responses to Covid-19, it has also restored the issue of Scottish independence - front and centre - in the UK, despite PM Boris Johnson's denial of any new independence referendum.

The problem facing the SNP - and all who now support a new referendum for Scottish independence - is that Boris Johnson is the leader of a large majority of MPs in Westminster and he and they all oppose any new referendum in Scotland. The British Parliament and its government has a legal right to control Scotland's ultimate destiny.

2. Recently in Spain, the Catalonia province and its elected Catalonian leaders, decided to hold their own referendum for independence against Spanish rule. The referendum was not accepted by the Spanish government. It was declared unconstitutional on 7 September 2017 and the referendum was suspended by the Constitutional Court of Spain after the request from the Spanish government, who then declared it a breach of the Spanish Constitution. The Catalonian referendum was denied and its leadership crushed.

3. This is the crisis of the next referendum for Scottish independence. And this is what the SNP leadership said about a new referendum in September 2020.

'That’s why we’re moving forward with giving Scotland the choice over our future – and before the end of this Parliament, we will publish a draft Bill setting out the proposed terms and timing of an independence referendum, as well as the proposed question that people will be asked in that referendum.'
'The 2021 Holyrood election will then be crucial – we will make the case for Scotland to become an independent country, and seek a clear endorsement of Scotland’s right to choose our own future.'

But nothing is published by the SNP that offers a way through the Westminster government's dominant majority legal-lock.

4. Virtually all of the radical left in Scotland also demand a new referendum. At the moment the left (which does not include the decaying and dying remnants of Scottish Labour) is driving in two directions.

First is the AUOB (All Under One Banner) marches across Scotland in 2019. On  07/10/2019, the Edinburgh march - in the rain -  attracted over 200,000 people - the largest demonstration in Scotland ever. The SNP leadership were effectively forced onto the platform - and their constitutional nervousness was noted. Today this unresolved question remains open under the general significance of the Corona-virus, but the SNP September 2020 statement is still moot in respect of the inevitable challenge with Westminster. The desire of the left (and some of the SNP deep-nationalists) to make independence the main, defining issue in the coming election in 2022, stems from the power of the AUOB movement.

Second, a smaller left group in Scotland insists that the referendum has to be effected only on socialist terms. The SNP and its leadership are defined as Scotland's Tories and building a socialist leadership of the referendum is the keystone to (and the only way) that Scottish independence can be won.

While the abstract and sectarian perspective of this second approach speaks loudly for itself, nevertheless the broad, mass-movement, now in suspension, cannot project Scotland's marches and its polls for a referendum as the answer to overcoming the UK government. Additionally, the problem that would ensue is that such a Scottish referendum, repudiated by the UK government, would become a different issue again across all British politics. The British state would define the left's Scottish referendum as an illegal initiative, and that would be seen as an attack on the democracy of the UK as a whole.

5. Here is an answer that opens the politics beyond Scottish 'political parties coming out of lockdown' and the dubious weight of Scottish marches and opinion polls across the UK, albeit their value in Scotland. The approach derives from the understanding that Scotland's 'right' for independence is its constant and unacceptable restraint created by the English based Parliament and governments. Scotland's Westminster laws and governments simply do not represent the laws and governments that the majority of Scot's agree with. That has been the case since the 1970s. For 50 years Scotland has not been able to implement the full requirements of its own society. This, fundamental fact, means that Scotland cannot implement its own democracy.

These are examples of what a lack of democracy means and what should happen about it - as soon as possible - to begin the fight for democracy in Scotland. First, the SNP and the majority of Scots think that Britain's Trident nuclear submarines are unacceptable. Trident is a British policy to 'defend' a nation that feels the need to prepare for devastating war across the world. Most Scots however want to be a small nation who look after their own people. This is what should happen. The SNP should remove Trident, close it down. Let Westminster move it to a nation that supports it. Mass action will certainly be needed to stop nuclear Scotland. If the SNP do not fight this issue, actively, in a mass movement, then they do not fight for Scottish democracy.

The implementation of a humane immigration policy, immediate alliances with surrounding nations, major conferences nationally and internationally to re-model the new democracy, including with other ex-UK citizens that are supportive. These are vital measures now to prove a new, progressive nation is being born. And they can be started in the face of Westminster's failing democracy - as  an alternative society.

From practical steps like these (changing Westminster taxes, re-organising a new Bank of Scotland and the building of a sovereign wealth fund, etc) the argument about Westminster's rights in Scotland will become immediately defensive and then apply for a new treaty and the battle for independence has truly begun. It is the alternative to endless court battles and declining marches.