A Separation,”Separation of Nader from Simin”, Review.

 

A Separation by Asghar Farhadi, has won a Bafta award and is now nominated for Best Foreign Film Oscar.

The Guardian said that the Iranian film goes beyond class and gender.

It is, by contrast, a picture that stays with class and gender. Its taut narrative develops them  within a generous humanism. A Separation also opens our eyes to some significant  religious and cultural issues in Iranian society.

Nader and Simin are a couple with a daughter, Termeh. They live in a flat in Tehran. The family is, in European terms, middle  middle class. Nadar works in a Bank. His wife, Simin, is a University teacher.

Simin want to leave Iran. While we are not shown exactly why. But there some clear indications that neither of the couple are happy with  Official Iranian culture.  In the kitchen there is a tin of Twinnings Earl Grey. Nader  uses ‘merci’ for thank you (widespread  in Farsi until the Khomeinist regime). Simin wears attractive  coloured headscarves. There is a Table Football.  Nader corrects his daughter’s teacher use of an arabic-based word to translate ‘guarantee’, offering a Farsi one. All the signs are that the couple do not support the dour Iranian regime.

But Nader does not want to leave. He wishes to keep looking after for his elderly father, who lives with the family and suffers from Alzheimer’s. Simin files for divorce when he refuses to go with her. The daughter, stays, a choice, we learn, she makes in the  hope of bringing the couple back together. The Family Court rules that the divorce cannot proceed until things are clearer. Termeh stays in the flat when her mother moves back to her parents.

The drama centres around  Razieh, a pregnant, pious woman from woman from the outskirts of Tehran. She is employed to look after the father. She arrives with her joyful small girl in tow.  When the carer  is faced with  the elderly father soiling himself  she phones up her spiritual guide to learn whether it is permitted to clean him. Razieh is rapidly exhausted by this work, and recommends that Nadar approaches her husband for the carer job.

The crisis comes when she has left the flat, for an appointment (we later learn – with a gynecologist), with her small daughter. The father is tied to his bed. He looks at death’s door. Nadar comes back, sess this,  and is furious. Meeting a returning  Raizeh he  accuses her of this, and of stealing money. He pushes her out. She falls.

This is not the end of his problems. He learns that she has been taken to hospital. He meets her husband Houjat, and finds that she has had a miscarriage. He blames Nadar for pushing her down the stairs. Nadar is accused of killing the unborn child.

Shots of the Iranian legal process seems like organised chaos. The Court Official in charge conducts his interrogations in a crowded police station. Nadar is put in prison. The husband threatens him and his family, apparently without serious restraint. There is the menace that Nadar is not a ‘real’ believer.

The picture of the  law’s attempt to unravel the truth sometimes  look like the efforts of French Examining Magistrates. Sometimes succesful, other moments not at all.  The stair pushing looks a less than likely cause of the still birth. Different explanations for the death emerge. There are no independent controls. There is, however, the presumption of innocence. The hope would be, one assumes, that as in the French system, the truth will emerge under rigorous investigation.

The film’s frame draws the viewer deeply into the plot. Minimalist and sparse is appears documentary without being didactic. The middle class drive effortlessly  around the city, while Raizeh is trapped in weary bus journeys. The characters vibrant and at the kind of point where their culture crosses European’s to be both sympathetic and bewildering. It’s not the people but the depth of the cultural rules and the law which lie just outside one’s grasp.

The final scenes  revolve around ‘blood money’ . The case does not go further to the formal Court.  Payments for deaths rather than punishment, are acceptable, (if the injured family party agrees) under Sharia Law. Houjat’s lack of money helps him take this path.

But the Wergeld (as the Anglo-Saxons called it) does not get paid. How and why is the pivot of the film.

It ends with the daughter Termeh’s final choice yet unannounced to her parents.

A Separation well deserves its successes. (More  here.)

Judy Terry, Suffolk County Council, Speaks.

Lady Judy Terry, Despairs at Ipswich Labour Party.

Suffolk Culture Tsar, the author of several etiquette manuals, Lady Judy Terry, lacks a public platform.

Tendance Coatesy is only too happy to guest her posts.

“I’m very much a glass or three person. I believe in relations with my colleagues and  people in the wider community. Creative leadership means the best! Not staff who lack tenacity, or a positive attitude.

That’s why I am shocked, truly shocked, by Ipswich Labour Party.

I established an Industrial and Provident Society to run the library service.

I democratically appointed the  Board and charged my good friend Mr Fox with the task of making significant savings.

What did Labour do?

They and their “rent-a-mob”criticised me!

In Ipswich Labour have got rid of Area Forums.

They provided a valuable space for people to listen to plans for the Big Society and Police reports.

Cllr Byrony Rudkin  revived the New Wolsey Theatre which I haven’t been to since she was involved.

Im March it’s  showing the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

What right has Ms Rudkin to talk about culture!

A couple of Labour councillors work in the private sector.

With this background how can they be Labour?

And look at all the money Ipswich Borough Council spends.

You’d think they had some responsibility for Ipswich people.

They say they have to employ agency staff because the government’s cut their funding. That there’s a Coalition policy to reduce the money local government has.

But who is to blame for this?

Ipswich Labour!

Sometimes, I despair.

Until I hear our brightest and best Conservative Candidate, ’Kev’.  Hallelujah! ”

 

More information here.

Marine Le Pen Wants ‘Patriotic Civil Servants’.

Marine Le Pen was interviewed on France Inter this morning. (Here)

One issue came to the fore.

Le Pen wants  ‘patriotic’ top civil servants.

This is a long-standing policy.

Last year she said,

• “Dans le cycle de formation des fonctionnaires des trois fonctions publiques, l’accent sera mis sur le sens de l’Etat et le patriotisme.
• L’Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA) veillera en particulier à recruter des hauts fonctionnaires patriotes, ayant le sens de l’État.”  Here.

In the education and training of civil servants in the 3 sectors the emphasis will be placed on the recognition of the state’s importance  and patriotism.

The National Administrative  College will pay special  attention to recruiting patriotic civil servants, having this sense of the state. 

How she would define this, and implement this rule is not clear.

One assumes that non-patriots would include those whom she denounced in the interview as believers in the pan-European “elite” ideal of a federal European Union.

As well as others from the ‘anti-France’.

But one thing is.

This strongly resembles the Hungarian nationalist and hard-right  Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s  policy.

Anybody interested in the French far-right’s different spheres, and how they are linked, should look at this site SCALP- REFLEX.

 This diagram is by the anti-fascist journal Reflex, though it’s widely distributed in France and this copy was taken from le Nouvel Observateur’s site.

 

French Armenian Genocide Law: A Golden Opportunity for Turkey’s AKP.

“

“A Golden Opportunity for the Turkish Government” 

Gaël De Santis In L’Humanité  has described  the background. (here)

“Tant les islamistes de l’AKP au pouvoir que les deux principaux partis d’opposition nationaliste sont vent debout contre la proposition de loi française qui interdit la négation du génocide arménien de 1915. Les leçons d’histoire qui viennent de France, pays dont le président Nicolas Sarkozy est le héraut de la lutte contre l’entrée de la Turquie dans l’UE, ne passent visiblement pas. Le gouvernement tient à préserver l’image de son pays. Celui-ci constituerait, à l’issue des révolutions arabes, un modèle pour marier islamisme, démocratie et croissance. C’est oublier un peu vite la répression des autonomistes kurdes et des journalistes qui l’ouvrent trop.”

“The Islamists of the AKP as much as the two Turkish opposition parties have stormed against the French legal project which forbids the denial of the Armenian genocide of 1915. History lectures from France, which is at the forefront of those opposing Turkey’s entry into the EU have not gone down well. The Turkish government is trying to maintain its country’s image. That is, as a result of the Arab revolutions, is to be a model of how Islamism, democracy, and economic growth can go together. That is, of course, if we forget its repression of the Kurdish movements and too inquisitive journalists.”

Human Rights Watch says,

“As the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government focused on promoting Turkey’s regional interests in response to the pro-democracy Arab Spring movements, human rights suffered setbacks at home. The government has not prioritized human rights reforms since 2005, and freedom of expression and association have both been damaged by the ongoing prosecution and incarceration of journalists, writers, and hundreds of Kurdish political activists, particularly through the misuse of overly broad terrorism laws. Violence against women in Turkey remains endemic. Police continue to use excessive force, particularly against demonstrators, and are rarely held accountable for such violence.”

The French legislation, which will penalise those denying or “minimising” the Armenian genocide could face a €45,000 fine and a year in gaol, has been some time in the making. It follows laws which make it illegal to deny the Holocaust (‘negationisme’).

Yesterday the Senate passed the law, which is backed by Sarkozy,  by 127 votes against  86.

It now has to go to the Constitutional Council, where opposition to this move is certain

There is a strong suggestion that Sarkozy’s need for support in his Presidential campaign has favoured its introduction this time.

500, 000  French citizens are from an Armenian background.

Nevertheless his close colleagues have criticised the project. Foreign Minster Alain Juppé has called it a connerie” (fucking stupidity).

Opposition from other quarters has been widespread, if far from being enough to stop the law passing. It has been loudest from the Centrist candidate François Bayrou. But it has not stopped there. All parties are divided, though the Green and the small Left radical group  Senators voted en bloc against the law (report here).

In debates Roland Muzeau of the French Communist Party (PCF) rejected the idea of giving into to Turkish pressure. It is however,wrong, he says, for the French Parliament  to take upon itself the responsibility of writing history.

Which we think it the right take on this controversy, despite all our heartfelt solidarity with the Armenians.

The Big Society: The Shire.

Map of Cameron’s Big Society.

David Cameron’s Big Idea on Radio Four yesterday was extremely informative. (Here)

The Producer, Steve Richards, related how important the Prime Minister’s policy is in the Independent,

Cameron’s friend, Danny Kruger, who worked for him in his early days as leader, told me: “I know that David Cameron is in office to enact or see happen or help to grow the Big Society. That’s his driving mission… if he can do anything by the time he leaves office, it’ll be to see a bigger, stronger society.” He is convinced the Prime Minister will never let go of it.

The programme set out the ‘idea’ that individuals and society, the people themselves rather than the state, would be encouraged to run public affairs. That paradoxically it was the government and its place-people in the state that are introducing the  ‘Big Society’ – whether anybody wanted it or not.

The most revealing moment came when one figure went into the source of Cameron’s viewpoint. He believed that the Prime Minister drew on his own experience of growing up in Peasemore, Berkshire. There, it appears, if there was a social problem it was settled by a  quiet word with influential people, the Vicar, the Rotary Club, and, though this was not mentioned, the landlord of the Fox and Hounds and the Squire.

There was no need for elected authorities to intervene.

There’s something about this backward-looking vision that reminds one of the Lord of the Rings. The Big Society,  will help restore the natural order of self-governing Hobits . Kindly Wizard David Cameron will protect them from the Eye of the State-Mordor.

The Red Tory Phillip Blond spoke of his hope that British politics might become centred around this ideas.

Blue Labour will no doubt happily join the Berkshire Bagginses.

Meanwhile in France François Holland kicked off his Presidential campaign with an attack on finance capitalism and a demand for justice.

Speaking to his supporters this weekend at Le Bourget his ‘Big idea’ was equality.(Here Here).

The audience shouted “Egalité! Egalité! Egalité!”

Instead of the Big Society: Egalité ou la mort!

Respect: The End (Archive 2007)

From Chartist Magazine 2007 – here.

Andrew Coates tells a tale of opportunism, egos and splits.

Where to begin? Where to end? Respect’s attempt to create a credible left-wing alternative to New Labour has culminated in a split, ferocious even by the standards of the British left. This won it coverage from Newsnight and Channel Four News reports, and a tide of instant Web reports and comments.  Nevertheless, beyond the rhetorical fireworks, and the apparent lack of political differences, is there anything to be gleaned from this débâcle? Did it start from false premises? Does the saga of the two fighting wings of Respect throw up issues important to democratic socialists?

Respect’s feuds appear just another case of the left’s tendency to self-destruct. Yet when it was launched the party looked as if was aiming for an enduring political presence. Called the ‘Unity Coalition’, it was founded in January 2004. It was primarily an electoral vehicle, allying expelled Labour M.P., George Galloway, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), anti-War Muslims and some small Leninist groups. It stood, if one remembers the mouthful, for respect, equality, socialism, peace, environment, community and trade unions. The main platform was opposition to the occupation of Iraq; Respect was the biggest organised force in the Stop the War Coalition.

In the General Election of 2005 George Galloway was elected M.P. for Bethnal Green and Bow, replacing Blair loyalist, Oona King. In three constituencies it came second in the polls – though other results amongst the 25 seats contested were much lower. At its local electoral highpoint in 2006, the party got 26% of the vote and three seats in Newham, 23 % and 12 councillors in Tower Hamlets and a victory for liberal Islamic activist, Salma Yaqoob in Birmingham. To leading SWPer, Lindsey German, this indicated, “there is a big audience for socialism and radical ideas.” (ISJ No 108. 2005). Three further municipal by-election gains seemed to confirm a real, if limited, electoral base. The Coalition’s leaders began to appear on the national media, and their sense of self-importance was visibly growing.

All this was to fall apart. By November 2007 there were two ‘Respects’. One, SWP dominated, held a National Conference, and the other, a Galloway-Yaqoob led alliance, Respect (Renewal), staged an alternative rally on the same day. The former accused the other of launching ‘an onslaught’ on the left. Accusations of communalism and Tammany Hall politics were made. The latter asserted that the SWP operated a two-tier organisation, controlling Respect through a system of ‘Russian Dolls’. There were allegations of packed meetings, an illegal donation, intimidation, and even violence. The pro-Galloway Socialist Unity Blog was flooded with hundreds of posts by warring former comrades. In group therapy they poured out their woes and mutual loathing (http://www.socialistunity.com).

There are now two rival lists for this year’s GLA elections. The SWP is standing Lindsey German as Mayoral candidate with a List for the Assembly. Their opponents are trying to build a “broad based progressive slate” of constituency and party list, candidates, and (with some dissent already) back Ken Livingstone for Mayor. Disputes remain about who has the right to the ‘Respect’ label under electoral law.

Respect had deeper roots than opposition to the war on Iraq, or Galloway’s political ambitions. As New Labour assumed Thatcher’s heritage and abandoned even moderate social democracy the socialist left was marginalised. A hollowed-out party offered no expression for effective dissent. The Scottish Socialist Party, formally launched in 1999, offered an independent alternative based on radical socialism. Tommy Sheridan and five other MSPs’ election to Holyrood in 2003 appeared to show that this strategy could work.

A parallel English and Welsh initiative was the Socialist Alliance (SA). SA candidates stood in the 2001 General Election, combining left groups, such as the SWP, the Socialist Party (ex-Militant), some Greens, and some former Labour left-wingers. In the event it scored an average of 1.7% of the vote, and only saved its deposits in two seats. The SA began to falter. The Socialist Party withdrew over moves towards greater centralisation. Former Labour NEC member and SA Chair, Liz Davies resigned her post in 2002 complaining of financial malpractice and manipulation (Tribune. 1.11.02). 

The left, however, was bolstered by the opposition to the invasion of Iraq. The massive anti-war march of 15th February 2003 was organised by the Stop the War Coalition, in which the SWP played a major part. How could the demonstrators’ views be represented? An answer, which would take the SA from its impasse, appeared to come. George Galloway had pushed himself out of the Labour Party and was looking for a new political home. Known for his anti-war views, and pro-Arab nationalist opinions (if not notorious for his genuflection to Saddam Hussain), he set about negotiating a deal with the SWP. Respect replaced the SA.

Detractors were not slow to point out the faults of Respect, or Galloway’s sulphurous and erratic reputation. The SWP’s political culture – described as permanent hysteria and disregard for democracy – particularly irked. Complaints rested on the conflict between the SWP’s version of Leninism, and democratic practice. The Party claimed it was in a ‘united front’: it, the ‘revolutionary’ element, allied on equal terms with those who opposed racism, exploitation and war. In reality the leadership took decisions with other notables, Galloway to the fore, above the membership’s heads.  On a range of issues, from calling feminism a ‘shibboleth’ to downgrading LGTB rights, to opposition to secularism, Respect alienated the left.

A real bone of contention was Respect’s description of itself as ‘the party of Muslims’. In their dash for electoral gain the party had compromised with the Islamicist bullies described by Ed Husain in The Islamicist (2007). De facto alliances, now admitted by the SWP, had been forged with right-wing Islamicists, such as supporters of the reactionary Jamaat-i-Islami party present in the East London Mosque. Secular Bangladeshis were not slow to point to the bloody role the Jamaat played in opposing independence and suppressing the left in their country. Communalist appeals led to a growing electoral rival amongst Afro-Caribbean voters in the East End, the Christian People’s Alliance. Salma Yacoob associated with Birmingham mosques that played host to ultra-conservative preachers. Any attempt to oppose this approach was met with cries of ‘Islamophobia’. In municipal politics Respect increasingly relied on ‘community leaders’ (including wealthy businessmen) of a Muslim background (Bangladeshi in East London, Pakistani in Birmingham) rather than socialists or trade unionists. Nor was this the only difficulty. Their councillors often operated as councillors frequently do: vying for position, and standing up for ‘their people’ first, squabbling, switching sides, and puffing themselves up, regardless of their party’s instructions.

The low point in Respect’s history came in 2006 when George Galloway became a Big Brother Housemate. Hs antics, whilst highly amusing to the non-Respect left, did the party great harm amongst its supporters. A torrent of ribald jokes about ‘Kitty’ Galloway sapped what little credibility they had. Undeterred, the Honourable Member began a media career, making him one of the five highest paid MPs.

This was but an interlude. It became public knowledge that Respect’s membership had declined from 5,500 in 2005, to 2,200 in 2007.  That autumn Galloway circulated a litany of complaints about the party: ‘The Best of Times, the Worst of Times’, a title modestly drawn from Dickens’s novel of the French Revolution. Respect was “not punching its weight”, its activists suffered from “exhaustion and enervation”, its organisation was marked by “amateurism”. It was unfit to face a General Election (widely mooted at the time). The stage was set for outburst and counter-outburst. Both sides borrowed freely from the analysis of their opponents: the formerly taboo words ‘communalism’ and ‘Islamicism’ were traded against a critique of democratic centralism. Respect had descended into a shouting-match between some very large egos.

The prospects for both the SWP Respect and Respect (Renewal) are not good in the GLA elections, or elsewhere. Their political differences are invisible to the general public. The intensity of the dispute means that voters are more likely to shy away, and the pool of left activists willing to engage in either of these ‘unity’ alliances has shrunk drastically.

Lack of public accountability, the culture of going for ‘what works’ – regardless of who gets hurt – and a disdain for democratic debate, helped bring Respect low. This contempt for the membership of parties, treating people as tools, connects Respect’s leadership to the norms of New Labour. Can anything be learnt from Respect? Perhaps that a serious effort to create democratic socialist politics has yet to be tried.

 

 

 

Review of Empire

 

Weekly Worker 420 Thursday February 21 2002

Struggles for freedom

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri Empire Harvard University Press, 2000, pp496, £12.95

Marx’s revolutionary ‘old mole’, disappearing underground and resurfacing unexpectedly, has “finally died”. It has been replaced by the “infinite undulations of the snake”(p57).

In their metaphor for the kaleidoscopic campaigns thrown up against the spread of capitalist globalisation, Hardt and Negri are nothing if unbounded in their ambitions. Empire has indeed had a wide international echo, even in notoriously conservative America, as proudly described by the journal of Hardt’s employer, Duke University (November-December 2001). The collaboration between the former leader of Potere Operaio (Workers Power), unjustly imprisoned – and still on limited release – for ‘armed insurrection’, and an American literary scholar has ranged beyond purely academic objectives.

Empire ends by talking of the role of the militant in “positive, constructive and innovative activity” and the “irrepressible lightness and joy of being communist” (p413). Negri has recently declared that the anti- (or rather, ‘alternative’) globalisation movement is becoming a “new political subject” of struggle, of counter-power, forming a “social body” (Le Monde January 27 2001).

Reaction from the left to the book has been mixed, and often highly critical. (Important reviews include: Gopal Balakrishnan New Left Review September 2000; Alex Callinicos International Socialism autumn 2001; John Kraniauskas Radical Philosophy September 2000; Malcolm Bull London Review of Books October 4 2001; Mike Rooke What Next? January 2002.) Few, however, ignore the transparent sincerity of the authors and the seriousness of their efforts to come to grips with contemporary capitalism. Nor that the debate should be brought to the widest possible audience.

Empire is not easy to digest. It teems with concepts and references, from the history of socialism, communism and the working class, to Foucault’s disciplinary society and bio-power, Deleuze and Guattari’s desiring machines, Castells’ network society and theories of postmodernism. Its frequently serpentine language makes it often hard to grasp. But Negri has described with clarity Empire’s two principal ideas: that there is no global market without a juridical order, and that this new political power is without a centre, without boundaries (T Negri, ‘L’Empire: stade suprême de l’impérialisme’ Le Monde Diplomatique January 2001).

A powerful examination of the global constitution is backed up by an analysis of economic and cultural transformations. The potential for resistance and a new society – a third element – is discovered, amongst which what the authors call the “multitude” (the ‘new proletariat’) is never far away. In each domain Empire challenges the left to rethink its stand.

Capital’s universal republic

“Empire can only be considered as a universal republic, a network of powers and counter-powers structured in a boundless and inclusive architecture. The imperial expansion has nothing to do with imperialism, nor with those state organisms designed for conquest, pillage, genocide, colonisation and slavery” (pp166-7). This is not meant to excuse the west from its responsibility in subordinating and exploiting the planet, not to mention armed interventions, from Korea to Afghanistan. Hardt and Negri’s argument is that Empire legitimates itself through the expansion of legal norms, a search for universal peace, and not brute force alone.

Thus, America has not only “international police power” but has become part of a “legitimate supranational motor of juridical action”. “The importance of the Gulf War derives rather from the fact that it presents the United States as the only power able to manage international justice, not as a function of is own national motives but in the name of global right” (p180). From Blair’s doctrine of the international community, to former leftists, converted to legal moralism enforced through humanitarian militarism, one can see the centrality of this development. They are part of this expansive network, which has absorbed national liberation struggles, tamed many NGOs and caused the withering away of civil society.

This arrangement works through a hierarchy. At the top is the United States, the principal holder of military might. Next are the global monetary institutions that regulate exchanges, while nation-states are “filters of the flow of global circulation and regulators of the articulators of global command” (p310). Finally there is civil society, “channelling the needs of the desires of the multitude” in ways that can be represented within these structures. In this synthesis, there are parallels with the early Roman empire painted by its Greek admirer, Polybius, as a balance of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. Empire today is “the monarchic unity of power and its global monopoly of force; aristocratic articulations through transnational corporations and nation-states; and democratic-representations comitia” – nations, NGOs, media and “popular organisations” (p314). A new eternal city appears in construction.

Imperialism in its colonial and neo-colonial forms, based on the export of capital and the exploitation of raw materials, rested, Hardt and Negri assert, on an “inside and an outside”. However, “Capital must eventually overcome imperialism and destroy the barriers between outside and inside” (p234). At the same time “the subjectivity of class struggle transforms imperialism into Empire” (p235). Here lies the fundamental contradiction that runs through the heart of the book.

On the one hand, Empire is replete with an analysis of the various forms of governmentally, bio-power (Foucault’s concept of the management of populations), postmodern, flexible accumulation, and the inexorable expansion of “networks”. These, in stressing an impersonal logic, offer, as critics such as Callinicos have observed, much in common with ‘hyper-globalist’ theories. That is, in other words, the dynamic fusion of capital, politics and culture rolling over the planet.

On the other hand, there is the insistence that Empire, and modern production, has arisen as a consequence of the powers of labour: “The proletariat actually invents the social and productive forms that capital will be forced to adopt in future” (p268). Capital’s problem after the worker revolts of the 60s, a “refusal of work”, was to capture this in a new postmodern structure, the “informatisation of production”. Indeed the crises of the period were caused by the demands of employees: “The long cycle of struggles against the disciplinary regime had reached maturity and forced capital to modify its own structures and undergo a paradigm shift” (p261).

The reasoning here resembles the ‘profit squeeze’ popular on the British left (and the right) in the 70s: the workers were not just corroding capitalism by just/unreasonable demands, but are always near to overthrowing it. Hardt and Negri extend this notion further: living labour is a creative social force that can no longer be measured: “the transcendental determinations of value and measure that used to order the deployment of power (or really determine its prices, subdivisions and hierarchies) have lost their coherence” (p354). Politics and economics are “beyond value”. Labour is literally escaping from the socially embodied categories of capitalism, as in Negri’s earlier writing in Marx beyond Marx (1979), which introduced the figure of the “self-valorising” salariat and the breakdown of divisions between economics and politics.

“Self-valorising” signifies, it might be conjectured, a refusal to submit, the rejection of work. An era of militancy may have forced some changes in work arrangements, though mass unemployment under monetarism had perhaps more effect. Loading responsibility onto the workers for crises in the capitalist regime of accumulation may be intended to celebrate their power; but it also mirrors neoliberal complaints about wreckers. The dialectic of labour and capital is a one-dimensional account of capitalist development, as recent debate initiated by Robert Brenner on the contradictions of inter-capitalist ‘horizontal’ competition indicates. But if the self-valorising proposition has some coherence, if debatable, it is impossible to make sense of the claim that value is no longer measurable, as a trip to Sainsbury’s will swiftly show. Without any further discussion of the labour theory of value, and abstract labour (which opponents have always seen as non-measurable, based on heterogeneous and non-equivalent work), we are left in a void.

Struggle and the multitude

Spontaneist forms of Marxism have often believed in the logic of the process of class struggle to carry workers forward to clash with the state. Hardt and Negri go one stage further. The main struggles of the last decades of the 20th century – Tiananmen Square, the May 1992 revolt in Los Angeles, the Chiapas uprising that started in 1994, the 1995-96 French strike wave, and the work stoppages in South Korea of 1996 – were regional and national events, which remained “incommunicable” outside their country of origin. Blocked from travelling horizontally, every serious social conflict is now forced to “leap vertically and touch immediately to the global level” (p55) because they “directly attack the global order of Empire and seek a real alternative” (p57).

Nevertheless, translating this potential into an effective reality, recognising a “common enemy” and “language of struggles”, is lacking. What is the social subject that bears the potential to coordinate the fight and rise up against capitalism’s imperium? The concluding and even more unsatisfactory arguments of Empire are centred on the concept of the “multitude” – its potency and power – and the route to a new struggle for communism.

What exactly does this concept mean? It refers to the unbounded movements and mingling of peoples, the deterritorialised force of living labour. In part a race of new barbarians. It is the “creative subjectivities of globalisation that have learned to sail on this enormous sea” (p60), “an antagonistic and creative positivity” (p61). A new “nomad singularity” constitutes Empire: “The ontological fabric of Empire is constructed by the activity beyond measure of the multitude and its virtual powers” (p261). Labour is where the new proletariat appears as this active power. It is where the multitude is “becoming self-valorising. They express themselves as machines of innovation. They not only refuse to be dominated by the old system of values and exploitation, but actually create their own irreducible possibilities as well” (p369).

Without going too far into somewhat abstruse philosophical byways, Hardt and Negri have, as they state, swallowed hefty chunks of the ‘vitalist’ theory of Henri Bergson (1859-1941), though insisting on the “reality of the being created” (p468n). And describe, in Bergson’s words, “a self which lives and develops by means of its very hesitations, until the free action drops from it like an overripe fruit” (H Bergson Time and free will London 1959, p176). Thus the “insurgent multitude” is poised for action. For, “Empire creates a greater potential for revolution than did the modern regimes of power because it presents, alongside the machine of command, with an alternative: the set of all the exploited and the subjugated that is directly opposed to Empire with no mediation between them” (p293).

The last battle

From this ambitious, to say the least, clarion call, we face the Last Fight for the “self-valorisation of the human (the equal right of citizenship for all over the entire surface of the world market; as cooperation (the right to communicate, construct languages and control communication networks); and as political power, or really as the constitution of a society in which the basis of power is defined by the expression of the needs of all” (p410). This is welded together by a demand for a guaranteed minimum income – a call raised by both free-marketers and some sections of the green and alternative left (though how it will be administered with freedom of movement is, as has been pointed out, a hornet’s nest in itself).

Militants should play the role of the early 20th century Industrial Workers of the World agitator, one who “best expresses the life of the multitude, the agent of biopolitical production and resistance” (p411). From the ruins of Empire will arise new cities – “great deposits of cooperating humanity”. Prudently, Hardt and Negri state that, “Only the multitude through its practical experimentation will offer the models and determine when and how the possible becomes real” (p411).

It is beyond the scope of this review to explore in depth the full complexities of Empire. The book’s great merit is to challenge some central Marxist categories, notably imperialism. Plainly a critique of the illusions of the left in the nation-state is in order, from the stillborn belief of the old British New Left that constitutional reform would create a more favourable environment for socialism, to the tragic adaptation of national liberation movements to the global market.

Criticising the illusions of pursuing justice through the existing international institutions rings many bells. Many well-meaning human rights activists have wound up in juridical institutions more contorted than Bleak House’s Court of Chancery. If Hardt and Negri are no Dickens, as their prose style so painfully indicates, their sallies are well directed. The lack of a ‘centre’ to Empire may be off-putting, in view of the unilateralism of the US, but it soon becomes apparent that the Washington-Wall Street-Pentagon axis is placed at the summit of the system.

The greatest difficulties in the book come from three directions. To begin with, Empire employs a variety of philosophical problematics, spatchcocked rather than integrated together. The concept of the multitude as a self-valorising subject is not even clarified to the extent that we can pin down its independent existence, or how Foucault’s disciplinary regime, and “biopower” (an inescapable net) mingles with Bergson’s absolute creativity. Quasi-Marxist class struggle mingles with non-class theories of sovereignty.

Next, the “mediations” between the multitude and Empire are asserted to be breaking down. It stands facing the multitude with no intermediaries. Yet what is Empire if not a system of complex mediations – civil bodies, filters, networks, states, transnational corporations, and global institutions? These ties, as Hardt and Negri indicate if only in passing, are what Marx would call the “invisible threads” binding millions of people to the process of globalisation. Such a formidable expansive apparatus has surely some density of its own.

Finally, given this, how can the judiciary, power and biopolitical machine standing over the plural multitude be shattered? Lyrical language, a heritage from Negri’s autonomist origins, is used to smother any serious political debate. There is not the slightest consideration of the hold of pro-neoliberal ideologies over large sections of the population, the elected (however imperfectly) free-market governments of the left and right, and a sheer wanton ignorance of the problems faced by socialists assuming political power, in however small degree now possible.

The thread of unresolved links between structure – the overwhelming power of Empire, and agency, the strength of the multitude, runs through these triple domains. There is no strategic politics to bring them closer. Where, before the ultimate attack, does any subject go from now, in this workplace, and tomorrow, in this strike, and the next day, in this election? Or the day when Empire is overthrown?

This is the point where Hardt and Negri’s revolutionary snake retreats under a stone. It is unlikely to emerge.

Andrew Coates

 

Perry Anderson Remembers (Archive)

 

On May 1968’s fortieth anniversary Tendance Coatesy publishes exclusive extracts from legendary Marxist Perry Anderson’s forthcoming memoirs, Apodic Aporiae (necessary doubts). Unlike many Anderson has never reneged on his class origins. He remains today as committed to the left as he ever was. With a rare personal voice Anderson sheds light on the key moments of 68, at home and abroad.  These passages describe the unfolding of the événements. An English translation will soon be available.

 

Extracts.

 

“Clachtoll Broch. The 1^st of May, 1968. I knew something was afoot. That morning I hailed the Gillie, “Tha latha math ann an diugh.” “Aye, young Master, it is a-raining in the field.” A glint came into his eye. “The beaters say we dinna see the best of it yet.” Prescient words! Surely the best was to come.

 

Lunch. Tariq had just arrived. His palanquin was still outside. ‘Gorge Rouge’ Blackburn, had come, post-haste, from his London Red-Base. Tom Nairn was there, fresh from his triumphs in Tossing the Caber at the Sutherland Games. In the kitchen, the ‘chicks’ (unreconstructed were we, alas), Germaine Greer, Juliet Mitchell and Hilary Wainwright were preparing some amuse-gueules, and roast Osprey. As Homer might have described us, ές ‘Нλΰόίου πεδίου.

 

The wireless crackled. As hôte I deftly tuned to Radio Luxembourg. Our comrade ‘Danny’ was on the microphone. “Nous, on a demandé la semaine dernière, qu’on puisse visiter les nanas dans leurs chambers. On nous a dit non! C’est la répression bourgeoise. Faut faire la révolution!” Outraged I forgave the failure, after the clause, ‘last week we asked’, to employ the subjonctif imparfait. The right to visit female students in their rooms denied? Truly an act of repressive intolerance. Had the doomed and inert capitalists bared their teeth at last? Danny would show them his own molars.”

 

……..

 

“We took to Boat-train to Calais. Paris was ablaze. At the Gare du Nord a charming poulbout from Montmartre disrobed us of our bourgeois wallets. Inside les Deux Magots Sartre and Castor were ebullient. Radical discontinuity ruled. Wordsworth described well the atmosphere of a similar Revolution. As lesser known line goes, ‘When Reason seemed most to assert her rights..’ While I mused, Guy Debord popped in, “It’s ze societie of the Spectacle, hein?” He shoved a paving stone under my chin, “On the beach, the stones to throw.” He paused, and spoke to a companion, Ian Bone, “Où sont notre pintes?” Althusser rose from a nearby table, “Only through theoretical practice will the class struggle be won.” As the rock reached his head he seized his sword-cane and poked Debord in the eye.

 

I was seized by doubt. Would there have to be a Niederwerfungsstrategie? What would be the calibration of means and ends? That evening from the occupied Sorbonne, I addressed an attentive audience of thousands. “Solidarity! A coherent and militant student movement has not yet emerged in England. But it may now be only a matter of time before it does. Hornsey Art School is in our hands as I speak. The LSE will soon fall. The Oxford Union is a Soviet under the joint leadership of Comrade Tariq and Comradette Benazir Bhutto. Hasta la Victoria, siempre! ” Deafening applause followed.”

 

…………

 

“Looking back, forty years on, what have we learnt? Perhaps it’s the origins of the present crisis. Try the protasis, what if…  It is revealing, the supine remains supreme.  . For the if stands as fungible property, in a  world where radical opposition has drained into new channels. A revolution in the revolution. Oneself? A Watchtower, Nairn, a Flag, the Saltire, Blackburn, a Pension Fund, Tariq, a Leading Liberal Democrat supporter, the ‘chicks’? Perhaps the deepest revolution of them all: soon to publish a joint soc-fem Cookery Guide, ‘Alternative Appetites’. The future? States dissolved. National democracy reborn. Alterglobalisation. There are no certainties here; so far, all that is possible are proposals and conjectures.  Jottings more than theses, they stand to be altered or crossed out. The old Mole grubs on….”

 

Terror and Consent. The Wars for the Twenty-First Century. Philip Bobbitt. (Archive)

  

Phillip Bobbitt has already made a name for himself, in the realms of high politics, and Academies closely chained to Power in the West, as the author of The Shield of Achilles (2002). This described the replacement of nation-states (jealously sovereign, territory-bound, responsible for its citizens’ well-being) by market-states (inter-linked at all levels, enabling people to produce wealth, not redistributing it, guaranteeing protection and human rights). Economically this change-over resulted (rather vaguely) from the kind of ‘connectivity’, networking of finance and information, and contracting out of state activities, readers of globalisation literature are only too familiar with. Constitutionally, and above all, militarily (Bobbitt’s fortes), the market-state appeared to give priority to new criteria of legality. Weapons of mass destruction, mass abuses of human rights, from ethnic cleansing to residual totalitarian regimes   destroyed the case for recognising the sovereignty of every state. The new technologies of war (extending the planetary reach of armed force) made possible targeted interventions to correct these abuses. As Gopal Balakrishnan remarks (Algorithms of War New Left Review. No 23. 2003) “In Bobbit’s terms, the American regime is the detonator of an expanding legal universe of market-state, bursting asunder an old international order based on the nominal recognition of the sovereignty of all nation-states.”(P 25) A world in which, Balakrishnan observes, Bobbitt foresaw looming threats to the “new constitutional order.”

 

A few years later, post post 9/11, and the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, these menaces have taken definite shape. Above all in terrorism.  In Terror and Consent (2008)  “The looming combination of a global terrorist network, weapons of mass destruction, and the heightening vulnerability of enormous numbers of civilians emphatically require a basic transformation of the conventional wisdom in international security.”(P 5) Just as the market-state works in tandem with “global, networked, decentralised, and devolved” instruments so its opponents (a nebulous category in the book) have their own international vision, and reply on equally transnational link-ups, outsourcing and incentivising (translation: providing incentives per piece of work, rather than permanently). Terrorist organisations are the most dangerous of these enemies of the market-states; “Terrorism will become a far more important security issue because market state terrorists, unlike their twentieth century predecessors, would actually use WMD against civilians.”(P 9)

 

Terrorism and Consent is centred on the war on terror. Bobbitt has no time for those who claim that terrorism is a method not an object. There are networked, non-state, organisations, such as Al-Qaeda, using extreme violence against civilians for political ends, which amount to the same thing: pretty real entities with pretty real murderous acts. So,

 

A war against terror makes sense, as an idea, because terrorism has become more warlike, and war is becoming indistinguishable from counterinsurgency and counter terrorism operations…. the war aim of the U.S and the U.K. is to preserve states of consent by protecting civilians, and this means that the Wars against terror will pursue three intertwined objectives; to pre-empt twenty-first century market state terrorism, to prevent WMD proliferation when these weapons would be used for compellance rather than deterrence, and to prevent or mitigate genocide, ethnic cleansing, and the human rights consequences of civilian catastrophes. (P 236)

 

Let us hold in suspension numerous doubts about this analysis. These range from the obvious: the Islamicist doctrines of Jihadists merit a study of their own. To piece together this network you have to have in common not just terror but a common ideological basis. Support is needed in the frustrated sections of pious Moslem bourgeoisies. An ability to secure a social base around a project of a restored Caliphate which rejects the creeping – or ‘consensual’ – repressive moral order of such as the Muslim Brotherhood’s affiliates. What sections of these classes, and in what nations, does Al-Qaeda appeal to, and why. Or the less clear: if terrorism is a kind of necessary doppelgänger of market-states’ military structures, and a reaction to their monopoly of violence, it seems at times to function in Terror and Consent as a Manichean devil: the darkness produced by the light. Human rights will thus always produce human wrongs.

 

The important point here however lies elsewhere. Bobbitt’s book is not a disinterested academic study: it is full of words of power. He asserts that the UN must become a  “claviger and steward”. That is a club and a guardian, not a (Achilles) shield to stand behind. The point at which this weapon is wielded is the crucial one. Bobbitt has doubts about the results of existing US policies, and “lawless behaviour in its penal colonies”.  But note the word, “pre-empt.” Both candidates for the US presidential elections have taken Bobbit’s ideas seriously. Both equivocate on exactly what this term means. Does it signify yet more armed interventions, notably to pre-empt Iranian development of weapons of mass destruction? Does it imply anything about the crisis unfolding in Pakistan, where Islamicist groups swarm and terrorist atrocities have reached a new peak?

 

Perhaps it is the latter difficulty that indicates just how shallow Bobbitt can be. He fails to offer any indication of Pakistan; the hurricane-eye of modern Jihadism can repair its nation. The problems there are so deep, from the religious exclusive nature of the state, its military-as-ruling-class, to its economic failures, that to talk of ‘terrorism’ in general without delving into this is frankly ridiculous.

 

Ahmed Rashid’s Descent into Chaos. (2008) is a searing commentary on the nature of the ‘war on terrorism’. He – from a liberal position informed by human rights  – describes how the US began waging the war on terrorism by rejecting the Geneva Convention, “denying justice at home, undermining the U.S. Constitution, and then pressuring its allies to do the same set in motion a devastating denial of civilised instincts. America’s example had the most impact in Afghanistan, where no legal system existed; in Pakistan, ruled by a military dictatorship; and in central Asia, where the world’s most repressive dictatorships flourished. By following America’s lead in promoting or condoning disappearances, torture, and secret jails, these countries found their path to democracy and their struggle against Islamic extremism set back by decades.”(P 293) So much then for the market-state’s (the US Template at any rate) ability to uphold the rule of universal law and supersede obsolete doctrines of sovereignty. 

 

It is not only the principles of democratic Constitutions and Treaties that are disregarded, or people’s most basic rights violated. The legacy is one of overwhelming social disaster, “The enormous cost of these wars has crippled the Untied States and world economies, the military deployments have shattered the U.S. and British armies, and the death and destruction have bled civilian populations and worsened the humanitarian crisis for neighbouring countries.”(P 401)

 

If this is the legacy of pre-emption and humanitarian intervention is it any wonder than many people are hostile to both of them?  And worry about any future American leader who clings to these doctrines? If Bobbitt leaves us with anything it is that a serious human rights left should have no truck with the wanton use of power in disregard of basic principles. A left that took such values seriously would be fighting the terrorism of Islamicist Jihadism by building amongst these populations to fight oppression and exploitation, to build real democracy. Support the world’s superpowers, in the guise of humanitarian interventions, or the removal of tyrants such as Saddam. This position is visibly weakening even amongst those ‘muscular liberals’ who saw this, with all their reservations, as at least a step in the right direction. 

 

Charlie Hebdo.

 Charlie Hebdo should be Veiled!

The Danish Mohammed cartoons – unpublished by an allegedly ‘Islamophobic’ British media – were reprinted in France by the weekly satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. With many of France’s finest radical cartoonists contributing their own designs, notably the front page. That,  by leftist Cabu,  had Mohammed saying, “C’est dur d’être aimé par des cons” (it’s hard being loved by prats). Such  is now the title of a just released documentary on the trial of Charlie Hebdo that resulted. The charges were brought by the Conseil Francais du Culte Musulman, In contrast to the British liberal and left’s pandering to religious community leaders, in France almost the entire left, from liberals to Marxists, backed Charlie’s freedom of expression. I haven’t seen the film, though no doubt there will be ways through the Web to get hold of it.  

 

Unfortunately my anticipated pleasure is already spoilt by the ructions of the present Chief Editor of Charlie, Philippe Val. This man does a frequent early morning ‘thought for the day’ (chronique) on France Inter, the most-listened to French Public radio station. Now it is well-known that self-styled ‘social democrat’ Val is a ferocious ‘anti-totalitarian’ and backer of humanitarian interventions left-right-and-centre and whether-they-like-it-or-not. He showed his own commitment to absolute free-speech by recently sacking much-loved cartoonist Siné (here) amid allegations (hotly disputed) of anti-semitism (more).

 

This morning Val was in full-throttle: mud-slinging at the French Socialists for voting against continuing to send French troops to assist with the occupation of Afghanistan. Peppering his rant with laboured ‘satirical’ remarks, with a simpering France-Inter type sniggering in the background, he declared it was Western Troops or the Taliban.  No mention of the corrupt, piously Islamic, violent, torturing, forces clustering around the Kabul regime, the attrocities of the occupying forces, or indeed the failure of the occupation to achieve a secular democracy. That much of the inability to deal with the Taliban stems from a long-standing complicity of the US with the Pakistan army and its intelligence services is beyond question. So, a result, rather than unbending support for the the Carrying On Up the Kyber we are faced with plenty of doubts. The Left in the French National Assembly is therefore justified in seeking alternative ways to encourage nation building and liberty in Afghanistan.

Charlie: good cartoonists, shame about the Editor.

Sarkozy Nous Voilà!

 

This fantastic satire, with acid sarcasm, sends shivers down yer spine. It is to remind us what the real class enemy is like.

Here Sarkozy takes the place of Pétain, following the famous song Maréchal, nous voilà!! It was an anthem of the Vichy regime. The fascist French daily Présent takes its name from a line in this chant.

 

The music was stolen from Casimir Oberfeld who was murdered in Auswitch – because he was Jewish.

Review: Strange Fruit Indeed.

Strange Fruit. Why Both Sides are Wrong in the Race Debate. Kenan Malik Oneworld 2008.

 

Kenan Malik has a mixed reputation. He is best known for his criticisms of race ‘realism’ (or bluntly – racism), conventional multiculturalism, and his defence of the scientific traditions of the Enlightenment against cultural relativism. Whatever their stand on this, to some on the left he may as well have scarlet letters branded on his breast reading Living Marxism. To others however, who have long developed a parallel critical stand on these issues, his writings are stimulating and always worth reading. Though, sometimes, he can seriously irritate.

 

Proving he has not lost the capacity to annoy, Strange Fruit begins with a contestable claim. That, “racial talk today is as likely to come out of the mouths of liberal antiracists as of reactionary racial scientists. The affirmation of difference, which once was at the heart of racial science, has become a key plank of the anti-racist outlook.”(P 5) While ‘difference’ remains a popular principle amongst a certain kind of leftist (public employees and academics), and the idea that people should replace fear of the Other with Respect, is still a liberal hobby-horse, it seems that its high-water mark has passed. Equality and rationality are coming back into fashion. Malik’s book therefore raises reservations, above all on the claim that “Antiracism has become an irrational, anti-scientific philosophy”. (P 6) A growing number of anti-racists are, as some have long been, opposed to precisely the relativist and romantic ideas of race and culture that Malik so forcefully attacks. 

 

The core of Strange Fruit is its discussion of the role of genetics of race-thinking. Classic old style racism has continued in the belief that our genes show profound differences in humans, and there are still psuedo-scientific studies claiming differences of intelligence. He demolishes these (largely socio-biological) theories  by a clear overview of the Human Genome project, and other elements such as discoveries about the distribution (mixed everywhere) of blood groups. Clearly race is not a scientific category in any real sense, it is a cultural one. Unfortunately as Malik demonstrates for many (the givers of courses in ‘diversity’ are a notorious case) identity is seen as a “genetic heritage, inextricably linking race, culture and belonging.”(P 63) The world is divided into distinct blocks of different human kinds, Diversity against Unity.

 

Where does this come from? Why pit these against each other? One source is a would-be radical assault on ‘rationality’ and ‘Euro-centeredness’. The notion that science and rationality are bureaucratic monsters (Foucault’s power-making-truth machine) has played a part. That there is something particularly obnoxious in European civilisation that smothers other societies.  That, in particular, the Enlightenment annihilated the cultural worth of non-Europeans. That it denied any merit to Non-European thought, making its science the sole criterion of knowledge.  That it was racist. Even (to the kind of theorist who finds even Cloud Cuckoo Land a bit too mundane) that it is ultimately linked to the Holocaust.

 

Malik tackles the assertion that the Enlightenment is to blame for racialism. Obviously real race-ideology derives from its opponents: the Counter-Enlightenment (Gobineau to cite but one). He points out that its universalist principles offered ‘civilisation’ even to those from cultures which were at present deemed (from their 18^thcentury vantage point) as primitive or barbarian. Equal worth and capacity were the essence of the human condition, only circumstances marred them. He divides the Enlightenment (following Jonathan Israel), rather schematically into radicals and conservatives “whether reason reigned supreme in human affairs, as the radicals insisted, or whether reason had to be limited by faith and tradition, the mainstream view.” (P 88) Malik puts Kant in the latter category, even though the author of What is Enlightenment? answered his own question as: it meant above all the use of your own reason with no deference to authority. Diderot, hard to classify, has a cautious strain but was very anti-colonialist. And so it goes..

 

His claim that “toleration, personal freedom, democracy, racial equality, sexual emancipation and the universal right to knowledge” comes from the Radical Enlightenment. (P 89) equally needs some needs qualifications. These would bring him down from the world of ideas to that of politics, supremely those of the French Revolution. There he would have been able to explore the beginnings of social institutions that put these into practice, the barriers faced by the radicals, their heroism and their shameful defeat. He would consider the brilliant Olympe de Gouges, the feminist pioneer, guillotined for her pains, the paradoxes of the anti-Slavery founder of the Société des Amis des Noirs, Abbé Grégoire (Anti-racist but anti-regional French languages), and the philosophe turned politician, Condorcet.  This might have shaped the direction of Strange Fruit away from the ideological heavens, and hells,  to the politics which play the decisive role in the present power of multiculturalism (from a state desire to incorporate ethnic groups to the interests of self-appointed ‘community leaders’). Not to mention the occasions when politicians play the ‘race card’.

 

There is a great deal of interest in Malik’s outline of how UNESCO’s attempt to confront racism after the Second World War, and cultural anthropologists wish to reject assumptions of Western superiority ended up approaching a relativism so pure it cannot even stand for basic scientific rationality. Enter ‘science’ of every kind of magic and alternative gibberish. Authenticity (a modern invention) leads to worshiping one’s (race-cultural) roots. The volkish notion of culture at its heart lent support for the notorious case of human remains, ‘Kennewick Man’ in the US. Discovered in Washington State these ancient bones, of enormous antiquity,  appear to be of no known human group, but were claimed by the local Native Americans as their own and tried to prevent scientific research on their origin.  In this case even the dead are instructed that they had “to bear a particular culture.”(P 177)

 

Another jump and we find Mailk baldly claiming that that the New Left adopted similar ideas, dropping the working class for new agencies in splintered cultural identities, each fighting its own oppressions. This may be true for some of the wilder forms of the US left, and remains a truism amongst the dying embers of post-modernism and such sects as the British Socialist Action (Ken Livingstone’s bag-people). But Malik would here again have benefited from having a wider political background than British groupuscules: these opinions are, and have always been, ultra-minority amongst most of the European left which has always tried to unite class movements and those of the oppressed (objectively oppressed that is, not by their ‘identity’ being thwarted). Cultural assertions have an importance nevertheless. Languages, like species, should be allowed to flourish and die without being suppressed or starved of oxygen. There is no contradiction between supporting, say, regional languages, which bear a culture that, to cite but literature and poetry which is unique, and standing for universal rights (equality before the law). The universalistic argument was made effectively long ago (by Saint Augustine in On Christian Doctrine) that while some judgements and tastes are properly relative (dress, family arrangements) some maxims are without exception. Augustine sharply cited the key test of the exceptions’ rule, “Treat others as you would be treated yourself.” Secularism which Malik unfortunately does not discuss, could be said to be an extended working out of this basic principle. Which itself deserves discussing within the broader context of a Marxist approach to ‘identity’ (what of nationality by the way? Malik barely mentions this) that links it to class and political forms, hey, let’s just call them states.

 

Malik only touches on Marxism in the vaguest terms, referring to its stand on human liberation, opposition to class exploitation, and positive attitude towards reason. But he does call for a return to the fight  for, ”humanism and reason.”(P 288)

 

 

Many of us have never abandoned it.

 

 

 

Parti de Gauche: tous ensemble dans le front de gauche pour changer d’Europe!

All Together in the Left Front to Change Europe!

Europe is in upheaval, with strikes, demonstrations and popular discontent spreading – the factory occupation in  Ireland’s by Waterford Glass workers is the latest flash point.  

Is there a European political response? In France the new Parti de Gauche (left Party), initiated last November,  held its first Conference over the weekend. It was principally created by Parti Socialiste left-wingers,  Senator  Jean-Luc Mélenchonet the Deputy (MP) Marc Dolez. They resigned from the PS on the eve of its national conference, last November, declaring that the Socialists were headed towards a dead-end right-wing future. There inspiration is the German Die Linke: a left party, backing radical reforms, anti-capitalism, ecology and feminism, within a democratic republican framework. They have drawn strongly on opposition to the neo-liberal cast of European Union legislation, and were opposed to the proposed Constitutional Treaty, and, the (substituted) Lisbon Treaty. Both are considered part of  the free-market ideology and practice they stand against. This platform had resonance. In the following weeks other significant Socialist figures, such as Deputy Jacques Dessangre and the Senator François Autin,as well as local councillors and members of left republican organisations,  joined them.  Further support has come from intellectuals and a raft of trade unionists. Behind is the experience on much of the left of working together during the Referendum on the European Constitutional Treaty.

At the Limeil-Brévannes (Val-de-Marne)Congress 500 delegates listened to speech’s decalring that, with mounting crises and unrest, “L’heure est à la riposte” (The time has come to Fight Back).  The party claims 4,000 members (organised in 250 committees). Naturally the unfolding social and economic crisis in Europe formed the background to the meeting.  The Parti de Gauche declared that, faced with the burgeoning slump, “C’est la responsabilité des partis de gauche disponibles pour rompre avec les logiques capitalistes qui ont si lourdement faillies.” (it’s the responsibility of the left parties who are ready to break with failing capitalist logic.). Their answer? To fight by both popular mobilisation and by the ballot box. To this end they propose a common Front, “Il s’adresse à toutes les forces qui refusent le traité de Lisbonne, combattent pour une autre Europe sociale, démocratique, écologique et porteuse de paix..” (it is a call to all the forces opposed to Lisbon treaty, and who fight for another Europe, social, ecologists and promoting peace..) . The New Party notes that, Les élections européennes de juin prochain nous donnent l’occasion de changer la donne.”  (With the June European elections we have the possibility to change the political landscape – I clarify the meaning).

Can the French non-PS left work together? There was  a joint declaration on Thursday’s general strike (which the NPA claims they initiated). What of the European contest? The PG wants to present a list of all those on the left who oppose the Lisbon agreements (which endorsed the rules which have created the social dumping UK workers are protesting against). A strong argument in favour, which Mélenchon cites, is that an opinion poll indicates that if a left front, from the Parti Communiste Français, Lutte Ouvrière,  Mélenchon’s Party to the Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste stood in the European Elections it could get up to 14,5% of the vote.  With the PCF on board he asks if Olivier Besancenot will assume his responsibilities and make this alliance. The LCR postie is  the leader of a party that’s  ”no longer a groupuscule” (here). Will the NPA agree with his proposal at its own founding Congress the coming weekend? The LCR aligned unions in SUD seem generally favourable. Christian Picquet of the  LCR minority has said that “there is no reason at bottom to refuse this.” (here)

We shall see.

Tarnac Affair: Review of L’insurrection qui Vient.

Coming Near You Soon?

The Tarnac Affair rumbles on (Here - in English). At recent French demonstrations in support of the accused, in particular for the, still incarcerated, Julien Coupat,  there were arrests. (Here). Clearly those marching in support of people facing the Courts are, rightly, most concerned about a miscarriage of justice. One should recall the seriousness of the charge:  sabotage of the French railway system, something potentially murderous. Questions about its truth are, then, of prime importance.

Nevertheless it’s worth looking at the ideas which are said to have inspired the group marshalled before Justice  by the French police. Their origins lie in writings in  the ‘post-situationist’ review Tiqqun (more here and here). As is the way with such reviews they appeal to small groups of the interested -  whatever replaced the avant-guarde, and  groupuscles of anarchist-autonomist origin. The same applied to other material produced by the anarchists-autonomists  now under investigation. It  took the affair of the Tarnac Nine to bring L’insurrection qui vient to a wider audience. Given the rising European unrest, it may reach even more readers. So, does their concept of a “coming uprising” have much to tell us? These  are some – critical – reflections.

Review: L’Insurrection qui vient.  Le comité Invisible. © La fabrique éditions, 2007

 

To the French Police and (some) Magistrates the country is menaced by the avatars of the Bande à Bonnot. These libertarian, individualist, anarchists, carried out the first motorised hold-up in France (1911), in the Rue Ordener, Montmartre. Some in the modern equivalent of the Sûreté have dreamt up a similar threat from anarchists. They are echoed by right-wing politicians. The President of Sarkozy’s Parliamentary group, François Copé calls the extreme left (from anars to the Nouveau Parti anti-Capitaliste) an “abcès idéologique” for the left as a whole. Today’s enemies of the State, the Tarnac accused,  are accused of sabotaging rail tracks.  For their part those accused in the affaire Tarnac (see above), have little time for any elected left, or conventional politics. Their central concerns lie elsewhere. The authors of L’insurrection qui vient, a certain Comité Invisible – which included Julien Coupat – denounce, as a major target ‘le quadrillage policier’ (omnipresent police control) of the country. In doing so they seem to have run up against something that goes back even further than the pre-Great War anti-anarchist Bloodhounds: the counterparts of Balzac’s early 19th century Peyrade and Corentin (Splendeurs et misères des courtisans). That is the state’s henchmen, with a  flair for conspiracies. Such a secretive arm of the Sarkozy règime does exist: paranoiac, manipulative and heavy-handed. It really seems to have got it in for the Tarnac accused.    

 

The text at hand is probably the most lucid up-to-date summary in French of what is often called ‘Autonomism’. Seven sections are headed, circles, a title of no doubt profound significance that nevertheless escapes me (Dante had nine circles of Hell).  It begins with customary French left grandiloquence that “ Le futur n’a plus d’avenir”. Or no future. Well, well. An equally strident and gratingly wrong-headed celebration of the 2005 riots in the French banlieues follows. “L’incendie de novembre 2005 n’en finit plus de projeter son ombre sur toutes les consciences. Ces premiers feux de joie sont le baptême d’une décennie pleine de promesses.” (the conflagration of November 2005 hasn’t stopped projecting a shadow on everyone’s conscience. These first celebratory bonfires baptized a decade full of promise). Claiming that those arrested came from all social and ethnic groups, they assert that only a hatred of existing society united them. We should, they assert, revel in the destructive nature of these disturbances, identify with the ‘dangerous classes’ and ‘bandits’ and their violent rejection of the existing order, their violence indeed tout court. With an unpleasant sneer, teachers who regretted that their schools were burned down are described as having “pleurnicher” (snivelled) about it all.

 

With this kind of prose, well known to aficionados of the French ultra-left, we know where we are going. Strikingly it leads us back to some ideas popular amongst anarchists during the Bande à Bonnot epoch. A meme transmitted across the generations? There’s a clarification of the difference between a capitalist-spectacular ’I am What I am’, and real freedom. So, «Devenir autonome», cela pourrait vouloir dire, aussi bien: apprendre à se battre dans la rue, à s’accaparer des maisons vides, à ne pas travailler, à s’aimer follement et à voler dans les magasins.” (becoming autonomous, that means, as much: learn to fight in the street, take over empty houses, not working, loving each other madly, and stealing from shops). Action should not concentrate on the wage-labour capital sphere, but more widely in “insoumission” (insubordination),“Nous avons la totalité de l’espace social pour nous trouver. Nous avons l’hostilité à cette  civilization pour tracer des solidarités et des fronts à l’échelle mondiale.” (we have the totality of social space to find ourselves.  We have the hostility of this civilization to lay down the path of solidarity and ‘fronts’ on a world scale – blocs of those in rebellion). So the marginal, the eternally stroppy, the true individual, in her own band of mates,  is the Figure of Autonomy. With this language in full flow, no-one will be surprised to find written that, “L’État français est la trame même des subjectivités françaises, l’aspect qu’a pris la multiséculaire castration de ses sujets.” (The French state is the framework of all French individual subjectivity, the aspect which has for centuries castrated its subjects – a use of the word castrate which one imagines would not occur to an Anglophone leftist, I note). Nor is it long before the claim that, “Toutes les organisations qui prétendent contester l’ordre présent ont elles-mêmes, en plus fantoche, la forme, les moeurs et le langage d’États  miniatures.” (all political organisations that claim to fight the existing order have themselves, in a puppet-show form, the customs, and the language of miniature states) is reeled out. That’s a few leftist lives wasted, hein? What fools we labour movement and left political party activists are. What fools.

 

There is reference to Capital, its transformations, its domination and integration of human tissue, and the sphere of value which now “embrasserait toutes les qualités des êtres” (which embraces every quality of human beings). Rather sub-Negri, Hardy and Virno I would suggest (on Tendance Coatesy’s analysis of these authors see here). As for work itself, with automation and information sciences, many “ travailleurs sont devenus superflus.” (Workers have become superfluous). This leaves capital’s gigantic machine pumping out profits while excluding large sections of the masses. Those inside are dedicated to ‘personal development’ shaping themselves for Capital’s needs; those outside are in precarious, typicallyAgency work, or in the ‘slave’ sectors of domestic employment, even prostitution, in sum:  ‘personal services’. Preferring not to have anything to do with the State, Politics and Capital marks off all the autonomist tradition and so we find it here. Reference to a Situationist-type social spectacle, (that vamps our energy) are accompanied with a Bartleby refusal to work. An eagerness perhaps to smoke dope.  As well as backing for wildcat strikes (grèves sauvages) – unions naturally are lieutenants of Capital. For good measure they also throw in some stuff about the environmental catastrophes (Hurricane Katrina), and ecology being appropriated by the system. As a small mercy there is none of the usual anarchist drivel about animal liberation. The  alternative? A dose of playfulness. Communes, self-organized, outside the circuits of power and production, with an autonomy, a life in liberated zones, living off the black economy, even fraud; whatever resources can be found, and shared.

 

So, they ignore the potential positive side of the Labour movement and the left. Equally the massive anti-revolutionary bloc in France, la Droite, (which managed rather effectively to get Sarkozy elected I observe) is little more than an obscuring fog over the domination of Capital. The central enemy is the Police. Since resistance can come from nearly anywhere (though especially the poorer urban zones), why bother with even this sketchy economic and class analysis? Nobody would have any idea from this text that a massive fianncial crisis (signaled in advance by people such as Larry Elliot in the UK and plenty of writers in France’s Le Monde Diplomatique), was looming and would cause popular unrest across Europe – there is no economics here to speak of. Or investigation into the political economy of neo-liberalism. All is rolled down to the – in their opinion – central conflict between the police and the ‘dangerous classes’. As for these potential supporters: it’s a commonplace that autonomists have a crippling inability to relate to the popular masses. Except no doubt those who have ‘Mort aux vaches’ (Death to the Pigs) tattooed on their arms. Here the rhetoric smothers and ignores the hostility of the majority of the inhabitants of the Cités (Council estates) to the violence that unfolded in their areas during the Banlieue revolts, and which hurt them more than anyone else. No doubt all this goes down well in their proto-Communes – though not possibly so swimingly when they dine with their parents and grandparents on Sunday, as a majority of the French ultra-left, for all their radicalism (famillies je vous hais)  tend to do.

 

As the L’Insurrection qui vient continues in this vein one wonders what all the fuss is about. Perhaps some clues lie in the analysis of the great metropolises. These are no longer anything but points in a network of flows, and “La métropole est le terrain d’un incessant conflit de basse intensité” (the metropolis is the site of a continual low-intensity confect). Hah! Something for the experts in terrorism and counter-insurgency to grasp. They aim furthermore to halt the urban perpetuum mobile. Stopping its incessant movement can proceed by blocking production, and the circulation of goods. “les autoroutes sont des maillons de la chaîne de production dématérialisée” (motorways are the links in the chain of dematerialized production) – leaving aside the fact that Negri, Hardt and Virno see this originating in a rather more ethereal dimension (immaterial production in fact), we can see why keen coppers’ ears prick up. Isn’t the French Railway network, the SCNCF another essential link? Weren’t the accusations that led to the Tarnac all about breaking this circuit – by sabotage no less? The description of Paris as not a centre of power to be ‘captured’ but the “cible de razzia, comme pur terrain de pillage et ravage” (target of raids, a place to loot and wreak havoc in) touches some raw nerves. These after all are the chaps whose profession is to protect the Capital from such attacks. The rozzers must have also felt rather, well, personally, affected by the demand to “Libérer le territoire de l’occupation policière” (free the country from Police occupation). To say the least.

 

Unfortunately for anyone drawing neat conclusions from  L’Insurrection qui vient  tops its ‘circles’ by some further dense paragraphs, strongly opposing a strategy of armed struggle. Naturally they indulge in some waffle about all uprisings being armed. But, given that power is not truly centralised and autonomists have no wish to build a ‘counter-state’, even a  ‘dual power’, they declare that, “la perspective d’une guérilla urbaine à l’irakienne, qui s’enliserait sans possibilité d’offensive, est plus à craindre qu’à désirer. La militarisation de la guerre civile, c’est l’échec de l’insurrection.” (the prospect of urban guerrilla warfare, Iraqian style, bogged down, without any possibility of going onto the attack, is more to fear than to wish, it’s a setback for the insurrection). The militarisationof civil war is a failure for the insurrection itself). All rather mealy-mouthed – the Islamists in Iraq are murdering reactionaries whom one would not even bother considering in a serious left perspective. But clear on the criticism of classic, RAF style, terrorism. In case even Inspector Plod doesn’t get the meaning of this they refer to the libertarian view that the Russian Revolution was set back precisely at this point. He might also reflect on the claim that new oppositions will emerge, in the wastelands of the banlieue, and that one day, all his fruits of his society will be “grandement ruinée” (ruined completely) and that “cette effroyable concrétion du pouvoir qu’est la capitale, “(Capital’s terrible concentration of power) will fall. Or not.

 

So, a text whose politics boils down to a celebration of revolt, and (in real terms) a kind of late ‘sixties/early ‘seventies ‘alternative society’, filled with a great deal of lyricism, romanticism about the 2005 riots (as if the rioters were incarnations of Victor Hugo’s Gavroche) that makes some good, if unoriginal, points, about the nature of the social and institutional dislocations underway, rooted in the purest autonomist ideology – that’s to say, perpetual grandstanding – is the basis for a new version of Action Directe. Maybe. But I think not. Unfortunately, to continue the reference to Les Misérables, the presumed authors have a pack of would-be Javerts yapping at their heels.

 

 

A Real Marxist, Georges Labica, Passes Away.

Georges Labica: Real Critical Marxism.

Georges Labica (1930 – 2009), one of France’s most important independent Marxist writers and theorists, passed away on the 12th of February (See: here). During an extremely productive life (bibliography here) he wrote important studies of Marxist theory, from editing the Dictionnaire Critique du Marxisme (1982, 1984, 1989), to short accessible works, such as Le marxisme-léninisme, Eléments pour une critique (1984). He worked with,  amongst many others, the theoretical review, Marx Actuel and  L’Utopie Critique (homages here) . Politically engaged throughout his life Labica-operated with the non-establishment left, notably self-management political organisations, such as the Alternatifs. His last published work, Théorie de la violence (2007) attempted to explore the conditions of legitimate violence (as opposed to ‘substitutions’) in the South, and the synthesis of democracy and Marxism (Review)

Georges Labica had a long engagement with the left. A member of the Parti Communiste Français from the 1950s to 1981, he was was conspicuous for his anti-colonial activism (from his time teaching in French Algeria),  and was prominent enough to be threatened by the OAS.  Academically his research continued in the line of Louis Althusser, though he never adhered to the Althussarian ‘school’. After leaving the PCF (as it drifted aimlessly in the first blush of Mitterrand’s Presidency)  Labica continued to describe himself as a Communist (in the democratic Marxist tradition). He produced critical works on Marxism-Leninism, from a Marxist prospective. In general he researched into the fundamental problems of Marxist theory and practice, producing a string of studies as a result. Without ever creating a grand  ’Theory’, in the vein of Foucault, Negri or Guatteri, Labica’s importance lay in sustaining the independent critical spirit on the left. His writings have influenced generations of socialists and Marxists. Above all he kept alive the kind of First International democray of Marx himself.

Largely unknown to the left in the English speaking world (where the academic left tends to live cloistered from the kind of activism Labica represented), he was recognised by the German, Spanish and Italian ones, to cite but a few.

Labica ‘s death is a great loss.

I need hardly add that I have been influenced by Labica – or that I was once due to meet him at a TMR meeting. But he was delayed at his work. 

Waiting for the Etonians: Review of Nick Cohen’s Latest Book.

 

Eton Spats.

 

REVIEW: WAITING FOR THE ETONIANS. NICK COHEN. Fourth Estate. 2009.

 

Nick Cohen is dismayed. Professionally. He rants, but is terribly reasonable. He finds little reasonableness in the world he looks on. There lie the ruins of popular capitalism. This gives Cohen but small pleasure. He had pointed to the complacency of the Labour governments of Blair and Brown, which inflated the housing and financial bubble. Its policies funded by a deal with Capital, or bluntly, by “prostituting itself” to the City. Cohen had seen that “The spivery of the City afflicted the political left as severely as its blind optimism.”(P 26) He had uncovered subsidised tax breaks for private equity barons, foreign billionaires and British companies with boltholes in tax havens. (P 345) In short, had we read his columns, we would have learnt the truth. This collection of articles bears witness. Not to praise folly, but to condemn it.

 

Nobody listened. Now he listens himself. It’s time to admit the free-market reformist wing’s merits: Labour’s public investments and the consumer boom together fostered a degree of modest personal happiness. Yet (see above) these conditions are evaporating, as the sources in expanding finance dry out. What has the Cabinet, the Third Way, or whatever they call it now (other than save your own skin), to offer? Cohen has more to say. Brown manages some ‘social democratic’ measures – taking the helm of the banking system. Will he go further? Where to? Cohen can only note that the left, from Government to the wilder shores of Trotskyism, has nothing to offer. Nothing whatsoever.

 

The author of What’s Left? (2007) is something of a cult figure on the British left. Admired for his capacity to roar, bellow indeed, though some, who do not measure up to his standards of decency, do not always relish his assertions about the left’s history and ideology. Sample, no doubt weighed on a heavily broken scale, “Because there is no coherent left-wing political programme, anyone can affect a leftist posture, just as anyone can walk into a shop.”(P 188) Ouch!

 

Cohen’s collection of journalism shows him generally in fine fettle. Sharp digs at once fashionable ideas from the ‘therapy culture’, and personal growth (though done better by the late Christopher Lasch in The Culture of Narcissism 1979), go down well amongst bitter and twisted leftists. So does attacking the culture industries’ treatment of “underprivileged whites” with “suspicion and condescension” living in a “parasites paradise, scrounging of the cozened middle classes” continues unabated. We lack, he rightly says, someone with the moral depth of Dickens to stir opinion about the poverty of millions. Or, I add, a Balzac to rip into the speculators and financiers.

 

The long-term trend, partly imported from America, for the liberal left to prioritise ‘equality of opportunity’ through promoting people’s identities, is rightly lambasted. Diversity often means flattering diverse prejudices, “..it has become racist to oppose sexists, homophobes and fascist from other cultures.”(P 191) There is an “intolerance of the intolerable inculcated by postmodernism, and the doubts about democracy in the liberal mainstream.”(P 192) Real equality, and better living conditions, are not achieved through a race with plenty of losers, endless ‘monitoring’, and promoting ‘diversity; while failing to improve the lot of all. Again, Robert Hughes’ Culture of Complaint (1993) has been there before. But there’s nothing wrong is rattling out the good old tunes.

 

Nick Cohen is famously opposed to appeasement of religious reaction, above all Islamism. He writes that, “When society decides that people’s religion, rather than their class or gender, is the cultural fact that matters, power inevitably passes to religious fanatics who believe religion justifies any crime.”(P 144) He appears to think that, when “confronted with ultra-reactionary movements and dictatorial regimes, liberals recommended surrender.”(P 31) Recent cases include Iraqi Baathism, and, above all, Islamist movements and regimes. All partly right. There is a kind of appeasement, exemplified in George Galloway that deserves Cohen’s loathing. Self-righteous followers on this path, can scream all they like about Cohen’s ‘apologies for liberal murder’ (he doesn’t make any): they are wrong.

 

Yet the basic analysis demands a challenge. Such surrenders are not principally due, as he elsewhere asserts, to ‘post-modernist relativism’. Galloway and those of that kidney have transferred their loyalty to the Revolution to ‘anti-imperialist’ Islamism, as in poor old Tariq Ali who thinks the Taliban are a national liberation movement, or those who consider the ultra-right-wing Hamas ‘anti-imperialist’ (for being against Israel). Livingstone is largely trawling for City Boss lieutenants.  But with others, who seek to ‘understand’ Islamism, the motives are more mixed.  Cohen’s definition of liberal tends to be an American not British one. That is a mixture of faith in social improvement, wishful thinking, transcendentalist optimism (the living experience of the Soul), and (in modern times) the betterment of a kaleidoscope of worthy oppressed groups. It is this kind of ‘trying to be fair to everyone’ liberal tolerance (deeper rooted that the transient fashion of postmodernism) which is at fault here.

 

 

It would be better to state that by definition no believer in liberty would indulge in excuses or (in the case of Respect and Ken Livingstone) alliances with reactionary religious-political groups. Nor would they, for example, praise, as Cohen’s friend Bernard Henry Lévy did, for the Afghan warlord and (non-Taliban) Islamist, Commander Massoud (here, here). What is a liberal anyway?  Mill’s definition of liberty included the freedom to think and write as one wants, freedom to tastes and pursuits, regardless of ‘moral’ rules (provided they are ‘self-regarding’ and cause no harm to others), and the freedom of assembly. Exit the Sharia and any Autocracy. For Marxists and socialists the choice is simpler: Islamicism and the dictatorships Cohen cites are vehicles of oppression. The former of the pious Moslem bourgeoisie; the latter of various hybrids of state kleptocracy and robber capitalism. 

 

 

Now that a “battered public seemed willing to embrace its old ruling class with something approaching relief.”(P 32) – the Etonians (aka David Cameron’s crew) – is there really no left in the offing? Brown’s Cabinet barely keeps its head above water. The anti-globalisation movement had little concrete to say, and its Social Forum wing has become (in the UK) the haunt of harmless cranks. The Green Party has plans to extract sunbeams from cucumbers.  Respect and the SWP are, well Respect and the SWP.

 

But there is a left that it emerging. It is one the spans the distance between radical social democracy, Compass, the unions, the small independent socialist publications, such as Labour Left Briefing, Chartist, and many others on the democratic socialist left, a gamut of groups, feminist, gay, anti-racist, green, and which extends to many on the ‘far left’ who are fiercely democratic. Ideas are now being developed, on welfare, public ownership and working conditions, that connect with the legacy of the socialist and labour movement. A left that never had any time for tyrants and dictatorships of whatever ilk, Stalinist, Nationalist, or Religious.  Or so I think – because I come from this movement. As do many. It’s a shame that other than offering some warmed over diatribes, and a few real insights on class and culture, wrapped in well-written prose, that Nick Cohen doesn’t seriously engage with us. Perhaps the East Wind has frozen his frowning face.

 

 

 

 

Welfare Reform Therapy: There’s a Lot of Ruin in the Notion.

Therapy for the Workless.

The Observer today reports that a keystone of its Welfare ‘Reform’ programme is flawed. Well, a bit more. A tissue of lies and cover-ups for the usual crew of useless private companies touting for business on the backs of the less fortunate, (end of clause) has come to light. In the sensitive area of incapacity claimants no less.

 A report marked “restricted” revealed how the private companies placed just 6% of incapacity benefit claimants on their books into work, rather than the 26% they had claimed would be possible when they bid for contracts. This compared to 14% achieved by state job centres during the same period. The report described the performance of the private contractors as “not satisfactory”.

Now unbiased commentators like Tendance Coatesy could have foretold this. We have heard a slew of heart-rending cases of people harassed, forced into unsuitable ‘schemes’, and the usual range of personal tales of great misery. The fact is that getting people with physical and mental difficulties into jobs is no simple task. It’s certainly not aided by money-grubbers, of whatever well-turned out stripe.

Not that all, it must be said, the problems in the to-be-farmed off benefits system are the  fault of the way existing private contractors operate. Job Centres themselves can be pretty threatening places, and not just for work-shy gobby Marxist dossers like our good selves. Just to give one case: they are already charged with funnelling people into the notorious ‘New Deal’ programme. Willy-nilly. This can be calmly described as an ‘open prison’ and a make-dosh opportunity for a variety of dodgy ‘trainers’ and ‘placement providers’ (amid a few good eggs that is). Apart from anything else the Dole queues have got too large for them to deal with effectively. Sign on, and meet the crowds. Due to multiply. Hell knows what it’ll be like when they roll out the full workfare boot-camp call-up. Tasar manufactuers will make a killing.

Yet help is at hand. Damp down the protests lads and ladettes. The same Observer leads with this encouraging news. “Victims of the recession to get therapy. State aid planned to fight job anxiety.”

Fears of a depression and an anxiety epidemic, caused by the recession, are forcing the government to offer psychological help to millions of people facing unemployment, debt and relationship breakdown. Sufferers will be referred to psychotherapists for expert counselling via an advice network linking Jobcentres, doctors’ surgeries and a new NHS Direct hotline.

Under the plan, which will involve training 3,600 more therapists and hundreds more specialist nurses, psychotherapy centres will be established in every primary care trust by the end of next year.

Further legislation, exclusively leaked to Tendance Coatesy, reveals plans to combine the scheme with the New Deal/Workfare. To adapt to the changing patterns of market positioning and reskilling, the unemployed will be given ‘talking cures’ to resolve their maladjustment issues. ‘Fitting in’ will be a quality programme individually tailored and incorporates health and safety legislation. In line with existing rules those failing to comply with the assessment/compliance criteria will be ‘exited‘.

International Women’s Day: Iranian Activists.

 Iranian Women Activists In London.

International Women’s Day. Just some interesting photos and reports from the Iranian left women’s movement all over the world (largely Worker Communist Party). In Battaile Socialiste.

 

Tendance Coatesy cannot stress enough how important it is to back the Hands off the People of Iran’s Campaigns, from opposing sanctions (that would bolster the Clerical Regime), opposing a US-led military attack (if it gets back in the picture), to supporting the democratic secular opposition, from trades unionists to women’s and LGBT rights.

 

Here and here (both 2007) are some further reasons why. We await up-to-date reports of what happened yesterday.

French Radical Left: Strong but Disunited for European Elections.

NPA: Only a United Front From Below.

According to the opinon pollers, Ifop, the PCF-PG (Left Front) has  4% voting intentions, against 9% for the NPA (Olivier Besancenot)  and 3% for Lutte ouvrière. This totals 16% for the combined radical left score, against 8,6%  2004 results (when neither the NGA’s forerunner, the LCR, nor LO got seats). 

Olivier Besancenot, generally thought to play a major part in his party’s good image,  is on a NPA list, but not far enough up to be in sight of any position to win a seat at Brussels. One would attribute this decision to a desire to stay close to the terrain of day-to-day politics. I must say that I warm to Olivier, and the fact that he lives a couple of bus stops away from where I had my Parisian flat does little to lessen this. But I underline that those expressing reservations about the strategy of the NPA have a lot on their side: you can’t just ‘jump over’ forces like the PCF and the PG; not at least if you want to build something substantial on the left  – see below.

Christian Picquet, leader of the NPA minority current that’s favourable to an alliance between the Front de Gauche and his party, has maintained his backing for such a List. In its absence he says he supports the PCF-PG electoral bloc. He argues that apart from a better election result, it would offer a serious challenge to the Parti Socialiste, and break with the endless fragmentation of the French left.

Of the current NPA direction, Picquet says

«Le NPA était censé apporter un renouvellement des pratiques à gauche. En réalité, il se comporte comme une boutique qui fait prévaloir ses propres intérêts par rapport à l’intérêt général du peuple de gauche», a-t-il déploré.

He regretted, “The NPA was meant to bring  fresh air to the activity of the left. In reality it has behaved like a business, and puts its own interests well before those of the left as a whole.”

Selon lui, «l’écho qu’a le NPA aujourd’hui et la popularité d’Olivier Besancenot les amènent à penser qu’ils ont les clefs de la réponse politique à la crise dela gauche et à la colère sociale», mais le NPA est «dans une bulle qui les enferme dans une illusion mortifère».

According to him, “The echo the NPA has found at the moment, and Olivier Besancenot’s popularity, have led them to think that they are they key forces that can respond to the left’s crisis and society’s rising anger.” But the NPA is, “in a bubble which imprisons them inside a deadening illusion.”

 

The Weekend’s  6,000 strong meeting for the PCF-PG and allies succesful rally here. Piquet’s role in standing up for Unity is extensively covered on this, the Humanité site.

Watchers of the French left await the NPA’s response to this defiance. Note added Wednesday: it seems as it’s coming to the turning point as if Picquet’s crew have ‘self-excluded’ themselves.

Review: Under Two Dictators. Margarete Buber-Neumann.

Train to Where?

Review of ‘Under Two Dictators. Prisoner of Stalin and Hitler’. Pimlico 2008.  

 

Margarete Buber-Neumann’s testimony of suffering in Stalin’s Camps, and then, in the Third Reich’s, is a key document of the twentieth century. After an intense period of activism in the German Communist Party (KPD) she and her husband, the leading KPD official Heinz Neumann, fled when Hitler came to power, and headed for the Soviet Union. Employees of the Comintern, they worked in France, and in Spain, during the Civil War. As the Communist International  became, as she puts it, a branch of the secret police, the GPU, any disagreements with the Soviet run leadership, and ‘unreliability’ became capital offences. When the Great Purges began in 1937, and hundreds of German Communists were arrested,  Heinz was one of them,  a ‘deviationist’. Neumann was tortured in the Lubyanka and soon shot. Initially in a social limbo, ostracised (though a few managed to show her acts of kindness) and frantically trying to get news of her partner, Margarete was arrested in 1938 and spent miserable months crammed into a Moscow gaol. In January 1939 she was sentenced to five years imprisonment and sent to the Gulag.  From there, in one of the most sordid deals of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, in 1940 she was handed over to the Nazis and then sent to Ravensbrück. Miraculously she survived to write down her story, published in 1948. This,  as the enlightening Introduction states, is “one of the most important survivor memoirs of totalitarian terror.”(P xxii) It is now back in print through Pimlico. Nearly every page makes harrowing reading.

 

Buber-Neumann reached an international audience for her role in exposing the lies of the French Communist journal, Les Lettres Françaises, in the famous liberal case brought against Soviet defector Kravchenko (I chose Freedom). The PCF denied the Soviet Archipelago of Penal Servitude. She, to their chagrin, was living proof of the existence of the Gulag. That is, sent East with others on a hundred thousand strong slave labour mission to turn barren steppe into fertile fields for crops and grazing. Not even  cutlery and mess tins were provided for their daily use. Everything, primitive huts ownards, had to be built. Great disorder reigned amid back-breaking toil. The division between favoured ‘Criminals’ and ‘Politicals’ (noted by all survivor accounts) made their lives a living hell. The description of remorseless oppressive and chaotic daily life prefigures Solzhenitsynby many years. Initially (soon to be disabused) she found conditions in Germany a relief, “The Ravensbrück hut seemed a palace to me after the wretched clay huts of Birma. And the equipment: a proper lavatory, a washroom with proper basins, tables, stools and lockers!”(P 166) This was not to last as the Nazi extermination programme was stepped up. Everything went worse and worse. But. in the hard winter of 1944 – 5 the Cremetorian was in full swing, its “.. glow at nights was almost always there.”(P 263)

 

 

The narrative must be read in full, a vivid word picture of existence at its lowest,  from the Gulag, to the darkness  in the Konzentrationslager. Memorable are acts of resistance, however ultimately to little avail, from left oppositionists to the most downtrodden victims. In the course of this journey to hell, two reflexions stand out.

 

 

The first, is the mechanism which undergirded Stalin’s mass murders had its original in a Bolshevik institution of long-standing. It was not just the constant adulation of the Leader and the Party. It was permanent efforts to ‘purify’ the CPSU, an urge whose origins lie in Lenin’s not Stalin’s time. That is, the “Tchistka, or purge, was a regular institution in the Russian Communist party.”(P 15)  Originally designed as a way of clearing out ‘dead wood’ (human beings deemed unsuitable, unworthy, then, unreliable, then nonconformist, non-orthodox, dissident, anything other than fully obedient Stalinists). A fright that leaves those saved all the worse morally.  Any Party member had the right to get up and denounce any other member, pointed questions about political past and present activities, if guilty of some deviation had to do public penance, Often a preliminary to actual arrest. “It can be imagined what an opportunity all this offered of paying off old scores.”(P 15)  One can easily imagine.

 

The second is a moral observation, “Christian morality declares that suffering ennobles the sufferer. That can be only a very qualified truth. Life in a concentration camp showed the contrary to be true more often than not. I think that nothing is more demoralising than suffering, excessive suffering coupled with humiliation such as comes to men and women in concentration camps. That is true of individuals and probably of whole people.!”(P 185) To her, it’s not like ordinary prison, where there’s  one blow, loss of freedom, is only the first. “You had lost all human rights – all, all without exception. You were just a living being with a number to distinguish you from the other unfortunates around you.”(P 185) What can you say to that?

 

The final passages contain further reflections. In the wake of her liberation Margarete was, like millions, adrift in a defeated Germany. On her wanderings she met with dissident Communists, who had rebelled against Stalinism in the KPD and retained their faith under the Nazis.  Her host began by stating that, “The Comintern was used only for what was useful to the Russians.”(P 311) Something went deep inside Buber-Neumann, “I experienced a long, long forgotten feeling of happiness, K hesitatingly, and with uncertain words, directed the following question at me: ‘Comrade Grete, what do you actually think of Soviet Russia. You have been there, haven’t you? To us, you surely can tell the truth.”(P 312) Friends came in the room as she told them,  “All of them former members of the KPD, members of the opposition who, like K, had left the Communist Party yet had remained antifascists imprisoned by the Nazis for many years in penitentiary or KZ,”(P 312) Nevertheless they remained treated by Communists as traitors, “Yet they still considered themselves to be Communists, they believed that they were the fighters for the true the fact that their ideological foundations was already damaged at all its corners. They didn’t dare yet to doubt Lenin, let alone the October Revolution or even Marxist theory. The great traitor was called Stalin.”(P 312) She described the full extent of the Big Cleansing and the Show trials. When she  got to the Hitler-Stalin Pact and  the Soviets handing her over to the Nazis one of her audience couldn’t control himself, “filthy killers!” he shouted.  

These are surely good people every democratic  left-winger would identify with. But is the following the case? “The path of suffering hadn’t ended yet for them, but already they had known the pain that a Communist feels when he loses his political   faith and has to re-orientate himself in this life – lonely and banished. (P 313) It seems an impertinence to comment after such a series of terrifying experiences. But one holds to the democratic root of Marxism so firmly because it is strongly planted, for all the efforts to tear it up.

 

The tale finishes on the most glorious of notes. Her heart-rending welcome in the House of Johannes Thuring, by her mother, sister, brother in law Dr Fleiss, and their children, rings in the mind, “From above on the steep wooden stairs at the entry to the house my mother’s voice, which had turned old, called over and over again, ‘Had  she really come? Has she really come…’”(P 341)

Margarete was embedded in the culture of the 20th century. Apart from her link to the core of German Communism her first husband, Rafael Buber, was the son of Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher. In Ravensbrück she befriended Melina, that is the woman of  Kafka’s beautiful letters Briefe an Melina. The two had promised that the one who managed to live would write down what they had seen. Melina wasted away, but Margarete managed to survive. She must be listened to. I don’t care about her eventual support for German Christian Democracy. This book has something that stays. 

 

 

 

 

 

Important Article in Taz Today about Islamist Manipulation of ‘Islamophobia’.

Necla Kelek: Doughty Fighter for Secular Freedom.

There’s a very important article today  in the German centre-left daily, Die Tageszeitung, by Necla Kelek, (who’s of Turkish origin), taking apart, root and branch, the campaign against  ‘Islamophobia’ by various kinds of Islamists (here). The piece,  a solid essay, goes into the whole misuse of the concept of ‘racism’ in this context. She points out the racist ideas of Islamicists: that one is ‘born’ a Muslim and can never stop being one. There is a promiennt place given to  the manipulation in Turkey by pro-AKP conservative Islamicists of the alleged anti-Islam atmosphere in Germany. In short, it paints a sad picture of the ideology of Islamicism: rather than fight for equality and act against real racialist politics, it serves as a counter-banner of prejudice around an Islam beyond criticism. That is, a closed ideology constantly under ‘threat’.

I observe that it seems a common religious trope. It could be extended very widely (put in other faiths for the one cited above)  to those who continually see their religions ‘menaced’.

France: Day of Action Tomorrow, Students Already in Uproar.

 

European upheaval continues to grow, from Iceland, Ireland, the Baltic states, Greece, to France. Oh yes, France. Tomorrow’s one-day General Strike promises some mass activity. Not just by official union and left parties. As a taste of the urnest brewing last night there was a student demonstration of several thousand  in Paris which wound its way through half the capital. It ended up in Montmartre, accompanied by ‘incidents’. As Le Parisien reports,

“Manifestation étudiante cette nuit à Paris : 4 gardes à vue.”

As part of the protests against the government’s ‘reform’ of higher education, a ”universities night’ began in the 13th arrondisment. The students then decided to have a spontaneous demonstration, which wove its way across the capital. After briefly blocking the traffic at Châtelet, they headed for Barbès and Montmartre (this is a hell of a route I note). At this point confrontations with the police took place. Around 150 youths began breaking shop windows, and attacking cars. The CRS (riot squad) moved in and arrested four people.

Thursday’s Day of Action – called by all the unions and backed by the left parties (and the Greens, who notably refused to do so for the previous General Strike) -   has overwhelming popular support (around 70% in the polls). The defence of the public sector (the famous ‘French model’ of social protection, its difference with other European systems rather exaggerated in our view), is important, and as in the UK the future of the Post Office is an issue. This comes together with widespread anger at Sarkozy’s tax breaks for the well-off.  The latter,  ’le bouclier fiscal’ (a shield that protects those who earn the most), is causing as much anger as the Bankers’ bonuses and pensions in the UK. There is this is dissatisfaction in the private sector, anxiety about unemployment and wages drifting downwards. A further range of causes, such university researchers’ fury at plans to to base their work on a quasi-business template – as is projected for higher education as a whole is pouring fuel onto the social fire.

 

The central demands are: 

•  Donner la priorité au maintien des emplois dans un contexte de crise économique. (Priority to keeping jobs during the economic crisis).
•  Améliorer le pouvoir d’achat, réduire les inégalités dans les politiques salariales. (Raise spending power, reduce salary inequalities in pay-scales).
•  Orienter la relance économique vers l’emploi et le pouvoir d’achat. (Turn plans to reboot the economy towards bettering employment and pay levels).
•  Préserver et améliorer les garantiescollectives. (Preserve and improvec ollectively adopted standards – a  big difference from the UK, there are tripartite negotiations and binding agreements on a whole range of working conditions and salaries).
•  Réglementer la sphère financière internationale. (Regulate the international financial sector).

Where this will end is not at all clear. Apart from these rather wishy-washy demands the real meat is in whether the State will back down in its drive to privatise and drop the coddled status for the higher earning classes. Sarkozy says – in effect – “I’ve already acted to deal with the financial crisis and helped protect employees. I’m not abandoning  my modernisation projects”. Will he change his mind? He has proved less ridiculously stubborn and a free-marketeer than Gordon Brown, who is notorious in Europe as the last man standing who will protect ultra-liberal EU Commissioner, Barroso. But a different Cabinet would be needed for the unions’ minimum demands to be met  - the traditional way for French Presidents to alter direction. The Unions are not seriously up for a strike to topple the François Fillon government – yet.  

 

Globalising Hatred – The New Anti-Semitism. Denis MacShane.

Globalising Hatred. The New Anti-Semitism. Denis MacShane.Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2008.

 

I had expected to be intensely irritated by this book. Denis MacShane is Tony Blair’s former Minister for Europe, and is well-known on the Continent for preaching the Gospel of the Third Way. If only the French Socialists had listened to his message, broadcast in Le Monde and Libération, as elsewhere… They could have enjoyed the glory Gordon Brown now bathes in. While as a contrariest, one has a certain sympathy for MacShane, capable of annoying people on a grand scale, it was not to be expected that this book would contribute much to an already overabundant public debate. Yet in discussing contemporary  anti-Semitism, MacShane is unexpectedly modest, and makes a whole set of well-judged (if contestable) points. Is it therefore right to claim that “The anti-Semitism of old has morphed into something new. It is a significant component of the new ideology; one might call it the ‘Endarkenment;’ which is seeking to deOccidentalise the world.”(P 159) ? Or that, “It is Islamism the ideology that has unleashed the new twenty-first century anti-Semitism..”(P xi) ? Yes and No. In any case, these are real issues, and not provoc’ Denis being provoc’ Denis.

  

MacShane, like many of us on the left, managed to pass most of his life without being over-conscious of religious or ethnic identities. He begins by noting that it was only comparatively recently that he became aware, for example, of the Jewish background of some of his comrades (I have the same experience). That doesn’t mean he is not conscious of cultural identity, an important fact – I observe that defending for example the Yiddish heritage has played a role in the admirable Jewish Socialists’ Group. I doubt if his own Catholic, Irish and Polish background is forgotten either. Just that it doesn’t function as an overwhelming fact. That is when close, he could “simply stop seeing people in terms of their skin colour or religion.”(P 1)  

 

Good. Cleared the decks.

 

Now why is anti-Semitism important today? MacShane took part in the All Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into anti-Semitism. (Report, 2006.)  People tend to dismiss anti-Semitism, “as not important as a contemporary phenomenon” (P 7) But, he asserts, “it is a growing component element of international politics.”(P 9) I find myself in agreement. Firstly, anti-Jewish remarks and acts are far more widespread than some liberals are willing to recognise. Keeping a sense of proportion – it is rare to meet anyone in the UK with the virulent Jew psychosis of some from the former Eastern Block – it certainly exists. Secondly, this prejudice is given a boost by a noxious mix of conspiracy ‘wise-guy’ thinking, and, most significantly Islamism. Even multiculturalists have had to confront the bigotry of those who brandish the Qur’an as the solution to all ills. Thirdly, there are European political parties, such as the BNP and the French Front National, that cluster round an anti-Semitic ideology. They’re part of a wider culture. The French black ‘humourist’, Dieudonné, now parades the Holocaust denier, Robert Faurisson, on stage, and collaborates with the FN and Shiite zealots. 

 

Islamism. That’s it said. There have been, MacShane doesn’t mention, anti-Jewish (and anti-Non-Muslim generally) persecutions in societies where Islam has been the state faith over a long historical period.  For instance, under the 17th century Persian Safavids. There appears a diiffulty here of the dominance of religious judgement in politics – which has existed in Europe (as if anyone will let us forget this) But doctrines that believe that salvation is an exclusive property of one Faith are wide open to modern (militarised and tooled up) intolerance, and (media led) mass moblisations. Not to mention a  few (civil and external) wars of religion. On such fertile soil in the 20th century European anti-Semitic ideologists took root in historically Christian lands  but ended up embraced amongst the Islamist founding fathers. Minus the biological gibbish about race these figures encouraged, nevertheless, pure religious-racialism(faith as a quasi-gene). Globalising Hatred pays a lot of attention to this in the thinking of Sayyid Qutb - the Egyptian Islamist always cited in these cases.  His writings show a “world of unremitting hate against Jews.”(P 100)

 

I wonder. The Muslim Brotherhood has had more factions than Trotskyism. Its ideology, shifts around politics, and its own power, using the Sacred in different ways. The Jew is but one target, puppet-master and scapegoat. In The Root of Radical Islam. Gilles Kepel (2005) we get a broader picture.  The hatred of the Moslem Brotherhood is wider and narrower: against the Jew, for sure, but the Secularist-Freemason, Communist and Westernisers figure equally. -This goes back to the reaction against the French Revolution and the origins of the far-right. It’s angst at modernity’s shattering of the Divine Order, a fear of Obedience threatened by Critique.

This hate is a major problem. There is no way we should ‘understand’ it:  religious fanaticism can only be opposed. But is  MacShane right to work with the assumption that Islamism as such is identical to Jihadism, to suicide bombing and mass murder? Clearly not. There are those who wish to use peaceful means to impose their theocracy, those who use mass movements, and these, well those who wish simply to kill. Is not just that Muslims are victims of Jihadism, as a kind of spin off from their loathing of Jews: it is inherent to their programme to want to ‘cleanse’ the world. What and Who? See the four figures just listed. Add (and this is by no means the least): its hostility to women’s rights, to gays, to non-Muslims generally. Hey – that’s a lot.

 

Every chapter of Globalising Hatred is not so heavy. The pages on Tariq Ramada are a joy. Especially since the ‘Professor’ get reverential treatment in the United Kingdom. MacShane is sometimes too eager to attack political enemies (claiming, for example that Le Monde Diplomatique is purely anti-Western and pro-Islamist, ignoring secularist authors in its stable). But here he is spot on. Ramadam’s shaky qualifications, poor-level academic work, pontificating, well-funded propaganda, obscurantist puffery, platitudes, unreadability, and shifty slippery inability to answer straight questions about the Sharia should be widely broadcast. Ramadam’s role in banning Voltaire’s play, Mohamed in Geneva (an act of ‘politeness’ that makes you cringe), should be brought to very Islamophile’s attention.

It is worth thinking, for anyone, like myself, who is opposed to Zionism (from its ‘national liberation’ claims onwards), and backs a ‘two state’ solution in the Middle East, that “Just as anti-Semitism was a euphemism for anti-Jewish politics, so too is anti-Zionism an attempt to find a formula that covers up a call for the eradication of the state of Israel. And on the whole when a state gets eradicated, its citizens vanish, one way of another. So anti-Zionism is Jew-Hatred by other linguistic means”(P 83) Maybe. But it won’t stop leftist internationalists pointing out the ruthless brutality of the Israeli government, and the fundamental wrongs of the state’s nationalism. Or, at the same time, against those who back the Brotherhood inspired Hamas as a national liberation movement (with Islamic charity as some kind of ‘socialism’), it is surely justified to point to its foundations in the far-right ideology of tis founders.  

 

Ultimately, then, MacShane only partly persuades. Anti-Semitism is a problem. But the problem of Islamism is far deeper. His largely muted criticisms of the British government’s failures to deal with it – partly the result of their own pandering to religious communitarians – show this. Getting rid of Islamist diatribes against Judaism will in itself not break its underlying totalitarianism. That needs thorough-going criticism and social movements of hope to counter its despair.

 

What then is the wider nature of Islamism, and what could combat it?  Islamism is a collection of movements, whose leaderships are bourgeois, or at least middle-class. Its programme is a forced harmonious form of capitalism. Its totalitarianism is Book, not Leader, based. It claims to express a desire for justice. But fighting global injustice need egalitarian secularism, not religious supremacy, unity, not the divisions of faith. Confronting real oppressions and exploitation needs rational thought, it can’t be done on the say-so of ancient texts.  Or say-so I. Socialism, which remains a hope, has a part to play – a central one for many of us. There is no place for religious bigotry amongst all shades of democratic socialism. On a  very optimistic day I think that MacShane might one day stray from the Third Way and consider this road. He might…

No2EU: Egg on the Dead.

They’re Bidding for His Vote.

No2EU, Yes to Democracy!

The Euro-Election alliance of the RMT, the CPB, the Socialist Party (still to be announced Galloway’s Respect and Sheridan’s Solidarity’s backing), and the Campaign to Defend Imperial Measures and Winding British Lanes (actually I made that bit up) is off to a flying start. To the Morning Star, the June European elections will be “electrified” - and as experts on how electricity brought Soviet Power their judgement must be respected. Meanwhile Tendance Coatesy is taking wagers on whether this doomed enterprise will get above 0,1% of the  vote.

Let us leave aside the fact that this platform’s anti-EU trademark is hotly contested by a  host of Barmy Britishers, that its exclusion – with one fell swoop - of left groups (SWP, et.al), is somewhat arbitrary. The important – though not redeeming – fact is that the original nationalist edge of the RMT-CPB has  been affected by some discreet changes in its original platform. The line about ‘restoring democracy’ to sovereign states, has been replaced by ‘repatriate’ democratic powers to EU member states. But still, a simple ‘No’ to the European Union sits badly with the strategy of demanding such changes to the EU – such as altering directives on privatisation (actually competition, but what the hell, this is not ever going to get near Brussels decision-making), and the ECJ etc. So we have an appeal to the worst traditions of the left, blaming the capitalist crisis on foreigners, the EU,  (not only British, one can find them elsewhere, such in Chevènement’s current in France), mixed up with something that could be reasonably supported if it was part of a campaign for a democratised-united social European republic. But not in this form. No.

There thus seem two programmes waiting to emerge: one, for democratised European political and economic structures, the other for a retreat to national sovereignty, with (dredged from the CPB’s dreamtime) reviving  the old Alternative Economic Strategy (national Keynsianism plus nationalisation). We can debate for a long time about whether the former should be United, Federal or Confederal, or Social or a Socialist Republic. Okay, that’s a bit of a reverie as well. But please, let’s look to the future, not to a (as they call it in France) ‘sovereigntist’  withdrawal faced with the – international - structures of capitalism (or, globalisation, neo-liberalism, etc etc etc).  Phew!

Here is the No2′s bullet point list, in all its finery:

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 ECJrulings and EU rules promoting social dumping

No to racism and fascism, Yes to internationalsolidarity 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.

NO, NO NO.

That’s about it.

Oh, YES, YES, YES: Democracy!

Collapse of all anti-democrats.

 

 

Tarnac Affair: No Material Proofs.

 

A great injustice pursues its course.

 

In Radical Philosophy Alberto Toscano provides a good introduction to this.

 On 11 November 2008, twenty youths were arrested in Paris, Rouen and the village of Tarnac, in the Massif Central district of Corrèze. The Tarnac operation involved helicopters, 150 balaclava-clad anti-terrorist policemen, with studiously prearranged media coverage. The youths were accused of having participated in a number of sabotage attacks against high-speed TGV train routes, involving the obstruction of the trains’ power cables with horseshoe-shaped iron bars, causing a series of delays affecting some 160 trains. The suspects who remain in custody were soon termed the ‘Tarnac Nine’, after the village where some of them had purchased a small farmhouse, reorganized the local grocery store as a cooperative, and taken up a number of civic activities from the running of a film club to the delivery of food to the elderly.

Le Monde yesterday commented that in the dossier of the affair (as a big as seven or eight telephone  books) that, it had ” beau être dense, il ne contient ni preuves matérielles ni aveux, et un seul témoignage à charge, sous X, recueilli le 14 novembre. ” It may have been dense, but it contains neither material proofs nor confessions, and a single witness cited, under X, has been received on the 14th of November.”  The documents contain the following exchange:

“– Le juge:”Pensez-vous que le combat politique puisse parfois avoir une valeur supérieure à la vie humaine et justifier l’atteinte de celle-ci?

– Julien Coupat: “Ça fait partie (…) du caractère délirant de la déposition du témoin 42 [sous X] tendant à me faire passer pour une espèce de Charles Mansonde la politique (…) Je pense que c’est une erreur métaphysique de croire qu’une justification puisse avoir le même poids qu’une vie d’homme.”

The Judge: “Do you think that political struggle can sometimes have a greater value than human life, and can justify causing harm to human beings?”

Julien Coupat, “This is part of the insane delirium of the testimony of  42 (X ). which tries to make me out as a kind of political Charles Manson. I consider it a metaphysical error to give any (abstract)  justification a greater weight than human life.”

Meanwhile Julien Coupat  languishes in gaol, and the other accused (out on bail) wait to see if charges are brought.

The cost of the surveillance operation, which lasted some years before the Tarnac autonomists were raided and slung into the clink, must be enormous. We are seeing the same State-Media obsession with anarchists and autonomists in the run up to the London anti-G20 Demos.

 

More information (in English) here. Coatesy’s critique of the autonomist ideology here.

GM20 Demo: Notes of a Leftist Trainspotter.

TUC Leads the New Revolution: March Against Those Who Put People Last!

Apparently, according to the Police,  there were 35,000 people on the Put People First March yesterday, (Here). I hate to disagree with our ever-reliable coppers but this is probably an over-estimate (yes, you got that right). While it was a successful event, we at the Tendance say it was around 20,000. True it was cold, which led to less bunching, and the march had got split into half at some point(some say it was a police tactic, others some anarchist protest that involved a sit-down, Coatesy says, who cares?)  but we stick by our scientific Marxist method of counting demos (Units based on the length of Park Lane).

Lowlight of the day was the presence of Tony Robinson as comic compère on stage. He introduced the ever bubbly Brendan Barber in terms which would have made Kim Il Sung blush. We know that poor old Tony lavished similar praise on Tony Blair, and was elected to the Labour NEC on that basis. All went well until he made some mild complaint. Punishment was swift. He got reminded that he was a lowly Baldrick after all. So watch out Tony: history has a habit of repeating itself.

Still, Mark Thomas distinguished himself by being funny (not uncommon, but a first for his political platform performances). He was in fine fettle -  socialism, Yes! I would have liked him to say something on the lines that  all the Blairite-Brownite  Bourgeois Bastards (and Banking Bosses)  should be strung up from the nearest Mobile Phone Mast. He didn’t. But one sensed that the thought was not far away.

We had up to 40 people on the coach from Ipswich, not bad (we did leafleting and a street stall which helped get the word out). On the March the Tendance had comradely conversations with the Weekly Worker lads, and indeed ladettes, the AWL, a leading  Briefing Cadre, and a Norwich anarchist. Topics covered were Iran (with a prominent HOPI comrade) , the doomed N2EU election slate, the anti-Workfare campaign, for Decriminalising Prostitution and Trades Council activism. In case anyone thinks we are dropping our guard and becoming a spreader of light, peace and friendship to all the left, we sneered at the Swoppies, Turned our Nose up at Newsline, Snubbed the Sparticists, and Stood away from the Socialist Party (extend list if and when group comes to mind). The Black Bloc – we listened a while but they struck us to amiable but aimless. We were able to ignore the scattered charity types and eco-warriors or whatever name ineffectual green herbivores call themselves this year. Poueff – and there were some desultory leafleteers for the No2EU.

Back home for a healthy dinner of two thick bacon rashers, baked beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, black pudding,  poached eggs and fried bread. With mug of Co-op 99 Tea.

No2EU, RMT, Sir Teddy Taylor and Far-Right Henry Nitzsche.

The People’s Flag is Red, White and Blue?

In the Morning Star Monday Column, usual  ad for the Korea Friendship on the anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung, “exploring his work on anti-imperialism, and the socialist economy.” Hah, just before, we find something a bit odd: Campaign for an Independent Britain and Campaign against Euro-Federalism. Public meeting, Democracy or EU Dictatorship’. Saturday 4th April. Friends Meeting House. Speakers; Frank Keoghan, People’s Movement Ireland, Brain Denny, Trades Unionists Against the European Union Constitution, and RMT Press Officer, Sir Teddy Taylor, former MP, Henry Nitzsche, MP, (Germany).  I was initially alerted by comrade Ian on Socialist Unity (though he has yet to post about it on his Blog) who questions workers’ interests in sharing a meeting with the likes of Taylor. Just in case you’ve not got the slant of the event it is further advertised on UKIP sites such as this.

 But there is worse than the fact that this is a platform of the RMT initiated No2EU, with British and Irish right-wing chums, such as Teddy Taylor. A lot worse.

On Henry Nitzsche (here):

“I am sick of being the bogeyman,” Nitzsche said on Friday, confirming his resignation from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Nitzsche had recently caused an uproar in Germany when he said that Germany “should never again be governed by multicultural fags from Berlin.” He was referring to the previous German coalition government consisting of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Green party.Nitzsche also spoke about the German “cult of guilt” in the way Germans deal with their country’s past. (15.12.2006)

 

Nitzsche is reported saying a few years back  that, “”A Muslim would sooner allow his hand to rot away before checking the box next to the CDU on his ballot.” (here)

 

According to Wikipedia’s German pages: “Seit dem 18. Februar 2008 ist Nitzsche Vorsitzender der von ihm gegründeten Wählervereinigung Bündnis Arbeit, Familie, Vaterland – Liste Henry Nitzsche.” That’s how he got elected.

 

 

Family, Work, Fatherland – sounds familiar, hein?

 

 

Added 1st April.

This is too good not to miss (Hap-tip to Herbert): Kilroy Silk to stand on No2EU list. Poisson d’Avril? ‘Apparently’ not: official confirmation here.

 

The Believers. Zoë Heller. Review.

 

Angry Woman

The Believers. Zoë Heller. Fig Tree. 2008.

Zoë Heller is a spinner of acerbic tales, as those who’ve watched the film of Notes on a Scandal know. The Believers is equally riveting, using literary rivets that is, and as a plus has a cast of interesting figures in a dynamic New York setting. The Litvinoffs, the ultra-radical lawyer, Joel (currently defending suspected terrorist Mohammed Hassani) his English wife, Audry (in the thick of post 9/11 anti-war activism), the grandmother Hannah, offspring (undergoing religious and personal crises) and their politicised milieu.  From the first pages, the prose grabs our attention. It begins closer to home, near Malet Street (home of so many left encounters) Audrey and Joel met in London, both on the left – her in the outer orbit of the Healy cult, he a young American legal fighter. Both have a secularised Jewish background – hers, lower middle class Polish, his, assimilated US immigrants, strongly left, himself already soaring in Civil Rights circles.

 

 

Why do novels feature these kind of glamorous left wing characters in interesting circumstances? One thinks of Russell Bank’s The Darling (2004), an ex US underground leftist who ends up in the vicious disintegration of one of West Africa’s failed states, or Unity, by Michael Ardetti (2005) about an upper class Brit actress who acquired a taste for Palestinian supporting armed struggle in Germany. Why not, say a fictionalised account of life as an Ipswich activist? Er well.. 

 

If, as Heller heads the novel, “The challenge of modernity is to live without illusion without becoming disillusioned.” (Gramsci no less), The Believers are much challenged. The unfolding plot, refracted through the prism of intense leftist culture (real and imagined), revolves around a set of potential and actual disillusionment.  

Switch to other side of the Atlantic. Joel still perusing his career of defending. defending. Against. Against. Suddenly he is taken ill and falls into a coma. The family gather round. Only for Audrey to be forced to face the news, after understandable reluctance to believe, that her husband had fathered a son by a black woman, Berenice, who (no doubt to make it more hurtful)  takes action-art photographs of her vagina, and has a room full of  “gerund-heavy non-fiction titles: Mindful Eating, Writing the Body, Understanding Gynocritcal Theory, Reading Tarot”.

 

Heller portrays Audrey’s leftism in ways which hardly evoke much sympathy. She declares, to cite but one instance, after 9/11 that, “The anger that motivates the suicide bombers is a political anger. A perfectly rational anger against the American hegemon.” A lippy young Englishwoman she has become a termagant in late middle age (not uncommon – for either sex). A conversation with her friend Jean is the occasion for reflecting on the shrillness of her ideology.  For decades now, she had been dragging about the same unwieldy burden of a priori convictions, believing herself honour-bound to protect theme against destruction at all costs. No new intelligence, no rationale argument, could cause her to falter from her mission. Not even the cataclysmic events of the previous September had put her off her stride for more than a couple of hours, By lunchtime on the day that the towers fell, when the rest of new York was still stumbling about in a daze, Audrey had already been celebrating the end of the myth of American exceptionalism and comparing the event to the American bombing of a Sudanese aspirin factory in 1998.”(P 33 – 34) I hate to evoke realist criteria but this is a realist novel: most of the left also went around “in a daze” at that time. Those with Audrey’s response, callow and bellowing, stood out like sore thumbs. But that may not have been the case in the cosier reaches of Manhattan’s left. Maybe after all Wolfie Smith emigrated and has a smart apartment near Central Park.

A confrontation of another stripe occurs with her daughter Rosa. She had been a believer, a Revolutionary, but a long stay in Cuba had shattered her faith. Not to mention her self-image as a Soviet muscular heroine. The “paradisical era of righteousness had come to an end. After a long and valiant battle against doubt she had finally surrendered her political faith and with it’s the densely woven screen of doctrinal abstraction through which she was accustomed to viewing the world.” Absorbed in the discovery of her Jewish interior Rosa attends Synagogue and religious education classes. These lead to more believing. The Red Heifer sacrifice (which purifies the recipient’s but pollutes the sacrificers) and many other ideas which “cannot be explained in logical terms that defy human reason.” are easily absorbed. Audrey tries to sneer her conversion away but Rosa brushes this off. She insists on Israel’s right to exist and defend itself (the ultimate betrayal to the WRP-culture of her mother). Auderey is lost in a welter of feeble counter-arguments, unable to deal with things seriously – rather a cop-out on the issue one might think.

As can be gathered, The Believers has a fine sense of character. It is studded with miniature portraits, prickly and sharp. Her wayward drug abuser adopted son, Lenny, floats in chaos, yet Audrey wraps this in cotton wool. His birth mother, gaoled as a terrorist in the ’70s for the semi-Weather Underground New York Cong, is a blinkered pathetic hard-case.  Audrey’s overweight social-worker daughter, Karla who flees from a loveless marriage to the arms of an apolitical Egyptian lover, Kahled, a Newsagent owner, is so put in her place than one wonders if her feelings ever register. Karla, a ‘caring person’, is somebody one warms to, a sickly heat when one realises just what a meaningless choice she’s made.   

 

The dénouement of The Believers takes place at Joel’s funeral. Audrey recognises her husband’s lover and son. She speaks of being part of a ‘tribe’, and the guests, the exotic fauna of American leftism, political and artistic, attend. Indeed in many senses her politics are a cultural, not ideological choice, for originality, striking a pose. That is, it suggested that they are like the ”arcane tastes” of adolescent Indie Music enthusiasts. Chosen for their rarity. More fundamentally Heller suggests that this kind of leftist will never recognise any refutation of her beliefs. As Audrey spits out, `You want to know what I’d do if the truth revealed itself to me and it wasn’t the truth I wanted to find?” Audrey smiled, “I’d reject it.”

 

For all the undoubted talent shown in The Believers, its taut syntax and its stylish ethical satire (that is: I liked it), and that anyone, there are some indeed, who hides in this shell merits a few verbal lashes, this is not a leftist approach. Indeed I would expel and shun not to say eradicate from the pages of History, and refuse to listen to anyone anyone who dared to advance such views! 

New Deal: YMCA Training, A Major Scandal.

 

Plan of Dencora House, Ipswich.

 

For Important Updates see here.

Forget Gordon Brown’s success in solving the global financial crisis, bringing food and water to the world”s hungry and thirsty, and eliminating child poverty for ever. His star project, the  New Deal for the Unemployed, a foretaste of the Workfare schemes to be  introduced by the Government’s Welfare Reform, is facing a major crisis.

In Suffolk this programme is managed by the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). Or rather its Training arm. This is  Brown’s support for religious charities taking over the welfare state in action. The YMCA  promises high quality services. It says that “We are dedicated to inspiring individuals to develop their talents and potential and so transform the communities in which they live and work.”  There are two centres in Ipswich, one for young people on the town outskirts. The other, Dencora House (popularly known as ‘the Den’) on an industrial-commercial estate in another far-flung suburb, Whitehouse. After varying periods of unemployment (dependent, for example, on age), the workless are assigned, in their majority, to a ‘course’ of thirteen weeks at these units. In theory, after a short period of CV and presentation skills induction, participants should be sent on ‘placements’ in various enterprises, local government, or the voluntary sector. The latter is an important growth area. In many cases taking over from  ’community service’ ordered by the Courts. Then you have to attended a session back at ‘the den’ to do ‘jobs search’ – sit in front of computers (never enough available) looking at a page of ads, filling in a few forms – in fact what you would normally do anyway if you’re looking for work.

The last time I was obliged to undergo this rigmarole there were the following complaints. Dencora House is in the middle of nowhere. It is very hard to get to from a lot of East Suffolk (its catchment area). It costs £1,70 pence each way on the bus there, from Ipswich that is. From other places, plenty of rural districts,  it’s double, even treble. Dole is just over £60 pounds a week, New Deal is £15 plus, minus (yes) the first £4 of your travel expenses. The rest of the journey’s cost is covered. But you had to queue up every Friday with all your tickets to get this back. In some cases this meant £30 to £40 – laid out beforehand on the Dole money just mentioned. Next, placements have been known to be thinly disguised exploitation of free labour. A training scheme offered for some over 55 year olds was on learning to ‘lay bricks’ (guess what the qualification is worth). Then there was the fact that even then some people never found placements and were stuck in the Den all week, doing little. At around forty people there during peak days there was also the question of health and safety – one men’s toilet for about 35 men. Anyone getting stroppy was threatened with being “exited” (charming word) – that is suspended form all benefit whatsoever. Finally there was the simple fact that the process rarely lead to work for anyone who was not already highly employable.

 

Switch to the present. Numbers of those thrown out of work swell and swell, even in relatively prosperous East Anglia. Yesterday I was told by someone on his way to ‘the Den’ that there on many days there are around 170 people there. Sometimes just two members of staff. The jobs supplement of the Ipswich Evening Star has roughly five pages of ads – at most. Those at ‘the den’ have to work through them – there is an even worse ratio of participants and computers. Many, hell of a lot in fact,  are now obliged to spend their whole 13 weeks at Whitehouse. Even those with a placement promise spend weeks waiting for it to be processed. Staring at the walls and the odd screen. Waiting for the few toilets to be free (large waiting list there as well). They are thrown out at lunchtime for an hour. Believe me the charms of ASDA, a chippie and a small café are about all the area has to offer. Any complaints? Exit! Get really angry? Exit! Want an alternative? Exit!

 

Translation: No Money, Live in the Gutter.

Strange to say we were talking about this when the local full-time Labour Party Secretary-Agent walked by. He heard it all from the foaming horses’ mouths.

I have checked this account with four other participants. It is borne out. One told me of a letter they had signed one day protesting against their treatment. It went to the DWP. I will report on the outcome.

It is an utter scandal that the YMCA is getting paid to pen people in a shed in the Ipswich Wastelands. Similar abuses are taking place all over the country. But who is digging the stories out? What is being done to bring them to a halt?

European Unrest: Strasbourg. UK: Dead London By-Stander was Assaulted by Police.

NATO Adviser at Work.

The British news today downplays the anti-NATO rioting in Strasbourg. German Radio reports that their authorities are angry. They managed to prevent any serious trouble on their side of the near-by border; why didn’t the French poulets do the same? Well, they didn’t. In fact the French police blame the violence on..German Black Blocks! (here)

The happy image of Barrack Obama travelling through Europe as a charismatic leader is forever wedded to pictures of black clad autonomists wreaking havoc and burning Alsace buildings. Deutsche Welle paints an even more extreme picture, with some protesters apparently armed. A picture show is available via Le Monde (including shot of 7,000 German marchers  blocked off from entering France). Now I feel that for all his merits (beginning with not being George Bush) Obama barely touches the surface of the problems these acts of rage stem from.

People don’t like NATO’s work: Afghanistan is a quagmire in which it’s sinking. That raises the hackles of a broad range of liberals, leftists and people with common sense. Who, the Strasbourg demonstrators are saying (I am speaking on their behalf thank you very much – elected by TC to do so), “enough posturing around the ‘New World Order’ – end your Great Game.” Not much positive, but there you go.

So, it seems that the thaumaturge Obama, and his loyal assistant, Gordon Brown, have been unable to squash opposition to capitalism and militarism. How wide is the span of discontent, or simple dissatisfaction the market? As broad as it is deep. There is a profound annoyance, fed-upnesshood to the max. Hate. And that’s just at this keyboard! Not onky against the Bankers who’ve scuttled off with their money bags full. It’s (well, some of it) against the ”moral capitalists’ in charge of state and market.  The ones running the show now.  People have had rising expectations dashed. They are getting mass unemployment, huge price rises in basic necessities (food above all), more coercion, and more moral and health police.  A bit of shouting and protest, mindless or not,  is the least the popular masses can do. Ian Bone (among other Bloggers) at least has his finger on this racing pulse. Even perfide Albion is showing a bit of protesting backbone in factory and school occupations.

The chance to touch the  hem of the anointed leader of the world doesn’t quench a thirst for real change. Mind you that at least is tangible, not like Gordon Brown’s witless remarks about bringing ethics to the market.

Meanwhile, here in the UK this story has broken: Dead City Protests By-stander was Assaulted by Police (Observer). That’s morals for you.

Gordon Brown Shows the Way!

Brown’s Mentor.

Gordon Brown in the Independent today,

The Prime Minister considers that the era of unbridled free-markets is over, ”Mr Brown insisted that the end of the free-market consensus – and need for greater regulation– could yet help Labour to neutralise the “time for change” factor that would normally play strongly for Mr Cameron.” The philosopher in Downing Street considers the world ready for global governance – just like all those books by David Held on Cosmopolitan Democracy predicted. He says, “This is going to be a progressive decade. I think people do understand that some of the problems we had can only be solved, first of all, by governments working together with other governments, nations co-operating with nations. There is a new internationalism, a new strategic role for countries working together to solve common problems.” We hate uncommon problems.

We hear what brought Gordon into his relentless campaigning. No doubt as well that quality of gavitas that explains why he does not waste time listening to those he disagrees with,

“Some will be found to help the jobless back into work. “What brought me into politics was that I saw the waste of unemployment and importance of tackling it as quickly as possible, so we don’t allow a large number of people to become unemployed.”

 Maybe Brown should read the exposé of the YMCA open-Prison, Denocra House, Ipswich,  on this site, here. There he will find that he allocates large numbers of the unemployed to an enterprise unit in the Ipswich wilds, doing little, being hectored and having their behaviour under tight surveillance. That’s how he can, and indeed does,  stop more people becoming workless: for statistical purposes every participant in YMCA ‘training’ is not counted as unemployed!

Alain Badiou: The Meaning of Sarkozy. Review.

President of France?

The Meaning of Sarkozy. Alain Badiou.  Verso. 2008.

Everywhere you look in Europe enthusiasts for Mao are flowering a thousand blooms. The President of the European Commission José Manuel Durão Barros, once an activist in Portugal’ s PCTP/MRPP, thunders for the free-market. La COPE, Spain’s steadfast Catholic radio, stars Frederico Jimenez Losantos, a former Mao fan in the anti-France underground. He rails against  socialists, Communists, separatists, free-masons and secularists. But it is from France, home of the Maoist movement, that we hear from a great  philosopher with a Mao badge past. Alain Badiou, ex-Union communiste de France, Marxiste-Léniniste (UCF-ML) polemicises against Nicolas Sarkozy, the “rat-man”. Inter alia he makes fun of Blair, following his discovery that Blaireau means Badger in French, and notes that Sartre called an anti-communist a dead-dog (chien crevé – inexplicably translated by Verso as ‘swine’). As Pierre Assouline remarks, “Après les rats, puis les blaireaux, les chiens. Décidément, drôle d’oiseau que ce philosophe.” (after the rats, then badgers, and dogs.. Certainly what a strange bird this philosopher is..) A period of enthusiasm for the Great Cultural Revolution and its Helmsman does give one  such a way with words.

But that’s enough on les noms d’oiseux (insults) for the moment.

The Meaning of Sarkozy (De Quoi Sarkozy est-il le nom?) is a political pamphlet. It is written by a professional philosophy teacher (in the ENS – France’s most elite college in the discipline). Born in 1937, and a long period of adhesion to leftist causes behind him, Badiou is  still active in L’Organisation Politique – a group principally committed to defending immigrant rights. Badiou’s tract made a splash. Including comparisons with the political interventions of the late,  much respected, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. The main conceit (in all senses) of the polemic is that the Victory of Nicolas Sarkozy and his UMP Party in the French 2007 elections heralded the triumph of Pétainism.  Yes, the puppet far-right regime that ruled the Southern half  of France from Vichy during the German Occupation. Sarkozy represent a ‘restoration’, after (very much after one would say) May 1968, a national revolution to ensure, “unconditional obedience to the potentates of world capitalism.”. Its themes, an end to moral decadence. Its models, the US and Blair’s Britain, servility, like Pétain, to the foreign powers (see potentates). It loathes immigrants.  France has undergone a huge reaction. A way prepared by the anti-Communist Nouveaux Philosophes, André Glucksman (an ex-Mao rival), and Bernard Henri Lévy. And the whole political class, left included, very much included. The Communists? Enemies of 68 par excellence. Result? Now we have France under Petanism “on a  mass scale”. A return to the social ‘transcendental’ (underlying structure beyond appearances) – France’s – apparently – eternal ultra-conservative order.  There is  ”fear, informing, contempt for others” around Sarkozy and his Prime Minister Fillon. The President encourages work, family and dislikes criminals! This is the spirit that gave 1940s France total censorship, banning of political parties, repression of all dissent, not to mention co-operation with the Nazi Final Solution. This New Order is truly an equal  threat.

Sarkozy is a ‘rat’ who rushes in on what’s on offer, obsessively gnawing away. Badiou then explains how this sharp-tooted vermin  came to power (counter-revolution)  in a highly original way. It appears that ‘democracy’ , at least in the sense Badiou gives it – “equality in the face of the Idea” – was not involved. In any case, “voting is a state operation. And it is only by assuming that politics and the state are identical that voting can be conceived as a political procedure.” In fact, “Rejecting our illusions means categorically denying that voting is the operation of a genuine choice”. Thus, there was no choice. None. Voting for a Socialist alternative, like Ségolène Royale, or for the various Trotskyist, Communist, Green candidates on offer during this (bogus) election? Not a true choice. Poor fools who backed them, weep now at your folly.  These marionettes were not prepared really to confront the system. The ballot – piège à cons!

The author of Ethics (2001 – English Translation) offered an alternative: “politics without party”. A crude Marxist analysis of the state (basically that the state is class domination)  and a politics of truth. That is fidelity to the ‘event’,  unique bursts of life in the world unsullied by the existing Order (something similar to the existentialist notion of ‘authenticity’). Badiou’s cumbersome writings on ‘ontology’ may explain something. I couldn’t put them down (having never picked them  up). Practice? Essentially Badiou backs “local experiments in politics”. His central one is his - feeble group of mates,  if truth be my politics – L’Organisation Politique. A few principles are strewn around, that all workers belong here, that art is creation, science is superior to technology, love must be reinvented, any sick person is entitled to treatment, and that newspapers that belong to rich managers do not deserve to be read (a reference no doubt to Libération, now under Rothschild Bank control).  Apparently he works with “our African friends” (cosy expression), to “exchange experiences”. And that, “The Morrocan worker forcibly asserts that his traditions and customs are not those of the petty bourgeois European.” Noble North Africans! This ‘test-bed for political experience” is already showing its worth.

Or not. Badiou seems to be groping towards the, commonplace,  idea of unifying the oppressed, without imposing uniformity. Nothing much wrong there. But it hardly needs the strident vocabulary he uses to get there. Such as the wholly misguided idea that the State in his 3rd Period Stalinist rhetoric, is a bogus simulacrum of democracy, based on naked  repression  and obedience to the rule of world capital. Furthermore one can do without the comparison between Sarkozy and Pétain: History involves no such “eternal return”. Sarkozy is a right-wing liberal (economically) and a conservative morally (except in his public-private life – Carla to the fore). Far from encouraging a Corporate Organic Vichiest state he has sought to reform his bureaucracy on free-market lines. His Catholic moralism does not extend to any legislative effect (unlike Pétain). Sarko comes from the Neuilly Haute Bourgeoisie, which gives him a brittle smartness and narrow-mindedness. Sarkozy’s cosmopolitan origins (his, absent,  father is Jewish), is very far from the provincial terrain of the Vichy notable. A smart-arse, nervously rushing around and hard to bear. I can loathe him quite happily without any comparison with the Marshall. I do and I will. Full stop.

Mass opposition to the President is under way, from workers, intellectuals, and students. Led by democratic parties and uni0ns who spend a lot of their time engaged in that mystifying democratic process.  We do not need to be amused any longer by Badiou or others’ hysterical hyperbole. As unrest spreads in Europe we , in each country, need to act: not to stew in this warmed-up dish of puerile rancour.

All of which amounts to less than a hill of haricots blancs. Badiou has none of Bourdieu’s seriousness and clear objectves (direcetd at preventing backward looking neo-liberal ‘reforms’).  Is there anything of comparable urgency on offer here? No: an abstract call to vigilance and to stand behind banner. Of what? The assertion of the  ”Communist hypothesis” is about all Badiou has to affirm: the conjecture that a communist society is worth trying to create (discussion of the economics and politics of Das Kapital are noticeably absent here). Plus a few historical examples of when people have tried to verify the theory. Such as, Maoism oblige, the Shanghai Commune. Can anyone who’s for the self-emancipation of the working class can so easily dismiss the electoral process? Clearly L’École normale supérieure, is a better vantage point from which to decide the workers’ views than the voting slip. In the face of such certainty it seems impertinent  to observe   that more participate in the latter than get educated at the former.

Badiou is clearly not a Marxist in any substantial sense. Certainly an active one. He has many admirers amongst the kind of folk who play at leftism at  academic symposia and buy books that are hard to read. The Meaning of Sarkozy may be a step downwards to near-ordinary language. But it contains a  sufficiently strong dose of disdain for ordinary people to satisfy a need for the esoteric.  Or provocative, in a pointless way, prose. Badiou announces his scientific discovery that France’s President is a rat man a number of times. When Assouiline remarked that this reeked of the images of Jews as rodents, that this reminded one of Vichy propaganda  films, he exploded. Is Assouiline Cultivated? Doesn’t he know Sigmund Freud’s  case-study  of the ‘rat-man’? What is he, a cretin?

As a fellow cretin I can only say: the Jew as vermin in Der ewige Jude is exactly what Sarko-rat made me think of, and to pity, not admire, the man who thought of this, and wrote thispile of worthless cack.

Political Islam. Tariq Amin-Khan Versus Samir Amin, and Vica Versa.

Eurocentric Demands?

I really cannot recommend reading this recent (March) exchange  of views too much. The American Monthly Reviewis far in advance of its British counterparts in giving a platform for serious debate about Political Islam. Unlike in the dominant UK  Islamophile left, Marxist opponents of this trend are given a central place.

 Tariq Amin-Khan makes a case (here) for ‘understanding’ Political Islam, based largely on a critique of a ‘clichés’ of ‘Islamophobia. That is, the left supporters of an ‘uncritical’ Enlightenment adopt, ”the dominant narrative in Western societies of “the Muslim” as violent, as oppressor of women, and as a medieval aberration against modernity.” I observe in passing here that there isplenty of evidence that “medieval aberrations” exist in abundance in mvoements and states dominated by Political Islam, and this is simply a fact. Enlightenment values for all their complexity (etc)  are at their most universal when they oppose oppressions and violence. If Amin-Khan is saying that this is Eurocentric then he is seriously misguided. He might as well say that Train Time Tables are an imperialist Canon imposed on railways. The truth is that these standards work, or should work. And does he have anything better?  

Amin-Khan’s conclusion is that, “Similarly, the popular anti-imperialist sentiment in Muslim majority states should not be confused with the actions of militant Islamists, which are not anti-imperialist. Militant Islam is conceived and imagined in the present, current context. It is, therefore, a “modern” manifestation that posits its own version of the Islamic “welfare state” for the current conjuncture to rival the Western capitalist state and Enlightenment notions of modernity. Understanding militant Islam in its current context will only enable the development of a coherent strategy of opposition and an alternative non-Eurocentric vision of society.”

Samir Amin, (here) contests this. To me Amin-Khan’s most serious error is to think that the Islamic ‘welfare state’ is really about people’s well-being, and is in opposition to the capitalist one. Amin argues notably in support of secularism as a basic principle for the left,

” I am in favor of adopting the absolute principle of secularism, of separating politics and religion. Radical secularism is the condition for implementing a creative democracy, one which does not justify its progress by an interpretation from the past, religious or otherwise, which always acts as a conservative obstacle. Radical secularism is inseparable from the aspiration to liberate human beings and society. That is why radical secularism was proclaimed by all the great revolutions of modern times (the French, Russian and Chinese), which led to the best moments of democratic and social progress. Nevertheless, the progress of secularism was slow, governed by the rhythms of the advances of bourgeois modernity, the beginnings of socialist-inclined advances, which opened the way to go beyond this bourgeois modernity..”

And that, “The major fight, the one that defines the very nature of a progressive (and socialist, obviously) left, unfolds on the terrain of social struggles for the rights of workers (wages, working conditions, union rights, right to strike), peasants (access to land), women (radical reforms in personal status laws) and citizens (access to education, health and housing). Fighting in these areas is not “to substitute these struggles for the struggle against imperialism”. On the contrary, the anti-imperialist fight, which should not be reduced to rhetoric, becomes real and effective only insofar as it is led by the working classes strengthened by the conquest of their rights.

On this plane, the current regimes and the Islamist movements are fundamentally opponents of these social struggles. There is no need to recall the violence of the repressive means they use — together — with the approbation (or silence) of imperialist diplomacy.”

There are interesting discussions on development (Amin’s forte) and so-called Orientalism. The latter is a  rather hackneyed term these days. Globalisation’s effects on world culture, politics and society  erode  the meaning of a distinct so-called Other all the time. One notes with satisfaction that both authors are serious about their opposition to Islamism. Amin-Khan tends to give some credence to the claim that its rise is partly a deflected popular radicalism, running up against imperialism’s interests (that is, the US and Europe’s) That an Islamic ‘welfare state’ , its source of appeal,  is its objective. Clearly a capitalist  religious dictatorship would be a better description,  or a totalitarian theocracy. But the quality of the exchange is striking.

 I couldn’t help thinking of this when reading about the Algerian Presidental elections Le Monde yesterday. It illustrates the reaction that the Left should be confronting, without pandering to comforting illusions about Islamism.

As the voters turn out to ballot (without real legitimacy), Le Monde describes how much of Algerian society has become ultra-conservative.

In 2000, 27 % of the population favoured equality between the sexes, today only 16 % do so.  With the exception of Kabylie, this has affected the whole land. Only two out of ten Algerians favour women working. Seven out of ten back women wearing the Veil. Young people are barely more progressive than their elders.

One can explain this in many ways – effects of the Military repression and search for some kind of safe haven in religion. Or that poverty, precarity, and a huge level of unemployment drive people back to traditional certainties.

 But clearly Islamism, ideologically that is,  has played a dominant role. The Islamicisation of Algeria has indeed been backed by the Military-Presidential clique, le Pouvoir, and their bureaucratic-entrepreneur claque. Their ‘secularism’ does not mean free opinion and secular values (the article notes the increasing persecution of Algerian Christians for preaching in a Muslim lands. It simply signifies that this state  faction rules and not one from the Mosque. The have encouraged, a conservative moral atmosphere, and the authority of religion. Only the relentless Arabisation has met successful resistance, from the Kabyle speakers – who have retained a more popularly supported  progressive outlook.

What of these elections? The establishment candidate, Abdelaziz Bouteflika has won, and participation was higher than expected. But it is a hollow triumph. The Algerian ruling class has prepared the way for Political Islam to make a return to overt activity – with all the oppression and blood spilt, not least by the Islamicists, that implies. 

Shame on le Pouvoir!

Abel Paz: (August 12, 1921. Died April 13, 2009)

A Great of the Workers’ Movement: Abel Paz (1921 – 2009).

Abel Paz, pen name of Diego Camacho, has died.

Brought to politics in the 1930s as a  member of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) (CNT Obituary) Diego fought in Spain against Franco and the counter-revolution. A member of the legendary Durruti column he took part in some of the most violent batttles.  As a supporter of the libertarian syndicalist side he participated in the – failed – 1937 Barcelona combat against the Stalinist take-over. At the end of the war, when Catalonia finally had gone down in 1939,  Paz survived and fled to France. The author of a number of important histories of the Spanish war, he remained a committed anarchist all his life, saying that,

“El anarquismo invoca una vida completamente diferente. Trata de vivir esta utopía un poco cada día.

Anarchism means a completely different  form of life. Try to live a little of  this utopia every day.

If anyone on the left dismisses anarchism,  one should contemplate the life of this hero of the international workers’ movement.

Hat-tip to Entdinglichung  (here), some more details (in French) of his initial internment in France, and  later war-time armed opposition in the Spanish maquis to Franco (here.)

Afghan Women’s Protests Stoned.

 The BBC reports on the attack on women protesting against new Afghan laws (for the Shiite Community) reducing them to chattel. The women were faced with counter-protesting men, who cried “Death to the slaves of the Christians.” And threw a hail of stones.

“Dozens of Afghan women who tried to protest against a new law they say legalises rape within marriage have been attacked in the capital, Kabul.  ”

News from Afghan defenders of women’s rights on the background here.

The Independent carries a detailed story.

Meanwhile after the acceptance of Sharia ‘law’  in Pakistani province Swat Islamists vow (here) to extend it to the rest of the country. “Joyous over the implementation of sharia law in Malakand region of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), the Tehrik Nifaz-i-Shariat Muhammadi (TNSM) chief Sufi Mohammad has said that the law would be extended to other parts of the country too, The Dawn reports.”

Yes, the aged bigot is a Sufi.

On Afghanistan, Anne McShane is right to point out in the latest Weekly Worker that, “despite the constitution and various other conventions and protocols signed by Afghanistan since 2003, even the US itself is forced to admit that ‘these commitment and efforts do not appear to be translating into safer and healthier conditions for Afghan women and girls. These paper exercises are simply a cover for a  wracked by war and backwardness. A backwardness that US intervention has worsened, not alleviated.”

The issue remains: how do we express solidarity with the Afghan women’s fight? A start might be by recognising that the conservative Islamists (many with their own blood-drenched Mujaheddin past) in charge of the state (such as it is), under US control, are to be opposed. But that the Taliban who after all want to accelerate the descent into Sharia reaction, cannot be regarded as a ‘resistance’ worth anything other than contempt. In these conditions some, from New Left patricians to Islamophiles,   are  tempted to imagine that there is  a ‘good’ Pashtun nationalism waiting there to overthrow imperialist occupation and when that happens,  then we will deal with such issues as women’s oppression and human rights. Experience shows, by contrast, that this concern has to to begin now.

Couscous (la Graine et le Mulet): DVD Review.

 

La Graine et le Mulet (Couscous) is now available on DVD * . It’s one of the most important films of 2008 and won a French César (Oscar) in that year.  Set in the Mediterranean Port of Sète, it follows the  crises of everyday life, and the joys, of a warm unselfconscious family. Nothing special. The Director, Abdellatif Kechiche, says he wanted to show a milieu of the French working class, of North African,  Midi, and more recent immigrant, origin, as ”ordinary“. 

This friendly and roving clan is the backdrop of a solid drama. This unfolds around the plight of Slimane Beiji (Habib Boufares)  a sixty-year old shipyard worker. He is a Tunisian immigrant of long-standing. He is devastated to find himself dismissed as work dries up. Is delocalisation of boat-building and repair at fault (that he is sacked as ’un français’ when they can get the job done cheaper elsewhere)? Clearly it is his age that counts – badly. But the background is the death of commercial fishing. The accelerating transformation of Mediterranean ports into marinas and tourist resorts  is happening in many other seas.

Redundancy money does not go very far. Beniji reacts dismissively to suggestions that he - as was the dream (rarely  fulfilled) of many North Africans,  returns  ’au bled’ (back ‘home’). Wracked by feelings of impotence, he flounders a while to find a way to keep going in Sète.  Scenes from the less than happy married lives of some of his family heighten the tension. But Beniji’s quiet dignity – his principle that he wants to leave a decent legacy (achievement, not money) - wins out.

His former wife, Souad (Bouraouïa Marzouk), cooks a brilliant fish couscous (hence the Mulet). At one of those long extravagant diners shared by the French working class it has pride of place. North Africans and French, drink, and talk – as they really do, not as in some kind of diversity training course – about their different languages and culture.  The food gives Beniji inspiration. Helped by Rym,(Hafsia Herzi) the daughter of his present companion Latifa (Hatika Karaoui), he sets about creating a floating restaurant offering the speciality. Rym carries the plans forward.  They face a  frosty (realistic) reception from banks and local bureaucrats (one emphasising that ‘here in France’ we do such and such). As is the way in film the restaurant gets a grand Opening Night: the occasion for the final dramas of La Graine et le Mulet. Do not under any circumstances miss the Belly Dance.

La Graine et le Mulet has traces of Ken Loach’s slices of working class life (without the didactic tone). Herzi’s performance as Rym has been described as ‘fizzing’: I’d say it’s guts electrified. There are tastes of sexual conflict, in the raw way of the world. There is a lot of other rich fare here. The couscous meal has echos of the glorious feast in Renoir’s Partie de Campagne (working class Parisians escaping to the countryside). One side (the vistor’s ) of Sète is a kind of escape; reminding us of Georges Brassens, and a feed by the Mediterranean. 

Abdellatif Kechiche  shows that  there are vibrant working class communities in Sète still. Even if their employment is threatened. Or that the Parti Communiste lost in 2001 to the UMP. One might call the picture soft-focus realism. If the camera shots weren’t so sharp. It is a truly humanist  film, with a fine balance between optimism and realism. As a celebration of ordinary working class people’s lives, and the genuine mixture of cultures and individuals, La Graine et le Mulet is up there amongst the greats.

* DVDs are the only way we at the Tendance can see the latest World Cinema since Ipswich Council leased  off the Film Theatre to a ‘businessman’ more interested in Manchester United than film. They do have the advantage of an option where you can turn the subtitles off.

New Labour’s Unfinished Revolution Finished Off?

 

Philip Gould: Thank you!

The plight of Georgina Gould, her contretemps in the Eirth and Thamesmead constituency, must have touched many hearts. It reminded me of the role her father, Lord Philip Gould, played in New Labour, for both Blair and Brown. His book, The Unfinished Revolution (1998) rightly stands as a classic. Gould set out the strategy for government whose results are with us today.

The Polster retells some anecdotes about the hard, ” aspirational” working class, that he knew in his (non-Lordly) youth. Today, he notes, the “new middle class” is at the centre of the country – drawing energy both from his old acquaintances, and the dynamic forces unleashed by markets. Newness, he discovers, is happening all over the planet. This globalisation needs “managed change”. People need to be equipped to go out and sell on the world market. Old fashioned statism, and class based politics cannot cope with these changes. Mandelson and Liddle (in their Blair Revolution. 1996) saw the key to winning British elections, and successful government, in wedding the “dynamic market economy” , “real equality of opportunity”, with a dose of social equity. Gould added that this “social” awareness should appeal to New Labour’s core constituency, the “people of the suburbs.”

Apparently, at 19% behind the Tories, the leafy lanes and driveways of the UK, not to mention my terraced street, are deserting New Labour in droves (here).

The only book on political polls which made a serious impact on me was Butler and Stokes Political Change in Britain. This, appearing in the 1970s, worked with a methodology that differentiated voters according to ‘cohorts’. That might mean, for example, that Gould’s aspiring hard-working, car-driving, home-owner, is a group that ‘came of age’ politically with Thatcher. They backed her primarily on economic grounds – mortgages, low taxes – with a degree of patriotic pride. They went over to Labour when they were convinced that the same ruthless pursuit of their interests and British self-assertion was served by Blair. A bonus was that the ‘social’ but of New Labour appealed to the Old Labour constituency and even those flinty types who liked good public services. Those to the left of that had nowhere else to go.

This strategy – a coalition hinged on the new middle class, the new Subject of History – had a lot of faults. For a while they could bear having to pay increased costs. Of privatised utilities. More and more farmed-out state provision,. Or the cost of schemes like PFI. Okay, what was left fully public was undermined. The managers-turned-businessmen taking over the rest were useless grasping cack. So? That group, the privatising middle class, did very well thank you. Having got rid of the Labour Party as a real political power-base, they created a version of Craxi’s Italian Socialists – a ‘big tent’  dependent on state largess.

A problem. Not foreseen - the economy would not always be “dynamic”. Even the hardest of hard employees don’t like facing the Dole. Or dynamic entrepreneurs enjoy going bust. They tend to whimper. Ask for help. When they don’t get it they take their votes elsewhere.

Instead of building up a lasting constituency based on an egalitarian, class, interest – making conditions better across the board — Gould successfully argued for this competitive ‘equality of opportunity’. When it’s become equality to fail, then the strategy falls apart.

Still Gould’s got his Lordship and I’m sure his daughter won’t end up on some  ‘training’ scheme for the unemployed.

Caterpillar (France): Back to Work? French Workers’ Anger Remains.

Caterpillar Stuff.

In France the world-wild-and-wide economic downturn has met resistance. Facing the wave of redundancies, attempts at pay-cuts,  and mounting unemployment there have been massive united union days of actions, huge  demonstrations, workplaces have been sat-in,  and managers ‘kidnapped’. The conflict at Caterpillar (at Grenoble et d’Echirolles) has been a symbol of this fight-back. The company produces real things of use. That it is hard hit by the recession shows the downward turn’s  depth.

Reports (in English) suggest that the Caterpillar conflict has been radical. At one point four bosses were held ‘hostage’ (here). The police were used at Echirolles and activists charged. The magistrate who judged the workers’ actions illegal talked of a « situation insurrectionnelle » or in legal terms, « une entrave à la liberté de travailler » (attack on the freedom to work).  He decided that any further blockages will be met with daily fines. Today the latest news is  that  after the plant occupation, negotiations have restarted with the American-multinational. On offer is a reduction in the number of employees laid off (from 733 à 600) and some better conditions for those forced onto part-time employment. The main redundancies stand. Union reps have signed up to this accord.

This agreement will be submitted, by secret ballot, to the affected. In the meantime work has restarted “à contre coeur” (unwillingly). It’s  hard to see how those fired up will accept such limited gains, and more sackings – but I am not writing as one of them.

On the Left all parties have supported the workers. The Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste,  offfers good  coverage of  this, and many other disputes. They  demand an end to legal proceedings against the Caterpillar workers, and a halt to all redundancies.

French Reactions to Ahmadinejad.

Doughty Anti-Zionist.

A quick round-up of reactions in France (which will doubtless develop).

Ultra-Catholic French ‘intégrists’ welcomed Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s ‘anti-Zionist’ declaration at the UN Geneva Conference on Racism: (here). ‘Anti-imperialist’ opponents of ‘Juiverie’ commended his ‘flying start’ (here). Not so strangely these two Blogs are interlinked.

France’s Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, and a noted defender of human rights, has refused to follow  advice not just to walk out from the Hitler’s Birthday speech, but to pull out altogether. He called the event the ” le début d’un succès”, (the start of a success”) (here). The Parti Communiste Français has talked of the Conference being ‘held hostage’ by the American led boycott, and Ahmadinejad’s ‘extremist speech’. Socialist Party General Secretary Martine Aubry was forthright and has demanded that France withdraw from the Conference.

No doubt Ahmadinejad’s British admirers on the ‘left’ who work for, or appear on,  Press TV – Iran’s state-funded ‘information’ broadcaster – would disagree.

Interestingly Press TV reports a proposal to set up “a secretariat to follow up and coordinate exchange of information on war crimes, genocide and other forms of organized crimes and holding periodic conferences in the Islamic and other interested countries to discuss the agreed subjects.”

These states certainly have plenty of their crimes to discuss.  

Hamas Kills Opponents; Clare Short Turns a Blind-Eye.

Do we seriously want this in Power?

Clare Short and Liberal Democrat Lord Adlerdice held a House of Commons Meeting last night.With a video-link to Hamas leader Mashaal . Supporters of recognising Hamas have welcomed this event. It happened that the connection wasn’t working (here) but the pro-Hamas intention was there, Short’s that is.

It appears largely up to to those who stand with the Israeli hostility to Hamas to criticise this. Yet there are plenty of reasons to do so. Without ceeding an inch to Israeli policies. That nationalist, militarist and human-rights breaking state, with plenty of blood on its hands, deserves serious democratic resistance. But is Hamas it?

Hamas’s platform for government (minimum programme) is anti-Israeli occupation and for the building of a Palestinian state. It supports resistance, and a range of measures, including backing for political pluralism. Behind this is an Islamist ‘maximum’ programme, the reign of the Qu’ran on Earth. The enforcement of Islamic standards of ‘modesty’  for example – dress code. These are ‘transitional’ measures. They bring the day-to-day party regime to its final goal of a pure society. Called the Sharia – the denial of human equality made into a parody of law. What has this, even remotely, got to do with the left? It’s the opposite of the socialism in any form. It is based on private property, inequality (for women and non-Muslims). Life is ruled by Divine decree. As interpreted by god’s representatives.

Parties are to be judged on how they carry out their aims. We have evidence of how Hamas operates in practice. Human Rights Watch (here) gives plenty of reasons to be more than wary of the Palestinian Islamists  - such as killing suspected ‘informers’ (aka, political opponents) notably during the Israeli armed forces attack on Gaza.

 

On the left it is customary to reel out the stale old arguments. That it is not up to us to tell ‘resistance’ movements what to do. Or that we don’t ‘really know’ about the conflict. We should let those ‘there’ decide. They are not brief on telling us how we should  support Hamas. Make as much noise as possible (following Clare Short). Boycott, people, and goods manufactured in Israel or by ‘Zionists’ generally. Do some flag waving and cheer-leading.

It is one thing to ask for, say, opposition to Israeli attacks on civilians. To oppose its policies, from the West Bank to Gaza. To give a general welcome to a Palestinian state. It’s another to work closely with Hamas – as George Galloway does, and Clare Short gestures towards. If anyone wants us to endorse this degree of  co-operation they had better come up with some pretty solid evidence that the group they link with is sound. Start with the  democratic, progressive, nature of the organisation. It’s no longer good enough to point to past practice, when Europe’s left enthused about all Third World movements without looking too closely at them. That we stood by African national liberation, or, the Indo-Chinese Communists, without telling them what to do. Or indeed really knowing too much about them. Well Galloway has ditched the PLO, too venal, and now he tells us that Hamas it tickity-bo. He would, wouldn’t he? Who else would take the words from his ilk, or from the other pro-Hamas groupies, from Islamist Tariq Ramadam, to grizzly Patrician Tariq Ali? Or Gilad Atzmon… (all on the same lletter calling for recognising Hamas).

It all ended so happily didn’t it? Naturally all these countries are now basking in such prosperous social democratic plenty (er….)  because of the lack of unwanted European leftists’ advice. Hamas will surely…yes, we have plenty of reason to think that if it gains more power its rule will be followed by more tomb stones in the self-proclaimed anti-imperialist cemetery. While outside the Peter Pans of the left will move onto the next Cause.

France: “Extreme Left Manipulation” Behind Social Conflict.

Les ‘Contis’.

Today former French Labour Minister, and present UMP (Sarkozy’s Party) General Secretary Xavier Bertrand accused far-left ‘manipulators’ of being behind recent labour unrest and social conflict (here). Speaking of this week’s trashing of the sous-préfecture of Compiègne (government offices) by angry Continental workers, he said, 

 ”J’y vois l’action de certains manipulateurs d’extrême gauche. Il y a des militants d’extrême gauche qui sont dans certains conflits et qui n’ont qu’une seule volonté, attiser la violence”

“I see there the activity of certain far-left agitators. There are extreme left activists who are only involved in such conflicts with one aim: to incite violence.”

This outburst comes with the background of continuing industrial and social disputes. Facing a galloping recession employers are scaling down enterprises. Their employees are reacting with fury.  The Continental (tyre manufacturers) conflict continues, with doubtful claims of a potential take-over. The Caterpillar workers (already cited here) have refused to participate in a vote on an agreement while colleagues remain under threat of victimisation. Encouraged by tough talk from Sarkozy and his employer allies, Caterpillar has begun legal proceedings as a result of the ‘kidnapping’  of four bosses. A host of other disputes are taking place (here). Former centre-right Prime Minister, Dominique Villipin, has talked of a “risk of revolution” building up (here). Electorally it seems likely the radical left Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste (NPA), and to a lesser extent the Front de Gauche,  will make a splash in the coming European ballot. They have been involved in supporting these struggles, with other groups, such as Lutte Ouvrière.

Blaming these ‘extreme left agitators’ has become part of Sarkozy’s crisis strategy. The vindictive “ Tarnac affair” attacked autonomists. Now new laws on demonstrations and labour disputes appear likely, repressing ‘hoodies’ in the former, and ‘kidnappers’ in the latter. One theme wins out: blaming social unrest on anything but the failings of the capitalist economy and the UMP-State.

Terry Eagleton and the Supremacy of Faith.

Don’t Worry Terry’s With You!

Terry Eagleton is thoroughly upset (here). At the “militant rationalism” of Dawkins, novelist chaps called Martin Amis and Ian McEwan, not to mention, Christopher Hitchens, and philosopher AC Grayling. They have become “weapons in the war on terror.” Indeed “Western supremacisim has gravitated from the Bible to Atheism.” He forgot Rosie Bell - who inched the path of doom last year.

Why? Apparently it’s because these sceptics and secularists are liberals. And liberals holds that “the state should tolerate any opinion that does not seek to undermine that very tolerance.” Eagleton, reader of Gnostic hidden meanings, sees that this is a “form of partisanship”. That they don’t like  Islam. That some of them, Hitchens and Amis, want not just to lock up terrorists.  They stand for “western cultural supremacism”. That Dawkisn is “self satisfied” critic of “benighted Islam”. That Grayling even believes in Progress! They end in a “slanderous reduction of Islam to a barbarous blood cult.”  Yes, Islam, the rationalists soil it with the same libels. These reductionist Islamophobes: they are all of the same kidney!

To Eagleton, agnosticism is “part of late (how late?) capitalism’s everyday routine.”  These characters look at other people’s faith with “superiority” ,”disdainfully above it.” Unlike Eagleton. He knows the sense of “national injury and humiliation” that underlies Islamist terrorism.  Having to hear Dawkins, Hitchens, Grayling and the rest of the gang of atheist sneerers and witherers can’t help either.

Poor Islam.

Terry Eagleton briefly mentions socialism, which stands for civil liberties, a key demand of  the working class movement. Apparently it is different from liberalism, which tolerates “any opinion” (even if it turns its nose up at them). One awaits clarification of this difference.

While waiting (a long time one suspects), let’s give a case. What might a socialist stand on Islamism be? For socialists it is one of complete and total opposition. Islamisms, in their various  forms, are movements led by the pious Muslim bourgeoisie. They are anti-socialist (standing for private enterprise), anti-democratic (believing in a harmonious society based on divine Law), and oppressive. Generally pretty racist as well. Class enemies we might say.

Eagleton, by contrast, has a lot  in common with post-modernism liberalism. And with the high-minded thinking-the-best-of-everybody of American Transcendentalists, Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman. That is ways to relativise difference, to reach out to the Other. Thus: Eagleton is against  Islamism. But understands where Muslim self-assertion is coming from. Better than most. Certainly better than supercilious metropolitan liberals who probably lack the balls of a gutsy Manchester Irish boy, an EngLit prof who’s done a couple of years in the Weasels (Workers Socialist League). Hard-types, orthodox Trotskyists.

But….Eagleton is not really talking about politics at all. If he dismissed (here)  Dawkins’s The God Delusion as a book written by a man ignorant of religion, the literary commenator shows few signs of acquaintance with political socialism. Socialism after all has strong roots in anti-clericalism, (even socialists with a  religion). Few socialists want a religious state – in that they agree with liberalism. That’s a reason why they loathe Islamism – amongst the others already given. Secularism is a belief in a state which attempts to be neutral about religious by not ceding to any of them. We might have an interesting debate about how this might come about in the United Kingdom, where under New Labour organised religion has unprecedented state influence. Or the faults of secularism, say, as interpreted in the French political tradition. Or how imperialism is a structure of economics and politics, not some kind of ‘anti-Islamic’ ideology. Again, what unites and separates the liberal rationalists Eagleton cites from the atheists and rationalists in the Marxist and socialist ranks.  But I digress.

What Eagleton is really talking about is the Christology and Ethical Theory he elaborates in The Trouble with Strangers (2008). This rests on the Imitatio Christi - the image of a Christ who takes on the suffering of the world. Who struggles for Justice. Eagleton opines that Christians follow this, in love and solidarity, in their reach out to identify with ‘strangers’ in a common humanity.

Humbly he imagines a Christian standing in for another in the queue for the Gas Chambers.

Truly the man is a worthy successor to Thomas à Kempis.

Atheists? They have fallen “at the first hurdle” – or we could say, at one of the stations of the Cross on the way to Calvery. Turned away. To wander in error eternally. 

There is indeed nothing like a Christian to endure the suffering of others.

Carnival of Contrarians.

A la Bastille!

 

There’s something called the ‘Carnival of Socialism’. It’s a rotating list of Blog posts the ‘Carnis’ decide are socialist. I suppose they must be  -  if I could be arsed to check up on all of them. Like most self-appointed glee clubs it’s terribly dull. The latest one looks as if it’s written by a professional dullard. Somehow Tendance Coatesy, despite its leading position in the labour movement, and the hope and joy it spreads amongst the world’s struggling oppressed, doesn’t get mentioned. In its place too many Quorn pies of bland comment maketh a sorry feast.

← Left is what a real Bakhtin Carnival looks like.

With a proud tradition of contrarianism we at the Tendance are now holding an alternative Carnival, of, you guessed it, Contrariness. Here are some recent recommended Posts that grade the make: Tony Greenstein has a go at David Aaronovitch and ‘anti-Zionist’  Gillad Atzmon  (here). Bob from Brokley (where?) is a, “Blog about trans-Atlantic translation, Jews and Jew-haters, the old and new Stalinists, islam and secularism, contrarians and refuseniks, and South London.” Voltaire’s Priest has some excellent musings on religion’s claims to spread peace  at Shiraz Socialist. This drew forth a  reply from the Grande Dame of West London, Red Maria (not, I suspect, her real name). Charlie, who actually thinks about economics, asks if the left should consider a ‘sustainable austerity’ programme. Stroppy pleads,  “can commentators on this please try to debate without calling people names such as scabs and nazis?”   Nation of Duncan does a bit of battling for the class struggle. Mick talks up the Japanese Communist Party. Pouminista does a magnificent job speaking about the often forgotten parts of the anti-fascist, anti-Stalinist left. Social Republic has some sharp thoughts on Italian nationalism. The Soul of Man Under Capitalism opines that “the man is screwing you through every fucking orifice…” Ian Bone recommends that we “get up off your arses..” Dave Osler controversially argues against Tax Cuts for the Rich. And Modernity does a Quick ‘Anti-Zionist’ Quiz that is certain to bring joy to members of George Galloway’s dwindling band of last-standers. Rosie Bell  has thoughtful reflections on the play Seven Jewish Children. Enty gets ready for May Day.

Finally, 3AM Magazine extends the domain of Contrarian struggle to the cultural field.

This List of Glory is by no means exhausting or conclusive. Be Contrarian !

 

UPDATE: Modernity raises questions about the other  ’Carnival’s’ tolerance of pro-Iranian apologists, here.

Tariq Ramadan: New Homophobic and Sexist Charges.

To Ramadan the Qur’an Says Gays, Sick, Women, Be Modest!

Tariq Ramadan,  faces a new crisis (here). This time it’s in Holland.

Ramadan is employed part-time as an Adviser by Rotterdam City Council. His role is to  ’stimulate discussion” on immigration and to ’build bridges’ with the Dutch Muslim community.  At the pay of  27 500 Euros a year he does two days a month work, has produced two reports and has led some public debates. This adds to Ramadan’s active presence in various guises across the world: in France, Switzerland, and elsewhere. Which includes the  United Kingdom where  he has an academic reputation, and is fêted by Conservatives, New Labour,  multi-culturalists and Islamophiles alike.

According to Le Monde this week Ramadan stands accused by the magazine Gay Krant of homophobic and sexist comments.

Ramadan aurait déclaré que l’islam prohibait l’homosexualité, laquelle serait “un dérangement, un dysfonctionnement, un déséquilibre”. “Dieu a fixé une norme qui veut qu’un homme soit destiné à une femme et une femme à un homme”, aurait aussi indiqué le philosophe. 

Ramadan is alleged to have declared that Islam prohibits homosexuality, which is ‘a disorder, a disequilibrium, a disfunction’. He is also said to have declared that ‘God has fixed a norm that means a man is intended for a woman, and a  woman for a man’.

Regarding women’s public appearance he recommended that they take less care of their appearance, and behave with modesty (soberly). In the street, they should “garder toujours les yeux fixés sur le bitume” (keep their eyes fixed on the pavement).

Reactions to these reported remarks  have hit Rotterdam Council. An enquiry has been launched. The comments are alternatively denied or considered taken “out of context”. The Islamist has been defended by the Green Party, whose Rik Grashof holds the  portfolio of Integration. he has declared that even if Ramadan is opposed to homosexuality he gives priority to “respect for people.”

In France long-standing secular critics of Ramadan place these remarks in context (here). Caroline Fourrest remarks that  ’Brother Tariq’,  praised as a religious progressive, has more in common with Jerry Falwell than Martin Luther King. In brief his comments are par for the course. While the Council has (here) apparently ‘exornerated’ Ramadan, the controversy rumbles on.

YMCA New Deal Training: Shut the Detention Centres Down!

Storm Dencora House!

Let the following know what you think about this:

Chris Mole(molec@parliament.uk)

YMCA Training(banbury@ymcatraining.org.uk)

Disturbing information reaches Tendance Coatesy that YMCA Training in Ipswich is reaching a major crisis. In the run-up to the ‘Flexible New Deal’ in October the DWP and the YMCA are pushing as many people as possible into the scheme. They have no placements. People are stuck in the ‘Den’ with nothing to do. They are effectively in prison 5 Days a week. We cannot be optimistic about how the ‘Flexible’  version will look like. If past private companies involved in the provision of such ‘training’ are anything to go by this will involve the usual problems (scams, lack of decent facilities and a total absence of real training). The plight of tens of thousands of the unemployed – harassed in programmes designed to force them into jobs which do not exist – will get worse and worse.

Dan who has been posting in the Comments Box of the original posts on the topic says,

” As usual this has become a very complexed issue. For each page of already over complicated law written regarding changes to the benefit system they write about 7 pages of guidelines for staff.

If history is anything to go by, half the law will be lost in translation (from law into guidelines) that is to say policies will be created that differ slightly from what the law says.

For example, the process of “signing on” even though staff members even say this has an official term called “signing labour market declarations” by DWP which JCP staff appear unaware of.

Only two New Deal Advisers in Ipswich have been “upgraded” for the Flexible New Deal, the rest currently as stand will be useless. There is still major confusion over the different stages.

Lets be grateful that there is still time.

My New Deal adviser told me I can’t change my New Deal option however I have found an current manual stating that participants may transfer between New Deal provisions – and that ability has been available since march 2004!! That’s 5 years…

Do they really still need to threaten you with the disclaimer to each job they find you ((”when”) however rare that is)?? But when they get you to sign most times they let you sign then remember to ask whether you [I] have done any “paid or unpaid work” blah blah – if you [I] did would have been too late and you [I] would have been sanctioned if not prosecuted for signing.”
He earlier commented, that,

There is one solution: Close the YMCA Training Centres Down Now! There needs to a through investigation. Ipswich is unlikely to be a lone case of abuse of public funds, and the waste of human potential these New Workhouses have brought. Ultimately two people are to blame: Gordon Brown and James Purnell. They are responsible for the misery  involved. They need to be made to answer for their decisions.

In the meantime despite opposition to the next stage of Welfare Reform (a further tightening of the screws) only the left of the Labour Party has expressed Parliamentary opposition. Unions and campaigners are not being heard in the media (even by some left magazines like Red Pepper, which seems to be getting quite a reputation for ignoring anything to do with welfare reform). The Tories promise an even tougher regime.

Now is the time to step up the opposition!

Dieudonné’s French ‘Anti-Zionist’ List: Worst Political Alliance in Europe?

Holocaust Denier and Friend.

Few deny that ‘Anti-Zionism’ can be  a cover for racism. But rarely does it lead to this broad alliance. In France the mixed-race (Cameroon-French)  ’humourist’ Dieudonné  has launched the Parti Anti-Sionist (Site). Its candidates are standing in the European Election this June (in the Isle-de- France). The List contains, Alain Soral, former Communist, then member of the Front National,  and Thierry Meyssan, famous as the author of  ”L’effroyable imposture” – a founding document of the 9/11 ‘Truth’ Movement.  They are joined by Sidi Yahi Gouasmi of the Fédération Chiite de France. As  well as Rabbi Schmiel Borreman of Judaism Against Zionism. This week, some senior political figures have called for this list to be banned (here).

The resolute nature of Dieudonné’s ‘anti-Zionism’ is such that he invited Holocaust denier, Robert Faurisson, to his stage show last year (here).

The PAS’s  programme includes the following:

Faire disparaître l’ingérence sioniste dans les affaires publiques de la Nation.  (End Zionist interference in our Nation’s public affairs).

Eradiquer toutes les formes de Sionisme dans la Nation. (Eliminate all forms of Zionism from the Nation).

Libérer notre état, notre gouvernement et nos institutions de la main mise et de la pression des organisations sionistes. (Free our state , government and institutions from the hands of Zionists.)

Fans of Islamism, Ultra-Orthodox Jews, Holocaust deniers, French nationalism, Conspiracy  Theories and France’s mixed-race answer to Bernard Manning, have (if they live in the Isle-de-France) a unique voting opportunity. Truly unique.

Update: Dieudonné Blocked by Police for 2 Hours When Registering his List. But do not Despair,  the Negationist Numskull Got Through.

June Elections: No2EU struggles, BNP Nous voilà!

Crow and Friends: Move the Masses!

The June elections loom. County and European – not exactly key institutions for the popular masses. Held in an atmosphere of absolute political pissdoffnessness they will be  the occasion for a lot of cock-snooting. Probably the BNP’s first Euro Parliament seats. A wipe-out for Labour. One hopes the mildly reform-minded Green Party will hold onto their positions. So far not even a blip for No2E (and I’m acquainted with some pretty unblippy blips). Still, they are standing everywhere, including in the vast Eastern Region. That includes here, East Anglia. Seething with resentment at MPs expenses - like anywhere else. Who knows if a couple of voters might cast their ballot papers in Bob Crow’s direction in protest.

David Semple expresses scepticism about this domed venture. Rightly he targets No2EU’s sovereigntist programme (British Democracy first), the process by which the RMT came to launch it,  the Socialist Party’s participation, and its laughable presence on the ground. Yet he sees a potential lurking somewhere. That is in possible further union disaffiliations from the Labour Party. The basis for a future launch of a left political alternative. Or maybe not. To Dave Craig in the latest Weekly Worker the initiative is a “temporary workers’ party”. That is despite, as he acknowledges, its flawed platform. How anyone can see a space for Dave’s project of a European Republic (a social republic that the left can build for socialism) is hard to grasp. No2EU is pretty clear on its opposite: the existing nation-state (the UK) as the prime site for socialism. Well, at least this is a  better position than the nationalist left. One (how long for this world) faction, Sheridan’s Solidarity, is behind the campaign. The other, Scottish Socialist Party claims to be pro-European. It criticises Union Jack waving opponents of the EU. But wishes for the day when the Scots will be waving the Saltire. Or rather, believes that “Scotland out of Britain” is a progressive demand (here)  Tacitly aligned with the business leaders of, say, the SNP, that is. As for No2EU’s  appeal to the electorate the same Weekly Worker has a letter by Chris Straffrod. He reports 8 people at the No2EU Manchester launch. Half of them were left-wing critics. Some mass interest.

No2EU’s previous promotion of a public meeting involving a German far-right M.P. first exposed here,  led to a  public  climb down in the Morning Star. Are supporters  up to these tricks again? Communist Student (Weekly Worker)  Chris Strafford alleges a No2EU supporter is promoting the List on British extreme-right and xenophobic Facebook sites (here).

So much for an alternative to Brown, the Tories and the rest. Here we have more pressing concerns. In Ipswich the BNP are standing for the first time in the County elections. In two wards, Bridge and Chantry (here). Both working class. The first, Bridge, covers Stoke, a classic largely white poor and workers’ and area. Its Labour Branch  is practically dead. The candidate, Bryony Rudkin, politely described by a world-celebrated  left activist sometime back as ‘Blairite yuppie scum’ replaces Harold Manga a well-respected black Councillor. Harold was removed by New Labour equal opportunities. The principle that well-off former Islington Council leader PAs and County Council leaders should remove working class types from Guyana. It did not need the cunning of a skulk of foxes to see a weak point there. Nor that Chantry, a vast estate, has in many areas the same make-up. Though with some Labour life left. Maybe enough to fight back the BNP’s ambitions to stir up  in-fighting amongst the less well-off and panic the worried middle class. So that Griffin’s cronies can prance around with their Union Flags in elected positions.

This is a  threat we will be concentrating on.

 

Note: Nick Griffin was educated at a minor public school in near-by Woodbridge. The first time he stood for election (some decades ago) was in Ipswich, for the Council. Didn’t win.

European Left: Chronicle of a Defeat Announced.

Wilting.

This morning on France-Inter Bernard Guetta, in his ‘géopolitique’ slot, outlined the coming electoral defeat of the European Left (here). It’s an analysis worth thinking about. In view of the June European elections and coming national contests in Spain and Germany (to cite but two). To begin with, Guetta asks: why is the left not on the rise? The recession/slump should have helped reforming alternatives.  The right’s polices are unsettled. In France, Nicolas Sarkozy, elected as a hard-line neo-liberal, has changed tack. Now he calls for regulation and a new financial and economic order. The international scene looks better: America’s right has finally lost Presidential power. The left, one would imagine, could  accelerate the retreat from liberalism. For a start, by doing well in elections.

In fact opinion polls indicate that the European Socialist Party will lose heavily to the conservatives.  Notably the European People’s Party and whatever band of  cranks the British Tories align themselves with. Britain is far from an exception amongst the 27 EU countries. Except that the far-right here are in a position to make a break-through for the first time.

Why?  Voters, Guetta argues, don’t blame their right-wing governments for the crisis – it came from America. They see them as better placed to deal with than uncertain new faces. Guetta suggests that the Socialist bloc is also tainted with its own association with the worst kind of liberalising economics (to say the least – Brown and Blair). It has been unable  to build a coherent European force (not able to offer a candidate in opposition to right-wing EU Commission chief, José Manuel Barroso). Or even a serious counter-programme on a Continental level. In these conditions the right appears to offer prudent management rather than a leap into the unknown. Crisis driven prejudices, resentment and fear can be channelled by the racist right in all its hues. Fortunately, against this, forward looking alternatives have gained appeal  (notably in France and Germany) towards the left of the social democratic parties. But these groups will not have much power.

“cette crise fermerait la longue parenthèse libérale a laissé le champ libre aux droites pour préempter le retour de l’Etat et aux extrêmes gauches pour surfer sur la colère sociale.

“This crisis will close the long liberal parenthesis, leaving the field free for the right to take advantage of the return of the State and for the extreme left to ride the wave of social anger.”

He concludes,

En ne jouant pas l’Europe, en ne sachant pas se faire l’avocat d’une puissance publique continentale à même de défendre le Travail, les gauches achèvent de se tirer dans le pied.

In not staking on Europe, not knowing how to make itself the advocate for a Continental Public Power, and not even defending Labour, the lefts have shot themselves in the foot.

The particular misery of the British Labour Party deserves a section on its own. Like a wounded and manky stag Gordon Brown is at bay. New Labour expended generations of political capital building up transient support in the ‘new middle class’ and ditching the labour movement.  It has recently turned to making the lives of the unemployed a living hell. No wonder it has nothing to fall back on in its present despair.

But are there Left alternatives emerging? Opinion polls suggest that in France the Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste (NPA has fallen down to 7% of voting intentions (from around 11%), while the Front de Gauche is hovering close at 6%. Lutte Ouvrière is at a low 2%. Unlike these fragments the German Die Linke may do better. But as the SPD looks likely to lose the autumn federal elections they will remain an opposition within an opposition. As is clearly the case in other European states. Italy’s left, faced with a malevolent clown, is impotent. It is still dominated by failing attempts to transplant the pro-business-socially-reformist model of the US Democrats. The Spanish PSOE seems simply unable to get a grip on the country. The traditional enemy of progressives, the Catholic Church, has been on the rampage. The Socialists’  left competitor, Izquirada Unida, remains marginal.  Only Iceland, which today announced its intention to join the EU, seems to have a real new Left government. But will its Green-Left partners remain trapped in the old hostility to European-wide structures it was born with? A warning: such policies have helped drive the British left to irrelevance.

 

European Elections: French Left Fractured.

This latest French Opinion Poll on voting intentions for the June European Elections is of interest.

	Février 2009	Avril 2009	Mai 2009
Liste de Lutte ouvrière soutenue par Arlette Laguiller	3	3	2
Liste du Nouveau parti anticapitaliste soutenue par Olivier Besancenot	9	7	7
Liste d’union Parti communiste et Parti de gauche soutenue par Marie-George Buffet et Jean-Luc Mélenchon	4	5,5	6,5
Liste du Parti socialiste	23	22,5	21,5
Liste Europe Ecologie soutenue par Daniel Cohn-Bendit	7	7,5	7
Liste du MoDem soutenue par François Bayrou	14,5	14	13,5
Liste UMP	26	26,5	27
Liste MPF-CPNT soutenue par Philippe de Villiers et Frédéric Nihous	5	5	5
Liste Debout la République soutenue par Nicolas Dupont-Aignan	2	1	1
Liste du Front national soutenue par Jean-Marie Le Pen	6	7,5	7,5
Autres listes (1)	0,5	0,5	2

That the UMP (Sarkozy’s party) is at 27%, a head above the Socialist Party(PS)  has many causes. Sarkozy has wind in his sails. He’s managed a deft act. Pre-becoming President  Sarko promised ruthless liberalisation. Now, faced with the recession, and its scandals, he calls for humanising capitalism. The main Parliamentary opposition? A weak, compromised, ’orthodox’ social democratic party. Weaknesses? The French Socialists are seeing the results of not defining themselves as a robust reforming force. There is the legacy of their own ‘Blairite’ period (1984 – 86)  – market-worship under Prime Minister Laurent Fabius. Then, after a return to Government following the thundering 1996 social movement, they vacillated. Socialist Prime Minister (1997 – 2002) Lionel Jospinbegan by defending the public sector. He ended up agreeing to privatisations. He lost, notoriously, to Chriac in 2002 – scoring less than le Pen for President. In the wilderness it seemed as if they might getradical. No: there was scramble for power before the last (20060 presidentials. Followed by in-fighting. Without any clear PS left opposition (its left fragmented, behindthe long-standing grandees, some quit the organisation with Mélenchon) their divisions are arranged around personalities. Above all,  the legendary feud between PS General Secretary Martine Aubry and Presidential loser Ségolène Royal. The result? A reduction of support to its core constituency: 21,5%.

If anyone has reaped a harvest from the PS’s lack of dynamism it’s the Modems of  François Bayrou. Posing as the most resolute – if avuncular – opponent of Sarkozy’s ‘coup d’état (attack on liberties) gets him a hefty 13,5%. To a lesser extent the Liste Europe Ecologie led by a smirking Daniel Cohen-Bendit (liberal market Green), at 7% have captured attention. Both appeal to mildly annoyed voters who don’t want anything really to change in France, and recoil from anything more than verbally challenging Sarkozy. By contrast another harmless diversion, the ‘Gaullist’ (pure republican) list, led by Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, is barely registering at 1%

The left of the PS still scores well. Olivier Besancenot’s Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste has come down from an inflated 11% (claimed) to 9% to 7% – illustrating the danger of politics as  personal mangetism. At 6,5% the Liste d’union Parti communiste et Parti de gauche backed by par Marie-George Buffet (PCF)  et Jean-Luc Mélenchon (Parti de Gauche) closely tails them. No doubt this will cause some embarrassment to those ‘anti-capitalists’ who failed to recognise the underlying strength of these ‘reformists’. Still we can read again the refusal of the NPA to have a common List or agreement  with their rivals (here). Apparently its due to the PCF-PG sometimes working with the French Socialists and making arrangements with the social-fascist class traitors (okay I made that last bit up). LO, at 2% is nowhere.

Unlike the UK the far-right appears on a downward slide. A kind of UKIP (with ties to Libertas), the Liste MPF-CPNT  gets 5%. Le Pen is at 7,5%. Anti-Europanism and ‘security’ are still important issues  for some, and xenophobia has hardly gone away, but not they’re not the seismetic forces they once were.

MPs’ Expenses and Marxist Methodology.

Gordon Needs Some Top Tendance Tips.

Nearly everyone has had a say on the MPs expenses scandal. So now’s the time for the Tendance to have its two penneth worth. From the view point of a section of the drinking classes which has raised itself to the level of understanding of the world-historical development of capitalism. That is. 

Some tips.

Comrade Wooster rightly pointed out that “stout denial” is best tried quickly. Congrats to Justice Minister Shadid Malik for following the Bertie Bolsheviks on this. We all stand by his statement that his claims were all made “a million per cent” within the rules.” (here) With those maths shame he’s not in charge of the Treasury!

Honesty is the best Marxist policy, is it not? Commendation to Clare Short, Shadow Minister for Belated Courage and Patron Saint of Cracked Tunes, on her contretemps, “an honest mistake.” (and see here)

Elliot Morely appealed to the anti-capitalist in us all by blaming the number crunchers for his difficulties: “sloppy accounting” (here).

Michael Trend, although from the monopoly capitalist enemy, melted our class warrior heart by blaming his claim of £19,000 on naivety and “misunderstanding” (here). How many times have the great unwashed  used that one when Graham caught them filching a bottle of Absolut Vodka from Sainsbury’s!

Let’s not forget that UKIP showed the way. Tom Wise, a UKIP (now independent) MEP for East Anglia charged this year with fiddling expenses (here), said that he has not “personally profited” from any of the loot (here). Hats off to the clever ex-Copper.

Now for the rest of the lot about to mount the stage and explain themselves: break a leg!

Euro-Elections: A Marxist Analysis.

 

Will the British Left Support a Social European Republic?

Who likes politicians? Or at any rate those in office. Fewer and fewer it seems. For the June European elections, the flight to small parties has begun. Demagogues and chancers, xenophobes and frank racists.  Thus: voting intentions at CON 28%(-9), LAB 19%(-3), LDEM 19%(nc), UKIP 19%(+12!), GRN 6%(+2), BNP 3%(-1). As the Sunday Mirror comments these  opinion polls run  UKIPneck and neck with Labour. The BNP looms. Those who see a silver lining in the Green vote forecast  (6%) are clutching at (organic) straws. The trend is, to say the least, not progressive.

The Continent has seen party-systems shaken by scandals over Politicians and money before. Germany was rocked by them when Chancellor Kohl was found out financing the CDU by dodgy means. France has periodic bouts of outrage over party funding – usually creaming off municipal contracts and an imaginative range of front businesses and ‘not-for-profit’ bodies. Spain sees at this very moment a crisis over right-wing Partido Popular political corruption in Valencia.  Still we’d have to go back to the Italian Tangentopoli scandals  to see anything that’s had a greater impact than the present UK meltdown. No-one is suggesting (well, not strongly) that UK Parliamentarians have Italy’s relation with organised crime. Though the interface between political figures and business is murky territory. Take the example of David Blunkett: his princely wage from the ‘training’ company A4E   (newly awarded a raft of contracts for the flexible New Deal) deserves further investigation (here). No. It’s more direct: the cosseted lives of MPs at people’s expense really gets on the electors’ goat.

What should be the left do?

The first response is: shout and spit blood. The second is: can we show anything politically? The answer to that is, the coming European and County Council elections are an opportunity to express our views. That is opposition to all of the above, notably Gordon Brown. But how?

Should we follow Geoff Martin, a respected comrade – just expelled from the Labour Party for calling for a vote for a rival to the LP List  -  and back No2EU? (here)

There is thus the No2EU List – not registering in the polls at any rate. Its strategy? To say No to the European Union and yes to British democracy. It is, in short ‘sovereigntist’ (nations first). It wants popular rule to come through a stronger British – independent – state. Nationalists on the left disagree – they want even smaller states (Scotland, Wales notably)  to run our affairs. Both groups are throwbacks to the 19th century. That’s the  ideas of the Italian liberal Giuseppe Mazzini. He thought that ‘people’s  nations’  were a progressive goal. They should be republics. Rid of tyrants and dynastic states that  imprisoned nationalities. Free peoples would then co-operate and make the world a better place. Put Brussels and the UK in these slots and you get No2Eu and the Scottish Socialist Party, plus a lot of left flotsam and jetsam. Excluding naturally well-respected cormades etc who are wrongly informed. They did not choose wisely.

Maybe they’ll get round to reforming Mazzini’s People’s International League.

Marx argued  frequently with Mazzini and his followers. Famously during the time of the First International (1860s-70s) The Italian Patriot’s cloying sentimentality rankled enough. But the real disagreement was over class. Conflict that is. Some very simple principles. Nations have classes. Mazzini wanted class harmony.  Capitalism is international, it forms, classes, well you’ve guessed it, internationally. The national shapes (influenced by states, culture, local conflicts) shape this. But do not cause it.  To abolish them means world-wide activity. To Marxists how the working class (broadly defined) might gain the power to end its exploitation is the key political issue. This depended on class unity – across the very national boundaries that the nationalists, however left, whatever their republicanism,  try to reinforce. 

Switch forward to the June European elections. The British left, from its woolliest Red-Green Wing to its hardest Communist Party of Britain/RMT one, is united in rejecting Euro-Liberalism. On offer by all the main party lists. But what does this mean? Most see this implying that rejection of the European Union (said more or less openly, I;m not even sure about the Greens’ views, till recently they demanded withdrawl). The SSP and Soldarity  advocate some kind of Saltire Socialism  the others, a  Parliamentary left revival. The SSp claims to be pro-Euroepan though its main contribution seems to be to add another flag to the already crowded EU one.  Or, perhaps like the harmless cranks of the Social Forums, they believe in devolving power so much it will disappear.

They are out of joint with most of the European Left.  They have no credible alternative to  European institution than sovereign states. The French anti-Euro Constitution booklet, En finir avec le euro-libéralisme (2008, L’Utopie Critique) is full of the former. It shows how European institutions are wedded to neo-liberalism, are remote from the electorate, deny even the creation of a European public constituency. So far, so much the Euro-scepticism.That the EU has not hindered – indeed has encouraged – the conditions leading ton the Banking crisis and the return of the bust part of the boom, is obvious. But here we split. The writers of En finir pose the question of a different Europe. One   which the excluded have the power to shape the institutions of the Continent. Hard as that may be, the demand for a Social Europe, a European Social republic, is one that unites, not divides. It’s a classic Marxist objective.  In the path of the First International, not Mazzini’s People’s Alliance.

There are some small  British left groups, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and the Weekly Worker-CPGB, which stand for such internationalist politics. The Weekly Worker offers a highly developed political analysis of the need for a Europe-wide socialist republic. One that needs some strategy to create, not just voting. Not that we have anyone here to vote for that stands for such ideas. No doubt there are others who think in this direction, from the democratic socialist left above all.  Unfortunately withthe  fragmentation of the electorate all the most visible part of the British left seems to offer is a mix of dead-ends and confusion.

Extension du domaine de la lutte.

Key Theoretical Text.

The class struggle intensifies. The floating signifier of the articulated hegemonic practices has been rent with lack, its suture is unravelling in chains of equivalence. The Tendance’s unity offensive against Dave Dudley reaches a peak. Er. Whatever. Michael Martin, symbol of all that is rotten in AEU pompous right-wingery, is (after clinging to his Office for dear life) going to resign as Speaker (here).  There’s a national political vacuum. We intend to do our best to intervene.

Here the Ipswich Anti-Racist, Anti-Fascist Committee held its first meeting last week. Around forty people attended – at a  few days notice. We will be out campaigning against the BNP.

A web site, created by Ipswich Unemployed Action, has been set up. The site presents many interesting first-hand reports and comments by Dan (and our good self – others will be forthcoming – yes you bloody will!) from the town. Its objectives are here.  

Nor should we forget the past. We would  like to signal the Country Standard. The Standard was the Communist Party of  Great Britain’s ‘rural’ paper (corresponding to La Terre in France). It was closely connected to the Agricultural Workers’ Union – now part of Unite the Union. There is a wealth of articles on the site, illustrating a positive side of the Communist Party. Of interest are the categories for Marxist historian A.L.Morton (who had strong  links with Suffolk), Paxton Chadwick (post-war Communist Mayor of Leiston), and his widow, Lee Chadwick, who continued the fight until her death in 2003 at 93 years old. I have a signed copy of her book, In Search of Heathland   in my front room. For all East Anglian comrades the Wilf Page section is of great importance. This marvellous man left a deep imprint. Poorly he was still a regular attender at the annual Burston rally. He passed away in 2001.

 

An absolute gem of a site.

From Fatwa to Jihad. Kenan Malik.

 

 It is twenty years since Ayatollah Khomeini, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, pronounced his Fatwa against Salman Rushdie. On 14^th of February 1999 he sentenced to death all involved in its publication. The Cleric offered a reward of $3 million (or $1 million to a non-Muslim) for anyone who carried out the murder. The effects of this ‘judgement’ still reverberate. In this finely layered book, From Fatwa to Jihad (2009), Kenan Malik describes the campaign against the Satanic Verses. Its unfolding left a significant legacy in the United Kingdom. He concentrates on two important areas. How the Rushdie affair provided an opportunity for Islamists of various stripes to assert themselves on the national scene. Behind fronts, the latest being the Muslim Council of Britain, they have laid claim to being the true representatives of British Muslims. The other is an account of the way in which the British state’s accommodation to such groups has shaped multiculturalism. How the Rushdie Affair brought to the fore fundamental principles  of freedom of speech. That is, how these liberties have been eroded by the defence of the sacred in the name of difference.

Malik reminds us that the Satanic Verses, is a complex and densely textured piece of literature. It was initially considered as a playful ‘post-modernist’ kaleidoscope with pronounced anti-racist traits. Most today, however, remember the episodes involving ‘Mahound’ (an amusing caricature of Mohamed). These were loosely anchored on the ‘Satanic verses’. That is, revelations that did not fit with doctrine (accepting a compromise over traditional deities) that were later excluded from the Qur’an. The novel’s parody of Islam’s founder’s years of rule and, notably, of his wives – such as the (historically real) decision to execute poets critical of the Prophet immediately raised a few hackles. They were gleefully seized on. In recounting the less picturesque tale of the organised outbidding by Saudi Arabian inspired outrage, and Iran’s, Malik details the Moslem protests. These began on the Indian subcontinent, reached the streets of the UK and culminated in atrocities: the attack on William Nygaard, Rushdie’s Norwegian translator, the knifing to death of his Japanese confrère, Hitoshu Igarashi. In Turkey, a Hotel meeting at Sivas, of the liberal Alevi religious current, at which the Rushdie translator, Aziz Nesin attended was surround by a mob. It was razed to the ground. 37 people were killed. The killers were prosecuted but the Turkish state initially attempted to try Nesin. I had occasion to talk to a Kurdish Alevi (now an atheist)  a few days ago and she still seethed with rage at the inferno and the Islamist pogrom in the town that followed. These events, as much as the book itself and the furore in Britain, left their mark.

At the time many people, liberals and leftists, including his publishers, Penguin, defended Rushdie. Yet a few empathised with the ‘hurt’ caused to Islam by the ‘West’. Or considered that Rushdie was a foreign chap out to make trouble. The most notable case was the British Government. Its spokespeople expressed ‘understanding’ for the anti-Rushdie anger, and apologised for the publication of the Satanic Verses.

Meanwhile the British Islamists who marched, attracted a wider audience. They discovered pride and identity in Islam. Former leftists from a Muslim background began to join them. He does not delve deeply into this, but it was also a key moment not just in the state’s policy of co-option, but in leftist accommodation to Islamism. The process has been encouraged by those who consider this a repeat of assertions of anti-racist Black identity. Why these are not considered traitors to the left on a par with ex-Trotskyist neo-conservatives is but one of many shameful aspects of the affair. Their contribution to reaction, should, all proportions kept, never be excused. Malik takes great pains, bolstered by on-the-spot investigation, to prove how wrong this approach is. What has happened is a proliferation of religious and ethnic fragmentation – hardly a left-wing objective. A world in which the most rigorous forms of Political Islam have flourished.

Talking to former members of the Bradford based Asian Youth Movement, Malik explores how this has occurred on the ground. In place of this 1970s anti-racist movement, with its class based and inclusive agenda, we have “plural monoculturalism”, with competing ‘communities’ fighting it out for public resources. After the initial Black (political) identity of anti-racism, we were faced with a process of endless redefinition, frequently on religious grounds (Islam first, rapidly imitated by other faiths). This finished by “imposing identities on people”. Nor was this a matter of purely cultural politics. A crude power struggle for community grants was been encouraged by challenging funding through religious and ethnic ‘community leaders’ – from the Greater London Council’s policy during the Livingstone 1980s period (reintroduced by the new GLA in the second millennium) to Birmingham’s Umbrella Group. The scene is set by the process, of doling out cash on what Malik calls a ‘tribal’ basis. In this way “multiculturalism has helped create new divisions and more intractable conflicts which made for a less openly racist but a more insidiously tribal Britain.” Plenty of cases of ethnic and religious jostling, from Hindis, Sikhs, and Christians, to the opens sore between South Asians and those of black descent, follow. The complicity of some of the left in this spoils-system, and the bullying shown by those who wield the term Islamophobia to shout down their critics, is well known. Thus it is a shame the author of From Fatwa to Jihad did not interview at greater length leftist activists who have long expressed opposition to this kind of multiculturalism – communalism in all but name. Such opinions are shared beyond the stalwart anti-racists of Southall Black Sisters– rightly cited out by Malik for their persistence to fight fundamentalism of any ilk. It is becoming a key issue for grass-roots left politics in fighting the rise of another ‘community’ ethnic politics. That is the one Malik notes, parading under the label of ‘British identity’ – the BNP.

Malik does not follow the self-lacerating route of explaining Islamism through the ‘humiliation’ of Muslims. He covers the spectrum of Islamic social and theological doctrines. From Fatwa to Jihad centres on Islamism, that is, the political-religious forces  often called fundamentalists or intègrists. Getting to grips with the political and cultural roots of the phenomenon he draws on recent writings by Olivier Roy and others he detects a response to globalisation in the diverse tans-national movements. They are fixated on rules, and literal interpretations of the Qur’an. Yet many enthusiasts are strangely contemporary, with tinges of New Age individualism. Islamism “is very much a child of modern plural societies, with its celebration of ‘difference’ and ‘authenticity.” The screams of hate against any perceived insult of Islam are more about blaspheming their ‘feelings’ than serious theology. This is less clear. No doubt there are some forms of Islam that fit this mould. Locally there is the mysteriously wealthy Origo ‘community’ centre and café which acts as a cover for an Islamic version of the Alpha Course*. But what of more directly Political Islam?  If it is anything, it is organised. They have finance, they have class origins, not just the educated jihadis that Malik cites, but leaders in the pious Islamist bourgeoisie. Al-Qaeda may be dispersed around the world; other networks are rigidly structured, as Hizbt ut-Tahir indicates. The way these bodies operate offers an entry into religious revelation. The objectives may be the fantastic Cockaigne of an Islamic Republic in which only the pure may walk. But the effects are manifold. This inspires people’s whole lives, and cuts them off (when politically translated) from the rest of society. So both streams of Islam exist – alongside all the multiple forms of traditionalism and modernism. A recent case, the Danish caricatures, is an indication of both individualism and organisation, Malik has not rouble showing that the very act of representing Mohamed is not against traditional Islam. It is rather considered a personal attack on puffed up individualists. But it was the ‘Muslim community’ with its all-too eager offence seekers that arranged the protests, to which the British liberals and government so cravenly capitulated. They might not achieve their utopia but the Islamists search for political influence and power continues. Over the bodies of the impure.  

What impulse, detached from the realities of  human needs, and based on religious delirium, encourages these forces? How do they recruit? Their propaganda is telling. Fear plays a big part. The height of this trend, Malik demonstrates, can be found in warning about an immanent Endlösung for European Muslims, as if the whiff of the gas chambers had crept into our streets. Malik shows that this is “hysterical to the point of delusional” While restrictions on civil liberties in the ‘war against terrorism’ (a very real terror, as 7/7 indicates domestically), infringe human rights, and there are some bouts of aggression against Moslems, there is little evidence of systematic attacks on British Muslims. Still less the kind of religious  descrimination against, say, Copts in Egypt. On stop-and search alone it is youths of an Afro-Caribbean background who are overwhelmingly targeted. The BNP rails against foreigners en bloc,  and are equal opportunity racists. Malik indeed argues, “If Muslims are singled out in Britain, and it is often for privileged treatment.” That is, public figures from Prince Charles to Tony Blair, go out of their way to praise its contribution to the world, and there are constant arrangements made to accommodate believers – subsidies, provisions for observance of ritual, and even efforts to incorporate Sharia ‘law’ into British jurisprudence. Nevertheless the effect of this rhetoric may be, he observes, to legitimate slaughtering the ‘kufer’, as acts of resistance.

The upshot is a poisonous legacy. Today Malik remarks, there is “widespread acceptance that it had been wrong to publish, and even more wrong to republish. Writers and artists, political leaders insisted, had a responsibility to desist from giving offence and upsetting religious sensibilities.” The law of blasphemy has been repealed but the first steps towards prosecuting criticism of religion have been taken through other legislation. Against this the wholly misguided view has been expressed that this is a battle between the ‘West’ and Islam. The latter Martin Amis opines, should be made to pay by collective punishment. Even the Enlightenment has been conscripted to this distorted cause. Destroying the very universalism which is its mark. An insult to the beloved Alevi martyrs who paid with their lives in Sivas for the defence of the Enlightenment’s most cherished values. The upshot? The failure to advance genuine Enlightenment canons of freedom of speech, and universalistic anti-racism, has “helped build a culture of grievance, in which being offended is a badge of identity, cleared a space for radical Islamists to flourish and made secular and progressive arguments less sayable, particularly within Muslim communities.” 

This book cannot be recommended too much. The dilemma of how to promote real equality, and universalism, in the face of the demands of anti-democratic religious groups, remains a key political issue. This is not a problem just of the ‘unrepresentative’ nature of bodies like the Muslim Council of Britain. It’s deeper. There can be absolutely no compromise or flexibility on the core principles of the Enlightenment, freedom of thought, enquiry and expression, at their head. In the meantime I wish that all those attending the meeting I went to last night at a Council for Racial Equality, would read From Fatwa to Jihad.

* Though this apparently harmless group soon reveals its links to organised obscurantism here.

Ben Gummer to Join Tendance Coatesy?

 

The face of Bovine spongiform encephalopathy?

Or a true Comrade?

Ben Gummer is the son of MP John Gummer (Suffolk Coastal). Famous for his Agriculture Minister Father forcing mad-cow burgers down his throat at a  tender age. Now, prospective – Conservative – PC for Ipswich, Ben was out on the Corn Hill yesterday. If you looked very closely you’d have found that his petition to save Ipswich Hospital/the NHS/Baby seals etc was a Conservative Party one. At £100 for a day’s permission to hold a stall on the privatised town square, he certainly was keen not to get abuse from passers-by who might take exception to a load of Tories. Though as we pointed out, such tricks are normally the mark of the Trotskyist tradition.

Ben, or Benjy as I call him as we are mates of a kind, a not very kind kind, wants to be liked. We know because he spoke of this very Blog last week. And had actually read it. Naturally our first reaction was to consider this a plot launched from our ever increasing swamp of enemies. But apparently not. This week he distinguished himself by talking to a local anarcho-syndicalist about his interest in libertarian ideas and Noam Chomsky. Ben later came over to the Ipswich Against Fascism and Racism stall – pushed down Tavern Street away from the privatised centre. And engaged in a chat with assorted anti-BNP leafleters. With no doubt the same wish to be taken as a jolly good fellow.

No doubt he is a jolly good fellow. But we have a message for Benjy. One of those hard facts of life that aspiring politicians should know. No Tory, the offspring of John Gummer, reared on a diet of roast moles culled from his dad’s extensive estates, is going to be liked by the Tendance.

Tarnac Affair: Julien Coupat Freed.

 

Just a  short note: Julien Coupat has been freed (provisionally) – here. He was accused of running a clandestine anarchist-autonomist network, responsible for sabotage of rail tracks. And no doubt Sarkozy’s bad breath. This has become a cause célèbre in France. Put simply, at the heights of the French state there was a view that, with widespread social unrest,  far-left terrorism was on the cards. They then ‘found’ the Tarnac accused (Julien is the last one held – for over seven months) to ‘fit’ the theory. Julien remains under stringent ‘juridical control’ (here). When, and how, the trial of Julien and his co-accusees, will take place, is now extremely unclear.

I will be blogging (we’ve been posting on this from the beginning) in more detail about this sordid episode. There was a long interview with Coupat in le Monde a couple of days ago, now translated I have just learnt,(here) and lots of things to say. Basically though, it’s an indication of serious political over-reaction.

 

Good news. We hope.

After the Election Débâcle.

Next Read This?

The Euro-Elections are this Thursday (Sunday for most of Europe). County Council ballots will take place the same day in many areas. All the indications are of a historic collapse of the Labour vote. Alan Johnson the very right-wing Cabinet Minister tipped to be next Labour leader, predicts his party’s worst results ever. (Here) 

As the multiple crises overwhelm the Cabinet, and the spectral figure of Gordon Brown prepares for an early grave, the political landscape is being reshaped.

Firstly, there is a rise in populism. I mean this seriously; not as a lazy journalistic blame-word. The politics of ‘the people’ against the ‘élite’. Run, as it is often is, by celebrities (wealthy media stars looking for a new stage and a comfortable extra pension). And the far-right.  I note, having been out campaigning against the BNP, that this populism is directed against immigrants – the ‘non-people’. For all the guff about massive waves of anti-Muslim feeling, this is a lot simpler. Ordinary people fighting it out over scarce resources and blaming the incomers for their problems. Plus lumping a lot on ‘the politicians’ – and the easiest target, ‘Europe’.

Secondly, the Tories are going to get in under cover of darkness: the Labour Party is going to go down in shame and confusion, unable to react. Their policies, for those bothered to read them, are a sharpening of the privatisation, hard right strategy of Gordon Brown. For those  who  refuse to settle for the Labour lesser evil, they have lots more evil to offer. The tools of state finance capitalism (nationalised banks) are there to favour the rich. The well-off who will be the first rewarded: tax cuts are a priority. And for all the rhetoric about freedoms the true moral culture of the Tories is shown by their EU alliance with Europe’s reactionary fringe.

Where will this leave Labour? Johnson is an atheist, which puts in bad odour with the religious leadership of the  Party. He was the only major trade union MP to back abolishing Clause Four, and backs privatisation. Which makes him loathed by the left – though it is said that the more ambiguous figure of John Cruddas could work with him. Since nobody know who will survive the coming wipe-out of a General Election, all of this is pretty speculative in any case.

That the left has been unable to present a challenge has deeper causes than the traditional ‘the main UK left parties are the most sectarian in Europe’ (not while the Tendance is still here!).

To begin with it is unable to counter populism.

On the one hand it is trying a feeble populist operation itself: No2EU. One groaned at the sight of Tony Benn during their electoral broadcast. Been may be a good chap. But he has the political judgement of a fruit-fly. A very amiable fruit-fly. One with a ‘O’ Level in the British Constitution.  And fundamentally, for all his ’internationalism’,  a patriotic dissident. Which is what this anti-Europe campaign is all about. It is unable to confront UKIP- to all forecasts, the grand winners of the Euro-Elections – because it shares their premise about ‘British democracy’ being threatened by Jonny Foreigner.

On the other hand, its anti-BNP campaign has been rent through with populism. Of a jolly ‘we’re all Benetton babes’, and ‘communities’ united against, you’ve guessed it, the ‘foreign’ ideology of Griffin. I have noted some ‘anti-BNP’ campaigners even say that it is better to vote UKIP than the overt fash. Why?

There are plenty of other causes of the feeble left response. That is, its own contribution to fragmenting the fragments. The left has been down the dead-ends of nationalism (the so-called progressive route of the break-up of the UK, or simply ‘restoring’ British democracy), alliances with ‘faith communities’ for a long time. It has failed to grapple with the politics of creating a degree of unity and universality, the traditional type of class struggle politics. Its communalist slant on multiculturalism has fed the pond that the BNP has thriven in. Thus the far-right promotes its own ‘community’ of the White British. Outbidding the other ‘communities’ with their ‘leaders’.

One part of the left (and sections of Respect, desperate for a way to jump a sinking ship) imagines its got a way out through the Green Party. Others look at the dying embers of the anti-Globalisation movement and all they see are a few gleams from the Greens. That is a party unable to deal with class issues (it was founded as an explicit alternative to class struggle socialism). Despite some people’s belief that they are left-wing the heart of the Greens lies on the  centre-right  centre-left. Daniel Cohen-Bendit is a good guide to their politics: a chap who’s allied with Christian Semocrats rather than the Die Linke. They often side with the left on issues such as human rights. No doubt some of their activists are good people. But Green issues are prior to everything. We should be in ‘harmony’ with  Nature – something like a religious belief. As ‘post-materialists’, believers in Gaia-politics,  they are very far from socialism.

So what do we have as an immediate  left strategy?

Item: failure to do anything but ‘defend British jobs’ when General Motors etc, goes under. We need to defend jobs, workers. No national prefix. Full stop.

Item: failure to campaign on the greatest attack on the Welfare State ever seen. The Workfare programme for the unemployed, and plans to draft all ne’er-do-wells (junkies, druggies, prostitutes) onto this scheme, has met little opposition.

Of national left leaders only John McDonnell has grasped these issues. Of national left groups only the AWL and the Weekly Worker come close to realistic politics. Of journals, Labour Briefing and Chartist – and no doubt more. That is, those groups that deal with these two items. But time is not on our side.

What will we do in the General Election?

Banned for Blog: YMCA Suppresses Dissent.

Some old habits die hard.

It had to come. It has come. YMCA bans Blogger.

This morning I went to Dencora House, Ipswich. For my ‘New Deal’ induction at YMCA Training. The first day in fact.  A little while in and I was summoned. YMCA manager and colleague. Copies of this Blog, and Ipswich Unemployed Action’s, on the table. Nervous type. Points to print-out. Picture of medieval Bastille. Legend, “Storm Dencora House“. Liked he it not. Or calling it a “detention centre”. Oh dear. Next, famous (hundreds of viewings), New Deal: YMCA Training, A Major Scandal.  Not too fond either.

Finally, their account of  this (posted by anonymous, which may not his correct title),  

“I have placed this website as the Home Page on all computers at Dencora House today. Hopefully some of my fellow detainees here will read it. There has also been print outs of your articles left around the centre. The staff have been going round ripping them off the walls. They then get put up again. 

People who merely found this site as the home page have been undertaking these actions on their own. Hopefully more people will involve themselves in such sabotage. If we make it too much hassle for them to treat us like this then they will be forced to stop!”

Apparently, the chief said, some people are upset about this kerfuffle. Deary me.

The upshot is I face being suspended from all benefits for exercising my (see YMCA Induction Pack), “freedom of conscience”. Apparently human rights do not apply to the out-of-work on the New Deal. Still no doubt they’ll find some way of justifying themselves. YMCA Mission Statement, “Motivated by its Christian faith, YMCA Training’s mission is to inspire individuals to develop their talents and potential and so transform the communities in which they live and work.” Needs some creative re-writing.

Oh yes, one of our many invisible supporters  tells us that they’ve blocked their computers’ access to our Blog.

Some faith.

 

Note to YMCA.

Ipswich Unemployed Action’s Web Master this Morning!

Yesterday this Blog had 1,071 Visitors!

That’s all.

YMCA Affair: Partial Victory?

Note Place of YMCA in Pyramid.

Latest developments.

Letter from YMCA (received yesterday lunch-time), 

“Dear Mr Coates

 New Deal Programme. Further to our meeting earlier today, I am writing to confirm that you have been dismissed from the New Deal Programme at YMCA Training, Dencora House.

As Discussed, the dismissal is due to our Health and Safety concerns due to the comment made on your Blog, ‘Tendance Coatesy’ which states ‘Storm Dencora House’. Our Duty of Care to our staff and participants on New Deal programmes remains paramount.” (my emphasis)

Operations Manager, Nofolk and Suffolk. “

Phoning my New Deal Adviser at the Dole she was surprised. Later in the day, another call, and I was told that I would indeed be treated as having been ‘exited’ (suspended) from the New Deal. Which means loss of benefits. She had seen this Blog. A special interview was arranged next week  - local manager to be present.

This morning I heard again.

It appears I will not be suspended. No special meeting will take place. I will  have to make a new claim. This means I am not sanctioned, but will have to go through the process again. Not immediately though. Not (I wonder why) with the YMCA. But, eventually, with whoever is running this autumn’s  new ‘Flexible New Deal’ .

Two observations.

Firstly, it clear that this proved more trouble than it’s worth. The YMCA letter indicates that ‘comments’ from my Blog were a cause for concern.  The picture of a medieval Bastille and the legend “Storm Dencora House” ( published start of May) was the cause. Yet, oddly, Dencora House has not been overrun by a pike-waving mob of baying leftists.

The revolutionary acts advocated were two: 1) Send E-Mails to Chris Mole MP, and the YMCA in protest at the New Deal, and 2) Stepping up the Campaign against Welfare Reform and the YMCA-run local New Deal.

It was obviously hard to pin a case against this other than on political grounds – Dodgy for the Dole, Crass for the Christians of the YMCA.

Secondly, there is little doubt that the solidarity shown here, and by many bloggers played a major part in this decision. I would like to thank everyone who did so. We often give solidarity for causes and don’t really think about what it means to those affected. I can assure everyone it means a lot.   

There are those in trouble with this system who do not have the networks we have. We must extend our solidarity to them, and continue the fight. As Harpy says, the Flexible New Deal promises to be worse. Some contracts have been won by private prison companies and similar organisations. Their victims need aid, to organise and for that they must have our solidarity.

An Injury to One is an Injury to All!

Euro-Elections: Carlos le Chacal Parle.

Fighting the ‘Anti-France’.

Now (have just begun new signing-on process) for something different.

French Euro-elections.Le Monde has reported a Meeting by the Dieudonné ‘anti-Zionist’ list (here) (More information here and here).

The Théâtre de la Main d’Or (1st of June) was packed out with Holocaust deniers, ‘national revolutionaries’,  9/11 ‘truthers’, Islamicists, fascists, Dieudonné’s mates, former Greens, former leftists, very much present anti-Semites.  

There was one very special guest – albeit by telephone link from his Prison cell. A certain Carlos. Taking time off from gnawing a few bones, the Venezuelan extended his full  ’symbolic’  support.

 ”Saluant sa “camarade” Ginette Skandrani, il s’est indigné : “Toi qui vis avec un Arabe, on te traite de raciste”avant de s’en prendre à “cette bande de gitans et de juifs qui te taxent d’antisémitisme. Ces gens (…) sont protégés par l’anti-France, excusez-moi d’employer une expression vichyste, c’est l’anti-France”. La salle s’est levée pour l’acclamer.”

“Saluting his ‘comrade’  Ginette Skandrani, he showed his anger, “You who live with an Arab, they treat you as a racist.” before launching into, “this band of Gypsies and Jews who accuse you of anti-Semitism. These people (…) are protected by the ‘anti-France’, excuse me for using this Vickyist expression, it’s the ‘anti-France’. The room rose in acclamation.”

Those bloody Zionist gypsies are at it again!

A Cold Warrior Attacks: Do the Greatest Cowards Try to Hurt the Most Ferociously?

Henry-Jackson’s Human Rights for the Vietnamese.

Attila Hoare, of the Henry-Jackson society,  has chosen this week to make a serious attack. Under the label, Shiraz Stalinist, and a picture of Bosnian Concentration camp victims.

Who against? Some nationalist warlord? Some genocidal General ? No: Andrew Coates.

It’s a cry from the grave of his political tomb - the past when he posed as a leftist  ’anti-imperialist’. That’s before his present incarnation as European Neighbourhood Section Director of the Henry-Jackson Society, a body founded in the name of American Cold Warrior Henry Jackson.  This society is united in  ”a common interest in fostering a strong British and European commitment towards freedom, liberty, constitutional democracy, human rights, governmental and institutional reform and a robust foreign, security and defence policy and transatlantic alliance.”  Emphasis on the ‘robust’. Jackson was a strongly in favour of waging war in Vietnam. Hoare supported the invasion of Iraq. Hoare thinks the main threats to world peace come from opponents of the US-led military alliance (here).  

Hoare is repenting for his past. In Democratiya  he has written, “As an eighteen-year old Trotskyist and ‘anti-imperialist’ at the time of the 1991 Gulf War, I can testify to the empowering sense of self-righteousness I felt as I demonstrated against the US and its allies, in the course of which my views became increasingly extreme: I fervently believed that the US-led intervention was by far a greater evil than Saddam’s occupation of Kuwait; that it would be a blessing for humanity if the US and its allies were defeated; that such a defeat would trigger revolutionary outbreaks across the Middle East and even in the West. ” Hoare has, since then,  long dropped his association with the far-left.

Though not from being “self-righteous“.

Hoare has chosen this moment to write on his Blog that,

“During the war in Bosnia, Coates was outspoken in his praise of the ‘apologists for nationalist murder’ and the ‘anti-imperialists’. In August 1992, Living Marxism  magazine published a letter by Coates, in which he said: ‘Three cheers for Living Marxism’s courageous stand on Serbia. At last some proletarian internationalism has seen its way into print.’ He went on to complain that in the Western ‘official media’, a ‘totally distorted picture of the Yugoslavian conflict has been presented’.”

Let’s leave aside the ill-judged ‘outspoken’. I take it that Hoare suffers from the same delusion as the YMCA. That thinks a letter, or a Blog, means someone screaming an opinion in the streets. Concentrate. At the time Living Marxism  advocated a ‘hands off’ the unfolding civil wars. I agreed. In 1992.  Hoare then goes on to state that Serbian atrocities in the former Yugoslavia were well known at the time. I cited other atrocities. He doesn’t. He implies that I backed Serbia. He loads me - with the strained chill of a true Cold Warrior – with responsibility for what LM said in 1993, and 1997. Not to mention their views on Rwanda. I say implies because he is unable to find any evidence whatsoever for this claim. Not to mention the obvious fact that I was never a member of the RCP or part of the group in any way. He began by discovering a letter, he ends by finding….nothing.

What were my views? A  lengthy piece, which I had published in Labour Left Briefing not long before this, explicitly said “Don’t Take Sides” in the civil wars in the disintegrating Yugoslavian state. I repeated the view in other far-left publications. I condemned all atrocities. If Hoare can find some revisionist under-the-carpet- sweeping I refer him to the long debate I had on the Red Pepper Yahoo group a few years back.It was against someone who tried to do just that.  I backed (as he briefly deigns to note)  federalism, in its Austro-Marxist version. This opinion I defended in the Socialist Society’s Internal Bulletin. It would no doubt seem to be a pro-Serb position, for someone who backed other nationalist sides. Hoare is welcome to criticise the position of not taking sides. The one I held and not the one I did not.

Hoare then refers, with filial emotion, to rude remarks I made about his parents’ support for Croatia. The pair are as notorious as Vanessa Redgrave for running to the Courts (here). I don’t have expensive libel-lawyers at my beck-and-call (Carter-Ruck, Hoare I saw the legal documents). I will only comment that I expressed strong disapproval of this position.  From being -  hard-line –  New Left Marxists they have since developed other sympathies. On the same Right as Hoare. I therefore consider my contempt  far-sighted.

Hoare claims that,  ”Never having raised a finger to oppose the genocide and aggression that were taking place in Bosnia in the 1990s, he continues to defame those who did, while now pretending to have been one of the good guys all along !” No doubt he does not claim to have been a ‘good guy’ all along. I certainly have never claimed that either. I opposed putting petrol on the fire. In the midst of the Yugoslavian civil war. I stood for federalism. Wrong or right, and in any case irrelevant, that was my opinion. For which the self-confessed moral cretin who thought Saddam Hussain would lead to way to a Middle Eastern Revolution now rails at me.

I am not going to be a big a ponderous bore as the prolific Hoare and give my stand on every single conflict since that time. Except this. During other conflicts I am much more closely aware of, such as the Algerian Civil war, I realised that human rights were a better political foundation than I had thought.  We all change. I used to think in terms bounded by socialist democracy.  I now support the  view that universal human rights are the lynch-pin of left politics. 

On what this means,  I differ from Hoare. I do not think their main enemy of human rights  lies outside of the US and the West. I am internationalist: not Transatlantic. I am doubly internationalist: I am against countries acting by imperial diktat.

Horrid Hoare. Hateful Hoare. Whore of the robust Transatlantic Alliance.

Why don’t you fucking pick on someone who’s a real enemy of human rights? Or is it because your own record stinks to high heaven?

By the way I, unlike you, allow comments on my Blog.

Sandy Martin Breezes Through.

An Example to Us All.

 

Beloved comrade Sandy Martin is elected Suffolk County Councillor.

St John’s: *Sandy Martin (Lab) 1,022, Gavin Maclure (Con) 865, Richard Atkins (Lib) 365, Lucy Glover (Green) 298. Lab hold. Turnout 38.8%.

 

To join three other Labour councillors on the County (may be more, on the phone this morning his partner says there’s some recounts going on).

Openly gay, democratic socialist and green…

We salute thee!

Who the Henry-Jackson Society (aka Attila Hoare) is.

 

 

More Henry-Jackson Human Rights.

From a well-respected, indeed beloved,  comrade,

 ”Scoop Jackson is the stuff commie nightmares were made of. I tend to
think that Schactman’s support of Scoop was more than political or
ideological, was made to irritate and infuriate his former comrades
into furious polemics of rabid prose. You know what an earnest bunch
we can seem when faced with cynics like Max Schactman in his late
years, and how much grumpy old cynics love to piss off idealists like
ourselves by doing provocative crap like that.

Of course, Scoop Jackson is not only the first Senator embraced by
neo-cons, but to a large extent the creator of their practical
framework: he was the one that created the practical precepts of
neo-conservatism, such as hawkish budgetary policy, support for
Israel, avowed “non-partisanship” in military affairs.

But in the forefront laid the opposition to the confluence of
left-pacifists and right-isolationists that started to develop after
the Korean War, and exemplified, most dramatically in two speeches by
then President Eisenhower: the 1953 “Chance for Peace Speech” at the
American Society of Newspaper Editors and his most famous speech, the
“Farewell Address”, better known as the “Military-Industrial Complex
speech”.

http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/speeches/19530416%20Chance%20for%20Peace.htm

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition
of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist.”
http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/speeches/19610117%20farewell%20address.htm

Scoop was largely responsible, then for the political strategy that
defeated Nixon (seen as a populist continuator of Eisenhower’s
isolationist tendencies) and put JFK in power, and of the Vietnam War.
There is no coincidence the Vietnam War was ended by Nixon, who hated
Scoop with a passion, even when having to “unite” with him.

Of course (as mentioned in the wikipedia entry) he best known as “the
Senator from Boeing”, and there was a strong practical basis for being
a hawk: Boeing remains both one of the largest single private
employers in Washington State, and a major political donor to the
Washington State congressional delegations. So any senator from
Washington State will to a certain extent be a Senator from Boeing.
Except Scoop elevated it to an art.

An evil man, responsible for much evil.

Today, perhaps the standard bearer of this ideology is Joe Lieberman,
except that unlike Scoop, he is a boring Connecticut nerd, while
Scoop was a dashing and gregarious good old boy.

Paul Wolfowitz’s “Scoop Jackson Republican” speech in 2002 (can be
considered the height of Neo-con triumphalism in the W era):
http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=307

BTW, Wikipedia, FTW!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_M._Jackson

sks

To which is added,

 

>> What I am asking. Does anyone here have any information about this
>> Henry-Jackson chap? I know he’s a first class piece of cack.
>>
>> But more…
>>
>
> Democratic Senator from Washington from the 50s to his death in the early
> 80s. FDR-style liberal when it came to domestric issues, hard-right when it
> came to foreign affairs. Hard-line anti-communist, anti-USSR. Pro-Vietnam
> war etc.
>
> He has spotterly interest because he was Max Schachtman’s favorite
> politician in his declining years. Many of his followers, including Tom Kahn
> worked on his failed presidential campaigns. Many future neo-cons, Richard
> Perle for one, also worked for him.
>

BNP: The Sound Of The Lambeg Drum.

Do they have the right idea?

That the BNP have got two Euro-MPs…

This filth brings me back to the first really intense demo I went on.

Red Lion Square (here).

Standing waiting for Nick Griffin’s mates (National Front in those days), I recall the sound of a drum.

A Lambeg Drum: an  Orange Marcher’s drum. The sound of bigoted hate down the ages.

Like the Balrog it got closer and closer.

Comrade Kevin Gately died that day.

I vowed to myself that I would avenge that death.

I hear the sound again.

Front de Gauche Wins Seats. NPA. Er, Not.

 

Front de Gauche won seats (here)

 

 la compétition qui opposait le Front de gauche au Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste (NPA), les amis de Marie-George Buffet et de Jean-Luc Mélenchon ont emporté la partie. Avec 6,05 % des voix et quatre élus, l’alliance du PCF, du Parti de gauche et de la Gauche unitaire (transfuges du NPA) a réussi son pari. Alors qu’il était largement en tête des enquêtes d’opinion pour la cinquième place en début de campagne, le NPA s’est fait dépasser et obtient au final 4,88 %, mais pas d’élus.

 

So that’s that.

Fighting the BNP.

 

I have a few words to say on this.

 

First, fight the fash on the Ground. No getting around they have won a substantial share of the vote. 

 (Evening Star)

ELECTION chiefs have today announced the two county councillors who will represent Ipswich’s Chantry ward.

Conservative Paul West and Labours Peter Gardiner will now take their seats at Endeavour House.

The vote had to be recounted following the county council elections on Thursday.

Mr West secured 1,858 votes (20%) and Mr Gardiner 1,819 (19%).

Labour’s Keith Rawlingson came third (1,726) followed by Conservative Nadia Cenci (1,691), Liberal Democrats Alison Williams (840) and Robert Tiffen (826) and the BNP’s Dennis Boater (714). 

ELECTION chiefs have today announced the two county councillors who will represent Ipswich’s Chantry ward.

Conservative Paul West and Labours Peter Gardiner will now take their seats at Endeavour House.

The vote had to be recounted following the county council elections on Thursday.

Mr West secured 1,858 votes (20%) and Mr Gardiner 1,819 (19%).

Labour’s Keith Rawlingson came third (1,726) followed by Conservative Nadia Cenci (1,691), Liberal Democrats Alison Williams (840) and Robert Tiffen (826) and theBNP’s Dennis Boater (714).

 

They exist. Us lot campaigned against them. Their vote is large.

Second, be democratic. No calls for state bans. No stupid egg-throwing. When it comes to physical confrontation with the fash we know how to defend ourselves.

Thirdly, fight the Nazi scum by class struggle politics.

Prime example: fight for the rights of the unemployed.

Defend the SWP!

There’s a Place even for Harry’s Place in the United Front Against Fascism!

Nobody, but bobody, can accuse (that is not a a typo Attila, or as you toffs calls it, a spelling error), can accuse the Tendance of liking the Socialist Workers Party.

But This is well out of order.

The local ‘cadre’ of the SWP is a good comrade

She, with the Labour Party, the Trades Council, the Greens, the Anarchists, the  local Socialist Party, the leftists of all stripes, and some of the local youth, ran the campaign against the BNP.

Hats off to the much-liked comrade!

Victory for Coatesy! Now the Fight Goes For Our Other Comrades’ Rights.

 

“A mob of unruly Transylvanian Peasants are rumoured to be heading towards Dencora House this Saturday. To celebrate the Victory of their alleged ‘leader’.” (Vlad the Impaler Workers’ Daily)

I have to announce to the International Proletariat  and Unity of the Peoples against YMCA-Training, that guess what, Coatesy has won his epic struggle!

I was not best pleased yesterday reading some stuff from the Dole about my ‘misconduct’. Just a phase, but it rankled.

But I noted – that is after quenching my thirst on three pints of Abbot Ale – that I had got the Dole transfer in my account.

This morning, looking at the sordid pile of junk mail, I picked up a Dole paper.

Coatesy has been reinstated on the Dole.

Now the struggle has to focus on the rights of the other blokettes and blokes who have got thumped on.

The Iranian People Will Fight Back!

 

I just have the briefest of moments to say this: but all socialists, democrats and lovers of the beautiful Iranian people must feel concerned at the actions of the Islamic Junta at the present moment.

The best comments I have read are on the HOPI site.

 

The worst were on the site of that SWP type who calls himself, modestly, Lenin’s Tomb. Apparently it’s a ‘class vote’ (here). Mind you on Socialist Unity there’s been some Scottish nationalists calling Ahmadinejad an ‘anti-imperialist’.

 

I’m sure that’s a great comfort to the Iranians clubbed and arrested by the secret police.

Support the People of Iran Against the Theocrats!

Support for the mass protests against Ahmadinejad’s re-election! But we should have no illusions that Massouvi would have been any better

Yassamine Mather, chair of Hands Off the People of Iran, assesses the highly fluid situation in Iran: (Here)

 

One awaits the analysis of those who broadcast on Iranian fundamentalist Press TV. Notably that darling of Socialist Unity, George Galloway (Here).

Iran. Galloway Has spoken: Iranian Masses Tremble and Obey!

 

 

Thanks to Enty (here) Galloway, referring to Iran, “You can count on the fact that the election was fair”. And that unspeakable, who is, “the president of an important country and we’ll just have to accept it.”

 

I don’t know about Iran in detail.

 

We have to show our love and solidarity to the masses. That’s the message.

 

But to Galloway: this parasitical enemy of every freedom loving person must be driven from political life.

Harry Potter, Politics and Iran.

Red Base?

I’ve got this thing going round my mind all the time.

The children of Beslan (here) before the Islamacists slaughtered them had a last prayer.

They prayed to Harry Potter.

Some might sneer.

I do not.

Harry Potter, friend of the oppressed masses of Hogwarts, and the symbol of all that is good and living inthis world, is the best example of why the popular masses will defeat the sterile tyranny in Iran.

People of Iran: remember the children killed in Beslan.

Their deaths were not in vain.

Marg Bar Diktator!

For Live coverage: Here.

Comment on Iran.

“We did not give blood to give up now” – Eye witness report of June 20 Repression

 

One thing is very noticeable about Iranian developments: it’s the sense that this ‘is enough’.

The apologists for Islamicism in the West try to explain all of this away as a middle class, ‘Western-inspired’ ‘etc (add word) plot by a bunch of privileged malcontents.

 

In fact it  is a protest from the heart of the Iranian people. As the important post from Shiraz Socialist shows.

Anyone who actually knows Iranians is aware of how dearly they cherish their high culture. Their sense of dignity and respect. With bloody good reason.

They feel humiliated by being dictated to by a boor and his cronies.

 

Marg Bar Diktator!

Are these the Worst Weasel Words on Iran Ever?

Socialist Unity’s Political Editor.

From their site, commenting, at length, on Iran.

“(Iran) whilst not a progressive society as we would understand it, has played a progressive role as a bulwark of resistance to US imperialism and Zionist expansion (here)“

Something called John Wright wrote this.

Rules for Agitators.

 

Bob from Brockley has published an extremely important analysis of activism on the left. The brilliant Irish Left Review provides an aide-mémoire on why the left gets it wrong so often (here).

Can we suggest another approach?

How to get it right?

This is the Short Guide for Agitators.

First rule: Be Honest.

We are socialists (or anarchists)  because we want to see a society of free and equal people. We do not begin from the premise that there is some kind of magical formula that we we have to impart to the masses: we are part of the masses. We treat others are we would ourselves. That is with candid truth.

Secondly: we do not operate with behind-the-scenes manipulation. If we are there for an issue, it is because that cause really matters. Not to get some affiliation for some clapped-out front-group. But to make the cause win.

Thirdly, be sure of what we are talking about. Something real. We should never forget that the popular masses are not stupid. You or I might think our knowledge of Lacanian psychology and Althusser is important. They might perhaps think that their skill in mechanics or music is. They listen when they know that you talking reality and talking sense.

 

These are the rules comrades.

 

We follow them by supporting HOPI and the Iranian People.

Ban the Burkha?

Islamicism in Practice.

There has been much controversy (here) about the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy’s comments regarding the Burka.

Firstly, let’s be clear. Having had the time to read Le Monde’s print edition on the remarks: these are suggestions not laws. Sarko is adept at floating ideas. Not so good at carrying them out.

Secondly, no socialist, secularist and libertarian should be in favour of women being in this cage. It is an insult to human dignity. It is a grave insult to human rights.

Thirdly, the real issue is not what people wear in the streets. It is if these symbols of oppression have authority that should concern us. In le Monde there is an article which describes,  sympathetically, a woman who said that when children are frightened of her she takes her niqab off.

Well that’s all right then.

I would not want children educated by her!

Benjy Bumps Up!

 

 

Tory Tout Out On The Tout.

You have to bleeding laugh  sometimes.

 

Benjy bounces back.

He says, I quote the actual words “I am not a Tory”, (here) “I’ve been incredibly lucky: a strong family, a good education, and a career I am passionate about. I’ve lived in Suffolk — and now Ipswich — all my life, and that is why I want to serve the people of Ipswich.”

 

Why don’t you fuck off and help your dad repair a few bird nests my son?

Fraud in the Welfare to Work Scheme (no question mark).

 

New Deal Company Manager.

 

Channel Four had this report last night (here).

 

Seems our enemies are finally getting flushed out.

 

You could have contacted us, you know.

Building to be Halted?

Suffolk University. Ariel View.

Rumours abound. And bound back. That Suffolk College’s building programme is going to come to one almighty halt.

Suffolk University is already built. Down by the docks. Complete with its peat-bog roof it is a touching symbol of futile green politics.

Suffolk University Campus. What a nice name.

Its claims to rival the beauties of Nice can be seen here.

 

This building has transformed my area into a permanent obstacle course.

 

Yet another example of Brown’s Britain.

Don’t Ban Press TV!

Press TV Situation Comedy.

The ever wonderful and weird world of Press TV (here) came under fire on Newsnight yesterday (here). Micheal Crick did the business.

Apparently they’re under investigation for their lack of impartiality!

But where else can you hear Gallows Galloway (appropriately Press TV are based by Gallows Corner) pontificate. Or that little darling Yvonne Ridley espouse the wonders of the Iranian regime.

 

A national treasure indeed.

TUC on Welfare Reform.

 

I went down this Friday to the TUC day of discussion on Welfare  Reform.

 

That is, against.

I can’t say I was in a good mood before I got there: paying £1 40 for a small bottle of water on the train does not inspire great thought.

The seminar was well-organised.

But let me observe these points.

Firstly, there is no compromise with the likes of Brown. The only response he respects is absolute opposition. I said that. To some agreement.

Secondly, there was very obviously what we call in French an OPA (take-over) attempt from two quarters. One, from Anne Gray, ex-CPGB (old CPGB that is) who wanted the Green Party to be the main reps of the unemployed. Sorry Anne but your mates in Norwich who banned foie gras from chippies are not going to be leading this one.

The other was the lassies from the various front groups of the King’s Cross Women’s Centre (now in Kilburn). Even a hardened sectarian like Coatesy can’t keep up with all your fronts. I don’t wish you ill.  You played a role in supporting us in Ipswich which shall never be forgotten.

But please you are not going to get a campaign going on an assemblage of women’s groups.

Same goes for that black women who talked of ‘her’ people (as if she bleeding owns blackness). And talked of slavery etc. That, the New Deal was about putting ‘her’ people back on the plantations.

Excuse me darling, I went to Westminster Further Education College to do me A levels.  A few streets from Congress House. I was in a minority of ‘whites’ (what the hell does that mean?). At the time in Peter Street, just off Berwick Street Market. The woman who took care of me (chief of library), and was me Mentor was a Jamaican. Jackie, an absolute pearl of a person. She was not oppressed: she helped  free me from oppression!

Stop talking gobshite.

Class Unity!

Smash Welfare Reform!

Coatesism Victorious!

The Spirit of our Goddess was with us today.

The Historic Leader of Tendance Coatesy was in a bit of a foreboding.

The Dole had summoned me for  a special meeting.

Turns out I am excused from any version of the New Deal.

And I get my dole!

Now if we all stood up like this we would smash the New Deal (and variants) into the ground.

The Line on Torchwood.

Comrades.

Watched Torchwood all week, Children of Earth, like I imagine millions of us here. Can I say how political it is.

 

And bloody brilliant.

 

456. What a menace! The Brownite-Blairite Ministers deciding to sacrifice the ‘less able’ children off the council estates. The celebration of gay love. The stand of the brave revolutionary woman Lois Habiba. Cap’n Jack saying an injury to one is an injury to all.

 

Comrades from Torchwood – there’s a place for you in the Workers’ United Front!

“So left, two, three!
So left, two, three!
Comrade, there’s a place for you.
Take your stand in the workers united front
For you are a worker too!”

Brecht.

Comrade Attacked by Job Centre Security.

Details are just emerging of a serious attack on a prominent member of Ipswich Unemployed Action by Security Guards at the Silent Street Job Centre.

Three brave security guards homed in on a small working class youth. Who had got a bit stroppy.  They called the coppers. He managed to escape.

What a fucking nightmare the Dole is becoming!

Robespierre on BBC Two.

 

Watched the programme on BBC Two Last night. ‘Bout Robespierre. (here)

What a load of unmitigated cack!

The sight of two of the worst enemies of freedom, half-baked rightwing pundit Simon Schama and self-proclaimed ‘Marxist’ Slavoj Zizek, debating the role of Robespierre, really got to me. There were some good historians present. But the general tone was: support Terror. Or be a Democrat.

Have they not read Les Dieux ont Soif  by Anatole France?

A true republican revolutionary, an atheist, goes to the guillotine because he protects a Royalist prostitute, and a priest.

A real revolutionary always stands by the oppressed. Come what may.

The revolutionary democrats won. In case the BBC hadn’t noticed.

Us and the Germans.

Never forget: Germany produced this poem of unspeakable beauty!

 

I am deeply influenced by German culture. I spent several years of my life reading Kant and Hegel. In depth. I have gone to evening classes in the speech and my German is to an extent that I can understandthe beautiful language. I went with a German bird to Heine’s grave round the corner to my gaff in Paris and know what he means to the Germans. I have his poems in me front-room.  My politics are strongly influenced by Germany. I think I do not need to cite the name. Or names.

All eyes on the European left are on howDie Linke is going to do in the forthcoming elections.

But I have a problem. We English are not Teutonic. I do not really speak German. On Facebook as a French-speaker I can communicate with Italian comrades with a flash of an eye-brow. I cannot do this in German.

Last night  I read Chesterton’s essay on this.

Our eyes have been turned towards the Latin world for over a thousand years. We are in fact more Latin than Germanic.

But as I say, all attention on Europe’s left is now on Germany.

 

We wish you well comrades.

 

Open Left and Equality.

Open Left Theorist.

So” equality of capability” and, elsewhere, “equality of potential” are James Purnell’s objectives (here). Whatever this means: like equality of being capable to realise a potential chance to have a chance to get a capability.

John Cruddas pontificates on fellowship and moral unity with material equality (here). Blimey he’s read a bit of Tawney. Though not, one suspects, any serious modern discussion of what equality means. Like by Brian Barry.

Our old friend, David Blunkett, notes on today’s letter pages that, Cruddas’s approach is misguided. What is needed are new directions. He cites, “The fascinating speech of Oswald Mosley, then a member of the cabinet, in 1930 – before his decline into fascism – showed that what was required were bold economic measures, not the cutback, retrenchment and cut in wages that were the reality of the early 1930s.” In fact David, the need for these bold measures were precisely what led the leader of the New Party  to his fascist trajectory. But then we always knew you had a shine for Mosley.

As for the rest of this stuff about equality. I note a deafening silence on a major cause of rising social exclusion, poverty and inequality in the UK. Welfare Reform. Even Red Pepper, which participates in Cruddas’s Compass, has kept mum about it. Mind you as it was founded by Trustafarian money I suppose they already have a welfare system of their own. Only the unions and a few campaigning groups have done anything at all. Which has not been enough – yet.

Until the left grasps the mettle and campaigns against Welfare Reform all these fine words on equality butter no croissants. Mass unemployment is coming back and those on the Dole are being subjected to a life of pain. Those on incapacity benefits are suffering. Lone parents, drug users, alcoholics, are being dragooned into coercive schemes. Against this we need decent welfare, freedom of choice, proper jobs and higher benefits. Or as they used to say, work or maintenance.

Or maybe the Open Left  – so open I bet they’ll ask lot to contribute (er, not), wants to force us to have equality that Blair, Brown, Purnell and Blunkett have created. Hat tip to rwendland on the very rich, Quangos,  and large companies who fund Demos here.

 

Their project. For most of us: Equality of misery.

Update: as this post seems to have got attention from Open Left they couldn’t do better than see this  site to grasp what is meant. Ipswich Unemployed Action.

Ernest Mandel. A Rebel’s Dream Deferred. Jan Willem Stutje.

The Bright Side of Things.

Review: Ernest Mandel. A Rebel’s Dream Deferred. Jan Willem Stutje. Verso 2009.

From the latest Chartist (not though in on-line edition – they only put a limited selection on the Web).

 

In 1976 Ernest Mandel observed that Europe’s far left had been able to “accumulate sufficient forces” in this “revolutionary period” to have the “realistic possible of winning over the majority of the working class.” (New Left Review. No 100.) As a young member of the same Fourth International as Mandel I read many of Mandel’s similar exhortations. Even to us ‘ultra-leftists’ in the International Marxist Group, only a few believed that this was true in Britain. Most were wary of what Stutje calls his “exuberant optimism”. Yet someone with a command of serious Marxist theory, a democrat and a revolutionary socialist, opposed to the official Communist parties of the day, a tireless activist, deeply impressed us. That our International had someone with such fierce intelligence, not a bullying leader of a sect, was a source of pride. A Rebel’s Dream Deferred tries to do justice to this Mandel. Somebody with the ambition to influence and take part in not just Europe’s but the World Revolution is no easy subject. If Stutje’s biography does not unearth a forgotten figure, Mandel’s writings remain in circulation; it confronts us with aspirations that have seemed, for a long period, from another epoch.

A “Flemish internationalist of Jewish origin” Mandel was born (1923) in Hamburg and grew up in Antwerp. His father was a leftist refugee from Hitler, who became a diamond dealer and then insurance agent; he was linked to the small Trotskyist movement opposed to Stalin. Mandel was brought up in an atmosphere of high European culture, and classical Marxism. Soon after the founding of the Fourth International in 1938 he joined the Belgium Trotskyists. Under German occupation Mandel remained politically active. Arrested once, and released (or ransomed, Stutje recounts), he was finally tried again for giving German soldiers anti-militarist leaflets. Deported to a labour camp in Germany, he was freed in 1944 full of expectation of the coming revolution. He had a lasting impression, “The alliance against fascism had consolidated both the democratic and Stalinist regimes, but under working class pressure.” Mandel threw himself into a lifetime of ratcheting up that pressure.

From the 1940s hope that Europe’s workers would rise in socialist revolution, to the joys of ’68, the left’s rise, and impasse, in the decades that followed, Mandel plunged into far-left politics. Stutje recounts the saga of the Belgium left (through the microscope of Trotskyism), and Mandel involvement in the Fourth International. Or rather, the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. He is fair to Michel Raptis (‘Pablo’), for years his closest collaborator and rival, praising his “political intuition”, and his faults, “imperiousness”. They separated mid-60s, on Pablo’s unconditional support for anti-colonialist movements. Mandel too, as the sixties wore on, had been wrapped up in ‘third-worldist’ causes – Struje cites close contact with Che Guevara. But his principal faith lay in the working class in industrialised counties. At the same time the party man was writing serious, if (critics comment), too all-embracing works, such as Marxist Economic Theory (1962), and the unfortunately titled Late Capitalism (1972) – how ‘late’? These consolidated his academic position at the Dutch language Free University of Brussels. That aside, few consider Mandel as the founder of a ‘school’ of Marxist political economy. As Stutje remarks, his study on the ‘long waves’ theory of crises (1978), lacks the institutional details of how capitalist accumulation developed post-war. But his influence was wider. Amongst prolific writings, which read as if stitched together from Europe’s press, Mandel produced real gems, his Introductions to the Penguin edition of Capital, and on Marx’s wider intellectual development. Perhaps his greatest political contribution – a break with the Leninist past as great as Eurocommunism’s – was to envisage socialist democracy. Strange to say, in retrospect, this was a major turning point for those reared in the harshest interpretations of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. It would be impossible to imagine a left capable of confronting the collapse of Official Communism without this return to democratic roots.

In the 1970s Mandel was banned from entering several countries, including Germany, France, and the US. Not only Mandel envisaged – in this case, feared – revolutionary upheavals. Even when this prospect subsided in the early 1980s the Fourth International peaked at 10,000 active members. But it did not weather the Thatcher-Reagan years well, nor adapt easily to the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. They foresaw everything but the neo-liberalism that ran riot across the globe. Yet till his death in 1995, Mandel remained bound to the “moral imperative” to continue to fight. Mandel was too much part of the real left – perhaps obscured in Britain through his brief canonisation by the most politically sterile faction of the New Left – to retreat to the Watchtower. A Rebel’s Dream Deferred pays tribute to the sheer ethical drive of the man. That the Fourth International’s Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire, now the Nouveau Parti Anti-capitaliste is now a real player in French politics demonstrates that he was not entirely mistaken.

Andrew Coates.

Also read Phil Hearse (Fourth International) on this book here.

Open Left: Bouncers, Bullies, and Britain.

  

‘Ere you gonna pay that fine or not?

Open Left witters on about ‘choice in public services’ (here)

I shall not cite Marxist writers on the changing nature of the state.* That is about, the privatisation of its functions and the increased domination of the interests of capital. No. I cite one in favour, Phillip Bobbitt (here). Bobbit argues, amongst general considerations on the ‘war against terror’, that that the Western state has been transformed. It has become a ‘market state’. That’s one that “promises to maximize the opportunity of its people, tending to privatise many state activities and making representative government more responsive to the market”. That includes said sacred freedom of choice in public services.

A perfect illustration today. The BBC reports plans to extend the right to issue on-the-spot fines to private security firms. That includes Bouncers. Increased opportunities for would-be hard men to get into fights with customers. And for the bosses  – a nice little earner.

Anyone with a modicum of common sense- obviously this does not include The Cabinet or its Advisers – can see this is a  recipe for disaster. Unlike many Marxists I find that Magistrates – now protesting vigorously at this imbecility – are often people of great good sense. Will they be listened to?

No doubt about it. There will be plenty of ‘listening’.

 

*For those interested in such matters one of the most interesting modern Marxist writers on this is Bob Jessop. Jessop works with a concept of the state that is a “condensation of class forces” and not a fixed instrument of bourgeois rule.

Crisis in the Parti Socialiste: Saved by the Summer Holidays.

 

Not so rosy.

The French Parti Socialiste (PS) is undergoing a deep, even existential, crisis.

The background is the continued feud between PS General Secretary Martine Aubry and  failed Presidential (and failed General Secretary) candidate Ségolène Royal. The most obvious immediate cause the fall out from the results in the European Elections. The PS got 16,5% , with 14 MEPs,  closely followed by Europe Ecologie at 16,3% . The latter also got 14 MEPs.

Europe Ecologie is an alliance of, notably,  pro-EU and social market Green Daniel Cohn-Bendit (co-President of the EU Parliament’s Greens) anti-EU anti-capitalist,  José Bové, and  Verts National Secretary  Cécile Duflot, whose background is in the  Jeunesse ouvrière chrétienne (Young Christian workers). Its principle was that, “Ecological and social imperatives must drive political choices.” The Euro-election programme  gives priority to combating climate change, protecting biodiversity, extending ecological measures across industry, and European-wide raised social standards (wages, social security). It calls for a new European Dream.

Here are some recent comments from leading Socialist figures (though where BHL fits in I’m not sure).

Below:

“ Depuis le 14 juillet, date de sa lettre à Manuel Valls le sommant de taire ses critiques ou quitter le parti, les attaques ont fusé : Mme Aubry, taxée d ‘”amateurisme” (Julien Dray), a été qualifiée de “gardien” d’une “maison morte” (Bernard-Henri Lévy).”

“Since the 14th of July, when Martine Aubry (PS General Secretary) wrote to Manuel Valls telling him to stop criticising or  leave the Party, a flurry of further attacks has been launched: charging Aubry with ‘amateurism’ (Julien Dray), describing her as the ‘caretaker of a dead house’ (Bernard-Henri Lévy).

Furthermore,

“Le PS, cet “arbre sec” (Jack Lang), qui est “tombé dans le formol” (Arnaud Montebourg), doit “changer ou mourir” (Arnaud Montebourg).”

“The PS is ‘dead wood’ (Jack Lang) , “has fallen into Formaldehyde (‘ (Arnaud Montebourg), it “must change or die” (Arnaud Montebourg).

 

Maybe they should come to Britain and get some advice. From some real experts on how to reduce a left party to pathetic wreck dying on its feet.

For now they’re off to the beach hoping everyone will forget about this.

Origio: Islamic Cult?

 

 

What a Selection of Learned Works They Have!

Origio in Ipswich is an Islamic evangelist movement. It has an Internet Café in Eagle Street and a ‘Community Centre’ in Upper Orwell Street. Rather well-funded by the looks of it. Certainly posher than our Council community centres – to say the least. A bit of a creepy cult-like atmosphere around them. Hard-looking types offer you elaborate cakes like they is spreading peace and light. Right goody-two-shoes. Wormed their way into the favour of the local state religious-support structures – aka CRC, Inter-faith groups etc. That it’s a ‘charity’ indicates how far the public purse subsidises all religions.

Clearly its openness has its limits. Like material about forbidding non-Muslim men from marrying Muslim women. Usual stuff about ‘hygeine’.

More important it is heavily pushing the works of a certain Dr. Mohar Ali (deceased 2007). According to Wikipedia he was “arrested after the liberation of Bangladesh and exiled” (here). The cause? He was charged with being a collaborator with the Pak army and complicit in the infamous 1971 Dhaka University massacre.

Oh dear.

We have a cult round the corner that looks up to someone implied in the Pakistani genocide in Bangladesh.

How Mad are Origio? Origins of Soap: Islamic!

European Savants Inspired by Islamic Science.

From one of Origio’s numerous front sites (Jimas).

Cartoons, Science and a Shared Euro-Islamic History

By Professor Salim Al-Hassani

Read here. “ They show that many everyday things that have become integral to Western civilisation were invented or brought to us by Muslims. Examples of these are coffee and the culture of coffee drinking, soap and surgical tools, vaccinations, paper, carpets, ‘Arabic’ numerals, algebra, cameras, soap, automatic water raising machines, clocks, many musical instruments, architectural features such as the pointed ‘Gothic’ arch. Even Robinson Crusoe and the English rose have been found to have Muslim origins, this list is endless. But the problem is that this knowledge isn’t yet widely available for the public.”

Coffee is no more Islamic than Tea is Confucian. The Professor, poor soul, is confusing the camera obscura with a camera that could take photographs – the latter is a European invention. Soap (in the modern sense, soap-like substances were known circa 2000 BC in Mesopotamia)  is an prehistoric Germanic  discovery (as the etymology of the word indicates, even in Romance languages). 120 types of surgical tools have been discovered in the ancient Indus Vally Civilisation. Smallpox vaccination was practiced in China and India 200BC. Paper in the modern sense (not Papyrus) is from ancient China.  ’Arabic’ numerals are from India. Algebra originates in the Babylonian civilisation (here). Water clocks, clepsydrae, were invented in antiquity; the first mechanical clocks were created in Europe in the 13th century, and it was not until the 15th that they appeared in the ‘Islamic’ world.

I could go on through the list but I’m bored. Though the Muslim ‘origins’ of the English rose and Robinson Crusoe looks promising material.  But, be fair: the Ottomans were the first to manufacture carpets.

Let’s bear in mind that these well-funded nutters (bigots?) have free run of University Campus Suffolk & Suffolk New College (here).

Salim T S Al-Hassani is an Emeritus Professor Mechanical Engineering and an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, Faculty of Humanities, University of Manchester.

I wouldn’t trust him to repair my bath taps.

French Workers Threaten to Blow Up Factory.

 

Workers at New Fabris (sub-contractors for the automobile  industry) have threatened to blow up their factory.  Faced with redundancy they have demanded a special sum of 30,000 Euros as a pay off, on top of statutory payments.  Today they have announced they will carry this out if their demands are not met.  The ultimatium date is  the 31st of July.  (Here)

A large demonstration is planned today at  at Châtellerault  (Vienne). (Here)

Workers’ declaration (from NPA site):

Nous exigeons toujours une prime de licenciement de 30 000 euros en plus des indemnités légales.

(We demand a special redundancy payment of 30,000 Euros on top of legal indemnities.)

Nous appelons l’ensemble des salariés des entreprises qui, comme nous, sont sous la menace d’une fermeture de leur entreprise ou de licenciements, du bassin châtelleraudais et de toute la France, à nous contacter de façon à coordonner nos luttes et à former un collectif contre les patrons voyous et licencieurs..

(We call on all workers in companies,. like out own, who are threatened with their enterprise closing or redundancies, in the châtelleraudais region, and across France, to contact us in order to coordinate our struggles and to form a collective against ‘thug-and-lay-off bosses’.)

Nous appelons l’ensemble des salariés en lutte pour l’emploi à une manifestationà Chatellerault jeudi 30 juillet à 14h.

(We call on all workers out struggling for employment to join the demonstration at Chatellerault Thursday the 30th of July at 14.oo. )

Nous invitons également tous les responsables politiques et syndicaux à venir se joindre à nous.

(We invite all the political and trade union leaders to join us.)

Vous pouvez nous contacter en écrivant à : newfabrisenlutte@yahoo.fr

(Contact details.)

Communiqué de la CGT New Fabris, Châtellerault, le 24 juillet à 11h.

 

Note: there’s a good article about New Fabris in the latest Solidarity.

 

Added Friday: Report on demo (about 1,000, composing important union delegations and personalities): here

 

UPDATE SATURDAY: End of movement. The workers have accepted 11,000 Euros extra payment and stopped their actions (here).

Burkha in France: Marginal.

 

Not ‘Must-Have’ Beach-Wear this Summer.

In Paris a parliamentary committee, headed by Communist André Gérin, is examining the question of the Burkha (or burqa). From an inquiry it has become in reality a ‘study group’. The reality of its object?   The French Police (interior information service) estimate that only 367 women wear the full body veil – burkha or niqab –  in France (here).

“Pour les policiers de la SDIG, le port du voile intégral s’apparente à une volonté de “provoquer la société, voire sa famille”, à un militantisme affiché, issu du salafisme.”

For the Police of the SDIG being completely veiled stems from a wish to “provoke society, or one’s family”, and is a badge of militancy, of Salafist origins.”

In an Editorial (29.7.09) le Monde  asks,

Doit-on légiférer pour moins de 400 personnes, légiférer pour une exception ? Faut-il ajouter une loi à la pile de textes de circonstance déjà votés par le législateur ? Compte tenu des risques – dont la stigmatisation de l’islam, qui pourrait offrir à la burqa une fausse image libératrice -, la réponse est non.

Should one legislate for less than than 400 people, legislate for an exception? Must one add yet another law to the pile of texts already voted through by the legislature? Taking account of the risks – such as the stigmatisation of Islam, which could give wearing the Burkha a false liberating image  - the reply is No.

I would tend to agree. But the intimidation of non-burkha wearing Muslim females (like that against non-veiled) is a problem. The veil in all its forms is an oppression. But this is even more deeply reactionary: the root being that non-veiled women are unclean meat. There remains an issue about putting anyone in a position of authority who is basically saying to uncovered women that they are impure and that men are a source of danger.

Hugo Chávez Prepares Dranconian Censorship Law.

No Socialism Without Freedom of Speech.

In El País yesterday (here) reporting from Venezuela.

“Luisa Ortega Díaz presentó el jueves al Parlamento un instrumento legal que permitirá al Gobierno de Hugo Chávez sancionar, con penas de entre seis meses y cuatro años de cárcel, a todo el que a través de los medios de comunicación divulgue informaciones que puedan atentar contra “la estabilidad de las instituciones del Estado”, “la paz social, la seguridad e independencia de la nación”, la “salud mentalo moral pública” y el “orden público”, o que “generen sensación de impunidad o de inseguridad” entre la población.”

Luisa Ortega Díaz (Public Prosecutor) presented to Parliament on Thursday a legal measure which will permit the Government of Hugo Chávez to punish, with penalties from six months to four years of prison, all those who, through the media, divulge information which could damage ‘the stability of the state’ , ‘social peace, the security and the independence  of the nation’ ‘public moral and mental health’, and ‘public order’ or which ‘ generates feelings of impunity and insecurity’ amongst the population.

More (in English) from the Venezuelan El Universal (centre-right – anti Chávez)  here.

This is an extremely serious development. All those sympathetic to Bolivarian Revolution and the cause of the Venezuelan people should be concerned. Such dranconian censorship is clearly very wrong indeed.

(I would have missed this if I hadn’t bought a print copy of El País).

 

Update: suppression of 34 Venezuelan radio and television stations Libération.

The Class Struggle on Ipswich Allotments.

Class Struggle Lunch.

It’s that time of year. Strawberries a distant memory.  Red currents, raspberries (well, not too good ), gooseberries, black currents,  soft fruit season has passed. Last rhubarb made into jam. Waiting for the plums and apples. New potatoes all eaten. Peas devoured. Turnips – only a few this time. Broad beans just finished. Shallots drying. Runner beans just beginning.  A mountain of Courgettes and Squashes. Beet spinach and Chard ready. Cardoon (flowering heads a bit like artichokes), eaten. Ridge Cucumbers blooming. Salads – Little Gem, Feuille de Chêne, Webbs Wonder, Merveille de Quatre Saisons, Salade à couper,  Rocket, Frisée, Lambs Lettuce, Land Cress, Radish (3 varieties), -Endives – Catalogna, Treviste, Barbe de capucin, and Oriental mix  leaf Mustards, Golden Streaked and Red, Komatsuna, Mizuna and Sky Rocket). Jerusalem Artichoke. Herbs: Sorrel, Chives, Angelica (good with Rhubarb), Marjoram, Mint (two varieties, one from Kurdish allotment holder), and Lovage (most of my herbs for immediate cooking use, Thyme, Basil etc,  I have in my small back garden or on a shelf next to the kitchen window).

As everyone knows Allotments are extremely trendy. Even five years ago there were plenty of abandoned rods  on ours. The old bor (often Italian or Caribbean) who worked in the engineering factories and escaped to their allotment for the weekend have faded away. Now everything is taken and there is a waiting-list for a plot. Wild life: slow worms, frigs, toads, voles, newts. Beautiful flowers, neat verges  – that’s not mine! High fashion for greens, that is middle class people  saving the planet by growing stuff. A slew of reds (there are a number of comrades on the site). Plenty of organic growers – slug lovers I call them. Traitors in the eternal war against the class enemy.

Now these vegan-vegetarian-greens no doubt feel virtuous and healthy by simply eating what they produce. But I wonder why so many (not all) take their cars onto the site. Including at least four who live only a bit further away than I do. That is a maximum of ten minutes walk. Green Cars?

 

More about Ipswich Allotments here.

 

Added: I forgot to mention my Sweet Corn (Maize), Leeks, Kohl-Rabi and Blackberries (they grow wild all over the place).

Coco Avant Chanel: I should…..

 

Recommended.

Be prepared to be pleasantly surprised. Most reasonable leftists have as much interest in Haute Couture as they do in Fabergé Egg collecting. We’re not too fond of Coco Channel Number 5 either. As for the woman herself, there’s that odour left lingering after her behaviour during the German Occupation, and her antics in Paris at the time. I saw The Devil Wears Prada and that’s about the depth of my fashion-knowledge. The attraction of Ugly Betty is one of those mysteries, like the Bermuda Triangle or why Gordon Brown continues to breathe, that lie beyond rational explanation. Yet this is not the case with this solid attractive film.  

Coco Avant Chanel is not bad at all. It concentrates on Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel ‘s  early years. The role is played by Audery Tautou. Beginning with her time in an Orphanage, abandoned by her widowed father,  she learnt the seamstress craft. Coco  emerges in Paris to a lif eof  repairing dresses and helping to fit out wealthy clients. With other ambitions, she is a night-time singer with her sister  in seedy Cabarets. From there she inveigles herself into the Châteaux of a Military aristocrat, Etienne Balsan (Benoît Poelvoorde). Horses and drunken orgies are the mainspring of Blasan’s extravagant life. It’s lived in an eternal Gosford Park, before anyone needed to cut back on the servants. With this backdrop there are enjoyable scenes of sub-Woodhousian comedy “Here’s Coco, she’s a lady of many surprises, some of them good’.  As this existence unfolds, Coco falls for a more serious character, English industrialist Boy Capel (Alessandro Nivola). But the course of true love never runs smoothly…

Coco’s talent emerges along the way. From making hats, and helping instill a new sense of modern style (clean cuts, no constraining Edwardian costumes)  she gets set-up as a Couturier. The film concludes with shots of dazzling light, costumes, and stunning parades of mannequins – marks of the success that Coco enjoyed for the rest of her life.

Naturally much of this is myth wrapped in candy-floss. Chanel must have been as hard as nails. Unlikely to be someone you’d like to meet in the flesh. Here she is a quirky kitten, if with inner-drive. How ? Most would admit that Audry Tautou is an endearing actress. She would make Lucretia Borgia a sympathetic character. Did Coco help women free their bodies from Victorian constriction? Only if they were of ‘ le gratin’. But regardless of any historical truth this is a time well spent. Not much illuminating about the class struggle, but lots of being bathed in light.

It was a definite plus that our local Multiplex showed in French, with sub-titles. About 120 people attended when I saw it.

Against Xenophobia and Patriotism: Fighting the BNP.

It has taken a  while, and some degree of distance, for this really to sink in. That is, the consequences of the  June Euro and Country Council Elections:  2 BNP MEPs, now 60 BNP Councillors. 9  UKIP MEPs, up to 100 Local Councillors. Clearly the shift to the far-right was not stopped – could it have been? – by the campaigning of Unite Against Fascism (UAF) and Hope not Hate.

As in many other European countries Britain now has a significant far-right electoral presence. Its main appeal is ‘anti-foreigner’ feeling, xenophobia, and – in both cases, but particularly  UKIP – a dislike of the EU’s machinery. Not that either declines to profit handsomely from European Parliament largess.  But Europe is the outside shell of their programme: opposition to Immigration is the kernel. It is a whipped up fear of being overwhelmed by a wave of ’new-comers’  (principally from within the EU), that won them  backing. As they say, “we”re not against X or Y – they’ve been here for years. But these new ones..they take the housing, the jobs…”. Secondary targets, ‘Islam’ , for the plebeian masses, and – sotto voce -’Zionism’, for the initiates, have none of this elemental attraction. 

Or that their loathing for aliens stays there. The BNP, no longer a classical fascist combat party, remains racist. UKIP claims to be a democratic party but has a structure based on odd-balls and obsessives. It is far-right in a classic sense: for a strong state and patriotic virtue. UKIP’s  ’non-racial’ tolerance does not extend further than embracing British patriots of immigrant stock. Ballot box success  for the BNP may lead to ventures into street politics, that is, confrontations with the left and violence against other hate-objects, blacks, Asians, gay. May, but it’s by no means certain. Continental far-right parties sometimes exist purely in electoral politics.  There is  little evidence that,  while an atmosphere of hostility to foreigners encourages aggression that a new NF Honour Guard is being formed. 

There is intense debate about what the left should do. One of the best contributions is made by Kerion Farrow in the latest Red Pepper (August/September) – not yet on the Web. He argues against relying on highly emotional exposés of the misdeeds of BNP members, strident marches, and shouting, while not offering political alternatives. Singled out  is the misguided – indeed totally deluded – idea that the BNP can be ‘banned’, and its supporters purged from employment through a version of the German Berufsverbot. Such laws, apart from stinking of the witch-hunt, can be used against the left.

What should be done?  Farrow says that the root cause of BNP growth is the result of Labour strategy:  ”the abandonment of much of the working class in pursuit  of narrow section of ‘swing voters’”. That’s the aspirational – individualistic – working class and the middle class. Not the poor, the low paid, and the – collectivist – unionised. To build anew the left must turn to this constituency. Needed are

“‘community unions’ unconnected to Labour, possibly funded by trade unions but with organisational Independence assured, that would work directly on helping to meet the needs of those political abandoned working-class communities where conditions are deteriorating by the day. The would be based around the self-identified needs and plans of those communities- which can only pit them head-to-head against the BNP and the political mainstream.”

The sticking point, however, is the call to completely abandon any support for Labour. Even by default.

Paul Meszaros of Hope not Hate faces up this point. He states, “For the BNP to lose an election, another party has to win.” In many cases this will have to be Labour. Defending Hope not Hate’s own community activism, he neglects to answer Farrow’s view that much of their propaganda has a negative effect. That it focuses on making the link with Nazis rather than talk to problems people run up against in their daily lives. Paul White, obviously a very genuine grass-roots activist, defends campaigning in the difficult area of Barnsley. He nonetheless  observes that the strategy of shouting “Don’t Vote  BNP/they’re Nazis’ failed.

 

The Tendance tends to sympathise with Farrow. Though has doubts about never voting Labour as a principle. We are also unsure about the record of the Independent Working Class Association whose strategy this is.  But very impressed in general by the outline in Red Pepper. That is, class based unity  against xenophobia and patriotism.  

 

In the brief experience of mobilising against the BNP in Ipswich – in those elections – it would seem that ‘exposing’ the BNP indeed failed (they got over 700 votes in one County Council Constituency despite having practically no organisation and this being their first candidacy). Maybe the left here as well  ought to be thinking about how to apply some version of the ideas offered by Farrow. Notably, how to demonstrate a practical alternative to the fear of foreigners.

As for Red Pepper why don’t they, at long last, try to connect with these working class and poor communities by campaign against Welfare Reform and  Workfare?

I forgot, they don’t do welfare.

East Anglian Voyage.

East Anglian Heimat.

£13.50 – Anglia Day Rover. Every year it goes up £1.00. But still a snip when you consider that it cost £3.40 for a return bus trip of an Ipswich suburb.

Early train – 7.42. Window seat on spacious train. Mist clearing, swathes of intense greenery flick by. Norwich in about forty minutes. I had intended to go to Sheringham first (the ‘Bittern Lien’). But a wait for fifty minutes when there is a locomotive about to leave for elsewhere?

Take the departing train – believing it headed for Great Yarmouth. Even more intense greenery. Full streams and rivers. Fields of maize, sugar beet and corn. Heavily wooded. Yet more trees, forest and heathland, heather and furze. Direction: Thetford. Boudica’s capital, and that of the Anglo (Saxon) Monarchs. Birth-place of Tom Paine. Visit Tom Paine Avenue and see Tom Paine Hotel. No time to see again his Statue (it’s imposing ). Note: hear Portuguese and Polish everywhere.

Return to Norwich and set out for Great Yarmouth. The only real holiday seaside resort in East Anglia (though Waltoin-on-the-Naze and Clacton come close). Approaching though marshes, a heron takes flight. Station not far from centre. Crowds everywhere. The magnificent sandy strand is dotted with people:  the working class at play, English beshorted and t-shirted, Caribbeans and mixed couples, large groups of Asian coach-trippers. Cheap toasties, burgers, rolls, fish ‘n’ chips,  cappuccinos, gooey sweets, rock and kebabs, tinnies of lager, flasks of tea, smoothies and pop.  Gaze at the Wind Farm off shore. Bumped into elderly Ipswich Trade Unionistsand wife – still a Labour man. Not many of them around these days. Bought a cornet of chips (Yarmouth is famous – some of the best in the country) at  thriving market. Choice of sauces (curry, Thai) just like Belgium. Had a big dollop of mayonnaise. Popular capitalism at work ?

Norwich again. Bus (free with Rover) to Castle. Walk to Market – colour everywhere. Reminded instantly why Norwich is a City and Ipswich a Town. More medieval, Tudor, Georgian buildings than you could possibly see in a day. Visit the Forum: vertiginous architecture. Extensive gleaming library (though unlike in Ipswich there are no lefty journals).  Merge with popular masses in streets crowded with busy chain stores, independent shops of all kinds (see Colman’s Mustard boutique), and three major Book shops (Ipswich – one). Look at Terry Eagleton’srevent diatribe against secular freedom (‘liberal humanism’). Decide not to buy (reserved in library anyway).

Recommended Day-Out for East Anglians.

Now where, one may ask, is the reference to Coatesy’s notorious pub penchant. Answer: I didn’t go in a single one. It’s not a good idea to booze when making complicated voyages around the East Anglian Rail Network. Example: at Great Yarmouth to get back to Norwich the train was delayed by fifteen minutes and crowd of several hundred people – many returning home with all their luggage, was queueing. A train to London had been cancelled as the engine broke down (something that happens all the time with National Express). With this a risk frequent trips to the bog are not a good idea. Even being a little merry can turn into its opposite when you’re stuck in a hot place.

Being merry with small tins of Taurine stimulant drinks is much better.

Burston Rally 6th September 2009.

Burston Strike School Rally

11am to 4.30pm, Church Green, Burston, nr Diss, Norfolk

 

A comprehensive outline of the history of the strike (begun 1914 – till 1939)  in Burston and the Higdons’ role is given here.

Join us at Burston to commemorate the longest strike in history, and to celebrate the people who continue to fight for trade union rights, working class education, democracy in the countryside, and international solidarity.

In April 1914, Kitty and Tom Higdon, loved and respected teachers at Burston Village School, were sacked for their socialist and trade union views.

The pupils walked out in support and from then until 1939 the villagers and the Higdons, ran the ‘Strike School’, providing an education for local children.

Times change, but the struggle in rural areas for economic and social justice continues.

This year at Burston we celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the Cuban revolution, with music, speakers, and special children’s activities.

Speakers include Tony Benn, and Luis Marron (Cuban Embassy)

Burston Strike School – the longest strike in history

Coaches will be running from various places. One will pick up from Colchester, at 9.30am, by the Gala Bingo in Osborne Street, Colchester. It will proceed to Ipswich, Tickets (£5.00) from Ipswich Community Resource Centre, 16 Old Foundry Road, (open 10 – 14.00 Monday-Friday). Leaves Crown St lay-by Sunday 10 a.m.

 

Further details: Colchester TUC here.

Progressive Conservatism and the Third Sector.

Mr Beadle: Pioneer Progressive Conservative.

Channel Four News last night. Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, launched, on the Demos platform,a robust project:  ‘progressive conservatism’.

Osborne declared that,

The torch of progressive politics has been passed to a new generation of politicians – and those politicians are Conservatives.By pursuing a course of illiberalism, centralisation, fiscal incontinence and opposition to meaningful public service reform, the current leadership of the Labour Party has abandoned the field of progressive politics.

In its place, the modern Conservative Party is now the dominant progressive force in British politics

Full Speech here.

There’s quite a lot (mean and dishonest) in this allocution. We can leave to one side, for the moment, rich men’s gimmicks, like Open Primaries for Parliamentary candidates. Most will concentrate on the ‘reform’ of education. Apparently on a Swedish model (I have my doubts about that claim). That is, to break up further school management  and make them responsible to local oligarchies and those eager to make rhino out of the three ‘Rs’. In Osborne’s terms:  ’businesses, charities and parents’.  The plans to turn over greater layers of NHS (following New Labour) to commerical interests will also get plenty of coverage.

TC,  by contrast, is largely interested in Channel Four’s attention to the Third Sector in Tory plans.  They underlined that many voluntary body, Charity, not-for-profit enterprise, chiefs were in Obsborne’s Demos audience.

What are they hoping to pick up?

The ‘Third Sector’ is not so  much a  sector as multi-storey car park for all kinds of vehicles. Some are sterling. Doughty fighters for people’s rights. Not a few genuinelly help ‘make a difference’. Others less so. Within this vast realm  there are increasingly money and power-hungry large-scale organisations. Social ‘entrepreneurs’ eager to get influence. Boards dominated by national or local worthies who expect deference – not democracy. I could cite the YMCA ‘training’.  I just have. I could mention the whole range of bodies dealing with the unemployed. Unlike traditional ‘impersonal administrations, the civil service, they are all too personal. Nosey-parkers, out to ‘reform’ the shiftless. A notable case locally is a Charity dealing with drug addicts. It expanded (state and local funding), following the Ispwich murders, into rehabilitating street workers. From supporting decriminalising it now enforces the criminalisation of prostitution. Wields power over people’ lives (with the threat of benefit sanctions and even prosecution). In-between the state and civil society they may be: as  the arms of the State interfering in  the lives of ordinary people.

Unemployment is up again today. 2.44 Million, including, a million young people. Workfare, Labour or Tory is coming. It’ll be hell on earth if private companies are in control. Not just of ‘training’ but of work itself. But what of the (apparently) softer option? Will the out-of-work be consigned to Third Sector care? More logical, since compulsory volunteering treads into their areas.  TC knows that already some voluntary sector organisations are gearing themselves up for this. Justifying their action on the grounds that people should ‘give back something’ to society (at weekly wages that would barely pay for a ticket to a rock concert at the Regent and an Indian meal afterwards).   

As trade unionists are well aware, Third Sector bodies are often poor employer. It is unlikely they will  always deal fairly with the unemployed (who will have even fewer rights). What mechanisms will there be to reign in the power of those in authority over them? What if the person in charge, a not so hypothetical scenario, has strong opinions about work-shy scroungers, and foreigners taking advantage of the system? Harassment and similar issues are hard enough to deal with in ponderous state bureaucracies. Believe me there’s nothing like local tyranny to make you yearn for their formal ways.

So, progressive conservatism look like giving power back to the local stock-jobbing oligarchies who ran British  towns and cities in Victorian times.  That ran decentralised welfare services. Devolved to  the capable hands of Mr Beadle. Progressing back to the 19th Century.

 

For more information on what’s happening on the Welfare  Front see Ipswich Unemployed Action.

Alan B’Stard Back: NHS a ‘Mistake’.

He’s Back!

Everyone in the UK (well, nearly everyone) is up in arms at the US Right’s’ barking-mad attacks on our National Health Service. A Maoist propagandist couldn’t have come up with something more guaranteed to get the Popular Masses up in raging anger. The sight of baying Americans screaming hatred against the egalitarian institution that draws us together was bound to wound. It has wounded. We all have tales of how the NHS has helped us. The dedicated staff. The liberty that free-at-point-of-delivery gives us. We love the NHS.  

If we moan about it, that’s because 1) We Brits like to whinge 2) We don’t like government measures to get private companies running schemes like PFI, or undemocratic Trusts. That is, business making money out of illness or unaccountable big-wigs ruling on health needs. 3) We fear above all any move towards a US style ration-by-ability-to-pay system. But, as they said on the News this morning, the country is up in arms at these US slanders.

Long Live Socialised Medicine!

But hark. What do we see pandering to the US mob?

Alan B’Stard, the Tory MP, ultra-Thatcherite , and star of  The New Statesman comedy series, has returned. Or rather,

“Tory MEP Daniel Hannan (here), who has long campaigned for the NHS to be dismantled and replaced with a system of “personal health accounts”, has joined in the criticism on US television, where he described it in April as a “60-year mistake”.

Speaking on Fox News on Friday, Mr Hannan continued his criticism.

“The most striking thing about it is that you are very often just sent back to the queue,” he told the Glenn Beck programme and spoke of elderly patients “left starving in wards”.

He described the NHS as a product of wartime planning, like rationing, and added: “I find it incredible that a free people living in a country dedicated and founded in the cause of independence and freedom can seriously be thinking about adopting such a system in peacetime and massively expanding the role of the state when there’s no need.”

He’s since added that he wouldn’t wish the NHS on anyone.

The upshot? Hannan has been disowned by the Tories (here).

Will this be enough?

The Popular Masses will want him brought to the Tower of London, through Traitor’s Gate. They await seeing his head  stuck on the battlements.

The Tendance reckons there’s going to be  plenty more like Hannan in the British Parliament after the next election.

Burqa Yet Again.

Watch Out, She’s a Threat to Guardian Liberals!

The Guardian, as part of its campaign against secularism in general, and French laïcité in particular, published a lengthy bleat by a Pankaj Mishra in its Review section yesterday, A Culture of Fear. Perhaps better titled, Islamophobic Europe: the Threat to Humankind and Nice People. He (note the gender) attacks the  book on Europe and Muslims, a devioce to make sweeping judgements about the faults of the Englightenment and European politics. I shall leave this aside until I have read Caldwell’s writing. What is important is that Mishra states that in France, “a  nation state whose geopolitical and cultural insignificance  in recent years has only been partly obscured by its hyperactive President..” . This comment (strangely absent from the On-Line text – I wonder why), is followed by this, accounting for the centrality of the issue of the Veil,

“In The Politics of the Veil, the distinguished scholar of gender studies Joan Wallach Scott explains how the banning of a small piece of cloth that covers the head and neck affirmed an “imagined France”, one that was “secular, individualist and culturally homogeneous” and “whose reality was secured by excluding dangerous others from the nation”. Scott demonstrates that French Muslim girls, who were directly affected by the law on the foulard, were “strikingly absent from the debates” in France, which were dominated by intellectuals and politicians frantically defining the dangerous “other” (typically by describing the veil as, in Jacques Attali’s words, a “successor to the Berlin wall”). 

Well I shouldn’t remind the ‘distinguished’ scholar and her ‘distinguished’ Guardian columnist that the ‘small piece of cloth’ was a rather important point during the Islamicist assault  on Algerian society. That their brutal way of enforcing it means that it is flecked with the blood of our martyr-sisters. Or of the  hundreds of thousands who died in this conflict between vicious Political Islam and the torturing Pouvoir, oddly not mentioned  in such distinguished company.  That Algeria and France are intimately connected, through population, culture and history. That in particular the Burqa, more than the simple foulard (which is a religious symbol removed from education and places where equality is important) is a means of enforcing inequality in public. It is  promoted by the Salafist forces  - well-funded agents of the pious Islamicist bourgeoisie – across Europe  is more than a piece of schmutter on the head.  It is a cage, of sexual paranoia and repression. That French secularism is an advance – and what exactly is there to criticise about it? That contrary to the above claims there was a very strong presence of Muslim women in the debate (here - Sisyphe) Including the voices of numerous North Africans who oppose rigid interpretations of Islamic rules and customs, those that legitimate oppressions (such as the moral dress code), and are secular. That the leading forces of the French anti-racist left, and groups, such as the Parti de Gauche (part of the succesful Front de Gauche Euro-list) are militantly secular.

Apparently a French Muslim Minister thinks differently to her American feminist anthopologist and other English-speaking culturally significant  betters.

The BBC reports,

A ban on the wearing of the burka in France would help stem the spread of the “cancer” of radical Islam, one of its female Muslim ministers has said.

Urban Regeneration Minister Fadela Amara told the Financial Times that a veil covering everything but the eyes represented “the oppression of women”.

 

It is, she declared,  opposed by a massive majority of Muslim women – and men.

 

 (I won’t go into the full theological arguments about forms of modest dress, and the regulation of women’s behaviour by men and Islamicist ‘brothers’.)

On Friday the Débats Page in le Monde ran a polemic byNathelie Heinrich entitled, La burqa, les sophistes et la loi. She took another more culturally significant American, John Brown, to task. He worries that banning the burqa undermines private life. By contrast, the French feminist researcher argued that if the burqa was only worn bya  few, it was nevertheless an affront to public human dignity.  France lets, “Des cercueils ambulants, des insultes vivantes à l’humanité circulant dans les rues comme si de rien n’était – chut ! (walking coffins, living insults to humanity walk in the streets as if nothing was happening – Quiet!) At the least the existing laws on such concealed identity  should be used against what many in France call, ‘le voile integral’ – complete veil. Heinrich advanced a strong argument, that to accept the burqa was  to “ déni de l’existence de principes moraux supérieurs aux caprices de la volonté individuelle.” (to deny the existence of moral principles which are superior to the whims of individual wills).

A ban is not the answer. I am more concerned with religious dress codes as Islamicist instruments of  power and control. That burqa wearers are present in public places – and in the UK they are now enforced in some Swimming Pools (allegedly) on non-Muslims (here)- is a disgrace. They are testing the waters in order to extend their oppressive regime. But this is not the central point today. It’s about the ability to carry  further, by authority, this  totalitarian moral doctrine. Above all anyone in a position of power should be prevented from following them, thus making the first step towards their coercive introduction, them, for themselves or others.

David Szalay, The Innocent. Review.

The Perverted Logic of High Stalinism. 

Review: David Szalay, The Innocent, Jonathan Cape, 2009

 Andrew Coates.

 From 3 AM Magazine - well worth looking at.

Novels about the former Soviet Union are often hard graft. To read, to write, no doubt, as well. Martin Amis wrote his worst book, Koba, the Dread (2002), personifying Stalin, and studded it with inane profundities. We learnt that the Man of Steel was barking. But a lot, too much, about Amis. David Szalay puts that approach to one side. The Innocent is not about pure evil. It’s about a misguided intelligence officer, the sane Aleksandr, and the ruins he left behind him.

Looking back on a life shaped and trapped in the perverted logic of High Stalinism. To the twists of career and marriages. Not from the time when Official Communism began to break down, but from the years of its lingering glory. The present, the 1972 Munich Olympics where Soviet athletes showed off their prowess to compete against the West. A time historian David Caute described in The Dancer Defects, when the Russian state tried to compete with the West, in sport, in science, and presented a façade of stable progress. The past, back to 1930 when The Head of the OGPU (State Political Directorate) lectures on the Rightist conspiracies, “wrecking, murder, terrorism.” The Ruitin conspiracy, the Eismont-Tolmachev-Smirnov conspiracy – and, naturally Trotsky’s. With all that follows in Aleksandr’s fight for the plotters’ downfall… To convey this Szalay’s narrative switches between Aleksandr’s type-written memoir and third person in the unfolding present. The former relocates us in the Stalinist period, and its aftermath. To the purges, the manoeuvres, and the making and breaking of marriages, bounded by a country he never leaves.

It begins when the earlier Bolshevik battles have been settled and state building, purging and personal advance rule. At a time in the 1930s when he joined the Feliks Dzerzhinsky OGPU Higher School in Moscow. Then the “making of Communism was something sacred for us.” Marxism, for these enthusiasts, was close to a “language of faith” of a “new heaven.” This jarring description – to say the Author knows that Marxism-Leninism was a cover for a religious commitment – reinforces an equally heavy-handed justification of killing for political, or rather millennialist, ends.

The meat lies elsewhere. In more credible events. Aleksander recalls a certain Antolony Yudin. A very famous pianist, believed, publicly, dead. Fast forward to the late ‘forties and the conclusion of the great patriotic War. Yudin, this former musician, is being held in a psychiatric hospital, out in the endless Russian forests. Injured during his detention as a traitor, his brain is so affected his short-term memory is awry. His past? A philo-germanic, (music, culture) he attempted to keep his contacts with country alive as war loomed and broke out. Who wrote to a German musicologist in 1942 asking if it were possible for him to go to Germany? Arrested… Hold on. Like the mystical communism this jars. Arrested after writing? Anyone, above all anyone well-known, with the remotest connection with Germany at this time would have already been under intense suspicion, most likely already sent to Gulag, and probably shot. With their relatives and friends. What need of a cover up of a botched shooting and false, not genuine, obituaries when there was actual proof for once? Kept alive for the sake of Doctor Lozovsky’s research into brain injuries… I think not. And I am only criticising this because a novel with realistic ambitions has to suffer some judgements in terms of its realism.

Fortunately there is a lot better writing at work. The intricate plot rests upon Aleksandr’s steadily rising career, with its set-backs, in the Soviet Intelligence section. But only for a few minutes are it banal, roughly tumbling through marriage, relationships, and accumulating posts and possessions. Most of the time there are reminders of a darker backdrop, the high hopes of the Kosmonol youngster. Meeting with a fervent Communist, with a hidden alien class origin, a series of edgy contacts with the sharp needles that stuck out all over the Stalinist system. Periodic purges, anti-semitism (Lovosky is one of “our long-nosed friends”), wives, lovers, and a settled routines existence as a functionary, pass along. The purging of Lovosky is, with the coming of Khrushchev, now a fault, and a period of unset menaces this steady progress. Aleksander considers him, retrospectively in 1960, in some way not innocent. Overshadowed: in 1960 he has his own worries about getting shot. But isn’t Living on Aleksander watches events in the Fisher Iceland Chess Match and then the Munich Olympic Black September terrorist atrocity take place. More flashbacks to the threats against the Stalinist regime, hidden whites, Trotskyists. Late middle-aged comfort.

To what? Perhaps I got lost as to where The Innocent was going. Or enjoyed myself on the journey – there is plenty of fine reflection on the way. Reading I found myself constantly thinking of the raft of books that have appeared about everyday Stalinism over the last decade. Many of the best are listed at the back of the The Innocent. But what I felt a lack of was a feeling that one could see what was happening. A cinematic input. Something in the genre of Burnt by the Sun or The Inner Circle. But more down to earth. Even so, the novel keeps your attention, and brings with it its own shafts of light into a world of everyday darkness.

Recipes for Social Democracy: Jean-Christophe Cambadélis

The French socialists are in a decisive debate about their future. This contribution (extracts below) is by one of their central figures, Jean-Christophe Cambadélis (from Lambertist student to supporter of the liberal Socialist Dominique Strauss-Khan).  The principal interest here is how far it echos similar moves around Compass.

Lettre à un militant qui n’en peut plus 

The Letter  begins by asking why the Socialists keep losing elections and votes.

“”La raison en est simple. Elle est la clé de tout. Nous sommes désormais perçus comme un élément du «système ». Selon le juste mot d’Edgar Morin,la réduction du socialisme au gestionnarisme a sapé les ‘fondements de l’espérance nos concitoyens’…”

The reason is simple, and the key to everything. Henceforth we are seen as  as part of the ‘system’. In the well-judged words of Edgar Morin, the reduction of socialism to management has enfeebled the ‘basis of hope amongst our fellow citizens’…   

Au moment où nous avions les conditions de l’offensive après le krach de décembre 2008, nous n’avions plus de dynamique. Le modèle social démocrate, devenu social libéral, s’était évanoui. Le nouveau modèle était empirique, sans force, sans certitudes, incapable de rassurer, d’entraîner les peuples d’Europe.Il faut maintenant opérer une rupture claire avec les années libérales du socialisme européen. Ceci est d’autant plus facile que ce ne fut pas la thèse officielle du PS français.

At the very moment, during the Bank crashes of December 2008, when had the conditions to go on the offensive, we had no energy or sense of direction left. The social democratic model, that had become social liberal, had evaporated. This model was based on ‘what works’, without any strength, without any certainties. It was incapable of reasurring, or bringing with it Europe’s peoples. Now we have clearly to break with the European Socialist parties’ neo-liberalism. This  is all the easier for us, because the French Socialists have never officially adopted this approach.   

 Yet no back to the 1970s, Programme Commun, radical nationalisation, workers’ control. Still less the ‘rupture’ with capitalism (as opposed to the neo-liberal variant of it).

Instead  Cambadélis’s  ideas for a new course  are vague. In a society where justice reigns,

“Cette société juste doit combiner l’écologisation des moyens de production et d’échanges et une nouvelle répartition des richesses portée par l’égalité réelle.”

This just society  must combine the ecologisation (his neologism) of the means of production and exchange with a new share-out of wealth based on real equality.

Finally apart from advocating Primaries to select candidates, notably the Presidential one, he states that,

“Le PS n’est pas la résultante un jour de l’alliance avec Olivier Besancenot parce qu’il y a des mouvements sociaux, le lendemain avec François Bayrou….”

The Parti Socialiste is not the going to have one day an alliance with Olivier Besancenot (new Anti-Capitalist Party) because there are social mvoements, the next with  François Bayrou (centrist) – (because he  seen as a vigrous  opponent of Sarkozy).

Conclusion: The Socialists, Jean-Christophe Cambadélis repeats (an old refrain), are the lynch-pin of unity on the Fench left. Only through them can it regain power.

Well he would say that, wouldn’t he..

Workers’ Control: The Note That Grew.

A NOTE ON WORKERS’ CONTROL AND SELF-MANAGEMENT.

 

Above available from Spokesman Books.

 

 (Extract from The Spirit of Factions and Sects – still being worked on. This is a revised and expanded version).

 [This follows a chapter on the Soviet Union and Stalinism. Criticisms of that is..)

A NOTE ON WORKERS’ CONTROL AND SELF-MANAGEMENT.

 

Two ways of arriving at socialism…

 

“One way is the way of democracy of working men; the way of raising the level of production; of voluntary self-reliant activity, self-discipline of the masses. This is, in our   opinion, the only way that can lead, and will inevitably lead, to the triumph of Socialism; while the other ruinous way is the way of the deprivation of the working classes themselves of every right and liberty, the way of transforming the working masses into a scattered human herd, submitted to benevolent dictators, benevolent specialist of socialism, who drive men in this paradise by means of a stick.”

 

Moscow Printers’ leader, Mark Kefali, in the presence of the British Labour Delegation to Russia, 1920. (55)

 

Where does this leave us?

Ramadan Sacked: Dutch City and University Say, Has links with Repressive Iranian Regime.

Loses Dutch Support.

Tariq Ramadan deux fois congédié à Rotterdam

Libérationtoday: Pays-Bas. La ville et une fac coupent les ponts avec l’islamologue . Story in  English here.

Sa «relation indirecte avec ce régime (iranien) n’est pas acceptable»et «a entaché la crédibilité de ses travaux». Telle est la raison évoquée par l’université Erasmus et la ville de Rotterdam pour mettre fin, de manière anticipée, à leur collaboration avec le controversé islamologue suisse Tariq Ramadan.

L’universitaire présente, depuis 2008, une émission hebdomadaire sur la chaîne publique iranienne Press TV, ce «qui est inconciliable avec ses deux fonctions à Rotterdam»,peut-on lire dans un communiqué commun.

«Répressif». Les deux institutions précisent que les propos tenus par Ramadan dans son émission ne sont pas en cause, mais simplement sa position au sein d’une chaîne financée par le régime «répressif»de Téhéran.

 

The City of Rotterdam and its University have sacked Tariq Ramadan (who had part-time posts/co-operation with both)  for his links with the Iranian regime. Notably with Press TV.

 

The Iranian regime now is hurtling towards a reign of terror. Accused anti-Semitic terrorist, Ahmad Vahidi, is Defence Minister. We should be backing the Iranian democrats, workers and the repressed, to the hilt.

How many more people can justify their collaboration with state-funded Press TV? Why should not those that do be subject to the same sanctions as Ramadan?

Why is Ramadan still  covered with media and academic honour in the UK?

 

Europe’s Left Divided: France Highlights General Line-Up.

Tricolor, Green or Red Flag?

The holidays are coming to an end. The French ‘rentrée’  is beginning. That’ s the time when the country’s Political and Cultural agenda gets set for the coming twelve months – in principle. It’s when the parties of the left try to settle their strategies, resolve their differences, and set out their wares.  At a series of ‘universités d’été’ (summer schools) the Parti Socialiste (PS), the  Parti Communiste Français (PCF), the Verts (Greens), the Nouveau Parti anti-Capitaliste (NPA), and other events (no doubt including the Parti de Gauche), have been and will be debating their failure to present a credible alternative to President Sarkozy. Or even, despite millions protesting on the streets this Spring, to affect substantially his policies. Neither the social-movement left, nor the (overwheminglySocialist) parliamentary deputies, look in any position to oust the right. For the latter, the European election humiliation of the PS, barely beating the Verts, adds piquancy to their dilemma. Renewal, from the right or the left?

Three responses are emerging. They all have a wide echo with debates across the European left.

The first is found amongst a wide layer of the PS. It is to try to establish an alliance with the centrist Mo-Dem party of François Bayrou and the Verts. That is, a tie-up between ‘democratic’ forces (Bayrou vaunts his claim to be the best fighter against Sarkozy’s  authoritarian populism), with an ‘ecological’ vision of progressive reform. Former LCR leader, Senator Henri Weber, who backs the latter, claims (here) that a ‘third refoundation’ of social democracy is underway. The first, the break with totalitarian Leninism (1920s), the second, with Marxism (Bad Godesberg – 1950s to 1980s), the third, with productivism and towards a new mode of ecological production (now. This greening goal, in various forms, is widely shared. However the first component of this new ‘cartel de gauches’ (the 1920s agreement between left republicans, liberal radical  socialists and the socialist party, the SFIO, co-operation with Bayrou (and ex-member of the centre-right UDF), is not accepted by all. It remains hotly contested. Not least by the PS’s General Secretary, Martine Aubry – elected on a platform opposed to such an alliance.  It is equally received with hostility by a majority of PS voters. Not to mention all the forces to their left.

This may become a wider pattern in Europe. As the SDP fails in the coming German elections, and Labour goes down to ignominious defeat, we will no doubt see similar calls made. 

The second are demands to ‘open up’ the selection of the PS’s Presidential candidate by ‘primaries’. This would mean an expensive publicity campaign to enroll a large swathe of the ‘sympathsiers’ of the Parti Socialiste in this race. How ‘open’ it would be is open to anyone’s guess. The advantage this process would give to those with publicists rather than politics  is enormous. Disregarding the utter failure of primaries to lift the Italian Democratic Party from the doldrums those with a vested interest are heavily promoting the idea (here) -with support from unexpected sources such as Laurent Fabius. Aubry, a party-activist at heart, is against; the ‘star’ struck Ségolène Royale (herself designated by a primary of those who paid a small membership due).

 Like its American template, this is an anti-democratic populist practice which puts power into the hands of the wealthy and well-connected with the established media. And takes away yet another reason to join a party – notably the PS where members have hitherto enjoyed considerable policy-making influence. One notes the idea’s popularity amongst the British Conservatives. No doubt similar forces in a defeated skeleton of the Labour Party will warm to the suggestion in time.

Thirdly the NPA remains stuck in its call for movements of opposition. A rumour, circulated at the end of July, has it that the party of Olivier Besancenot has lost around 3,000 members since its European election failure to obtain any seats. While this is patently untrue, they have lost a  momentum and no doubt a few hundred card-carriers. Relying on strikes (despite the unwelcome noises form the main union federations) and demonstrations is not much of a strategy. For next year’s regional elections the NPA intends trying to reach some agreements with other (non-PS) left parties, such as the Parti de Gauche and the PCF. The sticking point remains their refusal to countenance any accord with the PS – any. It’s hard not to have sympathy with their dislike of the Socialists’ manoeuvres and abject failure to launch a  radical challenge to the right. But the NPA display arrogance in refusing the meet the needs of these left parties, who depend on municipal power for their existence.

In this respect at least, unlike the two others,  France shows a great difference from British politics. We don’t have the luxury to split on such issues!

France nevertheless illustrates many of the causes of the failures of the European left.  A social democratic wing tied to the established system, losing its identity and flailing around for electoral relief. Opportunism about Green politics – which are in a complete muddle (talk of ecological modes of production, post-materialist activists, inverted priorities: Gaia first, exploitation and oppression a long way behind).  A radical left unable to connect with the broad labour movement.  Still, we have had Blair and now we’ve (just about) got Brown. So we’ve not much to crow about.

Workers’ Control: Notes that Grew.

A NOTE ON WORKERS’ CONTROL AND SELF-MANAGEMENT.

 

Above an important pamphlet available from Spokesman Books which explains a lot of the background to workers’ control.

 

 (Below: Extract from The Spirit of Factions and Sects, by Andrew Coates - a long text – book – still being worked on. This is a revised and expanded version).

 [This follows a chapter on the Soviet Union and Stalinism. Criticisms of that is..)

A NOTE ON WORKERS’ CONTROL AND SELF-MANAGEMENT.

 

Two ways of arriving at socialism…

 

“One way is the way of democracy of working men; the way of raising the level of production; of voluntary self-reliant activity, self-discipline of the masses. This is, in our   opinion, the only way that can lead, and will inevitably lead, to the triumph of Socialism; while the other ruinous way is the way of the deprivation of the working classes themselves of every right and liberty, the way of transforming the working masses into a scattered human herd, submitted to benevolent dictators, benevolent specialist of socialism, who drive men in this paradise by means of a stick.”

 

Moscow Printers’ leader, Mark Kefali, in the presence of the British Labour Delegation to Russia, 1920. (55)

 

Where does this leave us?

Support Iranian Resistance Against Theocratic Gaolers.

 

The ever-excellent Weekly Worker has some of the best reports on the unfolding crisis in Iran. 

In the latest issue (after the break for the Communist University) Yassamine Mather reports,

Misogynist Torturers Cling to Power.

Over the last few weeks, following the show trials of ‘reformist’ personalities and the imposition of even more severe forms of repression in Iran, the nature of protests has changed considerably.

However, demonstrations continue on a daily basis in Tehran and most other Iranian cities, with numbers attending ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Reports from the working class neighbourhoods of Tehran, such as Ekbatan, Apadana and Karaj, and from the white-collar suburbs of Tehran Pars, indicate that anti-government demonstrations take place every night and often lead to confrontation between protesters and Bassij militia.”

Full Story here.

In the same issue is a thoughtful review by comrade Dave Osler of some heavyweight books about Iran.

He comments, “The Islamic Republic is a theocratic dictatorship sui generis, and we should earnestly desire its downfall; while we would like to see that job achieved by the Iranian working class, we should acknowledge that even bourgeois democracy would be an advance.”

The Weekly Worker, essential reading.

 

Hands off the People of Iran (HOPI) Blog – here.

Primaries in the Labour Party: Coming Some Time, Maybe? Now!!!

Gordon Brown faces a well-deserved humiliating defeat. Next year at any rate.  Before he goes down in ignominy and shame New Labour strategists will flounder around looking for a way to claw their back to power.

The French Socialist Party has known its own set-backs. This August, the ‘silly-season’ in the UK, has seen, some concerted attempts to think their way out of their impasse. All centres on two strategies. The first are alliances. We shall leave the wisdom of aligning oneself with complacent landowners like François Bayrou (Mod-Dem right-centrist) and smirking right wing centrist Greens, such as Daniel Cohen-Bendit, to PS members to judge. The other strategy is based around primaries. That is open selection-processes for Presidential candidates, and, who knows, other PS aspiring Office Holders. The principle has now been accepted by General Secretary Martine Aubry (here). It is suggested that the process may involve non-PS candidates (from the MoDem or the Greens) – all depending on the willingness of them to participate. In any case the real point is that the voting will involve the public as a whole – self-declared backers of the PS, or not.

This has caused resentment and opposition on other left parties, who feel – rightly – that Socialists are trying to monopolise the ‘left’. It’s a risky idea: novelty and media bunting apart it will undermine (fatally?) the power of card-carrying activists.  The more to dominate them with  publicists and, no doubt vacuous US-style rallying techniques. In the long-term the structure of the PS looks set to undergo a massive shock, and possibly dissolution.

 It has not passed unnoticed in France that the Italian Democratic Party, now run on this principle has eliminated its left. It has equally been a resounding failureas a political alliance, and a feeble opponent of the loathsome Berlusconi. The pathetic fate of the Partito Democratico does not, some comment, seem a good recommendation for primaries-as-a-solution-to-the-left’s-problems.  

In the UK the Conservativeshave begun running primaries for local candidates. The first was in Totnes (here). This was completely open. Er hum – for deciding a Tory candidate or a Tory candidate. The Tories modestly note that, ”This will be the first time that a candidate will have a mandate from the whole electorate.”  The practice looks set to be followed.

Now the Labour Party’s Constitution would seem to prohibit such a move. But given that the present Party leadership pays scant attention to the Constitution, and would dearly love to be able to jump over the heads of those tiring members to reach the electorate a a whole, how long will it before some ‘strategist’  backs this idea. Will many get behind this, a way to funnel off anger at New Labour’s catastrophic governments? Whip up new enthusiasm?

I merely ask….

And have already been answered: the dull-as-ditch-water ‘Progress’ right-wing New Labour lot  have already jumped on this bandwagon (well, a couple of weeks back): here.

Die Linke on the Up: Saarland, Saxony and Thuringia Regional Elections.

It looks as if German politics are not playing out to the scenario predicted. That is, a shoe-in for Angela Merkel and the Right in this autumn’s, 27th of September,  General Election.  On Sunday in Saarland, an old stomping ground of Die Linke leader, Oscar Lafontaine, the left party scored 21,3% (detailed breakdown here).  A major upset, given that the PDS (one of Die Linke’s components) had never got more than a few percentage points in the Saar before. Some kind of coalition is inevitable, but by and with whom? It’s  suggested that the Green Party will be ‘kingmakers’ in this region. Given Die Grünen’s hostility to socialist policies this seems a delicate task. Elsewhere, in Saxony the Left got 20,6% and in Thuringia, 27,4% – good results, though in line with previous levels in former GDR areas.

Der Spiegel comments that (here), 

Left Party leader Oskar Lafontaine only managed to utter four words before the crowd of supporters drowned him out in cheers: “Yes, good evening everyone.” The 65-year-old politician was just greeting the crowd, but in fact he was giving them a lot more — an unprecedented election victory that many even in his own party didn’t even believe could happen.

The left-wing party scored 21.3 percent of the vote in elections for the state parliament in Saarland on Sunday — a result that was 10 times greater than that achieved by the party’s predecessor, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), in the state during the last election in 2004. In 2007, the Left Party was created through the merger of the western German WASG party and the eastern German PDS, the successor party to East Germany’s Communists. 

On the suggestion that there be a general alliance with the SPD and greens Lafontaine has this (here) to say:

In Deutschland wird seit den Wahlen vom Sonntag wieder viel über Rot-Rot-Grün spekuliert. Eine realistische Option auch für den Bund?

Nein. Für die Linke ist immer das Programm ausschlaggebend. So lange SPD und Grüne den Krieg in Afghanistan befürworten, solange sie mehr oder weniger die Rentenkürzung, die Kürzung des Arbeitslosengeldes und Lohndumping durch Hartz IV unterstützen, solange gibt es keine Basis für eine Zusammenarbeit.

After Sunday’s vote there has been again speculation about a Red-Red-Green alliance. Is this a realistic option?

 No. For the Left the Programme is always the decisive issue. So long as the Greens and SPD continue backing the war in Afghanistan, so long as they more or less support reductions in pensions, cuts in unemployment benefit, and social (wage) dumping (Hartz IV), there will be no basis for common work between  us.  

More analysis (in English, from China – of interest)  here. In German (here) a flavour of the hysterical political hostility that accompanies any successes of Die Linke, and efforts to reach coalition agreements between it and the SPD.

Disarray of the French Left.

 

Reminder of How Dismal the European Election Results were in France.

From the Latest Chartist Magazine (September/October). Written about a month ago.

The June European elections were not a success for the left. In the Continent-wide upsurge of the Right France was not exception. Head of State Nicolas Sarkozy was the principal victor. At 27,87% of the vote his party, the UMP, outran the Parti Socialiste (PS) – 16,48% – by a kilometre. The Socialists only just beat the Green List, Europe Ecologie, (16,28%) and got the same number of seats (14). There was no centrist break-through. François Bayrou’s MoDems, who posed as the best fighters against the President, obtained a low 8,45%. On the far left the anticipated surge for Olivier Besancenot’s Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste (NPA) failed to materialise. At 4,88% (and no MEPs) they were outdistanced by an alliance of break-away Socialists and the Parti Communiste Français, the Front de Gauche, who got 6,05%, (5 seats). For the left the only really good news was that the far-right Front National’s vote shrank to 6,3% and just 3 Euro representatives.

 

Before the elections the Socialists had barely recovered from a damaging feud. The battle for the post of General Secretary, between Martine Aubry and failed Presidential candidate, Ségèlone Royal was intense.  Aubry won by O.O4%of the vote. November’s ReimsCongress left disagreements unresolved. The party has an inability to decide on its direction. Efforts to wrench the PS from its class struggle heritage (at a time when class conflicts are highly visible in France), and replace them with a watered down version of Enlightenment values, republicanism, have not been rewarded by the electorate. Royal adds populism and talk of ‘hope’ (mimicking Barrak Obama). Critics allege she is a ‘social liberal’ – who accepts market economics. Aubry’s austere approach – rooted in a more traditional social democracy – has been too modest to make an impact.

 

The Euro election results were felt as an “earthquake “ by the socialists. Leading figures have made dramatic remarks about its coming “death”. Julie Dray has declared the party is “à la derive” (adrift). From the sidelines, Bernard Henri-Lévy suggests that the PS should “disappear”. A common refrain is that the party, in Manuel Valls’ words, “must change or die”. Yet nobody seems to offer any clear programme of change. Connecting to the voters by open ‘primaries’ is not much of answer – and is resisted by Aubry. A turn to the Third Way, given British experience has little appeal. But democratic socialist strategies have not made headway given the splintering of the Party’s left.

 

Europe Ecologie, apart from Sarkozy the main victors of the election, is led by Daniel Cohen-Bendit. He defines himself as a “libertarian liberal”. ‘Danny’ backs the European Constitution, humanised markets, and increased federal powers. Their other internationally known MEP, José Bové, was opposed to the Constitution during the French referendum and ‘anti-liberal’ in the French sense of opposing the free-market. The Greens’ programme gave priority to general ecological measures and moderate reforms of European social policy  – thus making them a safe choice for a protest-vote. But in other French elections the French Greens, the Verts, are completely dependent on agreements with the PS. It remains to be seen how their success will translate into domestic politics.

 

On the left the Front de Gauche, with the backing of the PCF’s apparatus and many left wing democratic socialists, is trying to emulate the German Die Linke. Its most dynamic component, the Parti de Gauche, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, was onyl formed at the end of 2008. It received the backing of the Piquet faction of the Ligue Communiste Révoltuonnaire (LCR), now a separate organisation, Gauche Unitaire. The Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste, which replaced the LCR at its founding conference this year, claims to embrace a wider ‘anti-capitalism’ than Trotskyism alone (it is not officially a section of the Fourth International), apart from some very small left groups, and new anti-globalising activists, it remains under the 10,000 membership target it fixed itself.  The NPA, at one point polls gaveit over 10% of the vote, failed to convince the electorate. It refused an alliance with the Front, on the grounds that it was compromised by agreements with the Socialists and did not offer an alternative to the State. NPA activists have consoled themselves that Mélenchon’s supporters tend to be elderly – as is the age of all those who cast their ballots in these elections.

 

Those looking for extra-parliamentary activity to defeat Sarkozy havealso faced an impasse. Massive one-day general strikes and street protests (mobilising up to 2 million people) this spring have not had any concrete results. Militant factory occupations and threats to blow up factories (New Fabric, Nortel, Givet) if special redundancy payments are not given, are signs of desperation. They have been compared with Luddism. The Union movement, unusually united, is looking for new ways to defend its interests. For the moment opposition to Sarkozy’s government has been out-manouevred.

 

Comment: Aubry and the majority of the Socialist Party have since been swept up in the move to hold Primaries. I’ve given more up-to-date analysis here.

Against the Greens, Again.

Green Power? No Thanks!

The left is fascinated with Green Parties and Green politics. Now all sniffiness aside (I have enough snuffles  about the Climate Camp protesters to cause a pandemic) there are serious issues at stake.

Yes, the fate of the Planet is important. Yes, pollution, global warming, the exhaustion of natural resources, and bio-diversity (simply – the countryside and the wild) matter. Yes, ecological measures should form a part of a left programme.

But, no, no, no, the Green parties are not a vehicle for progressive left politics.

All Green parties are cross-class ‘post-materialist’. Or so the text-books say. Their politics address people as human beings and a part of nature (Gaia). Socialist politics speak to people as citizens and members of classes. Why? Let’s boil this down to the essential. Socialism, whether Marxist or not, has two central objectives. To fight exploitation (the principal  source of inequality – capitalism), and to combat oppression (people being badly treated because of their class, ethnic, gender, sexual choices, religion or lack of religion).  For the first, class assertion, people’s interests, means support for trade unions, and a socialist economic strategy (okay apart from defending ourselves, we haven’t got much of one at the moment). At least something like workers’ control – of the whole economy. For the second social republicanism, human rights, and anti-racist secularism.

The Greens appear sometimes to back some of these objectives. At least in part. It’s obvious that, for example, their support for Co-ops (here) is the strategy of ‘growing co-operation within capitalism’. Now it’s all very well to encourage the idea of turning “existing for profit companies into workers co-ops”. The crucial point is that, as argued in A Note on Workers’ Control - here – that these need something a lot more. Either state encouragement, or a really massive upheaval to introduce self-management across society. Otherwise, all the experience of such islands of anti-capitalism is that they will fail.  

It’s hard not to think that the ley-way given to these policies is part of a wider attempt to embrace just about anything moderately radical going. Opposition to privatisation, anti-globalisation, climate change, even against Welfare Reform. This sums up the Greens’  approach: make lots of strong statements about how bad big businesses is, sloganise about No Logo, talk up the anti-globalisation movement and NGOs. But when push comes to shove they will never go against the grain of the market society. They, in short, are not socialists. Since they don’t claim otherwise the fault of thinking that they are, or at least close to, the Left, is not theirs. It’s those on the left who a re desperate to find some way out of our present dilemmas, or, more cynically, some (in Respect) looking for an exit-strategy when their organisation gets wound up (the near future).

 Green parties are not socialist and never will be. They are what they say they are: eco-centred and hostile to socialist industrialisation, socialist planning and a whole raft of socialist policies (from nationalisation to forced redistribution of ownership and wealth). Some members might be socialists. That’s another affair.

Why?

The reason is that Green parties are strongly marked by their origins (a feature of parties that Maurice Duverger underlibed0. That is, their Utopian super-class picture of the world means they appeal to anyone. Of Good Will. Like the early Robert Owen or Fourier they  ask for the support of well-intentioned individuals. Some, like these two, go so far as to ask for support from the rich and powerful (The Ecologist is a prime example). But most appeal to those who are sufficiently well-off to consider Green issues a priority – the so-called ‘post-materialists’. Not that there are not material reasons to be Green. But, at least until the class-based political system began to break up (encouraged by such parties as New Labour and its counterparts elsewhere) people cast their ballots on things like taxes, economic growth (a big problem for the so-called fundamentalist Greens), and welfare. Either way that is.

The central turning point for the European Green parties has been when they have got enough electoral support to have their own professional Green politicians(and hangers-on). A layer with its own interest in keeping their positions. This has meant systematic calculation and electoral strategy. They have to become more and more respectable. Without a defined class constituency, they trawl widely. Their political anchor has such a  long chain that it lets them drift.

Hence right-wing liberal-libertarian types like Daniel Cohen-Bendit. Hence the attempt by French Green leader, Cécile  Duflot(from a Christian background) to appear a competent ‘manager’ of a party. Les Verts have one of the highest ratios of  people holding posts in local government to members in Europe (9,000 members, up to a  couple of thousand elected figures – 5 Senators, 3 Deputies, 41 Mayors, and 168 Regional Councillors, and many more, though a lot  are very local – the equivalent of Parish Councils – ‘cantons’)  Everything depends then, on being capable of  running municipalities efficiently. Green-wise that is. Feeling the wind in their sails the French Greens are going alone. Until they need other parties. The future looks like this: compromise, coalitions, deals. This already happens between the Norwich Labour Party and the Council Greens.

In brief: the Greens are set to become, if their European sister parties are their template,  a version of the Liberal Party out to offer its support to the highest bidder, always waiting for the main chance to break through into the major league.  

The Greens are neither natural allies of the labour movement nor the left. If on specific issues they may be on the same side that is one thing. If it’s a matter of anti-racism, or opposition to selling-off public services, or for union rights. Fine. But there is no serious strategy for regrouping the left around the Green Party. Not now. Not ever.

Burston Rally, 6th September 2009. Report: Sunshine and Socialism.

 Burston Strike School: Rally is held on Village Green in Front.

Last year it poured with rain. This time the sun shone. Around 2,000 people attended the annual Burston Rally on Sunday (small notice in East Anglian Daily Times). The Morning Star carried a fuller report yesterday (here) and the YCL posted on it  (here).

The theme of this year’s event was solidarity with the Cuban revolution. Luis Marrion from the Cuban Embassy spoke on the advances towards socialism made on the Island.  Steve Hart of SERTUC (South Eastern TUC) warned about the continuing US blockade. He spoke of solidarity with the Latin American people, and the need to oppose the Honduran coup. Richard Howitt, Eastern Region Labour MEP gave his views. Others were less enthusiastic about the policies, and prospects, of the Labour Government.

There were stalls from most of the major trade unions: UNISON, UNITE, GMB, NUJ and the RMT. Bob Crow, from the latter, was present with a full crew ‘on tour’, a marching band (said to have learnt it’s tunes from the Raj), and its own zeppelin. Campaigns and pressure groups included: Unite Against Fascism, StWC, Palestinian Solidarity, Cuban Solidarity (with Carnival Musicians), Amnesty International, Workers’ Musical Association, Tom Paine Society (an exhibition at near-by Diss Museum is currently on show – see here), and the Humanists (no Christian Socialists this year). A group of Woodcraft Folk appeared, visiting from their Suffolk Hostel.  Of Left groups there were: the SWP, Socialist Party, CPB (M-L), a larger than usual YCL contingent, Socialist Appeal, and both wings of the SPGB (the  Socialist Party – not to be confused with the SP above, and the other lot).

 

Ipswich had its famous jams and elderflower cordial on sale, and the comrade had even produced Medler conserve this year (which I was intrigued enough to fork out for). Plus there were  free golden plums from a well-known allotment holder.

Few eco-warriors were present: they have a fête timed normally  on the same day as Burston. It’s held on some Lordship’s land in Norfolk.

With such a good turn-out one could see that a hefty chunk of the East Anglian active labour movement were there. This went from the left to many leading Labour councillors from Ipswich. Former Norwich MP, Ian Gibson, however was not spotted. The age-range went from the very young to veterans. Wilf Page’s biographer, Mike Pentelow,  was there to sign copies of his biography (Norfolk Red) of one of our region’s most important activists.

Our coach, jointly organised between Ipswich and Colchester, was about two-thirds full. On returning to Ipswich  we headed for the Dove. It was generally agreed that the day had been a great success and yet another step on the inevitable road to victory of the East Anglian Proletariat (and small peasants).

Parti Socialiste: Hold-Ups, Cheating and Treason…

Not Friends at the Best of Time.

Are these the worst allegations of fraudulent internal elections in European Socialist History? Anyone listening to France-Inter this morning would have been surprised by the  allegations made about rigging in the vote that saw Martine Aubry win the post of Parti Socialiste. Antonin André et Karim Rissouli’s  ”Hold-uPS, arnaques et trahisons” alleges this and much more. Literally piles of pro-Aubry ballots are said to have been added to the total.  The Nouvel Observateur gives a full report: here.

“On savait que ça avait triché, mais pas avec cette ampleur ni avec ce système d’organisation”, commente Ségolène Royal après la parution du livre “Hold-uPS, arnaques et trahisons”, qui lève le voile sur les tricheries lors de l’élection de Martine Aubry. Laurent Fabius, lui, estime que ce livre ne contient “pas d’éléments probants”.

We knew there had been cheating, but not on this scale, and not so systematically organised, declared Ségolène Royal after the publication of the book, Hold-ups, arnaques et trahisons (Hold-ups, Cheating and Treason), which lifts the veil on the tricks used during the election of Martine Aubry. Laurent Fabius* , for his part, that the book is not thoroughly convincing.

Reading extracts from the book in le Point I can only agree with Royal. It begins by reporting a message from an Aubry bureaucrat, “We’re not wearing kid-gloves, Stuff the Ballot Boxes!” – here.

 

I cannot overemphasise how damaging these claims are. The PS has just emerged with a  fragile truce about its future direction (acceptance of Primary selections, and at least entertaining the idea of alliances with the Greens and the Centre MoDems).

Now all hell look set to break out.

 

* PS ‘elephant’ (elder statesman) and former PM.

  

The Bells of Saint Lawrence and the Silence of the Film Theatre.

Tolling for the Death of Film.

For those who watched the National News, Ipswich (again!) is the Navel of the World.

Apparently we have the oldest bells in Christendom. At Saint Lawrence Church (here).

For those who so wish one can hear them here.

Meanwhile the Liberal-Tory Junta is facing the fact that its private cinema replacement for the Ipswich Film Theatre is going to close.

A letter has been sent about the latter to the local paper,

“Hollywood Cinema to close. A Chronicle of a Death Foretold. The Usual Suspects, led by Councillor Judy Terry, got rid of the Film Theatre. The Tory-Liberal adminstration assured us that with Hollywood  La Vie was en Rose. That the venue would be part of the Things to Come.  Others regretted the loss of a specialist outlet, highly regarded across the whole of East Anglia, not just East of Ipswich. Under the Rules of the GameHollywood could not compete. Commercial movies and some art cinema could be seen at CineWorld. Few went to the unpredictable showings at the Corn Exchange. Which only played a Handful of Dust apart from – often late – blockbusters.

After the Broken Embraces with private operators will the Council learn that commercial companies cannot be relied on the provide public culture?

I have a Shadow of a Doubt.”

The Tories and Liberals love ancient Bells, they hate modern uncommercial film.

It’s noteworthy that Saint Lawrence hosts a Drop-In Centre for the well-off (lunches start at well over a fiver). Or as Councillor Judy Terry calls them, the “nice people.”

Goodbye un-nice cinéphiles, and un-nice Caribbeans and their centre (the next on the Lib-Tory  hit-list).

Bob Crow: Election Challenge to Labour.

The Times reports (here)  that Bob Crow, the RMT and a variety of groups are seriously discussing standing left candidates in the next General Election.

 

Mr Crow is planning a new challenge to the political elite. The unions, he says, are planning to set up an alliance to stand candidates at the next general election. The RMT has already had six meetings in the past three months with representatives from other unions, pensioners groups, student bodies and green campaigners. “If we don’t believe that any of the candidates are good, there may be an alliance that comes together. We would be putting up policies that we believe people want. What our members vote for is their democratic right, but certainly we can’t just sit back and say vote Labour.”

He cannot lead the alliance himself — “my rules restrict me from standing at a general election,” he says — but he can help with the manifesto and fundraising, while his preferred policies are clear. “I would like to see taxes go up massively for the rich, I’d abolish all private education and all private medical care. I would do away with the Royal Family — that’s not to say they’d be executed but why should those people have a privileged place in society?”

This is worth deep consideration. I will begin with the best Spartist reasons why.

• Gordon Brown, who is likely still  to lead Labour in these elections, is nothing but a centre-right politician. His support for free-market globalisation (with a dose of Christian humbug) is far from even moderate social democracy. There has been no back-tracking on this, except a public safety-net for the banking system.
• The ‘market state’  Blair and Brown have inherited from the Conservatives, has been developed. On the one hand a variety of private contractors are now delivering public services. A large parasitical ‘para-state’ has grown up, taking in profit for themselves and offering disorganised and incompetent services in return. On the other hand the low-paid in the public sector have seen their real wages decline, and their working conditions worsened by outsourcing. Many manual and precarious workers in private companies have not seen their rights, conditions and pay significantly improve. Only a few groups with industrial muscle have made advances. The Cabinet has not introduced significant measures that would enable trade unions tip the balance the other way.
• The unemployed (a growing number of people, to say the least)  and all those who rely on state benefits have been targeted for a compulsory moral reform campaign. Their incomes have been  reduced, their eligibility for money constantly challenged, they have been harassed, and their lives made a misery by the market state. 
• The Labour government has failed to combat racism and xenophobia. Its multiculturalist state strategy is unable to fight rising extreme-right support. Instead of uniting people around common interests it divides them,  separating people by ethnicity and religion, and giving power and money to unelected ‘community leaders’. Secular anti-racism, the real alternative,  has been vigorously opposed.
• The UK Government has engaged in murderous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq  without a genuine democratic mandate. Or a clear exit strategy.

I could go on. A  constituency inherently opposed to the politics of Brown’s Labour Party can be seen emerging here. Attempts by the wordy John Cruddas (who backed the very welfare reform that is causing so much pain for the poor) to offer a Social Democratic  Alternative are not worth much. he ahs no worked-out programme that differs from Brown in the five bullet points listed, except vague principles, such as ‘regulation’ ‘social justice’ or more equality’ (while working for a few quid an hour to get the dole…).

 

We shall see what Bob Crow’s initiative has to offer. Its policies and its support. And how far it will be able to present candidates. There is an advertisment in the Morning Star (Saturday) about a Conference, open to all, which will discuss this.

In any case I am resolved not to vote for my local Labour candidate (Ipswich), Chris Mole. He has publicly backed Workfare. On these grounds alone Mole cannot be supported by any left-winger, or progressive.

Norway: Still the Red-Green Coalition? Update, Tuesday.

To Continue Green, and Red?

Many reports indicate that the Norwegian Red-Green Coalition is set to continue (here). Other reports say not. That the results will be close (here). More info here.  In any case it is interesting to note that the Reds in some part of Europe (not a member of the EU)  are still a substantial force.

The Picquet Tendency, now The Gauche Unitaire, argues that most European Social Democracy is becoming ‘Democrats’ on the US Model. But this is not a universal trend. Certainly Norway’s Labour Party (Det norske Arbeiderparti)  is not as bad as say, the abysmal Italian Democrats. Who have followed this route to nowhere.  Letting rule a Berlusconi who’s the laughing-stock of Europe. That’s when he’s not a less amusing tyrant. Out to shut the oppossition press up.

To become like the US Demcoratic Party – that merits a digression and a half. A sad fate: parties dominated by  interest groups, chief amongst them big business, and the wealthy, with other parts of the ‘coalition’ behind. Apart from a few brave souls they seem liberals with guilt, with ‘progressive’ ideas even woollier than Cruddas’s.

Not that Obama is anything but a great deal better than the previous US crew. With a  dash of social democracy.

What we need is an improvement on social democracy, not a  step back towards it. Does the existence of the Norwegian Socialist Left Party (Sosialistisk Venstreparti) help in that country?  Most, on the left, could say so. Though some criticise the Coalition lack of deep redness. The far-left (much of it Marxist-Leninist in origin) Røte alliance may get a couple of seats this time as well. Who knows what the feeble centrist Green Party will do, or think.

 

Update: Red-Green narrow win here. More here.

The xenophonic Progress Party made headway - here.

I have not found anything about the result on the Guardian site.  Or the Independent. Which shows something about their interest in European politics. By contrast a serious European centre-left paper gives a proper report – here. And here. Even the Spanish media think it’s important – here.

Ignorance of the Learned. John Keane.

John Keane and Tendance Coatesy’s Bed-Time Reading.

John Keane’s The Life and Death of Democracy (2009) is a thick tome. I did not expect the theorist (here) of ‘civil society’ as the site of social progress to be sympathetic reading. But, in contrast to many of the books I’ve been looking at when writing recently I thought it would be stimulating, interesting, and well-argued (add usual adjectives for someone you don’t really agree with). Besides I’ve a soft spot for anyone who annoys the Iranian theocrats.

I have not finished it yet.

But so far I have been throughly annoyed. A good thing one might think. But in this instance I think not.

To begin with Keane spends a good deal of his time sharing his knowledge of philology with us. This runs through  many pages. That is, for example, he has discovered that Democracy in ancient Greek is a feminine noun. That we should try to imagine a world in which this word is surrounded bya  cluster of other substantives which are also feminine. How hard! That it implies a female personification for a form of government. Er, like la République, and la Démocratie, not to mention Marianne. And (hey) la Recrue (Recruit – a word in French which is feminine regardless of the sexual gender of the person).

Not content with this erudition Keane explores the origins of the element, demos. Apparently it goes back to  Minoean Greek, and the famous Linear B. It meant something slightly different to do with people’s relation to the land. Strike me pink! English ‘Folk’ no doubt goes back some time too. Perhaps he could help us out here (he probably does, I have already got to the point where he labours over the origin of the word Thing in Old English and Common Germanic). Anyway, amongst other gems Keane notes that the Greek Hubris is (he claims) an import from Hittite, huwap (Page 63). I wonder really if this is true – Hittite, dead without any descendants.  Pretty hard stuff. Keane also opines that there was an ancient Sumerian word which is “semantically” related to demos. ‘Semantically‘ mother is related to all the languages of the world, but one suspects he implies rather more than this kind of relation.  

Tendance Coatesy has a strong bond, (stronger than semantics) with Sumerian culture. We consider that the Fall of Ur was a great disaster (Lament here). Things have gone down-hill ever since. Sumerian civilisation had the great advantage of being: 1) The  founding one for writing. 2) Its speech was neither Indo-European, Semitic, African, Turkic, Asiatic or indeed with any known cognate language. 3) No-one can therefore claim it as ‘theirs’ .

Apparently Keane differs. He uses 20th Century discoveries about Sumer (written up in any text on the subject – believe me I have read plenty of them), that they ruled with some kind of City assembly. Uses? Yes, to wage war against Marx. Citing Marx’s famous article, British Rule in India (June 10th 1853 – New York Daily Tribune), he says the following, “Had Marx the opportunity to learn Sumerian..”

Thus Marxy got the whole notion of Oriental Despotism wrong. That government in hydraulic societies (as Wittfogel called them), were based on three departments: Finance, War and Public Works. That – going back to what Marx wrote – village life, was isolated in these societies, that custom ruled them while the government ruled above. Marx did not mention if such states had, or had not, assemblies, though he said they dominated said settlements despotically,  warred, and taxed without their consent. Now the newspaper article uses pretty sweeping generalisations, cites Mesopotamia (where Sumer civilisation flourished) in passing, and is concentrated in India. Where he criticises British rule (main target) and criticises (in a patronising way) Indian traditional life. No references to Sumer as such in fact.

But then, unlike Keane and Tendance Coatesy Marx could not and had not read Sumerian. That is, before cuneiform was deciphered.

I suspect the theory of Oriental Despotism and the concept of the Asiatic Mode of Production have greater weaknesses than that, but no doubt Keane has struck a blow. Like his claim that Marx disliked Democracy because (sic) George Grote (a banker) wrote a paean of praise to Athenian Democracy this makes one wonder about slipping academic standards and ego inflation in the faculties.

Protests in Iran Erupt Again.

More protests in Iran, (see also: BBC)

Our hearts and minds should be with all those fighting for democratic freedom and against the Iranian Theocracy.

It is particularly important that the left and the labour movement should be backing those who are standing  against Ahmadinejad. Many of us have (here), and a wide swathe of left activists are behind the protestors’ demands.

There are still some British groups like Respect who have a different view of this issue. As they are  “on course to win up to three seats in General Election” (here) this is maybe time for them to think seriously about their position. Respect MP George Galloway has his own show on the tyrants’ telly (the Real Deal), Iranian state funded Press TV. Should George change his mind he could have a little word in the ear of his bosses in favour of those languishing in the regime’s gaols.

Update: Renewed Holocaust denial yesterday  by Ahmadinejad – here (English) and here (in French). Stroppy Blog has published a report on the Iranian leader’s  speech (here ) – which has inspired the first showing of  an apologist for his claim that the Shoah was a”myth”.

Background: Shiraz Socialist on what it’s like to work for the propagandist channel, Press TV, here. Stroppy Blog publishes (here) a further report. The latter has inspired – Comments Box -  the first apologist for Holcaust denial seen today.

Slide-Show Socialist in Shropshire Hills.

Coatesy Standing Firm.

My photos.

Well everyone else does it on their Blogs, Facebook and Mobiles. So here’s my very own slide-show. Settle down with the cocktail sausages, pineapple-chunks, silver onions, and cheese flavoured crisps.  Don’t stint on the Dandelion and Burdock pop.

Enjoy!

Visit to Carding Mill Valley, Shropshire Hills. Sunday.

Road to Helm's Deep

Snowdon in the (far far) distance.

Feeling East-Anglian Culture Shock at Sight of Hights.

The Workers' Paradise is Just Over the Horizon.

Maybe Paradise is Just a Little Bit Further Away than Predicted.

These are photos of an historic area hitherto unknown to the workers’ and progressive movement.

Note the strange contours of the landscape.

Hardly a flat surface to be seen.

Apparently these things are called ‘hills’. To veteran climbers of the Suffolk Alps they look like the colossal remains of a cyclopean age.

I mean look at them!

Pressing on, without regard for personal safety, we came to this.

Alas.

It led to another impasse.

Morning Star’s Hall of Leftist Fame.

 

The Morning Star has had quite a face-lift in recent months. Lots more news, features, investigative journalism (Simon’s stuff on homelessness), a widening of the political spectrum included and much better arts coverage. Plus the usual stuff by figures deemed worthy of space (Galloway, dull Greens, Union bureaucrats). Though it’s not yet a full daily paper with even more padding columnists.

I recommend reading it. If you’re used to putting up with things you disagree with  that is. Which is not a universally shared trait on the left.

Despite change, it’s encouraging to see that some old traditions are being kept up.  

Neil Clarke’s Monday piece, The Leftists who Didn’t Sell Out (here) might raise a few hackles. And thoughts of the Star’s enthusiasms in the past.

He lists ten figures.

• Clement Attlee
• Bruno Kreisky
• Salvador Allende.
• Olaf Palme.
• Julius Nyere.
• Janos Kador.
• Pierre Trudeau
• Daniel Ortega.
• Slobodan Milošević
• Hugo Chávez

It’s no secret, as they used to say in the Morning Star, that some of these figures are controversial.

Some here, naturally, would in any Socialist Pantheon (Allende). Others…? Something really rankles. Words like, authoritarian, brutal, misogynist  free-market shell (guess which ones), come to mind in a few cases.  Are they all part of the same Left? One wonders if Olaf Palme would sit comfortably with Milošević. Or if Attlee would get as cosy with Iran’s tyrants as Chávez so frequently does?

Opps.

Just failed Clarke’s ‘litmus test’ for sorting out the left from the rest.

Unconditional support of Hugo Chávez is the duty of every revolutionary Morning Star reader!

But there you go.

As another nostalgic reminder the  Star’s ever entertaining, Monday Column, advertises a must-see meeting “Celebrate China’s National Day”. A plus is that it’s organised by the CPGB (M-L) – still in existence apparently (not to be confused with the CPB, M-L). Speakers include George Galloway and Harpal Brar of the Stalin Society(here).

Hands off China!

Quite.

Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste: Opinion Poll on Unity.

Going it Alone Didn’t Pay Last Time.

French Regional Elections are next year. They’ll be a further test of the new anti-capitalist party, the NPA (which failed to get any Euro MEPs). Many people (in France that is, not British fans of the NPA)  think that a  drop from over 10% in opinion polls to below 5% was due to the party’s resolute refusal to align with the rest of the radical left. Will there be a recognition of this error? A call for unity with the Front de Gauche(Parti de Gauche and Parti Communiste Français)? With an entire tendency of the old-LCR (the Picquet group) now a separate body, the Gauche Unitaire, and working with the PCF-PG, one would have thought this is worth considering.

Le Monde yesterday (here) published an article saying, predictably, that the leaders of the NPA, are posing hard demands for other left groups. That any alliance with the parties of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marie-George Buffet, rested on their refusal to join (post-election) regional council executives led by the Parti Socialiste. Which is a way of “closing the door” on the PCF – to state the obvious. That is, the Communists will generally accept such governing posts – in return for PS backing where they are in the lead.

An opinion poll suggest that these NPA tactics are not going down well. 59% of the sympathisers of the left want a PCF-PG-NPA alliance. 61 % of NPA sympathisers think the same!

You heard it here first – it is very doubtful if any of the British left groups, admirers of the go-it-alone NPA, will talk about such inconvenient facts.

Portuguese Elections: Left Bloc Breakthrough?

Serious Presence in Portuguese elections.

This Sunday Portugal goes to the Polls.  José Sócrates, Socialist Party PM, may keep his grip on power. This is despite his government’s ferocious modernising policies, which have alienated public sector workers (aiming to recruit only one for every two leaving), and his efforts to ‘reform’ education. Not to mention a raft of scandals surrounding his Party and the State, including wire-tapping.

These are the latest opinion poll figures summarised (here).

Socialist Party (Centre-Left ?) : between 32 and 35%.

Social Democratic Party (Right) of Manuela Ferreira Leite: between 29 to 32%.

Left Bloc, led by Francisco Louça: between 9 à 12%

CDS-PP (Traditional Right): between 8 to 9%.

Communist Party (in alliance with the tiny Green Party): 8 à 9%

The Left Bloc looks as if it may get more votes, then, than the well-established Portuguese Communist Party. This party, the Bloco de Esquerda (here)  is sometimes compared to Germany’s Die Linke. However its main organised groups are rather different: the (Fourth International), Partido Socialista Revolucionário and the (originally Marxist-Leninist) União Democrática Popular. Independent leftists and other currents exist.

Portugal appears one country where the left is on the rise.

 

Background on CWI site here.

Coatesy’s Hall of Leftist Fame (and Honour).

Within its Shade We’ll Live…..

The Morning Star (see below) has published a list of 10 Leftists who never sold out.

There are surely better candidates than many of theirs.

We accept that they should be twentieth and twenty-first century figures (otherwise we could go back to Ur).

 However, the rules should be a bit laxer than the Star’s. They  concentrate exclusively on Office Holders. Having a degree of political or social power and influence should be the major criterion. In any kind of politics (from Cabinets to movements). This would mean no pure academics or theorists. But would embrace a wide swathe of those who’ve helped shaped the world for the better. Without them necessarily having been in charge of government.

Here are some suggestions.

• Rosa Luxemberg. Three things stand out. Her utterly uncompromising defence of democratic freedom – against all comers. Her activism on behalf of  the power and ability of ordinary people to organise and decide for themselves.  And Rosa’s brilliant contribution to Marxist theory. Murdered by Fascist Freikörps backed by German Social Democrats. Our greatest Martyr.
• Jean Jaurès. A founding democratic socialist Jaurès combined ethical idealism, French republicanism, internationalism, and undogmatic Marxism. In 1914 shot by nationalist. Paid for his anti-war campaigning with his life.
• Andrés Nin. Leading figure in the Spanish POUM. Independent  Marxist  and anti-Fascist fighter, defender of  the Republican cause.  Tortured to death under the supervision of Stalin’s NKVD.
• Antonio Gramsci. Leader of young Italian Communist Party. Imprisoned by Mussolini until his death. Active supporter of workers’ councils, and theorist of hegemony.
• Emma Goldman. For her love of life, her free spirit, and her contribution to the cause of liberation. Loathed by bullies:  from the USA’s plutocrats  to the bureaucrats of Soviet Russia.

Now for some more recent people.

• Michalis N. Raptis (‘Pablo’). Innovative Marxist who developed out of Trotskyism into a backer of self-management. participated actively in the Algerian Revolution, and backed Thrid World Causes before this became fashionable.
• Alain Krivine. The living embodiment of the best in European Marxist activism.
• Evo Morales. A real Latin American leftist leader. From his work in the Indian communities of Bolivia to the mines and urban centres, Morales is a democrat and a socialist who’s got his feet on the ground. Not his head wrapped  in self-promotion and glorious deeds.
• Aimé Césaire. Poets are the ‘unacknowledged legislatures of the world’. One of the greatest, he helped bring ”Third-world’ culture to the World at large.

Any ideas for a tenth?

Portuguese Elections Results: Good Score for the Left Bloc.

Good Result.

The Socialist Party has won the Portuguese elections with 36.6% of the vote (down from 45.03% at the last elections in 2005). Prime Minister José Sócrates, a moderniser in the mould of Blair and Brown, will hang on. No doubt the scandals surrounding him (such as allegations about wire-tapping) will as well. He now has to negotiate agreements with other parties (which?). They will have 96 MPs in the new parliament, not a majority outright. (Adapted from Euro News Samantha David).

Manuela Ferreira Leite,  leader of the centre-right Social Democratic Party got 29.1% (as opposed to 28.77% at the last polls). The party will have 78 MPs in the new parliament. In third place, the People’s Party (the Centro Democrático e Social – Partido Popular – CDS/PP) polled 10.5% (as opposed to 7.24% last time). The party will have 21 MPs in the new parliament. This is unpleasant news, since they looked like descending lower down the poll.

In fourth place, the Left Bloc (Bloco de Esquerda or BE) polled 9.9% as opposed to 6.35% last time.This is highly significant, if slightly less than foreseen. It is one (?) the best result for a party for the hard-left (of Trotskyist and Marxist-Leninist origins)in any European coutnry for some years.  The party will increase their MPs, to 16 in the new parliament.

In a speech, the Left Bloc leader Francisco Louca said

 ” the social security system has to be rebuilt, that unemployment payments has to be sorted out. He said that part-time employment should be converted into real full-time jobs by reforming the work code. The third objective for the Left would be to have a meaningful wealth tax and a minimum wage and lastly, a decent retirement pension. He also promised to dog the new government’s every step. He finished by saying that with the new mandate for the Left, things would never be the same again. After tonight, he said, he would have more power to argue against privatisation. He declared that the Left should be ready to fight for basic workers’ rights. He finished by thanking everyone.”

The Green/Communist alliance the CDU – made up of the PCP (Portuguese Communist Party) and the small
PEV (Portuguese Ecologist Party aka the Greens) – together polled 7.54% in the last polls. They have polled 7.9% giving them 15 MPs in the new parliament.

Euro-News comments that, “More than half a million people (ie 9% of the working population) are currently unemployed in Portugal, which is one of the EU’s poorest countries, many people (around a third of the workforce) taking home less than 600 euros a month. This is the highest unemployment rate in 20 years but with turnout at a depressing 59.1% (the lowest turnout ever recorded in Portugal, down from 64.26% last time) it is clear that a sizeable proportion of the electorate have yet to be convinced that any of their politicians can get the country back to work, let alone solve the long-term economic problems.”

 

This is only too true. As a conversation with Portuguese migrant workers in the UK will confirm, it plays a big part in their decision to leave the country. Perhaps we need to be equally thinking along the lines of the Left Bloc’s programme of measures to tackle the problem here.

Where does the Bloc begin from? The policies of the modernising Socialist Party. Or as they put it (here):

Durante quatro anos e meio, o Governo Sócrates dispôs de maioria absoluta: teve todo o poder e usou todo o poder. Os resultados foram mais privatizações, a degradação de serviços públicos, a acentuação das injustiças.

During four and a half years the Sócrates government, which has an absolute majority, thus complete power,  and used it. The results were more privatisations, the worsening of public services, and a rise in injustice.

Sounds familiar (though we’ve had even longer of that!).

El País comments that,

El veredicto de las urnas demostró que la bipolarización de la vida política portuguesa, a la que apelaron PS y PSD, no funcionó. El nuevo Parlamento estará más fragmentado

The verdict from the ballot boxes shows that the bipolarisation of Portuguese political life, that’s between the PS and the PSD, doesn’t work any more. The new Parliament will be more fragmented.

This decline in the two-party system appears to be a general European pattern (see German results). The attempt by Sócrates to swerve a little to the left, by backing a programme of public works, may have helped him avoid the disastrous fate of the SPD. However, a common pattern of a rising left force, protesting against the free-market turn of social democracy,  in evidence, does not look as if it can be avoided by such half-measures.

 

If only we had a left pole like this here…

 

Update Report from the NPA (French): here.

Beyond Brown and the Sun: A European Left.

Labour’s Flagship.

The Sun no longer behind him, Brown still has his flagship policies to save the Labour Party.

Hah!

Last week I was in the pub with the local Labour Party delegate to the Brighton Conference. His view was that the stage-front of the Conferences of today, with no votes on anything important, did not matter. The Government ignored them in the past, so why bother? Behind the scenes stuff, and the ‘policy-making’ forums, had at least some role. His goal, modest in the extreme, was to have a word in the ear of Ed Balls. About an alternative to a planned Academy take-over in Felixstowe. Which just about sums up life as a humble petitioner in the Court of Brown.

Didn’t Mandy do well? No he didn’t. Anyone can make fun of their own faults. Particularly when you’ve got as many as he has.  Didn’t Brown rouse them? No he didn’t. He trolled through a boring list of boring lists. The thinning ranks of the faithful would swoon over the ten-times table to stop them contemplating the Government’s failures.

What do we have? The Guardian cites three axes of Brown’s polices.

• Appealing to Middle Britain’s angry and struggling families with various poll-driven policies aimed at swing voters, including greater powers to curb 24-hour drinking, reforms of tax relief to give the parents of 250,000 two-year-olds free childcare for the first time, and the creation of a network of “supervised homes” for all 16 and 17-year-old parents who receive benefits.

Apart from the promise of free-child care (a promise unlikely ever to be  fulfiled) more ineffectual work for interfering busy-bodies.

• Showing how the government will be prudent with the public finances by pledging to put the government’s deficit reduction plans on a statutory footing.

See “unlikely to be fulfilled” above.

• Reaching out to disillusioned Labour voters, who may have been tempted to defect to the Liberal Democrats or even the Tories, by pledging that ID cards would not be compulsory.

This is so going to make me vote Labour….

So it’s still full throttle on Welfare ‘Reform’ (now with young mums forced into ‘homes’), pumping loads of cash into para-state private companies, privatising parts of the NHS, PFI schemes, low pay for the public sector, and, well the rest. Including wars. Brown has left all the mechanisms in place for a Tory Cabinet to accelerate the transfer of public revenue into private hands. In short, the Market State.

You can already see a gaggle of outsourcing companies queuing up next week  to get in Cameron’s good grace, the ‘voluntary sector’ gearing up to implement Workfare, and ..hop… here comes the Sun.

Is there anything to say other than, yuck?

A few. Electoral scores of the German Die Linke, and the Bloco de Esquerda in Portugal, are encouraging for the European Left. That is, the non Social Liberal, Market-State left. They indicate that a  strategey of radical reform programmes can have an appeal in the ballot box. That broad parties (or alliances), anchored in democratic socialism, pluralist internally and rooted in the labour movement, can be political players. And that less inclusive, narrower, initiatives (such as the NPA in France) have become a problem when they refuse to stand with others (as proposed in France by the Communist Party and Left Party). Finally, that the left does not need to hide its colours and attempt to cash in on the vogue for green politics (ultimately a road to the centre): it can stand on its own merits.

Or would if we had anything resembling this here.

Guinea: the Bloodbath that Should Shake the World.

Guinée: “massacre” et actes de barbarie lundi à Conakry, au moins 157 morts

 

See Video here.

Details on the political background here,   here and here.

 

NPA Communiqué here (Hat-Tip, Entdinglichung):

L’armée s’est rendue coupable d’un véritable carnage, lundi 28 septembre, à l’encontre des manifestants qui exigeaient que le putschiste Dadis Camara, soutenu par P. Balkany grand ami de N. Sarkozy, tienne sa parole et s’abstienne de briguer un mandat présidentiel. Plus d’une centaine de morts et plus d’un millier de blessés : c’est le terrible bilan d’une répression impitoyable.

On Monday the 28th of September the army was guilty of  real carnage against demonstrators who had been demanding that the putchist Dadis Camera, backed by the friend of Sarkozy, Mr P.Balkany, kept his word and did not attempt to become President. More than a hundred dead and a thousand wounded: the terrible result of ruthless repression.

Tories to Make Life Worse (if that’s possible) for Unemployed.

House of Lords: One of this Lot Will Make the Unemployed Toil for their Gruel.

The media today is full of David Cameron’s plans to Get Britain Working.

He plans to abolish the New Deal (in its various forms) for the Unemployed.

Good.

But what will they put in its place? And who is behind the schemes?

Details are sketchy (we will update them as they are revealed), but this (here) is worth noting. The policy is called,

“Get Britain Working” – which will see sweeping changes to policy across whole swathes of Whitehall in an attempt to “unleash investment and entrepreneurial activity that helps create more jobs”.

That is, the usual guff.

But wait..Who is the Shadow (unelected) Chap in Charge?

Mr Cameron’s article puts wholesale reform of Britain’s welfare system at heart of his drive for jobs – masterminded by Lord (David) Freud, the welfare expert who “defected” from advising the government to become a Tory shadow minister earlier this year.

David Baron Freud’s ‘expertise’ on welfare is nill. What has he done in his life? Well, he was a public schoolboy. He went to Oxford. Worked at the Financial Times. He then swanned around advising on financial deals, pilfering and making a mess of things.

A general outline of his knowledge of welfare issues:  (here).

“His involvement in raising £50bn ($72bn) during some of the biggest deals of the 1980s and 1990s made him a wealthy man – yet he continues to cycle to work, swim regularly in Hampstead Heath’s ponds and conduct his business in functional off-the-peg suits.”

Mistakes he has made in his career include (here), 

He moved into advising companies, and was involved in piecing together extremely complex deals such as the flotations of Eurotunnel and EuroDisney, which cost investors millions, and the financing of the Channel Tunnel rail link. Eurotunnel opened in May 1994 one year behind schedule and £2bn ($2.9bn) over budget. Sir David later admitted the deal was a “shambles” and that he had “successfully sold the market a pup”.But his chutzpah meant his career was not held back.Hauled before furious MPs to explain the mispricing of Railtrack, he was subsequently appointed an advisor to the government on its successor, Network Rail.

As a an adviser to the Labour Government Freud was responsible for introducing the principle of Workfare and the Flexible New Deal. Now he has ratted and joined the Tories we can be sure he will have had an even freer hand. Expect loads of money for the usual suspects (A4E etc) to ’train’ the workless, and a programme of workfare. That will be as a futile, demeaning, pointless, costly, as anyone can imagine. And do absolutely nothing to deal with mass unemployment.

Watching A4E gives some more information on this depressing, tyrannical, absurd, scheme (here).

Welcome to the Baron in charge of Creating Social Exclusion.

 

Cross-posted from Ipswich Unemployed Action.

 

Update  (Monday).

People on employment support allowance who are deemed fit to work would be put on the jobseeker’s allowance, reducing their benefits by £25 a week. Work ‘experience’  and ‘training’ to be compulsory after 6 months. The core elements of the Tory package involve putting everyone on a single out-of-work benefit, including the stock of 2.6m incapacity benefit claimants and lone parents. The back-to-work programme will largely be run by voluntary groups and private sector companies.

I woke up – briefly – around five-thirty this morning. Put the radio on (Radio Five I think). Some woman from (guess it!)…A4e. Haven’t heard anyone so thick. And such a  goody-two-shoes. Unable to get simple questions. Interviewer asked if there was a subsidy to take on the unemployed employers might get rid of existing workers to have the extra money. She failed to understand this. Replied about what a  wonderful job her company was doing.

These are the people who are going to Get Britain Working!

Tory Libertarianism: Work For 64 Quid a Week. Or Sleep Under Bridges.

Model Community Programme.

It’s worse than you thought.

People on employment support allowance who are deemed fit to work would be put on the jobseeker’s allowance, reducing their benefits by £25 a week. Work ‘experience’  and ‘training’ to be compulsory after 6 months. The core elements of the Tory package involve putting everyone on a single out-of-work benefit, including the stock of 2.6m incapacity benefit claimants and lone parents. The back-to-work programme will largely be run by voluntary groups and private sector companies.

I woke up – briefly – around five-thirty this morning. Put the radio on (Radio Five I think). Some woman from (guess it!)…A4e. Haven’t heard anyone so thick. And such a  goody-two-shoes. Unable to get simple questions. Interviewer asked if there was a subsidy to take on the unemployed employers might get rid of existing workers to have the extra money. She failed to understand this. Replied about what a  wonderful job her company was doing.

These are the people who are going to Get Britain Working!

 

But, Lo there is more (from the Morning Star):

The package of measures include scrapping the New Deal and replacing it with a one-stop shop for all claimants, including those on incapacity benefit.

The proposals also build on the government’s “work for your benefit” scheme, forcing long-term unemployed to engage in community work programmes to “earn” benefits.

Participation in community work will be for one year, at the end of which participants will start a fresh back-to-work cycle with a fresh assessment.

The Conservatives admitted that they were basing their ideas for the unemployed on Australia’s “work for the dole” projects.

Added Tuesday: Tories Putting Labour Plans into Place?

This is an accelerated implementation of Labour plans, not a set of really new policies.

Firstly, the underlying policy of replacing benefits which maintain people at a minimally decent level of existence has been eroded for a long while (beginning with said Tories). New Labour explicitly came up with the idea of actively encouraging those on benefit to seek work by a very simple measure: making their incomes so low they cannot possibly survive reasonably well (however meagre their income is) on them. Next they introduced a whole series of coercive rules to make life as unpleasant as possible for anyone signing-on – from constant checks, obligation to produce proof of job-seeking. To their final masterpiece, the New Deal. A central aim of this was to remove anyone working on the quiet, and to bore and cajole the rest into accepting any work going (thus making them an active drag on the conditions of those already in employment). A final part of this, the Flexible New Deal, will, under Labour, involve compulsory charitable and social labour – exactly the same as that carried out by those convicted but the Courts, Community service, for the long-term workless this will be a Community Programme.

All of these are efforts to remove an ultimate safety net and replace it with a machine to force people onto the labour market under the worst possible conditions. It really has its roots in the ideas behind the Victorian Poor Laws: make life for the unemployed as harsh as possible to encourage them to accept anything going.

Secondly, as part of this programme, those on Incapacity Benefit have already had to undergo a new series of checks on their status. the Tories will just bring this to bear more severely and more rapidly.

Thirdly, apart from the effects this is having on the labour market (a general downward pressure on pay and conditions) it will i) fail to deal with the most elementary features fo said market, its segmented nature. This will means large numbers of people trapped, regardless of any wish to work, in unemployment. ii) massively corrupt charities and the ‘voluntary sector’ which will be engaged in workfare – there are very clear signs that this is already happening (I speak from direct knowledge). iii) Feed the already greedy companies providing ‘training’ (parking people in near-detention centres, and yelling at them) for these schemes, as well as those giving ‘placements’ (useless for all but a few).

The Conservatives will move more quickly and create a greater mess than Labour – in terms of misery, failure, profiteering, fraud and broken lives.

 

Mass unemployment is the problem neither the Tories nor Labour really address. Or how to provide a decent life for those unavoidably out-of-work.

But, as is obvious with the advice of David Freud behind them, they are on the same track.

 

Mind you that hasn’t stopped  James Purnell (former Minister for above Misery) from bleating (here):

“So, the questions that should be asked:
1. How many people do the Tories expect to get back to work support? (Question to Purnell: how does back to work support resolve above problems in the labour market?)
2. How much would the service and success fees be? (Purnell, you set the gold standard of paying up front – would you pursue this wasteful idea?)
3. How much would the providers be expecting to borrow? (How much have your lot already funded these companies – break-down in detail if you please).

 
4. Do they have provider or banks prepared to commit to this policy?
5. When would the programmes start?
6. Are they abolishing the Future Jobs Fund?”

To all three questions: provide us with an independent Commission’s report on the results of the existing schemes, including stats of those suspended from benefits, salaries of providers, consultants, and an assessment of their effects on the labour market. This Commission should hear evidence from participants in the New Deal, Trade Unionists, and others affected by Government welfare reform policies.

JSA: £50.95     16 – 24  £64.30     25 or over

Diversity Dilemma No 200,001: Can Religious Football Teams Play Gays?

 

Is this Boot Gay?

Who Can Believers Play Footie with?

Libération: Here.

Dimanche, les joueurs du Paris Foot Gay ont été contraints de laisser crampons et maillots dans le sac. L’équipe adverse, le Créteil Bébel, qu’ils devaient rencontrer pour un match de Coupe Foot Loisir a refusé la veille de disputer la partie pour une raison de «principes». Des «principes» exprimés via un simple mail.

Sunday, the players for Paris Foot Gay, had to leave their boots and tops (whatever the football words are in English), in their bags. Their opposing team, Créteil Bébel, which they should have met for a Foot Loisir Cup match, had refused the evening before, to come to the game, because of their ‘principles’. Principles explained via a simple E-Mail.  

«Désolé, mais par rapport au nom de votre équipe et conformément aux principes de notre équipe, qui est une équipe de musulmans pratiquants, nous ne pouvons jouer contre vous, nos convictions sont de loin plus importantes qu’un simple match de foot, encore une fois excusez-nous de vous avoir prévenus si tard».

Sorry, but in view of the name of your team, in light of our principles  – we are practising Muslims – we cannot play against you. Our convictions are more important than a simple game of football. Again, please excuse us for having let you know so late.

The Gay team are calling for action. What should it be?

Front de Gauche: A Reality.

There’s a Place for You in the Front de Gauche!

Christian Picquet  is a former Ligue Communist Révolutionnaire leading figure. He fought for a distinct set  of politics in the Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste, before, with his tendency, resigning just before this year’s Euro-Elections. He is now of the independent Gauche Unitaire (GU). The GU, with the French Communist Party (PCF) and the Parti de Gauche (PG), have this month established a long-term co-ordinating committee. They urge the left of the French Parti Socialiste to combine, not just for next year’s municipal elections, but for mass action, to defend social rights and workers’ interests, against President Sarkozy.

In the PCF’s  L’Humanité this week here Picquet comments of his former organisation,

“Le NPA doit prendre acte de l’échec de son projet initial d’être la force hégémonique à la gauche du PS. Quand Olivier Besancenot déclare que la gauche est menacée d’un désastre à l’italienne, cela devrait le conduire à renoncer aux replis boutiquiers pour s’insérer dans la coalition la plus large possible, respectueuse de l’apport de chacun.”

The NPA should take stock of the failure of its initial project – to be the hegemonic force on the left of the Parti Socialiste. Olivier Besnancenot has announced that the left is threatened with an Italian-style disaster. This should mean that instead of shoring up his own group’s interests, he should get involved with the broadest possible alliance, one that respects everybody’s contribution.

The background is clear. On the one hand the Socialist Party has been sucked into a vortex of its own making. Unable to decide whether it will be an openly pro-market liberal party or a reformist one, its life is overshadowed by personality clashes. Rather than end this in-fighting itself,  it has found a novel way out. It has decided (by direct membership vote) to select its future Presidential candidate by ‘open primaries’. Instead of an internal duel, between Aubry and Royal, there’ll be a public battle – open to all-comers. But this means that instead of the membership of the PS, its activist core, the self-declared public sympathisers will decide a crucial aspect of its political strategy. This means even more of rule of the media-telegenic, and financially well-supported. In short, the reign of opinion-poll politics over democratic deliberation over programmes and strategies.

On the other hand, the feeble mobilisations of public opinion – on the streets and the enterprises – against Sarkozy, accelerate this process. Who has even heard of the latest wave of Union (token) protests? The result is that there are indeed pressures in French politics for the official left to concentrate ont he centre-ground. And to go the way of the pathetically impotent Italian Democratic Party, unable to challenge the brutal domination of the Right.

The Front de Gauche is a deep alliance of three principal forces - left Socialist, Communist, and Far-left . They offer a challenge to this process. It corresponds to the politics of Die Linke and the Bloco de Esquerda.  Whose rise has been widely noted on the French left. It remains to be seen if the NPA will listen (more details of how the NPA is reacting, with great difficulty,  to unitary pressure here).

Socialist Unity: From Soviet Union to the GDR, and the People’s Republic of China.

The Duty of Every Revolutionary is to Defend the Soviet Union.

The Workers’ World Party, the Morning Star, the Party of Socialism and Liberation, George Galloway’s Green Shorts, and Socialist Unity, have been discussing joint-action. Internationally. That at least is the message we hear. As part of this on-going merger initiative study-groups have been organised.

The below is an extract from a verbatim account (leaked to TC)  of one such meeting. On The Socialist Sixth of the World. Hewlett Johnson (Fred Kite collection).

Introduction (Ydna Wennam).

Today is the anniversary of the publication of The Socialist Sixth of World (Second Edition, 1939). For generations this book has inspired socialists. For all its faults, and Hewett’s  account here is a little too over-optimistic; but is a useful reminder that for the majority of its citizens the Soviet Union was a society that basically worked. There mass popular participation in the organisations helped in sustaining the society. To those who talk of labour camps and GPU, NKVD, or GUGB, these bodies and their operations were actually quite popular,  at   least as far as one can tell from their  enthusiastic  endorsements at Party conferences and public rallies. There was political repression, but you need to look at what actually happened, rather than assuming some Orwellian template. The groups who were liable to be persecuted were anti-social semi-criminal people; and those who courted political (and sadly sometime just social) links with the West. Let us not forget that the Soviets were encircled by hostile powers. Or that some groups openly encouraged the ‘overthrow’ of socialist power. There were widespread reports of wrecking and illegal factional activity. We can all accept constructive reservations.  But the opposition to the Soviets seems to be towards any attempt to even understand the USSR, or to acknowledge the degree to which it deviated from the Western propaganda stereotype.

Johnson came from a religious background – like many comrades in the fast-growing Respect Party. Yet he recognised that  the Soviet Union’s official atheism allowed full scope for private belief – if kept well  and truly to oneself. In fact the regime was “Christian in spirit”. A society in which “Love is the fulfilling of the Law” (page 368) Nor was he uncritical. “The order of Soviet Union is far from perfect” he noted, “Naturally the new order lies open to criticism in a hundred minor points.”(Page 87)

The material achievements of the Soviet Union were already apparent in the 1930s when Johnson wrote. He cites the growth in the agricultural production: the sugar-beet harvest alone is to show a further increase of 37.2% - as the five year plan products. “The sale of soap in the Soviet Union has increased many dozenfold since 1913.” (Page 212). Tea-leaf output is to be increased by 1939 to 3 million!  In an amazing anticipation of modern green thinking the author states that “Home grown food saves transport” (page 159) Rippling corn fields, and ballet in the evening!

We cannot recommend this book too highly – for all the comments one may one have about its details. Its message is clear. Who could not inspired by these lines? “Dawn breaks over the east. And in that fresh dawn men see the promise of a new world, nor a perfect world, and not a Utopian world, but at least a  world freed from poverty and explotiation…a world where mankind, realised at last from much that binds it to the earth, may find within itself a nobler and more enduring goodness and beauty.”(Page 384)

I pause for a moment to let this sink in.

Nor did this progress leave everyday life unaffected. The USSR , regarding personal sexual relationships, and respect for women as being the equals of men, then the Soviet Union was a surprisingly innovative and successful society. Stalin’s closest comrades, such as Beria, gave women many opportunities. And can I say that the Party General Secretary was a good dancer, a superb one, unlike Churchill…

German Greens Align with Right in Saarland.

Socialists? Nein Danke!

The German media are full of this today. In Saarland the Greens are forming a ‘Jamaican coalition’ (Green, Black, Yellow) with the right-wing CDU and the free-market FDP. Die Tageszeitung reports that a cause is the claims of Die Linke leader, Oskar Lafontaine, to the fruits of Victory (here). The Greens defend their decision, arguing that they never promised to co-operate with the left (who are the largest bloc). From the SPD’s National leadership Andrea Nahles the fault lies with Die Linke,

 ”Absicht oder nicht: Lafontaine agiert als Steigbügelhalter für einen abgehalfterten Ministerpräsidenten”, sagte Nahles der Berliner Zeitung.

Intentionally or not Lafontaine acts as if he is the given victor of the election, and due the Presidency (of the region).

By contrast, from Saarland itself,   SPDer Heiko Maas has thrown the blame on the Greens, 

 ”Wendehälsen der CDU  CDU  und der FDP einen Pakt gegen die strukturelle Mehrheit der Wähler geschmiedet” zu haben.

The Green’s turnaround with the CDU and the FDP goes against the structural majority that was forged by the elections. 

Die Linke received 21,3% of the vote in the region during the recent German General Election. Lafontaine is Fraktionsvorsitzenden (Chair) of the Linke’s group in the  SaarlandLandtag.

 

2009 Results:

34,5 %  CDU

24,5 %

SDP 9,2 % FDP

5,9 %

Greens 21,3 % Die Linke

Autonomists Run Rampage in Poitiers.

 

Poitiers. Saturday afternoon, around  250  people, according to the police, took over the centre of the town. Declaring they were a ”collectif anticarcéral” (collective anti-Prisons), masked and hooded, they broke about a dozen shop windows, bus shelters and telephone boxes. There were 18 arrests of which 8 were  immediately judged (by special sped-up procedures). They received two months (suspended)  to four months prison. Weapons and explosive caches have been found (Report - in English here).  

The action was in protest at the opening of a new Prison.

The police have announced that they have been following the organisation of this protest – through Web networking sites (and no doubt infiltration). The Mayor of Poiters has protested at not been informed of their prior knowledge.

The Minsiter of Interior, Brice Hortefeux, has declared war on the ‘ultra-left’. French security agencies have, for some time,  predicted that this kind of event would take place. There are demands for the autonomist left to be banned. (more here)

 

Note: The French prison system is one of the worst, and harshest, in Europe.  
 

Terry Eagleton: Reason, Faith and Revolution.

Will God Save the Left?

REVIEW: REASON, FAITH AND REVOLUTION. REFLECTIONS ON THE GOD DEBATE. TERRY EAGLETON. Yale University Press. 2009.

Why should we take it for granted that the Church is the Pillar of the Establishment? Is religion, potentially, a source for radical protest against injustice? This idea has a long history, and can be found in numerous socialist writings. Karl Kautsky in The Foundations of Christianity (1908) claimed the early Christians preached a form of communism. With atheism and secularism live issues the time has come (for those who back it)  to resurrect the view. Taking umbrage at the new wave of anti-religious writers, Terry Eagleton has vigorously pleaded the case. Christ was a revolutionary. The “Roman state and its assorted local lackeys and running dogs took fright at his message of love, mercy and justice, as well as at his enormous popularity with the poor, and did away with him to forestall a mass uprising in a highly volatile political situation. Several of Jesus’ close comrades were probably Zealots, members of an anti-imperialist underground movement” (London Review of Books. 19.10.06). The flame is not extinct. The message of the Gospel of the poor lives on. In The Trouble with Strangers (2008) Terry Eagleton asserted, “It may well be a dismal sign of the times that it is to the science of God, of all things, that we must look for such subversive insights.” Kautsky’s observed elsewhere – against his contemporary anti-clericals – that Socialism “preaches the energetic conquest of this earth and not the patient waiting for a future life” and in this can draw on believers, though not the Official Church hierarchy. This, to Eagleton, needs expanding. To him we can turn away from the bad side of religion, the heresy hunts, authoritarianism, complicity with exploitation and oppression, the moral prudery, and embrace the true “radical impulses” of the faithful.

Reason, Faith and Revolution is the published form of lectures in defence of the transcendental drive – in theological, philosophical, and political forms. It charges that many modern critics of religion rely on feeble arguments, and that some its champions veer to an apology for the West in the guise of a campaign for Secularism. Read out from the lectern it must have produced some wry agreement from the – no doubt – high percentage of believers amongst its American audience. Though not, one suspects, amongst any left-wing atheists (a group, of which I am one,  he has difficulty taking at its word) who happened to be present. The principal target of his venom is Ditchkins, a laboured amalgam of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens’s names. These chief (English speaking) proponents of the New Atheism are wrapped in mechanical ideas about “untrammelled human progress”, and that the “trust in the sovereignty of human reason can be every bit as magical as the exploits of Merlin..”(P 89). But there is more. Religion, of an oppositional, anti-Establishment (yet still ‘Orthodox’ – theologically) kind is one way, a way of unconditional Love, to socialism. Through that is, “political love” as its ethical basis. In “tragic humanism” there is something shared “in socialist, Christian, or psychoanalytic varieties, (which) holds that only by a process of self-dispossession and radical remaking can humanity come into its own..”(P 169) One opposed to both the inherent ‘atheism’ (Page 39) and ‘agnosticism’ (Page 149) of modern capitalism. We are left in no doubt as to whom the committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie has delegated the task of spreading this message.

Ipswich “Arrest Machine” Nabs 2.2 A Day

State Repressive Apparatus.

Ipswich’s Ali Livingstone, the Coppers’ Cop, is in the national news (here). He has Britain’s highest recorded arrest rate with 524 people held in 12 months.

Now I don’t want to have a go at Ali. Why? As the Evening Star says, “Earlier this year, Sgt Livingstone was honoured by the Royal Humane Society after he risked his life saving a suicidal who tried to jump from the Willis car park.”

Or the Ipswich rozzers in general. Not that long ago they set up a fake Pawn shop in the Norwich Road and nabbed a load of artful dodgers with the sting. This was: a) well targeted and b) highly amusing.

But there is a growing problem in Ipswich. It can be called, for that is its name, the Central Safer Neighbourhood Team. They have encouraged a greater and greater police presence in Town. To the point where it can feel downright suffocating.

The background? The centre of the town has seen, as with many other working class places, an increase in ‘incivility’. That is public drinking, and rowdy behaviour. Plus  drug dealing, and attendant thieving. Plus, specific to Ipswich, the aftermath of the Steve Wright murders.

Strategy to deal with this? The State has encouraged a two-pronged approach: schemes to (compulsorily) rehabilitate potential, and, actual, law-breakers, and a  crack-down on minor offenders.

Ipswich is a pioneer in dealing with prostitution, to begin with street workers, then, they have gone for the massage parlours.  The women involved get help, limited and short-term, involving such miracle cures for drug  addiction as acupuncture (I am not making this up). Bodies such as the Iceni Project whose chief  once backed decriminalisation have been drawn into the idea that prostitution will be magicked away by these means. The evidence is that selling sex still goes on, but is more hidden, and therefore riskier and (even) more exploited.

Next, public drinkers. New Labour has created a substantial class of socially excluded people. The rigorous Dole requirements, and fake-training schemes, have meant that increasing numbers of people are thrown onto the streets. Where they sit, sipping tinnies of strong lager and cider. These ‘benchies’ as we call them, are too rough for Wetherspoons – which says it all. Some of them are rough-sleepers as well. But now they face daily harassment from the Boys in Blue – backed by the town centre’s Commmercial Interests and Respectable Opinion  (the Ruling Liberal-Tory Junta’s  main constituencies). Three strikes and they are sent to Norwich gaol.

No doubt as the Flexible New Deal progresses, and Workfare comes into force, they will be subjected to compulsory rehabilitation as well.  

Or, as is  more probable, will be forced further into the gutter. From where they will end up in Prison. Costing a much heftier wedge than the Dole.

But there’s no doubt that plenty of coppers will notch up mighty Arrest rates in the process.

Scabs: Royal Mail Plans to Crush Strike.

His Lordship ‘Beyond Rage’ : Bring on the Scabs!

Royal Mail is heading for a bitter confrontation with postal workers after announcing plans to recruit an army of 30,000 temporary staff in an attempt to crush the national strike that starts this week. (Guardian  here)

In a move that stunned union leaders and raised tensions between management and workers to new levels, Royal Mail said it had ordered the biggest recruitment drive in its history “to help keep the mail moving during the strikes called by the Communication Workers Union (CWU)”. Sources inside the CWU, which has called national strikes for Thursday and Friday, questioned whether the move was legal and suggested that it could be challenged in the courts.”

With obvious Labour Government approval.

Is there anything to add to the total feeling of disgust at this?

Yes.

No doubt the Dole – or the Companies operating the Flexible New Deal – will be forcing us to apply for jobs as strike-breakers.

Split in Class War Follows SWP Faction.

Tendance Coatesy has always had a soft spot for Ian Bone. Anyone who feels for the repression of Kronstadt as if it were yesterday cannot be all wrong. We have the same attitude to the Fall of Ur (BC, 1940).

But disturbing news comes to  us. After the formation of the ‘real SWP’ faction (here) the fashion for lefty bust-ups appears to have reached the erstwhile comrades of Class War.

It began, apparently, with Ian becoming a supporter of Animal Rights. Then it was Veganism. From whence to pacifism and Buddhism. Now he is said to be working for Demos on the Progressive Conservatism project. His hand can be seen in the paper, “Democracy, Community, Neighbourhoods & Power”. This argues “that the best way to kick start democracy is to drive control down to town halls, neighbourhoods, and individuals.”

Ian is said to  have linked up with the SWP’s  John Rees. Rees has worked closely with ultra-conservatvives such as George Galloway and  the Jamaat-I-Islami. He has many lessons from that experience.

Meanwhile died-hard Class War supporters are planning to picket the Anarchist Book-Fair where Demos has booked a stall.

Statement on Sex, Lies and Trafficking (English Collective of Prostitutes).

PROVED RIGHT, RIGHT AND RIGHT.

Yesterday on Newsnight Denis MacShane, the MP who notoriously claimed that there were around 25,000 trafficked women on British streets, was confronted with the Guardian investigation cited below. Niki Adams of the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP) put the falsity of his charges to him. MacShane, being MacShane, blustered and waved his arms around. He dared to cite the Ipswich sex worker murders in an attempt to muddy the waters. Niki wiped the floor with him.

The facts are clear. As set out below. 

What is our connection? Young Ipswich women organised a march in the wake of the Ipswich killings.  We all joined in. The ECP participated. Niki Adams has since visited Ipswich and we have had the opportunity to talk with her, and her colleagues in the ECP. Their case is a strong one. Ipswich and District Trades Council, after a thorough democratic discussion with no pre-existing ’line’ on the issue, endorsed the call for decriminalising Prostitution. Our body put this to the Annual Conference of Trades Councils. It was passed without opposition. Since then this stand has faced the hostility of some feminists, from outside the Town, in the way described by the ECP.

This is what they have to say:

English Collective of Prostitutes Crossroads Women’s Centre (here)

The Guardian trafficking enquiry vindicates sex workers’ experience.

Nick Davies’ report (“Sex, lies and trafficking — the anatomy of a moral panic” Guardian, 20 October 2009) vindicates what we have been saying for many years: figures on the numbers of women trafficked into the sex industry are distorted and in many cases purely fabricated. In our wide experience working with women in most towns and cities throughout the UK, most sex workers have not been trafficked but are working to support families. Does that make prostitution “freely chosen”? Does it make any job freely chosen when economic need is pressing?

Feminism has become identified with a political agenda that considers prostitution uniquely degrading and equal to rape. Consent, the central issue both in rape and in prostitution, is being dismissed in favour of a fundamentalist law and order crusade. NGOs who sign up for this have seen their funding and influence increase. Far from being an independent women’s group, the Poppy Project has become a Home Office front funded to the tune of £9m. The Poppy Project is now trying to save itself by saying there “there is an awful lot of confusion in the media and other places between trafficking (unwilling victims) and smuggling (willing passengers) . . . they are two very different things.” Yet they were the first to blur that distinction, label most immigrant women as victims of trafficking, and promote legislation which does not require force and coercion in order to prove trafficking.

The impact of this anti-trafficking crusade on the ground has been to increase dramatically the numbers of raids, prosecutions and convictions of sex workers working consensually and often collectively with other women. Immigrant women have been particularly targeted as anti-trafficking laws have been used as an extension of immigration controls to get them deported. Sex workers have been campaigning against rape and other violence for decades.

From 1975 when we started, to 1981 when our we conducted the first research into the situation of prostitute women, 1982 when we took sanctuary in a church for 12-days, 1994 when we campaigned against serial murders, 1995 when we took the first successful private prosecution for rape with Women Against Rape, and 2008 when we initiated the Safety First Coalition in the aftermath of the Ipswich murders, we have been pressing for protection, highlighting how criminalisation makes women vulnerable to rape and other violence, and prevents women from coming forward. Our calls were ignored because they did not suit the government agenda. While feminists campaign for the criminalisation of clients under the Policing and Crime Bill, they hide all the measures in the Bill which further criminalise women and undermine our safety: increased arrests against women working on the street, forced ‘rehabilitation’ under threat of prison, throwing women out of the safety of premises, increased power to seize women’s hard won earnings and assets. If they are so concerned with our safety, why the silence?

They have also kept quiet about the Welfare Reform Bill which is making its way through Parliament at the same time as the Policing and Crime Bill. Welfare Reform threatens to bring destitution to increasing numbers of single mother families, people with disabilities and others. How many more will end up on the game?

Both the government and their feminist backers have refused to look at New Zealand which decriminalised prostitution over five years ago. A recent comprehensive government review found a reduction in attacks and sex workers are more able to report violence. Grahame Maxwell, head of the UK Human Trafficking Centre, who doesn’t dispute Nick Davies’ findings is quoted as saying “what we are trying to do is to get it gently back to some kind of reality.” Let’s start with scrapping the Policing and Crime Bill.

20 October 2009.

 

SIGN THE PETITION: HERE.

Nick Griffin on Question Time.

Dead-End Identity Politics. 

“Question Time was dominated by questions of identity. Whether the BNP were really ‘British’. Or Nazis (non-British). Or who was the Legitimate Heir of Churchill.  What was it to be ‘British’ (’aboriginal’ whites or not). Whether British was an inherent mix of ethnicities. In short, a Bottomless Pit of Identity Political Ideology.

Griffin began badly and only came into his stride when most of the other panelists began to outbid each other on being tough on immigration. He was still a fairly poor, pedestrian, speaker. In this he was a big contrast with Le Pen (whose telly appearance in France is said to have marked his serious entrance into politics). Le Pen (I saw this broadcast in the early 1980s) is a true demagogue: he mixes very classical French with moments of extremely brutal vulgarity (and still does). Griffin was only capable of a few coherent bursts of populism when others came out on the theme of controlling immigration. He came across as utterly confused  in his explanations about the BNP’s turn to the model of the European electoralist far-right. That he had ‘changed’ about sums it up, with little more explanation.

It was obvious that 1) Everyone used up their ammunition about Griffin’s Nazi background far too early, and then echoed it far too often. 2) Same for the references to the zig-zags of the BNP. 3) The BNP acts as a force to draw politics further to the right on the issue of hostility to foreigners. It achieved this aim last night.

The UAF Demo was also confused. If it was to protest against the BNP’s politics, then this became submerged in the issue of Banning the BNP from the BBC, or indeed any platform. Instead of attacking the issue of the BNP’s racialism, or its wider politics, this turned into a debate (or rather, a call for a non-debate) about letting them speak.

Bonnie Greer, who has British nationality, was terrible, smug and unable to relate to the debate. I say this with some sadness since I really admire the woman and thought she would deal a mortal blow to Griffin. Frankly telling everyone that we all originally come from Africa and stuff about the Neanderthals was irrelevant.

 Since the discussion centred around identity, Britishness, whether it had democratic values in itself, or was being weakened by immigration, or whether multiculturalism was a way of making a new British identity, there was little opening to left politics. Which are based on issues of class politics, equality, ending oppression and exploitation. 

All in all a sad example of a failure to grapple with the BNP.” 

The BNP are a force helping to drag politics ever rightwards.  But not exactly the only one. If they hardly present an imminent threat to democracy, they do give voice to a lot of menace towards a wide swathe of society. Above all to ‘foreigners’ -’ethnic’ or otherwise.

The rest? It’s mostly all been said. Lots of it bluster. Patriots outraged at him. Liberals yelling. General mayhem.

In this confused context, without a serious idea of what this implies,  UAF and its supporters do themselves no favours by calling for a Ban on the BNP.

No amount of shouting can get round the fact that the BNP are a legal political party. Question Time is a forum for legal political parties. Protest, showing our opposition, is right. But it has limits.  I recall vividly how television gave Le Pen his breakthrough in French politics during the early 1980s (not unrelated to Mitterrand’s desire to split the Right). But no-one then proposed banning his appearances. Apart from say, myself. What did people say to that? The view was never discussed. For one simple reason. If you can be voted for, then you have to heard.

The French Front National is now in decline. Increasingly marginalised  Why? Partly due to Le Pen’s advancing years.  It’s had plenty of internal feuds as well. And nutters.

But it’s mostly due to its failure to get to grips with the  political landscape. What has really undermined the FN is its incapacity to propose a coherent alternative in local politics. What did they say: La France aux Français!  How do they run a Town Hall  with a  slogan? If they are out for the ‘ethnic’ French only (‘national preference’)? What do they do with the rest of the electorate and inhabitants? How do they further the needs of some (French), and exclude others (non-French, or non-European)? The ‘nons’ aren’t going to disappear. The idea, looked at closely, that they could be made to, looks pretty ridiculous close up.

These are problems the Front National has never resolved. Which has led to drift, drift and drift. ultimately to going back to the sidelines. This week there are reports of a new far-right alliance, the Bloc Identitaire (here), seriously challenging it. That the Bloc Identitaire seems to be rethinking and rebranding some  of its themes shows that ‘indentity poltiics’ (mirrored in a way by ‘multicultralism’ and its liberal, left supporters), has more of an impact.

Does this apply in the UK? Phil has some pertinent questions to the BNP. How it operates (here). That is, what a  rabble they are in local government. How they – hard as this is to believe – are even worse than the average bunch of maverick councillors.

This is the right angle to fight them with. From the ground upwards. Not from the Screen downwards.

German Coalition Puts Far-Right, Far-Left and Islamists in Same Category.

German Anti-Fascists Now Face State As Well as NPD.

In Taz today there is a report that the new German FDP-CSU/SDU Coalition plans a crackdown on all kinds of ‘extremism’. That is, far-right, Islamist, and far-left. Or, to put it bluntly, concerning the latter category, militant opponents of the German neo-Nazis.

“Die Koalition will das bisherige Programm gegen Rechtsradikalismus auch zum Kampf gegen Linke und Islamisten nutzen. Aktivisten gegen rechts sind entsetzt.”

The Coaliton will extend the implementation of existing policy against right ‘radicals’ against leftists and Islamists. Anti-fascists are enraged. 

In practical terms this measure will be directed largely to extending records of far-right violence to the violence of Islamists and the far-left (???). In effect, downplaying neo-Nazi racist aggression. But its significance is rather greater.  

The importance of this is simple. It illustrates how the term extremist can slide easily across the political spectrum. It opens the way for restrictions. It shows how state measures to deal with unwelcome political organisations have a habit of being broadened. By the will of who’s in power.

Those calling for a state ban on the BNP, rooting out its members from jobs, and suppressing their rights, take note.

Note on the Rees ‘Left Platform’ Faction.

Judge of Legitimate Political Parties?

The Weekly Worker has published (here) some analysis on the emergence of the Rees Faction in the SWP. It’s called the Left Platform.

I just note this claim. That is, in Rees and mates’ initial public declaration of dissidence. The Defend the No-Platform Resolution (there’s a joke in there somewhere but I can’t see it yet),

 This calls for reaffirming the blanket policy of not giving  the BNP any public vehicle for its policies – against the SWP Central Committee’s partial recognition that this line is impractical (not that it is in principle wrong 

 

5. The BNP will not be beaten by ‘clever’ debates. What they want is legitimacy. If we appear with them, even if we win the argument, we lose the real battle because we add to their legitimacy. The principle at stake here is that the BNP should not be regarded as a legitimate bourgeois party.

Since when does the SWP, or a small group of it, have the responsibility of deciding what is, and what is not, a ‘legitimate bourgeois political party’?

 

Three Recent Books on Communism.

Requiem For a Dream? Three Books on Communism.

The Red Flag. Communism and the Making of the Modern World. David Priestland. Allen Lane 2009. The Rise and Fall of Communism. Archie Brown. The Bodley Head. 2009. The New Civilisation? Understanding Stalin’s Soviet Union, Paul Flewers Francis Boutle Publications. 2009.

Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall or not, drawing up the balance-sheet of Communism remains a central issue on the left. There are those, from the shrunken Western CPs to some on the hard left, who try to save ‘positive’ elements from the record of the ex-USSR, its satellites, and the remaining Communist Party-run states. Others, philosophical speculators, such as Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek, yearn for a Communism beyond mundane time and politics. Anti-Communism, sometimes claiming left credentials, has enjoyed a revival. Frustrated at being unable to soldier in the real Cold War, one section, with little success in extending democracy by military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, have latched onto fighting the Lilliputian chiefs of the European far-left. None of these stands has the remotest chance of contributing much of value  to understanding what Paul Flewers calls ‘Official Communism’. That is the history, political structure, and ideology of those Communist Parties that came to power in the wake of the October Revolution. By contrast, each of these books is of use. They range from discussing Communism’s  relation (or not) to Marxism and socialism, their harsh regimes – under Lenin, Stalin, and the period of ‘stagnation’ – the way they were seen in the West and on the left (Flewers’s object), and their final collapse. The Red Flag and The Rise and Fall of Communism are more syntheses than original studies. But  it’s as overarching summaries that they are most useful. A New Civilisation? is the most valuable, that is, for anyone from a left that is both anti-Stalinist and ‘anti-anti-Communist’. It is important for the new light it sheds on the way British political opinion came to look at the USSR during Stalin’s rule.* More than the posturing of residual Soviet patriotism, or (at its lowest) one-time leftists out to justify their present-day opinions by re-enacting the ideological war against totalitarianism, Priestland, Brown (both politically liberal) and Flewers (decidedly left) all offer serious ways of looking at the final account of the self-proclaimed heirs of the October Revolution.

 

David Priestland and Archie Brown begin their books with an outline of the sources of Communist ideology. Brown cites Christian origins for communism – his authority, Beer’s Edwardian History of British Socialism. Thomas More’s Utopia is evoked. This is a rather cursory start.

Front de Gauche. Better than Front on No-Platform for the BNP.

While the British Left is absorbed in a debate about whether to ‘No-Platform’ the BNP the French ‘left of the left’  is taking steps towards a political challenge. That is to ecocapitalists, social liberals, and the right. No prizes for guessing which more-to-the-centre parties the first two bits of jargon refer to. The occasion? Next year’s Regional elections (under decentralisation, the stake is a large amount of local government responsibility).  It would be good if we had this alternative. Rather more productive than discussing how horrible Nick Griffin and his policies are. Indeed it hard to imagine anyone in France even thinking about a strategy of denying the (declining) Front National space in the public media. Were the left in the UK serious we would spend some time looking at the Front de Gauche. Its strategy of successfully aligning separate left parties, and independent currents has something to say to our own fragmented left.

“Le PCF, fort de l’expérience positive du Front de gauche pour les élections souhaite contribuer à la formation d’un front de gauche élargi, ouverts à des forces nouvelles, à des personnalités, à des militants du monde syndical associatif travaillant autour de projets régionaux bien ancrés à gauche. (Here)

The PCF, strong following the positive experience of the Front de Gauche for the European elections (where they won seats for the European Parliament) supports creating a wider Left Front, with new forces, ‘personalities’, trade unionists, social movement activists, to work together on projects for the regional elections that are solidly anchored on the left.

This, involving the PCF, the Parti de Gauche (left wing democratic socialists), ex-NGA supporters and other left currents (alternatives, left republicans),  will be independent of the Parti Socialiste and the Greens. It would stand lists on own for the first round of the elections. However, negotiations with the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA)  have been less fruitful. The PCF would welcome their co-operation,

Le NPA aurait sa place dans ce mouvement, mais de la même manière qu’aux élections européennes, la formation d’Olivier Besancenot se refuse à prendre sa place dans des majorités de gauche dès lors que le PS y participerait.La semaine dernière, alors que Jean-Luc Mélenchon venait de déclarer qu’un accord était proche, la direction du NPA durcissait le ton sur le thème des « deux gauches inconciliables ».

The NPA will have its place in this movement but, showing the same behaviour as they did during the European elections, Olivier Besancenot’s Party has refused (in advance) to join with any left majority administration as soon as the Parti Socialiste is involved. Last week when Jean-Luc Mélenchon (Parti de Gauche) claimed agreement was close the NPA began to harden its line around the theme of the ‘two irreconcilable lefts’.

The sticking point remains the issue of alliances behind the Socialist Party (or Greens) in the second round of elections. For the NPA it is unthinkable that any backing could be formally given to the these parties. The reason? This would be negotiated by the Front de Gauche as a precondition for joining with them in local government. Which would imply more than blocking the route to the Right; it means co-operation with their policies. Or, as the Front would argue, putting more pressure on them to change them.

The Gauche Unitaire (ex-NPA) states (here) that a debate on this legitimate,

 Un débat est ouvert, au sein de la gauche de gauche, à  propos de la participation aux exécutifs des régions avec le Parti socialiste et Régions écologie. Ce débat a sa légitimité. Il n’en fait pas moins l’objet, depuis longtemps, d’échanges multiples. Il ne saurait, pour cette raison, constituer un préalable conditionnant la formation de listes unitaires de premier tour.

A debate is open, inside the left of the left, regarding participation with the Parti Socialiste and Ecologists,  in regional council executive.  This is a legitimate debate. However, despite this, acceptance of such participation should not constitute a condition for forming joint-lists in the first round of elections.

I would have thought that the issue is not really a question of fixed principle, but whether the Parti Socialiste and the Verts (Greens) have policies – in the Regional Government context – which make them beyond the pale for the left. It seems doubtful that they do have any. The relatively modest programmes they do have (a kind of  watered down version of municipal socialism with a green tinge), and the fact that they are mainly interested in sustaining the full-time political (paid) layer that dominates both parties (in the Verts over one third – 2,000 out of 5,000 -  of its real membership!) make one wary of them. What do you think of parties where the widely circulated  joke on their activists is they can be divided into two groups: those making a living out of politics, and those who’d like to. But does that mean refusing all co-operation? Before you’ve even had good enough electoral results to be asked?

A rather pleasanter dilemma than the one we face here. At least.

Blair, j’peux pas le blairer!* Jean-Claude Juncker for Prez.

People’s Choice for European President.

So it goes.

Blair for this.

Blair for that.

Blair’s like a cat that’s got the cream.

It is hard to imagine anyone who has done nothing at all for Europe except smirk is now, trying to be, well we know what.

Le Monde carries the news today that Blair faces competition for the post of European President (here). Jean-Claude Juncker, of Luxembourg, the plucky chap, is entering into the race. He is described as a David standing up to Goliath (shouldn’t that be Godzilla?) Blair.

Jean-Claude (as I call him) sounds a bit of a lad. Or an utter bastard to be frank. I once met the Luxembourg left. He was at a meeting in Paris. The country does not seem a workers’ paradise.

No matter.

Jean-Claude it is, and Jean-Claude it must be.

(*) I claim to have invented this pun btw. I made it back in 1996.

Anti-Postie Picket: The Shame of Ipswich.

 

The Sorrow of Ipswich.

Local Conservative Councillor Steven Wells yesterday led an anti-Postal Strike Picket outside Ipswich Royal Mail Offices. (More info: here) Standing on the opposite side of the road to the CWU picket the Tory-led suits attacked workers. They demanded ‘their’ post. The demonstration was composed (according to Socialist Worker here)  of paid employees of Steven Wells’ company, Experience Direct.

Socialist Worker does not mention that Steven Wells lost his Ipswich Borough Council Housing Portfolio earlier this year. A sign of the esteem the local Tories hold him in is that he is now on the Community Improvements Committee (as a Substitute).

 

Those who seek a better postal service might be interested in this. Not long ago the Royal Mail commissioned a computer-based survey (Pegasus) in Ipswich. To improve deliveries it recommended employing much higher levels of staff.

 

Strange to say it was ignored.

Dieudonné: Fine for Anti-Semitism.

Not Welcome Here.

Our old friend Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala has been fined 10, 000 Euros for anti-Semitism (here). Dieudonné associates with Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson, radical Islamicists, ultra-orthodox Jews, the French ultra-Right, 9/11 Truthers, and  ’anti-imperialists’. He is the nearest we’ve got to living proof  of  theories about the sleep of reason leading to monsters.

Worth bearing in mind when he visits the UK again.

How far into the future this will be is anyone’s guess.

His coming show at Leicester Square has just been unceremoniously axed (here).

The Coming Insurrection. Review.

 

The Coming Insurrection has just been published in English. Under the prestigious MIT label (here) and the no less highly regarded Semiotexte (an imprint gracing all the best crystal tables of the Manhattan left). meanwhile the Tarnac Affair (details here) continues, at a slower pace.  The site just cited does not refer to the controversy which has shaken the French anarchist milieu over sabotage – the root accusation. Which it would be too dreary to detail, except to say it revolves around accusations against the ‘Official’ anarchists by the ‘real-Continuity’ anarchists that the former distinguished between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ sabotage. More important news can be found on this Blog (here)

Be that as it may, this review, written as the Coming Insurrection gained notoriety, retains its relevance. Though some of its heat and rapidness. As we recently saw in Poitiers the autonomist left is capable of open street fighting on a scale not seen in France since the 1980s. Calls have been renewed for a ban on these groups. For all those buyers of the English version, and fans of these ideas, I republish it.

L’Insurrection qui vient. Le comité Invisible. © La fabrique éditions, 2007

To the French Police and (some) Magistrates the country is menaced by the avatars of the Bande à Bonnot. These libertarian, individualist, anarchists, carried out the first motorised hold-up in France (1911), in the Rue Ordener, Montmartre. Some in the modern equivalent of the Sûreté have dreamt up a similar threat from anarchists. They are echoed by right-wing politicians.

Protests in Iran Wednesday.

Will the Religious Regime Evolve Peacefully?

Agence France Press reports that there will be protests against the Iranian regime on Wednesday (in English here).

November 4 has emerged as an anti-US day in Iran, with thousands of Iranians, mostly students, gathering annually outside the US embassy building, dubbed the ‘Den of Spies’, to shout slogans such as “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” The event marks the capture of the embassy on November 4, 1979 — just months after the Islamic revolution toppled the US-backed shah — by radical Islamist students who took American diplomats hostage for 444 days.

Since then, the event which was aimed at condemning US policies towards Iran, has become one of the cornerstones of the Islamic regime.But this year the annual anti-US day could be marked by street protests against Ahmadinejad, whose re-election on June 12 triggered the worst political crisis in the 30-year history of the Islamic republic.

This is the time for genuine progressives to stand with the protestors. The movement’s detailed demands and aims are hard to judge from the outside. But we can agree that their fight for democracy against the Islamicist dictatorship has to be completely supported. ,

One wonders what the pro-faith left-leaning apologists for Islamisism  in  Britain will do.

On second thoughts, I’d prefer not to.

BNP Funded by Suffolk Toff.

Friston Scene.

Friston is a village near Aldeburgh. Nearby is the home of a scion of the Wentworth family, Charles Vernon Wentworth  - once the most prominent aristocrats of  the district. During many years the  hamlet was very much “an estate village”. But their property has gradually been sold off, including the family home,  Blackheath Mansion. Even so Wentworth retains some of the clan’s fortune. He lives, apparently at Friston Hall. (More here) The gentleman farmer has been revealed to be a the biggest cash  donor to the British National Party. Personally I find his Suffolk and class background more interesting than the marriage to a woman of Serbian origins.

Friston was also home, in retirement, to my father and mother. Their house, Windmill Cottage, was bought from the Estate. They were Chair and Secretary of near-by Leiston Labour Party for over a decade. That’s to say, I know the village well. Though they moved from Friston at the end of the ‘eighties, and have now passed away, I still keep an interest in the place. The pubs in Snape, however, are better than the Chequers.

It’s worth saying that the hamlet should not be remembered as the residence of a loud-mouthed reactionary. Friston is better recalled as the site of great Chartist agitation,

One leading local chartist put Friston on the map in 1839. He was Thomas Hearn, a local shopkeeper who opened a branch of the Working Men’s Association in the village and aimed to make Friston the ‘metropolis of chartism’. The Friston meetings were held in the Chequers Inn and the Baptist Chapel and the following was good. A rally for farm-workers was held in Friston wd 1,000 people were present. The farmers were alarmed at this and laid on alternative entertainment, and one threatened dismissal for any worker found attending. Later in the same year, on Boxing Day, 5,000 people attended a second rally, some of whom had walked from Ipswich to meet up with Hearn’s group and others at Carlton. Although the Chartists failed to get their demands at that time, Thomas Hearn continued to support the movement. In 1851 he was living in Grove Road, probably on the site of the later grocer’s shop.”

There is more information in this book here.

Back to Charles Wentworth. I have always heard that he had a ‘colourful’ freedom-loving youth. Yet still, according to the Daily Mail, his upbringing and breeding tells,

His inherited wealth includes a 660-acre farm in Friston – a pretty hamlet of pink-washed cottages and narrow lanes. The village green and meeting hall also belong to him, so parishioners must seek his permission to stage fairs and other events there, just like commoners of old.

This fact (rather well-known to inhabitants) might be a reasonable explanation why Mary Wright, Chair of the Village Hall Committee (and former Independent Councillor for the Coastal District)  refused to comment on the BNP to the Ipswich Evening Star.

Hezbollah Censors the Diary of Anne Frank.

 

Anne Frank: “Emotional”, ‘Zionist Promoter”?

Hezbollah censors the Diary of Anne Frank (Here).

“BEIRUT (AFP) – – Anne Frank’s diary has been censored out of a school textbook in Lebanon following a campaign by the militant group Hezbollah claiming the classic work promotes Zionism.

The row erupted after Hezbollah learned excerpts of “The Diary of Anne Frank” were included in the textbook used by a private English-language school in western Beirut.

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television channel ran a report slamming the book for focusing on the persecution of Jews.

“What is even more dangerous is the dramatic, theatrical way in which the diary is emotionally recounted,” said the report aired last week and also published on the station’s website.”

Does one need to comment?

Chris Harman is Dead: Expanded Political Obituary.

Contested Till Death.

Chris Harman, a leading figure for decades in the SWP (more here), died last night (here).

There will be many obituaries. This is a critical-political one. That is, like the SWP, we do not feel a need to wrap and hide underneath sentiment fundamental  political disgreements. Tendance Coatesy comes from a very different political tradition, of Continental Marxist unorthodoxy. For us, anti-Stalinists and anti-anti-Communists,  the SWP’s main defining feature, its ‘state capitalist’ theory, is of little interest. That is, the line against Stalinism has already been drawn, and there are better historical and theoretical explanations of the fate of the Soviet Union around. Perhaps more significant to our political activity has been the SWP’s political theory and practice. The organisation changed from an originally open Marxist grouping into the fractured, intolerant, opportunist mess we see today. We can see in Harman’s writings, noted for their lucidity and seriousness,  both sides of the SWP.

I wish therefore to make some comments on Harman’s political legacy.  It is far richer and more positive than today’s SWP party-structure would suggest. But not exactly without faults. These are some aspects,

Many of Harman’s political ideas, formed in the early International Socialists (forerunner of the SWP), has originally a libertarian cast. That is, their version of Marxism was based on socialism being introduced through a party which was  part of the self-organisation of the working class. Against what Trotsky called ‘subsitutionism’, and taking something of Rosa Luxemburg’s views on the importance of spontaneous democratic ferment, they were set out in the pamphlet below,

Party and Class (1969) (Here) Harman concluded that,

“The need is still to build an organisation of revolutionary Marxists that will subject their situation and that of the class as a whole to scientific scrutiny, will ruthlessly criticise their own mistakes, and will, while engaging in the everyday struggles of the mass of workers, attempt to increase their independent self-activity by unremittingly opposing their ideological and practical subservience to the old society. A reaction against the identification of class and party elite made by both Social Democracy and Stalinism is very healthy. It should not, however, prevent a clear-sighted perspective of what we have to do to overcome their legacy.”

No doubt most people on the left remember more clearly the turn to Lenin in the 1970s, and the founding of the SWP on more inflexible democratic centralist grounds. The present-day regime of the Party stems from this period. It  as a time of expulsions, rules about limited factional rights (if at all), and the entrenchment of a quasi-eternal Central Committee. It should not be forgotten that the SWP was not alone in its ‘Bolshevisation’ – the IMG and most of the SWPs splinters (with the notable exception of the working class opposition – that left for ever-  based in the Midlands) were also seized with this delusion.  There is a massive literature on this. On this time it’s often said that Jim Higgin’s More Years for the Locust (here) is the best critical account and explanation.

This bureaucratic orthodoxy-in-perpetual-activism, did not prevent Harman from retaining a critical spirit.

Example, The  Prophet and the Proletariat (here)

The book contains a balanced analysis of Islamism - very different to the one promoted during the SWP’s time in respect (or the relativist views of present-day Islamophiles). Not that it’s without problems. Its conclusion is worth citing in full. Not the least because in its death notice the SWP for reasons not alien to its continuing attempts to trawl in Islamist waters claims that it said that (here),

One of Chris Harman’s articles ‘The Prophet and the Proletariat’ was written to help prevent the marginalisation of the Arab left before the rising tide of political Islam. The article attacked claims that political Islam represented a form of fascism and sought to explain its rise in terms of the failure of the nationalist left; the appeal that a return to pure Islam had for a middle class intelligentsia who suffered from the insults imposed on them by the empire; and the ability of such groups to garner support from sections of the urban poor.

Harman indeed engaged in some superficial class analysis of Islamism (neglecting its strong bourgeois roots and pro-mercantile and state bureaucratic capitalist direction). But his main focus was unrelentingly critical of Islamic groups and the reactionary nature of their politics. What it actually written is that,

“It has been a mistake on the part of socialists to see Islamist movements either as automatically reactionary and “fascist” or as automatically “anti-imperialist” and “progressive”. Radical Islamism, with its project of reconstituting society on the model established by Mohammed in 7th century Arabia, is, in fact, a “utopia” emanating from an impoverished section of the new middle class. As with any “petty bourgeois utopia” [128], its supporters are, in practice, faced with a choice between heroic but futile attempts to impose it in opposition to those who run existing society, or compromising with them, providing an ideological veneer to continuing oppression and exploitation. It is this which leads inevitably to splits between a radical, terrorist wing of Islamism on the one hand, and a reformist wing on the others. It is also this which leads some of the radicals to switch from using arms to try to bring about a society without “oppressors” to using them to impose “Islamic” forms of behaviour on individuals.”

Precisely. Opposing the imposition of ‘Islamic norms of behaviour’ is the dividing line between socialists and reactionary ‘anti-imperialists’, and multi-cultural relativists. Such Islamophile riff-raff has recently been libelling gay campaigners like Peter Tatchell for defending universalism against religious norms.

It would have been interesting to know Harman’s views on this.

“… socialists cannot support the state against the Islamists. Those who do so, on the grounds that the Islamists threaten secular values, merely make it easier for the Islamists to portray the left as part of an “infidel”, “secularist” conspiracy of the “oppressors” against the most impoverished sections of society. They repeat the mistakes made by the left in Algeria and Egypt when they praised regimes that were doing nothing for the mass of people as “progressive’ – mistakes that enabled the Islamists to grow. And they forget that any support the state gives to secularist values is only contingent: when it suits it, it will do a deal with the more conservative of the Islamists to impose bits of the shariah – especially the bits which inflict harsh punishment on people – in return for ditching the radicals with their belief in challenging oppression. This is what happened in Pakistan under Zia and the Sudan under Nimeiry, and it is apparently what the Clinton adminstration has been advising the Algerian generals to do.

But socialists cannot give support to the Islamists either. That would be to call for the swapping of one form of oppression for another, to react to the violence of the state by abandoning the defence of ethnic and religious minorities, women and gays, to collude in scapegoating that makes it possible for capitalist exploitation to continue unchecked providing it takes “Islamic” forms. It would be to abandon the goal of independent socialist politics, based on workers in struggle organising all the oppressed and exploited behind them, for a tail-ending of a petty bourgeois utopianism which cannot even succeed in its own terms.”

The Islamists are not our allies. They are representatives of a class which seeks to influence the working class, and which, in so far as it succeeds, pulls workers either in the direction of futile and disastrous adventurism or in the direction of a reactionary capitulation to the existing system – or often to the first followed by the second.”

Naturally one would say that Islamist movements are in theory and in practice demonstrably reactionary. Nor the central importance of secularism for socialists. As an explanation it lacks the central role in Islamism of the pious national bourgeoisie. Nor the irreconcilable principle of democratic Marxists that one would never align with such groups.  But at least Harman did not exalt Islamists as automatically on the ‘right side’ of ‘anti-imperialism’.

Unfortunately the third aspect of Harman’s SWP’s work (below) shows just how far they had gone down the road of treating social movements as fodder for recruitment. After the 1970s the SWP, stuck in a permanent round of recruitment through moving campaigns, period purges of anyone awkward, and ‘get rich quick’ schemes. That is winning central positions in perceived rising trends of political unrest. Their ‘united front’ strategy meant co-operation with anyone who seemed to be going in the direction of opposing the existing political system. Or at least who had a vaguely radical sound.

This example explains how the Party saw the one-time important ‘anti-Globalisation’ wave.

Spontaneity, Strategy, Politics 2004. (here)

“ In other words, a visible revolutionary organisation is a necessity, not an optional extra. Its members need to take part in the wider struggles and operate through party groups in localities and workplaces. They have to organise people around them through regular paper sales and draw them to meetings. And the discussion cannot just be about immediate tactics, but has to raise the question of transforming society in its totality, of revolution, not reform. Only in this way can we move towards fulfilling the full potential of the last five years—towards overthrowing this system and creating a better one.”

In fact in Britain the ‘anti-gloablisation’ movement was a heteroclite mixture of well-meaning NGOs, other left groups, individuals (Ken Livingstone onwards), fading magazines like Red Pepper,  and trade unions searching for new blood and inspired by anti-globalisation unrest in other countries which and genuine impact. It equally involved cranks of a variety of  stripes (Greens, animal rights nutters, onwards), all wrapped in an unwieldy Social Forum network, run in the interests of grandstanding various large egos. The SWP failed to get many recruits from this pool and turned to other fishing grounds. What Marxism, in the sense of basing politics on the self-activity of the masses, remained was soon channelled into the ever-turning priorities of sustaining the organisation. We might say that the SWP’s version of Leninism resembled a business plan, constantly drawing up not SWOTs (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) but OTs – Opportunities and Threats. Harman either instigated or, at the very least, connived, in this development. That is, under a lot of guff about the Party as the People’s Tribune.

The Respect Party was the culmination of this approach, aligning right up with the extreme-right-wing Islamists of the East London Mosque.  Of which it is hardly necessary to add further comment.

In conclusion, for all these remarks, Harman had a lot to offer. His original standpoint was not far from genuine democratic Marxism. That he, and the SWP, evolved into the hysterical dead-end we see today, requires more explanation than can be put into a few pages. One might feel that it’s a shame Harman bound himself to the SWP political project so thoroughly. That intense committment would have been better spent elsewhere. But, then, that is not a matter for us to choose.

Against Marxist Messianism.

AGAINST MARXIST MESSIANISM.

Important New (very largely) Statement from Tendance Coatesy.

NOTES ON RELIGION

“Tout commence par la mystique et tout finit en Politique.”

Everything starts in mysticism and ends in politics.

“la mystique ne soit point dévorée par la politique à laquelle elle a donné naissance.”

Mysticism must not be devoured by the politics to which it gave it birth.

Notre jeunesse. Charles Péguy. (1910)

“Did Péguy kill Jaurès? Did he incite

the assassin? Must men stand by what they write

as by their camp-beds or their weaponry

or shell-shocked comrades while they sag and cry?”

The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Péguy. Geoffrey Hill. (1)

Does Christianity in its “fabulous unreality” contain “love, hope and faith, beyond the realm of the state and of authority?” Was Jesus the bearer whose message may yet bring “Utopian light on the problem of universal alienation and its cure?” To Ernst Bloch the real Christ was less important than what he was, has been, and is seen to be. Standing at the gateway of Time. The revival of this Messianic thread in Marxism – the belief that communism is woven in the pattern of religious tapestry – needs materialist critique. Starting from the Herald of Good News. Yet, it is widely accepted, that we will never end the Quest for the Historical Jesus. That is, the search, carried out by sceptics such as David Strauss, and, later by Ernest Renan as thoroughly by Christians as dedicated as Albert Schweitzer, for the ‘real’ history of the Messiah, peeled away from all the idolatry, superstitions and myths of centuries. Or – without a purely theological (critical, that is) excursion into how to begin to conceptualise the Life, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection – to even approach the issue of what this means. Or grapple with what God presented, in believers’ minds – across the ages. One should, as a materialist, surely refuse to separate wholly the areas of what we can know about the Messiah and what his Crucifixion signified theologically. The documents we have, the witnesses collected in the New Testament, and the context, the culture and social structure of the time, are rich enough to sustain the voyage of many present and future quests. We shall only try to keep our journey on one path. That is we can start in one of its dimensions: the historical record of how Christianity became a Church, the moments when profane existence took up a picture of the Divine and built an institution around it. For an influential strand of thought, portraying Messianism and eschatology, within Christianity, above all in Saint Paul, that there is a relation (hidden through many dark glasses) between the “living hope” of the Resurrection-Event, followed by the Second Coming (Parousia) and “invariant communism.” And that by probing these mysteries (set down by Badiou, Amabgan, Žižek and others), that, we may discover Toni Negri’s “religion without God”? To, as Walter Benjamin expressed it, “explode the continuum of history.” Or, as John Roberts asserts, “Marxists have to become messianists in order to live and struggle and organise in the here and now.”

Peter Tatchell: A Human Rights Defence.

The Results of Standing up for Human Rights.

Islamaphobia - the attempt to define criticism of Islam in any form as racialism and  beyond the Pale -  has taken a new toll. A virulent discussion has taken place on the Socialist Unity site. Around charges that Peter Tatchell is ‘Islamphobic’. That his campaigning for human rights is barely disguised Western cultural imperialism. That Peter has used gay issues to attack Muslims. That he is therefore, objectively, (and subjectively) an ally of the far-right. Barry Kade (Green left) has added fuel to the fire by a confused partial defence of this disgraceful pack of lies (here). He even added his own claims. That Islamophobia is hidden behind atttacking Islam on rationalist grounds,  ”this racism is veiled in the language of enlightenment liberalism and secularism.”

Really….

There are plenty of causalities in this battle. Beginning with Kade’s ability to disscuss politics without clichés. Andy Newman appears to have stepped into deeper waters than he bargained for. Derek Wall of the Green Party’s left,  published a reasonable defence of Tatchell’s record as a human rights campaigner. That this charge is “a lie plain and simple”. We have teased Derek in the past (and not doubt will in the future) but this was heartfelt. For reasons best known to himself Andy Newman saw fit to add a much more mixed analysis (here). This had some well-expressed comments that make it clear that Tatchell was not an ally of the far-right. But melded them with much pontificating around the subject, he failed to resolve the issue. Letting the smear’s traces there. To the annoyance of some Greens. They see this, not unreasonably, as an effort to stir up animosity between  the Green Party and liberal Islamist Salma Yaqoob. She after all refuses to reject the Sharia – how could she, she is a believer! It would be like a Marxist criticising Marx (opps - we do).  Instead Yaqoob and her apologists, talk of Islam’s ‘respect’ for human beings (not, all varieties and forms of the religion  taken account of, often  in evidence for Gays). Andy Newman caps this by  citing the obscure post-Colonial cultural studies academics and paper activists who began the latest hunt-the-Tatchell,

Rather than help, politics such as Tatchell’s have worsened the situation for the majority of queer Muslims. It has become increasingly difficult for groups such as the Safra Project, who are forced into the frontline of the artificially constructed gay v. Muslim divide, to contest sexual oppression in Muslim communities. The more homophobia is constructed as belonging to Islam, the more anti-homophobic talk will be viewed as a white, even racist, phenomenon, and the harder it will be to increase tolerance and understanding among straight Muslims. The dialogue which Safra and other queer Muslim groups have long sought over this is more often than not ignored or disregarded, and white gay activists such as Tatchell have proved indifferent to the fact that the mud which they sling onto Muslim communities lands on queer Muslims themselves.

Peter has answered such charges many times. He states that ”We should fight the real oppressors and not pick fights with, and publish false allegations against, other progressive people. Sectarian attacks undermine the struggle for human rights, social justice, peace and anti-imperialism.” (here) It follows that if homophobia (and say, the oppression of women) is something Muslim institutions and organisations practice (which is obviously the case) then we have to fight the institutions and organisations that promote this. If these academics (whose dismissal of ‘white gay activists’ says more about their ‘anti-racism’ than anything else) want a ‘dialogue’ with the Safra Project then so be it. But what is their attitude to States, Islamist parties and religious bodies which do actively promote anti-gay anti-human rights policies? Dialogue with oppressors?

Let’s be clear on this. Peter Tatchell stands on the side of universal human rights. Some cack-handed Leninists and post-modern relativists, may consider this as disguise for Western claims for European and US cultural norms to be better than any others. However, human rights, in the way Peter grasps them, are part of a fight for a better world. They are not fixed, but the result of people actively to defend them. We could add that the UN Declaration of Human Rights was itself the product of a sincere desire to draw together many different conceptions. Far from being exclusively  ’Western’ – they tried to include a planetary spectrum of views (Mary Ann Glendon, A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ( 2000). It was explicitly anti-colonialist. For all its faults (and there are many, starting with its neglect of material rights), it remains something that can be carried forward and developed. Not retreated from because some Muslims ((excused by attendant Islamophiles) think it represents an attack on their divine right to declare their own religious rights more important than anyone else’s.

Andy Newman now states, that (here),

At no time did any one ever accuse Derek Wall of being Islamophobic.
At no time did any one ever accuse Green Left of being Islamophobic
At no time did any one ever accuse the Green Party of being Islamophobic

The term Islamophobia has poisoned the whole discussion. Rather like the question ‘when did you stop beating your wife’, it is almost impossible to deny without some dirt rubbing off. I have good reason to dislike the word – as one of the first British leftists to be charged with it publicly on Islamophobia Watch. Someone very hostile to Islam full stop, Christopher Caldwell, in Reflections on the Revolutions in Europe (2009) has claimed that it’s a sign that any criticism of Islam is deemed unacceptable. This appears borne out by the ‘debate’ around Peter Tatchell.

What a mess.

The Burqa, Sarkozy and the British Left.

Marceau Pivert (1895 – 1958): Socialist Secularist.

In a speech yesterday French president Nicolas Sarkozy stated that, “France is a country where there is no place for the burqa, where there is no place for the subservience of women,” he said in a speech on French national identity. (More here – in English)

Sarkozy is trying to hold a national discussion about what it is to be French. In terms of the nation. Central to it, he argues, is a conception of republican secularism (or more exactly Laïcité). Behind this is an attempt to obscure issues which divide France, his own free-market politics to begin with. Thus, most of the French left rejects the terms of Sarkozy’s ‘debate’.  However the stress on secularism has had an echo. This morning on French radio the Communist Mayor of the town where he made this speech welcomed the assertion of republican liberty through secularism

This is not a  surprise, Much of the French left recognises the need for a republic free of religious influence. It splits people on quasi-ethnic grounds. It introduces a powerful source of obscurantism into public life. Laïcité is where they draw the line against, notably, Islamism. Not that socialists of any stripe are uncritical of the French state: it is rent with inequalities and favours religious organisations indirectly by subsidies and recognition. It has a history of imperial rule, and neglect of the rights of the colonised. Still, unlike in Britain, the direct influence of religious politics is considered anathema. French leftists can draw on an atheist and anti-clerical tradition in the radical Enlightement that opposed slavery and imperial expansion (Diderot, Condorcet). The French Marxist left also has a strong secularist background. In the 1930s the non-Communist hard-left was particularly marked by this – Marceau Pivert  to the fore (here, French, and English, here).

Here is what part of that Left says. In mid-October the Parti de Gauche participated in a big Paris demonstration for women’s rights. The PG attacks Catholic attempts to restrict abortion rights, and all forms of religious oppression. This is their statement on the veil and the burqa (more Here).

Le développement de l’islam radical contribue à la multiplication du port du voile et du voile intégral ; le port de la burqa est l’illustration emblématique d’une régression des droits et de la dignité des femmes, il est le symbole de la soumission des femmes, qui affecte la notion même de personne comme membre de l’association politique.

The development of radical Islam has contributed to an increase in veil, and total-veil display; wearing the burqa is the emblematic sign of a regression in the area of women’s rights and dignity. It is the symbol of women’s submission, which affects the very notion of a person as a part of political life.

This seems a fair starting point.

Why don’t we in Britain on the left  work from these premises on this issue? We have our own anti-clerical Enlightenment figures. Think of Tom Paine. To begin with.

KPA Unit 1224 Inspected.

It is a scandal that the British Morning Star does not print more news on the achievements of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) (Hangul: 조선민주주의인민공화국, Chosŏn Minjujuŭi Inmin Konghwaguk).

It looks likely that  Kim Jong-un, the second son of former dancer Ko Yong-hi, Kim Jong-il’s favourite wife who died of cancer in 2004 will take the helm of the world’s leading socialist state.  After his dear father’s death. He is apparently called, in a touching gesture of solidarity with the UK paper of the toiling masses, “Morning Star King“.

Unlike the ungrateful newspaper of this name we publish up-to-date news from the homeland of Juche.

KPA Unit 1224 Inspected Kim Jong Il, general secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea, chairman of the DPRK National Defence Commission and supreme commander of the Korean People’s Army, inspected KPA Unit 1224. He acquainted himself with the unit’s performance of military duty and made the rounds of the education room for revolutionary relics, bedroom, mess hall, bathhouse, soldiers’ hall, library, gymnasium, shooting gallery and other places, paying deep attention to the soldiers in and out of service. Seeing a rest home-like cosy barrack building furnished with all the best fixtures and its compound kept neat and tidy like a park, he expressed great satisfaction over the fact that the unit has provided the servicepersons with good conditions for their living and training. The KPA servicepersons are the precious Songun revolutionary comrades who safeguard the Party, the revolution, the country and the people with arms, he said, stressing the need for all the commanding officers to take good care of their living with paternal affection lest they should feel any slightest inconvenience. After watching the courageous training of the servicepersons, he was greatly satisfied to see all of them grown up to be a-match-for-a-hundred combatants who are fully prepared politico-ideologically and in military technique so as to safeguard the socialist homeland with credit. He set forth tasks to be tackled in boosting the combat efficiency of the unit in every way. Expressing his expectation and confidence that the servicepersons of the unit would display the honour of guardsmen in the honourable post for defending the country, he posed for a photo with them.

here.

Respect (Renewal): from SWP to Green Party.

Was Red, is now Green?

The scales should be falling from some people’s eyes this morning.

The leadership of Respect (Renewal) announced yesterday ever closer ties with the Green Party (in England and Wales). Reports on their Annual Conference (yesterday)  have yet to appear on their Web page (here).

Derek Wall posts (here) this comment from a Green Party observer,

‘Overall all speakers were very very positive towards the Green Party, George Galloway, Salma Yaqoob, Ger Francis and a number of other members made a very big deal of supporting the Green Party in various different ways and how we work mutually as two different parties.I think it is important to note that George Galloway called for people to vote for Peter Tatchell if they are able too and gave a stong endorsement of Peters politics, so fair play to George. They were obviously very positive about our decision to stand down for Salma but also talked often about Salmas support for us in the Euros and used it as an example about the right way to go about left unity. There was a lot of talk from George and others that Respect should not look to small far left cults for coalitions but to organisations like the ourselves.”

Tendance Coatesy has expressed the view for some time now that Respect (Renewal) has been looking for an exit strategy. In a link-up with the Green Party. Goodbye small cult SWP – hallo big cult Green Party.

Unkind people might suggest that Socialist Unity’s battle over Peter Tatchell owed something to the reluctance of Andy Newman to join in this move to the politics of Recycling Loft Insulation. That Comrade Newman has seen sense in hitching his waggon to the project of European left parties might seem to support this speculation.

Socialist Unity still bears the SWP imprint. It calls this Conference (Rally) a ‘big success’. But it has yet to comment on what went on. The Green Party are no doubt so overwhelmed with joy at George Galloway’s support that there is still no official response.  

We await these statements. We really do.

 

Added: apparently the Green left account is ‘third hand’ (Socialist Unity).  What will be the first hand report?  The breath bates.

Purge Looming in Respect?

“Respect’s leadership is absolutely determined that the influence of the ultra-left will remain marginal. There is no place for the kind of political sectarianism that is indifferent to a Tory victory or bitterly hostile to cooperation with the Green Party. Such views, often articulated by politically irrelevant grouplets of the far left, are an obstacle to the growth of a radical party of the left.” (more)

Ger Francis – leading Respect Light (Birmingham, Nationally).

No place for obstacles, eh

Indeed.

Comrade Ger (Geeeer to his friends) further states that,

“I fully expect the new National Council, on which the more sectarian voices are a shrinking minority, to drive through this perspective more forcefully in the coming year.” (here)

Sectarian voices be warned.

Ger’s background? SWP cadre.

You know I could have guessed that.

Trotsky: Two Recent Books.

Review: Stalin’s Nemesis. The Exile, and Murder of Leon Trotsky. Bertrand M. Patenaude. Faber & Faber. 2009. Trotsky A Biography. Robert Service. Macmillan. 2009.

“Estimations of Trotsky tend to shade into explanations for his political downfall.” So comments Bertrand Patenaude. How should the man be considered? Why should we be interested in his defeat? Rigid, lacking sound political instincts, the overweening “flaw” in his haughty personality, – all judgements of Stalin’s Nemesis – Trotsky offered brilliant justification of the Russian Revolution, and mordant criticisms of Soviet rule under Stalin. To Robert Service Trotsky was “an exceptional human being and a complex one”. He was a major actor in a central drama of the 20^th century, whose “ideas, including those about Russian history, had a lasting impact”. Patenaude’s Stalin’s Nemesis is a solid, if not particularly friendly, account of Trotsky’s life following his expulsion from the Soviet Union. It frequently expands to encompass the longer course of his vocation, from inspiring mass leader to marginalised founder of the Fourth International. But to get the full flavour of a study that puts the emphasis on how the one-time Commissar’s personality, imprinted with a “definite ideology”, shaped his career, from a leading player in the October capture of power, to exile, and victim of Stalin’s brutal revenge one needs to read Robert Service’s biography. With all the faults, and these flow in abundance, of such a method. Not that would have expected a sympathetic portrait. In Stalin (2004) Service compared Trotsky’s use of violence to Stalin’s and stated that he alone of the leading Bolsheviks approached the Georgian “in bloodthirstiness”. Or indeed a rounded grasp of Communist ideology and history. In his Comrades (2007) Service asserted that by the end of the 19^th century Marxism had become “an infallible set of doctrines and political substitute for religion.” And that Lenin and the Bolsheviks’ “new type of state” based on “one-party, one-ideology” with no respect for “law, constitution and popular consent” that had spread to “mutate like a virus”, infecting the body of Fascism, and Nazism. It remains around, apparently, to taint “the Islamist plans of Osama Bin Laden” and the Taliban.

Each book then offers not just narrative but assessments of Trotsky. That is, to the history of Communism and the Soviet Union. Patenaude’s story is largely centred on life in his Mexican homes in Coyoacán. Wider historical description and judgements about Trotsky tend to flow from this location. Despite its dismissive conclusion about the “dogma of Marxism” and Trotsky’s faith in the “glorious Soviet future” (did Patenaude mislay his style guide?) the book is gripping and illuminating. Aware of his previous writings, one expects less, and gets a lot less, from Service. In an ‘orthodox’ Trotskyist review David North (here) has rigorously unravelled the string of howlers that litter the book – apparently produced by a serious historian – from names, dates of people’s death, (including that of Natalia, Trotsky’s wife) to graver errors. The claim that this is the “first full-length biography of Trotsky written by someone outside Russia who is not a Trotskyist” may, nevertheless, be true. It is less than sure that Service’s efforts, to offer a “more searching approach” than previous biographies, such as Isaac Deutscher’s celebrated Trilogy, or the painstakingly documented publications of Pierre Broué, not to mention his subject’s own “self-serving and misleading” accounts, offer more than acres of darkness about Trotsky.

Compass: Social Democracy Against Democratic Socialism

Manifesto of the Conference-Going Classes.

Jon Cruddas MP and Andrea Nahles MdB have announced that “European social democracy needs a fresh start”. They have launched the “Good Society” debate (here). About the future of the European left. And ideas of what a good society should be. All within the background of declining electoral weight for the main socialist and social democratic parties.

In Building the Good Society, launched this April, Cruddas and Nahles, set out some ideas. They define the contours of the Compass project.

This document consists of tightly written paragraphs around seven main topics. Its admriers see at as a major step forward. In defining the post-Brown agenda of the left.

So what is its defining agenda? Not much is sparkling, new. Much is ‘ante’, not ‘post, the Third Way. A few good points, though not much.

As we can see:

• The pages open on the screen with the observation that social democracy (New Labour, the German SPD onwards) has failed to offer an alternative to unrestrained globalisation. That it saw (as we can read in Anthony Giddens’ work) a “positive” side of the process. This ignored the down-side of free-market expansion. Markets and growth have to be harnessed. For a better version of social democracy, Cruddas and Nahle assert that redistributive approaches are needed.  For, well…a better world. As indeed does Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, all relying on on the same processes of international agreements that underpin the institutions they claim to want to reform.
• They emphasise the central place of democracy to social democracy - not perhaps a very new idea.   
•  That social democracy  is based on the principles of solidarity, social justice and autonomy. Does it need pointing out that this is an even older trilogy? It could have been stated any time since the setting down of the Synoptic Gospels.
• Justice and equality are core values for the social democratic left. A claim that repeats Crosland’s View in The Future of Socialism (1956) – whose aim as a “just, co-operative and classless society”. The classless bit never got defined then. This document does not care to offer any development.
• That society should be run on a  co-determination (Mitbestimmung) basis. The German model which obliges companies to have a degree of responsibility to ‘social partners’ – a principle the TUC used to promote in the days when Will Hutton was listened to.  It has failed to take on in the UK. The employers don’t want it. So it’s got forgotten. Now it’s come back. Whoppie!
• Welfare – making people into “assets” in the economy. This is a market state idea full of pitfalls for the left (see below).
•  Social Europe – a range of social policy standards set on a Continent-wide basis. The best bit. Better than dead-end nationalism. But there si no programme to overturn existing EU institutions to make this possible.
• Wrapped around the document is the ideas that a ‘civic state’ should replace the ‘market state’.  idea about how a “civic state” should replace the ‘market state’. That a wide range of forms of social enterprise (co-operatives, not for profit projects) , including renationalised utilities,  should reassert  a democratic imput into mixed economy. There is little that is  different from Crosland’s original description of social democracy.

It would seen that ‘social democracy’ in this form is just the ‘left-wing’ of the Third Way.

Two major problems are not tackled.

The first is that the ‘market state’ is not just the result of a political choice by  Labour Governments to deepen the rule of private companies over public life. It now has its own material logic  – a stratum of parasitical contractors carrying out state functions. This lobby, representing a class fraction of the state bourgeoisie, is not challenged by words,. It needs a programme to cut it out. Secondly, the Good Society, fails to begin to grasp the problem of equality. Notably in the area of  welfare. Cruddas backed welfare reform – in fact his support for making people an ‘asset’ is a pure market state concept. It is  not to support people on an equal basis but to ‘equip’ them to ‘compete’ on the ‘global market’. This involves compulsion and payments of benefits at such low rates that any employment will be taken – making the system a permanent drag down on working conditions and wages. Work for Your Benefits, which he endorsed, will accelerate this process, and undermine public services by creating a pool of unpaid forced labour to take over public functions.

Secondly, the document does not begin to look at the structural nature of ownership and control of the economy and the state. Its ambitions are limited to restoring the ‘balance’ of the mixed economy which was lost during the 1970s. It fails to identify the political agency (one created by political parties as much as structurally inevitable), that could change these relations. In short, it is no democratic socialist programme based on the labour movement. Its ambitions are for reforms, by the well-intentioned. That is, not the popular masses, but  the conference-going classes. And some grandstanding pundits (Polly Toynbee).

It is not surprising that the journal Soundings has warmed to the Compass debate. The review’s editors come from the tradition that was immersed in 1980s concept of “radical democracy” and “populism” as alternatives to class based socialism. During the Blair decade those that had a residual belief in working class participation in participative democracy have tried to reinvent themselves. On the Left. But they have not dropped the strategy of ‘hegemony’ through coalitions  ’articulated’ in a  wider programme . More recently their allies have opposed (or, in they’d say, ‘critiqued’ ) universal human rights. Notably  the ‘cultural imperialism’ of gay rights.  Andy Newman of Socialist Unity adds to this mix an embrace of ‘progressive national identity’. 

Perhaps Andy’s warmth for the good side of the national progressive identities of the old Soviet Block  is a trail-blazer here. For some of Sounding’s writers to go back to their own past. O those halcyon days Sally, we had in the Woodcraft Folk!

All of which avoid the central mechanisms of class formation that left politics tries to latch onto. In its ambitions to fight oppression (of a wide nature) and exploitation (capitalism), through a democratic movement. Or the argument made by left specialists in Europe’s left, for example, John Callagham. That social democracy, based on the above approach, has failed in the past. That the Third Way was  a dilution, not a replacement, of it. And  that class continues to play a significant role in British politics which the left should grasp (The Retreat of Social Democracy. 2001), amongst other writings) More specifically, social democracy failed in the past to answer the democratic socialist alternative. One based on the dominance of social ownership  and popular control.

It is not suprising that in this debate (at least as far as one can see) there is little mention the rise of new left parties, such as the German Die Linke, or alliances, such as the Front de Gauche, in France. These are broad enough to cover a radical  strand and traditional labour movement lefts. But they involve people doing things. Not just attending prestigious media-eying conferences to agree with weighty debate on values, and  ‘concerns’ about Gordon Brown and the Tories.

That would be a tent too big by far.

Social Democracy: From MacShane to a New Civilisation?

Time for a twenty-first century Socialism – not Social Democracy. 

Denis MacShane writes (here) that,

“Social democrats need a new understanding of the historic compromises that are necessary for the practice of power.

The German election defeat followed on from losses for social democratic parties in the European Parliament elections. To be sure, socialists kept power in Portugal and Norway, but without a majority of votes. And PASOK’s win in Greece was based on a new politics, of criticising state bureaucracy and pledging support for small businesses, in place of old-style statist clientilism.

At a regional or city level the left can win power. But this is less and less the case at state government level. The democratic left is challenged by other parties that claim to represent its values or its electorate. The national-populists in the anti-European parties of the xenophobic right attract many of their voters from the white working class. The anti-capitalist parties of the populist left attract some of the proletariat, and workers protected in public service unions. The anti-industry parties of the greens also steal many progressive votes.”

Why? To the former European Minister it boils down to people being scared, in an economic downturn. They turn, turn, and end up with the established Right. Trusted with managing the crisis. Or the far-right, preying on fear. Or the greens, growing through the public’s concern about climate change and the environment. Or even ‘anti-capitalists’ feeding off worries about capitalism (I helpfully added that bit Denis). That much of the left (Denis excepted) has no thought-out economic policy – based not on slogans but on grasping the international nature of capitalism. It needs a realistic one, reaching about beyond the “prison the nation”. The left has to be  serious about the “conquest of power. ” This can only be achieved “through  historic compromises – with market economics, with the nation, and with voters.” To do what exactly, in the light of the abject failures of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown,a nd their Continental ilk, is less than clear. Perhaps MacShane might care to enlighten us.

Still, like Tendance Coatesy MacShane dislikes, “metropolitan elites organising endless conferences”.

That’s about as far as our agreement goes.

To clarify this analysis (to inject a bit of serious compromising with the need to look at reality that is)  Henri Weber (French Socialist, and former Trotskyist, LCR, here) makes some points. Rather more concrete than MacShane’s (here).

That Social Democracy’s present crisis rests on the unravelling of the ‘compromises’ (historic in fact) that  underpinned its European hegemony in the late ‘nineties. This political offer underpinned the successes of socialist parties in the second half of the 1990s.  This reached its limit in  2002  when 11 governments out of 15 in the European Union were socialist.

The first was a liberalisation of the economy, varying in form across different countries but present everywhere. In our ‘mixed economies’ the weight of the public sector was reduced, while that of the private sector was strengthened. “

In brief the ‘market state’. It did not result in either increased society-wide equality, or a solution to the long-term (relative) industrial decline (core social democrat vote) of Europe. Prosperity was a brittle and uneven thing – the same processes  created a massive ‘flexible’ labour force which could be dumped as quickly as possible (a lot swifter in the UK than many EU countries).

They expected in exchange, from state and industry, more investment and innovation, leading to a more efficient specialisation of our economies in the new international division of labour. They expected an ‘upscaling’ in all sectors of activity, so that they could reinstate full employment and ‘good employment’.

Which did not happen. An economic crisis – something beyond the end of Brown’s history apparently – did. European social democracy (in all its variants) was worst hit. Its  policy and institutional strategy was a recipe for disaster. The competitive advantage of market-states was thrown into doubt when the first breezes of economic problems reached them. This affected liberal ‘third way’ countries the UK above all. Because of its greater adaption to global flows those in the current got caught up and thrown into the vortex.  Social democracy’s electorate was hit; its strategic compromises with business partners left the latter  safe, not their ‘own people’. Mass unemployment, reinforcing the  structural worklessness neoliberalism rests on, has returned.

The second pillar of the compromise of the 1990s was the mutualisation of the costs of modernisation. It was believed that these costs should be borne primarily not by individuals but by the nation as a community. This required high levels of taxes and social redistribution, quality public services, a reduced but preserved welfare state, and negotiation between all social partners.

One should add that in Britain the said market state farmed out broad swathes of public services. To expensive and incompetent private companies. Whose costs are a massive drain on public finance. Social partnership ceased to have any meaning for anybody except these private groups, and the increasingly state dependent and private modelled ‘third sector. It is this apparatus which is now being marshalled in the UK (other countries, now under right-wing control, are following suite) to coerce the unemployed away.  A doomed project if ever there was one.

The third element was the affirmation of social progressivism. Socialists were the champions of the liberalisation of mores, gender parity and equality, homosexual marriage, the right to die in dignity, and the defence of the quality of life.

In other words it promoted social liberalism without social equality. Diversity, multiculturalism, and other aspects of this agenda took root. They took over from the reforms for universal human rights. In doing so they became attached to the market state. And the alienating forces of division and private gain they embodied. The worst example was the British state’s embrace of faith-based institutions in civil society. From bringing religious groups in welfare services, the authority given to faith leaders in minority communities, to a strategy of equal opportunities that replaced equality for all, this has undermined popular consent for social democratic parties. It has left the door open for the right and far-right to reassert national identity (and xenophobia)  as an alternative source of cohesion.

Weber notes that “The 2007-2010 crisis, followed as it will be by a period of weak growth, will condemn this compromise to obsolescence.”

Which it has.

Unfortunately all Weber can offer is this,

“If it wants to return to power, European social democracy must propose a new political offer. And such an offer has to be conceived, from its inception, at the level of the European Union. Furthermore it must embody – beyond its economic objectives – a civilisation project.”

Which is as clear as North Sea silt.

The democratic socialist project, in measured or radical form, is to replace the above ‘pillars’ by 1) A programme of publicly ownership to re-orientate the economy. Based on popular control – to re-root the left. 2) A transformed public service agenda to replace the market state with a popular (secular)  one. 3) An end to diversity and multiculturalism, a beginning to equality and universal public rights. Its appeal can be gauged from the fact that ‘social democracy’ is having to take the radical left into account.

 

If you want to see a completely wrong and disastrous way of dealing with these issues look at France (Britain’s Labour Party  is a bit too obvious, poor old Brown does not bear much looking at). As much of its left has split off to the Parti de Gauche Weber’s Parti Socialiste has not the slightest coherent project. Its politics? A mix of very civilised green waffling, gestural opposition to Sarkozy, municipal Parti Radical politics (in the 1930s sense) and some tax reforms. It has shifted to an alliance with the centre and the Greens. And some strange ideas about shaping itself on the US Democrats – through primary selections of candidates  (a disaster you’d have thought they’d seen coming from the Italian experience of them). Not to mention a permanent drama largely caused by Madame Royal, which has made them the second biggest laughing-stock (after New Labour) on the European Left.

The radical left is known best for its slogans. True. The previous remarks are just phrases to hook a deeper programme around. And we should recognise that the European radical left is fragile. The news that Oscar  Lafontaine’s illness (cancer) may threaten the whole project of Die Linke shows this. But this is clear. It requires a strong force to make its way. Not willingness to surrender before it begins. More aggressive than MacShane’s recommendation that we must compromises before we’ve started. To say the least. 

Oh, and did I mention the wars? The left is a bit more civilised that MacShane on that.

Camus in the Panthéon ?

Albert Camus in the Panthéon ?

Nicolas Sarkozy would like to transfer the ashes of Camus – on the  50th anniversary of his death (the 4th of  January 1960) to the Paris Pantheon. That is the national memorial for GRANDS HOMMES LA PATRIE RECONNAISSANTE (“To the great men, the grateful homeland”). Interment here is severely restricted and is allowed only by a parliamentary act for “National Heroes”.

His son Jean  is opposed (here).

There was an extraordinary brilliant and concise interview with Camus’ biographer, Olivier Todd, in le Monde yesterday (here). Todd, a first-hand witness of the post-War Left Bank, refers to Camus’s brief membership of the Algerican Communist party in 1934 – he left because it failed to support independence movements clearly enough. In the full article (the on-line version is cut), there is an account of the author of the Etranger’s later hesitation about the FLN’s campaign for full independence. And an account of  his disputes with Sartre – right about Stalinism, wrong about anti-colonialism.

Todd’s judgement on Camus is worth citing, “ Camus fut d’abord un écrivain, un artiste, un artisan, beaucoup plus qu’un philosophe dans la série Platon, Kant, Sartre, Wittgenstein.” He was first of all a writer, an artist, a workman, much more than a philosopher in the mould of Plato, Kant, Sartre, Wittgenstein.” This view TC shares.

His courageous Resistance  activity, his journalism,  moral presence on the left, and searing novels deserve better than a credential-boosting stunt by Sarkozy.  

Peter Sloterdijk: No to Forced Taxation.

Radical Icon?

There is an intellectual controversy ranging in Europe. France has been outpaced in its usual autumn row: this one’s  in Germany. Launched by Peter Sloterdijk. A mad-cap theorist to rival Slavoj Žižek, Sloterdijk is best known to British readers through a review I did (a long time ago) in Labour Briefing of his Critique of Cynical Reason (three paragraphs). This book, still available from an academic US publisher (here), was described as the philosophical answer to airport “shopping and fucking” novels.

Sloty’s campaign against the “Steuermacht”, the state-tax machine, has raised a debate. Neatly dovetailing into his other obsession - loathing of Die Linke. His line? Rather simple: taxes are forced out (‘Zwang’ being the operative term) of productive workers. They are thus the object of the new class struggle. For those who care to follow this, the discussion (largely opposing this pose) is all over the Germanophone Web (start perhaps from here).

 

Montgomery Burns  has found a Court Philosopher.  

Hands off the People of Iran AGM this Saturday.

 Saturday November 28 2009
Somers Town Community Centre, 150 Ossulston Street, London NW1 1EE (near Euston station). Registration from 10am.

More Information here.

It will be interesting to watch this on BBC Two tonight:

“This World tells the story of Neda Agha Soltan, with exclusive accounts from those who really knew her. Many young Iranians have claimed her as a ‘martyr’ for Iran’s protest movement; but the Iranian regime has tried to blame the West.”

Tariq Ramadan, What I Believe. Review.

Review. What I Believe. Tariq Ramadan. Oxford University Press. 2009.

Tariq Ramadan is a “controversial intellectual”. He faces “many-sided opposition”. The soft-spoken supporter of “solidarity, human dignity, and justice” is accused of “doublespeak”. “Criticisms first of (and mainly in) France, then taken up by some French loving groups of some ideological currents, have built up a haze of controversy around me and my commitment.” He asks, “What are the “ideological and/or interests” of these groups?” Not too savoury, as we shall see. He, by contrast, tries to “build bridges between two universes of reference”, “Western and Islamic ‘civilisations’” “and “between citizens within Western societies themselves”. The book’s contribution to this “process of mediation”? It’s an “opportunity to read me in the original and simply get direct access to my thought”. To show that we “share many common principles and values”. That it is possible to ‘live together’” (all liberal English Anglian inverted commas Ramadan’s). That he belongs to a “reformist trend” within Islam. Which is? A “great and noble religion.” And what of the West’s achievements? “Freedom and democracy.” Its faults? “Murderous ‘civilising missions’, colonialisation, the destructive economic order racism, acquiescent relations with the worst dictatorships, and other failings”. Ramadan is bold enough “to contradict accepted opinions” – even by raising these all-too often ignored features of the Western world. Particularly the “other failings”.

There is much in this pamphlet on the need for Muslims to engage in Western society. Its tone throughout is high ‘inverted comma’ clericalese. He pleads for Islam’s European future as part of a new ‘We’. “Western Islam is now a reality” – that is there are European populations with Muslim beliefs immersed in Western culture. So, “Islam is a Western religion”. Apparently this is a big plus. For bridge-builders this implies, Openness to Others (reciprocally), “Handling Fears” and “post-integration” pluralism. Up to, political engagement, and a commitment to worrying about the rights and oppressions of other groups than Muslims (why does this need to be said?). This has to be negotiated through “the fluctuating multiplicity of personal identities”.

Islam, in all its complexity, has to reach into the public domain. This will come about not by playing on “community feelings” and “community-oriented political logics”. A much more ambitious strategy is afoot. Much like the early Christian Christians the Muslim faithful need to integrate, to become part of the institutions of the state. Why? Muslim organisations would wield power and influence. As bearers that is, of a “consistent global vision”. This would be one that assembles a variety of interests in an effort to capture a position in society. Not just politics are important. There is ignorance of Islam’s intellectual richness. To counter this, he claims, the religion’s contribution deserves a larger place in the culture. Revised syllabi, he argues, may help. There needs more mention of Muslim thinkers, from al-Kindî (ninth century), al-Ghazâlî (twelfth century) to Ibn Khaldûm (fourteenth century) To rival no doubt the attention already given in Europe’s school trivium to Thomas Aquinas, Dun Scotus, and Anselm of Canterbury.

Not everyone from an Islamic background wants to span the division between Islam and the West. More shame them, apparently. Ramadan is forthcoming about his battles with Qu’ranic literalists – those who see in the Qur’an signs enough to justify their rigorist interpretation of the Sharia. Who, though he is fairly coy about this, do not exactly like non-Muslim societies, or indeed non-Muslims.

Wilf Page: Norfolk Red.

Norfolk Red. The Life of Wilf Page Countryside Communist. Mike Pentelow. Lawrence & Wishart. 2009.

There are some people who truly make a difference. For the greater good of the world. Wilf Page made a deep impression on left and trade union activists across East Anglia. And much further afield, as Norfolk Red narrates. Born just before the Great War Wilf became a socialist, a long-term member of the Communist Party, a stalwart of the Agricultural Workers Union, and then, after its merger, with the Transport and General Workers Union, active in upholding trade unionism across the region. He made a mark in campaigning groups, above all in the peace movements, and helped the workless set up (now sorely needed once again) Unemployed Centres. In his later years he was a pillar (Vice-President) of the National Pensioners’ Convention. Many people will remember him at the annual Burston Rally to whose growing success he contributed a major part. Will would welcome all and sundry with a smile. Remaining eager for news while waiting for the speakers, his staunch socialism never dimmed. Wilf was, in short, widely respected and loved.

Mike Pentelow puts Will’s life within the “history of the struggles of the rural workers of Norfolk.” One of the few regions of Britain where farm labourer radicalism continued up to the twentieth century (and beyond?) this has roots far back. Wymondham, where Wilf was baptised, was the home of Robert Kett (1492 – 1549), who led a famous rebellion in 1549. The Captain Swing revolts of 1830 were in response to the capitalist mechanisation of farming. Begun in Kent with the destruction of threshing machines they quickly had an echo in East Anglia – in Norfolk and neighbouring counties. Disputes over the conditions of rural workers continued throughout the century. In Sharpen the Sickle! (1948) Reg Groves described Norfolk as the “stronghold and birthplace” of the Agricultural Workers Union. Its founder Joseph Arch (1826 – 1919) made his mark there. The agricultural workers’ strike of 1923 – which precariously halted the farmers’ efforts to reduce wages and increase the standard week and ended amongst a wave of victimisation – had its stronghold in Norfolk. Wilf’s first political action was inspired by the dispute. He led fellow school pupils “to try to prevent the leaving of his much loved teacher, Miss Bunn, who was getting married”. The County authority did not employ women after wedlock, and Wilf’s protest failed. The children were all punished. This was but one injustice that marked Wilf’s early life.

Norfolk Red (named after a famous bull breed) describes how in the 1920s the rural and urban East Anglian poor were treated as beasts of burden. The poverty Wilf grew up in still shocks. Initially he drifted to London for work, and then in Jersey got employment in backbreaking potato picking. Serving in the RAF from 1933 he met a Communist Party member Dan Cohen. “He used to talk to me about the frictions in the world where anti-semitism was an historic problem, and explained the economics of capitalism. He thought the Soviet Union was a new experiment that was going to succeed and produce a new world society.” Wilf was stirred by his message. “My old Sunday School teacher used to say about world problems, the wealthy and poor, Dan was doing the same thing but a much higher level.” He spent 13 years in the RAF, continuing to educate himself and his wife, Christina, whom he married in 1939, in socialist ideas. During a largely uneventful war, apart from some North Sea flights, he became a lecturer in the Army Bureau of Current Affairs (ABCA). This organisation is often credited with helping to shift opinion in the Service leftwards. Wilf played a part in that move. A Sergeant and never commissioned, he was demobbed in 1945.

Back in Norfolk Wilf plunged into the agricultural workers’ union and politics, working full-time for the local Labour Party. The latter, which maintained a network of rural agents in East Anglia up till the 1980s, was not to be his political home. He resigned in 1949 – over the Labour Government’s conservative approach to running nationalised industries, its failure to confront farmers over tied cottages, and colonialist repression in the Far East. By 1950 he had joined the Communist Party, becoming their election agent in the Paddington North. He stood as a Communist candidate for Edgefield on Erpington rural district council (where he sat as a Labour member) and was returned as a Communist councillor for every election from then until 1974 – including a spell on Norfolk District Council. Through the union and council he pursued his opposition to the tied-cottage system (the practice of bonding workers to their employers by letting them accommodation tied to their jobs). Defending those threatened with eviction, and writing on this and other topics in the Communist party aligned journal the Country Standard Wilf was a thorn in the side of the country gentry, farmers, and their Tory friends. As a Red he was an obvious target. He tried many different occupations, briefly an extra-mural lecturer, a bus driver, and many jobs. But “it would not be long before Wilf was organising his workmates and getting victimised for this – and getting sacked again.” Fortunately his wife had more stable employment with the County Council.

For the texture of a life well spent one needs to read Mike Pentelow’s description of the union and community activist that Wilf became. He played a part in the British Czechoslovakia Friendship Society. He supported the early CND. In 1961 Wilf helped draw up the Communist Party’s plans for agriculture – public ownership of land, improved pay and conditions for farm workers. This developed over the years. Perhaps not everyone will agree that “increased food production” – in opposition to the Common Market – was a step towards a modern approach to ‘produce locally’. The CPGB’s main aim was for national “food security”. But Wilf really came into his own inside the Agricultural Workers’ Union. Despite hostility from anti-Communists (he was only elected to the Executive in 1969) he kept on agitating. From a Norfolk base he pushed forward a whole range of policies, opposing endemic low wages, supporting increased training, demanding equal pay for women. The cause of tied cottages remained vital. It finally wound up on the Parliamentary agenda. Wilf “drew attention to the case of a young farm worker who, having been made redundant, was living with his wife and baby daughter in a shed, while their two other children slept in a car.” Joan Maynard, closely linked to the union, steered the Rent Agriculture Act into parliament. Legislation in 1976 ended summary evictions without alternative accommodation. Finally recognised by the movement in 1979 Wilf became the President of the European Federation of Agricultural Workers’ Union. This campaigning did not cease in later years. Domestically he stayed deeply involved in the union, peace activism, and left politics. After retirement he was a leading figure in the pensioners’ movement and was, as mentioned, a very welcome sight at Burston every year.

Wilf Page stayed with the Communist Party during the turbulent years of 1980s. He eventually joined the Nina Temple offshoot (that retained the party property), the Democratic Left. While he sold its short-lived paper, New Times, he also, his daughter Carol says, continued to read the Morning Star. The fall of Official Communism did not undermine his socialism. He considered that “I have realised that communists have got to start thinking for themselves..” That, “I think my Marxism has been enriched as a result of the downfall of the Soviet Union, I still think of myself, as I have done since the war, as a Marxist.” “I’m optimistic. I think people are beginning to think for themselves and create new ideas and new structure. He old militarist structure has got to disappear and new ones have to emerge from grassroots experience of life.” As the Democratic Left evaporated, and a variety of political groups disputed its legacy – from some of Wilf’s colleagues who looked to the Greens, to others who claimed the mantle of social democracy – he kept with the labour movement. When Wilf Page passed away in 2001, the Norwich Labour MP at the time (who had been in the International Socialists), Ian Gibson, said that he “turned up like a magician whenever there was a struggle”. For this, and many other sterling qualities, individuals of Wilf Page’s stature will always be dear to the hearts of the people. He stimulated, encouraged, organised, and was true, throughout his life, to the socialist principle that people should think for themselves.

An inspiring biography – this is a must-read.

For more information see the Country Standard (here).

Work for Benefit: Labour’s New Helots.

This article appears in the December issue of Labour Briefing .

Work for Your Benefit: Labour’s New Helots. 

Welfare reform legislation is due to be one of this Government’s enduring legacies. From this autumn there will be two benefits: Jobseeker’s Allowance, and Employment and Support Allowance. Already there is pressure on medical assessors to channel those on Incapacity Benefit into the former, where many lone parents and others will also eventually join them. JSA brings a lower income – down to the standard rate of £64.30 a week, in contrast to £89.80, the starting point of incapacity allowance – and, after six months, puts claimants on the Flexible New Deal. This, being tried out in large parts of the country, will eventually replace all existing welfare-to-work schemes. For a year the jobless will be farmed out to private companies, intensively advised and obliged to carry out a minimum of four weeks of “work related activity” (they may be “advised” to do much more).

This sounds relatively benign. It replaces 13 weeks in “work placements” of dubious value or simply stuck in “training centres” (where the only “training” is sitting in front of computers “job searching” for work that does not exist) of the previous New Deal. However, the Government has learned nothing from its experience of farming out the New Deal to private companies, two of which at least have been accused of malpractice. The faith-led YMCA has also run schemes. Most have scraped through their contracts with low employment outcomes and feeble training standards. The approximately 600,000 claimants who have faced sanctions for not complying with every aspect of the schemes shows how they are used to punish people. If participants were in charge of inspections, the companies would fail in an instant – yet the DWP has been told to contract out its new scheme to the same bodies.

The new regime will closely regulate people’s lives. Partners of JSA claimants will also have to seek work actively. Those dependent on drugs and alcohol will undergo compulsory rehabilitation. There is no clear notion of what will happen if they fail, other than they will have no benefits.

Most worryingly, after two years unemployment people will be forced onto the Work for Benefits programme. This will involve full time activity in “training options, short term work trials, a remuneration subsidy for employers to take them, or voluntary work in the local community,” (DWP October 2009). With unemployment set to rise to 3 million by October next year, when this policy is enforced, they will have plenty of compelled “volunteers”.

Some argue that since JSA is supplemented by housing and council tax benefit, it is “fair” to work for this money. However, those further benefits are paid at varying rates, making the overall pay rates different between individuals – and still leaving them well below the minimum wage.

This all raises fundamental issues. First, why should those who through no fault of their own have no job be forced to do what has up to now been the task of those sentenced to do community service by the courts? Indeed, what will happen to community service orders when the long-term unemployed start to undertake similar “sentences”?

Second, this will corrupt the voluntary sector, parts of which are already gearing up for it. The character of the voluntary sector will change. The nature of forced labour is to give power to the employer while discouraging the worker, making them dependent on the goodwill of the employer. The rights of volunteers are not the same as those on paid contracts. Groups and no doubt individuals will profit financially.

Third, it doesn’t take a genius to realise that cash-strapped local government will see this as an opportunity to plug gaps in their services. A tied labourer is cheaper than a paid employee. In areas as disparate as home helps to environmental projects volunteering could become a new national service, replacing those working for real salaries.

Those opposed to welfare reform have to date had little impact on Brown’s take it or leave it decision that this is the direction welfare will go in. The umbrella initiatives organised by the TUC have petered out in well-meaning but ineffective lobbying by a coalition of “antipoverty” NGOs with some union support. There are now signs of a more militant approach emerging from unions of the unemployed and other groups. There are web sites promoting opposition and plans for a decent benefit system that could really cope with people’s needs. As mass unemployment returns pressure for change will increase.

Labour looks set to leave behind a new body of helots – the work-for-the dole underclass. An incoming Conservative Administration will have plenty of conscripts for its plans for workfare. Both ideas were pioneered by the same person – once adviser to Labour and now the Tories, the exceedingly wealthy Lord Freud.

Andrew Coates

􀁺For more information, visit Ipswich Unemployed Action Here.

Minarets: Tendance Line.

Ban every Church Steeple!

This shock declaration by arch-secularist, Tendance Coatesy, rocked the Left.

ER….

Ispwich Racist Filth.

IPSWICH: Bouncers at an Ipswich pub are today under investigation for allegedly barring Asian drinkers.

Shocked councillors heard last night how two Asian men were turned away from a live music night at a pub in the town.

The story as written in the Evening Star appears to have got edited into oblivion.

The original cites a  a number of cases barring Asians.

Those who know Ipswich will realise that the pub’s name is The Plough.

Here.

Defend Socialist Unity!

This is important,

Under the title “Andy Newman is ashamed that he is promoting a Hamas Fundraiser” Harry’s Place wrote a libellous article that is crammed with deliberate lies. The author of the article is anonymous, reflecting their cowardice, and they turned off comments, preventing there being a right to reply, and which also meant sending all the Harry’s Place yahoos over here to disrupt this blog. (more here)

 Andy has posted a very justified response on his site.

Ipswich Trades Council voted to give money to a campaign to bring aid to the Palestinian people. This very Wednesday. Our of solidarity with the  people.

Nothing more complicated than that.

So I suppose this makes us lot in Ipswich supporters of Hamas.

Er I think not.

Iran: New Protests. Priority is International Solidarity.

At the Hands of the People of Iran AGM a couple of weeks back (More info here and here)  the protests in the country were a central concern. We learnt that these were demonstrations by the people – the popular masses. They involve significant working class forces. Opposition is continuing to the theocratic regime.

The BBC reports events yesterday. The people are not cowed. The students’ day protests struck a further blow for liberty.

At the HOPI AGM it was mentioned that we should no illusions in many of the reformists. But that the demands for freedom, women’s and workers’ rights, strike at the heart of the Islamicist tyranny. This means that we should not let liberal Americans think that they have a monopoly on supporting human rights (here).  Human rights start with backing the Iranian people in their fight.

During the moving recent BBC documentary on the beloved martyr Neda an apologist for the regime claimed that ‘President’  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in his heart a socialist.

Perhaps that lie – repeated by we all know whom –  has had some success in quarters of the British left.

The first duty of every revolutionary is to show active solidarity with the Iranian masses in their struggle for democracy.

 

More reports via HOPI:

 

Dear friends, supporters and members of Hands Off the People of Iran,

 

Please find below a link to a report about yesterday’s mass protests in Iran: http://hopoi.org/?p=850 Please spread the word about the courageous fight of our brothers and sisters.

 

Also, you can find the statement by Khodro car workers on our website here: http://hopoi.org/?p=848

 

Finally, the policies adopted at our AGM on November 28 are also now online: http://hopoi.org/?p=840

 

Red Pepper: à quoi ça sert?

 

Trustafarian Must-Read.

There is a magazine in Britain. Even most lefties will have probably never heard of. It’s called Red Pepper.

Latest cover is on the ‘anti-capitalist movement’. We all know this has had great success in abolishing capitalism.

Most of it is concerned with issues which Mrs Jellyby from Dickens’ Bleak House would recognise. Nothing to do with any effect on the lives of the kinda people who read the glossy mag.

Concern for the deserving domestic poor? Stuff from groups like the London Coalition Against Poverty. And similar ineffectual ’coalitions’ (donchya just hate that US imported word for campaigns?). 

Nothing, literally nothing about the real campaign against Welfare Reform. Specifically not a word on the looming work-for-benefit. 

But this is not my specific  gripe today.

It’s the article written by Bilal El-Amine on Hizbullah in Lebanon. It ends with the conclusion that “It is tragic that progressives in the West have such a one-sided picture of Islamist political practice and fail to see the liberatory aspects of the movement. “

We know where we are going…..

Hizbullah have given the “Shia of Lebanon” “some semblance of dignity, liberated from Israeli occupation and terror, secure on their land, with a far brighter future than anyone could have predicted.”

It does not take a specialist knowledge of Lebanese sectarian politics to recognise that this is an immense piece of cack.

Presumably this future will be all the brighter for not having copies of Anne Frank’s Diary read in schools (story here).

New ‘Marxism Today’ strategy in UK. From Scratch to Gangrene.

 Has not Breathed its Last.

Marxism Today was magazine of the old CPGB. Noted, it its final years,  for its ebullient Editor Martin Jacques.

And its sterling efforts in creating what became Blair and Co.

The actual Blairites said to them, “Thanks awfully chaps and chapettes, but we won. You can now sod off”.

Bereft, this lot have lacked a political project.

 But a new one is forward.  

The basic line of the Marxism Today crew was to drop class politics for a national-popular strategy (believe me you have to read Gramsci to get what this means in detail but essentially it’s becoming patriots).

You can see it coming again in the strange alliance  of former leftists, nationalists, Green Party débris, religious enthusiasts, and something called Respect. AKA Socialist Unity Blog.

 

A tell-tale sign is the barely disguised stuff by Andy Newman and contesting national hegemonic discourses on patriotism.

 Translation: we have to be the real patriots.

 

Socialist Unity Goes End Game.

Icon of the Left?

Socialist Unity confirms (here) its ‘national hegemony’ strategy by an appeal.

Vote for the jolly good fellows and fellowettes they like.

“We will therefore support the following for example (and there may well be many more), who strongly demonstrate practical representation of the left in its widest sense:

Caroline Lucas (Green, Brighton)
Dai Davies (independent, Blaenau Gwent)
George Galloway and Abjol Miah (Respect), John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn (Labour) (in London);
Peter Tatchell (Green, Oxford);
Dave Nellist (Socialist Party, Coventry);
Salma Yaqoob (Respect, Birmingham)
Gayle O’Donovan, Kay Phillips (in Manchester; Green and Respect respectively);
Peter Cranie (Green, Liverpool);
Val Wise (independent, Preston).

Now given the way it’s written you’d have thought (okay I thought) it was signed by the individuals in question. Most of whom are greatly valued comrades. Or at least some.

It ain’t.

Just a bunch of Andy’s ‘counter-hegemonic’ mates.

Starting from Nick Bird (Lowestoft).

Love ya to bits mate.

 But, well. How shall it puts this politely?

 Not exactly centre of the class struggle.

Still the appeal has its attractions. 

A charming confusion between two well-respected left wing MPs, and a certain fine feline from Glasgow.

Ispwich Goes Snow. Yuk!

East Anglia is normally one of the most snow-free places on the Planet (after sub-Saharan Africa).

Today Ipswich is covered in mucky drifts, and black slush.

The pavements are made of ice.

The roads are knee-deep in said drifts. (Evening Star here)

And that’s just the centre of town.

Talk about climate change.

SWP: you gotta laugh, ain’t ya.

The ever- reliable WeeklyWorker  reports on the SWP faction fight (here).

The SWP central committee has made its intentions regarding the opposition Left Platform crystal-clear, writes Peter Manson. John Rees, Lindsey German, Chris Nineham and their supporters now look set to be charged with ‘factionalism’ and expelled

You would have to heart of stone not to laugh.

I first came across Lindsey German in the movement in support of the Portuguese Carnation Revolution.

She suddenly appeared as some kind of leading authority on Portugal.

This did not do down well with the actual London based Portuguese workers (Portuguese workers’ Co-ordinating Committee) who were mostly supporters of the MES.

And as for the execrable John Rees…

Well I haven’t forgotten when he practically slammed the door at Conway Hall last year in my face.

Oh, is there any politics involved here?

I merely ask.

In Defence of ‘Centrism’: Against the SWP’s Democratic Centralism.

There is an alternative Marxist tradition. Okay there are lots. But one that’s increasingly attracting attention is known to self-styled Leninists such as the SWP as ‘centrism’. According to them we are in-between social democracy, reformism, and them – the ‘true revolutionaries”.

I beg to differ. Put simply it is democratic Marxism.

Heroic groups such as the POUM in 1930s Spain, the ‘Pivertists’ in France and many other groups, including the Austro-Marxists and the organisations that Henk Sneevliet ran, never accepted the kind of ‘democratic  centralism’ than runs like a thread throughout the SWP and similar parties’ practice. Nor indeed their mentor, bossy-boots Trotsky.

After the Second World War most of these formations were absorbed back into the mainstream labour and socialist movement. But reemerged in the 1960s New Left. In France the PSU were a leading current in this tradition. During the Portuguese Revolution the MES led the way. Since then clearly parts of Die Linke and the Parti de Gauche  as well as les Alternatifs in France form part of this current.

Whatever disagreements one can have with the specific politics of these groups  their basic principle is inner party democracy, the rights of tendencies and factions, and open debate. Other aspects stand out: the concern for workers’ and social self-management, and the respect for wider democracy. The current is beginning to be revived. As such a source of continuing conflict with organisations like the SWP.

 

The spirit of  Andreu Nin  shall be avenged!

 

Or maybe not.

Grewal Household Captures Nation’s Hearts.

Loved by the Masses.

The Grewal household have captured the hearts of tens of thousands. (More here).

Last night’s episode was the best ever,

The big Indian wedding,  Shay’s start of a new life with Sunny. All the drama and live exposure.

Terrific.

It was so thoroughly acute and touching. Warmed the cockles of a usually very cynical Coatesy heart.

The fact that the dad got pissed on three bottle of wine went down well.

This show did more for anti-racism than a million UAF tracts,

Ipswich Buses to be Flogged off.

Soon to be Carted to Rubbish Dump.

Ipswich Buses, one of the few remaining municipal transport services in the country, is be sold off to some privateering chancers (here). Ipswich buses, the pride of the town, will be destroyed.

It is no secret that the ruling Tory-Liberal Junta is one of the most oppressive regimes this side of North Korea.

The clique contains the following,

Councillor Elizabeth Harsant – Leader of the Council.

Utter numpty.  

Councillor John Carnall – Deputy Leader and Portfolio Holder for Finance.

 The eminence grise. Grey and Greyer.

Councillor Nadia Cenci – Portfolio Holder for Communities.

 Likes to associate with the BNP.

Councillor Judy Terry – Portfolio Holder for Arts, Culture and Leisure.

The easiest woman on the planet to bait. Loathed by all the council staff. Tried to join Labour at one point.  Sole merit: a large round bottom.

Councillor Richard Pope – Portfolio Holder for Housing Services.

Who? What?  When?

Councillor Tanya De Hoedt – Portfolio Holder for Transport & Highways Services.

Possible candidate for war crimes prosecutions.  

Councillor Richard Atkins – Portfolio Holder for Planning & Economic Development.

Non-entity amongst even non-entities.  

Councillor Phil Green – Portfolio Holder for Safer Ipswich.

You’re having a laugh here geezer?

Councillor Louise Gooch – Portfolio Holder for Environmental Services.

Ah poor Louise. Everyone’s friend. No-one is “more left wing than I am”. How are things with Andrew Cann recently eh?

 

To top it all one half of this committee of Free Market dictators, is rallying behind Benjy Gummer, (here). Benjy, as I call him as we is mates, came up to us during the local elections. He reads Chomsky and apparently that makes him a good chap. Not in my book mate.

The other part of this rabble backs (though not all of them, see reference to Louise) Andrew Cann. He is the son of the former Labour MP Jamie Cann (here). Now a Liberal Democrat. Following in his father’s footsteps down the Dove.

 

And now they are set to destroy one of the best bus services in the country.

Mike Marqusee in Guardian.

Loved by all Progressive Humanity.

Mike Marqusee has a moving and important article in the Guardian today. ( here)

He is, as we all know, extremely ill. Cancer. Worst kind.

Mike Marqusee was an ‘historic’ editor of Labour Briefing.

His contribution to the left is second to none.

My dad, an old style Labour man, after his stroke and when he was in in Hartesmere Hospital, used to  cut out his articles from the papers.

His proud boast? He would tell the staff that “my son knows Mike Marqusee”.

Beloved comrade, what more can we say?

Death to Anti-Semitism!

 Referring to us lot.

“Because you all go to the same N.London synagogue? Posted by jock mctoursers. Dave’s Part (here).

With these words shall ye know them.

Death to anti-Semitism!

Bab El-Oude City.

Islamicist Terror at its Beginnings.

More here: Bab El Oued City

For those who labour under the illusion that the Algerian civil war all began with the Miliary coup.

This brilliant film shows how Islamicism began to be enforced.

“L’Algérie en 1989 : Peu de temps après les émeutes d’octobre 1988, la vie quotidienne est dure dans le quartier de Bab El-Oued à Alger. Boualem arrache, sur son immeuble, un haut-parleur diffusant la parole de l’Imam, car cela l’empêchait de dormir (il travaille de nuit). Les intégristes islamistes saisissent ce prétexte pour répandre la terreur. Ainsi, ils prennent à partie Ouardya, une femme aux moeurs jugées trop libres…” (here)

Explanation: Algeria in  1989, just afer the riots of October 1990. Daily life in the Bab El-Oued quarter in Algiers. Boualem tears down a loud speaker (blasting out hysterical Islamicist propaganda) from the roof of his building – it stops him from working  (he is a baker on nights). The Islamists seize this as a pretext to spread terror. So they take it out on Ouardy (a Marxist feminist), a women whose morals are judged too free…

David Tennant, Doctor Who, “life-long socialist”.

Brilliant amongst the Brilliant.

David Tennant is a lifelong socialist, and even appeared in a party political broadcast for the Labour Party in 2005.” (here)

Doctor Who (The End of Time here) Par t Two on New Year’s Day was one of the most amazing and sidérant episodes ever.

The very trees in Christchurch Park groaned as he passed away.

The Oud’s song will remain in our hearts.

Comrade, you shall not be forgotten!

Irish Greens Impose Blasphemy Law.

Green Politics?

Anyone with any illusions about what Green politics mean should read this,  (here).

Put simply, being rude about religion is now against the law in Ireland. The legislation was pushed through by the Irish Green Party (Comhaontas Glas) and Fianna Fail

“The convener of the blasphemy.ie website, Michael Nugent, said: “This new law is both silly and dangerous. It is silly because medieval religious laws have no place in a modern secular republic, where the criminal law should protect people and not ideas. And it is dangerous because it incentivises religious outrage, and because Islamic states, led by Pakistan, are already using the wording of this Irish law to promote new blasphemy laws at UN level.”

Mr Nugent now faces possible prosecution and having his home searched under the terms of the new Defamation Act which came into operation on January 1.”

Instead of the Greens support for religious bigotry we should perhaps support this,

“We ask Fianna Fail and the Green Party to repeal their anachronistic blasphemy law, as part of the revision of the Defamation Act that is included within the act. We ask them to hold a referendum to remove the reference to blasphemy from the Irish Constitution.” (More here)

Communiqué of the NPA on Iran: Back the People in Struggle for Liberty!

 

French leftists back Iranian Democrats.

I shall only roughly translate this: it is written in such a way that it is practically the same as English.

“Communiqué du NPA. Le NPA solidaire du peuple iranien en lutte pour sa liberté.

vendredi 1 janvier 2010

C’est avec courage que le peuple iranien fait face depuis plus de six mois à une répression de plus en plus violente et meurtrière.

It is with courage that the people of Iran have stood up, for six months, against a more and more murderous repression.

L’extension et l’approfondissement de la contestation populaire témoigne de la détermination des femmes, de la jeunesse et des travailleurs iraniens. Par sa mobilisation le peuple iranien met en échec la stratégie de terreur qui est la seule ”réponse” dont est capable le régime dictatorial de la République Islamique d’Iran.

The extension and deepening of the popular revolt bears witness to the determination of women, the youth and Iranian workers. By its mobilisation the Iranian people have checked the strategy of terror which is the only ‘response’ of the dictatorial Islamic Republic of Iran.

Face aux aspirations démocratiques légitimes exprimées, les dirigeants de la République Islamique d’Iran et les Gardiens de la Révolution menacent d’écraser la résistance populaire dans un bain de sang, comme l’a montré les 8 morts et les centaines d’arrestations suite à la répression des manifestations du 27 décembre.

Faced with legitimate democratic hopes the leaders of the Islamic Republic and the Revolutionary guards threaten to crush popular resistance in a blood bath, as was shown by the 8 deaths and hundreds of arrests during the demonstrations of the 27th of December.

Plus que jamais, le peuple iranien a besoin de notre solidarité.

More than ever the Iranian people need our solidarity.

Le NPA apporte son soften à toutes celles et ceux en Iran pour la liberté, l’égalité et la justice sociale et exige la libération des centaines d’opposants détenus dans les geôles du gouvernement iranien.

The NPA backs all those in Iran who are fighting for freedom, equality, and social justice. We demand the release of the hundreds of oppositionists held in the gaols of the Iranian government.

 (Here)

The French left has a good record, and this proves it.

It is the duty of every revolutionary to support the struggle!

Ispwich Buses, Council Agenda.

  

Pride of the Town: To be Destroyed by Tory-Liberal Junta.  

To give an example of how this clique run things. Next Council agenda here.  

The stuff on the Buses is part of the ‘closed agenda”. A source comments, “At the meeting next week on the 12th they will probably vote to begin the process. At a future meeting (certainly before the next elections in May) they will vote to confirm the sell-off. That meeting will be held in secret too.” 

Worthy of note:  

“Exclusion of Public

To consider excluding the public (including the

press) from the meeting during consideration

of the following items under Regulation 21 of

the Local Authorities (Executive Arrangements)

(Access to Information) (England) Regulations

2000 as it is likely that if members of the public

   

were present during that item there would be 

disclosure to them of exempt information 

  

falling within paragraphs 3 and 7 of Part 1 of  

Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act  

1972 (as amended).”  

 

Ipswich Labour Party Campaigns Against Bus Sell-off: (here)  

Meanwhile arch-Thatcherite Tory Benjy Gummer is spending thousands of pounds (this is not made up) ‘campaigning’. Figaro-ci, Figaro-là, Benjy here, Benjy there, Benjy fucking everywhere.  

Benjy fuck off.  

I might even vote for Chris Mole the next time I see your mug in the Star or in some expensive glossy publication your minions stuff through my door.  

 

Ipswich Tories and Liberals’ Hatred of Public Transport: a Class Analysis.

Ipswich Liberal-Tory Transport Strategy Meeting.

Anyone walking in Ipswich today will know that the streets are a death-trap. The Borough (Liberal-Tories) and County (Tories) have let the roads and pavements  round here become skating rinks. Nothing done about that. No doubt to save money. But the Buses work well. This has to change. No doubt at all. Must make bus-users suffer. Selling off Ipswich Buses is just part of a general pattern: they do not care about ordinary people in general (pavement users), and bus passengers in particular.

What is the origin of this attitude?

Tendance Coatesy can exclusively reveal the real causes of this position.

Councillor John Carnall  – Deputy Leader and Portfolio Holder for Finance. Travels to work by Black Helicopter. Evenings? He hovers above our comrade’s house in Chantry.

Councillor Nadia Cenci – Portfolio Holder for Communities. Spends most of her time in an attic watching DVDs of Bewitched.

Councillor Judy Terry. After hearty breakfast of ten eggs, five muffins (laced with Maple syrup), six bars of chocolate, she is winched up by a Cherry-Picker and wafted away to her second flat down in Neptune Quay.

Andrew Cann – if he can stumble to the Dove he feels everything is fine.

Benjy Gummer – claims to live in Ipswich. Spends most of his time on extensive estates in Cloud Cuckoo Land. Where he owns a slave plantation. Is transported back by a Chariot pulled by Inferi Dii (demons from Hell).

 

Ipswich Tory-Liberal Slogan, “Pavements and Buses are for losers.”

Note: Interesting local Labour Blog here. (comments mine).

Alasdair Ross quotes the following, “Crown Street Car Park shut (Lords and Ladies don’t need public car-parks, just heliports)
Crown Street Swimming Pool neglected (too posh to wash)
A promise of a million pounds towards Broom Hill Swimming Pool removed (not exactly unforseen)
Planning to close the area Housing Offices (peasants, can’t they use the Web?)
Passing on as much work as they can to private consultants (nice little earners)
Planning to close West Villa. (homeless families – scum)”

One could add their attack on the Caribbean Centre…

Anti-Semitism in Ipswich.

Outrage against the Human Race.

Modernity is often accused of exaggerating the presence of anti-Semitism.

I can personally testify that he is not entirely wrong.

I have heard people say things about ‘the Jews’ which make my blood boil. From 9/11 Troofers at the CSV who speak of the Israelis who didn’t turn up for work that day to people talking abut the ‘yiddos’.

Yesterday I went to the pub (the Robert Ransome)  after writing on the Web.

There was an old fool there, mouthing off about said ‘race’. Sitting on the other side of the bar you could hear him rant and rave from five tables away.

He loudly declared that Hitler “had the right way to deal with them.”

I am acutely conscious that this pub is a few metres away from where the Blackshirts had their Ipswich HQ.

Think, Coatesy.

I have had some tremendous rows recently defending migrant workers and ‘foreigners’ from racists. Do I need another?

This one is clearly a nutter.

But wait.

Help is at hand.

An old Suffolk bor speaks up.

“Moi wife were a Jew.”

Ipswich people have a way of dealing with things.

I strongly suspect this was not true. But he was obviously revolted by what the man said.

That shut his foul gob up.

Save Ipswich Buses!

 

The United Front of all Progressive Humanity to Save Ipswich Buses (Coatesy on extreme left, er, sorry right).

Joking aside this is really important.

Chomsky and La Vieille Taupe.

Serious doubts remain about Chomsky.

Chomsky may be the favourite leftist author for Ipswich Tory Benedict  Gummer.

But very definitely not for Tendance Coatesy.

Chomsky besmirched his reputation for ever by his defence of the Veille Taupe (here). More here.

Apart from his appalling attempt to deny (or at the least, minimise) the extent of the Cambodian genocide, Chomsky leapt to the side of this vile ‘leftist’ French bookshop and publisher, which specialises in anti-Shoah denial. Loathed by every French leftist I may add.

More recently the Veille Taupe has published  Roger Garaudy, Mythes fondateurs de la politique israélienne. A denial of the Holocaust. Written by the former ideologue of the PCF. Who is best known for his attacks on Louis Althusser. And conversion to Islam.

The Observer yesterday published an article on pro Pol Pot academic  Caldwell which cites Chomsky’s genocide denial during the Cambodian massacres (here).

Noam Chomsky. An icon of radical dissent who continues to command a fanatical following, Chomsky had questioned the legitimacy of refugee testimony that provided much of Ponchaud’s research. Chomsky believed that their stories were exaggerations or fabrications, designed for a western media involved in a “vast and unprecedented propaganda campaign” against the Khmer Rouge government, “including systematic distortion of the truth”.He compared Ponchaud’s work unfavourably with another book, Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution, written by George Hildebrand and Gareth Porter, which cravenly rehashed the Khmer Rouge’s most outlandish lies to produce a picture of a kind of radical bucolic idyll. At the same time Chomsky excoriated a book entitled Murder of A Gentle Land, by two Reader’s Digest writers, John Barron and Anthony Paul, which was a flawed but nonetheless accurate documentation of the genocide taking place.

For all his interesting and valuable work doubts therefore remain about Chomsky.

The stink was such that even  publications like Le Monde Diplomatique still refer to this – while defending Chomsky against his more direct critics.

Coatesy Facing Up to Global Warming (New Year’s Day).

Felixstowe Ferry (here).

Parti de Gauche Leader on Burka: The ‘Body Veil is an Affront to Liberty Itself’.

 

French Left Leader Backs Secular Freedom Against Religious Garb.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Here

On proposals to ban the Burka.

What is wrong with the Burka (voile intégral) ?  ”D’abord parce qu’il est obscène.”

To start with it’s obscene.

Principles?

 ”l’universalité des droits de la personne humaine, d’autre part la défense du caractère laïque de la République française.”

The universality of human rights, and on the other side, the defence of the secular basis of the French Republic.

“Si l’objet de la nouvelle loi est bien de garantir la liberté, l’égalité et la dignité de toutes les femmes qui vivent sur notre territoire, d’autres mesures seraient opportunes dans ce cadre.

If the object of the new law is  to guarantee freedom, equality and dignity of all women who live in our land, there are other measures which should be taken within this structure.

 Si une proposition de loi est débattue, je pense que les parlementaires de gauche devraient les proposer par amendements.

The Parliametary Left should amend the law (he is a Senator).

Le but serait d’étendre le champ d’application de l’impératif laïque.

The aim should be to extend secularism.

Après cela il est temps aussi d’imposer l’obligation de mixité des lieux publics et services publics. En effet le principe de mixité n’est pas aujourd’hui garanti par la loi, y compris à l’école.

It is time to impose the principle of ‘mixing’ (that is women and men should allowed to be together) in all public places. Today this principle is not guaranteed by law, even in schools.

Par exemple, on ne peut accepter le maintien et l’extension des horaires de piscine non mixtes, ou bien les heures d’accès au sport réservées aux seuls hommes ou aux seules femmes, chacun de leur côté.

For example, one cannot accept the rule that reserves certain hours in swimming pools for one gender. Or that certain types of sport should be reserved for one gender.

Enfin, si législateur voulait afficher la constance de ses principes et la cohérence de sa pensée pour notre pays, il pourrait, pour conclure la nouvelle loi laïque, étendre l’application de la loi de 1905 outre-mer et en Alsace Moselle.

Finally, if the legislators are really coherent they should extend secularism to French overseas territories and to Alsace Moselle (where there is still recognition of religion as part of the state and the education system).

Even more hard-line than Coatesy!

Our Goddess. Not wearing a Burka.

Front de Gauche: Best Wishes Comrades!

 

One Two, One Two, Comrades there’s a Place for You in the Front de Gauche!

Le Monde here

“L’accord a été signé la veille. Sachant que leur salut dépend de leur politique unitaire, les communistes se sont faits plus coulants. Le Parti de gauche a obtenu deux départements de plus et trois têtes de listes départementales en Ile-de-France. La Gauche unitaire de Christian Picquet, une région et quatre départements et les Alternatifs obtiennent l’Alsace. Le reste sera pour le PCF, soit environ 90 à 95 candidats pour 184 sortants.

The agreement was signed yesterday. Knowing that their success depended on unity the Communists were more supple. The Parti de Gauche will have two regional lists, and three list heads in the Isle-de-France. The Gauche unitaire of Christian Piquet (ex-LCR minority tendency) will have one region and the Alternatives (self-management) will have Alsace. The remaining regions will be PCF-led lists, around 90 to 95 candidates (for 184 former councillors).

La fin des négociations s’est faite au détriment des autres petites formations comme la Fédération pour une alternative sociale et écologique et des personnalités comme Clémentine Autain ou Leila Chadli, minoritaire “unitaire” du NPA.

Smaller groups lost out in the negotiations, such as the Federation for a social and ecological alternative and Clémentine Autain ou Leila Chadli, a minority current in the Nouveau Parti Anti-capitaliste.

Le Front de gauche, élargi aux Alternatifs, au Parti communiste des ouvriers de France et au Mouvement politique d’éducation populaire – qui se présentera aux électeurs sous l’appellation “Ensemble pour des régions à gauche solidaires, écologistes et citoyennes” –, est “dans les starting-blocks”, jurent-ils tous.

The Front de Gauche, broadened to the Alternatives and Parti communiste des ouvriers de France and the Mouvement politique d’éducation populaire ( even I, leftist  train-spotter who likes the Arlernatifs do know who these last two lot are) will stand as “Together in the regions for a social, ecological and citizen left. ”

We are now in the starting blocks!

This is a remarkable alliance.

Going from self-management leftists, republicans, libertarian leftists, democratic Trotskyists, democratic socialists to the French Communist Party. In December Le Monde reported that a current within Les Verts (Greens) wanted to reach an agreement with the Front de Gauche.

Comrades we wish you well!

Daniel Bensaïd is Dead.

Amid the good news about the Front de Gauche I have just learnt that Bensaïd is dead.

(here) More here

Will be posting on this.

I am  sad. Really sad.

He was a real beacon of hope.

Rohmer Dies.

One of his best.

Eric Rohmer is dead.

For all cinephiles he was an perpetual source of beauty and wonder. I have a framed postcard of Triple agent just behind my telly.  Rohmer’s ‘intimist’ films showed life in its real complexity, anxiety, and love.

BBC report Here Le Monde here.

Wikipedia here.

1. Ma nuit chez Maud (1969)  A mighty film.
2. La Collectionneuse (1967) La Femme de l’aviateur ou On ne saurait penser à rien, antithèse de l’œuvre de Musset On ne saurait penser à tout (1981) Perceptive to the max.
3. Le Beau Mariage ou Quel esprit ne bat la campagne qui ne fait château en Espagne de La Fontaine (1982) Great.
4. Pauline à la plage   A gem. A real gem. Expressed every reason why we love French women – in all their forms.
5. Le Rayon vert ou Que le temps vienne où les cœurs s’éprennent, vers extraits du poème Chanson de la plus haute tour d’Arthur Rimbaud (1986) Now have DVD from the Independent. Fantastique.
6. Conte de printemps (1990) The whole Contes series is translucent
7. Conte d’hiver (1992)
8. Conte d’été (1996)
9. Conte d’automne (1998)

All below recommended.

• 1993 : L’Arbre, le maire et la médiathèque
• 1995 : Les Rendez-vous de Paris
• 2001-2007 : Drames historiques :
  • 2001 : L’Anglaise et le Duc
  • 2004 : Triple agent
  • 2007 : Les Amours d’Astrée et de Céladon. His last film. Saw on DVD last month.

The man was simply a genius.

 

Daniel Bensaïd, Camarade.

A Real Marxist.

There have rightly been many tributes to Daniel Bensaïd (biography in English here). Images and references in Le Monde here. In English from the Fourth International here. More in English here.  In French here. And thanks to all the comrades, notably Jim  Monaghan, who have supplied links.

He was an exceptionally fine human being.

His history is that of the left: son of Communist parents he moved to the revolutionary left in the 1960s.

I won’t repeat what has already been said about his career.  From shaky beginnings (such as his enthusiasm for Third world guerillarism) he gradually became a major Marxist thinker. Personally I was more influenced by his thought in the 1990s and the present decade than by his earlier books.

But what I would like to add is that Bensaïd became, during the 1990s, heavily engaged with Kantian and open democratic Marxist thought. Like many of us who have a background in the same intellectual tradition he was in a perpetual dialogue with republicanism. Unlike, say the British Socialist Workers’ Party, he was critical of the religious turn of some of the left. His last writings develop his earlier critique of postmodernism into a general attack on the former Marxists who had become admirers of  Mystical Messianism – all the more remarkable given his earlier work on Walter Benjamin. They can be viewed here.

I met him once, at a day-long seminar held in London Metropolitan University in the late 1990s. I asked him about his references to Kant’s Contest of Faculties. Essentially Kant says that such was the capacity for improvement shown by the French Revolution, that despite all the setbacks, all the horrors, this event showed humanity’s capacity for improvement for ever. That never again would this drive for progress be fundamentally thwarted. Bensaïd believed that the Russian Revolution was in the same great line.

 

Was he right?

 

Well Tariq Ali, who grovels at the feet of Islamism, has the cheek to write an Obit as well.

SWP Nears the End.

Fourth Song of the Dead?

Ian Bone comments (here).

My long term deep entrists within the belly of the beast  tell me that the Socialist Worker is on the verge of financial collapse.No ones been paid at the Socialist Worker or Socialist Review for the last 3-4 weeks, none of the full timers have been paid for a similar period, morale is low. They are looking to declare bankruptcy by June.None of this was of course revealed to the membership at last weekend’s conference!

Boney may not be the most impartial reporter of this (though as we have a deep personal link I tend to trust his judgement).

But is this true, or is it bleeding true?

The Devil Has Us By The Throat.

Flexible New Deal Training Centre.

Casablanca. Young women refugee. “The Devil has us by the throat Sir, please help us.”

Caught between the twin evils of Christian and Islamist reaction (Brown and al-Qaeda), we are in this situation today.

I have been ‘strongly advised’ by the state’s sub-contractors not to post anything on the YMCA.

So I won’t.

Save us from the religious barbarians O Pallas Athena‎.

Sixth International. Traitors.

Betrayed by So-Called Sixth International.

It has come to the attention of Tendance Coatesy that a group of splitters are in the process of forming the Sixth International.

A special plenary session of Tendance Coatesy was held last night in the Spring Road Allotment shed. Our Central Committee (Majority Faction) formally denounces this band of traitors to the cause of liquidationism. Our external faction of the Sixth International has published a detailed critique of this clique of sell-outs (available in English, French and Sumerian cuneiform tablets). It will shortly be available on the Darknet.

Wikipedia entry (here):

“The Sixth International is or was an international socialist organisation which claims the heritage of the Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth Internationals, while considering that the members of each were irrevocably liberal, centrist splitters. It does not recognise The First International as it considers its official name, the International Workingmen’s Association, phallocentric.

The main body of the Sixth International split from the Fifth International some time before it was founded, objecting to its leadership’s delaying tactics in recognising their faction, the “League to Destroy the Fifth International”.

When founded, the group claimed three members, one each in Milton Keynes, Stamfordshire and the Gilbert and Sullivan Islands. However, its Stamfordshire section (known as the Stamford Worker’s Party) was disaffiliated when they were found to have skipped its stringent admission requirements, which insisted that each member must have read the entire output of Marx, Lenin, Mao and Hoxha in the original tongues, have mastered sumo to Olympic standard and be able to recite the complete lyrics to Mmm-Bop by Hanson. The Stamfordshire section soon came to see an opening to the proletariat in local pigeon racing clubs, and undertook a long-term entrist strategy, disguised as a collared dove.

Within a month of the Stamfordshire split, the two remaining sections agreed to hold the Founding Conference in Milton Keynes. The Gilbert and Sullivan Islands section was unable to find the venue, and promptly left the international, writing a famous polemic, Well, you started it.

Both sections continued to refer to each other as the official Sixth International, while giving their own groups increasingly elaborate names. The Milton Keynes section is now known as the “Sixth International (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-Hoxhaist) (Provisional Central Committee)”, and now bases its ideology on the thoughts of Pol Pot and Margaret Thatcher, calling for intellectuals to be sold shares in the countryside and forced to march to the Conservative Party Conference.

The Gilbert and Sullivan Islands section calls itself the “World International League for the International Redistribution of the Assets of the Sixth International (Gilbert and Sullivan Islands) International”, its member said to be close to splitting with herself over the question of the orthodox pronunciation of “Boise”.”

It is sad sign of the degeneration of this once healthy current that it fails this pons asinorum for all revolutionaries.

 Boise is pronounced Boïsé

Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition: Good, But Where is the Policy on Migrant Workers?

Keep the Red Flag Flying!

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition has been launched. Analysis of its prospects via Phil here, and the general political background in the Weekly Worker here. Wikipedia here. Clearly its aim is to mobilise support for left candidates in the coming election. From a wide spectrum of parties, including Labour. No doubt there is much to say about the left and union bodies involved, or the refusal of some groups (CPB for example) who do not back it. This is its provisional programme. On this basis it looks encouraging but, as noted below, there is a serious gap and underdeveloped themes.

“The core policies include, amongst others, opposition to public spending cuts and privatisation, calls for investment in publicly owned and controlled renewable energy, the repeal of the anti-trade union laws, and the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

The statement makes a clear socialist commitment to “bringing into democratic public ownership the major companies and banks that dominate the economy, so that production and services can be planned to meet the needs of all and to protect the environment”.

Here.

PUBLIC OWNERSHIP, NOT PRIVATISED PROFIT
Stop all privatisation, including “PFI” & “PPP” – privatisation just rakes off our money into their pockets, for worse services.
Bring public services and utilities back into public ownership under democratic control.

NO CUTS – QUALITY PUBLIC SERVICES
Take rail back into public ownership and build integrated, low-pollution public transport.
Quality, free National Health Service under democratic public ownership and control.
Stop council house sell-offs and build eco-friendly, affordable public housing.
Good, free education for all under democratic local control, plus student grants not fees.
Keep Royal Mail as a publicly owned service, not a privatised cash cow.

STOP GLOBAL WARMING
Deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions – otherwise climate change, caused by capitalism, will destroy us.
Invest in publicly owned and controlled renewable energy – not nuclear or dirty fossil fuel.

JOBS, NOT HANDOUTS TO BANKERS & BILLIONAIRES
Bring banks and finance into true public ownership and democratic control, instead of huge handouts to the very capitalists who caused the crisis.
Tax the rich. Progressive tax on rich corporations and individuals, with a crackdown on tax avoidance.
Massive investment in environmental projects, for jobs and survival.

EMPLOYMENT & TRADE UNION RIGHTS
Repeal the anti-trade union laws.
A minimum wage set at half average adult male earnings, with no exemptions.
Invest to create and protect jobs, especially for young people.
Solidarity with workers taking action to defend jobs, conditions, pensions, public services and trade unions.

PROTECT OUR ENVIRONMENT
Recognise that we depend on our environment for survival.
Move to sustainable, low-pollution industry & farming – stop the pollution that is destroying our environment.
Recognise that many of our planet’s resources are limited and that capitalism fritters them away for profit.
Produce for need, not profit, and design goods for reuse and recycling.

DECENT PENSIONS & BENEFITS
Restore the pre-Thatcher real value of pensions and link them to the higher of wages & earnings.
Protect entitlement to benefits and their value; end child poverty. This needs a clear stand against Welfare Reform and Workfare to be added.

DEMOCRACY, DIVERSITY & JUSTICE
Welcome diversity and oppose racism, fascism and discrimination.
Ensure women have genuinely equal rights and pay.
Defend our liberties and make police and security democratically accountable.
For a democratic socialist society run in the interests of people not millionaires. For bringing into democratic public ownership the major companies and banks that dominate the economy, so that production and services can be planned to meet the needs of all and to protect the environment.

SOLIDARITY NOT WAR
Bring home all British troops from Afghanistan immediately – no more wars for resources.
No more spending on a new generation of nuclear weapons, huge aircraft carriers or irrelevant eurofighters – convert arms spending to socially useful products and services.
An independent foreign policy, based on international solidarity – no more US poodle, no moves to a capitalist, militarist United States of Europe, no Lisbon Treaty.

It has been pointed out by the comrades on Facebook that this lacks any policy on migrant workers. Or on immigration.

These are core issues for trade unionists and socialists. Xenophobic  ’anti-foreigner’ sentiment is widespread in the UK. It shades into open racism. It drives politics to the right. It divides. We need to above all to defend the rights of migrant workers. That is, to  build working class unity, and make class politics, not the communalism of fading groups like Respect, or the nationalism of the mainstream parties, our principle. Not to mention the need to fight the BNP.

Nouveau Parti AntiCapitaliste in Disarray?

Nouveau Parti AntiCapitaliste in Disarray?

Le Monde reports yesterday (here),

Olivier Besancenot is to head the regional election List in the Ile-de-France – “ à contrecoeur” – reluctantly. He stands in a weak position in this area.

Depuis que sa direction a été mise en minorité à la mi-décembre, le NPA n’a pas d’orientation nationale sur les régionales et les fédérations gèrent localement leurs accords. Résultat : dans trois régions, le NPA s’allie avec le Front de gauche ; dans trois autres, il part avec les amis de M. Mélenchon ; en PACA, avec les Alternatifs… Ailleurs, il se présente seul, avec le soutien du Mouvement des objecteurs de croissance.

Since mid-December, when its leadership was put in a minority, the NPA has no national strategy for the regional elections. The result? In three regions the NPA has allied itself with the Front de Gauche, in three others, it is alligned with the ‘friends of Mélenchon’ (Parti de Gauche), with the PACA (left alternative republicans), the Alternatifs. Elsewhere it is standing alone, with the support of the Red-Green ‘Objectors to Growth’.

En interne, l’absence de ligne trouble les militants et ça tangue. Les minoritaires, partisans de listes avec le Front de gauche, refusent de faire la campagne. L’amertume en gagne même quelques-uns qui se retirent sur la pointe des pieds. “Le choix de partir seul est pour moi l’expression de l’échec du projet NPA”, écrit Leila Chaibi, démissionnaire de la direction nationale.

Internally, the absence of a line is worrying the activists and (leaving their politics askew) is hardly to be wished for. The minority, who want a common list with the Front de Gauche, are refusing to campaign. Bitterness has gone so far that some have backed off completely. “The decision to go it alone is for me the expression of the set-back for the NPA-project”, writes Leila Chaibi, who has resigned from the national executive.

There are currently three main positions in the NPA on this: A) the position above (let local groups try to work out their own ‘unitary’ strategy – the current Majority’s position), B) No alliance with the Front de Gauche and C) Alliance with the Front de Gauche. (More here). Indications from the membership show strong support for B, with backing the two other lines however, when put together, nearly equalising this score.

Despite the popularity of the go-it-alone stand, it appears then that the good sense of many local NPA activists has resulted in agreements with other political forces of the left. Others still riding into battle without allies, are, we can judge, even from this distance, making a serious error. It should not forgotten that the real problem is not intra-left, but the complete mess represented by the Parti Socialiste. Apart from the never-ending farce of Ségèlone Royal, there is its steady drift rightwards. The Socialists’ are trying to align with the right-wing French Green Party – les Verts – and they are attempting to reach agreements with the pompous centrist François Bayrou. They are following in the foot-steps of  the Italian Democratic Party which  destroyed the country’s left. Which has left Italy ruled by a blustering tyrant. The stakes are extremely high. Sarkozy will never be defeated by the Socialists’ strategy. Nor by the NPA standing ‘seul contre tous’. The Front de Gauche is an attempt to fight back. A serious effort to refound the left. To emulate Die Linke.

Pete has described on this Blog the way of alliance in Languedoc. “Here in the Languedoc our list includes the NPA, RdG, PCF, Fede, Alternatives, GU and Objecteur de croissance (Red greens).” Mind you does mention some PCF people now standing under the (racist ex-Parti Socialiste) Frêche  ticket (he was expelled for his racialist rants, such as calling ‘harkis’ – Algerians who fought on the French side in the war of liberation - ”sub-human”).

These comrades deserve support. The challenge by the real French left against a proto-’Italian’ turn will have repercussions for the whole European movement.

Though I somewhat doubt if we’ll hear much of this side of the story in the British left press.

Hands off the People of Iran: February Week of Action.

 

Hands Off the People of Iran is launching a week of action in solidarity with the grassroots opposition movement in Iran, running from February 13-20 2010.

  

More information here.

It is the duty of every revolutionary and person of good will to show solidarity with the Iranian protesters.

Lest we forget.

Burka: French Propositions.

How Should This Be Approached?

In France, the Voile intégral (Burka, Niqab) may be prohibited in certain public spaces. A special Parliamentary  Commission has just announced the conclusions of its investigations. This recommends.

Une résolution parlementaire «condamnant le port du voile intégral comme contraire aux valeurs de la République», assortie de son interdiction dans les services publics et de mesures visant à conditionner son abandon à l’obtention d’un titre de séjour ou de la nationalité française, à encourager les actions de médiation et de pédagogie et à renforcer la lutte contre les violences faites aux femmes. (More here)

A Parliamentary resolution, condemning “wearing the Burka, as contrary to the values of the republic” linked to its ban in public services, and measures making French nationality and permission to stay in France, and to encourage education and mediation to prevent violence against women.

The report, adopted this Tuesday, argues for a parliamentary resolution followed by a ban on “hiding one’s face” in public services, including transport, but not in the street.

According to the Nouvel Obsevateur many UMP (Sarkozy’s party) deputies support banning the Burka in all public spaces. (here) Representatives of the Catholic Church and the French Protestants and Muslim organisations oppose any law. The Chief Rabbi has refused to take a position (here). But also see Paris Iman Hassen Chalghoumi backs Burka Ban (here). The French Communist Party (PCF) has already made clear its opposition to any such legislation, saying it ‘stigmatises’ Islam (here). However the joint rapporteur of the Commission on the Burka, André Gerin (here) is a prominent member of the PCF.

The rest of the left shows divisions. Opposition to the Burka from the Parti de Gauche (here) but criticism of the laws as ‘stigmatisation’ of a particular relgion, and a lack of a general secularist approach.

Nothing will be decided before this Spring’s Regional Elections. It appears doubtful if a sustainable law can be thought up.

This is a sledge hammer approach to a very small problem of a few thousands wearers. Such a law would be impossible, without repression, to enforce. Marie George Buffet (PCF leader) is right, it does stigmatise Islam. It is in fact a diversion from real social problems. Notably a political response to reactionary Islamism. It would result in more confinement of women not less. It is startling that the UMP, which is is noted for hostility to social equality, is mounting this campaign.

Few on the French left would defend the Burka. Many would prefer no legal measures at all. However, there clearly is a case to prevent anyone in authority over others (teachers for example) imposing their anti-humanist dress code. It is a reproach to ‘unveiled’ women every minute it is worn. Not to mention a continuous proclamation of ‘purity’ against the ‘impure’. In these conditions it is a true challenge to the republican and democratic values of any land.

The anglophone left tends to ignore the reality of Islamism. It always looks for some ‘positive’ aspect of this far-right ideology, and ignores the violence it imposes, particularly on women. There is no doubt that Islamists in France are trying to enforce their anti-human ideas of ‘purity’ on those they consider ‘their’ women – as Enty links in the tragic tale of Rayhana, below.

Feminist actress attacked in Paris

 By John Lichfield in Paris 

Saturday, 16 January 2010

Police launched a terrorism investigation in Paris yesterday after two men tried to set fire to an Algerian feminist playwright and actress.  The attackers sprayed Rayhana, known only by her first name, with petrol and threw a lit cigarette in her face. The petrol did not ignite, possibly because of the extreme cold. 

Rayhana, 45, is appearing in and directing her own play about the oppression of women in Algeria. She was walking to a theatre in a north-eastern suburb of the city when she was insulted in Arabic and attacked. A fortnight ago, she was approached in the same area by two men who said: “We know who you are, you miscreant whore. This is a warning.”  More here.

Interesting general history of the imposition of the Veil here.

Tories May Let Councils Set Benefit Levels.

Life On Ipswich Tory-Liberal Local Unemployment Benefits.

Tories May Let Councils Set Benefit Levels. Toby Helm. Guardian here.

Under the proposal benefits would be lower where it was easier to find work, and councils would also be given incentives to help people find jobs. The Conservative Treasury team are holding talks on handing responsibility to local councils for setting and distributing benefits such as the jobseeker’s allowance.

A move to setting benefit rates to match the needs of local labour markets has been pushed by radical Tory councils but it is the first time that the frontbench has embraced the concept.

Speaking at a conference organised by the New Local Government Network in London, the shadow chief secretary, Philip Hammond, disclosed that he was holding talks on the issue with Conservative councils, including Kent. He said: “There are some key challenges we will have to face in delivering this agenda. Can we take the public with us in this agenda? Can we persuade people living in your area, for example, they would rather see the management of workless benefits in the hands of a local authority than in the hands of a national government setting standards nationally?” He said “huge potential savings” were available, adding that he regarded local government as pivotal to reducing the public sector deficit.

Under the proposal benefits would be lower where it was easier to find work. Councils would also be given incentives to help people find jobs. The plan has not yet appeared in any formal document.

This is part of a pattern. It’s not just cuts, (‘savings’). Or lower benefits generally. We can be sure that making welfare more ‘local’ and ‘decentralised’ will mean (through inevitable sub-contracting) greater involvement of Charitable and religious groups. That is,  in running the lives of the out-of-work. The days of Mr and Mrs Bountiful will return. And Mr Beadle.

In Ipswich this would be an utter disaster. The Liberal-Tory administration has attacked public services: shut down local Housing Offices, closed the Film Theatre, closed Crown Pools Car Park, hived off work to ‘consultants’, threatens to shut a residence for homeless families, and is now privatising Ipswich buses. They refuse to deal properly with the needs of growing numbers of street sleepers. They  have made a Council funded Community Centre (largely dealing with the workless) into a ‘Trust’ with a dominant religious  and charity element on the Board.

Their attitude to the poor is summed up by one leading Tory Councillor saying that their new ‘Community Centre’ in an old town Church (St Lawrence Centre) will “keep the riff raff out“.

Put that lot in charge of the dole and we will be queuing at Charity soup kitchens in no time.

More on Unemployed Campaigns, Ipswich Unemployed Action, here.

‘Progressive’ London ? The Last Gasp of Popular Frontism.

Last Gasp of Popular Frontism?

This weekend there is a conference that calls itself ‘Progressive London’.

It’s being held to set out the Progressive Agenda to Stop the Right in 2010.

The background?

 
Progressive London is a unique coalition, launched by Ken Livingstone, and involving people and views from across the political, cultural, community, generational and artistic spectrum, to promote the kinds of progressive policies which have made London such a success and a place where people from all walks of life and cultural backgrounds can be themselves and come together around common goals.

Based on this,

London is one of the most dynamic and exciting cities in the world. The basis of its recent success, creativity and prosperity has been its international openness, radical steps to protect the environment, respect for diverse cultures and traditions and the central role of public sector investment and public services in helping the city to work. 

Rarely has so much wool been spun to cover a threadbare political programme. Progressive is a term that can be extended far. Though not so far as to clothe those who oppose a “dynamic and exciting” London,  have “no” respect for diverse cultures,  who dislike openness, and detest public services. Gotcha reactionaries!

Speakers include (I cite one session on electoral reform):

• Jenny Jones AM, Leader, Green Group, London Assembly
• Mike Tuffrey AM, Leader, Liberal Democrat Group, London Assembly
• Neal Lawson, Chair, Compass
• Sunder Katwala, General Secretary, Fabian Society

So from right-wing New Labour, to Liberals, via the Greens, and the centre left Compass, we have a gamut of ‘progressives’.

Then we have a hefty gang of the religious-minded.
• Edie Friedman, Director, Jewish Council for Racial Equality
• Professor Tariq Ramadan (our old friend gets about doesn’t he?)
• Bruce Kent, Vice President, Pax Christi
• Mike Barnard, Uprise
• Wilf Sullivan, TUC Race Equality Officer
• CHAIR: Murziline Parchment

George Galloway MP, Harriet Harman MP, Ed Miliband MP, Jon Cruddas MP, Diane Abbott MP, Bairbre de Brún MEP, Sinn Féin, and his nibs, Ken Livingstone, will be speaking.

Prominent members of secretive sect Socialist Action (John Ross for example) and fellow travellers, such  as Annie Marjoram, will be there to talk as well. Though in all fairness one should add that Martin Smith national organiser of the SWP will be there for a session of music and racism. And on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq there are prominent Communist Party of Britain supporters,  Andrew Murray, Chair, Stop the War Coalition and the  Chair, John Haylett, Political Editor, Morning Star

Still some might suggest that Socialist Action have played a key part in setting the agenda.

It is hard, if not impossible, to see any common agenda between such diverse people. Let’s leave aside religious fishers after souls, and dodgy groups like the Islamic Initiative. Or the Islamic Forum Europe, whose associate, Azad Ali is part of the session on There is no Progressive Imperialism. Ali is former Head of the Civil Service Islamic Society, closely associated with the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE)  and the East London Mosque (ELM) both of which are dominated by the Jamaat-e-Islam (the murderers of our beloved leftist Bangladeshi comrades).

The Forum publishes gibberish like this (here),

In order to be effective agents of change in the community, Islamic activists (duat) should take into consideration what may be termed as the ‘Diversity- and relationship – oriented empathy’ attitude towards da’wa and the people who are being called (mad’u). This, you may say, is more of a counselling psychologist approach, which was, without a doubt, the method employed by the Prophet when he interacted with other people.

The central point is that there is nothing progressive (forward moving) about the agenda of New Labour. Never was. It was a reaction: it aimed to grab the centre-ground of politics. It went for Middle England. It continued the Tories’ plans to make the state a ‘market state’. It has privatised and kowtowed to the Finance that Livingstone thinks plays a major role in making London such a dynamic city.  It is making the lives of the workless a misery by Welfare ‘reform’. It has not promoted Trade Union Rights. The central problem of the left is to recreate a viable democratic socialist alternative to New Labour. So what do the Saturday Conference-goers  have to talk about?

ONE SOCIETY, MANY CULTURES, THE COST OF WAR – AFGHANISTAN, IRAQ, TRIDENT. DEFENDING FRONT LINE SERVICES, BORIS JOHNSON MID-TERM – AND HOLDING THE MAYOR TO ACCOUNT, THERE IS NO PROGRESSIVE IMPERIALISM, STOPPING THE BNP – NO CONCESSIONS TO THE FAR RIGHT, WINNING THE ARGUMENT – NEW MEDIA AND THE ELECTION, WHY THE TORIES ARE NOT PROGRESSIVE,CAPITALWOMAN, HOMES AND PLANNING FOR LONDON’S FUTURE, A PROGRESSIVE AGENDA TO STOP THE RIGHT IN 2010,  CONFRONTING THE ECONOMIC CRISIS – INVESTMENT NOT CUTS •KEEP LONDON MOVING – CUT FARES NOT INVESTMENT,TACKLING CLIMATE CHANGE AFTER COPENHAGEN, PR – PROGRESS THROUGH ELECTORAL REFORM?THE WAY FORWARD 

All no doubt worthy topics.

But not the slightest agenda setting programme. That is a serious break with New Labour, Neo-Liberalism, and the promotion of Communalism that many of the religious figures invited promote. A realistic set of proposals to fight unemployment, rebuild the Welfare state, promote equality and anti -racism (against multi-culturalism), to offer plans for social ownership and to claw back and extend working people’s rights. And on Welfare Reform, the single most regressive policy of the present government – silence, silence, silence. All is subordinated to the need to battle the Tories and the BNP. Any group or individual willing to do so, in classic ‘popular front’ style, is welcome to join in.

The overwhelming impression (apart from being a vehicle of numerous personal ambitions) is of the lost huddling together to stay warm.

Nothing at any rate remotely resembling the projects of Die Linke and the Front de Gauche.

Tariq Ali: Politics and Philosophy of Cant.

Gentleman Anti-Imperialist.

Tariq Ali is an anti-imperialist. In the latest New Left Review (Jan/February) (here) - just out – he writes about President Barak Obama (‘President of Cant’). One year after the election. “How has the American empire altered?” Results and Prospects. His focus? American foreign policy.

US global strategy under Obama Ali notes, has a “continuity” with previous Presidents, from Reagan, Clinton to both Bushes. Despite humanitarian ”mood music” it remains about entrenching the power of the “American Empire”. Change, but remaining the same.

The structure of this Imperial realm is broadly painted. We have an, often incisive, analysis of how US interests are upheld across the world. Notably in the Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Obama stands accused of “sonorous banality and armour plated hypocrisy”. That is, his warm words about human rights and social justice cover - thinly - naked exercises in realpolitik and a drive for world hegemony.

One would have liked discussion of what exactly the ‘interests’  in each case are. No doubt based on state power, resources, prestige, and markets. But it’s always niggled me that this can be used to explain any US policy going. Including say, the exact opposite of what Obama is doing. One wonders if there are some serious misjudgments being made in Afghanistan and Iraq. That betray not just human rights, but American ‘interests’ as well.

In this instance Ali should have explained why Obama is pursuing the same basic strategy as his forerunners. What mix of lobbies, policy analysts, inner Presidential factions, Congress and Senate committees, is at work here. Where it is leading. Instead we have a ‘discourse anlaysis”. That “each address larded with every egregious euphemism that White House speech-writers can muster to describe America’s glowing mission in the world, and modest avowal of awe and sense of responsibility in carrying it forward.”

But he does not go far into the material analysis of interests.

Neverthless Ali describes the Allied occupation in Iraq with well-measured (and deserved) scorn. He attacks the Afghanistan client regime. American intervention in the labyrinth of Pakistani politics, and questions their heavy-handed attempt to force the country to crush domestic radical Islamists.  He doubts the US’s good faith in the Palestine-Israel conflict. He puts the sheer misery inflicted on the people in these lands  in the foreground. On Iran Ali cites the history of tacit co-operation between Tehran and Washington. He sketches the recent conflicts between the Islāmic republic and the US – from the nuclear issue to regional alliance. In short a complex jig-saw puzzle of different rivalries, regimes, and bloody disputes, is put together.

So far so good. Ali is at his strongest in describing inter-sub continental conflicts. One has the feel of someone really grappling with the politics of Pakistan and its neighbours. Who is intimate with the details of its President ” infamous widower of Benazir Bhutto, Asif Zardari, a discredited crook.” Afghanistan under Kazari is a state for which words like  corruption and profiteering are too mild. The US presence is profoundly malign. Recent drives in the border zones (drone bombing for example) and across over to Pakistan itself,  are wreaking havoc. They are truly  ”destabilising another society in the interests of the American Empire.”

But what are Ali’s philosophy and politics? What is his alternative?

He bemoans the lack of “anti-imperialist solidarity” with Afghanistan, which would “weaken the system in it homelands.” That there a “Second Saigon is not in prospect”. That is, “No world-historical spectacle could be more welcome than the American proconsul feeling once again by helicopter from the roof of the embassy”. For all the resemblance with Vietnam (says he) this isn’t on the cards today.

On Iran he opines that the present revolt stems from an attempt of the most “openly pro-Western  to take power on a  wave of (mostly) middle-class protest”. This “was supressed by an incumbant counterstrike that combined electoral fraud and militia violence”. He criticises the  opposition leadership as compromised with past repression. But nobody can ignore than for Ali “pro-Western” is not a compliment. Ali rages at Obama’s “ideological posturing” for expressing support for the Iranian protestors. Against his grief at Neda’ murder. ‘What about’ – the cheapest trick on the left – killings in the imperial domain? asks Ali. 

I will resist the temptation to do my own “What abouts”.  Except one: what about backing the democratic opposition loudly and clearly Tariq?

 No doubt Ali is wrapped up in his conclusion, that Obama is looking to fail. That, “If the recent setbacks for Democrats in West Virginia and New Jersey—where Democratic voters stayed at home—become a pattern, Obama could be a third one-term President, abandoned by his supporters and mocked by those he tries so hard to conciliate.”

Hold on. What about the foreign policy itself?

This signals the underlying dilemma of the essay. In the lands where the US and its Allies are present we have the “Western occupation and its collaborators”. That there are those, throughly not ‘pro-Western’, who are ‘anti’ the Empire. They are the “resistance” – Iraqi above all. Ali can’t quite bring himself to give this tag to Afghanistan – he talks instead of “Afghan guerillas”, “reorganised neo-Taliban”. So, being opposed to the Empire is good. They are ‘anti-imperialists’. Brave chaps. Perhaps a little misguided on some  issues . However, Ali, probably sensibly if he wants to avoid upsetting his fragile ideology, does not go far into the nature of these ‘resistances’.

For they are dyed-in-wool reactionaries.

By minimising this Tariq Ali is as guilty of cant as any American President.

 

Iran: Number of Dissidents Threatened With Death Rises to 66.

Iran on Thursday hanged two men for being ‘dissidents’ and for participating in protests that erupted over the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June last year. The appeals court upheld the preliminary sentence handed down to Reza Ali Zamani and Arash Rahmani Pour, who had also been charged with plotting to topple the Islamic government; the Tehran prosecutor told the media that they had belonged to the monarchist group Tondar. (Pakistani Newspaper Dawn here).

The true scale of the repression is now emerging.

Names of political prisoners condemned to death  (from here) :

 1 – Ali Saremi, 2- Ayub Porkar, 3 – Ahmad Karimi, 4 – Nasser Abdolhosseini 5 – Reza Khademi, 6 – Amir Reza Arefi 7 – Alireza Karami Khairabadi, 8 – Khaled Hardani, 9 – Abbas Deldar 10 – Farhad Vakili, Kurdistan : 11 – Zeinab Jalalian, 12 – Habibolah Latifi, 13 – Shirko Moarefi 14 – Farhad Vakili, 15 – Farzad Kamangar, 16 – Ali Heidarian, 17 – Hossein Khezri, 18 – Rashid AKhkandi, 19 – Mohammad Amin Agoshi, 20 – Ahmad Poladkhani, 21 – Sayed Sami Hosseini, 22 – Sayed Jamal Mohammadi, 23 – Rostam Arkia 24 – Mostafa Salimi, 25 – Anwar Rostami, 26 – Hassan Talei 27 – Iraj Mohammadi, 28 – Mohammad Amin Abdollahi 29 – Ghader Mohammad Zadeh, 30 – Shirin Elmhavi 31 – Adnan Hassanpour, 32 – Hava Botimar, 33 – Ramadan Ahmad (prison d’Ourmia, originaire du Kurdistan syrien) 34 – Farhad Chalesh, 35 – Sarhad Chalesh (militant politique du Kurdistan turc, prison de Zanjan Prison) 36 – Saeed Ramadan, (militant politique du Kurdistan de Syrie, prison de Qazvin) 37 – Hajar Ghaderi, 38 – Jahangir Baduzade Sistan-o-Balouchestan 39 – Abdul Rahman Naruee, 40 – Abed Gahram Zehi 41 – Abdoljalil Rigi 42 – Nasser Shebakhsh 43 – Mahmoud Rigi 44 – Ali Saedi, 45 – Valid Nisi 46 – Mahed Faradipoor 47 – Daer Mahavi, 48 – Maher Mahavi 49 – Ahmad Saedi, 50 – Yusuf Laftepoor Ahvaz 51 – Ovdeh Afravi 52 – Ali Reza Salman Delphi 53 – Ali Halfi 54 – Moslem Elhai 55 – Abdolreza Navaseri 56 – Yahya Naseri, 57 – Abdoliman Zaeri 58 – Nazim Berihi 59 – Abdolreza Haldchi 60 – Zaman Bavi 61 – Risan Savari, 62 – Leila Kaabi

Reminder of Hands off the People of Iran Week of Solidarity. 13th – 20th of February – more information here.

It is the duty of every Revolutionary to side with the Iranian democratic opposition.

 

Let us remember this: Galloway Praising Iranian ‘Democracy’.

Lutte Ouvrière: Front de Gauche Not Really Left.

The French Spring Regional Elections are important for the whole European left.

A new sign of the Parti Socialiste’s problems is the ‘Frêche affair”. This former regional Socialist Leader,  an elderly loud-mouthed self-styled ‘bluff character’, was excluded from the party. But he still headed the Languedoc List with his former comrades (many of whom still like him). He  has now committed another gaffe. Saying  ex-PM Laurent Fabius has a “tronche pas très Catholique” (a mug not exactly Catholic). Fabius is of Jewish origin. The PS now is negotiating a separate list – rejecting Frêche’s outbursts as “incompatible with Republican values”.

Meanwhile Lutte Ouvrière’s (LO)  take on the Front de Gauche (alliance of Communists, left socialists, Alternatives, left republicans, left Greens and democratic Trotksyists)  is largely critical (here).

They describe the haggling, negotiations, and uneven presence of the Front de Gauche’s list. Its proposals, such as using ‘regional funds’ to boost employment, will lead, they argue, nowhere.  LO concludes that,

“Rien donc qui puisse convaincre de l’ancrage à gauche de ce Front de gauche et de ses futurs élus dans les prochains Conseils régionaux. Rien surtout qui puisse ouvrir des perspectives aux luttes que les travailleurs devront mener pour ne pas faire les frais d’une crise dans laquelle les capitalistes les ont entraînés, avec pertes et fracas.”

There is nothing here, therefore, that could convince us that Front de Gauche and those who will be elected,  are really anchored on the left. There is nothing that could open up the perspective of struggle that the workers must wage, to resist paying for the crisis. A crisis which the capitalists caused, with all its upsets and loses.

In the 2008 municipal Elections Lutte Ouvrière participated in unitary left lists. In  69 cities and towns,  this was an alliance with the  Parti Communiste, the Parti Socialiste, or both. In a number of other districts they stood with other parties, such as the LCR (forerunner of Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste), Greens, left republicans, the Parti de Travailleurs (Lambertists), and the MRG (Centrist ‘Radical Left’). 

Despite these criticisms LO has yet to make a public declaration on its voting recommendations for the crucial Second Round of these elections.

LO has an independent take on the Trotskyist tradition. It has influence in some unions, and  a number of local councillors. Some accuse it of being a sect of ‘warrior monks’. An English language account of their history and politics is given here.

Bella ciao, Iran

It is the Duty of Every Revolutionary to Support the Iranian Democratic Opposition.

Cherie Blair: Religious People More Equal than Others.

Best Way to Appear in Court.

It’s becoming more and more obvious that religious people think they have special rights. More than anyone else. Here is the Cherie Booth (Or Blair) in action:

A secularist group has lodged an official complaint against Cherie Booth QC after she spared a man from prison because he was religious.

Shamso Miah, 25, of Redbridge, east London, broke a man’s jaw following a row in a bank queue.

Sitting as a judge, Ms Booth – wife of former Prime Minister Tony Blair – said she would suspend his sentence on the basis of his religious belief.

Miah – who had just been to a mosque – punched Mr Furcan inside the bank, and again outside the building.

Ms Booth told Miah that violence had to be taken seriously, but said she would suspend his prison sentence because he was a religious person and had not been in trouble before.

She added: “You are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behaviour.”

More here. The Group complaining is the National Secular Society here.

Get religion, get your own legal system!

Pornography and the Left: Angela Carter’s Sadeian Woman.

Pornography and Left: A Retrospective on The Sadeian Woman. Angela Carter. Virago. 2006 (1979)

Close to the live debate on Prostitution, lies the more muted feminist discussion of pornography. In the background of arguments about the sex-trade are issues about the commercialisation of obscenity. Or rather, “Any violation of a woman’s body can become sex for men; this is the essential truth of pornography.” (Intercourse. Andrea Dworkin. 1987). In this “occupied territory” surely the pornographic writer is the bureaucratic lackey recording the tortures of its victims. Selling sexual pleasure is only part of a mass-producing industry that reaches the top shelves of the local newsagents. Nobody can doubt that the presence of sexuality, commercially or individually express, sold, consumed, or bound up with gender politics, remains an unresolved issue. Except that is for puritans whose hostile answers are ready-made.

Here we reach a problem that has faced feminists since the late 1970s. Debates continue about sexuality, and oppression, over masculinity and femininity, over LGBT topics, and about their cultural, and economic basis. In this instance the clash between anti-pornography feminists, and those who back libertarian sexual pleasures, those for and those opposed to censorship (sex-positive feminists), has drifted away from argument about the content of the material, to concentrate on the business.

In a sense the terms of debate have not advanced much since the William’s Report (1980) and working out degrees of public protection from “obscenity” and assessing what should be considered “private”. Williams’ concern with pornography was that it crossed this line, by making picture of intimate acts visible. The worries about its accessibility and half and unwilling consumption has increased today with the deluge of images present on the Web. Not to mention the Net’s threat to post-Williams legislation restricting its consumption. Rules restricting sales of certain types of porn to sex shops, or preventing under-age buyers, appear unstable faced with computer access.

Anti-prostitution campaigners also underline the changing nature of the sex-industry. There are allegations of trafficking and near-slavery, as well as increased availability (via the same Internet, and local advertising), which the law can legislate against. Those supporting decriminalisation regard it as a private affair, (choice) but agitate for labour rights and the legal protection of those engaged in this activity. Both issues are normally talked about in terms of choice, privacy, and the scope of public regulation. Or the people involved in the commerce. Not through a take on the activities themselves.

Angela Carter (1940 – 1992) did look at this, in terms of culture and relations between men and women (she barely touches on the Lesbian Gay Bi-sexual Trans-sexual field). Most of us know, and revere her fiction but the author of Nights at the Circus’s writing ranged much wider. In The Sadeian Woman (originally published 1979) she thought long and hard about pornography and its connections with sexuality. The centre of this book is pornography’s most radical producer, the Marquis de (post-French revolution – Citizen) Sade (1740 – 1814). His portraits of diverse sexual acts are often difficult to stomach – far from the erotic – but well worth considering for their insights. As Sade is at present rather an academic taste, it involves looking at some pretty abstract ideas to get a handle on what he said, while attempting to relate them to these topics.

Strange Days Indeed. Francis Wheen. Review.

 

Strange Days Indeed. Francis Wheen. Fourth Estate. 2009.

An Essay On Francis Wheen’s ‘Seventies. 

Francis Wheen burst into public view with a scandalous biography of gay Labour MP, Tom Driberg,  (1905 – 1976) “Poet, Philanderer, Legislator and Outlaw.” To the left he made his name with Karl Marx a Life (1999), a splendid study of Marx “the man”. How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World (2004) defended the Enlightenment against “holy warriors, anti-scientific relativists, fundamentalists, radical post modernists, New Age mystics or latter-day Chicken Lickens..” Wheen’s Marx’s Das Kapital, a Biography (2006) managed the almost impossible task of making intelligible a book that resembles a “vast Gothic novel whose heroes are enslaved and consumed by the monster they created.” It is not everyone’s taste that the author-journalist associates with Nick Cohen and the view that ‘the left’ is menaced by ‘totalitarianism’. But, as a fellow Suffolk dweller, he has a lot of other things on his side. Wit to begin with.

Strange Days Indeed, is about “the most distant of times” the 70s. It was, he claims, a “golden age of Paranoia.” Years no-one would want to revisit. Dominated by “apocalyptic dread and conspiratorial fever”. Suspicion and fear seeped from heads of State, from Richard Nixon to Harold Wilson, to society at large. Conspiracy thrillers, such as the Parallax View, Pynchon’s novels and the Illuminatus! Trilogy (read by nearly everyone I knew when it was published), were wildly popular. The “frustration” of everyday life ratcheted up the tension. With secret agencies, bugging and infiltrating subversives, and politicians plotting in concealed cabals. In Britain there was talk of an authoritarian national government, military coups and building private armies to crush the left and unions. A decade when the bearers of the ‘60s counter-culture and the left were met with steady hostility and open repression.

This hatred often meant moral panic. Wheen has fun with the absurdity of the 1971 prosecution of Oz magazine for its School Kids issue. Written by a guest team of teenagers one of its greatest crimes was to re-paste a Robert Crumb cartoon with Rupert Bear, carrying a huge erection. The charge? “Conspiracy to corrupt public morals or outrage public decency”. They must have had a point about corruption – I still have a copy, bought when I was at Secondary School. I got my first political kicking from a guardian of decency (Salvation Army) when we OZ supporters tried to disrupt a Festival of Light March.

Much of Strange Days Indeed is devoted to high politics as they descended low. Of Wilson, MI5, Nixon, the CIA, Watergate, and the hideous twists of Mao’s China’s Mass Line. The Great Helmsman was plainly filled with violence and rancour, a scourge of ‘class’ enemies, and the sponsor of a Court that pursued their own ‘Marxist’ ultra-nationalist vendettas. The Chairman’s wife, Jiang Qing, was “afraid of sounds and strangers”, and devoted to her own “sadistic omnipotence”. Elsewhere there were the Russian ‘years of stagnation” during which dissidents were imprisoned in psychiatric hospitals. There are chapters on the FBI, the CIA and the fraught relations during Harold Wilson Premiership with his own secret services.

The Left, Wheen observes, shifted towards its own clandestine practice. There was a great deal of romantic fantasy about guerrilla warfare, which moved from rural foci to urban insurrection. Some, “convinced the revolution had begun” in 1968, moved from “street theatre” to fanaticism. Redoubling the effort while losing sight of any objective, they struck a pose, and descended into a hallucinatory parody of “revolutionary action”. Some launched their underground schemes, from the Baader-Meinhof Band (RAF), the Brigate Rosse,  the Angry Brigade, to more substantial metropolitan and rural guerrilla movements in Latin America, the South, East and South Asia. It was a decade when “the cities of the non-Communist world were alive with the sounds of explosions and police sirens.” Other far-left groups engaged in strident demonstrations and violent class struggle. The state responded in kind. Wheen fails to mention (if he even is familiar with this) in any real detail the tortuous history of the most important in Europe, Italian militarist leftist groups, notably the Brigate Rosse (surely the most serious case of wild, often justified, paraonia around). They quickly began to spiral into dubious actions, and mutual suspicion, no doubt aided by secret service manipulation.

Domestically, it is not the still influential Communist Party of Great Britain that gets much mention in Strange Days. Nor a great deal on industrial left-led militancy. There are pages on the Miners’ strikes in 1973 (the Battle of Saltley Gate – mass picketing), the Three Day Week (1973 – 4), and the ‘Winter of Dicontent’ . Nor are other working class rooted lefts examined. The largish leftist group, International Socialists, which lost its main Midlands industrial base in this period, is not seriously covered. . As it  became the Socialist Workers Party,  a ‘demoncratic centralist’ organisation, it set down hysterical and opportunist political norms which continue to have an impact on the left to this day.

Instead we get a tour of exotica. After the gestural neo-Situationist Angry Brigade, it is the antics of Gerry Healy’s much smaller Workers Revolutionary Party, and the even smaller International Marxist Group (IMG) that grab Wheen’s attention. The former, leader a “squat bullet-headed thug” considered the collapse of capitalism imminent. He bullied his way through the cadres and raped female members. The IMG, he considers, had different faults, political ones. They “drooled” over a wide range of guerrillas and supported the Provisional IRA (the correct formula here is “unconditionally but critically”).

It is true that while on this path the group found time to “lionise” some ‘heroes’ of very dubious dramas (echoing in reality, the enthusiasms of the Parisian left). * But this soon shifted. Perhaps the “reluctance” to take up arms was a sign of self-indulgence – though personally I would not have liked to end up like former Red Brigade members in exile, with unclean hands, brimming with mutual rancour. But if so, the gourmets of vicarious revolutions had other dishes to feast on. The IMG’s Fourth International thought in terms of a European ‘new mass vanguard’ of students and employees. They anticipated an “explosion of mass struggle” and “dual power” In Britain this was focused on calls for a General Strike. The IMG’s best-known public face (though far from its formal leader) Tariq Ali, Wheen observes, predicted workers’ Soviets across Europe in the decade. But then Tariq Ali later considered that Boris Yeltsin was a going to prove a good democratic socialist….

Drawn by the romance of armed struggle and individuals such as Ulrike Meinhof Wheen only briefly sketches the real mass uprising in Portugal during 1974. After post-Corporate Dictator Caetano Portugal a quasi-insurrectional landscape developed. The Carnation Revolution, as Tariq Ali predicted, saw near-Soviets in the Portuguese factories. This was not to last. Although, by contrast, land occupations endured years in the central Communist regions around Evora. The confused politics of the Revolution (including a counter-strike against an alleged Communist coup) soon ended in a stabilised country aligned to NATO, not the Warsaw Pact. As an activist in the original Portuguese-led Solidarity campaign, one began to get a sense of the importance of large-scale movements rather than striking personalities, or intense political factions. This, for many of us, signalled the route that much of the radical left would take in the coming years – away from Che Guevara and back to broader democratic socialist organisations. Such a turn, like the principal issues that dominated far-left activism during the decade – the rebirth of the Labour left as ‘Bennism’, and the large-scale violent street fighting with the National Front – get ignored in Strange Days. Though apparently he did go to a Rock Against Racism concert.

In pursing radical performance Wheen ventures into other areas he is not genuinely familiar with. To him the self-dissolution of the French Gauche Prolétarienne (GP) in 1974 was linked to disgust at the 1972 Black September Munich Olympics Massacre. This may have played a, delayed, part. But it was much more the result of enduring rancour at their 1972 witch-hunt against alleged killer of Brigette Dewevre (a miner’s daughter) at Bruay-en-Artois. A part of France that resembles the bleakest English proletarian North. The Maos called for the castration and lynching of the alleged murderer, a Notary, and Rotary Club notable, Pierre Leroy. Prominent GP members who protested at this hysteria were dismissed as “vipers”. A woman amongst them was called by the future Editor of Libération, Serge July, “the daughter of a bourgeois”, “afraid of seeing your father’s head on a pike”. Despite this certainty the case has yet to be solved.

The dissolution of the GP left many different legacies. What happened to its former supporters as the decade wore on? Wheen cites André Glucksman, as an emblematic leftist intellectual of the ’68 generation. He was a leading activist, not a leader. But his career is of interest. It shows something of the ‘70s Strange Days passes over. Glucksman had begun to drift from Marxism in 1972. He was heavily influenced by Solzehenitsyn, defending the “plèbe” (plebs) against class based Leninism. Another figure was Benny Lévy (‘Victor’). He, rather more central to the GP, was Sartre’s secretary – which explains the ties between them and the ageing Existentionalist. The strong reservations felt by Simone de Beauvoir (in La Cérémonie des adieux) about Sartre’s relationship with the ‘Maos’ stem largely from Lévy’s unbounded – changing – enthusiasms.

Glucksman, and Lévy, were, by the end of the decade fierce opponents of the Union of the Left, and increasingly of the “actually existing left” as such. The former became associated with the ‘nouvelle philosophie’ (which saw totalitarianism in Marx himself). During its heyday 1976- 77, he was linked with media celebrity Bernard Henri Lévy (whose leftist phase was much briefer). Glucksman’s more recent backing for Sarkozy was rewarded last year with the Légion d’Honneur. In another direction, Sartre’s aide, Benny Lévy became a student of the Torah and descended into obscurity. Not everyone became a renegade to the left. A part of the GP went into mass movements (such as the supporters of the mid-70s Lip Watch-making factory occupation). Individual former GPers have continued in leftist campaigns to this day. Yet others became highly respectable. Serge July became a 1980s ‘social liberal’ who enthused about quasi-Blairite modernisation in the formerly leftist, Libération. ** A small fraction went on to become real terrorists, in the 1980s Action Directe. To explain these careers would need a lot more than any tale about the consequences of leftist ‘paranoia’. Though the New Philosophers certainly tended (and tend) to see the threat of the Gulag behind any left-wing movement.

There are unfortunately many other flaws in the book. Most of the history and the anecdotes are known to all who care to read (On Mao, see Simon Leys, writing in the 70s, well before Chang and Halliday, on the Soviet Union, Zhores and Roy Medvedev – whom he cites). The US President’s equal opportunities bigotry and psychological blemishes are as notorious as Homer Simpson’s love of Duff. Wilson’s PM years, his fear of intelligence agencies, and his ‘fat spider’ and ‘blind beggar’ stage, are so well known they are practically in dictionaries of quotations. And the history of the 70’s left, including its flirtation with ‘armed struggle’ has been done to death – on the RAF and the far left. In France a cottage industry regularly publishes weighty tomes on the post-68 radicals. Many of whom are still around. Little is “distant” or “strange” here. Nor is Wheen’s main thesis of much solidity: there is never any indication that the ‘paranoia’ evoked came anywhere near, to mention the obvious, other historical waves of pathological suspicion – take that of the Great Terror in 1930s USSR.

Strange Days, then, lacks investigative depth. No doubt there is much to say from the vantage point of the New Statesman during the decade. But it was not a good listening post from which to gather material for the ambitious story, englobing such a wide political spectrum, and real movements that he attempts. Wheen’s fleeting encounter with the ‘alternative society’ came at its alleged end. Though I can recall squats and flats in London that still flew this flag up to the end of the decade. He does not appear to have read accounts of how some from this trend, far from becoming obsessed with ‘changing themselves’, ultra-violence, or ‘them’, got involved in the serious left precisely during the ‘70s. There is next to nothing about how feminism engaged with of the left. Sheila Rowbotham and Lynne Segal’s revealing autobiographical writings illustrate the real transition from the ‘underground’ to socialist feminism are absent. Their Beyond the Fragments with Hilary Wainwright,  summed up the development of their, and the next, generation. There is nothing on the growing influence of Marxism – however transient – on the intelligentsia.  The work of Stuart Hall, who examined the rising star of Free-marketeers, and the ‘Great moving Right show”  that led to Thatcher’s ’authoritarian populsim’, does not shine on Wheen’s horizon. Nor, as we already mentioned, is there much on the growth of  the Labour Left and the radical left’s engagement with the labour movement.

Still, Wheen has some perceptive observations (as an essay marker would say). Give me time and I’ll recall them. As someone who participated in the left during the decade, I would like to be able to say that I never fell for the romance of violent revolution. But I can’t. All one can observe is that it was force of circumstance that drew us away from conspiracies, real or imagined, and into democratic left politics.

Whatever. This is a world far from today’s “fusion paranoia”. This thesis about the 70s can only bear so much. In a much more limited way the concept has been put to good use by David Aaronovitch – Voodoo History indeed. It certainly stands good when applied to the various Truth Campaigners worrying like dogs over the bones of 9/11 victims. But Wheen stretches his argument too far – and the famous humour cannot cover what is a rather thin dish of gruelling effort. That is, an attempt to squeeze a complex world into a theory rather than to test it. Rather similar to conspiracy theorising in fact.

* On the IMG’s mentor, the Fourth International (USFI), and its flirtation with Latin American ‘armed struggle’ see Ernest Mandel. Jon Willem Stuje. 2009. Pages 186 – 192.

** A very amusing polemical book by the pioneering gay activist Guy Hocquenghem summarised some time back the developing careers of many former ’68 revolutionaries in this vein, Lettre ouverte à ceux qui sont passés du col Mao au Rotary.  1986.

Strange Days Indeed

Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste “has failed”.

An Effect Effectively Ending.

French March Regional Elections: NPA Faces an Impasse. Here.

(Summary and explanations) According to the most recent opinion polls,  the NPA will get 3,5% of the votes in the French March Regional Elections, barely more than Lutte ouvrière (3%), against 6% for the Front de Gauche.

Political historian Stéphane Courtois says,  ”they wanted to believe in a broader party, but everyone has realised that they have only repackaged the LCR. . The presence of a candidate wearing the veil on the  list of Vaucluse, which has been attacked by nearly all the other political parties, will not help. “The LCR always had a feminist image, and this will tarnish it. I consider this will create a problem for them.”

Olivier Bescanenot’s star is waning. As a media favourite he has been overtaken by Daniel Cohen-Bendit. Without this publicity, his lack of serious prospects becomes more evident. He has  no real political strategy for the elections, or the prospect of bringing concrete change about. The NPA is caught between the Greens and the Parti de Gauche (part of the Front de Gauche). To the left electorate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon (Front de Gauche) appears “more constructive” than the “sterile” revolutionary vote.

Bescancenot has failed to debate with Mélenchon.

The NPA is unable to decide on what to present nationally in the ballot box. They have entered into alliances with otehr left and Green groups. In 15 regions they are pesenting their own lists, in 3 they co-operate with the Parti de Gauche, and 3 others with the both the PG and the Parti Communiste Français.

The case of the veiled NPA candidate Ilham Moussaid continues to make waves.

To Olivier Besancenot, “on peut être féministe , laique et voilée…” One can be a feminist, secularist and veiled.

This claim – to begin with why is veil not worn by men? and if one is a secularist why does one want to assert one’s religious beliefs in every public place – has been met with derision on the rest of the left

 

Meanwhile Jean-Luc Mélenchon has criticsed the NPA for its promotion of a veiled candidate here.

“cette jeune femme est une très bonne militante. Mais si elle a une conscience politique, c’est sur le terrain politique que ça doit se jouer, avec des arguments. La religion est du domaine de la vérité révélée. On ne peut pas débattre de ce qui relève de la vérité révélée.

This young woman is a very good activist. But if she has political awareness, it’s on the political terrain that this should be worked out, with arguments. Religion is the domain of revealed truth. One cannot debate with assertions of revealed truth.

On the NPA he says,

Ils se saisissent de tous les moyens pour creuser le fossé, pour se différencier de nous qui sommes d’une gauche laïque, d’une gauche qu’ils savent à cheval sur les principes.

 

They are grabbing every means of deepening the division, to distinguish themselves from the secular left, a left stands for our principles.

 

Put simply the NPA backs the veil for sectarian advantage. As the prospect of building a broad, vibrant, left out of the LCR and a thin layer of new recruits, recedes, they are turning to the multiculturalism of the British Socialist Action, George Galloway, and Ken Livingstone. This alliance with religious ‘progressivism’ is leading nowhere in the UK. In France, from the left,  it may be electoral suicide. 

Amnesty Suspends Gita Sahgal.

Statement by Gita Sahgal – on many Blogs.

 Hat Tip Stroppy.

7 February 2010This morning the Sunday Times published an article about Amnesty International’s association with groups that support the Taliban and promote Islamic Right ideas. In that article, I was quoted as raising concerns about Amnesty’s very high profile associations with Guantanamo-detainee Moazzam Begg. I felt that Amnesty International was risking its reputation by associating itself with Begg, who heads an organization, Cageprisoners, that actively promotes Islamic Right ideas and individuals.

Within a few hours of the article being published, Amnesty had suspended me from my job.

A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when a great organisation must ask: if it lies to itself, can it demand the truth of others? For in defending the torture standard, one of the strongest and most embedded in international human rights law, Amnesty International has sanitized the history and politics of the ex-Guantanamo detainee, Moazzam Begg and completely failed to recognize the nature of his organisation Cageprisoners.

The tragedy here is that the necessary defence of the torture standard has been inexcusably allied to the political legitimization of individuals and organisations belonging to the Islamic Right.

I have always opposed the illegal detention and torture of Muslim men at Guantanamo Bay and during the so-called War on Terror. I have been horrified and appalled by the treatment of people like Moazzam Begg and I have personally told him so. I have vocally opposed attempts by governments to justify ‘torture lite’.

The issue is not about Moazzam Begg’s freedom of opinion, nor about his right to propound his views: he already exercises these rights fully as he should. The issue is a fundamental one about the importance of the human rights movement maintaining an objective distance from groups and ideas that are committed to systematic discrimination and fundamentally undermine the universality of human rights. I have raised this issue because of my firm belief in human rights for all.

I sent two memos to my management asking a series of questions about what considerations were given to the nature of the relationship with Moazzam Begg and his organisation, Cageprisoners. I have received no answer to my questions. There has been a history of warnings within Amnesty that it is inadvisable to partner with Begg. Amnesty has created the impression that Begg is not only a victim of human rights violations but a defender of human rights. Many of my highly respected colleagues, each well-regarded in their area of expertise has said so. Each has been set aside.

As a result of my speaking to the Sunday Times, Amnesty International has announced that it has launched an internal inquiry. This is the moment to press for public answers, and to demonstrate that there is already a public demand including from Amnesty International members, to restore the integrity of the organisation and remind it of its fundamental principles.

I have been a human rights campaigner for over three decades, defending the rights of women and ethnic minorities, defending religious freedom and the rights of victims of torture, and campaigning against illegal detention and state repression. I have raised the issue of the association of Amnesty International with groups such as Begg’s consistently within the organisation. I have now been suspended for trying to do my job and staying faithful to Amnesty’s mission to protect and defend human rights universally and impartially.

***********

Gita is a member of Women Against Fundamentalism and Southall Black Sisters. She is a truly wonderful person – a principled activist. Her defence of secular values led her to be one of the first to stand up for Salman Rushdie against the Islamist ‘Fatwa’. She wrote about this in the Socialist Society Magazine of the time – Interlink. I wrote a companion piece. (Details here) I shall never forget her shaking my hands at a meeting and thanking me for my support.

 

All true anti-racists and supporters of human rights should stand by her side. Against the disgrace of Amnesty International.

 

Face Book Group here.

Bernard-Henri Lévy Admits Error.

New Philosophers’ Must-Read.

Bernard-Henri Lévy has recognised unwittingly using a spoof philosopher in his latest book,  “De la guerre en philosophie”  (On War in Philosophy) (Here.  - French). (News in English here).

The crumbled crumb made this gaffe by citing a fictional  Jean-Baptiste Botul (15 august 1896, Lairière - 15 august 1947, Lairière) (here) . In all the earnest gravitas the author of Barbarism with a Human Face could muster.

No doubt the title of Botul’s magnum opus, The Sexual life of Immanuel Kant, was enough to draw in BHL. Plus, it was rude about one the greatest philosophers of all time…

What larks we had, Benny, what larks!

List of BHL’s works that contain mistakes, false information and common-old-garden lies:

Bangla-Desh, Nationalisme dans la révolution, 1973 (réédité sous le titre Les Indes rouges 1985)

La Barbarie à visage humain,Grasset, 1977,ISBN 2-246-00498-5

Gita Saghal: ‘Anti-Imperialists’ Reply By Bullying.

No to ‘Anti-Imperialist’ Bullies.

Gita Saghal’s suspension from Amnesty International continues to create waves. Anyone wanting to follow the details can get more information from the Support Site: Human Rights for all (here).

Noteworthy is the unrestrained bullying of her critics. Gita has been called a member of a “nutty group, Women Against Fundamentalisms” and a crank (here). The ever-so sane Bob Pitt who wrote this, ex-member of a well known highly mentally stable group, the Workers’ revolutionary Party, is not alone.  

Others are calling us lot “anti-imperialists lite” and, more commonly, pro-imperialists tout court. Stroppy, another uppity woman, has got it in the neck for her support for Gita.

The prize for intellectual confusion goes to Andy Newman of Socialist Unity who criticises Gita Saghal (here) on the grounds that she fails to respect religious morality,

for religious people, their ethical and moral viewpoint is part of who they are, because it derives from a code of values which they believe comes from an authority higher than man made laws. What we cannot do as atheists is assume that the evolution of moral and ethical viewpoints within our own society can be regarded as a superior standard that other people must comply with. Nor can these values be simply private questions of belief, as they have practical consequences for how people organise child rearing, probate, divorce, etc.

Furthermore, Gita’s stand,

effectively amounts to an endorsement of Western liberalism as being a superior set of values which if necessary must be allowed to overrule the rights of others.”

At least there are no insults. It’s just that we cannot be right by asserting ‘Western liberalism’s superiority’. It is down there on all fours with any ‘legal’ code on the planet. Just a plural set of options. 

This links, falsely, two separate things. Firstly, Andy Newman claims that moral and ethical views evolve  (is this not a tautology?) from different contexts. Societies, religions, cultures. Secondly, that because of this no-one ‘in’ such a society can regard their standards as “super standard” for other lands, faiths, ideologies and, no doubt,  tastes.

This reminds me of an episode of Angel (spin off from Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

A group of demons about to sacrifice someone and eat his brains are stopped by the Vampire with a Soul. “Racist” they cry at him. “This is our custom – you have no right to stop us.”

Yes, Andy Newman, says, eat his brains!

The whole point of ethical systems by contrast is to make universal claims. Otherwise they are not moralities but mores – customs. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is just that. Universal.

Gita Saghal  stands under this banner.

 

Unlike those who think that Islamist bullies have special rights.

Lindsey German and the Trotskyist Tradition.

Some Red Knight for the SWP.

On the resignation of prominent SWPer Lindsey German  there is an abudance of commentary. Personally I think she did it on a day that would make it too late to appear in the Weekly Worker. Phil has posted a good summary- more here.

What does this say about the ability of Trotskyist groups to tolerate differences?

In the New Course (1923 – here on-Line), protesting against the  Bolshevik Party ‘monolithicism’ Trotsky tried to get to grips with the problem of democracy.

He wrote,

“If factions are not wanted, there must not be any permanent groupings; if permanent groupings are not wanted, temporary grouping must be avoided; finally, in order that there be no temporary groupings, there must be no differences of opinion, for wherever there are two opinions, people inevitably group together.”

The fate of German’s Left Platform in the SWP – allowed (just) for a brief period before their national conference – is clearly a case of how this logic works. We await John Rees to express his own “different opinion’”.  A short way to becoming “not wanted”.

No doubt then we will learn more about what is really at stake. At present we have just snipes, and curt rudeness.

Trotsky was really only arguing for an element of discussion. John Molyneau of the SWP claims   (here)  that the “Leninist democratic centralist party is both necessary for the success of the revolution and the most democratic form of political organisation”.

Yet Trotsky never accepted the need for full inner-party freedom. In 1923 he buckled. Caught in a  contradiction between the need to agree on One ‘line’, and ‘implement’ it, and the day-to-day clashes of different views, he opted for the primacy of the former.

The Founder of the Fourth International remained hostile to ‘factionalism’ and the need for ‘unity’. Even if, in the 1930s, he came to accept an element of internal party democracy - and even socialist democracy (limited to socialists that is) in a future Workers’ State. This ambiguous  legacy has profoundly influenced the tradition that the SWP stems from.

Molyneau notes (rightly) the pressure of how mainstream party and business organisation influences left groups. He asserts however that, “ democratic pressure from below is all the stronger in a small far-left socialist party, even if it remains overtly passive, because (a) the leaders are plainly not motivated by desire for material privilege, there being none on offer (though sometimes the desire to maintain material security may be a factor); (b) the rank and file are motivated overwhelmingly by conviction; and(c) it is not difficult for them to vote with their feet and leave.”

Perhaps they are doing just that now. But what about posing the question of the freedom of tendencies? Molyneau - unlike German and her partner John Rees, sees some merit in the LCR/Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste’s practice of internal liberty for ‘actions’. It might be that this norm has something to teach the British left – the split of the Piquet tendency (Gauche Unitaire) had none of the Left Platform’s  drawn out drama. In some regions the NPA even co-operates with the GU in the Front de Gauche. Surely this is Rees’ famous ‘united front’ in practice.

More fundamentally we have to recognise that all politics involves potential stasis – upsetting, challenging, subverting, existing rulers, central committees, leaderships. Turbulence, in short. Or more simply, efforts at policy change. The SWP is tearing itself apart by not having a way of letting this happen in a democratic arena.

The leader of German’s Left Platform, JohnRees deserves no sympathy since his own conception of the Party – derived from the early György Lukács mixed with Trotksy’s most centralist writings  - is hostile to such a  democratic forum. For those who follow this line the Party is the bearer of proletarian consciousness, that pierce to the ‘actuality’ of the revolution through its ‘epistemological’ mechanisms. Disagreements simply get in the way.

As German clearly was and is.

Baroness Tonge and the Paranoid Style in British Politics.

Tonge Takes a Nap.

Following her remarks about Israeli ‘organ traficking’ in Haiti, Baroness Tonge, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Health in the House of Lords, as been sacked. Party leader Nick Clegg has “apologised” for Tonge’s claims.  The BBC reports,

Jenny Tonge told the Jewish Chronicle there should be an inquiry into claims that Israeli troops sent there after the earthquake were trafficking organs.

Nick Clegg said the comments were “wrong, distasteful and provocative” and dismissed her from her post.

He said she apologised “unreservedly” for any offence she had caused.

The peer is a patron of the news website, the Palestine Telegraph, which printed the allegations.

It claimed that members of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), sent to help with the humanitarian effort after Haiti’s devastating quake, were selling human organs.

 

More from the BBC here.

Tonge said in 2006: “The pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the western world, its financial grips. I think they’ve probably got a grip on our party.”

 Hofstadter, in the Paranoid Style in American Politics stated, (here).

So the Liberal Democrats are in the ‘grip’ (by the throat?) of the Israel ‘Lobby’ . No further explanation is needed. nor indeed of its “financial grip” leading to ripping out the internal organs of dead or dying Haitians. Though she ‘apolgsies’ for causing offence – notably not for the assertions she made.

Tonge stands in a broad international tradition. In a famous Essay, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, Hofstadter described the extreme US right of the 1950s as in the grip of paranoid fantasies. Amongst his description of this cast of mind is this,

The enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman—sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced.

Tonge clearly holds a lot more ill-will about Israel, Zionism more than she will say publicly. It is a long-standing Tendance Coatesy principle that people in positions of authority with ‘controversial’ views say a watered down version of what they really believe. But then that’s not paranoia, just common sense prudence. Tonge crawls pretty low even in this field, by making claims about Israelis profiting from Haitian misery. But there you go.

David Aaraonovitch in Voodoo Histories (2009) observes the rise in “conspiracy theorising”. That is those who consider they have contact with the “underlying universe” who “understand” what is “really” going on. He notices, rightly, that today this way of thinking exists amongst the educated as well as the traditional US-style know-nothings. But Aaarnovitch thinks that this “projection of paranoia” is the mark of the “politically defeated” the “causalities of politics, society..” Those who are “impotent.”

This may be the case for the Palestinians Tonge cites. Or even the Islamists she is close to. But is her condition really the result of the pathetic failure of her party to make any impact on British politics? For sure, as permanent oppositonists, the Liberal Democrats have a reptuation for attracting eccentrics – that is nutters. It would not be hard to find others with the same opinions – no doubt wider, there will be doubtless further calls for an investigation into these allegations. It is to be expected that some  ’anti-imperialists’ will endorse her demand for an ‘enquiry’ – and if goes the wrong way they’ll have more ‘proof’ of their ideas.

Or maybe this is part of a wide revival of anti-Semitism. A more formidable ideology than, say, the American paranoid style of the 1950s. One with a political agenda, to racialise political scapegoating, with deep roots in the far-right. That seems a better area to look for an explantion.

Socialist Campaign to Stop the Tories and Fascists: Some Friendly Comments.

Yet Again and Again: Without Illusions?

As the General Election approaches there are many calls from the left. They include favoured Candidates.That is boosterism for a handful of left-leaning Greens and communalists (Respect – continuity). Or, out of sheer desperation, celebrations of ‘progressivism’ around watery ’social democratic’ wish lists. 

Still, there are more serious appeals. Amongst the latter there is the on-going Campaign  for a New Workers’ Party (Socialist Party led), the Socialist Campaign group of Labour MPs. The one with some ideas about a new left organisation – which remains to be defined. The other, with a strategy of bolstering what remains of the Labour left. Neither is wrong – I would back both. But they hardly have much of a real base of support.

The issue is, do we vote Labour or not?

The prospect of a future Tory Government is concentrating minds wonderfully. ” The choice of government at the general election will be between Labour and the Tories. All the current signs point to a Tory victory” .The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty notes.

Their call- SOCIALIST CAMPAIGN TO STOP THE TORIES AND FASCISTS - should be included in the ‘serious’ category (Site of Campaign here, debate in Shiraz Socialist here).

They observe that,

There are now, for the first time in many years, real policy differences between Labour and the Tories.

That,  union support will, in these conditions, remain wedded to Labour. But,

There is mass working-class disillusionment with New Labour – rightly. Now we need a “Socialist Campaign to Stop the Tories”which will organise rank and file trade union activists and organisations to link a Labour vote with a positive campaign.

Furthermore,

There is no chance of the outside-Labour left having a sizeable and concentrated presence in the general election.To create better choices, we need a campaign across the country to provide a working-class voice within the Labour vote at the general election. That is the best way to start organising for a labour movement fightback against a coming Tory government – or against the cuts and privatisations of another Brown government.

This is a fair, broad-brush, analysis.

t is important, nevertheless, to add, that a ‘socialist campaign’ cannot have much impact on Labour itself. Not for want ot popular sympathy (though yet another campaign?….). There are more basic reasons. The internal organisation of the Party now consists of a series of formidable buffers against left-wing policy making. It is a bulwark against individual left MPs extending their influence. Not only is the Party organised around the needs of the Cabinet and the Leader – this is a long-term process. The hollowing out of the party began under Neil Kinnock in the 1980s, accelerated during the ‘Party into Power’ reforms (that gutted Conference’s powers and internal democracy), and has left Labour as a a set of rallies and an inner organisation of notables – in modern guise.  The hierarchy of Policy Forums and the revamped NEC mean that socialists have a hard time getting heard, let alone influence.  

But far worse is afoot.  Labour is in a close relationship with the very privatising profiteering mechanisms of the ‘market state’ that make the public administration unfit for any purpose other than more free-market policies. From quasi-state bodies to dubious private companies, this layer of the publicly subsidised its (hopelessly incompetent)managerial classes is devoted to  retaining contracts and privilege. It is even embracing and influencing the former ‘voluntary’ sector. It can threaten to jump ship for the Tories at any moment (and many already have).  This drag on Labour is not challenged by the Campaign’s calls from the wilderness for a ‘workers’ government’ .

In these conditions one would vote for Labour in many constituencies – where the candidates are genuinely part of the labour movement (in the broadest sense). They will seize on  Tory plans to savage public provision, and introduce even more illiberal social measures (though it’s hard to see how Cameron could be more of a straight-faced religious authoritarian than Brown). This obviously is not enough. The policies this appeal raises, on union rights, opposing cuts in public services, ending military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so on, are tools to bring to their attention better ideas than those that a Labour manifesto will hold. 

Perhaps the emphasis on fighting the BNP will help set some political minds thinking about the Cabinet actions that have helped fuel this party’s more visible presence. Though one can always exaggerate its importance and get bogged down in hysteria. That often provides a convenient outlet for anger to Labour members who otherwise have done nothing to oppose Brown and Blair.

 But where candidates stand for precisely this market state, then they cannot be supported. These are elements of the bourgeoisie (or more simply, tired careerists) living off the heritage of the unions, and the party. Those, for example (I do not choose this case by chance) who back Welfare Reform and Workfare, are enemies of the poor and working class in the most intimate way.

They cannot be campaigned or voted for.

Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste: The Movie.

 

C’est parti is a documentary that covers the launch of the NPA.

It has had good reviews.

Perhaps someone will get the idea of doing a film about recent intrigues and deering-don’ts  in the SWP/Respect etc.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold?

New Left Review at Fifty.

 

New Left Review at Fifty: Is There Life in Their Politics?

New Left Review is a “left intellectual project”. What is the nature of this undertaking? On its fiftieth anniversary can a balance sheet, and future prospects be drawn? The British New Left, respectively the original New Left from E.P.Thompson and John Saville’s New Reasoner and Stuart Hall from the University and Left Review, that combined in 1960 to found the Review, and the Second New Left, whose chief theorists, Perry Anderson and Tom Nairn, as well as Robin Blackburn, ran the journal after 1962, is often the object of intellectual biography. Assessing the value of the individuals’ work. Or on the magnificent set-piece battles between Thompson and the later NLR’s editors. Here there is a different object: the transition from the original New Left’s aim to “make socialists” to New Left Review’s (1962)  Editor, Anderson and his  more ambitous plans. That is, to his ultimate goal, to produce a fresh layer of left intellectuals who would help end British anti-theoretical “exceptionalism” and pave the way for socialism. History, careers, and disputes, should be seen in the light of these objectives.

Susan Watkins in the Editorial to the 61^st Edition (Second Series) of the Review, talks of its launch in 1960 as “one of a myriad of small harbingers of left renewal”. Its early enthusiasm for “anti-colonialism”, Third Worldism in general and Latin American guerrilla activity and Cuba in particular, were causes championed by a much wider international New Left (notably American and French). They were succeeded by “intensive debates within Marxism” of the end of the decade. But what really brought the New Left prominence, and shaped the journal’s frame of reference, was 1968. Leading up this was the movement against the Vietnam War, whose British wing, the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC) had a decidedly New Left tinge. This, as we are frequently told by veterans, was a tumultuous period, at its most spectacular in May, marked by student revolts, the counter-culture, the democratic and humanist socialist resistance to Stalinism, and, above all, the stirrings of mass workers’ action in Europe. Even in ‘sleepy London’ the London School of Economics saw a student occupation – which displayed solidarity with French protests. In the VSC held a mass demonstration in September ’68, causing manufactured panic in the media, and, saw a ‘Maoist-Anarchist’ splinter faction (several thousand strong) march on Grovesnor Square. Violent clashes with the police ensued. A Revolutionary Socialist Students’ Federation (RSSF) came into being, with encouragement from the New Left’s publications. Its influence, split and reformed into various factions, rippled through British campuses in the years to come.

New Left Review engaged in theorising these events, and, also to Watkins, “helped pioneer work on women’s liberation, ecology (? There are so many claims to have been a proto-Green), media, film theory, the state.” Not that theory smothered action.

Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste at an Impasse.

 

 Not Articulate in Defence of Secularism.

The Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste was founded just over a year ago (Wikipedia – in English - here). Its origins and general character do not need rehearsing on this Blog. Suffice to cite two elements.

Firstly, the NPA is not just an ‘anti-capitalist’ party, but claims to be a ‘revolutionary’ as well. Secondly, its ideology is a mixture which includes, apart from the said hostility to the bourgeoisie, Trotskyism, Marxism, Ecology, Anti-imperialism, Feminism and Guevarism.

The latter remains a bit of mystery. One suspects it’s something to do with wanting the support of those types who put up Che posters in their flats, back Venezuela’s ’Bolivarian Revolution’, and wear groovy Cuban T-shirts. As for feminism, we shall see.

The NPA’s  revolutionary creed is now confronting the less lyrical world of the March French Regional Elections. This, as we have noted here before, has involved the NPA is a compromise. Local NPA branches can decide on their alliances with other left groups (or  to ‘go it alone’) - as long as they “totally independent” of the (rightward moving) Parti Socialiste. That is the largest political left party in France. When it comes to the second round of these elections …this will be a matter for the same local groups to decide if they will support the leading force on the left. In all certainty the Socialist Party lists, will often be remade to include others, such Greens and, the Left alliance, (Front de Gauche) which the NPA will have difficulty actively supporting. More probably they will simply call for “blocking the way to the right”.

The NPA’s programme, Tout Changer, rein lâcher (change everything, don’t let anything go), is, as one might expect. Maximalist demands (in Trotskyist terms, they are transitional - ones that capitalism cannot concede), such as a prohibition of  redundancies and absolutely free public transport appear. As do minimum proposals for equal pay, sustainable, local, agriculture, public banking. And, specific to the Regional Assemblies, they call for plans to raise taxes, sustain budgets, and develop publicly run training schemes. In brief, to oppose the present drift towards private provision, and built a decent public democratic sector. Further democratic principles include opposition tot he Sarkozy repressive ‘security’ legislation. On international issues, the  withdrawal of French involvement in Western interventions is prominent.

One can say that – watching the videos of their campaigning , and meetings – that the NPA manages to put on  an honest, inspiring (and frequently really touching) operation. More like the Right to Work Conference, speaking from the heart,  than the bombast of Respect leader George Galloway, or the velvet evasions of Salma Yaqoob.

But political problems loom large. There appears to be diminishing ’ompf’ in the left’s camp. The NPA – and the non-PS generally (including the Front de Gauche) do not appear to be taking off. Opinion Polls give the non-PS left lists national percentage points under  5 % (though locally this varies considerably).This has something to do with the morose political and social climate – which France shares with the rest of Europe.  The difficulty of presenting a credible alternative to Sarkozy – beyond calls for yet more ‘struggle’ – lies in the absence of the left of the PS’s ability to unite around a different national political project.

But the NPA’s specific, self-inflicted, problems, stem from another source.

The decision to  feature a veiled woman on one of its South of France  lists has created an immense furore. (Initial story Here.) The candidate has a good background in militant democratic activism. But her open support for religious dress overshadows this.

She  claims – for reasons which are unclear - to be a feminist. That is, beyond this assertion and backing for abortion rights, there is no exploration of the link between her Moslem beliefs and ‘feminism’  in the ‘Interview with Ilham Moussaïd’ (republished by an anglophone living in France here.)

If she is a feminist why does she accept a rule – said to protect women from male lust, or at the very least an instruction from god to keep women pure – which does not apply to men? If Islam is in any way feminist, why does it permit polygamy and polyandry?

These contradictions led three of Moussaïd’s fellow NPA list candidates to resign. Nationally NPA web sites have been buzzing with hostile exchanges on the matter – with a  substantial part of the organisation outraged at the attack on secular public values it represents.

The NPA is caught in a contradiction. It criticises the veil (in any form -  a symbol and reality of oppression). Yet it accepts this breach in its principles. Efforts to wriggle out of by stating that the decision in supporting the reactionary dress was  decentralised are hardly convincing. The Parti de Gauche has openly accused the NPA leader, Olivier, of “racolage” – touting for business – in religious constituencies. When he offers a justification of this action (or lack of it)  Besancenot looks frazzled and disingenuous to the rest of the left.

In the UK the left will generally welcome giving a religious ‘pluralist’ dimension to politics. In Britain the multiculturalist and religious left not only accept the veil, but makes a virtue out of its embrace of ‘diversity’. Most think that the veil is a matter of pure individual choice – ignoring the religious ‘law’ which enforces it, and the bullying of the zealous to extend its use.  

One should look at the origins of this ‘anglo-saxon’ attitude. One cleverly exploited by the ‘soft’ Islamist Salma Yaqoob who claims the veil is a “woman’s right to choose” (here). And hypocritically ignores the violent, murderous, recent history of its imposition under waves of Islamisation across the world.

In the United Kingdom this ‘liberalism’ is a modern adaption of the ‘tolerance’ of British imperialism for the faiths and customs of those they ruled over. Specifically, it is a legacy from the Raj – of imperial sanction for religious ‘personal law’. Today this stand is transferred to Islamic dress. It can be extended to any ‘cultural’ practice – judge not or ye shall be judged, one might say. A kind of liberalism that ends up in the Stanly Fish argument that religious censorship is no great deal, since people always have different ‘preferences’. And don’t we ‘censor’ too. Or, in this case, is not encouraging women to dress as sex objects just as bad.

Well, they don’t harass women or stone them for not dressing up as Pole Dancers.

As far as I am aware.

The hard-line secularism of the Parti de Gauche on this, opposing religious dress codes (though not ‘bans’ on the Burka) is attractive  - you know where you stand with them. Religion should be fought in left politics – not by law but by political struggle. One day maybe even the British left will recognise that.

SWP Descends to Threats.

Gerry Healy: Gone but Not Forgotten!

Just been threatened by the new  Suffolk SWP cadre.

This individual cancelled a meeting of the ‘Right to Work’ campaign – at very short notice. So short I only heard of it half an hour before it was due. Too late to inform one person, who was busy walking from the Chantry Estate (he is suspended from the Dole, bus costs £1.80 each way). A long trudge through the drizzle. I had to go and meet him at the arranged place to say it was cancelled.

Naturally I was angry.

Next day saw said ‘cadre’ flogging paper outside College.

Expressed said anger.

Just now ‘cadre’ came up to me in Library. Seething with rage. Not welcome at Right to Work (bye-bye that!). Groans about my talking him in such a way. Brief explanation. Face contorts. Apparently I am a ‘bittter (heaven forfend)) sectarian”. Then suggests that I “come outside” for a “full and frank discussion” of this. “Are you threatening me?” “No” Body language says otherwise.

One cannot help but think that their little recent contretemps has affected the way the Party behaves.

SWP…WRP here we come!

Bangladesh Set to Become Again a Secular State.

Justice at Last?

Glory to the Great Bangladeshi People!

 

News just in:

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government plans an attempt to turn Muslim Bangladesh into secular state, a minister said.

Nearly 90 percent of the population is Muslim and Bangladesh ranks fourth after Indonesia, Pakistan, and India by the number of Muslims, with over 130 million.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision declaring the Fifth amendment, which dropped secularism as a guiding state principle, as null and void.

The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami party had appealed against the High court judgement.

“In the light of the verdict, the secular constitution of 1972 already stands to have been revived,” Law Minister Shafique Ahmed said late on Saturday.

“Now we don’t have any bar to return to the four state principles of democracy, nationalism, secularism and socialism as had been heralded in the 1972 statute of the state,” he said.

Bangladesh gave up the word “secularism” in the 1975s.

(from here) (Reuters here)

Background here.

There are also the forthcoming Tribunal and Trials of War Criminals (here)- those who stood with Pakistan in its mass slaughter during the 1971 War of National Liberation (here).

Many of the alleged crimes were committed by  members of the Jamaat-I-Islami or related Islamist groups. In Britain these political forces are closely aligned with George Galloway’s Respect Party. They have also enjoyed close relations with the SWP and Ken Livingstone’s advisers.

The principal link, through the East London Mosque, is claimed  here . The contents of this site, Bangladesh Genocide Archive,  are well worth looking at. If you can stand weeping at suffering and the indifference of the world today  to the plight of the Bangladeshi people.

It will be interesting to see, as the legal process unfolds, how the above UK groups and individuals  justify their alliance with war criminals.

We await Islamophobia Watch’s wriggling.

 

Facebook Group here.

Tendance Coatesy on Secularism: a Short Guide.

Secularism:

In Defence of Militant Secularism – here.

So What is Secularism? Ian Birchill – here.

A rely to Ian Birchall – here.

Religion (General).

Against Marxist Messianism - here.

Review of Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith and Revolution - here

Islamism.

Burka: French Propositions – here.

Review of  Tariq Ramadan’s What I Believe – here.

Review of Kenan Malik From Fatwa to Jihad – here.

Rushdie Affair – here.

Anti-Semitism.

Review: The New Anti-Semitism. Denis MacShane – here.

 

Tariq Ali: Vichey to Blame for French Left Secularists.

Foe of the Enlightenment and French Secularists.

The assault on Illhem (here)

By TARIQ ALI (who “comes from an old, crusty, feudal family” - here)

Ali’s comment on the controversy about the NPA candidate with the veil (a subject posted on here frequently), and the recent row over wearing the  Burka, starts reasonably,

Patriarchal traditions, cultural habits and identity are what is at stake here and they vary from generation to generation. Pushing people back into a ghetto never helps.

Pushing people into ghettos by subsidising religious communalism is a bad idea. Such as the British state’s sponsorship of multiculturalism and state funded ‘communtiy’ eladers. Or pandering to religious customs which clearly oppress people -as with all other “cultural habits” (from British sexism) that are against universal human rights. But one suspects this is not what Tariq  has in mind.

This is what he is referring to, 

The Algerian women who fought in the resistance against French republican colonialism did so as anti-imperialists. Some were partially veiled, others not. It did not affect the way they fought or the methods used by the French to torture them. Perhaps the torturers should have been more brutal to the hijabed freedom-fighters to help integrate their progeny better in the Republican tradition.

Well, that’s clear: critics of the veil are the progeny of racist French imperialist thugs. Indeed we are the offspring of torturers.

Apparently no-one has a right to criticise the NPA having a veiled candidate because the world is such a  bad place:

The anger against Ilhem and the NPA is completely misplaced. The real state of the world leaves the defenders of the Republic completely unaffected: the million dead of Iraq, the continuing siege of Gaza by Israel and Egypt, the killing of innocents in Afghanistan, the US drone attacks in Pakistan, the brutal exploitation of Haiti, etc. Why is this the case?

Several years ago I noticed that French protests against the Iraq war were muted compared to the rest of Western Europe. I don’t accept that this was due to Chirac’s opposition to the war [after all de Gaulle had opposed the Vietnam war even more strongly], but to Islamophobia: an increasing intolerance of the Other in French society, reminiscent of the attitude towards Jews in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The conformism of that period explains the popularity of Vichy during the early years of the war.

Ah yes, them Frenchies are anti-Semites. Criticism of Islamism is in a direct line with the ravigns of Édouard Adolphe Drumont’s La France Juive. Having transferred this loathing to a new Other, they hate Islam so much they (including the conformist secualrists) backed Bush.Or at least were happy to see him invade Iraq without their help.

A pretty long chain of non-sequitors. But what can you expect from a man who called for a Liberal Democrat vote in the last election on the grounds that they were opposed to the War on Iraq. Not sense at any rate.

Islamophobes and anti-Semites share a great deal in common.Islamophobia: an increasing intolerance of the Other in French society, reminiscent of the attitude towards Jews in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The conformism of that period explains the popularity of Vichy during the early years of the war.

Now we know where we’re going. Frenchies (always secret defeatist fascists), French secularists, are, well French, thus: secularist Left = Vichy.

Ali is never shy of showing off his wider intellectual culture:

How many Western citizens have any real idea of what the Enlightenment really was? French philosophers undoubtedly took humanity forward by recognizing no external authority of any kind, but there was a darker side. Voltaire: “Blacks are inferior to Europeans, but superior to apes.” Hume: “The black might develop certain attributes of human beings, the way the parrot manages to speak a few words.” There is much more in a similar vein from their colleagues. It is this aspect of the Enlightenment that appears to be more in tune with some of the Islamophobic ravings in sections of the global media.

Doddery old Tariq obviously doesn’t know much about the Enlightenment either. Such as Condorcet’s appeal against slavery and for equality. Or the Society of the Friends of the Black People. Or the abolition of slavery under the First French republic (rescinded by Napoleon).

Most people would say that racist comments are against the Enlightenment, whether the Philosophes said them or not. That is, that they contradicted their won principles. As did the occasional racist or homophobic remarks of a certain Karl Marx.

Le Monde on February 20, 2010.

 

Tariq Ali’s wrong-headed and unwelcome comments neglect the central point: Islamist attempts to enforce dress codes are part of their political programme. Since he so fortiche in Algerian History he might profit from following what happened when this programme was attempted -to the  misery and terror of Algerian women. Which is a central reason why the French secularist left is hostile to the veil and religious symbols in the equal public domain – though not in favour of a ‘ban’ by law of the, say, the Burka. Or remark on the fact that Sarkozy is very pro-religon, and would like to adopt – to a small degree it’s true – elements of ‘multiculuralism’ that Ali admries so much.

As someone who admires Islamist ‘anto-imperialists’ Tariq Ali is now at the end of his political trajectory: mouthing insults against the Englightenment and French Secularism. Let;s hope he doesn’t go even further and defend Jamaat-I-Islami War Criminals.

There’s no fool like an ageing old New Leftist Fool.

Hitchens and Amis: A Marxist Dismissal.

Marxist Study Group Reading?

Boulevardiers and flâneurs such as Tendance Coatesy have been entranced by recent spats by the country’s leading cultural figures. That is, Martin Amis and Anna Ford. Now we have Christopher Hitchens’s mémoires, Hitch 22,  to contend with. Marxists will be asking: what is the political significance of these rows? What do they show about the contradictions amongst the (self-styled) contrarians. The enchantment continues.

Or maybe not.

Amis we can dismiss with an adjective: he’s a poor writer. His muffled voice (London Fields – can anyone remember the plot?). His slack, truly cack-handed,  style, “the awful human colourlessness of South Wales, the dully flickering whites and greys, like a Pathe newsreel, like an ethnic Great Depression”. And his  risible attempts at ‘profoundity’  about Stalinism and the left (Koba). Even Britain’s leading Christologist, Terry Eagleton’s attack on Amis, over some sweeping and commonplace remarks about Islam, failed to inspire any sympathy for its object. At least not from me – and that really tells.

Now we have Hitch 22. Christopher’s friends. P.G.Wodehouse meets Tony Cliff . Some scabrous allusions to sleeping with two future Tory Ministers to pepper it (is that moaning or boasting?). Some tales of long-distant leftist days. No doubt we will hear some whingeing as well as bragging. Will there be any justification of Hitchens’s turn to the right? As he finally gave in to Jeeves and got rid of his friends in the Heralds of the Red Dawn.

So far not on the evidence.  Or rather yes. In a sense. Hitchens provides probably the definitive account of his drinking strategy,

It’s the professional deformation of many writers and has ruined not a few. (I remember Kingsley Amis, himself no slouch, saying he could tell on what page of the novel Paul Scott had reached for the bottle and thrown caution to the winds.) I work at home, where there is indeed a bar room, and can suit myself. But I don’t. At about half past midday, a decent slug of Mr Walker’s amber restorative, cut with Perrier water (an ideal delivery system) and no ice. At luncheon, perhaps half a bottle of red wine: not always more but never less. Then back to the desk and ready to repeat the treatment at the evening meal.

Personally I find this hard to believe. G.K.Chesterton once described the size of an average full bottle of wine as fit for one person’s consumption. This is hard to fault. Note to self: submit Hitch, above, to Pseuds’ Corner asp.

Unlike Hitchens’ other political stands. Ramblings about Islamic fascism and support for the invasion of Iraq. the former, a complete failure to recognise that the real fight against Islamism passes through the secular left of the countries where the battle is being waged. Not through the good offices of the US-NATO military.

As for his atheism - fine as it goes, but even Coatesy finds it a bit shallow. Lacks depth. Lacks profondeur. As we flâneurs say.

Response to Islamophobia Watch.

Bob Pitt’s Islamophobia Watch has a take on Bangladeshi secularism – and Tendance Coatesy’s “ultra-secularist” site. (here).

Regarding moves to reintroduce the secularist principle of the Bangladeshi Constitution he notes,

the government has shown little enthusiasm for such a change. Following a meeting last month between the ruling Awami League and its coalition partners, one of whom urged that the constitution should be amended along those lines, prime minister Sheikh Hasina stated firmly that the words “Bismillah-ar-Rahman-ar-Rahim” would be left unchanged in the constitution, as would the declaration that Islam is the state religion.

This is indeed the case. Not one to be celebrated either.

It is not difficult to identify the motive behind this decision. During the 2008 election campaign the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its Islamist ally Jamaat-e-Islami accused the Awami League of hostility towards Islam, and Sheikh Hasina no doubt reasons that if her government were to abolish the religious elements in the constitution this would be exploited by the opposition. So an entirely justifiable change that would restore the secular principle to the constitution has been rejected on pragmatic, not to say opportunistic, political grounds.What, then, are the “secular foundations” of the 1972 constitution that the Bangladesh government wishes to restore? Well, crucially they want to reinstate a provision, subsequently removed, which declared that “no person shall have the right to form, or be a member or otherwise take part in the activities of, any communal or other association or union which in the name or on the basis of any religion has for its object, or pursues, a political purpose”.

Indeed, following the Supreme Court’s verdict, Shafique Ahmed was quoted as saying that all religion-based parties should “drop the name of Islam from their name and stop using religion during campaigning”, and he went on to announce that religion-based parties are going to be “banned”. In short, what the government of Bangladesh is planning to do is to amend the constitution in order to illegalise Jamaat-e-Islami.

Here we pause. The Jamaat - unnoticed in the UK where its supporters are free to run the East London Mosque – has engaged in systematic violence against leftists and secularists in Bangladesh. This continues on a daily basis. The latest outrages and their outcome (today) noted here.

Pitt continues,

What does this have to do with secularism? Nothing whatsoever. If a secular constitution required the suppression of faith-based political parties, then secularism in Germany would require a ban on the Christian Democrats. And nobody, not even a secularist ultra like Andrew Coates, is calling for that.

Quite a few constitutions ban political parties that based on religious, other communalist or racist  ideologies. There are provisions in, say the Turkish Constitution to that effect. The German Constitution bans the resurrection of the Nazi Party – and its laws are extremely harsh towards Holocaust Denial. Political Parties under the Grundgesetz must have “internal organisations that conform to democratic principles”. In general the idea of calling political parties by religious labels is not particularly democratic since it suggests that they have a special role in representing that religion rather than electors. German or other Christian Democrats face the problem that  in today’s  Europe  Christianity is not the only religion of its citizens, and that vast numbers of people are secular. In countries with a majority Moslem population this is particularly acute since it is usually synonymous with a call for Islam (and the Sharia) to be the basis of the Constitution and not democracy.

In that context, groups like the Jamaat seek to impose a narrow vision of Islam. Nor is this just a matter for Bangladesh. As Andrew Gilligan’s Channel Four documentary last night (here) demonstrated beyond controversy how the Islamic Forum of Europe is implementing its reactionary segregationalist agenda.  In this they are aided by generous State and local government subsidies. All the  better to throttle opposition and any Bangala culture – secular or religious – they dislike. That a land, which has one of the richest and most glorious cultural legacies in the world – Bengali –  is threatened by such thugs is of prime importance to progressives across the world.

One would wish to combat such parties – something Islamophobia Watch singularly fails to do.

In this case we would not accept that say the Jamaat should be banned but ought to be politically confronted. Something Respect, the SWP and Livingstone, because of their alliance with the Islamic Forum of Europe, will not do.

Abdul Hamid of the Spitoon notes that the Jamaat and its much larger ally, the Bangladesh National Party (BNP), are at present denying the rights of the Pahari people. (Spitoon)

This is in a long line of their sponsorship of pogroms against non-Muslims, ‘tribals’, and secularists.

Something Bob Pitt fails to register.

We leave the last word to a Bangladeshi secularist, Rasel Pervez,

Awami League, as a political party, claims it upholds secularism, and most of the Awami inclined intellectuals simply wants Awami league to follow this secular path. All the intellectuals of Bangladesh wish and want Awami league to become a party that leads the fraction of Bangladesh population which supports secularist view; but, in essence, this particular party never moved further away from its roots and always in practice has nurtured the Muslim sentiments as its party policy.

In fact, Awami League has never really overcome their religious roots. In practice, it uses the religious sentiments of people to stay in power. And, this is precisely the point where it looses its idiosyncrasy from Jamaat e Islami and other non-secular parties.

Actually the spirit of 1972’s constitution was to establish a secular state which would have no state-religion, which aimed for the state not to patronize any religion and should not use religious sentiment of people politically. But Awami League is failing to follow that course of secularism and using the religious sentiment of people to justify its misdeeds. Instead of being called Awami League, we should at least recognize their effort of Islamizing this country by renaming it as “Allama Awami League” and also to respect the believes of  our countrymen start a political movement of having a Islamic name of our country.

(More Here)

Front de Gauche Slightly Up, Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste Disappears: Opinion Polls.

French Socialist Party Likely To Do Well.

Opinion Poll, Le Monde, 4th march, for the March French Regional Elections. (Relayed Here.)

These are figures that relate to the first round of the elections. The second round – where further agreements and alliances are possible – is crucial.

Lists (right-wing) of the  UMP-Nouveau Centre-MPF-CPNT remain at  30%, plus  1%, of other fragments of the right make  31%. Parti Socialiste for the  PS lists  (28%), adding 2% for  Divers gauche (diverse left) lists  (Frêche in Languedoc-Roussillon, Liste Giacobbi in Corsica…). That is a total of  30%, a rise of two points.

Les Verts-Europe-Ecologie, à 12%, lose a point.

The Front National at 8% loses a half point.

The  Front de Gauche à 7% has gained a point, while the MoDem (centre)  are unchanged at 4% (Note a lot lower than they expected).

The Extreme Left is clearly losing support:  2,5% for  Lutte Ouvrière (-0,5) and 1,5% for the  NPA (-2).

From this one can assume that the Socialists are well poised for the second round. They can make deals with other parties of the left, and are likely to win in most (if not nearly all) regions). The Front National will probably damage the right further.

The left of the Socialists and the Greens is therefore not making a great impression. At 1,5% the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste risks effectively disappearing electorally. Its inability to defend secularism clearly and its ambiguity towards reactionary religious dress codes (Islamic veil), have doubtless played a part in this dramatic drop in support (3,5 to 1,5%). Added: LO critique of NPA’s stand on the religious issue here.

The fact that the Parti Socialiste has been able to prove its capacity in local government (municipal and regional) seems to help them. They remain, nevertheless, well short of a convincing national political strategy. Hovering around alliances with the Greens or the Mo-Dems further confuses their profile. In these conditions the Front de Gauche (Left Front – grouping together electorally left socialists, Communists, Greens and radical leftists ) may be able to present a more radical programme, based on the wave of social and industrial discontent that is stirring. It may have a longer-term impact – that is up to the next Presidential and national elections. How the NPA reacts to this will be an important for the future of the French left.

 

Pabloism: A Serious Biographical Sketch of Michel Raptis.

‘Pablo’.

We are often asked about Pabloism (well not very often but it has happened). Well the Pablo is one, of many, party names of a revolutionary usually called Michel Raptis. The most reviled Trotskyist of the post-war period, the father of lies, liquidationism, and revisionism of all stripes and spots.  With this in mind it is no surprise that Tendance Coatesy, as with many other leftists, owes a political and ideological debt to this outstanding individual.

There is more. Hearing that his principal orthodox Trotskyist enemies were Gerry Healy, Pierre Lambert and James Cannon – all po-faced right-wing authoritarians – one cannot but help but like Pablo.

Then there are heavyweight political and ideological reasons to be interested in Pablo, and the Tendency around him (which, if it ever was, was certainly not reducible to his personality). For an introduction, Wikipedia here. More texts are beginning to appear on the Marxist Internet Archive – here. These help give some portrait for anyone interested –  to make their own minds up, not rely on worn-out judgements on ‘Pabloism’.

But  the best biographical introduction to Michel Raptis: on the Lubitz Trotskyanet –  here  The account cannot be cut and pasted so go to the – extremely useful – site.

Lubitz effectively debunks a host of myths about Pabloism. The biography outlines the complex early period of his political life – including important episodes - such as the Second World War and his participation in the Algerian Revolution - where documentation is of necessity not always easily available. The rows in the Fourth International – - in the 1950s – between the figures cited above and Pablo and Mandel – are given fair attention. The article covers the later politics of the Tendance Marxist Révolutionnaire (TMR), and wider aspects of the later period of Pablo’s political career - the primacy of self-management. There is a solid bibliography. In short, the highest standards are met.

 This provides a window into how the TMR embraced the project of a ‘self-managed’ republic, took up themes such as feminism, supported anticolonial revolutions (without neglecting as their consequences unravelled, the necessary critique of ‘anti-imperialist’ national bourgeoisies), and defended democratic politics against Stalinism and orthodox Trotskyism.

By the 1980s the TNR, which operated on a collegiate rather than a ‘Leader’ basis (and numbered outstanding figures such as Maurice Najman), had returned to some position of influence. It helped keep alive the ideas of workers’ control during the political triumph of neo-liberalism. This heritage continues. Not to mention its close relations with modern movements, that place ecological issues within the context of popular control. Those influenced by these ideas are today active in the French ‘alternatifs’, left social- republicanism, and the (left-wing of) the  Front de Gauche. As well as in other countries where the TMR’s impact was wider than its formal membership.

For its contemporary relevance then this sketch of a biography  is therefore highly recommended.

Iceland Votes No.

Happy Days Are Here Again!

Early referendum results showed that 98 percent of Iceland’s 230,000 voters had voted “No” against the deal to repay the UK and Dutch governments who compensated Icesave 340,000 customers in 2008 – the outcome came as no surprise to the Reykjavik government. (From here)

Or “ En þegar talin höfðu verið yfir 130 þúsund atkvæði höfðu 93,3% kjósenda hafnað Icesave-lögunum en 1,7% samþykkt þau.”( here.)

IceNews reports that 1,5 %voted yes (Here) and that, “Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir said following the referendum that negotiations will likely restart next week with all three nations as committed as ever to finding a fair solution to the repayment of money lost in the failed Icesave savings accounts.”

No doubt ways will be found to ignore this result.

For all that, it would be tempting to say that Icelanders are to be congratulated. That by saying ‘stuff it’ to the bankers and fund-managers, and rich individuals who tried to benefit from finance capital, they are well within their rights. That the misery - wage and social cuts, unemployment – they have suffered should not be made worse to curry favour with these rapacious thieves. That this shows a people united in their ability to say “No”.

Tempting.

And entirely right!

Against Communitarianism.

Against Communitarianism.

A Critical Review:  Justice. What’s the Right Thing to Do? Michael J. Sandel. Allen Lane. 2009.

Michael Sandel is a ‘communitarian’. A critic of political and economic liberalism and its building block, the private “unencumbered individual”. An advocate of the common good based on “situated” selves. In the Reith Lectures of 2009, Sandel threw caution about transposing a version of US history to a different European context to the wind. He announced that, “renunciation of moral and religious argument in politics in the decades following World War ll, prepared the way for the market triumphalism of the past three decades.” This must be remedied. In place of a framework of neutral law and secular politics we should engage in substantive debate about the good society – including within this those who argue in terms of the sacred. Or as he puts it in Justice, “a politics of moral engagement”. One that, in contrast to the liberal and secularist hostility to religion, is “more capacious faith-friendly form of public reason.” Issues such as same-sex marriage, abortion, patriotism, stem-cell research, the ‘moral limits of markets’, and redistributive taxation, imply, inevitably, “moral and religious controversies” that should not be kept out of the civic domain. Indeed they reveal “moral ties” that are bound up with the striving for a better life.

In many respects Justice is an expanded version of Sandel’s best known book, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982). This – an extended critique of John Rawls’ egalitarian liberal A Theory of Justice (1972) – put forward the notion of justice as “constitutive”. That is, made up by people’s “shared self-understandings” of their “attachments”. He concluded that with this type of politics, “we can know a good in common that we cannot know alone.” The present text, which “accompanies” his “legendary” Justice course at Harvard University, is directed at a less specialist audience. As such it often resembles the curriculum of those Great Thinkers DVDs one sees advertised in the New York Review of Books. There are chapters on Utilitarianism (Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill), neo-liberalism (Milton Friedman), market-libertarianism (Robert Nozick), political liberalism (Kant, John Rawls), and an interpretation of Aristotle, associated with fellow communitarian (Catholic and one-time New Leftist) Alasdair MacIntyre. Along the way, he spins folksy anecdotes or as he calls them, from MacIntyre, “story telling” (about, amongst others, car repair-men, and baseball players) to make his case. Whose tendency to run to blandness is enlivened by a dose of some Tabasco Sauce – a plea for citizenship beyond the logic of the market, and for the pious to play an important role in defining our “sense of community.”

With its appeal to religious ethics seriously, it is hardly surprising that Justice has found admirers in faith communities. These range from enthusiasts for ‘social’ Christianity to Islamists, desperate to find someone who recognises the value of their calls to divinely grounded Justice. Some former leftists flaying around for support for their claim that key alliances must be made with believers on issues of communal injustice might be equally seduced. No doubt there will be also Third Wayers who are drawn back to Tony Blair’s brief flirtation with another – much more woozy – communitarian, Amitai Etzioni. And whatever it was is he said about mutual obligations in “responsive communities”. Much of Sandel’s “exhilarating journey” (blurb) is more wide-ranging. As already described, it is a History of Great Ideas: of Freedom, Ethics and the Good Life illustrated by Burning Issues of the Day. It is by examining them that Justice attempts to demonstrate that the “demands of solidarity” raise topics where religious, and other heart-felt, moralities’ voice should be heard. They should be part of the “narrative conception of moral agency”.

Taslima Nasrin: The Wandering Victim of Islamism and Multiculturalism.

The Book That Still Upsets.

Taslima Nasrin has been under a cloud since 1994 (more here). In exile from Bangladesh for her secularism. For writing such as Shame  (Lajja) – which criticised religion, and particularly political Islam. The cause of her reaction? Bloodshed. Those who were not followers of the Prophet were driven out of the country. Not just in the period of the partition of the sub-Continent. But in waves afterwards. In her own land the far-right parties of God continued to terrorise slaughter non-Muslims. In particular pogrom drives, “In the Hindu eviction drive, village after village was burned to the ashes” A Hindu was “a two-legged animal which had become a foreigner in his own land” Threatened, “You will be cut to pieces to be given to the cows as fodder.”

Brave Nasrin would not remain silent. She wrote. She fight. For “the disease of religious fundamentalism is not restricted to Bangladesh and..must be fought at every turn.”

Pogroms – Jamaat and other Islamist  inspired – remain a threat.

Nasrin was and is not afraid to attack the failure of Bangladeshi left parties to defend Hindus. “Which party could be trusted after even eminent Communist Party leaders  didn’t feel secure with their Hindu names?” Ignored by British press she remains in serious risk of attack by Islamists.  Under sentence of death.

Yesterday Le Monde (here) gave a full page to Nasrin’s plight. 

” Taslima Nasreen, 48 ans, est ne apatride trimbalant sa valise de pays en pays, de villes en villes, séjours fugaces en des havres provisoires.”

“She has no nation, who carries her suitcase from country to country, from city to city, hidden stays in fleeting havens.”

At present in India her refusal to stop criticising religion means her present home is increasingly provisional.

Since Nasrim criticised the burka. She suggested women take this “symbol of oppression ” off and burn it. As a result  she has been again the target of a violent Islamist campaign. Last March two people were killed in  demonstrations in Karnataka demanding her death. the Indian left accuses her of fomenting hatred against an already oppressed religious minority. She replies that she also attacks hard-line Hinduism. To no effect.

It looks probable that her stay – even under such restrictions she is barely free at all – in India will not last. They are already talking about a new exile, a new search for refuge.  (More here).

 

It is hardly surprising that Nasrin’s case has not been loudly heard in Britain. By the ruling religiously inspired Establishment or by more liberal multiculturalists and much of the left. Lippy Bangladeshi atheists - a woman to boot – do not fit into the narrative of oppressed Islam. Nor any possible consensus about the role of faith in finding ”social justice’.  She must be ‘nutty’. She is a pain. No doubt an ‘Islamophobe’. Better keep quiet about her. Just watch.

By contrast it is the duty of every revolutionary to stand shoulder to shoulder with Nasrin.

Downbeat End of Campaign for the NPA.

All is not going well for the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste. launched to great fanfare as a potential leading force on  the French Left it is now facing up to the potential of a poor election result in next weekend’s regional elections. Its failure to take a clear secularist stand against the veil has contributed. As has its inability to decide clearly on a national line – though tending to a ‘go it alone’ position in most place in others it has entered alliances with the rest of the non Socialist Party left.

Mercredi 10 mars, devant quelque 800 personnes – une petite “Mutu” pour le facteur révolutionnaire –, il a tenté une nouvelle fois de reprendre son antienne sur “la crise sociale profonde” et “la répartition des richesses” qu’il préconise, discours qui a fait son succès.

Mais les dirigeants ont du mal à cacher leur difficulté à faire campagne. “C’est compliqué cette fois-ci”, admet Basile Pot, un proche de M.Besancenot. Malgré une campagne militante ”à l’ancienne” axée sur les mots d’ordre nationaux classiques et la revendication des “transports gratuits pour tous” en Ile-de-France, le leader du NPA reconnaît que “c’est difficile”.

Avec des prévisions donnant le NPA entre 2 % et 3,5 % des voix, les sondages ont traduit à leur manière ce ressac.

I would put its likely score lower, at below 1,5%. This is because NPA supporters tend to come from layers that are less likely to cast a  ballot than the average  – youth, and protest voters. But then I well may be wrong.

Le Monde here.

Ben Gummer Plays the Race Card.

Is Ipswich Worth a Bit of Racism?

“A Message on Immigration from Ben Gummer to residents of…….(Ipswich Street).”

This came through the door yesterday. “Immigration – it’s time to Act”.  ”I have been recently in your area, knocking on doors”. Not that I noticed.  A Window sign saying “Death to the Fascist Insect that Preys on the People” may have put Benjy off. Him being a bit of tick  that it.

It goes on “everywhere across the town people are concerned about immigration”. 

So concerned that is that Benjy has to “address ” these “concerns“. Not that it’s about ”race or colour” – since we all know the “concern” people feel about the large numbers of Americans, Australians, Canadians and Kiwis here.

So: we get Conservative promises for an “annual limit” on people let in here, a “point-based” system for those with skills, “limit immigration from new EU counties”. I am getting bored. He mentions the asylum system, Border Police, greater integration and a British Bill of Rights in place of the Human Rights of Act. Obviously not all humans are good enough to be British.

There’s even some stuff about “myths” about Asylum Seekers. Apparently they don’t get free cars! This reminds me of the campaign against Ben’s Dad, “apparently he doesn’t get free champagne breakfasts every day” (when does he get them?).

The culmination is the claim that “No fit person, British or not, should live on benefits as a way of life”.  A big  thank-you to full-time Careers and their meagre benefits.

This clearly means: Workfare. That is replacing people working for real pay with those on the Dole – work for benefits as it’s known. Which will reduce wages in ways unseen in this country  since pay cuts in the Great Depression. The unemployed with eat into full-time salaries, and they will take over the work of council and private companies. A prospect no doubt wished for those with full-time jobs.  And sure to deal with immigration (?) and its ‘problems’.

All in all a disgraceful case of stirring up fear – of “immigrants”. If Ipswich Spy reckons it’s “quite tame” then he (or she) fails to see what blowing a dog-whistle does: it gets the mutts frothing.

This glossy leaflet was financed by a certain non-domiciled Vice-Chair of the Conservative Party. This foreign-based individual has poured funds Tories fighting into marginal seats. Ipswich for example. The text is centrally generated. Then slightly adapted. Benjy benefits from the profits of a foreign based millionaire – I underline this point to illustrate the double standards of these xenophobes. Ashcroft has plenty of other points against him. Such as being a rapacious exploiter.  Which is nothing to do with where he lives.

This funding issue is ignored by Bridge Ward News who seems only interested in Ipswich Labour Party’s  cash sources.

As for being a populist…

Ben Gummer is the author of the Scourging Angel (2009). A scholarly, throughly researched, study of the Black Death. Showing some talent as a historian Gummer promotes the optimistic view that the Catholic Church was a force for good during this plague. It, he asserts, tried to fight anti-Semitic and other scapegoat-searching persecutions that followed its progress. He enlivens otherwise rather ponderous chapters with citations from Middle English literature, including Langland and Chaucer. Showing some signs of genuine appreciation. True the book lacks  any serious analysis of the – overarching -  processes – accelerated by Bubonic death – to the dissolution of feudalism, or indeed of any generalised class structure. But it is serious history.

If Gummer choses to add the theory that the word “job” stems from the medieval scribes’ way of writing “unun opus”, he is entitled to crank etymology. It shows an agreeable propensity – growing with age – for all kinds of odd-ball theories.

Stick to the medieval history Benjy.

Ex-SWP Left Platform (Rees and German) Mount a Counterfire.

Rees, German and Friend: Happy Days are Here Again?

The former SWP Left Platform has launched its own web site, Counterfire. Or rather a Blog - here. Or at least have a presence there.

Nothing about the world-historical reasons for their break  with the SWP as yet. Under theory some pedestrian stuff about Gramsci, Climate Change, Peasants Revolting and Trotsky on the United Front (Part 331). Most is ‘reporting’ in the Socialist Workers style (that is, always check out the facts for yourself before believing any of it).

If their coverage of the failure of the state to ban BNP members from being teachers is anything to go by: they are profoundly confused and illiberal.

This contains this claim by Tony Dowling,” a National Union Teachers (NUT) activist in Gateshead ”

“Schools need to be safe, inclusive places where every child is valued. This is ABC for teachers – and I know the overwhelming majority of parents feel the same way. Teachers who are signed up to a party with diametrically opposed values – values of intolerance and exclusion – cannot possibly support the sort of environment we need. Last week we took a group of pupils to a mosque in Newcastle, where they had a tour and learnt about the Islamic faith. Such educational opportunities broaden children’s horizons, but are despised by the BNP.

The new report claims that existing measures to protect pupils from discrimination are adequate. Those who have lobbied for new restrictions, by contrast, argue that a teacher’s membership of the BNP is incompatible with values like respect for diversity and a commitment to schools as inclusive communities (from  here.)

This utterly misleading scare-mongering.

Once you set up “values” like diversity and commitment to “inclusively” as the criteria to be a teacher without further qualification, you do two things. Firstly, you lay down a ‘test’ for them on the basis of what you take their values to be. Secondly, you fail to distinguish between what people think and what they do. Since only the latter are visible, you can make all kinds of judgements about their ‘hidden’ ideas. In this way, you lay the ground for an Inquisition into personal beliefs.

Singling out the BNP evades the problems this creates.

Diversity and tolerance are challenged by a  variety of groups, including Islamists, extreme nationalists, various religious sects, and cults. To make all of these groups fit into the ‘values’ you see lay down is impossible. Rees and German have worked closely with Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood and the Jamaat-I-Islami who violate all the basic notions of tolerance and diversity. Do they still maintain links with the shadowy IFE? If they couldn’t see these people for the intolerant racist bullies they are, what chance has a School Tribunal – motivated by the pressure Counterfire and other more substantial lobbyists for a purge of the BNP  would exert –  of reaching just decisions on who to ban?

By whipping up fears about the BNP Counterfire and those with the same views fail to fight the racism present in  mainstream political parties, beginning with the Labour and the Tories.

A poor start for the former SWP leaders’ new project.

Slavoj Žižek: First as Tragedy. Then as Farce. Review

Communist Explosion

Review: First as Tragedy. Then as Farce. Slavoj Žižek. Verso. 2009.

 

[Note More recent Critique of  Žižek  here.]

Slavoj Žižek came to the left’s attention in the 1990s. Initially he was called a “‘right Hegelian’ masquerading as a ‘Left Hegelian’ with a dubious neo-liberal past. (Peter Dews 1995) A few years later he was heralded as a “welcome recruit to the anti-capitalist struggle”. Blending “rarefied Lacanian themes” and Classical Marxism resulted in a “highly suggestive theory of the revolutionary act” (Alex Callinicos. 2001). More recently he has become a fixture. Someone who “defends an iconoclastic Marxism against ‘conformist liberal scoundrels’.” (Göran Therborn. 2008). Not without critics. To some on the left the Slovak theorist’s “critique of capitalism has little to do with Marx’s” (Andrew Robinson and Simon Tormey. 2006). With such contrasting assessments it is not surprising that Wikipedia has detailed pages on Žižek’s critics and defenders. This will probably multiply them. A prolific author it is near impossible to keep up with all of his writings, but this seems certain to be his most politically engaged and politically relevant book – for what that’s worth.

No doubt First as Tragedy Then as Farce will still startle a few. We rapidly forget its laboured “IQ Test”. Marx’s well-worn phrase is taken and applied to the collapse of the liberal-democratic political utopia on 9/11” (did you notice that?), and the ‘repetition’ in the ‘farce’ of financial meltdown (is that still going on?) But this is not the main thesis. Fortunately. The central objective of the book is to “take the ongoing crisis as a starting point”, examines the “utopian core of capitalist ideology”, the nature of the “real” is mystifies, and attempts to unravel its central contradictions. That the text’s efforts to “locate aspects of our situation which open up the space for new forms of communis praxis” will have some echo is certain. Well-attended public appearances and media coverage underline Žižek’s present popularity (videos here). Though one has little evidence that his audience is doing much to “re-actualise the communist Idea.” Or to resolve the Left’s dilemmas – either to struggle for state power (what is normally called Leninism) or to reject capturing the state altogether (a line associated at the moment with John Holloway’s writings) – by adopting his own ‘Leninist’ project of “to make the state itself work in a non-statal way”. Is this the way forward for “communist praxis”? Many people will probably already think of a few objections here. What this implies for governments and civil services is not explored beyond reference to “radically changing” state power, “and its relationship to its base” “and so on”….

This review will not try to negotiate all of the “so ons”. They lead us to the inner alcoves of Žižek’s maze of concepts. Just for theory: Lacanian psychoanalysis, theories of the ideology and the subject, Kant, Hegel and subsequent German idealist philosophy, not to mention Marxist dialectics, are there in abundance. With plenty of by-ways into Badiou (star turn – here), Laclau, Saint Paul’s universalism and Walter Benjamin’s “divine violence”. Not to mention more empirically based writers picked up along the process of churning out the present pages, such as Jean-Pierre Dupuy and his warnings about potential catastrophes – commonsense advice that we should anticipate disaster before it happens that Žižek manages to render into Latinate profundity. Or musing on “humanisation” in telling stories about people that “emphasise the gap between the complex reality of the person and the role he has to play against his true nature” There is reference to Jonathan Littell’s aridly formal novel Les Beinveillants (2008), a “fictional-person account of the Holocaust form the perspective of a German participant, SS Obserturmbannführer Maximilan Aue” From thence to psychology and politics of ‘Toxic subjects’ (‘the Two-Faced Sneaky Back-Stabber’ for starters), and then the Italian Government’s use of the State of Emergency. A hotchpotch of High Theory and journalistic commentary. All of interest, but hard to keep within the boundaries of the narrative we are busy constructing out of the pages of First as Tragedy.

Invariant Communism.

We are concerned however with one, if often over-egged, dish. How Žižek’s mixes the ingredients to explain the way “invariant communism” – a “concrete universality”, “universal features that may be applied everywhere”- “has to re-invented in each new historical situation.” If the ‘Real’ of the global market mechanism, a limit on representation, how can we speak of communism today and how can it become actual? The new Spirit of capitalism for Žižek fills the symbolic dimension. A world not run by traditional hierarchy but by “post-modernism”, a flat decentred world, where the “master-Signifier” is multiple consumerism, or rather, a kaleidoscope of enforced choice. A world in which we buy for “experience”, consume for pleasure and meaning, where companies promote their “ethical values”, and politics are fragmented by our (multiple) “identities” A world that by its very permissiveness foments fundamentalist – puritan – reactions. And the populist-racist mobilisation around its own version of “fear of the toxic Other” (Žižek rarely misses a helping hand from the clichés of the academic left even when he turns round and tries to maul them). An environment, in short, which the capitalist ‘real’ – operating beyond the ken of most people – throws up a vast array of misleading images and ideas that smother radical challenge.

French Regional Elections: Socialists on Course, but Massive Abstentions.

With a total of 50% (29% for the Socialist Party) the left won a historic score.  The elections were marked by record abstentions ( 54% ) This was nevertheless a slap in the face for Sarkozy’s Party, the UMP, (which he openly campaigned for – violating Presidential neutrality). They were down (with their allies) to  26,18%.

 

The election results will not alter the existing leadership of Regional Councils, which are all under Socialist control, except for Alsace and Corsica. In the latter the right may lose. Only the situation in Languedoc, where the Frêche list (organised by a loud-mouthed ex-Socialist  populist) came out ahead of all left lists. The Parti Socialiste is calling for a vote for him to stop the UMP gaining power.

****

Europe Ecologie, an alliance of the Verts and Green ‘notables’ from all sides, got, 12,46% – a reduction on the European election result., 16,2% They will be a position to negotiate positions of strength inside new regional council. Their politics on ecological issues, are not expected to cause difficulties, though the self-importance of some of their candidates may be more of a problem.

****

To general surprise the far-right Front National did well. They has a high vote in the Nord de Calais (Le Pen’s daughter Marine - now coming Party leader)  and 20% in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur where Le Pen stood. In many places they will be able to stand again in the next round – thus undercutting the traditional right, and effectively helping the Socialists retain power. The FN ascribes its success to the debate on French ‘identity’ – where their xenophobic message has seemed to be part of the mainstream.  

The Front de Gauche got over the limit of  5% – up to 6% . The Nouveau Parti Anti-capitalist (NPA) got around 2,5% (it is not clear whether this figure includes the minority of regions where they were allied with the Front de Gauche or not). This defeat (they had hoped for 5%) was expected. Commentators account for it, partly from their perceived sectarian stand, and partly from their failure to stand up for secular principles on the issue of the Veil.

All of these left forces call for a vote ‘against’ the right. But only the Front de Gauche will actively negotiate with the Socialists and campaign for their victory.

The  Mouvement Démocrate (MoDem), the ‘centrist’ opposition to Sarkozy declined to 4,35%.

******

High abstentionism is said to be due to the feeling that regional councils are not relevant to everyday  life, and to the failure of any party to convince people that they will make a difference.

 

(From here) Perceptive analysis, Rue 89 here.

Green Chahārshanbe-Sūri.

French Regionals: Where the Left now Stands and What it Means.

French Regional Elections Results of the  14th of  March 2010

POLITICAL LISTS.		Make-Up	First Round
			#	%
	Extrême Left	NPA, LO	662 199	NPA 3,4%LO 1,10 %
	Front de gauche et alliés, Communists, Left Socialists,Ex-NPA and Altenative Greens and others.	PCF, PG, GU, Les Alternatifs	1 137 153	5,84 %
	PS et alliés	PS, PRG, MRC	4 579 807	23,52 %
	Europe Écologie (Green Party with  political personalities and allies)	Les Verts, F&S	2 372 340	12,18 %
	Divers gauche	Variables	594 947	3,05 %
	Union de la gauche (Socialist Party, Left Radicals,Republicans, some Communists)	PS, PRG, MRC, PCF	1 094 111	5,62 %
	Other listes	Variables	366 422	1,88 %
	Listes régionalistes, from Bretons to Corsican nationalists.	RÉG	146 104	0,75 %
	Mouvement démocrate et alliés (Centrists)	MoDem, alliés variables	817 608	4,20 %
	Majorité présidentielle: President Sarkozy;s right-wing UMP and its allies.	UMP, NC et alliés	5 066 826	26,02 %
	Divers droite. Odd-ends.	Variables	241 153	1,24 %
	Front national	FN	2 223 760	11,42 %
	Extrême droite (Identity Bloc and dissident FN)	EXD	173 283	0,89 %
Abstentions			23 407 608	53,64 %
Voters			20 232 451	46,36 %
Spoiled and Invalid Ballots.			756 738	3,74 %

 Three Main Issues from these results for the French Left:

• The Rise of the Green Vote. Europe Ecologie (Official Site here) is an alliance of the Green Party a few  political refugees (or opportunists)  from other parties (Socialists and Communists) and well known Ecological personalities (such as José Bové). It is headed by Daniel Cohen-Bendit. This result contrasts startlingly with their Presidential score in 2007 (1,7%). Danny le Vert’s  aim now is to create a new platform for ‘political ecology’ – to become a major player. The Greens (les Verts) are a small group of around 5,000 members. More than fifth hold elected positions, from the lowest levels  of municipal politics to the Senate. With their present allies they are likely to become even more top-heavy. Their politics, opposing for example, regional rapid train projects, are not without ambiguity. Allied with the Socialist Party they will do well in the next round of elections – in terms of seats. Their political future looks more and more conventional - in the direction of the German Greens that Cohen-Bendit is determined to push them. One will follow of itnerest their ability to sustain these voting levels in sharper more crucial elections .
• The Front de Gauche (in English here) did reasonably well – eclipsing the Nouveau Parti Anticapitalist (NPA) where the latter stood apart from the rest of the non-Socialist left. In Limousin, where the NPA stood with them – they scored their best result (over 13,13%). This indicates the benefits of working together. Even if it now posing problems with the Socialists for the next election round – they will not accept NPA candidates hostile to their party(here).  LO – who really went it almost alone – got nowhere. In the Vaucluse, where the NPA succumbed to multiculturalist  opposition to secularism, by standing  a veiled candidate, their vote dropped by a half to around 2%. Internally NPA critics of this inability to stand up to religious oppression were numerous. As they said, here is a  difference between  defending people’s right to wear oppressive religious dress and conniving in it politically. The future of the Front de Gauche as an electoral alliance looks probable, though how far there will be future candidates for Presidential Elections (already Jean-Luc Mélenchon is spoken about) or – improbable – a joint organisation remains to be seen. The weight of the Parti Communist Français’s past remains heavy.
• The Parti Socialiste did well. Both the Greens and the Front de Gauche appear to have gathered support as perceived pressure groups on them rather than full-blown alternatives. How far they will be able to operate – within the limits of Regional Government – remains to be seen. The Socialists are still without any clear nationals strategy. Their proposed alliance with the centrists of the Modems appears up in smoke, and the centre party is already imploding.

The Second Round on the 21st of March promises to consolidate the pattern of left – PS-led – advance. Whether the left will have a ‘grand slam’ and win every region is of little interest outside of the hexagon

The Parti de Gauche says:

 Le Front de Gauche s’enracine. Nous sommes les seuls à avoir progressé en voix tout au long du cycle qui s’achève. Nous entrons donc dans le suivant en dynamique ascendante. L’adhésion est bien présente, souvent au-delà de nos électeurs

The Left Front has put down roots. We are the only force to have seen our votes go up in the political cycle which is now ending. We are entering, therefore, on an rising wave, into the next cycle. Support and backing is really there, often well beyond our electorate.

Internationally we may reflect on the positive results of unified political campaigns. To begin with the French left has avoided the ‘Italian’ disaster of being dragged to the centre and impotence - though Europe Ecology remains a threat which may yet do the same as the Mo-Dems once menaced. Equally it shows the importance of standing up to social democratic compromises with market-liberalism from the left, by open new organisations. The NPA’s inability to ‘jump over’ the rest of the left has left many of its members openly disappointed. The NPA’s declaration, that the Elections showed a rejection of Sarkozy and massive abstention, failed to face their own responsibilities.  But the fact that some local NPA groups co-operated with the Front de Gauche (not to mention a  whole tendency – the ‘Piquet’ tendency – which joined it) is a good sign for the future.

Review: The Idea of Communism. Tariq Ali.

Not a Totem?

 

Review: The Idea of Communism. Tariq Ali. Verso. 2009. 

Communist spiders, capitalism as a nervous disease, the triumph of liberal capitalism, when “utopia, together with all notions of collective activity and its misshapen Communist children, was buried safely in the family vaults..” the Flying Machine of the Tailor of Ulm… The opening pages of The Idea of Communism are full of confusing metaphors and allusions. We steady around the motif that, “the idea of ‘Communism’ grew out of the need to challenge wage-slavery of workers during industrial capitalism of the nineteenth and twentieth century”. From Europe and North America as wage slavery spread, resistance to it developed – the twin sides of the “first wave of globalisation”. It was the analysis of this process, of its “longue durée”, that Marx and Engels offered. “Because of its lasting value, it will last as long as the planet”. Tariq Ali has not published a memorable, well-researched or even well written book, (in comparison with his The Duel, 2008, on Pakistan and Afghanistan). But its 126 pages have great ambitions to say something of value. 

  

The Idea of Communism is not so much an exploration of Communism, as an account (cobbled together from historical insights of varying quality, and his own published writings of decades past ) of the fate of one type of Communism. This begins with the Communist Manifesto (1848) and concludes, as the “light is dim” with a call for “new forms” of combat “between the possessors and the disposed.” An evocation of William Morris’s A Dream of John Ball (1888) Where “fellowship shall be established in heaven and on the earth” completes the elegiac tone. An unfortunate reference. Perhaps Ali imagines himself as the Lancelot in Morris’s The Defence of Guenevere (1858). Mounted on the “roan charger” who comes to rescue Communism “at good need”. 

The history of the “idea” of communism it is not. Nor does it explain its Ali’s claim that as long as capitalism exists so will a communist challenge. It never specifies why resistance to markets and private property have to be communist as such (Interview here, rhetoric in full flow here). It is an account of the views of “Communism’s founding fathers”, Marx and Engels, their appropriation by the leaders of the October Revolution, and a balance-sheet of that event and its consequences for today’s left. That is, there is nothing about pre-capitalist communist utopians, the communism of Moses Mendelson, Wilhelm Weitling and Étienne Cabet, anarchist communism, or contemporary communist thinkers such as Michael Hardt and Toni Negri. The “practice” is that of Marxist parties, post-1917 that followed the Leninism codified and (transformed) by Stalin and their (largely) Trotskyist or former Trotskyist, critics. It is a story of the “divorce of theory from practice” – a promise of social equality and freedom that would come with the abolition of wage labour, and a bureaucratic reality. Repressive dictatorships – founded on other waves, of terror. There is plenty on the search for a true “praxis” that unites the two realms. Pre-Lenin the 1870 Paris Commune comes close to the ideal. Apparently in opposition to the ‘social’ republic that its leaders supported. Or as Marx stated, the “vital elements” which “frankly avows ‘social emancipation’ as the great goal of the republic” (First Draft of ‘The Civil War in France’ 1871). The author of Capital saw in it the germs of a transformed state. The future lay, not in rejecting ‘republicanism’ . It was in the way it went beyond it through its “organised power” and its role as “the vanguard of working men of all nations”. But then Ali’s image of the Commune has more in common with the vivid (c more essential) novel by Commune participant Jules Vallès in L’Insurgé (1885) than a thought-out, critical, historical inquiry.

French Left Victory. Europe Écologie: Cracks Start To Open Up.

The Sunday Second Round of the French regional Elections were a success for the Left.  56% of votes on a national level for the joint-lists of the Parti Socialiste, Europe Écologie and the Front de Gauche (in  a few regions, such as Brittany - for the Greens, and Limousin for the Front,  they stood separately). Sarkozy’s supporters got  37% . The far-right Front National got  7% This leaves the left running all the regions, except Alsace. Negotiations  with Corsican nationalists over a regional government are continuing. (Summary here)

The left clearly benefited from disillusion with Sarkozy’s main promise. That if people worked more they would get more (more jobs, less taxes). Economic growth remains modest and unemployment high. Proposed reforms of the welfare state affecting retirement and pensions frightened many. Yet the left has no attractive central objective,  apart from defending existing rights and a dose of ‘green’ politics for the environment. Ecologists were able to gain support partly because they appeared to offer ideas on the latter in elections for the bodies (Regional Super-Councils) that initiative and run the infrastructure (transport and planning) that touch these concerns.  The Parti Socialiste hope to integrate many of those elected on the Europe Ecologie slate. But their own internal disputes continue: the saga of the fight between Socialist leader Martine Aubry and Ségolène Royale.

The future of  Europe Écologie is now capturing media attention.

This electoral alliance is made up of the Green party (les Verts) and a gamut of personalities, ranging from left wing figures like José Bové, radical intellectuals, notables, activists,  to “neither right nor left” ecologist pioneer, Antoine Waetcher.

Daniel Cohen-Bendit, the ‘liberal-libertarian’  leader of Europe Écologie wishes to create a new structured organisation out of this alliance. On Sunday he called  for a new “political co-operative” formed around «collectifs Europe Ecologie-22 mars». (here). The reference to Cohen-Bendit’s May 68 (very much) past, is underlined by his critique of ‘obsolete’ political machines, adapted to the industrial past. A new form of political organisation, (inevitably) held together by the Web, with full plurality, should be created. “Il est nécessaire de «repolitiser» la société civile en même temps que de «civiliser» la société politique et faire passer la politique du système propriétaire à celui du logiciel libre.”  “We have to repoliticise civil society while, at the same time, civilise political society, passing rom the political system based on proprietors’ ownership to that of a free radical.” (literally from property to free software). Opines Danny.

Others are less keen. Martine Aubry, former Green Presidential candidate, says it’s all  “too early” for such a project. Rhetoric of a new ‘co-oeprative’ politics hides more than it reveals.  (here). Is the political axis of a new formation to be clearly on the left? Or, as Cohen-Bendit’s practice in Germany and the European parliament indicates – open to the Centre and centre-right? Another issue is the internal organisation of this proposed body. How would these groups operate? The not-too-distant experience of the anti-liberal ‘collectifs’ during the Referendum on the proposed European Constitutional treaty did not result in any new political organisation. They split over the formation of the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste - many backing Bové for his marginalised Presidential bid, others supporting Bescancenot and the NPA.  Europe Écologie contains potential divisions from this period: José Bové invested a lot in this campaign, Cohen-Bendit actively backed it. Not to mention the widespread suspicion of Cohen-Bendit on the left, including left-of-centre social-ecologists.

With these problems in mind another thought must have occurred to activists on the French left,. Cohen Bendit speaks increasingly in terms of “je” (I) rather than “nous” (We). Have not the newly elected Greens seen that the real issue they face is not to create a “new” party but to come to grips with the Parti Socialiste’s embrace? This reality – a hard fact they will confront in their Regional Council rather more than Cohen-Bendit’s effiorts to drag them away into his own personal project.

As strains over this proposal are emerge the prospect of the 20012 Presidential elections is concentrating  minds. But in which direction?

 

Update: last night over 300 people crowded into a meeting organised in a Parisian café to hear Cohen-Bendit argue for a “metamorphosis” of the Green movement. Present were important Parti Vert members, with several leaders notably absent (here).

 

Gauche Unitaire: Unity Pays!

The comrades from the Gauche Unitaire (ex-NPA) contributed to the score of the Front de Gauche. They stand  for a new democratic socialist party.

They deserve their success.

There was one unfortunate exception to the push to join the left together.

In Limousin the Socialist Party refused to integrate the Front in the second Round of regional Elections. This was because of the presence of Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA) candidates. In the event the joint list went from 13,1% to 19,1%. 3 Communist Party (PCF), 2, NPA and 1 Parti de Gauche councillors were elected.

This shows the positive benefits of unity (more from NPA here)

The Red Army Faction, A Documentary History. A Notice.

Important Book

The Red Army Faction, A Documentary History. Vol 1. Projectiles for the People by André Moncourt and J. Smith (Here)

The history of the Red Army Faction (1970 – 1998) is important for the European Left. The group did not just take up arms. From the “Urban Guerilla Concept” (1971) to its final declaration of dissolution, the RAF produced justifications for its strategy and actions.  The film, the Baader-Meinhof Complex, has stirred up interest in the organisation. Based on Stephan Aust’s book it gave a version of the RAF”s best-known leaders’ lives, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, which is widely accepted. That is, that these underground militants were deluded and isolated. They killed needlessly, and ended their own lives in despair. The  picture is shrouded with a doomed glamour.

Smith and Moncourt (two pseudonyms) have produced a hefty alternative version. It extends far beyond biography, and the Baader-Meinhof band. It provides an introduction to the West German New Left from which the movement emerged. Unlike many who toyed with the romance of Latin American Foci, the RAF were serious about their project: to establish an outpost of Urban Guerilla action in the First World. To the authors, they were far from indiscriminate: their targets were institutions and players in imperialism.

The book offer a detailed narrative history of the RAF’s development (up till the mid 1980s)  backed up with contemporary documents.  Projectiles for the People also offers an account of lesser known armed bodies, such as the Revolutionary Cells (RZ) and the Second of June Movement. The list of actions is placed in a wider political context, including the intense state clamp-down that went with rising media hysteria against the Baader-Meinhof Gang (as they became known).  Moncourt and Smith claim that the RAF took great care to avoid hurting civilians. The controversial heart of the book is soon apparent.  That Meinhof’s death in 1976, and those of Andreas Baader, Jan-Carl Raspe and Gudrin Ensslin in Stammheim in 1977, were not suicides. In all these cases there is “compelling evidence” that the State and Prison authorities were involved. That these were, in effect, murders. All of this is supplemented with numerous references and a clear chronology (at the end of the book).

We discover how the rest of the West German left interacted with the armed struggle. For example,  the present leading European Green, Daniel Cohen-Bendit and future German Green Foreign  Minister, Joshka Fisher initially sympathised with the armed struggle. Their ‘sponti’ (non-dogmatic left) organisation (Revolutionärer Kampf) proclaimed, after the hunger strike to the death of Holger Meins in 1974, “unambiguous solidarity with the guerilla“. After Meinhof’s death, and rioting in the streets, they backed off. But only to support “mass militancy” against armed action. Fisher called for them to “put down the bombs and pick up the stones”.

The authors do not shy away from confronting difficult issues. These include anti-Semitism, or at best, callous ’Anti-Zionism’ and the crimes of the hijack that ended at Entebbe. They demonstrate at least one point. That Horst Mahler, a former member now on the Holocaust-denying far-right, was expelled from the RAF in 1974. His trajectory, they assert, was an isolated one. However this bears little on the problem that during the 1970s the group and its allies were slow in “recognising or rejecting antisemitism”.

There is much in this throughly argued and documented book that will cause a pause for thought. Many of us on the European left, who had sympathy for glamorous guerillas, were turned away by former combatants   ’Bommi’  and Klein’s accounts (June the 2nd and RZ) of what was wrong in this strategy. German leftists told us of how the repression against the RAF and other armed groups had turned against the whole left. They made us consider the moral issues at stake, though I would not exaggerate this too much. Perhaps, more significantly, the spiral of more and more isolated violence turned people off . Those who backed the  RAF after Stammheim turned from anti-imperialism, Smith and Moncourt state, to an obsession with imprisoned guerillas.

Today the idea of a united ‘anti-imperialist’ movement, let alone an armed struggle in Europe, appears impossible,  politically and ethically dubious . What would such a  strategy be based on?  What ‘anti-imperialist’ countries are there, and what movements? North Korea? Jihadists? The area of dispute is limitless. In Europe the dying embers of nationalist armed combat, in the Basque Country, and in Corsica, are overshadowed by the horrors that went with the break up of Yugoslavia – a real armed conflict.  What happened there, which was sometimes presented as a fight for national liberation, had effects that linger in Europe. The actions of the erstwhile ’anti-imperialists’ of the German Green Party, Cohen-Bendit, and Fisher, have not fared better. Their backing for military ‘humanitarian interventions’ in the Balkans, is said by many to have paved the way for US intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. After  these developments it is not surprising that many on the left today are sceptical about any use of force. That they prefer mass struggle to an armed one.

Nevertheless,  Projectiles for the People should open a debate about what the RAF meant, historically and politically. It should be widely read.  

 

This volume will be followed by a further one. More information here.

 

Work for Your Benefit Coming to East Anglia.

Pilots are due to begin this autumn.

Succesful tenders for Norfolk, Cambridgeshire & Suffolk.

The information below identifies the suppliers who have been successful at PQQ stage of the Work for Your Benefit competition and the Contract Package Areas they have been invited to tender in.

1 – A4E

2 – Consultancy Home Counties

3 – Ingeus

4 – Intraining

5 – Reed in Partnership

6 – Seetec

7 - Suffolk County Council

8 – TBG Learning

9 – TNG

From DWP, Here.

Usual suspects. Chancers, Millionaires (are they not the same thing?), dubious recruitment agencies, ‘learning’ (what?) and ‘Consultants’.

With a new face – Suffolk County Council.

The Chancellor Alistair Darling is calling for radical cuts to public expenditure (here). The Tories agree. How is this going to go with the duty to provide services? Answer: make the unemployed carry out public sector work for well-below the minimum wage, with no labour rights, and under the constant threat of destitution if they disobey. Cheap. Problem solved.

Wondered how Suffolk County Council  is going to make savings without massive cuts (no service reductions here)? See above…

Criticisms of Workfare on the Ipswich Unemployed Action site – here

How Not to Fight the BNP.

Today sees a Hope not Hate Day of Action against the BNP. This is just one initiative amongst many. Unite Against Fascism organises opposition to the BNP and the English Defence League (EDL). There are regular skirmishes. Last week’s demonstration against an EDL rally in Bolton was met with brutal police action. Emotions are rising.

What are the ideas and strategies behind these campaigns?

That all democrats should act to “expose” the BNP and the EDL. To show that they are far-right racists, out to attack non-British ethnic groups. That they hold a neo-Nazi agenda.

The UAF writes, “We aim to unite the broadest possible spectrum of society to counter this threat.” This alliance includes the labour movement, the left, liberals, religious and ethnic groups.

Those involved are motivated with genuine anger at the BNP’s public declarations, and, limited,  election presence.

Why are some people voting BNP? Why was the party able to get MEPs elected? What are its roots? How has the EDL  got the means to bring football supporters and casuals out on the streets to shout about Islam?

Is the best way to answer them to “expose” their real aims by door-to-door and media campaigns? To bring out anti-fascists when the far-right is in the street  to say “No Passaran!”

Eddie Ford argues in the Weekly Worker (here) that,

The EDL is but a symptom of the alienation engendered by the decaying system of capital, defended and promoted by the whole bourgeois establishment and its state. And to take on the latter we need to begin by uniting the existing organised left around a partyist perspective and hence take a decisive step towards what the working class really needs – a mass Communist Party of hundreds of thousands and millions.

The profound problem being, of course, that this is almost the exact opposite of the approach adopted by the SWP/UAF and others. Deliberately, and with a certain degree of cynicism, such groups constantly present the threats and dangers posed by the EDL and BNP in such an exaggerated way as to justify the construction of the widest possible popular front – which turns out to be the SWP and assorted liberal personalities, vicars and trade union officials.

Eddie is on the right track. Neither a popular front nor streeting-fighting will get anywhere.

• The fury at the BNP and the EDL is displaced resentment. The left is unable to offer a cedible alternative to Gordon Brown. Encouraged by members of the Labour Party and Trade Union officials it united  against what seems a far easier target. The left can feel warm, self-righteous and active without having to confront its own weaknesses. The Labour Party equally avoids  its own responsibilities.  
• Far-right parties have grown across Europe. Why? What is the alienation Eddie Ford talks about? Political scientist Eric Maurin explains the French Front National support as a response to a “fear of the future” (here). Despite its claim, this is not just high in France. A ‘factured’ society where there’s a loss of faith in tommorow, is emerging across the continent. What is it based on? It is a division inside both the working and middle class between those who are still ‘safe‘ in their work and careers, and those exposed to the ‘flexible‘ labour market. The fear of being turned out from a job and having to face competition for employment means that people blame the last arrivals on the market . In Britain, migrant workers take the brunt of these anxieties. Whether deliberately or not, employers take advantage. 
• In these conditions, the far-right can get people to blame ‘foreigners’ for everyone else’s difficulties,  even when they are not even in the running for the same work. Anyone anxious about keeping their job and salary (mortgages, debt and high private utility prices make most of us on the edgy about our income) can vent her or his frustration on this convenient object.
• In-fighting extends to  state provision (housing, education and health). Those protected ‘in’ the system are worried about being cast into less protected. The government’s programme of privatisations and outsourcing increases the difference between private welfare and public. It makes a whole swathe of people nervous about their position. Unemployment looms. Anyone forced onto the Flexible New Deal and other dole schemes (hundreds of thousands) is made to feel that they do not have benefits as a right. They have duties to the state. It, and its private contractors) have rights over them. Many people loathe this condition. This is another source of frustration.
• The government’s multiculturalism has encouraged this process. This is not by its welcome promotion of mutual understanding. It is by its political strategy of supporting ”community leaders’  of ethnic and religious groups the recipients of local power and money. It contributes a further level of frustration and competition over resources. Multiculturalism, in this  sense ,  is a factor in fostering racism.
• The far-right can concentrate all the resentments and insecurities of people together into an  ’anti-system’ programme. This can slip from anti-foreigners, British nationalist, to virulent anti-black or Moslem propaganda. But its hinge is a reaction to the market-state. That is Labour’s commitment to keeping its consistency ’safe’, promoting their interests. With its idea that the state should equip us to compete in a global market, people are left vulnerable  to the gales of insecurity when economic crises arrive. Their own policies inflame the atmosphere in which the far-right thrives.

UAF and Hope Against Hate have not tackled these problems. They tend to reduce the source of BNP backing to ‘anti-Islam’ inflamatory speech. They have tried to create the view that nobody should criticise religious belief.  But opposition to religions, such as Islam, and Islamist politics, should not be confused with dislike of Moslems. By putting these together they are unable to pursue an  anti-racist agenda. In Tower Hamlets, for example, Ken Livingstone, Galloway, the SWP and other’anti-BNPers’ , are allied with the supporters of the far-right Jamaat-I-Islami  a well-funded  Islamist group responsible for massacres in the Bangladesh War of National Liberation and the slaughter of leftists, Hindus and other minorities ever since. By failing to answer those who criticise this link they expose a weakness that undermines their own credibility as anti-fascists.

Nevertheless, one should not exaggerate either this factor, or the importance of the BNP. Much more serious, is, as Eddie claims, the inability of the left to develop a “partyist” perspective. Only a densely networked left, present in the community, can begin to fight the BNP and the EDL. This would have to be one that confronts the legacy of Blair and Brown – the market state to start with – that is the real cause of what popularity the far-right  has got.

This does not mean ignoring the BNP, or the need for a street presence against the EDL. But it’s an issue of different priorities.

Italy: Right Holds on, Northern League Surges.

Idol of the BNP.

The Weekend’s Italian regional elections did not bring good news for the left. According to the BBC (here),

The coalition of Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi has made gains at the expense of the centre-left in regional elections, partial results suggest.With most votes counted, the coalition has a lead in six of 13 regions where voting took place. It previously controlled only two. The gains came despite Mr Berlusconi’s recent personal  and political scandals.

Le Monde comments that of the political forces,

un seul a vraiment triomphé : la Ligue du Nord, alliée au PDL, obtient pour la première fois de son histoire les présidences régionales de la Vénétie et du Piémont.

Only one has really triumphed: the Northern League, ally of the PDL  (Party of Liberty – Berlusconi’s rally), has got for the first time in its existence the regional Presidencies of Veneto and Piedmont.

Bossi, the League’s leader, speaks of “tsunami della Lega Nord” – a “Tsunami” in their favour. (here)

This is very bad news. It means that an outright xenophobic party is in a position of real power. The Lega Nord’s appeal is straightforward. It raises fears of foreigners (non-Italians) and the Italian South, on the kind of dog-in-manger defence of the relative regional prosperity of the North. It is a good illustration of a side of regionalism that many British leftists are usually keen to avoid, since they assume that decentralisation is always a good thing.

 

The abject failure of the Partito Democratico, (Democratic Party) is heart-rending. It  shows the futility of trying to model a European centre left party on the US Democrats.  Forces to their left have  Partito della Rifondazione Comunista, (Communist Refoundation) are divided.  (here) The marginalisation of the left indicates is partly a result of their own internal fragmentation. This has been helped  by the Sinistra critica (Critical Left)  allied to the French Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (itself in crisis as a result of its own ‘stand alone’  strategy).

For the European left Italy is a source of great sadness.

La Ballade de Jim.

Burka and Niqab To Be Banned In Belgium?

Le Monde reports today that,

Les députés belges membres de la commission de l’intérieur de la Chambre ont approuvé à l’unanimité, mercredi 31 mars, une proposition de loi visant à interdire le port de la burqa dans les lieux publics.

Belgium deputies (MPs), in a Parliamentary Commission, have unanimously approved on Wednesday the 31st of March, a proposal  that would mean the Burka (voile integral) will be banned in public places.

(More here.)

Le Soir, Belgium’s  foremost daily, states that only the Francophone Greens had, some,  reservations (here), and that,

La Belgique est vraisemblablement le premier pays d’Europe occidentale à adopter une loi qui bannit le voile facial de l’espace public. Une interdiction générale et absolue que le Conseil d’État français vient d’estimer peu tenable, juridiquement.

Belgium is probably the first Western European country to adopt a law banning face-veils in public spaces. A general ban which the French Council State has said is not tenable in legal terms.

In France there is a growing realisation of the potential for arbitrary and heavy-handed action if any full ban is made. It is extremely unlikely that France will do more than make prevent wearing the full face-veil (Burka and Niqab) in certain public conditions - where it would prevent equality. Such as in state and municipal services.

In Belgium the proposal still has to go to  the Parliament to be approved. It is likely to be challenged in terms of its compatability with the state’s constitutional law (notably Title 2, Article 11 on freedom of religion). 

It seems a hasty over-reaction. In France the whole nature of the debate has been criticised. Many welcome the affirmation of public equality and are opposed to all forms of religious covering up, the target. But when there are many government measures that attack people’s rights (over pensions to start with) it looks as if the issue is artificially inflamed to divert attention away from them. Such ‘culture wars’ have a tendency to distract from more significant problems.

Even if we considered this a key topic these measures steer away from challenging  the strength of religious institutions.  Islamism is not just a galaxy of  far-right political movements based on the pious Moslem bourgeoisie. It is bound up with efforts to establish the power of Islamic jurisprudence , Fiqh, (here) .  The combination of religious ‘scholars’ and bigoted activists is the source of the oppression.  Not individuals. No prohibition of the full veil addresses this seriously. Probably because many of those worked up about the Burka are not just on the extreme right themselves – or on the right generally – but because they too favour religious bodies (Christian). In other words they are not secularist to begin with.

 

Can anti-racist secularism can deal with this delicate subject?

This is far from clear.

What is certain is that one has to start from a secular state. This is something which does genuinelly not exist in Belgium. Although, unlike England, there is no official  Church there is an institutionalised system of “recognised religions” (here). This gives subsidies  and power to faith organisations, including Moslem ones.  In this way the country’s religious policies resemble British ‘multiculturalism’ . They have helped foment communalist identities. Banning the full veil will not deal with the problems this causes, not least the divisions between Flemish and Walloons, and their inability to give ‘immigrants’ (many of second and third generations) real equality.

Notes on Why I am Not a Muslim.

 

Notes on Why I am Not a Muslim. Ibn Warraq. Prometheus Books. 2003. 

First published in 1995 Why I am not a Muslim was part of the blowback at Ayatollah Khomeini’s Fatwa against Salman Rushdie. It is a searing assault on Islam, seen as fostering “religious fascism” and a defence of intellectual liberty. Against those who, at the time, were (and are) openly calling for Rushdie’s death he affirmed his right to “criticise everything and anything in Islam”. Yet despite common ground over defending democratic values, for the secular socialist left Why I Am Not A Muslim goes against the grain. Appeals to Karl Popper, and Arthur Koestler, and sallies at “fellow travellers” with “totalitarian Islam” seem to place the author on one side of a religious Cold War.  More recently he has torn into Edward Said and the concept of Orientalism (here). However the book’s title is taken from the free-thinking writings of a hero of the left, Bertrand Russell (Why I am not a Christian). This suggests that we should look at it in terms of another tradition; one, which has increasing importance in European, left politics, secularism. Warraq indeed concludes with his readiness to oppose “fascism and racism in the West”. That is, if need be, to defend the value of universal freedom and openness against the West itself. 

Today there is unreasonable hostility in Europe to Islam, not just towards Jihadists or aspects of the religion, but to all Moslems. At the moment proposals to restrict the right to wear full-face veils (Burka, Niqab) in Belgium and France, are grabbing the attention. Some say that we are seeing a full-scale campaign against Muslims. But this is not the whole picture. These reactions meld into a far more generalised prejudice against ‘foreigners’, migrant workers and long-established non-Christian groups. By contrast Governments and states try to institutionalise Islam and other religious communities within a multiculturalist consensus. In Britain the main political parties stand for an ever-growing role for ‘faith communities’ in determining and carrying out public policy. Some liberals and leftists appear to welcome this process. There are those preaching a dialogue between “Western and Islamic ‘civilisations’” on the basis of an assertion of Islam’s progressive values. (Tariq Ramadan).” Others, ‘alter-globalisers’, seeking interfaith unity around global ‘social justice’. In the guise of opposing prejudice they would help support state sponsored influence for all supernatural creeds. 

But fighting against stigmatising Muslims on the basis of their religion is not the same as embracing religious institutions. In fact putting Islam on an equal footing with other state endorsed faiths is a recipe for greater intolerance. The Rushdie affair has been followed by a string of other cases where believers have asserted their right to censor critical voices. Local politics have been opened up to competing religious groups, not just to influence-seeking Islamic organisations but also to Christian lobbies and the Christian People’s Alliance. All have their own agenda, yet tend to coalesce around conservative moral principles. In this sense Warraq’s writing should be considered as not just as a rationalist attack on one doctrine, but as part of a broader critique of the social influence of religion.

Democratic Centralism. Origins of the Slate System.

This is a Guest Post by  Dave Parks

The article below is from karlmarx.net. Some key points briefly – the slate
system was NOT operated by the Bolsheviks or even the early Communist Party -
it was introduced in 1921 along with the ban on factions and this was
 two years prior to Stalin first getting control of the party. This was then
combined with the massive expansion of the CC so that it could be filled with
 loyalists – that way bureaucratically outnumbering any opposition. The slate
system was introduced into the Trotskyist movement in 1950 by Gerry Healy -
he was also having problems with the awkward squad(s) at the time. the rest as
they say is history … all of today’s sects have a slate system.

 Dave Parks

With the Slate: On to Victory!

 

 A link to the article The Origin of the ‘Slate System’: here.

The Importance of this article and the issues Dave raises are fundamental to any balance-sheet of the democratic Marxist left. Starting with the nature of democracy.

Pat Byrne   March 2010

The Origin of the ‘Slate System’ used in elections for the leadership of Leninist Groups.

The leadership-recommended slate system for internal elections to the national leadership is used in most Leninist groups. It is not a natural system arising from the workers own experiences and democratic instincts but something artificially imported into the workers movement. In theory, the slate system can be used to recommend a list that consciously includes a good balance of talents and personalities. In practice, it gives the existing leadership a tremendous advantage in elections and experience has shown that it has allowed leaders to secure their continuous re-election along with a body of like-minded and loyal followers.

 

Let’s examine how the ‘slate system’ arose. As the Leninist movement supposedly bases itself on the example of the Bolshevik Party, we need to start our process of discovery here. The following information comes mainly from a study made on how Communist Party internal elections were carried out in Revolutionary Russia. The study, ‘The Evolution of Leadership Selection In The Central Committee 1917-1927’, was written by the well-known sovietologist and academic Robert V. Daniels who drew most of his information from the official records of Bolshevik and CPSU party congresses. His essay was published in a fairly obscure academic study of Russian Officialdom which covered Russian society from the 17th to the 20th centuries.

Criticism does not exclude Muslims from the political process.

This letter (Here. )  caught my eye in Saturday’s Guardian – a paper that normally never publishes anything critical of Islamicist politics. Amongst all the good comrades  I was particularly pleased to see Amanda Sebestyen’s name on it.

We are disturbed by the visible rise, in some parts of the country, of anti-Muslim bigotry resulting in sporadic attacks on Muslims and their places of worship. We deplore this and condemn it unreservedly. However, the authors of the letter you published (Islamophobia is a threat to democracy, 25 March) are quite wrong to equate legitimate concerns about the leadership of the East London Mosque and the Islamic Forum of Europe with anti-Muslim bigotry. To do so betrays those who have genuinely suffered discrimination. The East London Mosque has frequently allowed intemperate clerics to speak on its premises, some of whom have promoted values antithetical to those required in a tolerant and progressive society.

They intimidate and bully other Muslims into accepting their contested theology as undisputed truth. Their allies and associates across south Asia have encouraged discrimination against minorities, opposed the reform of family laws and supported laws on blasphemy.

How can it be right for those of us who believe in liberal democracy to leave unchallenged those who would discriminate against religious minorities, women, homosexuals and Muslims with dissenting or heterodox views?

Criticism of incitement to religious hatred has nothing to do with excluding Muslims from the political process, as the supporters of the East London Mosque and Islamic Forum of Europe suggest. There are many impeccably non-sectarian Muslims active in political life, including in parliament, who are capable of opposing both racism and fundamentalism.

The greatest threat to democracy comes from reactionary and sectarian political groupings. We are disturbed by the rise of confessional identity politics in this country. Those who would promote such politics deserve robust scrutiny. To combat them is a moral duty.

Ansar Ahmed Ullah Nirmul Committee Gita Sahgal Women Against Fundamentalism Monjulika Jamali Cultural activist in east London, Denis MacShane MP, Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui Trustee, British Muslims for Secular Democracy, Nigel Fountain, Saikat Acharjee Lawyer, Amanda Sebestyen, Tehmina Kazi Director, British Muslims for Secular Democracy, Sandra M Kabir BRAC UK, Tahmima Anam Novelist, Amina Ali Gender equality campaigner in East London, Murad Qureshi London assembly member, Aisha Shaheed Women Living Under Muslim Laws, Dr Ahmed Zaman President, Communist Party of Bangladesh UK Branch, Harunor Rashid President, Soytten Sen School of Performing Arts, Darren Johnson London assembly member, Green party parliamentary candidate, Lewisham Deptford, Keith Angus Lib Dem parliamentary candidate, Hackney North and Stoke Newington, Rayhan Rashid War Crimes Strategy Forum-WCSF, activists’ coalition, Waliur Rahman Workers Party of Bangladesh, Peter Tatchell OutRage, Syed Enamul Islam Former MEP candidate for London with the NO2EU: Yes to Democracy coalition, Dr Irfan Al Alawi International director, Centre for Islamic Pluralism, Dr Rafikul Hasan Khan President, Bangladesh Udichi Shilpi Gosthi UK Branch based in east London, Prof Tom Gallagher Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, Prof Nira Yuval Davis Centre for Research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging, UEL, Cassandra Balchin, Sujit Sen Bangladesh International Foundation, Syed Neaz Ahmad Academic and author, Harunur Rashid JSD, Zoe Fairbairns Novelist, Carolyn Hayman, Brigitte Istim, James Bethell Nothing British about the BNP, Jenny Harris Theatre administrator, founder of the Albany, formerly of National Theatre, Marieme Helie Lucas Secularism is a Women’s Issue, Victor Sebestyen, Syeda Nazneen Sultana Gender equality campaigner in east London, Dr Nowrin Tamanna University of Reading, Pragna Patel Southall Black Sisters

From a letter calling for support for this:

Dear Friends

Ansar Ahmed Ullah, whose anti-racist and Bengali cultural history work I greatly admire, participated in the making of the recent C4 film criticising the East London Mosque .

Some of you may know that this mosque is run by the same religious extremists who collaborated with the Pakistan Army during the Bangladesh war ,and were involved in the mass murder of Bengali intellectuals.

Clearly the socialist lawyers and other progressives who signed the letter in the Guardian this morning, roped in by George Galloway and Respect to denounce any attack on the East London Mosque and Islamic Forum of Europe as an incitement to Islamophobia, may not have known all the facts. 

Personally I don’t  dispute that the C4 film might have been followed by  even further racist attacks, on people who go to the mosque without knowing the full story, and on ordinary muslim people. If so it is horrible that the remedy is seen to be denying other muslims the right to speak out or have any democratic debate. 

I think this is a good and brave letter – I don’t know the other people who will be signing and I don’t want to find myself stranded in a sea of Andrew Gilligans and Melanie Phillipses, so I hope that at least as many progressive people will sign this letter as mistakenly signed the earlier one. 

Now we await a foaming Bob Pitt of Islamophobia Watch to make a reply.

Ipswich General Election Line-Up: A Bad Start.

Ipswich Line-Up for General Election in the Evening Star: (Here)

The BNP has selected ex-RAF serviceman and former Ipswich publican Dennis Boater as their candidate and he will also be standing in the Stoke Park ward at the annual Ipswich Borough Council elections.

Mr Boater said: “I go out leafleting and get a very positive response. Voters are pleased to see us and ask why we haven’t stood before.”

Mr Boater said that if invited, he would take part in hustings meeting with other candidates.

“Some may say they will not share a platform with the BNP – that’s their choice, but it will not look good in the eyes of the electorate.”

Asked if he would take part in a candidates’ debate with Mr Boater, Ipswich Labour MP Chris Mole said: “While I am instinctively disinclined to give the BNP any credibility, they have to be defeated by argument.

“I regret the BNP will be standing in Ipswich – it’s sad to think they can win votes here. The concerns the party says it has on immigration have been addressed by the Labour government.”

This is very unfortunate phrasing (if correctly cited).

What ‘concerns’? The BNP wants to get rid of ‘foreigners’. To enter in an “argument” when one “addresses” their “concerns” is to have conceeded more than is needed.

Ben Gummer, Tory candidate, said: “I am very sad that the BNP will be spreading its lies and disinformation around Ipswich.

“I can understand the concerns that people have over immigration, but the BNP is playing on that for its own wrongful ends.”

More “understanding” “concerns”. What exactly do they “understand?“

As the French expression goes, “tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner”.

To ‘understand everything, is to forgive everything.” (Here)

The General Election has already got off to a bad start in Ipswich.

Do we really have to be reminded of what the ‘concerns’ of the BNP are? 

See here.

 

Update: Ipswich Spy (here) says, “ we leave our comments section open, and we welcome all sections of society, (but) this site will not give any publicity to the BNP or their candidate Dennis Boater beyond this post”.

 

Bridge Ward News, which has showed plenty of “understanding” for the BNP’s “concerns” has yet to comment.

Sarkozy, Those Rumours, Dati, Those Denials, Finance, Those Plotters.

Going Their Own Way.

The saga of Nicholas Sarkozy’s infidelities, corruption, abuse of power and persecution mania continues.

Ex-Minister,  Rachida Dati, has been forced to reply to claims she has been stirring the boiling cauldron. (Here).

Contrary to myth the French media has covered the story.

Its best-known investigative journalist, Stéphene Guillon (here), has poured revelation after revelation out on France-Inter every morning. Under the cunning disguise of ‘humour’ Stephy has revealed the truth: that there exists a vast web of conspirators out to ‘get’ France’s beloved Monarch.

Even so, progressives have a duty to publicise that truth will out like a dammed spot.

We can reveal that Sarko regularly dresses up as “Madame Frou-Frou”  for trysts with a foreign political leader, known only as “David C”.

Meanwhile Carla Bruni has made an “Eminence Rousse”, with the pet-name of  ”Benjy”, her devoted “love slave”. They were spotted on Ipswich’s glamorous Neptune Quay yesterday evening.

The forces behind publicising this, in the financial world, are too mysterious to mention (Yet more here).

Malcolm McLaren and Situationism.

Juvenile Respect for Authority.

Malcolm McLaren’s death was unexpected.

He made a great contribution to radical culture. The Great Rock and Roll Swindle, that is.  It was mixed with a greater boost to his own personal inflation. Frankly, who cares about that? Punk was a much needed shock. We liked it in the late 70s. A real thrust in the guts.

One thing made him real him for me. Not long ago he was on a Radio Two programme about  Serge Gainsbourg (here). McLaren really loved and understood the poetry and music. Really. That chimed a lot with me.

A useful account of his relations, or not,  with situationism is here . I’ve always heard that Jamie Reid was the real situationist. That is the account I had from a few Warwick Uni people who got into King Mob, not that they, nor Jamie (more here), were actually members, (the people I spoke to were too late on the scene anyway). 

Some  say that McLaren never got beyond the ”détournement” of  the ‘spectacle’ bit. Or that he fell in love with it.

There’s a useful entry on Punk and Politics on Wikipedia - here.

We could do with some of that anger and energy in politics and culture today.

Ian Bone notes funeral here.

Splinty has a Video-Fest here.

French Tribute here. French radio here. Le Monde trying to be ‘tendance’ (which apart from being the name of a well-known revolutionary group means ‘trendy’ in French) – here.

On Soundings and Reinventing the Left in Britain.

 

After the Crash: Reinventing the Left in Britain. Edited by Richard S. Grayson and Jonathan Rutherford.

As the General Election approaches the left is hesitant. Support for Labour, the few score candidates endorsed by the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUCS) or the handful of other left candidates, is debated. On Saturday the 10th of April activists have been demonstrating to defend the welfare state. What would be a re-elected Labour government be like? How can we fight a Conservative one? What would a Coalition mean? There is little clarity about the left’s future course of action faced with any of these possibilities. A post-election conference is simply called “Join the Resistance!” In other words, continue to do what we’ve done up till now, but try a lot harder to do it better.

In an effort to bring some strategic sense to the left Soundings, has published an E-Book (here). It is a collection of essays around the theme of ‘reinventing’ the left.  This claims to think beyond the election to where forward-looking politics could stand on a different basis. It calls for “ New kinds of transformative political alliances.” The Editors announce, “we need to create a common ground for a progressive coalition of ideas and action.” “We need to rediscover our capacity for collective change. Our task is to reverse the decades-long transfer of wealth and power from the great majority of people to the financial sector, global corporations and a tiny rich elite.” For this, “We believe that now is the time for a new coalition of ideas and action on the centre left, working together to find common ground for change. At the heart of such a coalition is the belief that social democrats, liberals, greens and civic nationalists share a wide range of concerns. The processes by which we negotiate our alliances with one another will define the democracy of our movement, our acceptance of pluralism and our recognition of difference. It will be our commitment to a plural and democratic politics that will make us truly radical.”

What does this imply for the General Election? To put it simply, Soundings is thinking in terms of hedging its bets. The issue of what an incoming government will do is less important than establishing “common ground” for these forces. For the 6^th of May this reduces to a hope. The signs of the times indicate, they claim, that a realignment of the left is emerging. If any part of this hypothetical “progressive coalition” does well in the ballot box this is to be welcomed.

Transformative Alliances.

The model here is not centred on affirming traditional labour movement politics against the Conservatives or New Labour. The new fault lines are broader. “On one side are those who continue to believe that the market and individual choice are the most effective means of governing people and maximizing individual freedom. On the other side are those who believe that individual freedom must be rooted in greater equality, social relationships and the democracy of public action.” Straddling the categories may be both ‘compassionate conservatism’, with its own ‘social’ dimension (strong communities) and New Labour, which had/has is own vision of how to equip people for the market-place, public sector reform, and if not equality, then equal opportunity. But Soundings would like, if rather indirectly, to set both in the former camp and itself and its (wished-for) allies in the latter.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon “feels capable” of Presidential Candidacy in 2012

Jean-Luc Mélenchon “feels capable” of being a Presidential candidate in  the French elections of 2012.

The leader of France’s Parti de Gauche (Wikipedia – in English – here) says in a period of crisis “characters” stand a better chance than  “pasturised cheese or  freeze-dried fish” (“des fromages pasteurisés ou des poissons lyophilisés”.) (Here.)

What his allies in the French Communist Party think is not clear.

More on Senator Mélenchon (in English) – here.

Labour Misleads Over Jobs ‘Guarantee’.

Faith-led Job Placement.

Labour to guarantee a job for anyone unemployed for over 2 years?

To hear the media and read the press apparently so.

Channel Four News even did a special ‘report’ .  On the 11th of April it claimed,

“Labour is to fight the election on a manifesto pledging to offer jobs but cut long-term benefits to anyone who has been unemployed for more than two years.”

Ahead of Labour’s manifesto launch tomorrow the party said its proposals would be “ambitious but affordable” as the prime minister stakes Labour’s claim to a fourth consecutive term principally on securing the economic and social recovery.

Under Labour plans public jobs would be offered to anyone over 25 who has been unemployed for two years or more and everyone under 25 unemployed for 10 months or more. If the job is turned down they will lose benefits such as jobseeker’s allowance.  ( here.)

The Independent repeats this today, Labour plans to

“Create 200,000 jobs through the Future Jobs Fund, with a job or training place for young people who are out of work for six months. Benefits cut at 10 months if they refuse a place; and anyone unemployed for more than two years guaranteed work, but no option of life on benefits.” ( here)

But the Labour Manifesto says,

All those who are long-term unemployed for two years will be guaranteed a job placement, which they will be required to take up or have their benefits cut.

A ‘plecement’ then, not a job. People on the ‘Flexible New Deal’ get placements. They get no extra money than the standard JSA. A £15 a week extra allowance for placements has been abolished. So, one pay cut already and it doesn’t  look as if there are plans to pay people real wages for these new posts.

People on these schemes have few rights and plenty of obligations. Labour’s Welfare Reforms increases these to “work for your Benefits”. It looks as if this proposal is a way of disguising Workfare.

This promise of work (that is paid at a reasonable rate at least) for anyone unemployed for over 2 years is then misleading.

To put it bluntly, it is a lie.

 

Will this be different from the Tories’ “Work for Dole” scheme for a “Community Work Programme” ? (here)

We have our doubts.

French Greens Fall Out.

French Greens Battle Elements.

As exclusively predicted here the French Greens have fallen out amongst themselves.

Fresh from their recent electoral success in a broad electoral alliance, Europe Ecologie, Daniel Cohn-Bendit wanted to form a  post-party movement  corresponding to the novel stage of cyber-capitalism. But his ship had barely begun to sail before it ran aground at the reefs. Or rather the rocky coves of a structured Green Party, a Parti Vert. Known as Les Verts.

Their leading figures took ill the suggestion that they should dissolve into a information highway-network under Danny’s captaincy (here). Cécline Duflot, the Party Secretary (here - in English)  has written her own, maturely pondered, response to this utter drivel (which barely hides a wish to move the Greens rightwards). To put it simply she wants the French greens to remain aligned to the left (that is, the Parti Socialiste). With a few nasty remarks about the Nouveau Parti Anti Capitaliste (NPA) to broaden her polemic, not to mention the Socialists moves to gather other allies on the centre, this is a call for a future Green-Socialist Party agreement for government. Cohn- Bendit has clearly over-reached his ambitions with his plans to ‘skip over’ such an accord. The wild claims made for the post-materialist post-party ‘political co-operative’ he promotes can’t have helped suppress already well-known tensions between Danny and anyone on the serious left of centre political scene. No one can doubt that despite its quicksilver image his project gives power and authority to Notables, not members. And certainly weakens the position of activists. That’s just to add to  widespread scepticism about Cohn-Bendit’s “reformist utopia” (latest version here).

Anyone interested in the future of the European Green movement should follow these developments closely.

At stake is a dispute between two models. Cohn-Bendit’s ‘immaterial‘ ecological centrist alliance is pitted against the greening of social democracy.

Benedict Gummer: Dad’s Dosh.

Would He Bless His Namesake?

Terrible bad form and all that. But perhaps we ought to be reminded of the background prospective Tory Ipswich MP Benedict Gummer comes from. That is, his MP dad. These God-botherers do after all believe in sins of the fathers, or something or other. He did finance Benjy’s time at Tonbridge Public School.

Let us be reminded that Benedict’s father, John Gummer M.P, was one of the worst offenders in the Parliamentary Expenses scandal (Here).

 

John Gummer, the former environment secretary, used the parliamentary expenses system to claim more than £9,000 a year for gardening.

Mr Gummer also received hundreds of pounds to meet the costs of “treating” moles, removing jackdaw nests, tackling insect infestations and an annual “rodent service” contract. He claimed more than £100 a year for the mole treatment alone.

Not content with killing innocent wildlife Gummer ‘earns’ (we use this word loosely) his living by touting himself around a vast array of companies.

Here are a few examples of how John Gummer earns his hefty crust : here. Note Valpak. It would be interesting to know more details about Valpak’s (or other Gummer interests) and the Suffolk Incinerator and the (Tory-run) County Council. This has yet to be covered in the highly interesting Ipswich Spy and  by Bloater Bridge Ward News (no surprises there, he can barely manage a key-board).

1. Remunerated directorships

Chairman, Sancroft International Ltd.; consultants providing advice and monitoring in corporate responsibility and environmental, social and ethical issues. Address: 46 Queen Anne’s Gate, London SW1H 9AP.

Received £13,750 (gross) quarterly salary for chairing company meetings and giving strategic global advice on corporate social responsibility. Hours: 42.75 hrs. (Registered 22 October 2009)

£9151.25 quarterly salary(gross): chairing company meetings, strategic global advice on corporate responsibility, 89.75 hours (Registered 27 January 2010)

Chairman, Veolia (formerly Vivendi UK); water companies. Address: 5^th Floor, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London, N1 9AG.

Received £3,562.50 salary (gross), 2 hrs, board meeting by phone plus preparation, and attendance at office opening (unremunerated). (Registered 14 August 2009)

Received £3,562.50 salary (gross), hrs: nil. (Registered 21 September 2009)

Received £3562.50 (gross) salary for chairing a board meeting. Hours: 3 hrs. (Registered 22 October 2009)

Received £3562.50 (gross) salary: no board meetings in November. Hours: nil. (Registered 21 December 2009)

Received £3562.50 (gross) salary. Hours: nil. (Registered 20 November 2009)

Received £3562.50 (gross): board meeting and strategic advice. Hours: 3.5 hrs. (Registered 27 January 2010)

Received £3562.50 salary (gross): no board meeting in February. Hours: 0 hrs. (Registered 23 March 2010)

Chairman (non-executive), Valpak Ltd, Stratford Business Park, Banbury Road, Stratford-upon-Avon, CV37 7GW; not-for-profit organisation for compliance with packaging waste directive. Salary paid alternative months.

Iranian Regime Links-Up With European Far-Right.

 

Far-Right Likes Iranian Theocrats; Theocrats Like Far-Right.

Hat-Tip to Enty.

From Iran en Lutte (Here)

Seyed Mehdi Miraboutalebi, l’ambassadeur de la République islamique d’Iran à Paris ne fait pas les choses à moitié. Mardi 13 avril, “pour approfondir les relations entre les deux peuples” et “parce que les médias injectent des idées préconçues dans les opinions publiques”, il s’est prêté à un jeu de questions-réponses dans un bar à vin parisien du 5e arrondissement (qui, pour l’occasion, ne servait pas d’alcool) tenu par un ex-militant du Renouveau Français (groupe pétainiste et antisémite), ex-colistier de la liste antisioniste de Dieudonné, très proche des hooligans du PSG et des ultranationalistes serbes. Bref.

Seyed Mehdi Miraboutalebi, Ambassador of the Iranian Republic in France, doesn’t do things by halves. On Tuesday the 13th of April “to deepen ties between the two peoples” and because “the media spreads preconceptions amongst public opinion” he offered himself to a question-and-answer session in a Wine Bar in the Parisian 5th arrondissement (which, for the event, served no alcohol). The bar is run by a former member of  Renouveau Français (a Petanist and anti-semitic group), a member of the Dieudonné electoral List, who is also close to the Football hooligans of PSG (paris saint-Germain), and Serbian nationalists….

This little chat was organised by the journal Flash -  the  magazine of the “altermondialiste” (anti-globalisation)  extreme-right (site here). It publishes well-known rightist racists (from a Front National background), 9/11 Truthers, and ‘identity’ theorists such as such as  Christian Bouchet, Philippe Randa, Alain Soral and Alain de Benoist (the key Intellectual of the Nouvelle Droite). Oh,  and Dieudonné.

Clearly Iran’s Islamists knows where  their real friends lie.

Socialisme: Godard’s Last Film?

Screening at the Cannes’ festival – here.

Benedict Gummer and Dad.

Criticised by Ipswich Spy  for ‘familism’ Tendance Coatesy points this out:

Address of Benedict Gummer’s Web sites: Registrant:
Benedict Gummer
46 Queen Anne’s Gate
London, London SW1H 9AU
UK

Domain name: BENGUMMER.COM

Administrative Contact:
Gummer, Benedict
46 Queen Anne’s Gate
London, London SW1H 9AU
UK
+44.2079607916

Note Dad’s Main Business Address: 46 Queen Anne’s Gate, London SW1H 9AP.

This appears to contain a minor misprint as the correct post code for Sancroft is SW1H 9AU.

John Gummer is Chair of Sancroft (more here). On the 21st of June 2009 the News of the World reported that

“(In Context of Expenses Scandal)

In total Gummer claimed at least £9980 in payments to Sancroft. …”

The right-wing Taxpayers’ Alliance stated (here),

The former Environment Secretary, already under fire for claiming to remove moles from his country estate, handed in a raft of invoices from a company called Sancroft.

Gummer is founder and chairman of Sancroft, based a stone’s throw from Parliament in posh Queen Anne’s Gate.

It is one of the astonishing revelations from the millions of controversially blacked-out MPs’ expense submissions published by the Government this week.

The heavily-censored receipts show Gummer made at least 16 claims for Sancroft’s services from 2004 to 2008.

Rigorous

They included repeated claims for the use of laptop equipment, many at hundreds of pounds a time. He also claimed thousands towards the recruitment and wages of a diary secretary who works out of Sancroft’s offices and who he admits dealt with both his private and parliamentary work.

Gummer submitted at least two claims – £2,400 and £1,808 – for recruiting the aide. He also put in an invoice from the firm for a £46.50 train fare.

Some of the invoices were for thousands of pounds. But one scrawled handwritten note submitted to the Commons Fees Office said simply: “Please pay Sancroft £4.86 VAT.”

In total Gummer claimed at least £9,980 in payments to Sancroft.

The firm describes itself as providing “Corporate Responsibility Solutions” – giving advice on environmental, social and ethical issues.

Gummer yesterday insisted he had done nothing wrong, telling the News of the World: “I try to do things as cheaply as possible for Parliament. I am very careful about being extremely rigorous about the way in which I behave.”

Benedict Gummer “is currently operations director at the corporate responsibility consultant Sancroft.”

Hey op!

Benedict works for Dad’s company.

Don’t expect Bridge Ward News to mention this.

Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste, Nouvelle Crise.

 

Message not Received.

The Nouveau Parti Capitaliste (NPA)  created just over a year ago – the rising left force in Europe.

How long ago it seemed…

Le “camarade Olivier” caracole alors dans les sondages, apparaissant comme le seul opposant à M. Sarkozy face à une gauche à la peine. Le facteur alterne plateaux de télé ”punchy” et visites dans les usines. Fini ”la vieille gauche défaillante” - un PS englué dans ses querelles, un PCF moribond et des Verts qui se cherchent -, place à la “vraie gauche qui résiste”.

Comrade Oliver climbed up in the opinion polls, appearing to be Sarkozy’s only real opponent – facing a left wasting away. The Posty popped up “swinging punches” on television shows and factory visits. It was the “end of the failing old Left” – a Socialist Party stuck in in-fighting, a moribund Communist Party and the Greens naval-gazing. It was the moment for “the fighting left”.

L’atterrissage est douloureux. Le NPA s’est vu distancé électoralement par le Front de gauche, l’alliance entre le PCF et le Parti de gauche de Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Avec Martine Aubry, le PS est redevenu crédible. Et pour la nouveauté en politique, c’est Europe Ecologie. “On s’est auto-intoxiqués en disant qu’on était les seuls à gauche à résister à Sarkozy et on a oublié de faire de la politique”, reconnaît Pierre-François Grond, numéro deux du parti.

Coming down to Earth has been hard. The Front de Gauche, the alliance between the Communist Party and the Parti de Gauche of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, overtook the NPA in the (regional) elections. With Martine Aubry the Socialists have become credible again.  As for political novelty, they have been replaced by Europe Ecologie. “We were intoxicated when we said we were the only ones fighting Sarkozy and forgot how to act politically” – recognises Pierre-François Grond, deputy Party leader.

(More Here.)

The NPA will hold a congress to discuss its future direction in November. There has been a  drop of membership (last week Libération alleged the decline was around 10%). Criticisms of the NPA’s decision-making process – allegedly confined to a group around  Oliver Besancenot - are rife.

In the Vaucluse there is more or less open war by the majority of the local NPA who opposed the decision to accept a candidate (for the regional elections) wearing the veil. The Congress, it is said, “réaffirmera sa laïcité et reconnaîtra son “erreur” sur le voile.” (will reaffirm its secularism and recognise its ‘error‘ on the veil).

This will no doubt please British supporters of an alliance with Islamism – not. (here and here)

As Pete Shield says, there is a general crisis of political parties in France. The left, and now, the right, have not been succesful in reforming society for the better (in their own terms). The most obvious failure is that mass unemployment has not gone away for two decades. There is rising electoral abstension and (as across Europe) a decline in mass memberships. From Sarkozy’s UMP, to the (difficult) formation of a new grouping out of the Greens, not to forget the Socialists, all are trying to re-define their role and strategies.

But for the NPA sobering up after their go-it-alone binge is proving particularly difficult.

Yvonne Ridley and George Galloway: Why Socialists Should Never Vote for Respect.

George Galloway, Salma Yaqoob and Yvonne Ridley: Best of Friends.

Yvonne Ridley is a prominent member of Respect. So prominent in fact that she has a special section on their official site (here).   

Respect claims to left-wing and anti-imperialist. What kind of ‘left-winger’  and ‘anti-imperialist’ is Yvonne Ridley?   

Wikipedia notes (here),   

After the Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev  (accused of the Moscow theatre hostage crisis and blamed for the Beslan school massacre) was killed, Ridley wrote an article referring to Basayev as a “shaheed“, despite a noted Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad where the deaths of ‘enemy’ children were denounced, and that all children who have yet to reach maturity are considered to be on the natural path (Fitrah) in Islam. The article however does not state her views on who was responsible for the deaths since there has been contradictory accounts regarding those events, with Basayev writing in particular that the Beslan School Massacre was “a terrible tragedy” and, in reference to then President Vladamir Putin, “Kremlin vampire destroyed and injured 1,000 children and adults, giving the order to storm the school for the sake of his imperial ambitions and preserving his own throne”. She went on to refer to Basayev as leader of “an admirable struggle to bring independence to Chechnya”.   

This is of interest, 27th December 2009   

The activities of the rent boys who parade up and down Al-Shawarby Street in Cairo provide a good metaphor for the relationship the Egyptian Government has with Israel and the US. Both are quite shameless and ruthless; prepared to do whatever it takes to please … in order to secure a fistful of dollars. But at least the man whores of Al Shawarby are honest about their trade as they eagerly hustle potential customers. (here.)   

Not many socialists would use expressions like “man whores” and compare politicians to “rent boys”. Still fewer would speak like this : 12/04/2010,  Ridley stated (here),   

For too long have we allowed the long, poisonous tentacles of Zionism and Islamaphobia to twist and weave their way into British courts. Ordinary, law-abiding citizens of faith and no faith have had enough of seeing our courtrooms hijacked by those who believe some are more equal than others when it comes to freedoms and liberties.   

Ridley famously claimed that,   

“[Respect] is a Zionist-free party… if there was any Zionism in the Respect Party they would be hunted down and kicked out. We have no time for Zionists.”    

Which sums up her view of Respect’s politics.   

One should add that Ridley runs a programme on Press TV: The Iranian Theocrats’ propaganda arm (here). 

George Galloway naturally has another show on the same station (Here). 

Anybody thinking of voting for Respect should think long and hard. 

Should they back a party deeply entangled in support for the Iranian regime? That as a result has the blood of our martyrs on their hands? 

Even so Galloway has a “sense of humour“.

This is from an esteemed column and Blog  in the Daily Record,  in which he muses (here) – Hat-Tip Enty.

Danni in M&S knicks and pyjamas as part of the new advertising campaign will surely help the store. Alongside the past adverts featuring Twiggy and Mylene and my favourite – Noemie Lenoir – the ad campaign of the high street warhorse has begun to get it back on its feet.

 

Johanna Kaschke: A Plea For Help.

The libel action brought by Conservative Party activist Johanna Kaschke against Dave Osler looms nearer (here).

Ol’ Black Forest Cherry Gâteau (Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte) has been at the end of her tether, (Blog  Here. )

Her Blog is märchenhaft, phänomenal, prima, sensationell, sondergleichen, spektakulär, staunenswert. Not at all written by someone sternhagelvoll.

An  attempt at American almost succeeds,

Even when the council was liberal they could only make those delightful improvements to our area because they gotten plentiful supplies of money to do so. Imagine a Liberal council under a Labour government today could not make any more improvements to the area in respect of maintenance for lack of money. 

But it is Libel cases that are a main preoccupation. (here)

I have dcided to publish the orders made in those legal cases that are currently ongoing at the High Court.

You can view them and if you wish to provide legal support to me please get in touch at once.I need you urgently.HQ08X01628 Kaschke v Osler

this case is set to go to jury trial on 27 April 2010. Mr Joel Bennathan QC is representing Mr Osler on a pro-bono basis, I urgently need pro bono representation or the case is doomed under ECHR Article 6 if I loose.
HQ08X00922 Kaschke v Gray, Hilton, Pressdram
HQ08X00921 Kaschke v Der Spiegel, this case was thrown out of the English court but is now filed with the ECHR
Please look under links for a link to the folders with the orders on MSN as I cannot put public PDF files on Google docs but can do so on MSN spaces. I am unable right now to embed an iframe to show the folders here.

Johanna clearly needs help.

Of a kind that, one suspects, the Courts cannot provide.

Ipswich Election Odd-Bods.

It is commonly, and ridiculously, asserted that we on the left have more than our share of odd activists.

I refute, rebut  and categorically deny this.

If we once wore the ‘looney left’ label with pride we have long been dethroned.

Benedict Gummer is a promising crank. He claims to find the origins of the word ‘job’ in some obscure Latin phrase (it has no such source). I can confidently assert (though no doubt the Order of the Templars will expel me for this) it does not. Not, not, at all.

The local Tory Party contains – in order  of looniest - supporters of the Richard the 3rd Society, Christian bampots, and – need I mention this? – Judy Terry. Now frazzle-em up Bridge War News is making an electrifying stab at joining their ranks.

Yet it is the Liberal Democrats who win the prize for outstanding nutty-barking maddest political party in Ipswich. They range from embittered former Labour members, former Communist Party supporters with a cute vein in abuse of the disabled, greenies, those interested in UFOs, more Bible thumpers, and 9/11 Troofers.

I was reminded of them yesterday evening. I was coming back from my Job placement waiting for a bus. A woman approached me. Wild-eyed and starting. Would I sign her election nomination form? What for? Reply: I’m either a Liberal or an Independent.

Quite.

She did not get my signature.

It may interest Ipswich Spy that this women has been spotted in past elections.

He ought to find out more.

Belgium Moves Today To Ban the Burka (Voile Intégral).

Belgium looks likely to see some kind of ban on the voile intégral (total veil). As it stands it seems that the Burka, Niqab will be prohibited  in all public spaces. (Le Soir. ) (BBC here)

Doubts remains about the constitutionality (state and European) of such legislation. Neverthless, with the support all the country’s political parties (including the Greens, despite some reservations) this look set to move a stage closer.

It is not clear how such a law – as opposed to one limited to public services - could be enforced without gross interference in people’s private lives.

It may well be that this will not get afoot because continuing disputes between the land’s Dutch speakers and the French will cause the government to fall apart – on unrelated issues here. STOP PRESS: Belgium Government falls over federal question – here.

Meanwhile moves are proceeding to devise a similar law in France.

La présidente de Ni Putes ni soumises (NPNS), Sihem Habchi, a salué comme une «victoire des femmes» l’annonce mercredi à l’issue du Conseil des ministres d’un projet de loi  visant à une interdiction générale du port du voile intégral dans tout l’espace public.

The President of Ni Putes ni Soumises (Neither Whores Nor Door-mats - background in English  here. ), Sihem Habchi, hailed Wednesday’s announcement of a Cabinet White Paper  that plans a law introducing a general ban on wearing the total veil in public spaces, as a “victory for women”

«C’est la victoire des femmes, c’est le début d’une nouvelle page pour l’émancipation des femmes des quartiers populaires à qui on va proposer autre chose que l’enfermement ou la mort sociale», a déclaré Sihem Habchi.«Aux législateurs, je demande du courage politique pour voter une loi de protection et d’émancipation des femmes. Qu’on entende la voix de celles qui luttent contre le fascisme vert!» a ajouté la présidente de cette association qui revendique 6.000 adhérents dont 20% d’hommes.

“It’s a triumph for women, and the beginning of a new chapter in the struggle for the emancipation of women in working class quarters. We are going to offer them more than the choice between social imprisonment or being spurned.” declared  Sihem Habchi. “I ask legislators to have the courage to vote for a law to protect and free women.” To listen to the voice of those who fight against green fascism.” added the President of the association, which has 6,000 members (20% men).

(Libé)

Two observations.

Firstly it is a point of principle for those who stand for freedom, and women’s rights, to  campaign against the total veil. As the feminist libertarian Rebecca West described it, (Black Lamb Grey Falcon 1941), its use stems from the horror that masculine tyranny feels at female sexuality.

Secondly, this fight is not best carried out by the state. Certainly, not by laws which will prove invasive, and require the use of considerable surveillance and repression. Or that could create support for Islamists and their fellow-travellers on the religious left. However, where the veil is worn by instruments of the state and law, and where it enters into legislation by its presence, it is a problem. One that creates a basic inequality between the ‘purity’ of the hidden female and the ‘impurity; of any woman not so clothed. In these conditions (state public services it ought l therefore to be restricted. That is, anyone with power, should not be allowed to impose their horror of females publicly displaying their bodies.

One thing should be clear: for the Islamic defenders of the total veil it is not a matter of  human rights.

It is divine law versus human legislation.

 

This illustrates what is at stake (here),

The telephone has not stopped ringing at the offices of “Insoumise et devoilée” (Defiant and unveiled),” located in Verviers, in southern Belgium. “In the past two weeks, sixteen young women have reached out to us,” says Karima, who is visibly overwhelmed by her work. When in 2008 she founded the organisation, named after a book she published the same year, Karima never imagined things would evolve so quickly. “It’s proof my story is not an isolated case, as some politicians suggested,” she jokes.

Born in Belgium to a large Moroccan family, Karima was forced to wear the veil from the time she was nine. “They ended up sewing it to my hair,” she confides. Treated like a maid by her family, she was cloistered, mistreated and forcibly married in Morocco; an existence she managed to escape from, and recount in her autobiography. She says she wrote her story for the girls and women who face the same ordeals.

Today, Karima’s organisation strives to provide women who are seeking a fresh start with a network of host families. “When we receive a call for help, we respond immediately, because often the courage doesn’t last,” she says. Her work also takes her to schools, town hall meetings and television programmes.

Her long-term goal is to achieve a ban on headscarves in public institutions.

St George’s Day: Why I Hate it.

 

Let’s Hear it For the Dragon!

Reasons to loathe St George’s Day:

Events were planned in many areas to honour England’s patron saint from Morris dancers in Loughborough to costumed stilt-walkers handing out silk flowers in Tameside. In London, the English flag will be raised at City Hall .Mayor Boris Johnson said: ”As well as marking the extraordinary life of a Cappadocian merchant, Saint George’s Day is an opportunity to celebrate our country’s many achievements.

”Our small island, sitting at the confluence of European cultures, has a rich heritage whose influence on language, art, learning, and politics – to name but a few – has been felt right across the globe.

”Gguitarist Joe Brown and singers from the Players’ Theatre who will reprise Victorian music hall songs such as ”Let’s all go down the Strand”.

Chairman of the Local Government Association Group Dame Margaret Eaton said: ”St George’s Day provides people with an opportunity to come together in community spirit and enjoy themselves

Plus the Daily Telegraph, here. 

And there is also English Heritage  here.

But most of all there is former leftist Anthony Barnett’s call for English ‘Home Rule’ – here.

I have just seen Jerusalem, the hit play that takes place on St George’s day in Wiltshire. It summons up the spirits of England to return to the aid of a forsaken land of suburbia and regulation. It got a standing ovation. It’s Dionysian central character, an outsider living on the inside of a lost identity. Its wonderful assortment of the young. Its broken, rural self-confidence. Its rendition of the slavishly imported yet at the same time ‘up yours’ defiance of life here. It’s confident use of Shakespearian violence.  All suggested it is a play for an epoch – with a future energy just being released.

On this St George’s day, Our Kingdom carries a statement from Mark Perryman in praise of modern England and a marvelous projection of the Cross of St George onto the Houses of Parliament by Power2010.

At least some past English nationalist warblers and spiritual wanderers, like G.K.Chesterton, were often witty…

The Rolling English Road

by G. K. Chesterton

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,

The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.

A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,

And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;

A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread

The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.

I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,

And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;

But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed

To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,

Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,

The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.

His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run

Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?

The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,

But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.

God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear

The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.

My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,

Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,

But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,

And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;

For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,

Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

David Harvey’s ‘A companion to Marx’s Capital’ : A Review.

Not just a study aid

Andrew Coates reviews David Harvey’s ‘A companion to Marx’s Capital’ Verso, 2010, pp320, £10.99

Weekly Worker – here.

 

“Of course, we have all read, and all do read, Capital.” Louis Althusser’s opening words to Reading Capital (1968) were improbable to most Marxists then, and even more unlikely now.

Forty years on, in the wake of the worldwide financial crisis, anti-capitalism and Marxism have seen a modest revival, it is true. As the Communist manifesto observed, capitalism is “like a sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells”. But going through Marx’s critique of political economy ‘to the letter’ to find the bourgeoisie’s grimoire remains a minority taste. As David Harvey states, “a whole younger generation has grown up bereft of familiarity with, let alone training in, Marxist political economy”. This is not just an academic loss.

To Harvey movements that oppose capitalism need an “alternative vision”.^[1] If The enigma of Capital (2010) tries to show one, A companion to Marx’s Capital is its essential partner. The book explores the factory where Enigma is manufactured. Harvey’s aim is to “get you to read a book by Karl Marx called Capital Volume I, and to read it on Marx’s own terms”. Honed by years of lectures to an American graduate audience (replete with ‘gottens’), it is of greatest interest to those whose “practical engagements” demand a “strong theoretical base”.

Left readings

There are two main left approaches to Marx’s Capital. The first, largely academic, is taken by his critics. Theorists have taken Marx’s works to pieces so thoroughly, as in the writings of Jon Elster, Barry Hindess and Paul Hirst,^[2] that little remains but the concepts of forces and relations of production. From these, we get ‘post-Marxist’ theories of the total autonomy of politics, largely beyond any of the categories of Capital.

A second approach is that of a ‘return to Marx’. But it is of a very particular type. The ‘capital-logic’ school, which owes debts to the analysis of value by the early Soviet writer, II Rubin, is influential on the non-academic left. One theorist, John Holloway (Change the world without taking power, 2005), has his own reading of Marx. He maps the theory of commodity fetishism onto politics and states (‘form process’). The realm of “fetishised social relations” enwrap us in capital’s power to the extent that opposition has to begin (as the book does) by one big “scream” against the entire system. Anything less ends up propping up capitalism.

Harvey therefore does not write in a vacuum. Companion is not just an invitation to read Marx. He is obliged to defend some basic Marxist positions against the radical critics. The labour theory of value is justified as a necessary “material base” of production. Harvey states (repeating some classical views): “We need the concept of value as socially necessary labour-time” to stop us imagining that the economy of the market “arrives magically”, “facilitated by the magic of the money”.

Against analytical Marxists, who criticise Marx’s ‘flirtation’ with Hegelian terms, he is less forthright. There is no widespread use of Hegelian language or reliance on Marx’s (metaphorical) concept of the ‘negation of the negation’. While Harvey admires Marx’s ‘dialectical’ method, this largely refers to their ability to capture social development ‘in motion’, within an interlinked “totality”. Dialectics, he observes in the first chapters, enabled Marx to go beyond the surface or “appearance” of capitalism to discover its inner workings. We get a sense of the way the labour process is dynamically organised, how the circuits of capital are interrelated, how “space and time get set up and understood”, how machinery is deployed and the contradictions of commodity production develop. That lets us see the major contours of the modern capitalist world.

But this (loose) dialectics is only a tool. As for the analytical theorists, it is the capacity of Capital to offer accurate diagnoses of how capitalism operates that matters, not, as Harvey states in his concluding chapter, the “dance of dialectic”.

The ‘autonomist’ reading of Marx and its ‘great refusal’ of capital’s capacity to abstract is also addressed. Labour and technology are part of ‘metabolic’ processes bonded to nature. By their intrinsic character they imply hard effort. A demand for autonomous free play is not the pivotal point from where capital can be challenged.

Workers’ resistance takes a different form. It is directly related to conditions inside work. Class struggle may (by preventing destitution and preventing its tendency to throttle demand) help capital reach a better equilibrium. But such conflicts (for example, over the length of the working day) “can go beyond trade union consciousness and morph into more revolutionary demands”. Left unresolved, however, is exactly how class struggle can be related to politics, and can avoid being absorbed or quashed by the state and the bourgeoisie.

Piloting a voyage

In the journey through Marx’s work there can be few better pilots than Harvey. He unravels the most difficult chapters of Capital, on commodities, on the labour theory of value, to expose with clarity the process of surplus value extraction.

There is a constant effort to retain a critical awareness. So, in discussing the origins of money, Harvey casts doubt on Marx’s own historical beliefs (that they emerged directly from commodity exchange). Companion equally makes good use of modern theory to indicate the continuing importance of Marx’s fertile suggestions. Harvey claims (perhaps optimistically), for example, that Foucault’s works on ‘Panoptic’ labour discipline are compatible with Marx’s description of the regimenting of wage-labour in the first factories. The book equally sparkles with Marx’s literary allusions (from Balzac to Shakespeare), historical illustrations (such as the British 19th century Factory Acts and Chartism), philosophical debts (Hegel), political and ideological context (utopian socialism, Fourier, Proudhon, Owen, Cabet, Saint-Simon). Harvey gives due attention to the political economists Marx critiqued – Adam Smith, above all, though also Ricardo, Malthus and John Stuart Mill, whose writings are important for anyone wishing to go further into what Marx meant.

Readers of Companion (and Enigma) should be aware of the context. A radical geographer and critic of postmodernism, Harvey has become increasingly concerned to link his theoretical work to political conclusions. This appears throughout Companion. One central theme is how the crises of capitalism work out. While he adopts a multi-causal approach on this (considering underconsumption as well as the decline in profit rates), a central problem for capital is “overaccumulation” (a theme of the Communist manifesto). In Capital’s pages there are only indications of this problem, as the work stretched into further volumes (capital is reproduced generally though recurrent devaluations and crises of disproportionality continually upset the system). The important point is that overaccumulation means a lack of internal effective demand for products, and a reserve of idle capital. Rosa Luxemburg saw a resolution external to the existing circuits of capital reproduction. This lay in “the existence of some latent and mobilised demand outside the capitalist system”. Its use implied “the continuation of primitive accumulation through imperialist imposition”.

Harvey extends this insight into even wider economic and political arenas. Whether every feature of classical pre-great war imperialism defines the ‘highest stage’ of capitalism or not, these mechanisms, Harvey argues, still operate. He asserts that modern business continues to resolve its difficulties through seeking external outlets for its surplus goods and capital. It seeks to “solve its capital-surplus problem through geographical and temporal displacements”. This implies both a continuation of imperialism (through capital export), and the internal colonialisation of formerly non-market social institutions.

The process we call ‘globalisation’ is thus more unsettling than a networked world market, ‘immaterial’ (technological) production or other aspects of the transnational economic and political flows described in Toni Negri’s and Michael Hardt’s Empire (2000) and Multitude (2004). Classical colonialisation has been succeeded by endless economic and political shocks. Repressive political or directly military means are still used to open up new markets and dispose of people.

In The New Imperialism (2005) Harvey described the battering down of barriers to capital through the “enclosure of the commons”. Naturally he develops – from and beyond Marx – a host of forms relating to how the contradictions of capitalism develop and are (in phases) resolved, not to mention the spiralling complexities of the different “limits and barriers” of capital. But this element of his theory, extending the life of primitive accumulation to contemporary capitalism, is probably the most politically significant. It is the basis for both oppression and resistance. Or, as Companion indicates, “political struggles against accumulation by dispossession” are “just as important as more traditional proletarian movements”. Nor are the western heartlands unaffected: in Baltimore people are losing their homes because of the subprime mortgage crisis – “a vicious class war of accumulation by dispossession”. In these conditions, political strategies are needed “around the notion of class war”.^[3]

Today, while we see capital turning inwards to cannibalise formerly publicly owned and administered assets, the process is, Harvey has argued, helped by political means. A brief history of neoliberalism (2005) describes a similar process of dispossession at work. “The reversion of common property rights won through years of hard class struggle (the right to a state pension, to welfare, to national healthcare) to the private domain has been one of the most egregious of all policies of dispossession pursued in the name of neoliberal orthodoxy.” Neoliberal politics – Thatcher in Britain, Reagan in America – were about “the restoration or reconstitution of naked class power, locally as well as transnationally, but most particularly in the main financial centres of global capitalism.” Capital is turning in on itself, as ‘unproductive’ state functions are turned over to private contractors for private profit (though in Marxist terms this creates a conceptual difficulty – are they still ‘unproductive’ when all the surplus value comes from diverted taxation?).

We might also note that the neoliberals’ success in creating a permanent ‘reserve army of labour’ (the out-of-work or causally employed) is now accompanied by coercive dispossession of existing welfare rights, and forced labour (Workfare) to provide a flexible pool of employees and push down wages. This reminds us that primitive accumulation was accompanied by forceful measures to make those without property toil.

Class struggle

Companion is, then, not just a study aid. It has political ambitions. To illustrate how Marxist politics could operate Harvey focuses on Capital’s account of struggles over the working day. He updates this discussion of the tendency of employers to extend as far as possible the working day with descriptions of conditions in plants producing Wal-Mart goods today, and the loss of “class power” to alter them. But we are not clear – as we indicated in discussing autonomist thinkers – how far sufficient class power, if it reappeared, could be exerted to shape the legal framework of society or the state’s internal make-up.

Marx apparently never fixed an “equilibrium point” for class struggle that could tell us how far we can proceed in this direction. In which case Capital is a political route-map which indicates clearly the starting point (class struggle), but fails to signpost most of the paths (against or through the apparatus of the public power) through which the working class has to travel.

One example makes this difficulty plain. Harvey asserts that capitalist exploitation cannot be fought by appeals to human rights or “rights talk” generally. Exploitation and dispossession are acts of class power, which can only be met with class action. Yet when he discusses the struggle over the length of the working day and wages he cites accepted living standards as socially established ‘givens’ capitalists have eventually to accept. They evolve, as a wider, more prosperous standard of life is accepted as the absolute minimum.

Can we not see that ‘human rights’ are part of the independent ‘moral economy’ of the masses, which is the bedrock of movements for better conditions? If neoliberalism is based on markets and the norm of legal equality, what is there to prevent people from asserting their own moral universe in opposition? Marx may have been right to observe how the existing notion of rights corresponded to the apparent equity of (normal) exchanges in a capitalist society, while ignoring the underlying inequalities behind them. But the system cannot impose itself over all what Harvey calls our “species-being”. From that source come new demands that reach beyond existing society. ‘I know my rights’ may be a more intelligible starting point than Jon Holloway’s scream.

Marx and, influentially, Engels believed in forming mass working class parties. The classical Second International perspective is that the cause of labour proceeds by steady democratic expression. Is this fundamentally flawed by the existence of capitalist states ‘internally related’ to the process of accumulation? Is the state largely (as in Capital) concerned with maintaining certain essential functions of capitalism (law, money, communications and so on)? Are successful workers’ demands for a more active role (welfare, education, pensions, health) just doomed to make capitalism more stable? Are these ‘gains’ or half-victories – half-self-interested concessions that may be lost?

Clearly the main British political leaderships think that neoliberalism has won for the foreseeable future. In which case how and at what point will more radical class struggle be able to go beyond such a framework? Harvey explores in other writings the alliances beyond labour this may require, but more significant may be the way in which parties can be constructed.

This is a good point on which to conclude. A companion to Capital is more than excellent company. It makes us consider that it is not identities – national, religious or cultural – that primarily define how we live. It is capitalism. Its ever-present form is crystallised in money as a “radical leveller”. This “indicates a certain democracy of money, an egalitarianism in it; a dollar in my pocket has the same value as one in yours”. But revenues are not democratically distributed. Capital stands against labour; rents and surplus are extracted from the workers. Thus the “concept of class, in all its ambiguous glory, is indispensable to both theory and action”.

I want more money, I want my rights!

Notes

1. See his political conclusions on this at davidharvey.org/2009/12/organizing-for-the-anti-capitalist-transition
2. T Cutler, B Hindess, A Hussain, P Hirst.  Marx’s Capital and Capitalism Today London 1978; J Elster Making sense of Marx Cambridge 1985.
3. For discussion on these views see ‘Symposium on David Harvey’s ‘The new imperialism’, Historical Materialism Vol 14, No4, 2006.

Anti-Communist Figes Versus Anti-Communist Service (and Others).

No Anonymous Criticism!

Robert Service, author of Comrades and Trotsky complains,( here.)

Today I awoke to find that my fellow academic Orlando Figes had admitted responsibility for anonymous negative reviews of my three most recent books posted on Amazon. It’s been quite a fortnight. Last week I heard from Rachel Polonsky, whose book had also been negatively reviewed. The strong suspicion, strengthened by a survey of the Amazon data, was that Figes was the author. I sent out an email about this to leading Russian and European historians without specifically naming who I thought was the culprit. Figes loudly objected, claiming to want to mend relations. Then quietly came the letters threatening legal action, and the assertion that Figes’s wife, Stephanie Palmer, had admitted responsibility.

Now we know it was Orlando Figes - the author of the The Whispers and A People’s Tragedy. Both works are historical criticisms of Stalinism and more widely, Communism. As are, er, all of Robert Service’s books.

Now all this fluttering of legal threats is clearly very vexing, Totally misguided. Wrong, wrong wrong.

Fine, praising your own books is OTT (more here). But what exactly is there against Figes being rude about Service  anonymously? A bit stupid. Callow even. But hardly a midnight-call to a sterner critic.

Times Literary Supplement reviews were all anonymous up a couple of decades back.

More on the background, Orlando’s vexacious litigant past and so on  (here).

Service remarks that,

“This is a matter that has broad implications for the public interest..” and “For nearly two weeks we’ve been sustained by two-way mega-splenetics about the waste of time and money and about the psychic cost to our families.”

He notes, “Still, you have to laugh. This winter I’ve been picketed by Trotskyists at public talks. While they may be bitter, they do at least deliver their denunciations in the open. They confirm my belief that there’s a genuine public need for Ol’ Man Trotsky to be looked at with a clear eye.”

Tendance Coatesy’s  been rude about Robert Service’s book on Trotsky here. He hasn’t picketed – rather infra dig we would have thought. Yet we reserve our right to publicly repeat the odd sneering comment.

Isn’t criticism awful!

Again what’s afoot when the press makes this out to be some big affair?

 

On Figes perhaps he’ll look at this: here.

 

Monday: Apparently many others seem to dislike Service’s ‘crap’ – here.

Good Riddance to New Labour? Or, Not?

No Future! No Future! No Future for You! (?)

Tony Wood has written what may be one of the most significant political articles in New Left Review  (here. ) It is devoted to British politics. Here and now. Wood,  known for writing on Chechnya, grapples with the central issue of this election. That is the future of New Labour.

At  times Good Riddance to New Labour is marked by the vapid theory that Britain is a ‘prison of the nations’ (Ukania) – a strange gaol where prosperous Scottish Nationalists eat at their fill. Fortunately this gestural belief that regionalism and sovereigntist fervour  in Scotland and Wales are the wave of a better tomorrow, and a tendency to see ‘democracy’ in constitutional terms rather than, say, industrial or social, is not the principal message. Wood presents a brilliant overview of British politics, a ‘conjunctural’ portrait of all the factors that are concentrated in this election. Where he really hits all the right notes is through focusing on what exactly is wrong with New Labour.

As Wood begins,

The UK elections of May 2010 will mark a watershed in British politics. After thirteen long years, New Labour’s economic model lies in ruins, but a reckoning has been delayed until after the vote.

He concludes,

The specifics of New Labour’s record—one murderous war after another; slavish devotion to finance; promotion of rampant inequality; repeated assaults on civil liberties; fragmentation and privatization of public services; outrageous corruption—make plain that they have fully merited being turfed out of office. Good riddance; this execrable government deserves to go.

That is a balanced judgement. Not much more to loathe in the list. Whatever marginal improvements there’s been (such the much exaggerated minimum wage – a feature in plenty of other countries where I don’t notice it getting cited as a historic victory) they’re undercut by this catalogue of disasters.

Brown does not deserve anything other than a humiliation. Whether we also merit the punishment a Tory victory would bring, or the uncertain prospects offered by a variety of Coalition possibilities, is another matter.

How have we  got to this point? Wood’s analysis melds political science, political economy, finance, social surveys, high politics, international relations, and ideology.

For us it’s the meeting point between ideology and Blair and Brown’s government strategy that matters most. To begin with, New Labour claimed to be a new hegemonic project. That is, one with deep roots, able to channel the votes of the aspirational working class, the middle class concerned about their futures, and dynamic business forces, into a ‘new’ (always that adjective)  progressive alliance. One once called the Third Way, between socialism and neo-liberal capitalism. Though very soon (as it was no longer ‘new’) that expression got dropped. It became er….No-one has yet named ‘it’ properly, and perhaps never will, but let’s say Christian social marketism.

They might conveniently forget it now but many on the centre-left (a very New Labour phrase) accepted that the labour movement was no rising power. That the New Labour constituencies and voicing of their concerns was the way to gain, and maintain, a powerful reforming government. The media and ‘progressives’ decked this out with their concerns, from constitutional reform (a New Left Review hobby-horse), to tax and welfare changes to lift up the deserving and improve the listless. Above all there would be a massive expansion of state funding for public services – where all types of Labour supporters worked in or depended on.  

To Wood there never was a hegemonic ‘moment’. That is a time when New Labour joined up its vision with the voices of the masses, and became the dominant common sense of society to the point where all other views were subordinate. The above constituencies were there to be captured, and their votes were not the expression of a new regime of truth. They won in the face of division, not over real adversary.

“New Labour’s remarkable longevity has largely depended on the unprecedented eclipse of the Conservative Party, which after its ejection from power in 1997 disappeared for a protracted bout of internal blood-letting; it only began to re-emerge as a contender after 2005. Within Britain’s two-party system, a decade without serious competition left the field empty for Labour, which—thanks also to the distortions of first-past-the-post—secured commanding majorities with declining levels of popular support.”

In terms of ideas and inner-party Tory politics, it’s hard to fault this. New Labour got Conservative backing precisely because it appealed with similar ideas. Blair (sometimes called by the Right, ‘the best Conservative PM we’ve got’)  went with the Conservative grain; he did not strive to establish a different set of political and economic opinions (on anything from markets to international relations) He, and Brown, are meritocratic, not egalitarian, Christian believers in charitable help, defenders of reconciliation. In short, conventional thinkers well in the mainstream of European Christian democracy.

Yet there needed to be a certain momentum behind New Labour. If in voting terms who can doubt that,

“If Tory absence provided the negative foundations of Labour’s ‘weightless hegemony’, its positive basis was supplied by the long economic boom that began under the Major government, and from which Downing Street continued to benefit until 2008. This record-setting period of expansion was premised on the inflation of a series of asset-bubbles, above all in housing, which, together with the spread of more complex debt-based financial products, permitted the creation of significant wealth effects for UK homeowners and property speculators..”

This indicates a more deep-rooted base – the hard-nosed homeowner, the hard-working family, the hard-minded individualist – right up to the financier. Who are hardly ‘weightless’ social agents.

Blair and Brown have  built a state in this image, the ‘market state’. One that hives off for private profit public assets and revenues. An extremely heavy, cumbersome, regime, riddled by  the typical inefficiencies and profiteering  of private enterprise applied to public ends. Thus,

 ” from the 1990s onwards, rather than assets being sold outright into private hands, it was now streams of public revenue that would be handed to shareholders as guaranteed profits. This has taken two main forms. Firstly, subcontracting: under Major, public enterprises were encouraged to contract out provision of services to private companies, opening the way to a new realm of commodification. This trend was rapidly expanded under Labour, now reaching from local refuse collection to the administration of welfare, from dentistry to prisons. These immense subsidies to private profit have occupied a significant, and rising, proportion of government outlays: in 2007, subcontracting alone, at £68bn, accounted for 20 per cent of current public expenditure.”

Joining this are even more leaden instruments,

“The second modality has been the Private Finance Initiative (pfi)—of all the Conservative policies which New Labour has adopted and then accelerated, perhaps the most damaging in its long-term impact on public services.ce infrastructure, which would then be leased back from them under 25- to 30-year contracts. Large portions of public funds would now be mortgaged ..The real justifications for the scheme lay rather in accounting legerdemain and neoliberal ideology: delegating ever more of the state’s functions to capital.”

The third pillar of the market state (not described as such by Wood) is equally important. That is its reshaped  ‘training’ and disciplining functions. These are carried out by market-oriented public educational bodies, and, for the unemployed (over 2 and a half million people) by private companies funded by state largesse. Several billion pounds of public revenue flow into these bodies, which range from highly selective Universities to sink schemes for the out-of-work. These apparatuses are both meant to equip people to sell their skills on the ‘global’ marketplace, and to reform the recalcitrant poor and workless. In reality the encroaching private sector has profited without delivering results. The introduction of workfare - forced labour – for the long-term unemployed will seal the nature of the market-state. That is it will explicitly demand  duties  to work for  quarter of the minimum wage.

Rather than summarise the rest of the Tony Wood’s article we will concentrate on its conclusions. That is, what can be done to tear the party and government from its support for the market-state? Not to mention changing its  other policies (a long list, including above all,  foreign adventures and the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan).

Wood notes,

“What of the argument that Labour might still be persuaded to return to its better, social-democratic self? As noted, the party made its social-liberal turn much earlier than its European counterparts, seeking to reverse the catastrophic electoral defeats of the 1980s by accepting the Thatcherite settlement and dropping any redistributive programme. Kinnock marked the first stage of this shift, Blair its culmination. The dominant impulse behind it was not so much ideological as instrumental: a quest for electability rather than a Damascene conversion. This produced a progressive hollowing-out of the party, under the sign of a ‘modernization’ led from above. Under Blair the party conference became an echo chamber for pronouncements from on high. The void at the party’s core has been filled by conformism and careerism, hunger for electoral success distancing it ever further from its origins in the labour movement.”

Anyone who has been active in the Labour Party knows this is the case. In the mid1990s I wrote a lengthy article for Tribune describing the new system of Policy Forums, at their inception, in these terms. Others did as well. If anything the blockage of democracy has got worse since. From patrician disdain at the Bennite upsurge (how dare these people tell us Parliamentarians what to do!), to general dislike of any radical rocking-of-the-boat, we have a managerialised hysteria well satirised (though not by much) by the series In the Thick of It. The real left is wholly marginalised. The ‘centre-left’ of Compass is a wistful presence, reduced to a pale version of 1950s social-democracy. Enfeebled local parties, whose activists are often reduced to those seeking election, are no counterweight.

This is the result,

“ Labour’s steadily declining share of the vote, and even more by the rate of abstention in the party’s industrial heartlands. Here Labour has been buoyed by the lack of electoral alternatives. But still, one of the striking features of the last decade has been the extent to which the party’s longest-standing supporters now refuse to vote for it—including many who had been party members. This is another index of the party’s degeneration: its membership halved in the decade after 1997, and has now reached a historic low of 166,000. To be sure, the phenomenon of declining party-political membership is not confined to the UK. But even within the broader landscape of decreasing partisanship, Labour seems in worse shape than its European analogues: the French ps, notorious for being a collection of notables, currently has around 200,000 members; in Germany, the spd is rather larger, at 500,000, while the Italian pd claims over 800,000 iscritti. The actual influence any of these members have over policy is open to question, but it is clear that the Labour Party faces a comparative lack of cadres…”

We would add that this lack of activists is equally visible inside the trade unions, where even formal memebrship is becoming rarer. The generous and disinterested (since rewards are meagre for the unionised) use of union political funds in a last-ditch campaign for Labour’s re-election will have little efffect. 

So what does this imply for the May ballot-boxes ?

I feel, from going campaigning against the BNP and whatever political activity a left-winger can presently undertake, that something important has changed. That not only are people not enthusiastic about New Labour (for a vast variety of reasons) but they no longer care about appeal to loyalty. That they are determined to vote for those they choose – not those they are told to support. For the left this means that if we vote for the left, left Labour and Left socialists (as I would at least hope) we should really be thinking about new mechanisms that can effectively represent us on the political landscape . That we should not vote for those in the Labour Party who took us into the market state is another aspect we should consider. That our long-term projects need to be brought forward for yet another effort at creating a serious left organised alternative. Meanwhile…

As Wood states,

surely the clinching argument against New Labour is one of simple democratic principle. Any government with a record as appalling as this one’s deserves to be punished at the polls, if accountability to the voting public is to have any meaning.

Quite.

Burka: French Socialists Against a Sweeping Ban.

 

Are these Chains a Sign of Freedom?

Controversy in France over the proposed ban on the full face-veil (voile intègral) steps up,

“France’s Socialist Party has come out against a potential law forbidding women from wearing the burqa. The party argued that women should instead be discouraged from wearing the head-to-toe-veil.” (France 24 Here.)

However Martine Aubry (PSA General Secretary and Mayor of Lille) states,

 Selon la maire de Lille, le port du niqab ou de la burqa est “un réel problème” dans notre société et il convient de s’y opposer, comme n’ont cessé de l’affirmer les socialistes. ”Le Conseil d’Etat, consulté, a donné un avis qui remplit ces conditions. Que le gouvernement se donne le temps de la concertation au lieu de diviser et d’opposer, et qu’il suive cet avis. Alors nous serons d’accord. Sinon, qu’il sache que nous proposerons notre propre loi”, a ajouté la première secrétaire du Parti socialiste.”

According to the Mayor of Lille, wearing the niqab or the burka is a “real problem” in our society and we have to oppose it, as the Socialists have constantly re-affirmed. “The Council of State (Constitutional watchdog) has given its opinion, which fulfils our conditions. The Government has to give over enough time to consider seriously  their advice. Instead of sowing division they should follow the Council’s recommendations. If they do, we will be in agreement with them. Without this they should know that will propose our own law.” Added, the Socialists’ General Secretary.   (Le Monde Here. )

The Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste notes (correctly)  both the manipulation of this ‘debate’ by the French right and that this hastily-cobbled together law will stigmatise Muslims, (here) -

 ”le gouvernement cherche à détourner l’attention des conséquences de la crise et de sa politique sur la population ” “Pratiquant l’amalgame, il cherche à diviser le monde du travail en désignant comme principal bouc émissaire les musulmans, assimilés en bloc à des intégristes.”

The government is looking for scapegoats to distract attention from the effects of its policies on the population, and the crisis. By smearing and by sticking all in one bag called “fundamentalists”  they are attempting to make Muslims the main scape-goat.”

 ”…interdisant le port de la burqa dans l’espace public : elle interdira de fait à ces femmes de circuler librement et les assignera à domicile, ce qui renforcera encore l’oppression qu’elles subissent.”

“Forbidding wearing the Burka in public spaces will prevent these women’s from moving around freely. It will confine them to their homes, under virtual house arrest, and will reinforce the oppression they undergo.”

“Tout en s’opposant à ce projet de loi liberticide, le NPA réaffirme sa solidarité avec les femmes qui luttent contre toutes les formes d’oppression, dont le voile intégral, mais c’est d’abord en luttant toutes ensembles pour le droit à disposer de leur corps que les femmes s’émancipent.”

“While affirming our opposition to this liberty-killing law, the NPA reaffirms its solidarity with women fighting against all forms of oppression – which the full face-veil is – we strive above all to struggle together for women’s emancipation and the right to do what they will with their bodies.”

What?

 The NPA regards the Burka as an oppression?

Surely the British left  knows better!

It’s a precious sign of the religious struggle for liberty….

 This is barely exaggerated.

It is interesting to contrast the NPA’s stand with that of the increasingly religious rightward drifting  ’Socialist Resistance’ group, which apparently belongs to the same ‘Fourth International’ – here. According to them a ban on Burka is “It is all about denying freedom to be confident in what you believe in and to take part in society under equal terms.”

Misogynist dress codes are all about ensuring being “confident in what you believe in”.

Brown, Bigots, the Left and ‘I’m not Racist, But…’.

Fight Bigots!

Most of it’s been said. Gordon Brown, Gillian Duffy, “bigot”, apologies, and a heavy bow to people “immigration concerns”.

So it went, and goes and goes. (here and here).

The PM is a man of overweening arrogance, a sociopath. The left owes him nothing.

Hubris struck.

Tough.

But there remains the issue, immigration.

Let’s be clear. The question for the left is not just the ‘problems’ which migration is said to ’cause’. Competition over housing (alleged),  a scramble for jobs, tussles over scarcer public services,  are ideal conditions for anyone to end up blaming ‘others’. The most visible being well, ‘other’ – migrants and immigrants. Rich people with plenty of resources tend not to get nasty over these things. They don’t jostle and shove, they just have.

We should be implacable in opposing the whole ‘debate’. A discussion that’s one-sided concession after concession to those who blame foreigners for their woes. From lack of money or poor public services to pub closures. Rtaher than the real culprits – not to be seen on the street -the top-paid managers, CEOs and state decison-makers. Basic socialist stuff.

I’ve had some furious rows about this. Those people always begin, ” I’m not racist, but…”

If this is not ‘racism’ it is clearly its closest ally, xenophobia – fear of foreigners.

But who are the Eastern Europeans Gillian Duffy was moaning about? They are, in the immense majority, migrant workers.

Many seem unable to grasp what this means. The British left has indulged itself for too long in nationalist dreams (Scotland, Wales and now England), and multiculturalism to seize on this point. They’ve put priority for their ‘nations’ (which they claim are ‘oppressed’). Or they’ve  translated backing for ethnic equality into support for religious groups, above all Islamists. This section of the left has lost sight of the fact that the rule of money and capital trumps ‘identity’ of any kind.

It ought to be simple good sense that the left offers ideas to bring people together to fight oppression and exploitaiton – a cliché but bleedin’ obvious. On the basis of shared interests. Does this exist?  It is happening in the food processing industry, where migrant workers have begun to get unionised and engage in our common struggle.

Anyone in close contact with ordinary people is well aware that ‘immigration’ is a big issue. In Ipswich this focuses on the visible presence of migrant worker and ethnic minorities near the town centre. That is, the area around Norwich Road which people say is ‘no longer England’, or my district.

The answer is not only to ‘understand’ such  ’concerns’ . After all some people dislike change – though others like it. Multicultural tolerance is not the main thing at stake. It is despair and a lack of political vision for the future. A result of the New Labour and Tory market state that throws everyone back on their limited resources. The  answer? Well, at least an attempt at one is to offer a way forward. to make all our lives better. For equal rights!

The alternative is to engage in a rush to a Dutch auction (if I may permit myself the term): politicians outbidding each other in demanding stricter and stricter control over immigrantion.

This will not halt the movement of people across countries. It will make our lives more and more ruled by having to prove our nationality, and stigmatise migrant workers.

But then those demanding this are “not racist”.

Ipswich Tories, Foreigners and Workfare.

 

In Favour of Starving Unemployed into Work?

Ipswich Tory Candidate Benedict Gummer is best known in the town for spending time in pubs and home wine-tasting parties.

What else does he do? No doubt emerging reluctantly from a busy schedule of hostelry visits and trips to the Off-Licence Benedict  has found the odd moment to propagate Conservative Policy on foreigners. That is, there needs to be a “limit” on them.  For reasons which remain obscure a Tory Ipswich leaflet linked this to the workless. Who are another problem that must be tamed.  Benedict Gummer  announced that, “No fit person, British or not, should live on benefits as a way of life”.  No doubt benefits should be rather a way of death. Or rather, forced labour – Workfare.

Advanced business thinkers are already contemplating how they will make this happen.

Ipswich Unemployed Action reports,

“This week the former head of the CBI, Lord Digby Jones, told Panorama that he thought the time was right for the introduction of workfare – as the plan is often called.

Lord Jones actually took a step further than most in claiming that if he were a viewer at home, Panorama’s report on the young unemployed would make him so angry that he would want to starve some of the long-term unemployed back into work.”

Something ol’ jowelly blubber-guts is unlikely to do in the immediate future.

Digby Jones after a Good Feed.

“He added that he thought he was in step with the British public’s thinking on the subject.”

Lord Digby, a former Minister of State for Trade in the Labour government, is moving closer to the Conservative Party (here).

That Party is busy “addressing” public “concern” about immigration. Will the  Tories address Digby Jone’s  ”concerns” as well?

They already have…

 More Local News:

Guardian report on hell-hole created by Ipswich Liberal-Tory Junta – here.

Feel on local pulse – Labour Councillor Alasdair Ross’s Blog here.

First of May in France: Numbers Down from Last Year.

1er mai : des défilés moins fournis

All reports conclude that despite largely unified First of May marches  there were fewer out on the streets of France than last year. Saturday saw around 350.000 demonstrators, according to the left-union federation the CGT. This contrasts with a  union estimation of 1,2 million in 2009. In Paris about 45.000 attended, as opposed to 160,000 in that year. The same smaller turn-out  was repeated elsewhere.

It should be noted that the – exceptional – 2009 mobilisation was driven by a wave of protests and days-of-action against Sarkozy’s policies. This First of  May was only the beginning of a campaign against proposals to ‘reform’ the pension system. Today Olivier Besancenot (NPA) asked Martine Aubry of the Parti Socialiste to engage in a joint-campaign to protest against plans to reduce payemnts and raise the qualifying age (here).

Manifestation le 1er mai 2010 à Strasbourg. (© AFP Frederick Florin) (Here)

Liberal Democrats, Harbingers of New Labour’s Death.

The strange rebirth of Liberal England is having an effect on the ‘centre-left’. It may well turn out to be a false pregnancy. For the moment, however, it seems to have grabbed the attention of all those political figures who have striven hard to destroy the left. The Guardian, which backed the ‘Alliance’ of Social Democrats and Liberals in the 1984 General Election, has returned to its roots. With the Observer it now calls for a Liberal vote – here. Their star columnist, Polly Toynbee, who spent the 1980s attempting to smash the Labour Party, urges people of both Labour and Liberal sympathy to vote “tactically”  If they don’t then, she writes this morning,  we will fail the Council Estate poor,

..if centre-left people don’t vote tactically in every seat for whoever best keeps a Conservative out – Labour or Lib Dem regardless of personal preference – it is Donna’s Clapham Park people who will be stricken by George Osborne’s first emergency budget.  (here).

Poor Pet Poor.

The ‘left-of’centre’ group Compass has got in the act as well. (here)

The key issue now is denying the Tories outright power, but in doing so recognising that power is likely to be shared. However much the parties have converged on the same space, and however much people have been disappointed by Labour in government, clear differences still exist between progressives and the Tories. Clearly the best hope of progressive politics, of something better than this, lies first in keeping the Tories out. Only then can we start the process of building a new politics in which greater equality, sustainability and democracy take us on the journey to the good society.

In the Independent today Peter Hain is cited offering a four-year ‘partnership’ to the Liberal Democrats.

There are a number of causes this hands-across-the-ballot-box. Leaving aside the most obvious, a wish to cling to power, there has long been a confused sentiment that somehow the Liberals, “progressives”, are unjustly sundered from other “progressives”. That the split between Labour and Liberal parties was a historical error.

However, the Liberals were a party of a section of industry, nonconformist respectability, reform from above, and (most importantly) visceraly hostile to wealth redistribution and the interests of the unionised working class. While Labour had a tradition of high-handed, well-meaning, but bureaucratic reform, it clashed with the Liberals on the latter point. Those within the old Liberal party who accommodated to the rising power of the unions transferred to Labour, and carried on the tradition of social liberalism there. Those who fixed on the beneficient market regulated by the judgements of the Wise and the Great, ruling municipally through philanthropic notables, stayed. No Governing Liberal, including Nick Clegg, has ever been anything but hostile to organised labour.

It is hardly a coincidence that as New Labour favoured markets and the civic role of Lords and Lady Bountiful they opened the way up again for the true Liberal tradition. In this way the rise – yet to be confirmed in the Ballot Box – of the Liberal Democrats owes everything to Blair and Brown. If they get any power they will complete the transformation of new Labour into a US style Democrat Party – and hasten its death as an effective alternative to the Conservatives.

The other source of sympathy for the Liberals lies in the idea that British political system is rent with a  fundamental undemocratic constitutional set-up that needs “reform”. On the left a whole theory is attached to this, that the ‘backward’ UK Monarchy and State – a system built on subjecthood - has to be replaced by a Constitution based on citizens. As the Liberal Democrats back this strongly then they are held to be particularly ’progressive’. None of these theorists has ever explained how all the principal faults of British politics and society are found in republican states, in the rest of Europe to start with. Nor that the whole process of globalisation has rendered this notion of a British ‘sonder weg’ (special route) to modernity irrelevant in the face of world-wide convergence around the model of a Market State. That the Liberals equally fervently back this Market State escapes their admirers’ attention. Their programme for change relies on strengthening local elites, not on democracy. Only Proportional Representation may offer some meagre comfort by opening up the political landscape to a more genuine electoral confrontation between different forces.

The Liberal Democrats politics differ mildly from the more overtly right-wing programme of David Cameron’s ’big society’ Tories. They are, apparently ’nicer’. This might be true - in parts. The cabal of self-promoters, cranks, grudge-holders and genteel amateurs that make up Ipswich Liberal Democrats are not, however, generally thought of in these terms. Selfish and vain is how many would describe the Ipswich Liberals. Which holds true for the national party.

If, a heavy if, there is any coalition with the Liberal Democrats after this election it will only be in the interests of the not insubstantial constituency of vain, self-regarding and selfish people.

Not any step forward for the Left, however generously defined.    

Icelandic Ash A Call to Vote Christian People’s Alliance: Religious Parties Gain Ground.

Even the Ash Votes Christian!

Side-by-side with an assertive  ’Muslim’ vote is a rising ‘Christian’ political presence. With 150 Candidates in the General  Election the Christian People’s Alliance (here)  is making its way to the ballot box. It looks set to expand its total of 5 local councillors in the coming municipal contests. Membership figrues are hazy but there is no doubt that it involves a swelling number of Christians, predominantly from an Evangelical or revivalist background.

In Ipswich the Christian Party – 71 candidates nationally (here and here) is standing a candidate, Kim Christofi. According to Wikipedia, “It aims to fill a void they say exists in the current political spectrum for the Christian Right in the UK. They are pro-life, have opposed moves towards legislation equalising the position of homosexual, bisexual and transgender people with heterosexual people and hold a sceptical view on the EU.”

Their policies (announced in last Scottish Elections) include:

• a proposed referendum on the reinstitution of the death penalty for severe crimes, where two or three witnesses were present at the crime scene and forensic science confirms involvement.
• legislation to ban abortion.
• increased taxation on alcohol and tobacco.
• initiatives to bring personal responsibility to bear upon “self-inflicted disease” (such as alcoholism).
• Zero tolerance on drug possession.
• curfewss for under 11 year olds, with mandatory intervention of child protection agencies in relation to any child 10 years or younger that is found unaccompanied on the street after 9:00pm.
• the reintroduction of the right of teachers to use corporal punishment in extreme circumstances.
• greater observance of a weekly day of rest (Sunday).
• limits around coastlines to preserve stocks of fish and sand eels.
• promotion in school of chastityy before marriage.
• re-instatement of Section 2A (also known as Section 28), a law to guard against the promotion of homosexuality.
• the re-introduction of corporate readings from the Bible in all Scottish state schools.
• provision of Christian religious education on a mandatory basis, with no obligation to promote other faiths, regardless of the wishes of those being instructed or their parents. There currently exists a level of compulsory Christian observance in all British schools,^] so these policies are calling for this to be increased.
• a science curriculum which should “reflect the evidence of creation/design” in the universe (see Creation-evolution controversy).
• public health campaigns to discourage homosexuality  alongside excessive drinking and the use of addictive substances, whilst maintaining “God loves and we should love” such individuals.
• the restoration of the right for parents to smack their children (as with prayer, this currently exists and the policy is a call for an increase).
• “Mind Pollution Levy” on 18 Certificate Films, DVDs, CDs, Video Games and Top Shelf magazines.
• a re-establishment of the principle of the innocent party in a divorce being acknowledged in any divorce settlement.
• discouragement of the practice of addressing women as Ms.
• opposition of the practice of altering birth certificates to reflect gender confirmation surgery.
• promotion of Biblical alternatives to the current criminal justice system, including emphasis on the role of witnesses over forensic evidence.
• Total privatisation of public assets, including the NHS and the public schools. Job cuts in the public health sector. All immigrants will be required to be covered by private health insurance.
• Increased restrictions on immigration.

The Christian People’s Alliance (more here) claims to be more  ’social’  (very sharply distinguished from socialism) and socially tolerant. It has these policies:

Recognition of Christ’ s sovereignty (supreme authority) over the nations and in politics.

Respect of [the Judeo-Christian]-God‘s law as the basis for constitutional government and a stable society.

Like the Islamists the Christianists base politics on Divine Rule. We can dismiss the below as blather:

Reconciliation among nations, races, religions, classes, gender and communities [with god]

Respect for human life given by God.

Social Justice to address wrongs and provide restitution to the wronged.

Peacemaking, by addressing the causes of wars.

Open, transparent government, which subjects itself to debate and critique.

 

 

The CPA’s views on the sovereignty of God can be forthright, (here)

John Manwell Chair of Liverpool City Churches network, Together For The Harvest, which brings together over 100 churches. He is also the Christian Peoples Alliance candidate for Liverpool Walton. He says that the volcanic ash from Iceland is a sign from God that Britain and Europe need to turn and confess their sin of unbelief and rebellion against the Gospel. He commented on the fact that the ash surrounded Britain at the same time as the three main party leaders had their first televised debate in front of the nation:

“Ash is a clear Biblical symbol of repentance. The ash from Iceland brought our airlines to a halt for a week. As a sign from God it was gracious – no-one was killed. The standstill reminded us that with all our power and politics, the human race is powerless compared to God and His creation. It is right that judgement begins with the house of God and clearly the Roman Catholic church is taking steps to sort itself out, as the party leaders alluded to on Sky. However, our whole political system has hardened itself against God in rampant secularism. This has to change.”

Like the ‘soft’ Islamists, and their toadies in the ‘Respect Coalition’, then, the CPA finds that religious progress is thwarted by secularism.

Those damned secularists!

More Ash Vicar?

Benedict Gummer a 9/11 Truther? And Other Musings.

Ipswich Tory Thinks ‘Mickey Mouse’ Did This.

Will Ipswich have a 9/11 Truther as its MP tomorrow? We don’t know for sure. What we do know is that Benedict Gummer, Conservative Candidate for Ipswich, has claimed that “Mickey Mouse” was behind the attack on the Twin Towers.

When did Benedict make this claim? This Tuesday. Before eight in the morning the dapper Tory was standing outside Ipswich Railway Station. With a gaggle of cronies he was thrusting leaflets in commuters’ hands. No doubt he was hoping for ” the smiles and offers of good luck ” that his Blog claims he gets.

Not this time. A comrade from Ipswich Against Racism and Fascism was there, giving out anti-BNP leaflets. He had a few ‘words’ with the man himself. Benjy came out with the just cited (and amazing) statement. Was he influenced by his readings of Noam Chomsky? Was Benedict still recovering from his heavy schedule of wine-parties and pub visits. Or was he  rattled at this?

 

We shall never know. But we would like Benedict to answer this: what theory do you have about 9/11?

Tendance Coatesy is open to all your speculations on this subject. Though not to your  lies ab0ut saving Ipswich Hospital – here.

Now to another point.

The impression we have is that a large swathe of voters have taken one look at David Cameron and do not like what they see. How they will cast their ballots is anyone’s guess. Obviously the Liberals will do much better than anyone expected a month ago. They will do even better in Alexandra Ward Ipswich since there is no Green candidate for the local election. Why? The Liberal candidate was one of the signatories for the inexperienced Green. He found that this autograph was invalid (not difficult to predict since the Liberal had already nominated another Liberal and you can’t do this twice). Exit Green from the election. Without even a vote!

But for the rest - we await the results.

Ipswich, General Election: Bad Result.

Ipswich Result.

Ben Gummer	Conservative	18,371	39.1	+8.0
Chris Mole	Labour	16,292	34.7	-8.2
Mark Dyson	Liberal Democrat	8,556	18.2	-2.9
Chris Streatfield	UK Independence Party	1,365	2.9	+0.2
Dennis Boater	British National Party	1,270	2.7	+2.7
Tim Glover	Green	775	1.7	+1.7
Kim Christofi	Christian Party	149	0.3	+0.3
Peter Turtill	Independent	93	0.2	+0.2
Sally Wainman	Independent	70	0.1	+0.1
Majority		2,079	4.4
Turnout		46,941	59.9	-0.2

 

From Ipswich Spy - for best up-to–date reports. More from the BBC.

 

The town was crawling with Tories all yesterday. I told one, obtrusively asking for cards at Zoar Baptist Chapel, that he was “Tory scum”.  The absurdity of a place like Ipswich getting a nasty Tory squirt elected is not lost on the Tendance cadres.  

I had planned to go to sleep early and get up in the middle of the night. Just drifting off after 11.15  and heard phone ring – Anwar, who thought Exit polls not too bad. When I got back to sleep I kept waking up and going downstairs turning on the telly, hopping around radio stations. Great that McDonnell won so decisively Rest is, well rest.

Benedict Gummer is a walking disaster. But then most readers of this Blog will know our views on Benjy. On what emerges from negotiations to form a Government we, like all politicos, will have ample time to comment.

For Ipswich Against Racism and Fascism (which can be contacted via the E-Mail given in Sidebar ‘About Tendance Coatesy’), the 1,270 votes for the first-time BNP candidate, is an unacceptably high score .

Galloway Bad Loser to the Last. Wither Respect?

George Galloway lost. ”Fantastic ” Salma Yaqoob lost. Abjol Miah Lost. - here.

Respect admits to a “disappointing night” (here). Socialist Unity, their tireless cheer-leader says, “there is now some need for reflection about what happens next. I offer congratulations and commiserations to our brilliant candidates who deserved better results.” (here)

Galloway didn’t even have the courage to turn up at the Count Result.

A sad reflection on the waning standards of communalist politicians.

One wonders if his Iranian state employers will continue to pay a very ex-MP.

 

 Tower Hamlets:  Respect: 1 . Newham Respect 1.  Birmingham: 3 Respect Councillors.

No doubt Yaqoob will have time as well to campaign in favour of religious rights for Muslims in Europe. But perhaps she is now looking for something more solid to build her political career on. Labour? Liberals? Greens?

 Newly elected Labour MP Fitzpatrick (here) showed that once introduced communalism has not gone away,

“The disrespect party has clearly suffered a huge defeat and that’s another major positive from yesterday,” he said

Reflecting on a campaign which had been marred by negative publicity and claims of electoral fraud, he said: “I have recently been the subject of a number of smears, being accused of Islamophobia, of trying to ban traditional Muslim weddings, of trying to close the East London Mosque and other such nonsense.

“These would be laughable if they were not peddled to try and poison the minds of the Muslim community.

“That community refused to be conned and came out to vote for me,” he said.

The Morning Star ‘reported’ (here) Ms Yaqoob saying that,

“It is a fantastic achievement and testimony to a desire for a political alternative to the parties of bombing and big business. It is clear that many people’s fear of a Tory government boosted the Labour vote, puncturing the Lib Dem bubble but also squeezing my vote as well.

“I am really proud of the campaign that I ran.”

For our part we follow this little chap’s reaction,

After the General Election….

  

Time for the Left to Shift Gear! 

AFTER THE GENERAL ELECTION . . . JOIN THE RESISTANCE!

 

 

 

  

SATURDAY 15th of May

10:30am – 3:30 pm

University of London Union, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HY

 

  

Entrance: Free

(donations welcome)

 

 

  

Whatever the outcome of the General Election, this Parliament will see the new Government savage public spending to pay for the crisis caused by the bank bailout.

But how can we protect our services, and build a political alternative?

This is a one day conference for the labour movement left across the UK to share experiences of the General Election and plan for the coming months.

 

  

Speakers include:

John McDonnell MP

and Mark Serwotka, PCS General Secretary

 

 

  

 

 

Co-sponsored by the LRC, CLPD, Convention of the Left, CWU, Labour Briefing, NUJ, Save the Labour Party, Right to Work and the Socialist Campaign to Stop the Tories and Fascists. 

‘Progressive Partnership’: Mon Cul!

The Future?

Soundings and Compass must he well happy. A “ new progressive partnership” (here) is underway.

We have lived under this ‘patnership’ in Ipswich for the last few years. ‘Nice’ people have got rewarded. The pathetic grudges of Andrew Cann (Liberal Leader) made public policy. Public services ruined. Looney Tory Bendict Gummer elected.

Ipswich made into a rubbish bin.

In this town even the crêpes are oppressed!

 

Et alors, bientôt le pays!

Vote Guardian, Vote Tory, Vote Ipswich Liberal-Tory Junta!

Fascist March Against Globalisation in Paris, 9th of May.

The Far-Right in Europe Remains a Threat.

Fascists March in Paris, 9th of May, Against Globalisation.

According to Le Monde (here) there were a maximum of 700 ultra-right fascists on the March. That is those to the right of the Front National in such groups as the  Nouvelle droite populaire (dissidents from the  FN); le Renouveau français (traditionalists), the néo-Gud (the name is from hard-line student fascist group of many years standing) and the  Nationalistes autonomes (anti-globalising far-right).

These by no means exhaust the range of the French ultra-right. 

 

The attempt to use leftist-sounding rhetoric and imagery (against the capitalist market, backing strikes and protests) is blatant.  

‘Progressive Coalition’, a Millstone, McDonnell for Leader!

Millstone Waiting for Labour Movement’s Neck.

Gordon Brown is going. But not gone. This has a momentum of its own.  Desperately trying to cobble together a ‘progressive alliance’ with the Liberal Democrats he is using the last of his Doctor Evil powers. But his strength is ebbing day-to-day. The popular masses are heartily sick of these manoeuvres. Labour MPs are thinking of the future Party leader elections. The Tories are waiting for their hour. Only the Liberal Democrats, flattered at the attention, are playing their moment as hard as they can.

For the left the following are some important considerations.

• The feeble score of  left of Labour candidates in the election illustrates the failure of various socialist combinations to create a clear alternative to the Brown government. It shows that socialism, and left ideas more broadly, have had little resonance in the electorate. The gap between our views and ordinary people’s is wide.   It is not just that groups like Respect have pandered to Islamism, or that the SWP has tried to put its own ‘party-building’ above the movement’s interests. The fundamental reason for the left’s impasse is the lack of a convincing popular message.
• This has been helped by the succesful effort to shape the Labour Party in the image of the non-social democratic American Democrats. The policy-making process of the Party (Policy Forums onwards) are designed to exclude radical, labour movement and socialist, challenges. The unions have tried to adjust to this, by pursuing their own interests through Lobbying. They too have been unable to make an impact – despite The Thick of It media figures like Charlie Whelan.
• The real political issue is not going to be reduced to who takes over the leadership of the Labour Party. It is going to be about the policies he or she offers. The crucial point is the response to the ‘inevitable’ massive cuts in public spending. From the BBC onwards every force of the British establishment is presenting a case for financial ‘rigour’. Nor is this just propoganda - similar to that carried out in the 1970s to  popularise Monterarism and the free-market on the state and private media. One only has to read the European press to see that the UK’s financial deficit is widely considered a massive problem.
• ‘Inevitable’ or not financial austerity will clash with the interests of millions of people, in the public sector outwards. There is therefore a constituency – concentrated in the unions’ membership - which is opposed by its nature to such plans.
• A ‘progressive alliance’ between the Liberals, the Labour Party and nationalists, will be sealed on a programme of financial cut-backs. Apart from the perception of thwarting the popular vote it will be anything but progressive in social and economic  terms. It will rapidly become a millstone around the neck of the parties involved. On the bright side it will show the political exhaustion of all the ‘centre-left’ attempts to remove socialism from the political agenda.
• The left needs therefore, in the first instance, to offer a convincing alternative set of measures to the coming cuts. We have to have an economic narrative that can respond to this crisis. More than just ‘fight the cuts’ we should be concerned with strategies for the future, to not just oppose but to initiate a series of alternative propositions. This has yet to emergence in a popular form. The time to begin this is now.
• If the left can align with Labour MPs and Union leaders who recognise the blockage we have the opportunity to emerge as a political force on the national stage. If we manage to get behind John McDonnell, a serious, well-liked, socialist MP, and campaign for him to become Labour leader, we may be doing something of greater use than boosting small left groups’ fortunes.

If….

May Day, Review.

The West Bletchley Left Book Club Circa 1936

By Andrew Coates. Published here.

John Sommerfield, May Day, London Books 2010/1936

April 29th, London, early 1930s, “In this whirlpool of matter-in-motion forces are at work creating history.” May Day (1936) sets out “a new world painfully fighting to be born from the filth, the rottenness, the miserable decay of capitalist society”. John Sommerfield’s ‘collective novel” of the London class struggle portrays and celebrates this struggle. It is full of high optimism. In a Postscript he calls it “early ‘30s Communist Romanticism.” A worker-writer and a Communist (remaining so up to the 1950s), this, his second novel, is red with the flush of Leninist enthusiasm. The Stalinist Zhdanov would call such committed literature, “a new type, revolutionary romanticism”. “Socialist realism” then is not just about showing how “things really are” or should be. Sommerfield, is concerned with love, with passion and despair; his characters’ souls are not engineered to react like cold automata.

There are many of them; too many to pay close attention to them all. There is John, a unionised Carpenter at Langfier’s Carbon Works. He life is ruled by deep affection, for his young wife, Maritime, and their baby David. This craftsman, while pleased with the new employment his trade has won him, is revolted by conditions in the Works’ machine shops, and the lot of the hard-driven factory workers affected by speed-ups and a rising numbers of accidents. But when union brothers urge action he remembers his “long miserable months of unemployment” and Martine’s “little ambitions for a nice home with bright curtains and new furniture.

The machinists, all women, are “silly girls with their synthetic Hollywood dreams, their pathetic silk stockings and lipsticks”. Yet, they are the “raw material of history” touched by “deep discontent” at the way the “automatic lathes” are to be operated on piece-work. Carbon Works is drawn into the conflict between bosses and workers. A Communist, Ivy Cutford, is there to bring them to class-consciousness. “The girls are beginning to take a good deal of notice of what she says because they like her.” While the bosses rear up at the prospect of conflict, aware that these “Communist elements” pose a threat. John equally comes to realise that “Life is a struggle for us, life is a battle under the long shadows of the factory chimneys.”

The employers are changing; the firm is becoming part of a larger holding. Capital is being concentrated. Sir Edwin Langfier, the founder of Carbon Works, is now in thrall to Amalgamated Industrial Enterprises, and their agent, Dartry. In Park Lane the Cabal of Monopolists behind the Corporation meet to decide on the future, “they are scheming to close down factories and speed up others, to consumer their lesser rivals. They making their class an ever-smaller and more exclusive society: control of production passes into the hands of an ever-shrinking group.” Below, there is a shout, “Workers, all out on May Day. Demonstrate for a free Soviet Britain!”

The Bus Drivers are out on strike. Mr Raggett Secretary of the Transport Workers; Union, “the owner of a fine house and car, a man of weight, with a large income and twelve-thousand pounds’ worth of securities” tries to break it.” May Day gets nearer. “The Communist cells have sprayed out leaflets like machines guns scattering bullets”. All out on May Day! It’s as if the world has become laid out in the columns of the Communist paper, the Daily Worker.

Sometimes one follows this, other times words scuttle past like beetles (I nicked that phrase from Roberto Bolaño). The frequent clumsy metaphors and language don’t help, “colours of halted waterfalls”, “soft lights glow unaudienced” to cite but two at random. As for the Communist tracts, “like autumn leaves falling into running rivers” “dropped into the living torrents of the homeward-hurrying workers” all leftists have given out bits of papers that get swept away.

But the narrative holds. On May Day an accident happens in the carbon Works Big Shop. A hand, Mabel, is scalped by the shafting, and the plant strikes. There is a fine description of how Sir Edwin Langfier is revolted by this result of speed-up. The callousness of the agent of the Monopolists, Dartry, who is only concerned about the hold up to orders, is heightened by his realisation of his ageing, and “the spectre of senility and impotence.” As a virile contrast the Monster Demonstration bursts forth, streaming out from the East End. A baton falls on one marcher’s head, “and the world exploded into a scarlet oblivion”. “Men and women who have never marched in a demonstration before are becoming revolutionaries in the course of a few hours”. Marble Arch is the destination, with the “flag-draped body is held up and saluted by a hundred thousand clenched firsts raised”…”Red Front!”

You don’t read May Day waiting for an unexpected conclusion. The “party-minded” Sommerfield lays on the Daily Worker line with a trowel. But is not Proletkult ‘pure’ proletarian literature. There is a freshness that is hard to dismiss. Unsettling modernist techniques, of the “Camera-Eye”, collages of newspaper reports, a montage of scenes, interrupt the narrative. As important as the lives of May Day’s characters are the Carbon Works, the Docks, Charing Cross Road, West End cinemas and theatres, the powerhouses of Battersea and Lots Road, the Print, Bus garages, the March, newsbills, statistics on unemployment, industrial accidents and strikes. There is a genuine tenderness and complexity of feeling (John’s hesitations, Langfier’s scruples) at work. True, the revolutionary vortex they are all thrown into has more magic than realism about it. Yet its picture is not consoling. The energy at work is agitating, dividing. Sommerfield is not bent on drawing together people of “good will”. One could say that for these reasons, the 1934 novel would not have gone down well with the mixed liberal, communist and pacifist audience of, say, the West Bletchley Left Book Club circa 1936.

Today, after May Day 2010, “everyone’s talking about politics”. But Nick Clegg, David Cameron and Gordon Brown, hardly represent the kind of new world that John Sommerfield (1908–91) would have revelled in. The present-day unions efforts at “mobilising the masses” have been singularly muted – the RMT (a donor for the book’s production, excepted). Only the routes of the London Streets, portrayed with great vigour, remain fixed in the same direction. But as foreign leftists sometimes say about the British Capital’s roads, they are wide and long enough for demonstrations to get lost in. Not, at any rate yet, highways filled with a swelling Red Front.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew Coates is long-standing socialist and trade union activist who lives in Ipswich, near the Sunshine Suffolk Coast. He owns one of the best collections of sectarian left literature in East Anglia and 540 Everyman Classics. To while away the long-days he posts incessantly on the Web, pursuing vendettas and the line of his international organisation, Tendance Coatesy. His pastimes include putting slug pellets down on his allotment and watching the creatures die.

First published in 3:AM Magazine: Monday, May 10th, 2010.

Normal Service To Be Resumed – Shortly – After London Curry.

Counter-Revolution?

I was in London on Saturday.

A really good meeting of the left.

John is standing.

So it was worthwhile.

But I digress.

Had a curry in the evening – a real feast with all the trimmings.

I can still feel it.

McDonnell’s the One!

John’s Programme.

John McDonnell is trying to gather enough MPs to stand.

Read more: here.

It is the bounden duty of every socialist to support John.

Diane Abbott: Schmoozing with Portillo too Much ?

 

Stands Against Doughty Socialist Campaigner John.

Dianne Abott’s best mate is Michael Denzil Xavier Portillo.

That is only political fact that I retain about her.

Oh apart from bumping into  her a few times a vaguely left meetings.

Now she standing for the Labour leadership (here).

No doubt ‘Sue R’ who posts her will tell us more Diane’s political, and indeed social background.

Apart from her public school education her fling with Jeremy Bernard Corbyn springs to mind.

Dianne Abbot: Vote for the City of London!

 

 

City of London School.

Rumours that Dianne Abbot  has been offered a place in David Cameron’s Cabinet have been vigorously denied.

The dapper gal was educated at Harrow County Grammar School where she met her life-time sparring partner Michael Denzil Xavier Portillo.

Her political trajectory from left to wealth  is not unprecedented.

Meanwhile this (Hat  Tip to Sue R)

Her leftwing credentials were dented in 2003 when she decided to send her son to the private £10,000 a year City of London school, after previously criticising Tony Blair and Harriet Harman for sending their children to selective state schools.

here.

Diane Abbott: Jonathan Aitken Gives his Backing in Labour Bid.

Abbott’s Street Creed Support is Growing.

Jonathan Aitken has given his backing for Diane Abbott as leader of the Labour Party

From today’s Independent on Sunday here

Aitken was jailed for perjury in the late 1990s, so his endorsement might not have been the first Abbott sought. Still, there it is:

“She has outstanding qualities. She’s a standard bearer for the left, and a good communicator. It’s what Labour needs. I wish her well.” 

Given the former Tory minister’s bluer-than-blue background, the move might come as something of a surprise. Still, the pair have history: They worked together at TV-am and Abbott’s son is Aitken’s godson. And, who knows? If she gets Michael Portillo’s backing, she might overtake Ed Balls as the Opposition’s favourite candidate.

McDonnell: The Real Reason Why Some of the Left Oppose Him.

From Wikipedia:

In 1981, McDonnell was elected to the Greater London Council (GLC) as a member for Hayes and Harlington. He became the Chair of Finance, responsible for the Greater London Council s budget, and was Ken Livingstone‘s deputy leader. In an interview with Ronan Bennett for The Guardian  newspaper, he described his role during this time as being, “to translate policies into concrete realities on the ground.” He further discussed his performance by indicating, “I was a fairly hard-nosed administrator. We set in train policies for which we were attacked from all sides but are now accepted as mainstream: large-scale investment in public services; raising the issue of Ireland and arguing for a dialogue for peace; equal opportunities; police accountability. We set up a women’s committee, an ethnic minorities committee”.^[

Livingstone removed McDonnell from the post of deputy leader in 1985, shortly after they came into conflict over the GLC’s budget. Margaret Thatcher’s government first cut central government funding to local government, and then introduced rate capping, preventing selected councils from raising local taxation beyond a set level as a means of reducing public spending. Encouraged by the success of the Liverpool City Council, which delayed issuing a budget in 1984 until the government agreed to restore some funding cuts, twelve Labour councils that had the cap imposed on them chose not to set a rate at all in the spring of 1985, demanding that the government lift the cap. The GLC also faced capping, and McDonnell headed a campaignn amongst Labour members to adopt this strategy in response. Unlike the local councils, however, the GLC faced a legal obligation to set a rate by mid-March. McDonnell contended that accepting the cap would lead to a reduction in spending and prevent the GLC, which had already lost all of its funding from central government, from honoring the manifesto pledges Labour had been elected on in 1981.

In his book If Voting Changed Anything, They’d Abolish It, Livingstone outlines his belief that McDonnell presented exaggerated figures in order to support his proposal. Despite paying lip-service to the “no rate” campaign, the GLC set a legal rate on schedule, passed by moderate Labour councillors with the support of Conservative opposition members.

Comment: I happen to think that McDonnell was right.

Welfare Reform: It’s a-Comin’.

 Frank Field’s Deputy For Welfare Reform.

A bit more here and here.

This is really serious.

When I signed on yesterday the woman on the counter asked me of what things I’d done to seek work.

I replied, “I am interested  in a career in the Civil Service.”

Now apparently I will have my opportunity: volunteers to run the Job Centre!

Only joking.

Just.

Cordelia Gummer Speaks Out.

Esteemed Comrade Abused Under Tory Misrule.

Cordelia Gummer, a long-time sympathiser with Tendance Coatesy, has a view on her bro’s failure to get an  appointment as under-Minister for Paper-Clips.

“The in angustiis pecuniae caused by the renovations at  Giles Corner are not there “pour rein”.

Even the crows on the street in Ipswich know what a financial failure the Conservative-Liberal coalition has caused.

How could they appoint Benedict with this local background?”

So much for Ipswich Spy’s puerile accusations of nepotism and family loyalty!

Sex Workers and Brian Tobin: A Respectful Comment

 

In the Guardian yesterday.

The murder of three women working as prostitutes in Bradford has reminded us of the terror that gripped the streets of Ipswich four years ago. During Steve Wright’s killing spree in the winter of 2006, many of the women I work with became acutely aware of their vulnerability and wanted to get out, there and then.

 We can introduce new legal measures, and various groups can keep spitting vitriol about decriminalisation, legalisation or whatever their preferred option is; but unless we as a society learn to deal with drugs more effectively, we will never see an end to what is a desperate and dangerous activity that destroys lives.

More here.

Now Brian is a person for whom I have the utmost respect.

I really mean this.

But what does this highlighted sentence mean?

I know for a fact that yesterday in the streets of Ipswich that there were women with very obvious drugs problems. And men.

Like really serious heroin and crack users.

They have not gone away.

Brian may recall our Trades Council Meeting to which he was invited (as he has strong links with the labour movement). We talked about this very issue.  I said that heroin use devastates people’s  lives.

I meant  the case of two of my really closest friends. The beautiful Sue Tout (her brother from the group Renaissance – here) and her boyfriend Lawrence. Lawrence ended up throwing himself on the Tube line at Finsbury Park. Sue  died from heroin-related complications. Both from socialist and communist families. You can imagine how it affected their even nearer and dearer

This was thirty years ago but what has changed to make people get off this poison?

I do not think, Brian, will all due respect, that a programme of this

“acupuncture, aromatherapy, reflexology“

is going to do it.

Liberal-Tory Coalition (Ipswich) elects Coco the Cann as Culture Czar.

 

Ipswich Liberal-Tory Coalition Culture Chief.

Barking news: Andrew Cann just elected as Culture Supremo of Ipswich (here).

Andrew Cann has a distinguished career.

His