A Very Public Sociologist: European Union

Showing newest posts with label European Union. Show older posts

Saturday, 6 March 2010

A Tale of Two Expulsions

Party like it's 1937! Two interesting expulsions from the fringes of political life almost flew under the radar this week. The first, and probably the more newsworthy is the expulsion of UKIP MEP, Nikki Sinclaire (pictured) from the party. This came after her resignation from the Europe of Freedom and Democracy group in the European Parliament a couple of months back. For those who aren't acquainted with the EFD, this ragtag and bobtail grouping of hard right populists hold positions somewhat out of step with the positive political gains of the last 30 years. You know, stuff such as the important victories over racism and sexism.

It is their "maverick" opposition to "political correctness" that Ms Sinclaire fell foul of. She might like to dress it up as being offended by the "anti-Semitism, violence and the espousal of a single European policy on immigration" of UKIP's European friends, but the rumour doing the rounds is the open homophobia of the execrable Lega Nord of Italy was (obviously) deeply problematic for the openly gay Sinclaire. This didn't seem to be much of a problem for the rest of her UKIP colleagues and so she upped sticks. And who can blame her? By their friends shall ye know them.

No one will be surprised if Sinclaire isn't the last MEP to bail out from our europhobic friends. In the previous European Parliament UKIP lost three of its MEPs through fraud and petty bickering, and Sinclaire herself hasn't exactly had an easy time of it during her UKIP membership. The reason for this volatility as compared with the mainstream parties and the other minor parties is the strange niche it occupies in Britain's political ecology. UKIP are virtual no-hopers when it comes to local and general elections (one reason why Nigel Farrage's challenge to House Speaker John Bercow' will come to nought). The 2004 and 2009 European election results show them up as a vehicle for funneling the widespread antipathy toward the EU. Of the 2.5 million who voted UKIP last June, more than a few would have done so thinking they were giving the "Brussels Bureaucrats" the finger. But the problem for UKIP is this vote is completely amorphous, and therefore the constituency it represents is ... well, can it be said they have a constituency outside a European election?

Without the kind of stability of the core constituencies of Labour, the Tories, the far left, the BNP and even to some extent the LibDems and Greens, UKIP as a party will always be all over the place. They have shown an ability to reach beyond the traditional Conservative vote (for instance, they won the popular vote in Stoke) but have proven unable to do anything with it. Without an anchor, UKIP will continue to be riddled with fighting and fallings out.

The other expulsion of interest is unlikely to pass muster on all but the few blogs that take an interest in the sectarian machinations of the British far left. And seeing as this is one of them ... As we all know (at least those of us sad enough to give a fig about 50-strong micro-groupings), the grandly over-titled International Marxist Tendency is in total meltdown (the Weekly Worker and the CWI have got the goods here and here). One episode in its disintegration has been the expulsion of one of its relatively well-known public faces, Heiko Khoo. While not a household name in sectarian circles, he has built a profile as the face of the IMT at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park (there's a bit more about him in Tony Allen's excellent oral history). In an organisation devoid of 'stars' this is a big deal.

What happened? It appears the comrade has been expelled on the flimsiest of pretexts. There's more over at Left Outside. His crime, according to one IMT neophyte, is putting the organisation in danger ... for espousing an analysis of China different to that of the leadership!

In my book that's an action more characteristic of a cult than a political organisation. But then the IMT have always been very, very strange. I used to run a forum in the late 90s with a comrade who fell in with them. To cut a long story short more and more IMT'ers were co-opted onto the moderating team, with the corresponding result that discussion was incrementally censored before the forum was shut down altogether (it was one of the reasons why I set up the UK Left Network list). But anyway, she ended up moving to Belgium to help the section there do up its HQ ... which the city branch was going to move into in some sort of bizarre group living arrangement. Very strange and unhealthy. If I'd had to wait for Peter Taaffe to come out of the bathroom in the morning, or get on Bill Mullins case for not washing the pots I doubt my SP membership would have lasted as long as it did.

I digress. The expulsion of comrade Khoo from the fast depleting ranks of the IMT is a doomed attempt by the leadership to inoculate its membership against ideas not anointed by the holy trinity of Rob Sewell, Alan Woods and (zombie) Ted Grant. Any group that cannot even acknowledge the existence of other socialist organisations, let alone properly engage with the analytical contributions of groups, individual activists and academics in the wider labour movement doesn't deserve to call itself Marxist.

Saturday, 13 June 2009

Branch Meeting: Election Analysis

Stoke Socialist Party met last night for a post-match analysis of Sunday's European election results. It fell to me to present the lead off, which was heavily based on this blog's three previous posts. The ensuing discussion was quite wide ranging and might be of interest to readers and Socialist Party watchers.

On the No2EU vote, Brother C thought that setting it against the 940,000 polled by the BNP there is not really a like for like comparison. From the 1999-2004 period the BNP's vote rose from 102,647 (1.1%) to 808,200 (4.9%). The latter result was after 22 years existence as a party. No2EU went from nothing to 150,000 in only three months of existence, despite the political weaknesses, refusal to take seats in Brussels and lack of media coverage.

On the point of taking up seats, A thought this was a bigger issue among SP comrades and other lefts than the general public. Going by the work we did on stalls, this was not mentioned once - even by people who knew a bit about No2EU. Regarding the BNP and why so many voted for them, the reason why this question represents no mystery to our comrades is because of our consistent street activity. Over the years we've spoken to thousands of workers, some of whom have told us why they're willing to give the BNP a go. There is a thrashing around for a political alternative and at the moment it appears the BNP's populist message chimes with their experience. On votes themselves, A argued we should avoid parliamentary cretinism - votes are not the be all and end all. Election results are a snapshot of history and indicate some of the processes going on in the depths of society.

N drew attention to the content of the BNP's campaign. They placed extra emphasis on nationalisation, jobs and expenses - while pushing the usual racism and xenophobia. In effect the fascists fought part of their campaign on the left's policy platform and undoubtedly won some votes on that basis. Turning to No2EU, he talked about how he was originally uncomfortable with the name but had changed his mind as the campaign wore on. The European Union represents the interests of an ascendent fraction of European capital and have to remember that its internationalism is nothing to do with ours. We seek to unite workers across borders in the fight for our class interests. The EU's internationalism seeks to turn workers against each other by playing off different nationalities.

Brother F noted the tendency of the liberal left to view the BNP vote in moralist terms - far better to write nearly a million people off as incorrigible racists than ask tough questions about the liberal left's inability to connect with them. On Hope not Hate, it appears at every election, makes a big fuss about the fascists, ends up campaigning by proxy for a Labour vote but at the same time purges mainstream anti-fascism of politics. It does nothing to fill the vacuum the BNP have been successfully exploiting these last 10 years. Also, F thought it's worth remembering that our collective experience shows us only a minority of BNP supporters are hardcore racists. Most may espouse casual racism, but then again such attitudes were not uncommon among the miners - who are often held up as Christ-like figures by some on the left.

Returning to the name again, C argued that No2EU's name may have rubbed well-meaning and liberal left people up the wrong way, people who identify with some of the positive discourses and values that have begun to accumulate around the EU. Anyone approaching the campaign for the first time without prior knowledge could be forgiven for thinking it a crude and simplistic europhobic platform along the lines of UK First.

In sum, my reply to the discussion touched on three areas (with an aside on the SLP. The first of these were No2EU's name - I agreed with Brother C's comments and suggested the name was always going to see us placed with the eurosceptic populist right. And on top of that, the name was completely naff too. Second on the European Union, again our message was too simplistic. The EU is a proto-state and therefore it would be a mistake to merely write it off as an instrument of capital. After all, the UK state is a bourgeois state but that doesn't mean our party raises demands to 'smash the police' and 'dispand the army'. Democratic demands are about weakening the hold capital has over political authority to create more space for socialist politics, which is why, among other things, we call for the abolition of the Lords, the scrapping of the monarchy and fixed short term parliaments. We should extend this method to the EU. Finally, the one thing the BNP teaches us is that unity and consistency reaps political capital in the long run. The left should take a leaf out of their book instead of turning up at major elections in a different guise every time.

Monday, 25 May 2009

North Staffs No2EU Leaflet

It's been another busy weekend for No2EU supporters in Stoke. Teams have been out leafleting all week and speaking to hundreds of people on city centre stalls. Our boards have been highlighting the issues of MP's expenses and Dave Nellist's pledge to take the average wage should he be elected. Unsurprisingly the response has been very positive.

Brother J spoke to one woman who said she'd already had sent a postal vote in for the BNP, but if she knew what we were about she would have voted for us instead. In penance she took a load of leaflets to dish out around her local working men's club. Understandably most people we spoke to were disgusted and most rightly stated that if "ordinary" people had fiddled expenses they'd either be sacked or face a visit from the fraud squad. Another woman (without prompting) said we could do with more representatives like Dave Nellist, another spoke about her time campaigning for Terry Fields when she was in Militant in Liverpool. Even one of Stoke's awkward squad, who's always made a point of coming up to previous Socialist Party stalls to either disagree with us or tell us we're wasting our time seemed impressed with the arguments we put forward for No2EU.

Below is the text of one of the local leaflets we've been handing out in North Staffordshire.

All 3 major parties want to privatise Royal Mail

Party: Supports Postal Privatisation?
Labour Yes
Conservative Yes
Lib Dem Yes
NO2EU No!

Vote No2EU for a public postal service!

On June 4th tell them NO! by voting for:

No2EU - Yes to Democracy!

Stand up for all workers' rights
The use of exploited foreign workers in Britain is being carried out under EU rules demanding the "free movement of capital, goods, services and labour". EU directives and European Court of Justice decisions are used to attack trade union agreements, the right to strike and workers' pay and conditions.

The Single European Market, created by the Tory government with the Single European Act in 1987 creates a pool of working people to be exploited and treated no better than a commodity. These EU rules allow employers to escape from national collective bargaining and employment legislation and impose lower wages and worse working conditions, creating a race to the bottom.

These EU rules, which no one asked for, have been behind some of the most bitter industrial disputes in recent years, like the Irish ferries dispute, the strike of Gate Gourmet workers at Heathrow, and the Lindsey oil refinery workers' strike. The European Court of Justice has even decreed in the Laval and Viking cases that union agreements that protect workers' conditions contravene the "free movement" of labour in the single market.

The recent protests at Lindsey, supported by workers across Britain, were not against foreign workers or xenophobic. They were simply defending the fundamental right to work under union agreements - a right denied by the EU.

The so-called "free movement" of labour will increasingly undermine wages and working conditions. To ferry workers across Europe to carry out jobs that local workers can be trained to perform is an environmental, economic and social nonsense. If food miles represent an unacceptably large carbon footprint, then 'labour-miles' clocked up for the pursuit of profit is even more damaging.

Keep your PUBLIC services PUBLIC!
The Lisbon Treaty and the EU's privatisation agenda represent a significant threat to our communities and to the services we rely on.

The renamed EU constitution forces governments to hand public services over to private corporations - that means handing fat cats control of the railways, schools, postal services, energy and even social services across Europe.

the commitment to hand over public services to big business in successive EU treaties was the main reason the Conservtaive party originally supported the EU.

Now services suffer and those providing the service face attacks on their pay and conditions as profiteers seek to maximise their profits. Once again the only ones who benefit are big business, the banks and politicians on the make!

The current economic crisis was created by discredited neo-liberal policies, yet under the Lisbon Treaty they become constitutional goals. We should be defending public services in Britain, not allowing bankers and eurocrats to take them over in order to make money for big business in Europe.

On June 4th Vote No2EU - Yes to Democracy to defend public services such as post offices and the NHS. To renationalise our railways and develop manufacturing in Britain.

This little piggy went to Parliament!
MPs currently take home a salary of £64,766. However on top of this generous amount our elected representatives are further enriching themselves playing the property market with our money!

Here are just a few highlights. MPs from all three major parties are involved:

Elliot Morley (Labour) - Claimed £16,000 for a mortgage he had already paid off! Total claimed last year: £145,373 (+ £64.766 in salary)

Andrew MacKay and Julie Kirkbride (Conservative) Husband & wife MPs - Used his second home allowance to claim more than £1,000/month in mortgage payments on their joint flat near Westminster. She used her expense allowance to claim over £900/month for the mortgage on their family home near her constituency. Joint claimed last year - £283,404 + £129,532 in salary)

Andrew George (Lib Dem) - Claimed £847/month for a riverside flat in London used by his daughter. Total claimed last year - £170,367 + £64,766 in salary

The BNP are no better. For years leader Nick Griffin has been using BNP funds as his personal piggy bank. After helping himself to members' donations to build an extension to his Mid-Wales farmhouse Griffin was forced to sack the then BNP treasurer Mike Newland over the affair. Griffin can't wait to get his racist snout in the massive EU trough, don't give him the chance!

No2EU - An Honest Choice!
When No2EU candidate Dave Nellist was a Labour MP ('83-'92) he took only the wage of a skilled factory worker (40% of what he could have earned), which is less than half of what other MPs took for themselves. The rest he donated back to the labour movement and charities.

Sunday, 24 May 2009

Alice Mahon Backs No2EU

Press Release:

Alice Mahon, the former Labour MP who resigned last month from the Labour Party after 50 years membership, will speak at her first public meeting since leaving the party in Birmingham on Tuesday, May 26th, in support of the No2EU campaign in the Euro elections.

Mrs Mahon, 71, was the Member of Parliament for Halifax from 1987 to 2005.

She joins a number of former Labour figures backing the anti-EU coalition - including the former leader of East Sussex Council Labour Group, Prof Dave Hill, former deputy Labour leader of Carlisle Council, John Metcalfe, and former election agent for Peter Shore MP, John Rowe, who are all candidates for No2EU on June 4th.

The former Labour MP for Coventry, Dave Nellist, is the lead candidate for the trade union backed campaign in the West Midlands.

Mrs Mahon in her resignation letter said she could no longer be a member of a party "that at leadership level has betrayed many of the principles that inspired me as a teenager to join". Her letter, sent to former colleagues in her Halifax constituency, was sharply critical of Labour's failure to deliver a promised referendum on the EU "Lisbon Treaty".

"If that Treaty is ratified", she wrote, "we can say goodbye to any publicly owned services...... we will be handing over to private corporations, social services, education, transport and postal services. Even the NHS will be up for grabs".

Ms Mahon will be joined at the election rally on Tuesday, May 26th, 7.30pm at the Carrs Lane Church Centre, Birmingham by Brian Denny, national officer of the RMT trade union, and West Midlands No2EU candidates Cllr Dave Nellist, and Joanne Stevenson, the General Secretary of the Young Communist League.

Monday, 18 May 2009

George Osborne Comes to Keele

It's not everyday you have the second most senior Tory in the land turn up at your university to launch the Conservative's West Midland's European election manifesto. Being a curious chap and always looking for blog filler, I thought I'd go along and see what George Osborne had to say for himself.

The shadow chancellor didn't leave a favourable first impression. It was bad enough being one of the few lefties in a room chock full of Carlton Club wannabes (one Conservative Future young hopeful was overheard advocating the abolition of parliament "because it's stupid") and having to submit questions in advance, but making us wait an extra 20 minutes when Osborne had been in the building for a while doesn't impress. But still, I'm sure what followed warmed the cockles of those ice-cold Conservative hearts.

George Osborne suddenly appeared and gave us a dose of the populist spiel we can expect from the Tories between now and June 4th. I think my verbatim notes for the opening section of the speech says it all:

Vote change on June 4th. Signed pledge to clean up European politics. Pledge to bring real change. Every candidate to sign this pledge. Change is needed more than ever. Can understand anger. Apology. Commit to change, broaden change.

Heavy duty stuff.

At least Osborne eventually brought a little bit of politics to bear. Harking back to the collapse of the Soviet bloc, he said he followed a new Europe take shape after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The European Union that emerged was, in his opinion, "too regulatory, too introverted, too centralising", but there were positives too. For Osborne part of its positive agenda is an enlargement that deepens liberal democratic values and reduces conflict between member states, offers a transnational platform for dealing with climate change, and a million other worthy arguments trotted out in defence of the EU. Osborne added that he didn't want to see votes wasted on fringe parties that "offer no vision, disappear between European elections and have abused the system." Who could he possibly have in mind?

We then hit the questions. I wasn't too surprised mine wasn't chosen (As a trade unionist, why should I vote Conservative? Do trade unions have anything to fear from a Tory government?), which is a shame as those that got past the gatekeeper didn't tax him too much. He was asked whether he supported Turkey's accession to the EU (yes), was committed to a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty (absolutely), the high and low points of the previous Tory government's foreign policy (in short - loads of highs, lows - grudging acceptance of fault over the Balkan wars, but no mention of Rwanda), and if the Tories would commit to keeping the cap on tuition fees. Unfortunately on this one, the only hard and fast position of Osborne was the calling for a "debate" on the subject.

And that was it. As the excitable CF rabble jostled to have their photos taken with "the next chancellor of the exchequer" we slipped out the door just behind Osborne's very desperate-looking entourage of MEPs and party workers. So there we have it. As press launches go it was smooth and slick and gave the semblance of engagement. It might even tempt some young Tories away from their wine and cheese evenings for some leafleting.

One last observation - carrying the "vote blue, go green" logo on your party-owned 4x4s is not the smartest of moves.

Monday, 11 May 2009

No2EU Campaigning in Stoke

The No2EU campaign here in Stoke has taken on some flesh this last week. At Thursday night's branch meeting of Stoke Socialist Party, Brother C talked about his experience on the first No2EU stall that took place last weekend. He said the experience was very different from being on a normal SP stall. For starters people approaching the stall tended to be more politically engaged, though not always in the way we socialists would like! Given how the campaign's only recently come together it was unsurprising a bit of confusion greeted the name. He and Brother N spoke to some anti-EU people who were preparing to vote for UKIP or the BNP and found the best way of talking to them was to strongly contest anti-immigrant sentiment by putting forward straightforward class arguments. They also found it extremely useful to counterpose the present bosses' Europe with an alternative workers' Europe, which successfully forced the more nationalist-inclined voters to think a bit more deeply about the basis of right-wing euroscepticism. Brother C did warn we have to be sharp on this and not give reactionary opposition to the EU a free pass.

Then on Friday evening we had a No2EU public launch/campaign meeting. We were fortunate enough to have Jo Stevenson of the Young Communist League and Dave Nellist of Coventry SP come and address the meeting (yours truly did the chairing honours). Jo's speech opened with an attack on the BNP - she rightly pointed out the opportunities this election afforded them as well as the fakery of their left-sounding policies. She then moved on to some of the criticisms of No2EU, which aim to paint it as some sort of nationalist formation. She took hold of the 'little Englander' label and said the labour movement is - but only in the sense it along with its counterparts across Europe fight measures coming through the EU that attack our living standards and undermine national collective bargaining agreements. She then moved on to give Unite's March for Jobs in Birmingham next Saturday a mention as an example of concentrating our forces against attacks on our class, from wherever they come.

In his contribution Dave looked at how progressive disillusionment with the mainstream parties has fed into an increasing vote share in the European elections for parties with no Westminster representation, and these votes can go all sorts of ways. Where the BNP are concerned theirs is mostly a protest vote - hard core racists only form a small minority of their support. But there is a problem if they become the favoured repository of protest votes - it can become solidified (as we've found in parts of Stoke). Also we should not forget that wherever the BNP vote goes up, the number of racially motivated attacks does too. Therefore part of No2EU's objectives is disrupting this support. Dave also went on to talk about the lack of democracy at the heart of the EU, it being a creature grown incrementally out of a series of treaties and how in his 30+ years of political activity he hasn't seen any slate of candidates as solid as this one. The main problem he saw with No2EU is that it should have been up and running over a year ago.

During the discussion, Brother N came in on the soft left's love-in with the EU, seeing as the British government has avoided social democratic crumbs that have fallen from the commission's table. But this is not the core of what the EU is about. P replied there is an internationalism of sorts among the bosses, but it's an internationalism of convenience - what unites them is a desire to keep our class down, which is why it's keen on the free movement of labour. For us, our internationalism comes from below and is about uniting our class across borders. Brother C of the Communist Party added that to call the RMT leadership nationalist is utter rubbish given its role organising workers of many nationalities on the London underground. Brother F spoke of the difference between working in care for the public and private sectors, highlighting that the British government as well as the EU are still obsessed with privatisation.

It then came to sorting out activities, which included a stall and leaflet drops in throughout the week, and of course the No2EU intervention at next weekend's demo in Birmingham. Thus Saturday morning found a team of SP'ers, a CP comrade and an indie hitting Hanley high street. Our comrades did a mixture of SP and No2EU, while the others banged out No2EU leaflets like there was no tomorrow. We had a No2EU board up but managed to attract no negative comments - though I did speak to a "card carrying Tory" who refused to sign our petition. Another plus was the No2EU slogan appeared to really catch the eye - very few leaflets went into bags and pockets without a good look. Also I managed to win a Workers' Power supporter to voting for the coalition too, which was strangely gratifying.

But with less than a month to go there's still much to do. If you want to get involved drop me a line.

Saturday, 18 April 2009

Branch Meeting: Marxists and Elections

The Socialist Party is not an electoralist party. As an organisation dedicated to the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society our party works across a broad number of fronts. Week in week out we are involved in trade union activity, community campaigning and organising meetings, in addition to the basic work of street stalls and paper sales. Preparing for and standing in elections is only a priority for a handful of our branches, but most have taken part in electoral contests from time to time. That said, electorally speaking, outside a few areas our party has hardly set the ballot boxes alight. So why bother? Explaining why was the task Brother A set himself at Thursday's night branch meeting of Stoke SP.

As fairly orthodox Marxists, the SP is of the view that the state is an institution that upholds capitalist class relations. Parliament is just one aspect of the state. Behind it stands a system of constitutional checks and balances, unelected bureaucracies, tiers of quangos and the state's repressive arm: the army, the police and the secret services. If a mass socialist party won majority representation at Westminster this constellation of agencies and institutions remain in place to frustrate its measures and protect the status quo in property relations. This view has long been a staple of Marxist thinking, but has found itself confirmed time and again by history - the most prominent being 1973's drowning of Chile's parliamentary road to socialism in blood.

Despite this and the recent glut of scandals to have damaged the reputation of parliamentary politics, millions of people retain their illusions in liberal democracy. For us elections are just another area of work. We stand because it can give us the sorts of publicity we don't receive outside of them, and it can be helpful in moving a struggle forward. For example, the election of Jackie Grunsell to Kirklees council did not harm the fortunes of the NHS campaign she was part of, and having that opening in the council chamber has allowed Jackie to assist a number of local workers' struggles. Where the SP does have elected representatives our actions also provide an opportunity to discredit and expose the other parties. For example, for all their anti-establishment verbiage the record of the BNP's 50-odd local authority councillors across Britain pales against that of just five SP representatives. Seldom has so little been done by so many.

But what about those circumstances when the SP doesn't stand under its own name? We have done it when we were part of the Socialist Alliance and are going into the forthcoming European elections as part of the No2EU - Yes to Democracy slate. But, A asked, would it be better if we stood under our own name?

The discussion opened with a contribution from Sister J, who said coalitions with like-minded forces are often preferable so we avoid the silly situation of socialists standing against each other when large numbers of council and parliamentary seats won't face a socialist challenge at all. Brother N focused on what No2EU represents - it differs from previous left coalitions and broad-based alternatives because it is backed by a major trade union. The RMT's support shows other unions there are other ways to be involved in politics than just a strained relationship with Labour. And for this reason a lot of trade unionists in Labour-loyal unions will be following what happens with No2EU closely - what counts here won't necessarily be the size of the vote.

Brother F moved onto the nature of the EU and argued that we should see it as a transnational centralisation of capitalist rule. Take lobbying, for example. At the moment firms run offices to lobby for their interests in all the capitals of the EU. But as the EU has assumed greater powers to the point where it is the primary source of law in most countries, it is easier for firms to centralise their lobbying operations around the EU bureaucracy. The democratic deficit that exists at the heart of Europe means, theoretically, that firms can bypass the limited democracy of the member states and have their will enforced against democratic aspirations from below.

He then turned to the opposition to the EU. The right have been allowed to run with the issue of sovereignty for too long. When it comes to the Lisbon Treaty, the only problem UKIP have with it is that it's an EU measure. Shorn of its EU constitutionalism, he doubted they would find little fault if it the UK government was ramming through its neoliberal measures. Brother P came in to argue we should assess the EU dialectically rather than paint it as a straight neoliberal institution and draw conclusions from that analysis. Unfortunately, while it enshrines a modicum of social democracy in the much-maligned (by the right) Social Chapter, the role it has played this last 20 years is as a neoliberal battering ram against the more corporatist policy direction traditionally favoured by Germany, Italy, France and Scandinavia and the midwife of neoliberal restructuring in Eastern Europe underlines its character as something to be opposed by socialists. Nevertheless among some layers the EU represents itself as the crystallisation of Enlightenment values, as the epitome of liberal internationalism. Brother B, recalling his studies, said that academia tends to reinforce this perspective. When he did international relations he learned about different critical perspectives, but when he took modules related to the EU out they went and in came uncritical liberal theories of the state.

Returning to electoral politics N flagged up the argument often heard on the far left from Labour supporters that standing in X, Y and Z seats will let the Tories or, worse, the BNP in. We've heard this before - when our sitting SP councillor came up for re-election and faced off against Labour and the fascists, it was we who were accused of splitting the anti-fascist vote - no words for the populist independent, no condemnation of the LibDems. And of course, if we were to blame for letting the BNP in why is it Labour have not only proven unable to win subsequent contests in Stoke's Abbey Green ward, but the BNP's margin of victory is actually increasing? P argued this idea of homogenous voting blocs is a psephological conceit - the primary reason why a party does not win an election is because its campaign has not persuaded enough people to turn out and vote for it. If the BNP are polling well that's a challenge for other parties to meet rather than grubbing around for pathetic excuses.

The discussion then came back to A. When we stand in elections there are two things we need keep in mind. We want to win new people to socialist ideas and we want to build our party. And we need to take the interests of the wider class into account. For the SP the immediate strategic objective in front of socialists is establishing mass working class political independence. No2EU could be an important step in that direction, not because it's going to win millions of votes but it pulls together forces from within the unions around a progressive platform. The relationships the campaign will build and the experience of working together will be the real gain of the European elections, and it puts us on a good footing for an ambitious intervention at next year's general election. And who knows? It might just be under the banner of a newly-formed left alternative.

Monday, 6 April 2009

EU to Force Through Public Sector Cuts

No2EU Press Release

EU tells UK to cut public spending, No2EU campaigners warn

EU finance ministers have given Britain six months to come up with plans to cut public spending, the EU-critical electoral alliance No2EU – Yes to Democracy warned today.

No2EU - Yes to Democracy West Midlands co-ordinator Cllr Dave Nellist gave the warning after EU finance ministers meeting Prague last week warned the UK to cut its budget deficit to the EU Stability and Growth Pact limit of three per cent within four years.

“The UK government recorded a government deficit of £78 billion last year, equivalent to 5.4 per cent of Gross Domestic Product, and the Stability and Growth Pact limits budget deficits to three per cent of GDP which currently adds up to £43 billion.

“Reducing the current government budget deficit by £35 billion in a year implies potentially appalling cuts in essential public services.

"Local authorities are already conducting a "doomsday study" of the potential impact on local council budgets of up to 30 per cent funding cuts and it paints an horrific picture for local services,” the former Labour MP warned.

NO2EU - Yes to Democracy convener Bob Crow said that the EU’s strict criteria had enforced the privatisation of capital projects to keep them off the government's books, by means of private finance initiatives (PFI) and the disastrous PPP on London Underground, which had increased the costs of essential public services and subsidised corporate profits.

"It is clear that EU leaders want ordinary working people to pay for the recession, by cutting essential public services, instead of the banks and finance companies that contributed so much to the economic crisis in the first place.

"That's why a vote for No2EU – Yes to Democracy against the EU’s privatisation agenda is so essential on June 4,” the transport union leader said.

For more information contact Cllr Dave Nellist on 07970 294 237 or Brian Denny on 07903376303

Thursday, 19 March 2009

No2EU is Live

The No2EU electoral initiative website is now live.

From 'about us':

No2EU Yes to Democracy is an electoral platform. It is a trade union-backed alliance of political parties and campaigning groups. We believe the time is right to offer the peoples of Britain an alternative view of Europe.

The recent referendum in Ireland clearly demonstrates that the working people of Europe are not happy with the direction the EU is taking. The failure of the mainstream parties to represent this feeling has led to a political vacuum.

We will not sit in the European parliament in the event of winning any seats. Our candidates will only nominally hold the title MEP and will not board the notorious EU gravy train.

We want to see a Europe of independent, democratic states that value its public services and does not offer them to profiteers; a Europe that guarantees the rights of workers and does not put the interests of big business above that of ordinary people. We believe the current structures of the EU makes this impossible.

We say...

* Reject the Lisbon Treaty
* No to EU directives that privatise our public services
* Defend and develop manufacturing, agriculture and fishing industries in Britain
* Repeal anti-trade union ECJ rulings and EU rules promoting social dumping
* No to racism and fascism, Yes to international solidarity of working people
* No to EU militarisation
* Repatriate democratic powers to EU member states
* Replace unequal EU trade deals with fair trade that benefits developing nations
* Scrap EU rules designed to stop member states from implementing independent economic
policies
* Keep Britain out of the eurozone

Thoughts? Comments?

Also, Bob Crow's blog here.

Wednesday, 4 March 2009

RMT and the European Elections

The prospect of the RMT launching a nation-wide European election bid from the left is certainly an exciting one, and has already generated some discussion and speculation. The report below from Pete McLaren is of last weekend's CNWP steering committee meeting that went out on the Indie SA discussion list. Needless to say the process is far from finished, so readers and comrades ought to keep that in mind.

I want you to be the amongst first to hear some potentially quite exciting information.

It was announced at the CNWP Steering Committee on Sunday that the RMT are putting up the money to stand TU/left "lists" in every Euro constituency. Their main reason is to ensure left opposition to the BNP. They invited the Socialist Party, Communist Party and a handful of left Trade unionists to a meeting last weekend to announce this. They presented a list of their 10 key demands, which concentrate on rejection of the Lisbon Treaty, opposing racism and fascism, opposing privatisation, opposing EU militarism, restoring democracy to EU states (whatever that means), defending manufacturing and keeping Britain out of the eurozone. I know the SP have asked for an 11th point on internationalism, partly to counteract the largely anti EU stance of the RMT.

The RMT are calling this a platform for the election, not the start of a new party, and that whatever regional organisations are put in place, that will all end the day after the Euro Elections. However, the initiative is independent and trade union based, and we could keep the momentum going after June 4th even if the RMT will not not do so.

The SP have asked for the group organising this initiative to be broadened, and this was backed by the CNWP today, along with general support for the project as an independent TU challenge. As I understand it, the RMT organising group has already agreed to support Rallies or Public Meetings in every region. The RMT are discussing media publicity.

I suspect that this will be a left anti EU TU programme, and I suspect there will be a lack of democracy about how candidates are selected and the manifesto agreed - but I could be wrong. The registered party name is "No2EU-Yes2Democracy", which I think could send out the wrong message - the very word "socialism" should have been included, for a start. The politics behind this was described today as 'Trade Unions against the EU constitution' , with some left politics against privatisation added.

CNWP Steering Committee members, whilst welcoming the initiative, were critical of its probable programme and its concentration on the EU, and the lack of democracy so far.

There is even an idea at present that anyone elected under this banner would not take up their seats - this is already being challenged within the group around the RMT.

This is an evolving process, and hopefully there will be changes, with some democracy and accountability, and a more progressive programme. But, in any case, I do think the initiative offers real possibilities. There will be a momentum created in every region, with the left working together and structures may well appear on a regional basis. These do not have to disappear after the elections just because the RMT leadership wants them to. The initiative could become a step towards a new left party. The Rallies could be used to push that whole process forward.

As long as the politics are within the 80/90% we can all agree upon, I think this could open up real opportunities. I may be wrong. I had no idea this was coming, although those at the the LULC will remember that Rob Griffiths did say that the CPB was discussing with others the possibility of standing a TU/left list in two constituencies. I guess this is what he was referring to. It has now multiplied!

The Socialist Alliance will get regular updates from the SP and CNWP on further developments, so I will keep you informed.

Interesting times, maybe!

In Unity

Pete

Photo by Marc Vallée

Friday, 22 August 2008

Branch Meeting: The Other Europe

At last night's branch meeting, we were treated to the debut lead off from C, a very recent recruit to the massed ranks of Stoke Socialist Party.

Continuing with the Europe theme of last week's meeting, he chose to spoke about the perception of the "other Europe" east of the Oder. He noted that Eastern Europe has suffered centuries of cultural denigration in the West and how the usual stock response to blame Russia and 'asiatic despotism' for its underdevelopment obscures the role the West played in maintaining this state of affairs. For example, many an 18th century travelogue by Western travellers marvelled at the backwardness and ignorance in the East as their circles in the West were embracing Enlightenment ideas. But this was a one-sided appreciation of the situation. In actual fact, as industrial capitalism was starting to develop in the West it became increasingly dependent on the East for grain. Therefore, Western development was brought at the price of Eastern underdevelopment: the local ruling class had an interest in keeping the peasantry indentured within feudal relations of production. The rise of capitalism, at least initially, was accompanied by a strengthening of Eastern feudalism.

In some ways this was reinforced by the iron curtain. Though for a brief period after the Russian Revolution, the East symbolised a new, muscular modernity, the disintegration of the Eastern bloc over 1989-91 saw it reduced to a handful of basket cases clamouring for Western aid. As some countries moved toward the European Union, it became clear they would be admitted at a price: the dismantling of their economies and restructuring along neoliberal lines, and a programme of reforms to meet a minimum standard of liberal democracy. The ascension of Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary and the Baltic Republics in 2004 may, on the surface, signal a break down in the East/West division but an inequality gap still exists. For example, the GDP per capita of the three EU states bordering the ascension countries (Italy, Austria and Germany) stood respectively at $35,000, $36,000 and $40,500. For their eastern neighbours the figures were Poland ($11,700), Czech Republic ($17,000), Slovakia ($13,900), Hungary ($20,000) and Slovenia ($22,100) (all rounded to the nearest 100).

It's unsurprising that workers from the East, particularly the Poles, have travelled to the West to find employment. Unfortunately, in Britain and despite their status as EU citizens, migrant workers are among the most exploited sections of the working class. Very low wages - often beneath the statutory minimum, substandard housing and con-merchant landlords are no strangers to thousands of workers drawn from this layer. If this wasn't enough, the political establishment, at times deliberately, at times unconsciously conspire to dehumanise them. We on the left are frequently appalled by xenophobic attacks on migrants by the mainstream right wing press. But we also need to beware of liberal paternalism. "Supportive" sections of the ruling class have been known to hail East European workers as "efficient", "hard-working" and willing to work the kinds of jobs slovenly British workers won't do. But all this does is render them dehumanised automatons impervious to appalling working conditions, underlining their "alien" qualities and reinforcing the cultural "othering" of the East.

The discussion moved on to the South Ossetian crisis and how perceptions of the conflict are likely to strengthen this separation further, but this time with Russia as the condensing point for all the anxieties about the East. In part this was already fed by the uneasy interdependence between it and the EU. Russia is an exporter of the energy the EU needs, and the EU presents to Russia its most lucrative markets. Tensions are not helped by much of the EU's military apparatus being tied to the USA via NATO.

On the conflict between Georgia and Russia, there's very little need to go into the ins and outs considering the forensic treatment it has received in the mainstream media and on the blogs. But there were two arguments of interest that came up in the discussion. Picking up on analysis found all over the internet, was the observation that the crisis marked the beginning of a nascent multi-polarity in international affairs threatening to overtake the USA's position as global hegemon. Linking into this was speculation about why Bush acquiesced to Georgia's assault on South Ossetia. Knowing this was likely to provoke Russia into overt military action, and given the US wants to strengthen its grip on the Middle East via a string of bases and friendly regimes in the region, why be so foolhardy to allow an apparent reversal in Georgia? One comrade ventured that perhaps the US position is now stronger. Russia's projection of power into its near abroad has left many on the EU's flank fearful of interventions in their direction. It undoubtedly helped focus the mind of the Polish government who overcame 18 months of jitters and signed up to Bush's missile shield. Ostensibly designed to intercept missiles from the remaining 'Axis of Evil' - Iran and North Korea - Russian military strategists are not daft enough to think this doesn't give NATO a key strategic advantage over its position.

But for all the positioning and posturing the "new cold war" is a rhetorical recrudescence of distrust and paranoia. The politicians may spout hot air, Russians and generic East Europeans might be making a come back as "baddies" in popular culture (Indiana Jones, The X-Files and Hellboy, for example), "dodgy" Russian businessmen maybe swanning around with their dubious wealth, buying up premiership teams, and the spies are running around London leaving a trail of isotopes in their wake. But at present the ruling class in the East and the West have more than enough mutual interests to prevent this going beyond an exchange of insults and human rights lectures.

The walls, barbed wire and minefields may have gone and the cultural divide is stronger than before. But a more fundamental division, between the rulers and the ruled, between capital and labour is even more deeply entrenched. As long as this constant exists, regardless of the differences within and between East and West, so does the potential for unified international action to fight it.

Thursday, 14 August 2008

Branch Meeting: European Crisis and the CWI

Last week, Stoke Socialist Party sent a small delegation of members to the annual CWI summer camp in Belgium. Tonight, A and M reported back on several of the discussions. A concentrated on political developments in Europe and the fortunes of some of the CWI sections there, while M concentrated on the organisation elsewhere. In this post I'll be concentrating on A's contributions as the information on most CWI sections, their membership figures and their prospects is really for internal consumption only. (We had membership figures for each CWI section up on the wall - I couldn't help wondering what a certain left newspaper would give to see those figures!)

A opened with the observation that a qualitative change in the political situation is sweeping across Europe. This manifests itself in three ways.

First, there are successions of economic and political crises - Brown's predicament is by no means unique. There was the forlorn hope the credit crunch would be a passing blip, but now several countries are staring into the abyss of deep crisis. Iceland, for example, has been described by several business observers as a hedge fund on the brink of bankruptcy. One current account belonging to the Bosnian government has been so depleted that the princely sum of €23 is all that remains! Denmark has slipped into recession, having fulfilled the 'official' definition of two consecutive quarters of economic shrinkage. And the Eurozone as a whole shrank by 0.2 per cent in the last quarter.

Par the course for our rulers when their economies enter choppy waters, they are trying their best to get European workers pay the price. Nearly everyone has felt the pinch from higher food, fuel and energy prices. In Portugal, unemployment has doubled. In Spain, 300,000 jobs, mainly in the construction sector, has been lost to the collapsing property market. In France, Sarkozy is attempting no less than 116 separate attacks on the French working class, ranging from terms of employment to the social wage. In Italy Berlusconi has picked a fight with the country's education workers with a plan that aims to throw 20 per cent of them onto the dole.

But the ruling class has a problem. Politically, its social base in wider society is very weak indeed, and as a consequence they are increasingly out of touch. New Labour is a case in point. Nationally and locally it refuses to budge from the deeply unpopular policies that have seen electoral humiliation after electoral humiliation heaped upon it. And what are we to make of the bungled announcement, during a crucial by-election in a solidly working class Scottish constituency, that Thatcher might receive a state funeral? But it's the same elsewhere. The SPD in Germany continues to shed members like its going out of fashion as they prop up its 'grand coalition' with the CDU/CSU. Sarkozy has entered the record books as the least popular first-term French president in history. Mainstream politics in Belgium are paralysed and there's talk of divorce among its constituent Walloons and Flemings. And Irish voters delivered a big slap in the face to its ruling class and the eurocrats when they rejected the Lisbon Treaty.

This is a precipitous moment for our class to start moving. And the situation is compelling it to do so. Workers in Belgium have taken advantage of their masters' constitutional difficulties - there have been 80 strikes against below inflation pay "rises". In Britain we recently had the two day Unison local government strike and the first national teachers' strike for 20 years. Greece has been shaken by three general strikes over the last year, including a two month teachers' strike backed by a significant movement of radicalised school students. Transport and manufacturing workers in Poland have taken action, and among them are the first employees of Tesco to walk out.

The rising gradient of crisis and struggle has affected the politics of our class. The tendency present from the 1990s toward the emergence of new workers' parties/left formations has been strengthened. Developments in France and Italy were made in passing, but A preferred to deal mainly with Germany. Electorally speaking, Die Linke is now (just!) the third party in Germany. Its leading figure, Oskar Lafontaine appears to be positioning himself more to the left with more talk about socialism. But unfortunately the programme of the party is not socialist - yet. In the opinion of the CWI, its potential is stymied by a preoccupation with pursuing those polling figures at the expense of the social movements that have so far nourished the new party. The SAV, Germany's CWI affiliate, is committed to helping Die Linke develop in a positive political direction and is currently discussing strategies on how this can be done.

A also touched on Greece, where conditions are very favourable for the development of a new left party. Here the CWI section, Xekinima is part of an 11 party coalition of the left, Syriza. In 2007 it won over 360,000 votes (5.04 per cent) in the general election and is gaining support at the expense of the traditional centre left party, PASOK. Since the upturn of class struggle in Greece its opinion poll ratings have improved by such an extent that PASOK has made overtures for coalition talks. Xekinima and the CWI are opposed to participating in bourgeois coalitions, which is one of the reasons why support for the PRC in Italy collapsed.

In sum, as neoliberalism as a model of capital accumulation and a strategy for class rule is becoming exhausted, we're opening into a more volatile period marked by economic and political flux and increasing class struggle. In short, a period not too dissimilar from the transition to neoliberalism from the old Keynesian/pseudo-Keynesian policies of the post-war boom. The CWI may possess tiny forces but everywhere it is seeking to place itself in the strategic centres of struggle, and it will do all it can to carry them through to a successful conclusion.

Monday, 23 June 2008

Gramsci and European Integration

I wanted to come back to Andreas Bieler's contribution to Saturday's proceedings, 'Class Struggle and the Analysis of European Integration in the Global Economy' because he presented it as an exercise in Neo-Gramscian analysis. Say what? No, I don't know anything about Neo-Gramscianism either. But at least I was a touch wiser after the lecture.

Gramsci's contribution to Marxism and social theory has certainly been influential, but how influential has been a topic of debate in international relations scholarship. For Bieler the basic positions on Gramsci's legacy boil down to two camps: austere and absolute historicism. The former holds that Gramsci's work was conceived at a particular point in time and is only meaningful in this context, which of course was 1920s and 30s Italy. If we take this argument to its logical conclusion, then knowledge is always contingent and context-specific. It means forever starting from scratch. Against this, absolute historicism acknowledges the historical origins of Gramsci's perspectives, but says concepts can transcend their origins provided they are adapted, reformulated and applied critically. If theory is to be useful it must adequately grasp and explain new phenomena. It becomes an obstacle if it coalesces into schools of concepts, ignoring new approaches and developments. Because this set of concepts has outgrown its origins, it is necessary that we speak of Neo-Gramscianism.

As with any Marxist analysis the starting point are the relations of production. For Neo-Gramscians the core collective actors are class forces and the struggles between them. Also, class forces are always fractionalised. This is hardly news, Marxists have previously analysed the contradictions within class forces around finance/industrial capital, blue/white collar workers, and public/private sector capital. But for Bieler these in the main have succumbed to the fusion of capitals and proletarianising/deskilling processes. In the European Union of today, class fractions tend to be organised around a complex of nationally-oriented, internationally-oriented, EU transnational and global transnational fractions of capital, which are in contradictory relationships with one another and, of course, are subject to the overarching antagonism with labour.

For those who operate with vulgar notions of Marxism (who, in the main, tend to be its opponents) the importance of class struggle should not be confused with economic determinism. After all, does not struggle imply openness? Capital is economically compelled to intensify the exploitation of labour power, and it is so driven to compete among other capitals. But this by no means guarantees the economy gets what the economy wants. In this sense, the economy conditions and determines the social in the *first* instance. For Neo-Gramscians class forces become conscious of their conflicts and ultimately their interests on the terrain of ideology. More often than not discourses of struggle do not assume an explicit class character, but they have the effect of mobilising class forces.

Right wing British euro-scepticism is a case in point. The language of class is never used, but the language of sovereignty, independence, Brussels bureaucrats and the like have successfully cohered a bloc of forces representing national and international capitals who believe they would lose out from further European integration. This is where 'old-style' Gramsci comes to the fore. Each class fraction engages in hegemonic projects to try and win influence in civil society and bend the polity to its will. But not all projects have an equal chance of succeeding. Looking at the spectrum of euro-scepticism in Britain, it tends to assume a right wing character owing to the resources at the right's disposal and the overall balance of class forces in capital's favour. They have hegemony over opposition to the EU. When was the last time you heard opposition to the EU expressed in anti-neoliberal terms outside the left press?

To illustrate the framework in action, Bieler looked at the case of Austria's accession to the EU in 1995. In the early 90s Austrian capital was more or less split down the middle between national and international orientations. The latter was for EU membership as the free trade area would give it greater market opportunities. The former however was protected by tariffs and regulations that, as a condition of membership, would have been swept away. Analysing this contradiction means identifying the key representatives of contending fractions and their actions. These typically would be employers associations, unions and political parties. In this case, the Federation of Austrian Industrialists were united behind a discourse that would make Austrian capitalism more 'efficient', but also its organic intellectuals contrived to answer concerns about Austrian security and the 'neutrality' it managed to maintain throughout the cold war. Compare this with the tensions that divided the Austrian Peoples' Party. It has traditionally drawn support from business, agriculture and white collar workers, but any unity the party had was swept away by the debate. The dominant bourgeois pole of the party tended to support the FAI's stance, whereas the middling and agrarian elements backed the no campaign.

Internationally-oriented capital won the eventual referendum because it was able to cohere a more convincing hegemonic project than its opponents. As the tide of history was flowing in neoliberal globalisation's favour, EU membership seemed common sense. But as we have seen in Ireland's referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, this is not sufficient in and of itself. Here the Campaign Against the EU Constitution was able to pursue its own variegated hegemonic project and negotiate the contradictions between the class forces grouped behind it to win the referendum.

Much ink has been spilt over the ramifications of the Irish decision, so I won't be adding to it. But what I took from this application of Gramsci to European integration is a change in my perception of his contributions to Marxism. It showed how Gramsci's abstract theorisation of socialist strategy in the context of a (relatively backward) nation state is flexible enough to explain its subsumption under the emerging sovereignty of the EU at a very different historical conjuncture. What it demonstrates is the essential openness of Marxist analysis and its unrivalled ability to produce convincing social explanation.

Saturday, 21 June 2008

Zizek for EU President!

Brother T took some time out from the class struggle in milton keynes on friday to listen intellectual superstar, terrorist and provocateur Slavoj Zizek speak at Birkbeck. The advertised meeting was on 'the materialist reversal of Marx in Hegel', but according to the report, Zizek instead had a muse about the European Union and the Lisbon Treaty. See, I told you he was a terrorist. Zizek is a complex figure and I don't know his work particularly well, so I defer to T and others who may wish to add their observations in the comments box.

Slavoj Zizek is alive! His oeuvre is all encompassing of philosophy, literary and cultural studies, scattered with references to pop-culture (The Matrix, The Sound of Music, Mel Gibson's conspiranoia, etc. and cannot fail to evoke one's imagination. How many other contemporary intellectuals generate such a vast interest that they've spawned a peer-reviewed journal in their honour? He reads, steals and borrows from a whole array of scholars but it is his intimate relationship with Lacan that is of most interest to me.

Lacan's own perverse technique for allowing the limping of the truth is to engage with "midspeak": a technique that realises the truth can only ever be half-spoken. Marcuse in One-Dimensional Man asserts that ours is the language of sales and marketing and perhaps this is best encapsulated by Zizek in his introduction to Welcome to the Desert of the Real.

In an old joke from the defunct German Democratic Republic, a German worker gets a job in Siberia; aware of how all mail will be read by the censors, he tells his friends: 'Let's establish a code: if a letter you get from me is written in ordinary blue ink, it's true; if it's written in red ink, it's false.' After a month, his friends get the first letter, written in blue ink: 'Everything is wonderful here: the shops are full, food is abundant, apartments are large and properly heated, cinemas show films from the West, there are many beautiful girls ready for an affair — the only thing you can't get is red ink. In our liberal democracy have (or at least we are told we have) all the freedoms we could ever wish for and are free to raise our voice at the ballot box. Zizek contests this fallacy by advancing that the only thing we are missing is the red ink: we feel free because we lack the very freedom to articulate our unfreedom.

So what is to be done? Mikhail Bakhtin points out the most apt way of restructuring prevailing values is to make them the topic of the discourse. i.e. To discuss them. But no one but a few (allegedly) archaic Marxists refer to capitalism any more. Zizek's recent offerings go some way to redressing this, such as his Violence and In Defence of Lost Causes.

Zizek commenced with an overview of the recent Irish "no" vote to the Lisbon treaty and how the EU is likely to grapple with this. I expected Zizek, who ran for president in Slovenia's first election in 1990, to damn the EU bureaucracy for its democratic deficit and attempt to push the treaty through but instead he offered to throw his hat in the ring. His lack of resistance surprised me. He advised that what was to follow was going to present a serious philosophical paper and that he would leave out the crude jokes and pop-culture references. I would contest that he was only partially right: the paper was more theologically as opposed to philosophically informed. Zizek's recent co-conspirator, the passionate Christian, Alain Badiou has a lot to answer to. What would Lacan say?

Does the Lacanian Left exist? Perhaps it was in a moment of Revolutionary Becoming. Now it seems to be influenced by bourgeois values and adopting an ethico-religious stance. Zizek seems to be grappling with his own demons: is he a representation of the commodification of a space formerly reserved for intellectual endeavours or a "serious" theologian? If this trend is to continue it might be slightly more difficult for Verso, his "regular publishers", to tempt me with his next offering.

Tuesday, 25 March 2008

Socialist Strategy After the Third Way

It may be too early to tell, but last week's monthly ICM poll for the Graun suggests the government will be dumped out of office at the next election. It puts the Tories on 42% while Labour trails at a miserable 29%. The LibDems and Others clock up 21% and 8% respectively. The 17th March YouGov poll for the London Evening Standard makes grim reading for Livingstone supporters too. Boris Johnson leads on 49% while Ken languishes way behind on 37%. Paddick posts 12% support and the rest have 3% to split between them.

Interestingly, there is an international dimension to New Labour's woes. According to Ernst Hillebrand writing in March's issue of Prospect Magazine, the centre left across the EU (including Norway) are in trouble; it "looks set to lose out in Italy and has lost direction in Britain. Four of the five Nordic countries - social democratic societies par excellence - now have conservative heads of government. The German SPD is in power as a junior coalition partner but threatened by a new party to its left; in France the Socialists are in a mess. Is this merely the normal swing of the pendulum, or is it the result of something deeper and more worrying for the centre left?"

Hillebrand's answer is yes. The turn toward the centre right across Europe is symptomatic of the exhaustion of Third Way-style politics, here defined as mild neoliberal economics married to a broadly progressive socio-political agenda. This is the politics not of wealth redistribution (well, not in favour of the least well off anyway) but of producing the skills and knowledge bases European economies need to compete with and for markets in the emerging Far East. It is an overly technocratic project about managing and encouraging globalisation for the benefit of capital. What it is not is a means of solving long standing social problems. Where they are acknowledged, the interlinking promise of education/training, job creation and trickle down was supposed to deal with them.

Everyone but the most blinkered Blairite/Brownite knows the traditional working class base of labourism and social democracy have not been the winners in Third Way politics. The proportion of income across the EU has fallen from 72.1% to 68.4% over the last 25 years - and this is despite employment rising from 61.2% to 64.5% from the mid-90s to today! The education, education, education promise made by Blair was also taken up across the EU, and failed to deliver. Hillebrand argues school graduation rates remain unchanged, the quality of HE institutions has declined along with their ability to secure favourable returns in Europe's labour markets. As a rule upward social mobility has remained static. Under pressure and scattered to the four winds by widespread deindustrialisation, tensions have been rising from actual and perceived competition between 'indigenous' and immigrant workers. It has been further stoked up by 'get tough' policies on illegals and the free movements of the emerging EU-wide labour market. And to crown it all off European social democracy believes it has no alternative but to pursue this course.

With this disconnect between the centre left and its base the parties have become rootless and beholden to policy by focus group, opinion polls and newspaper headlines. They are not in a position to respond to what Hillebrand sees as a creeping conservatisation of social values - a reaction against social liberalism probably best exemplified by Britain's 'official' multiculturalism. Conservatives, on the other hand, are very well placed. Though it may be difficult getting a credit card between Blair/Brown and Cameron on economic issues, their "new" soft conservative social agenda is a blend of the traditional and the liberal. This compares more favourably to Labour's petty authoritarianism of ASBOs and cigarette bans. The main beneficiaries of this state of affairs on the continent so far, as well as the centre right, has been the far right populists and neo-fascists, and to a lesser extent emerging new left formations.

These chickens haven't fully come home to roost in Britain just yet, so what can the centre left do? Hillebrand's solution is an inversion of their present strategic direction. Labour and other social democratic parties should be more conservative regards social values, and more left wing on economics and social justice issues. It has to retain the centre ground of politics and speak to the aspirations of society's middling layers, but also rebuild its working class base. Hillebrand also rules out a return to the "old, failed statism" of the past. The centre left has to make its politics relevant by speaking to people on lifestyle issues and crucially matters of work/life balance. The trumpeting of low inflation figures, employment and economic growth statistics excite only the few. But what makes the pursuit of such an orientation particularly challenging is that the right have already travelled some way down this road. The battle with them will be on the ground of their choosing.

As things stand and New Labour remains on its present course, the Tories will win the next election. But is there anything the far left can learn from Hillebrand's forecast analysis? Yes, but I fear his strategic arguments are beyond our movement as presently constituted. But what we can do (and some sections of the far left are doing) is develop a strategy encouraging cooperation among instead of competition between our meagre components. And the second part is to connect with those sections of our class abandoned by New Labour. The Socialist Party, Respect Renewal, the SWP and some parts of the Labour left have limited but noteworthy successes in this regard. But beyond this we have to do what the centre left has done in the past and appeal to all sections of our class, from the poor and disenfranchised to the aspirational and better off. There is no problem talking about quality of life issues either, after all it is often a (silent) component of the campaigns we routinely engage in. And we have to make clear democracy is at the heart of our politics. Through practice we can convince our audiences that the authoritarianism of the Stalinist and social democratic stripes are alien to socialism.

Unlike Labour and the other mainstream parties, our principles are not for sale. We cannot dispense with the socialist case for expediency's sake. This won't be easy, but they don't call it a struggle for nothing.