1. Where now is left social democracy in the West?
The British Labour Party's drastic defeat in the 2019 General Election is the current signature for the radical left across the West. What is it that causes these large failures and retreats - in Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Denmark, Germany, Greece etc.? And a decisive collapse of left social democracy across the West is happening in the near future as the radical Bernie Sanders has been thrown over by the Democratic membership. It certainly defines the defeat of left social democracy across the whole West and its failure to act as the main, progressive answer to globalisation - or to the rising extreme right.
2. Why is left social democracy failing?
Taking the example of Britain, there are the simplistic, hostile answers against socialism that flood across the traditional press media. These idiocies are also regular from Trump's mouth. But the attacks are most gross in the case of the British millionaire tabloids. Most popular British papers go beyond the anti-socialist features on the internet, singing their own old swan songs to the tune of WW2. The coronavirus is used as the latest WW2 parallel. These declining, sad old comics have now decided that they are the mouthpiece of the otherwise marginalised, older sections of the working class as they set out fake visions of the past. They try to provide a version of society which was centred on a great success, but then was thrown away by the youth rebellion of the 1960s, then by the Common Market, then the trade unions, then immigrants, then political correctness (gone mad), and then (post Thatcher) the self-serving detachment of Britain's politicians. But Britain's traditional, decaying, press-media is not the substantial reason for the left's defeat.
In Britain today most people under 50 prefer the internet to find their news - and their versions of history. This increasingly undermines the future of the traditional press and even frightens the liberal BBC (that defines the national debate mainly within the parameters of our 'given' society; note its coverage of Corbyn in 2017 -19). But frankly, the news on the internet offers a greater range of different views in a period where the traditional 'consensus' - a la BBC - in no way reflects real life for most people.
Starting from some basic facts, 10 million voted Corbyn in 2019 - the biggest number looking for an entirely different society since Attlee's post war government. (The Labour leader Michael Foot promoted a very weak program in the 1980s.) The section of the working class that moved over to Boris is not a novel development. (Some US correspondents are claiming that Boris is not a Trump because he is genuinely supporting sections of the working class! See Marshall Auerback 'Nation' March 4, 2020.) Boris's manoeuvres have a long history. Disraeli 'won over' the new knights of trade unionism with the 'benefits' of Empire and its possible concessions in the end of the 19th century. Thatcher sold council houses and offered housing development as an alternative to industry. The older sections of the working class in Britain suffered the Thatcher victories and fell into their gradual decline accordingly. The 'successful' 10% ended up moving to the county of Essex - along with singing 'stars' Lulu and Rod Stewart!
It is not and it has never has been the desertion of the working class as a whole, particularly now, in its modern and young, one hundred and one guises, that has 'broken' from the desperate need to change society. Winning over a chunk of the working class by the right is not the fundamental reason for the left's failure. Indeed in Britain and across other western countries, there are consistent polls that support state ownership across all utilities. More significantly are the constant movements of resistance and struggle for significant societal change - from the huge requirements of climate change to battles with the declining welfare systems, to the movement in Greece, in Germany etc., that are fighting for the right of free movement of refugees. Tomorrow, the failure of the West's role in the requirement to stop Covid-19 and the results of its anti-social economic system that is organised against society as a whole will produce a new revolt.
3. Has social democracy therefore been tricked out of its potential success by the ruling class's manipulation of modern 'democracy'?
For decades voting in the West was a pretty pointless affair. Millions in the West began to stop voting for parties that seemed to be all the same. Voting appeared to change nothing. And power and wealth were beyond the electoral realm. But now society is polarising and elections are changing. Wealth and power are beginning to be central in day-to-day politics.
As a result there are some momentous tricks brought up by history, which are now being carefully manipulated by the rulers that determine the West's electoral habits. In Britain for example the voting arrangements in 2019 meant that Labour needed 50,835 votes to win a parliamentary seat in the House of Commons. This compared with the 38,264 votes required to seat a Tory. When you add the 14.5 million votes in the 2019 election that did not secure a candidate and the 1 in 3 voters who voted for candidates they did not primarily support (so called tactical voting) it meant that Boris's huge government, with an 87 MPs lead over all other MPs and parties, ended up actually representing barely one-quarter of the British voters!
Trump tactics are being studied in Britain, using the registration of voters as a means of removing hundreds of thousands from the electoral roll - especially the young, the poorest, voters of colour etc. And there is much more to follow.
This, the manipulation of either already planted manoeuvres in the electoral system or those now planned, is getting closer to an answer as to why the left was defeated. But not necessarily so much around the different electoral systems and their tricks as such; more around how the West's politics in general that can never successfully lead to wealth and power being in the hands of the millions.
4. Is the politics of left social democracy adequate to challenge and defeat those who are dominant and who now can exercise wealth and power?
This is the crux of the matter. What is the West's modern democracy? In the end, it is not a question of technical arrangements or even voting systems. It is the question - what is the nature of our 'democracy'? How do really big decisions really get made? Do millions of voters get to decide what they want and need and are they then able to carry out their decisions? Do we have to have 'separate' people who 'do' our democracy and take over the decisions we make - because our daily lives are too difficult for us to carry out our political decisions? Is a continuity viable between voters deciding something, and then the voters themselves making that thing happen?
The western working class, especially the young, have virtually had to start from the beginning, building up their collective strength in the face of climate change, globalisation, the 2008 banking crises, now a pandemic and the further polarisation of society. The remains of the trade union movement in most western countries are today more active in their campaigns but considerably less able to lead a new, vast, disparate working class across society. And right at the centre of this under-developed working class movement and its marginal if popular organisations is the hole that is still empty - where the view of the prospect of a genuinely democratic, socialist society needs to be.
Original Marxists and socialists appeared to be coy about predicting the future. They understood that social context and class action were everything. It was absurd to insist that the future kaleidoscope of history could be settled by the way of a set of architects' drawings. But history since that time has presented the results of the great working class movements and their politics over a century and more. And what young people in the West see today is not only the failures of their own day to day societies but also the collapses, the defeats and the gross mistakes of most, self-styled, socialist countries across the world. By and large the youth support the resistance to the leaderships of those who have led, in name, such societies. Older working class people in the West knew about the collapse of the Soviet Union and they knew that when it did exist, before and after WW2, they praised the Russians for their defeat of Hitler, but, on the whole, their grand-mothers and fathers did not want to live in so-called Soviet Russia. (For one thing it was a country that had no Soviets).
It is always possible to wave theoretical banners and argue that, like the waves in the ocean, the movement of the working class towards a new society is the main, conscious, global question that has yet to be resolved (at least since the French Revolution). Of course working class socialism inevitably takes surges forward, but then it retreats as the system of capitalism first founders and then reorganises. Socialism, over time, appears as though it is unable to defeat the core of capitalism.
At this point in time most Western working class people think (rightly) that their children will be poorer and have a lower standard of living. They want and need drastic change in their society and the corona crisis only increases that feeling. But the political direction of socialism, connected as it is to the defeats of the past, make the political future unclear and practical advances appear fuzzy and utopian. That often leads to the image of progression becoming a personal adventure and success amounts to carving out gains at others expense.
Corbyn's 2019 Manifesto won Labour over 10 million votes - but the Manifesto itself lost credibility. It did not sound possible or likely to be achieved. Simultaneously, the 10 million-plus who also wanted the sort of changes Corbyn described, they went as far as not voting Labour at all! Left Labour leaders, including Corbyn, insisted that all the Manifesto gains were essentially a matter of Britain simply rising to the levels already achieved by German state-welfare etc. But the British waverers believed that the Manifesto would actually be a huge shift in British society. The 10 million-plus did not believe that it was simply a shift to the level of some other European nations. The 10 million-plus did not believe that the Manifesto could be implemented without a great upheaval in Britain. The data about Germany and the Scandinavian countries' social welfare and investments were accurate, in comparison with the UK, but the people beyond the 10 million knew in their hearts that achieving even these very limited advances in the context of the UK would require the deepest struggle since the 1970s. Then they looked again at the ferocious divisions of the Labour Party, led mainly by its MPs, and the results of the history of socialist efforts in the past - and they turned away. The Attlee example was no longer a valid example for them. They were right. It never was. Attlee rebuilt the war torn Britain by wringing concessions as he simultaneously rebuilt capitalism, using the post-war state. And the 2019 voters were also right that these supposedly relatively small steps in Labour's Manifesto, in the context of Britain in 2019, would not have been accepted by big Capital but rather its application would produce a giant storm.
5. What needs to change?
Social democracy, even the sincere left social democracy of Corbyn, does not cut it anymore. Even if you restricted your desires to the reforms echoed in the Corbyn Manifesto and you want to succeed, you would now need a new revolution in Britain. And that was the missing political centre of Corbyn's proposal. Leave aside the deep split among Labour's MPs and the hostility of virtually every company and corporation, the Labour left - and others - argued that Corbyn's plans were no more difficult to set up than was Attlee's program. But there was a blind spot in the left's perspective of Attlee during the 2017 and 2019's UK General Elections. Capitalist Britain had been smashed in WW2. The Empire was collapsing. Attlee used the state he had built up during the war to save British capitalism. And that, of necessity, involved major concessions to the working class, but never outside the framework of the new capitalism. For decades Labour and Tories maintained Attlee's fundamental order. The British society was, in effect, a ruling class / working class compact until the 1970s - led by the union bosses in the case of the working class - in the agreed framework of a capitalist economy and a majority component of the state delivering welfare.
This compact is long gone - whatever Boris tells the workers in the Midlands and the North East of England. In various ways and at different points in history the British-style compact was adopted and now, has systematically broken across the European West. The Attlee gains cannot be repeated in today's economy and society. And working class people in Britain and across the West feel that that. They know that Corbyn and the left covered up or signally denied that there has to be a new and ferocious struggle to gain any serious inroads into today's capitalism.
At the same time 20th century revolutions (with small and partial exceptions) have been seen by the West to have failed outright or to have turned sour. (Left) social democracy could not even hang-on to the concessions they won after WW2. They have become left liberals and died out as mass parties or, as in the minority cases of Corbyn in the UK and Sanders in the US, promoted programs that workers want but do not believe can happen.
What is to be done? The answer begins with brutal honesty. Millions of the new working classes in the West are damaged by the current capitalist system. They are fully aware of their losses - which are deepening. As has been seen, huge initiatives and epic answers are offered from the new right - and the apparent sizes of these programs are designed to shape up to the huge problems that millions face. This creates a drama and movement in politics for a time. It appears to fill the hole in society where once particularly older working class people could see and identify themselves - now the unions and the old working class parties had gone. But the right's political show inevitably turns out to be empty. Instead, the new right insists more and more on authority, on the control of society and works as a vessel to maintain order and support the power and wealth of the new capitalist global order. Empty of any real direction but enriching capitalist authority against any and all who resist it, the new right attacks minorities and leftish critics to define its own political domination.
There is a lesson for the left in this context. The working class is aware that any serious or sizeable change takes major and specific means; and that serious forces will need to be contended for and substantial progress to be made. Left social democracy denies that. But the response to the new right requires the new left to offer an equally large and decisive alternative - based in their case in serious and practical explanations which denounce the social and economic system and spell out real alternatives. And this takes the argument right back to the future of democracy. Created properly, it will be a new democracy that can break the failings of the left's history.
The way that the left can simultaneously pull away from the apparent failures and defeats of the 20th century revolutions, and successfully adopt a policy for structural change of society, is based on a new focus - for a different, and for the most powerful, democracy.
6. So what can we do about a revolutionary democracy?
Left social democracy in the West has trailed the failing revolutions across the world in their incapacity to break capitalist domination. Indeed the social democrat project was unable to get anything like as far as the Russian or Chinese or Yugoslavian or Cuban or Vietnamese revolutions. And despite the failures of these revolutionaries, their challenge to capitalism and its associated imperialism meant that their revolutions pushed further and faster against the world's dominant social system than anything achieved by social democracy. That is also a part of the revolutionary historical legacy.
People like Blair have long ago dropped any sort of offensive against capitalism. But real social democrats are still attempting to define their alternative to the capitalist system - at least in the West. Despite the history of the social democratic failure, they still believe that social democracy is the only route to socialism in the western context. And the most significant left social democratic thinkers in the West today are Picketty in France and Monbiot in the UK.
Picketty has produced a new book 'Capital and Ideology' (2019). It is a magnificent tome. As with his previous masterpiece he has drawn out the immoral, anti-human and practical idiocy of the constant expansion of wealth to the world's top 5% and the stasis - and for half to a third of the population - the reduction of wealth, for the rest of us. It has been going on for decades. It crashed the world's economy in 2008 and then soaked more from the 95% and mostly from the bottom 30%, to allow the 5% to continue to rise. Picketty expands his thorough analysis of similar periods across history and demonstrates their disastrous consequences across the ages.
But we are left with a problem without a solution. Picketty suggests answers that are extensions of his suggestions in his previous book (total inheritance taxes; fair education etc.) Rationally, he is spot on. However, as Corbyn never made clear, the reality of a super class and its determined entitlement of its domination is not an abstraction. And the people who live and exist this way are of course part of a network of others who rule and run the institutions, that allow and promote this condition. In other words, it is a revolt that is required to break up this condition. Extremely rich and powerful people have to lose their wealth and their power. And given their network and their resources, including those that bind the state, they will oppose and fight any substantial change. Social democracy, even left social democracy, does not understand that in today's world, everything needs to change for anything to change.
Mombiot offers a different solution to Picketty - of sorts. YouTube and Face Book show a discussion where Monbiot and a questioner talk about 'the commons.' This has echoes from the English Civil War and the Levellers but there is something attractive and real about how property and resources can be taken out of ownership per se and managed by people who follow the water that flows from the sky, the energy that flows from the sun and the wind and the water. And here is something that is critical for any sort of fairer future. The idea of the 'commons' is deeply democratic in both the sense that property is not owned and that management is collective, which can only be democratic. But again there is no bridge in Mombiot's thinking between what is (treasured and embedded) now and the problem of the change he forments.
Lenin apparently said that socialism - is electricity plus soviets. To get electricity into the hands of the majority you need soviets. To change from modern capitalism to a new society that runs on behalf of the vast majority you need a new democracy. And there is not the slightest sense - even from genuine radicals like Corbyn and Sanders - of the desperate need for a new type of democracy.
7. Ok, generally speaking - what is to be done?
First, it is most urgent that before left social democracy in the West entirely dissolves itself, the left base of these parties need to recreate new political formations. For example, organisations like Momentum in the UK, which are managed by the base and have a clear socialist program, can act independently of most of the remnants of Labour MPs as they tunnel away towards their own end and the Blairite past. Additionally and critically such movements, like Momentum, need to make clear alliances and common fronts with other political movements that act for radical and anti-capitalist change. This can range from organisations like the Peoples Assembly to the left inside and outside of the SNP in Scotland. Without the remaining left in the social democratic shells making a substantive move to build a new socialist bloc, a huge and particularly youthful radicalisation will be lost across the whole of society. And all that will be left is a well-intended far-left stream of confetti.
Second, as the recession and slump - following coronavirus - is preparing austerity part 2, it becomes a pivotal moment to attack and denounce the West's decaying democracy.
There are so many negative experiences that millions upon millions in the West have in relation to their political systems. This is not a theoretical supposition. At heart it is a class matter. The majority get very little, indeed mostly they lose, from their political systems. To an extent the new right, Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, etc, etc, understand that. They do not sell democratic institutions, which they know are failing, instead they sell themselves and their own domination. Initially, they rest on the anger and dissolution of all sections of the population who see the failure of the political class. In time they become the iron fist that smashes any real attempt to change class politics.
In the UK, leaving aside the biggest section of Britain's 'democracy,' the ridiculous and mouldering House of Lords appointed without a single vote, and even if there are genuine elections and choices, as with 2017 and 2019, which had real class issues are at stake (a very rare situation), the British people as a whole have only once, in 1931, won a majority. Since then every government has won with a minority vote. And when getting a 'proper' government really matters, in the UK system you can even get your government without getting the highest number of votes, let alone the unobtainable majority of voters. In 1951 Labour scored 48.8% of the popular vote - the highest Labour ever achieved. The Tories scored less votes, but won more MPs and took the government.
This sort of shenanigans is normal in the West's democracy. The world knows how Trump got to be President 2 million votes less than Clinton. In most European countries the shenanigans happens after the vote as the real power is shuffled in the most appropriate way for the continuation of the prevailing system. So, to get anywhere, the socialists have to break up the West's traditional politics and its underpinning state - if they really wish to build up a new economy and society. This is how to move from a social democracy, which is blocked from any socialism by its acceptance and defence of the current 'democracy', into a democratic socialism.
But this could not be a new 'party policy.' Building a new democracy would be an action. If the new party, alliance, movement focussed on decisive, concrete requirements, coming from the people in democratic meetings across their self-decided areas, then views like 'No Second Austerity', 'Build New Green Industries', 'Good Homes and Wages for All', 'Votes now for our future (countries, cities and towns)' begin to be heard. The movement should be prepared to set up local and national votes to test what people need most. Then it would help mobilise the voters and help organise how to effect their vote. If this sounds like a utopian dream - in part it has already been experienced - by millions.
In the case of Britain there has been a recent referendum about EU membership. After the referendum two other 'big' votes have surfaced, one of them for the second time. The Northern Irish are beginning to change their nationhood away from Britain. And the Scots are preparing again for a separate nation.
The Brexit referendum was set up by a section of the Tory party and coming from that source it initially created a great confusion as to whether the Brexit vote was a far right, anti immigrant campaign, as a means of winning traditional working class votes, or, as the years rolled by following the vote, whether it had empowered the working class against the British establishment. The significance of the referendum was, however, immense. The Brexit confusion cut through society, energised millions of people who ignored traditional politics, mobilised millions in action and radicalised the Tories - to the right - and Labour to the left. Although the starting point was a Tory Grandee that needed to reshuffle his backward MPs and although that confused the issue, deliberately opening the door to the new right, nevertheless, the energy, commitment and passion of millions of ordinary people, over several years, created a majority and changed their society. Imagine if millions of ordinary people were not only able to vote in referendums but were also able to set the serious questions. That is the new democracy.
Any MPs or councillors could collaborate or cut themselves off from the new democracy in action. Real democracy, carried out by the majority of voters. Democracy in action would be the bedrock of the new democracy for the whole of society. It would stand up against the degeneration of a rotten system.
The fight to set serious questions by the population would be defended by the democratic meetings and actions. The actions would be mass actions, and the events would be voted for, the voting would be direct and cover all main issues.
The goal would be the gathering of the new, active democracy, opening to all the big questions, as the alternative to the current undemocratic politics that is founded on a biased state and a rotten society.
8. But, what is to be done - right now?
Right now, the new Labour leader Keir Stamer is telling us all that he will support everybody in anything they do - including the government over the coronavirus. But the real socialists should prepare to stand loud and firm against the storm that Boris and his government are brewing when the coronavirus dies away.
'The Low Pay Commission says cost of fighting coronavirus pandemic endangers flagship pledge to raise national living wage to £10.50 an hour.' This little note comes from the Guardian but has been generally ignored elsewhere.
Here are the latest facts from The Institute of Fiscal Studies (26 March.) It offers this tentative 'result' of government costs:
The British economy will shrink by 6% in 20/21 costing the government £70 bn
An estimated expenditure given the small and under funded public services .£266 bn
Estimate furlough costs £10 bn
£330 bn to company loan guarantees with estimated costs to government of £50 bn
Definite suspension of VAT costs £30 bn
Total, estimated £426 bn
Additionally in 20/21 government borrowing will rise from £55 bn to £120 bn. They originally promised very long debt recovery ...
This is one year, the first year of Boris's Tory government. Because the government is new, because they believe that 3 or 4 years of austerity mark 2 can be blown away by 2025, this damage is going to be handed over to the working class in direct ways (see above) and in great slashing cuts into social services. Like the bankers in 2008, the big companies will be 'saved' now and remain untouched in the years to come. The costs of the coronavirus for Britain will be immensely more than most of the larger European states (and probably doubled over 2 years) because Britain has severely cut back its health service and welfare generally over 10 years. It has had o make a great leap financially just to get to the resources needed to run an adequate service let alone deal with the coronavirus.
Socialists will desperately need a plan for the people. And, at last, WW2 surfaces - as more than just flyers in the press. In WW2 the top earners paid 98 and 99% income tax. Even through the 1950s, 60s and the early 1970s it was roughly 90%. By 1999 it was less than 40%. So; first, the utilities, transport and pharma have already been showered with government money and therefore need to be taken over to protect the huge loan offers turning into the hands of the CEOs and private share holders. (As with the 'quantitive easing' after 2008 which created hundreds of new billionaires.) If there is doubt on this point then call a referendum and let mass action decide. Second, the terrible weaknesses of the British Health Service and welfare particularly with the aged, has been shown (see Germany) as a government promoted mass killer. Health, welfare and education need to be ramped up and as wars are now unaffordable and tax havens unacceptable, we need another referendum on paying for the priorities of the people.
In a nutshell, Boris's government should not be allowed the slightest credibility, legitimacy or acceptance following the Coronavirus disaster. The socialists will not, in such circumstances, spend their time and efforts crying for a general election. They will build the democracy and the decisions that count from the base; new demands for new referendums. The general election will come only as a desperate effort to dissolve the new democracy. The new democratic politics, through its actions, in defence of the ordinary people, must become the centre across UK society.
9. An End of the Beginning
The breakthroughs so far achieved by socialists have all been driven in large part by the need to overthrow great imperialist powers and their wars. None of the larger capitalist countries in the world, that are part of the imperialist domination themselves, have yet seen the success of a revolution at home. The immense victories against imperialism, won by Soviet Russia, by China, by Yugoslavia, Cuba and Viet Nam and others went through desperate periods after they won their wars and revolutions but had no resources to win a socialist peace. Eventually, as western imperialism weakened by the end of the 20th century, China managed to 'steal' economic progress via cheap labour and then by winning great Capital. But all of the countries mentioned and many others created new classes and forms of society that withstood western imperialism to some extent, but degenerated their previous socialist goals. Some, like Cuba, still remain obvious beacons. Others, like Yugoslavia were simply destroyed. Meanwhile, no fully developed country came close to even starting genuine socialism.
Trotsky, who saw first hand the degeneration of Soviet Russia, wrote pieces for many papers. In 1934 he wrote for Liberty how American could be communist. The essence of his cheerful article was that the resources and technology of the US would prevent the underlying forces that spelt monstrous bureaucracy in Russia. American socialism would truly lead humanity. The essence of his argument was that while the rich capitalist countries were incredibly difficult to break with their immense systems and powers, subsequent to the revolution none of the major conditions of violent bureaucracy and a society run by the police of want, would apply. In other words, the West would find the revolution incredibly difficult but the subsequent growth of socialism so much more easy to develop. (He added, 'One final prophecy: in the 3rd year of the Soviet rule in America you will no longer chew gum!') That's already happened!
Social democracy, even the genuine Corbyn type sees a transfer to socialism in the West from entirely the wrong angle. Social Democracy believes that the easy business is the transfer of the current system to socialism - if you put the right arguments and inhabit the main political institutions. And that is why they have mainly ended up as supporters of that system. Breaking through the West's wealth and power is the route to a socialist society. And such a society would start from the real possibilities of an advanced condition for its people.
The world has changed dramatically since 1917. The revolutions (and many other great developments) have at least succeeded in showing how it is possible to make immense changes, contrary to all apparent possibilities. But that understanding can be stopped dead by those who start from the endless 'now' as the only map for the future. Western imperialism is weakening right across the globe. The dissolution of capitalism through its tenuous, global-wide, financial structure is fragile and dependent on national handouts each time it subsides. The old 'third world' is now part of what was called the 'first world' as millions slave for pittances in the metropolises of the West. Anger, dislocation and rejection are the common culture in the traditional 'rich' countries. Time to take action and reverse the future.
Monday, 6 April 2020
Wednesday, 1 April 2020
Is a new society coming?
BBC Radio 4 'Start the Week' - March 30th - was one of a number of podcasts, articles, speeches and essays that are trying to work out what will life be like after the Corona virus is vaccinated away. Amol Rajan, an astute BBC commentator, led the discussion between Danny Darling, a political geographer who was promoting his book called 'Slow Down' and Nick Timothy, Chief of Staff for ex PM Teresa May, who has had plenty of time since 2017 to write his book called 'Conservatives in an Age of Crisis.'
Timothy is obviously having a hard life as his tome was a heartfelt plea for the Tory Party to stop basing itself on the banner of 'individual freedom' alone. Instead the Party should look more like Disraeli and Harold MacMillan's approaches. Timothy believes that the Conservatives should use a medium size state to promote other good stuff besides freedom, like better wages and the proper support for the health services. He is scared by the California led hyper liberalisation and the end of corporate tax. Sadly (for Timothy) he has pushed his book exactly at the time when (a) Tory PM Boris won a large majority on a right wing program and then (b) went on to tell us that there was a society after all (dumping Thatcher) and has then spent £billions defending health and working class wages. Timothy, just as in 2017, has in 2020 fallen off his horse before the race started.
It was therefore not surprising that Timothy's contributions to the Start the Week discussion proved to be defensive and even a little desperate.
The ideas offered by Darling were, however, highly significant. Rajan had to pull the the points made by Darling into the program's shape, just as he had with Timothy, but, unlike Timothy, he was able to create a better background for what Darling was saying.
'History's great acceleration' was the mantra that Rajan used to define the popular view that the last 20 or 30 years was a tremendous advance, first technologically and then socially and then globally. However, Darling said that in the last decade virtually all the indices, polls, empirical studies and scientific evidence showed a great slowing down and even an even more, a substantial stopping, of global history. Rather breathlessly (as the program was closing) he added that even IQs had stopped!
'Slowing down' as a theme is also becoming common among various thinkers as they try to work out how the world, and particularly the west, will be - post corona. (See blog 27.03.20.) But Darling's studies pre-date the corona virus. And some of the 'post corona' thinking has suggested that the effect of the virus will only accelerate a big shift in society that was already emerging.
The paradox of 'slowing down' is that it will happen, if it happens, very fast.
For example, one part of any 'new society', at least in the UK, will be the fate of the Boris led Tory government, apparently deeply secure with a huge majority and facing a scattered Labour Party opposition. Already social media and the traditional press are beginning to attack the failings of the Tory plan to defeat corona. (See The Daily Mail, 1 April, '20.) But what is most significant is the fundamental fate of the Tory government in the next four and a half years. The British economy will not 'bounce back' as Boris and his Chancellor constantly repeat. Its decline and its decay will be the key factor for the Tory government for years. Boris's government will be marked by a deep recession and probably a slump. Austerity, even rationing, are now on the medium term horizon.
This is the reality that governments, like the Hungarian dictatorship, are beginning to prepare for. Because social upheaval is inevitable.
Gathering a new political force across the West in general and in Britain is the key to what sort of change we get. And the change we want to kick start society again needs to be the conscious actions of millions who organise resources, technology and genuine democratic decisions for the sake of humanity. Twitter and the selfie, the billionaires and millionaires, poisoning the climate and violent competing does not do it anymore.
Timothy is obviously having a hard life as his tome was a heartfelt plea for the Tory Party to stop basing itself on the banner of 'individual freedom' alone. Instead the Party should look more like Disraeli and Harold MacMillan's approaches. Timothy believes that the Conservatives should use a medium size state to promote other good stuff besides freedom, like better wages and the proper support for the health services. He is scared by the California led hyper liberalisation and the end of corporate tax. Sadly (for Timothy) he has pushed his book exactly at the time when (a) Tory PM Boris won a large majority on a right wing program and then (b) went on to tell us that there was a society after all (dumping Thatcher) and has then spent £billions defending health and working class wages. Timothy, just as in 2017, has in 2020 fallen off his horse before the race started.
It was therefore not surprising that Timothy's contributions to the Start the Week discussion proved to be defensive and even a little desperate.
The ideas offered by Darling were, however, highly significant. Rajan had to pull the the points made by Darling into the program's shape, just as he had with Timothy, but, unlike Timothy, he was able to create a better background for what Darling was saying.
'History's great acceleration' was the mantra that Rajan used to define the popular view that the last 20 or 30 years was a tremendous advance, first technologically and then socially and then globally. However, Darling said that in the last decade virtually all the indices, polls, empirical studies and scientific evidence showed a great slowing down and even an even more, a substantial stopping, of global history. Rather breathlessly (as the program was closing) he added that even IQs had stopped!
'Slowing down' as a theme is also becoming common among various thinkers as they try to work out how the world, and particularly the west, will be - post corona. (See blog 27.03.20.) But Darling's studies pre-date the corona virus. And some of the 'post corona' thinking has suggested that the effect of the virus will only accelerate a big shift in society that was already emerging.
The paradox of 'slowing down' is that it will happen, if it happens, very fast.
For example, one part of any 'new society', at least in the UK, will be the fate of the Boris led Tory government, apparently deeply secure with a huge majority and facing a scattered Labour Party opposition. Already social media and the traditional press are beginning to attack the failings of the Tory plan to defeat corona. (See The Daily Mail, 1 April, '20.) But what is most significant is the fundamental fate of the Tory government in the next four and a half years. The British economy will not 'bounce back' as Boris and his Chancellor constantly repeat. Its decline and its decay will be the key factor for the Tory government for years. Boris's government will be marked by a deep recession and probably a slump. Austerity, even rationing, are now on the medium term horizon.
This is the reality that governments, like the Hungarian dictatorship, are beginning to prepare for. Because social upheaval is inevitable.
Gathering a new political force across the West in general and in Britain is the key to what sort of change we get. And the change we want to kick start society again needs to be the conscious actions of millions who organise resources, technology and genuine democratic decisions for the sake of humanity. Twitter and the selfie, the billionaires and millionaires, poisoning the climate and violent competing does not do it anymore.
Friday, 27 March 2020
Corona virus - changing the western world?
Esquire, an internet newsletter for fifty year old men who want to be thirty, has an interesting article about the future of the West, speculating up to the point when the corona virus is stopped by immunisation. It selects ideas over the next year or so from various professors and analysts about the likely consequences of the virus in western society.
It is worth noting that definite assumptions frame the main arguments in the article; such as the general spread of immunisation being only available by the end of 2021 and the deep economic downturn that will follow vast government spending coupled with the sharp decline of economic activity. But these assumptions do not feel unreasonable. The reflections offered by Esquire's available 'experts' seem consistent with the framework suggested. And their predictions are worth reviewing.
There are some interesting, if minor, judgements made, such as the the likely revival of local produce for sale, meaning that supermarkets will lose strawberries in winter (and all their other flight based food.) And the absence of new TV programs - as the pandemic ebbs and then flares up again - is bound to shift the population to a younger demographic - as more babies arrive and more elders die earlier. Daily life will be more local, slower and more communal. But behind the list of speculative possibilities (the final end of the high street, the reduction of international travel etc) there is a shared view among Esquire's commentators that the whole of society is going to change, not least because the corona crisis is speeding up what is already an inevitable change in society.
This is where there are at least two problems facing Esquire's soothsayers. First, a great deal of the evidence for a substantial change in society, at least in Britain, appears to boil down to the apparent revelation that a right wing (Brexiteer) Tory government has turned its fundamental economic principles on its head. And it is true that huge amount of the government's access to wealth has not just supported business, it has also been marshalled on behalf of key social services and lost wages. Our Esquire visionaries seem to share some of the approach of the French, world wide intellectual Picketty's - new book, 'Capital and Ideology', which slams current capitalism in respect of its constant and increasing miss-distribution of wealth in this period and across earlier points in history. Picketty demonstrates in an unquestionable study of the evidence, that such surges of wealth gathering tended in the past to break countries up.
Alas, basing the idea that Boris's Treasury's policy and Britain's access to loans are speeding up a redistribution of wealth, or even suggesting a direction towards a redistribution of wealth, is frankly ridiculous. £330Bn of loan guarantees are to be made available for business. Small firms get £32Bn. Covering lost wages is assessed as a cost of £78Bn (see City economists 'Capital Economics'). £7Bn goes to plumping up Universal Credit and the five million self-employed are to share an estimated £7Bn also.
The peons of praise sung by Tory grandees about the NHS have yet to pinpoint the slightest gain or improvement for the service over the medium to longterm. Besides the appalling failures with testing, proper safety clothes for NHS workers and the failures to link up with EU bulk purchasing of oxygen masks (£1.54 a mask) - Boris and his predecessors cheerfully broke up any of the service's pandemic preparations. Dissolving hospitals, now desperately re-stocking, offering the smallest ratios of doctors to population of all the main European countries, now being brought back from retirement, and so it goes on. Not one Tory cavalier has apologised about the destruction of the NHS in the last decade. Not one has said anything about the future of the NHS. And yet the NHS is the critical fulcrum of the corona disaster. It is what will save a coherent society or, if it fails because of its history, it will break it.
Like Picketty, although without any of his brilliant tenacity or scholarship, our Esquire experts not only misunderstand Boris's intentions for the future, but also fail to realise how the dramatic changes in western and British society could emerge. Picketty focusses in history the separate regions and countries destroyed by their dominant effort of accumulation of wealth. But now we have globalisation. Wealth accumulation is the main trigger of international capitalism, not just regions and nations. Conditions today show that change in ecology, in building international movements, in the reconstitution of wealth and a new democracy are painfully ready to be born. But it is this second point that constitutes the deep, dark hole in their thinking. Society will not melt into its new colours. It will have to consciously fought for, pulled into the light by human struggle and consciously remade.
It is worth noting that definite assumptions frame the main arguments in the article; such as the general spread of immunisation being only available by the end of 2021 and the deep economic downturn that will follow vast government spending coupled with the sharp decline of economic activity. But these assumptions do not feel unreasonable. The reflections offered by Esquire's available 'experts' seem consistent with the framework suggested. And their predictions are worth reviewing.
There are some interesting, if minor, judgements made, such as the the likely revival of local produce for sale, meaning that supermarkets will lose strawberries in winter (and all their other flight based food.) And the absence of new TV programs - as the pandemic ebbs and then flares up again - is bound to shift the population to a younger demographic - as more babies arrive and more elders die earlier. Daily life will be more local, slower and more communal. But behind the list of speculative possibilities (the final end of the high street, the reduction of international travel etc) there is a shared view among Esquire's commentators that the whole of society is going to change, not least because the corona crisis is speeding up what is already an inevitable change in society.
This is where there are at least two problems facing Esquire's soothsayers. First, a great deal of the evidence for a substantial change in society, at least in Britain, appears to boil down to the apparent revelation that a right wing (Brexiteer) Tory government has turned its fundamental economic principles on its head. And it is true that huge amount of the government's access to wealth has not just supported business, it has also been marshalled on behalf of key social services and lost wages. Our Esquire visionaries seem to share some of the approach of the French, world wide intellectual Picketty's - new book, 'Capital and Ideology', which slams current capitalism in respect of its constant and increasing miss-distribution of wealth in this period and across earlier points in history. Picketty demonstrates in an unquestionable study of the evidence, that such surges of wealth gathering tended in the past to break countries up.
Alas, basing the idea that Boris's Treasury's policy and Britain's access to loans are speeding up a redistribution of wealth, or even suggesting a direction towards a redistribution of wealth, is frankly ridiculous. £330Bn of loan guarantees are to be made available for business. Small firms get £32Bn. Covering lost wages is assessed as a cost of £78Bn (see City economists 'Capital Economics'). £7Bn goes to plumping up Universal Credit and the five million self-employed are to share an estimated £7Bn also.
The peons of praise sung by Tory grandees about the NHS have yet to pinpoint the slightest gain or improvement for the service over the medium to longterm. Besides the appalling failures with testing, proper safety clothes for NHS workers and the failures to link up with EU bulk purchasing of oxygen masks (£1.54 a mask) - Boris and his predecessors cheerfully broke up any of the service's pandemic preparations. Dissolving hospitals, now desperately re-stocking, offering the smallest ratios of doctors to population of all the main European countries, now being brought back from retirement, and so it goes on. Not one Tory cavalier has apologised about the destruction of the NHS in the last decade. Not one has said anything about the future of the NHS. And yet the NHS is the critical fulcrum of the corona disaster. It is what will save a coherent society or, if it fails because of its history, it will break it.
Like Picketty, although without any of his brilliant tenacity or scholarship, our Esquire experts not only misunderstand Boris's intentions for the future, but also fail to realise how the dramatic changes in western and British society could emerge. Picketty focusses in history the separate regions and countries destroyed by their dominant effort of accumulation of wealth. But now we have globalisation. Wealth accumulation is the main trigger of international capitalism, not just regions and nations. Conditions today show that change in ecology, in building international movements, in the reconstitution of wealth and a new democracy are painfully ready to be born. But it is this second point that constitutes the deep, dark hole in their thinking. Society will not melt into its new colours. It will have to consciously fought for, pulled into the light by human struggle and consciously remade.
Wednesday, 26 February 2020
Youth radical politics.
'Generation Left' is a book by Keir Milburn. William Davies reviewed the book in an essay in the LRB, 20 February 2020, and drew up further facts about politics and the young since 'Generation Left' was published in May 2019. The book and the review are definitely worth their salt, but this blog will borrow some key facts from those sources and others about young people and politics in Britain today - aiming at specific conclusions about Britain's potential political future.
First, a really delicious quotation from the review:
'If you are over the age of 50, the odds are that you are happy with how it's all worked out.' (The UK General Election result.) 'If you are under the age of 50, the odds are you are not, and if you are under the age of 30, you may well be bloody furious.'
But, like everything else in politics, there is an argument, in this case not whether youth are radical (even the most rabid Tory press agree the youth are mainly radical-lefties, tinged with Marxism!) The argument is why has this happened? Inevitably we find that the answer to that question, the reason for the radicalisation of the young, leads to different paths and reflects different social interests.
There are various responses to younger people becoming radical. One example is the often referred to selfishness of the baby boomers (born 1945 - to 1964) who have sucked up the best of the incomes, the health services, welfare and the most devastatingly, have been able to seize home ownership, which in turn has become a wealth asset. It takes seconds, if any time at all, to unravel the boulder in the eye of this piece of hollow reasoning.
It seems plain that the period following WW2 was a patch of western history when most ordinary, working class people in the West were generally able to gain better standards of living than any previous period. But how? Kindness from the ruling classes? Has this ever been a feature of History? More likely the victory over fascism and the organisation of the working classes through unions etc., forced a better redistribution that any previous period. Society between 1945 to 1979 was not created by the selfishness enjoyed by the 'baby boomers'. As unions were fought and defeated; as public services were sold off, it was the selfishness of the ruling class led-society from 1980 that started the social decline of millions and millions of ordinary people, in various degrees, across the western world.
The deliberate act of Thatcher to monetise homes building a working class Tory bloc (long before Boris Johnson) was not in any meaningful sense, a 'choice.' Jobs were becoming precarious. The unions were being defeated. 'Buying' your council house seemed a defence against poverty. But despite the impact of the Thatcher revolution, those young people who have challenged society openly, in action and their argument, seem thus far to have dismissed the nonsense of the selfish baby boomers.
Then there are the 'cultural' arguments that suggest the 'over' universitised experience of the young and extensive lefty education in general (including 'dangerous' institutions like the BBC, the courts, leading show biz stars etc) that leads to unfair judgments on society, particularly in relation to patriotism, the armed forces, immigration etc. There is a genuine fear in the tabloid press that they will cease to exist, and thereby break the lode stone of Britain's 'deep' character. And it is true that the British youth are more educated - in terms of degrees etc., than their forebears. New definitions based on so called 'cultural wars' are used to define this chasm between the youth and their elders. The communication technology is supposed to underline the rift. But, again, these young people that have shifted, particularly in the UK and the US towards radical politics, deny a mainly cultural explanation of their disengagement from modern society.
It is easy to imagine that young radicals have been seeking their own way to a better world. Standard histories describe such moments in all political upheavals - as though the sheer innocence, coupled with deep feelings of the young creates the need for drama. Less picturesquely perhaps, there is a deep economic class basis for young people in the West to radicalise today.
In the late 1970s in the UK owner occupancy was around 50%. On the eve of the crisis of 2008 owner occupancy was 70% and after 2008 it fell to 63%. Meanwhile the rate of home ownership among young adults has halved over the past twenty years. Currently more than £17 billion is loaned to around 1.3 million students in England each year. The value of outstanding loans at the end of March 2019 reached £121 billion. The average debt among the cohort of borrowers who finished their courses in 2018 was £36,000. The average salary for full time work in 2019 was £36,610.. The median starting salary for UK graduates for 2018-2019 is between £19,000 and £22,000 a year. The average earnings of employees aged between 22 are 29 per year are £24 850 for men and £22.921 for women.
Despite the mill stones around their necks and their rental future, students are in the 'privileged' sector of UK youth. They amount now to 49% of young people of the relevant age. The conditions for the 51% non students are worse. According to ASHE, 16-to-17-year-olds entering the job market can expect to earn under £200 a week; under £10,400 a year - should they have a yearly contract.
Finally, the decline of young people's economic conditions has been projected into the future as a new study that examines life expectancy, welfare and health has been published (25 February 2020.) From the Financial Times, we read the following;
'Improvements in life expectancy in England have stalled for the first sustained period in 120 years after a decade of government austerity, according to one of the world’s leading experts on the link between social deprivation and health.
Describing his findings as “shocking”, Michael Marmot, who heads the Institute of Health Equity at University College London, highlighted rising child poverty, declines in education funding, an increase in zero-hours contracts and the large number of people resorting to food banks. The result was “ignored communities with poor conditions and little reason for hope”.
Sir Michael told the Financial Times: “I’m not saying ‘austerity is killing people’. I’m saying it’s highly likely — because we identified the key drivers of health and health inequalities, and because they’ve changed in an adverse direction — that those changes are responsible for the health effects that we see.”
He has drawn a stronger link between austerity and the slowing increase in life expectancy than in his last report, in 2017.'
This is the meaning of the polarisation of British politics and society. Brexit has never been its basis and nor has its result somehow achieved any real solution, anymore than the radicalisation of young people is based on some fantasy, on a 'culture war' or youth's wishful thinking. The Labour Party members now deciding their votes for leader will have a serious effect on whether young people can organise and express their radical views, from the Labour platform, across society. Labour under Corbyn offered a route that opened to the radical youth, and now so does Sanders and a section of the US Democrats. But both of the would-be dominant forces in those traditional parties want to pretend that they can wish the polarisation of society out of existence and find their own fantasy of a 'middle way.' If they win the leadership vote, their failure will mean that the young will learn yet another sad truth about who are their friends and will need to take an entirely different and much harder road.
First, a really delicious quotation from the review:
'If you are over the age of 50, the odds are that you are happy with how it's all worked out.' (The UK General Election result.) 'If you are under the age of 50, the odds are you are not, and if you are under the age of 30, you may well be bloody furious.'
But, like everything else in politics, there is an argument, in this case not whether youth are radical (even the most rabid Tory press agree the youth are mainly radical-lefties, tinged with Marxism!) The argument is why has this happened? Inevitably we find that the answer to that question, the reason for the radicalisation of the young, leads to different paths and reflects different social interests.
There are various responses to younger people becoming radical. One example is the often referred to selfishness of the baby boomers (born 1945 - to 1964) who have sucked up the best of the incomes, the health services, welfare and the most devastatingly, have been able to seize home ownership, which in turn has become a wealth asset. It takes seconds, if any time at all, to unravel the boulder in the eye of this piece of hollow reasoning.
It seems plain that the period following WW2 was a patch of western history when most ordinary, working class people in the West were generally able to gain better standards of living than any previous period. But how? Kindness from the ruling classes? Has this ever been a feature of History? More likely the victory over fascism and the organisation of the working classes through unions etc., forced a better redistribution that any previous period. Society between 1945 to 1979 was not created by the selfishness enjoyed by the 'baby boomers'. As unions were fought and defeated; as public services were sold off, it was the selfishness of the ruling class led-society from 1980 that started the social decline of millions and millions of ordinary people, in various degrees, across the western world.
The deliberate act of Thatcher to monetise homes building a working class Tory bloc (long before Boris Johnson) was not in any meaningful sense, a 'choice.' Jobs were becoming precarious. The unions were being defeated. 'Buying' your council house seemed a defence against poverty. But despite the impact of the Thatcher revolution, those young people who have challenged society openly, in action and their argument, seem thus far to have dismissed the nonsense of the selfish baby boomers.
Then there are the 'cultural' arguments that suggest the 'over' universitised experience of the young and extensive lefty education in general (including 'dangerous' institutions like the BBC, the courts, leading show biz stars etc) that leads to unfair judgments on society, particularly in relation to patriotism, the armed forces, immigration etc. There is a genuine fear in the tabloid press that they will cease to exist, and thereby break the lode stone of Britain's 'deep' character. And it is true that the British youth are more educated - in terms of degrees etc., than their forebears. New definitions based on so called 'cultural wars' are used to define this chasm between the youth and their elders. The communication technology is supposed to underline the rift. But, again, these young people that have shifted, particularly in the UK and the US towards radical politics, deny a mainly cultural explanation of their disengagement from modern society.
It is easy to imagine that young radicals have been seeking their own way to a better world. Standard histories describe such moments in all political upheavals - as though the sheer innocence, coupled with deep feelings of the young creates the need for drama. Less picturesquely perhaps, there is a deep economic class basis for young people in the West to radicalise today.
In the late 1970s in the UK owner occupancy was around 50%. On the eve of the crisis of 2008 owner occupancy was 70% and after 2008 it fell to 63%. Meanwhile the rate of home ownership among young adults has halved over the past twenty years. Currently more than £17 billion is loaned to around 1.3 million students in England each year. The value of outstanding loans at the end of March 2019 reached £121 billion. The average debt among the cohort of borrowers who finished their courses in 2018 was £36,000. The average salary for full time work in 2019 was £36,610.. The median starting salary for UK graduates for 2018-2019 is between £19,000 and £22,000 a year. The average earnings of employees aged between 22 are 29 per year are £24 850 for men and £22.921 for women.
Despite the mill stones around their necks and their rental future, students are in the 'privileged' sector of UK youth. They amount now to 49% of young people of the relevant age. The conditions for the 51% non students are worse. According to ASHE, 16-to-17-year-olds entering the job market can expect to earn under £200 a week; under £10,400 a year - should they have a yearly contract.
Finally, the decline of young people's economic conditions has been projected into the future as a new study that examines life expectancy, welfare and health has been published (25 February 2020.) From the Financial Times, we read the following;
'Improvements in life expectancy in England have stalled for the first sustained period in 120 years after a decade of government austerity, according to one of the world’s leading experts on the link between social deprivation and health.
Describing his findings as “shocking”, Michael Marmot, who heads the Institute of Health Equity at University College London, highlighted rising child poverty, declines in education funding, an increase in zero-hours contracts and the large number of people resorting to food banks. The result was “ignored communities with poor conditions and little reason for hope”.
Sir Michael told the Financial Times: “I’m not saying ‘austerity is killing people’. I’m saying it’s highly likely — because we identified the key drivers of health and health inequalities, and because they’ve changed in an adverse direction — that those changes are responsible for the health effects that we see.”
He has drawn a stronger link between austerity and the slowing increase in life expectancy than in his last report, in 2017.'
This is the meaning of the polarisation of British politics and society. Brexit has never been its basis and nor has its result somehow achieved any real solution, anymore than the radicalisation of young people is based on some fantasy, on a 'culture war' or youth's wishful thinking. The Labour Party members now deciding their votes for leader will have a serious effect on whether young people can organise and express their radical views, from the Labour platform, across society. Labour under Corbyn offered a route that opened to the radical youth, and now so does Sanders and a section of the US Democrats. But both of the would-be dominant forces in those traditional parties want to pretend that they can wish the polarisation of society out of existence and find their own fantasy of a 'middle way.' If they win the leadership vote, their failure will mean that the young will learn yet another sad truth about who are their friends and will need to take an entirely different and much harder road.
Friday, 14 February 2020
Our new rulers
Our ruling classes are demonstrating a new initiative. It arises first in their political choices.
Most political commentators and analysts talk and write about a new populism that has arisen in the West. Populism is an odd term that explains very little. It has arisen as a response to the later part of the 20th Century and the early 21st, when the major political parties had coagulated and where voters declined to respond to the narrower and narrower options offered by those traditional mass parties.
Following the 2008 crash the class nature of the capitalist system in the West became immediately obvious to millions, perhaps billions. Most people were directly effected by the panicky shift of funds held by states that poured wealth into banks and then into stock exchanges, in order to prop up to the prevailing economic system across the West. It created the demand that ordinary people's needs should and could be met by governments and politicians. Accordingly, the (largely) new working class population demanded political action. It was this political upheaval that was first described as 'populism'; the naive, underdeveloped, simplistic demand by the working class that would drive inroads into capitalism's apparently universal domination and instead demand politics that acted in their favour.
When the media and the academics' wriggles and giggles finished; when the halo around 'Apple' and Obama lost their angelic haze, it was quite apparent to many people at the base of society that the ordinary political mechanisms in the West were still failing to respond to the new context. Springing up out of the decaying political history of the West came a range of alternatives. In the societies in eastern Europe that had broken up the remnants of the USSR, the golden EU had turned pretty sour, pretty quick. After 2008 in eastern Europe there was a choice of enemies; the suspicious, corrupt legions of ex-bureaucrats at home, or the slicker, richer and corrupter 'globalisers' in Brussels and, most of all, those centred in a united Germany and those refugees at the border of Greece and Turkey. The new racist right and their local bureaucrats and their billionaires filled the political gap. The political model became Putinised and Populist.
Further West, in Italy, institutional politics had always failed. The project that Italy, as a decisive component of an overall ruling class European leadership, had also begun to collapse. The political order now vies for another version of Mussolini or for taking over the squares. In France the traditional parties collapsed and Macron, the spirit of the age according to the Economist, is now also collapsing, as he concedes and concedes more and more of his Thatcherite plans to the trade unions. Macron's failing populism is in danger of mushrooming a new version under the banner of the fascists as the only means to stop the left. And on it goes.
Further West we have the UK, Ireland and the US.
In the UK, as things stand, a dramatically (albeit partially) reformed Labour Party, failed. Some correspondents thought Labour was the populist menace (now thoroughly defeated.) But meanwhile the Tories managed to break themselves up. They have now coalesced away from the policy favoured by leading elements of the traditional ruling class in Britain over the EU and, with its new block of working class voters, the Tories under Boris, have power. They call themselves the 'Peoples Government'. They used Brexit as their leverage. They succeeded in smashing the their own image of a ten-year Tory government that openly and proudly delivered nothing but poverty! They used their new bloc of ex Labour voters, their new patriotism and the use of Brexit as the second victory of WW2 to build what is now the real successful British populism.
In Ireland, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Fianna Fail have been defeated - from the Sinn Fain led left. Another 'populist' manoeuvre? Even the British correspondents doubt it. It is certainly another serious upheaval; one that arose from a working class population that saw the results of 2008. The British elite savoured Varadkar for his 'progressiveness' and his Cameron type alliance with low company taxation, mainly EU based. Varadkar had, has, no intention of returning Northern Ireland to Ireland - even given the complexity of EU borders in the island. Now the shadow of the disintegration of the UK hangs over British politics. In the event that politics in Ireland genuinely move that way - then - as with the remodelled Tories in Britain, a 'real' populist politics will start to surface.
The US demonstrates the most advanced character of the new populism. As a successful political agency, US populism has now shown most of its features. As with the transformation of the British Tory Party the Republicans back Trump completely. Apparently Trump's 'America first' slogan cut against the US's ruling classes in respect of their global reach; but little damage has actually occurred, in banking, among the international corporations (where using force against free trade has often proved handy in China etc.) The biggest corporate tax cut keep profits high and the stock market ebullient. Most important of all has been the political block that the Democrats potentially broke with Obama (who dismally failed) has now, for the time being, been nailed up. Populism in America is the exciting way to maintain the status quo.
And this is the point about the modern version of populism.
If we take the EU issue in British politics - ostensibly the British ruling class opposed Brexit to the hilt. The structure of successful capitalism in Britain depended on open access to the biggest market in the world. But what happened? The hilt proved less important than the rise of the left, coming out of the experience of 2008. It cannot be picked out, British billionaire by billionaire, but the risk of the Corbyn government proved more immediate than Brexit. The Tory Party, the party of Britain's ruling class for centuries, helped create a populist Tory government as the means of destroying Corbyn's danger.
There are several analyses of the structure of the modern ruling class in the UK and internationally. Certainly deep national attachments to the great sources of wealth operating in the UK are diminishing. Practically speaking most very wealthy Brits live all over the world with their compatriots from other countries. The British state is still essential as the 2008 crash shows, but it is not the location of British wealth that matters, it is the political and legal safety of its institutions, (including most of the world'd tax havens) that keeps it defined as 'home.'
That's the point of populism and the populist parties and movements now emerging across the West. Neither big Capital mainly based in country by country, nor the consensual politics between the major political parties, can be resurrected. The US Democrats are not going to cut Trump away with a 'love you all' consensus Democrat President. The Tories needed their internal revolution to stall the British left. The working classes in the West have already suffered a drastic reduction in their standards of living. There is neither a social nor an economic basis for a return to consensus. The promotion of self-styled populism is the first step in the polarisation of Western society. And big Capital knows what side it is on. It showed its mettle in Nazi Germany.
Most political commentators and analysts talk and write about a new populism that has arisen in the West. Populism is an odd term that explains very little. It has arisen as a response to the later part of the 20th Century and the early 21st, when the major political parties had coagulated and where voters declined to respond to the narrower and narrower options offered by those traditional mass parties.
Following the 2008 crash the class nature of the capitalist system in the West became immediately obvious to millions, perhaps billions. Most people were directly effected by the panicky shift of funds held by states that poured wealth into banks and then into stock exchanges, in order to prop up to the prevailing economic system across the West. It created the demand that ordinary people's needs should and could be met by governments and politicians. Accordingly, the (largely) new working class population demanded political action. It was this political upheaval that was first described as 'populism'; the naive, underdeveloped, simplistic demand by the working class that would drive inroads into capitalism's apparently universal domination and instead demand politics that acted in their favour.
When the media and the academics' wriggles and giggles finished; when the halo around 'Apple' and Obama lost their angelic haze, it was quite apparent to many people at the base of society that the ordinary political mechanisms in the West were still failing to respond to the new context. Springing up out of the decaying political history of the West came a range of alternatives. In the societies in eastern Europe that had broken up the remnants of the USSR, the golden EU had turned pretty sour, pretty quick. After 2008 in eastern Europe there was a choice of enemies; the suspicious, corrupt legions of ex-bureaucrats at home, or the slicker, richer and corrupter 'globalisers' in Brussels and, most of all, those centred in a united Germany and those refugees at the border of Greece and Turkey. The new racist right and their local bureaucrats and their billionaires filled the political gap. The political model became Putinised and Populist.
Further West, in Italy, institutional politics had always failed. The project that Italy, as a decisive component of an overall ruling class European leadership, had also begun to collapse. The political order now vies for another version of Mussolini or for taking over the squares. In France the traditional parties collapsed and Macron, the spirit of the age according to the Economist, is now also collapsing, as he concedes and concedes more and more of his Thatcherite plans to the trade unions. Macron's failing populism is in danger of mushrooming a new version under the banner of the fascists as the only means to stop the left. And on it goes.
Further West we have the UK, Ireland and the US.
In the UK, as things stand, a dramatically (albeit partially) reformed Labour Party, failed. Some correspondents thought Labour was the populist menace (now thoroughly defeated.) But meanwhile the Tories managed to break themselves up. They have now coalesced away from the policy favoured by leading elements of the traditional ruling class in Britain over the EU and, with its new block of working class voters, the Tories under Boris, have power. They call themselves the 'Peoples Government'. They used Brexit as their leverage. They succeeded in smashing the their own image of a ten-year Tory government that openly and proudly delivered nothing but poverty! They used their new bloc of ex Labour voters, their new patriotism and the use of Brexit as the second victory of WW2 to build what is now the real successful British populism.
In Ireland, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Fianna Fail have been defeated - from the Sinn Fain led left. Another 'populist' manoeuvre? Even the British correspondents doubt it. It is certainly another serious upheaval; one that arose from a working class population that saw the results of 2008. The British elite savoured Varadkar for his 'progressiveness' and his Cameron type alliance with low company taxation, mainly EU based. Varadkar had, has, no intention of returning Northern Ireland to Ireland - even given the complexity of EU borders in the island. Now the shadow of the disintegration of the UK hangs over British politics. In the event that politics in Ireland genuinely move that way - then - as with the remodelled Tories in Britain, a 'real' populist politics will start to surface.
The US demonstrates the most advanced character of the new populism. As a successful political agency, US populism has now shown most of its features. As with the transformation of the British Tory Party the Republicans back Trump completely. Apparently Trump's 'America first' slogan cut against the US's ruling classes in respect of their global reach; but little damage has actually occurred, in banking, among the international corporations (where using force against free trade has often proved handy in China etc.) The biggest corporate tax cut keep profits high and the stock market ebullient. Most important of all has been the political block that the Democrats potentially broke with Obama (who dismally failed) has now, for the time being, been nailed up. Populism in America is the exciting way to maintain the status quo.
And this is the point about the modern version of populism.
If we take the EU issue in British politics - ostensibly the British ruling class opposed Brexit to the hilt. The structure of successful capitalism in Britain depended on open access to the biggest market in the world. But what happened? The hilt proved less important than the rise of the left, coming out of the experience of 2008. It cannot be picked out, British billionaire by billionaire, but the risk of the Corbyn government proved more immediate than Brexit. The Tory Party, the party of Britain's ruling class for centuries, helped create a populist Tory government as the means of destroying Corbyn's danger.
There are several analyses of the structure of the modern ruling class in the UK and internationally. Certainly deep national attachments to the great sources of wealth operating in the UK are diminishing. Practically speaking most very wealthy Brits live all over the world with their compatriots from other countries. The British state is still essential as the 2008 crash shows, but it is not the location of British wealth that matters, it is the political and legal safety of its institutions, (including most of the world'd tax havens) that keeps it defined as 'home.'
That's the point of populism and the populist parties and movements now emerging across the West. Neither big Capital mainly based in country by country, nor the consensual politics between the major political parties, can be resurrected. The US Democrats are not going to cut Trump away with a 'love you all' consensus Democrat President. The Tories needed their internal revolution to stall the British left. The working classes in the West have already suffered a drastic reduction in their standards of living. There is neither a social nor an economic basis for a return to consensus. The promotion of self-styled populism is the first step in the polarisation of Western society. And big Capital knows what side it is on. It showed its mettle in Nazi Germany.
Tuesday, 11 February 2020
An astonishing book
'Will and Testament', a novel by Norwegian Vigdis Hjorth, available from Verso, is a masterpiece. Reading the book, translated into English by Charlotte Barslund, is coming to grips with a new type of novel that should inspire and be followed across the literary world.
But I suppose nothing is for certain. For example the Guardian review, printed on the back of the book, manages to entirely miss the point of 'Will and Testament'.
'This is a novel that people can enjoy either as high literature or as a work of down-and-dirty revenge.'
Anybody is entitled to have their own understanding about a public book - and even have their views printed. But it is difficult to see anything in the Guardian's comment that touches on the simple furnace of truth that the main character opens up to us. Bergljot is not producing 'high literature' or plotting her vengeance. She is ruminating on the terrible events of her childhood and struggling with her day to day relationships, her friends, her children and relatives and her meaning as a sophisticated, older woman. She is doing it in her totally clear, often repeated (but never copied) razor sharp, thoughts.
I'm not going to repeat the 'plot.' (It hangs around a will and a testament.) The essence of the book is surely not the plot in the simple sense of a 'beginning, middle and end' story. It is the astonishingly honest reflections of a woman who is trying to survive. The simple truths that hesitantly emerge, then tumble out, then block any movement and then overwhelm the sadness of pain and fear are mounted inside the same theme, but are endlessly different. The events in the book are platforms in Bergljot's present life and require their consideration, they create further revelations and her fuller emergence.
What is the result for the reader from this revelatory experience? The opposite of boredom (or any fight with 'high literature' or a dished up cathartic solution). It is the intimate knowledge of another person. Frankly, a life-changing event.
Criticism? Well; there are all the innate aspects and implications of the western world to deal with. They are present in all works, in every piece of western art and culture. Bergljot does not represent the whole of humanity (and does not pretend too.) More, Bergljot has access to therapy, a signal part of her history in the book. (We do not go there with her.) And the book's author allows for a different character to spell out to Bergljot the Freudian message of personality - where unresolved 'instincts' are discovered as the reason for human beings' grotesque acts, such as the overthrow of humanity's reason in the 1st WW. Interestingly, Bergljot makes no comments about her friend's views on Freud. To be honest, it is the least engaging part of the novel. The 'why' of her abuse is much more real as she describes her own experience of the abuser.
The argument surrounding the social context of personality is not developed in the novel, exception touched on the above. The core remains the irrefutable, unmistakable, unforgettable truth.
But I suppose nothing is for certain. For example the Guardian review, printed on the back of the book, manages to entirely miss the point of 'Will and Testament'.
'This is a novel that people can enjoy either as high literature or as a work of down-and-dirty revenge.'
Anybody is entitled to have their own understanding about a public book - and even have their views printed. But it is difficult to see anything in the Guardian's comment that touches on the simple furnace of truth that the main character opens up to us. Bergljot is not producing 'high literature' or plotting her vengeance. She is ruminating on the terrible events of her childhood and struggling with her day to day relationships, her friends, her children and relatives and her meaning as a sophisticated, older woman. She is doing it in her totally clear, often repeated (but never copied) razor sharp, thoughts.
I'm not going to repeat the 'plot.' (It hangs around a will and a testament.) The essence of the book is surely not the plot in the simple sense of a 'beginning, middle and end' story. It is the astonishingly honest reflections of a woman who is trying to survive. The simple truths that hesitantly emerge, then tumble out, then block any movement and then overwhelm the sadness of pain and fear are mounted inside the same theme, but are endlessly different. The events in the book are platforms in Bergljot's present life and require their consideration, they create further revelations and her fuller emergence.
What is the result for the reader from this revelatory experience? The opposite of boredom (or any fight with 'high literature' or a dished up cathartic solution). It is the intimate knowledge of another person. Frankly, a life-changing event.
Criticism? Well; there are all the innate aspects and implications of the western world to deal with. They are present in all works, in every piece of western art and culture. Bergljot does not represent the whole of humanity (and does not pretend too.) More, Bergljot has access to therapy, a signal part of her history in the book. (We do not go there with her.) And the book's author allows for a different character to spell out to Bergljot the Freudian message of personality - where unresolved 'instincts' are discovered as the reason for human beings' grotesque acts, such as the overthrow of humanity's reason in the 1st WW. Interestingly, Bergljot makes no comments about her friend's views on Freud. To be honest, it is the least engaging part of the novel. The 'why' of her abuse is much more real as she describes her own experience of the abuser.
The argument surrounding the social context of personality is not developed in the novel, exception touched on the above. The core remains the irrefutable, unmistakable, unforgettable truth.
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