On 'left-wing' authoritarianism

Red Pepper magazine is hosting an event on Wednesday night in London which aims to go some way to clarify the various strands of worries and queries that people have about the state of left wing political movements. As well as the obvious matters to debate - the question of left unity (which I've already discussed myself, and will likely come back to at some point) and what impact the Occupy movement has had on the prospects of the left-wing - it also covers what I feel is a hugely important issue:

How do we avoid repeating the authoritarianism that blighted the socialist project in the last century?

I feel this is a hugely important issue to address, as it may be the greatest stumbling block towards a more successful left-wing. Not only has the 'socialist project' as it is referred to failed - in a European context, at least - but, when it did collapse, the people, even those loyal to the USSR up until then, were disgusted at the rotten innards which spilled out. Now, communism and socialism - anti-capitalism in general - is synonymous with Stalinist gulags, with mass starvation, with the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge.

This is, of course, a willful misrepresentation of what left-wing politics actually stands for. In fact, there is an attempt by right-wing commentators, especially in America, to redraw the traditional political spectrum, whereby 'left' is shorthand for 'authoritarian', and 'right' is immediately parallel to 'freedom' and 'democracy'. Hence the placing of fascists and nazis at the left side, while the right is populated with conservatives, libertarians and neo-liberals.

Obama, who is, in social-domestic terms, liberal-left, and right wing in everything else, is frequently portrayed as a communist who wants to take away your freedom by increasing taxes slightly. Glenn Beck and his ilk are the ones who portray themselves as the defenders of freedom (the freedom to live in a country where you are shot with an unlicensed gun or die of a curable health problem because you can't afford health insurance).

Dan Hodges article for the New Statesman gives several examples from the British media, where this redrawing of the political spectrum has increased of late. Iain Dale, for example, gives it the old 'the clue is the phrase 'National Socialism'". There was also a flurry of articles defending Dr Rachel Frosh, a recently-elected police and crime commissioner after she tweeted the below picture:

Hodges makes an important point in his article - 

Hitler wasn't a socialist, nor was he a conservative. He was a political mutation.

Hitler was part of the burgeoning wave of fascism which was sweeping Europe after its creation by Mussolini in Italy. It disregarded the traditional opposition of capitalism vs socialism for a more populist, catch-all version which cherry-picked from everything. It had roots in left-wing politics, but it had roots in right-wing politics as well.  Like all power-mad dictators, Hitler basically made it up as he went along.

Moreover, he had a skewed vision of what 'socialism' meant, and the relation to Marxism. See, for example, this interview from 1923, reprinted in the Guardian as part of the 'Great Interviews of the 20th Century' series:

"Why," I asked Hitler, "do you call yourself a National Socialist, since your party programme is the very antithesis of that commonly accredited to socialism?"

"Socialism," he retorted, putting down his cup of tea, pugnaciously, "is the science of dealing with the common weal. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists.
Socialism is an ancient Aryan, Germanic institution. Our German ancestors held certain lands in common. They cultivated the idea of the common weal. Marxism has no right to disguise itself as socialism. Socialism, unlike Marxism, does not repudiate private property. Unlike Marxism, it involves no negation of personality, and unlike Marxism, it is patriotic.We might have called ourselves the Liberal Party. We chose to call ourselves the National Socialists. We are not internationalists. Our socialism is national. We demand the fulfilment of the just claims of the productive classes by the state on the basis of race solidarity. To us state and race are one."

To redraw Hitler as a socialist, and therefore damn all socialists by association, is either a deliberate action in the absence of proper arguments - like, for example, an argument refuting that capitalism is in crisis - or the bizarre thoughts of a close-minded idiot. Either way, it remains a feasible thing to do because history shows the allegedly intrinsic connection between anti-capitalism and authoritarianism (this also leads to the mistaken conclusion that capitalism is intrinsically linked with democracy and freedom).

Admittedly, the left wing connection with authoritarianism is not the sole result of propaganda by right-wing newspaper columnists. The actions of the 'socialist' (state-capitalists, in reality) governments of the USSR, China, Cuba, and more are, of course, horrendous, and, I feel, a betrayal of what anti-capitalist politics can, and should, mean. I find this especially important to note as we move through the era of neo-liberalism, whereby capitalism combines a recklessly free market with a strong state which is designed to nurture the growth of this 'free' market, and stifle opposition to it. Socialism is now the definable democratic model.  

But, concerning the historical examples of totalitarianism: what they can serve as are reminders of the incorrect way to apply to works of Marx, and others, to real life. There were aborted attempts at establishing capitalism throughout history, and the current mode remains riddled with flaws. History is there to be learnt from, and, importantly, to be cast off, as so not to cloud our judgement today.

The university is a factory - shut it down!

Our temporary occupation here should be considered a warning shot: this campus was always ours, and we will not allow management to terrorise our community any longer. 

We call on all staff and students to join us. To reclaim the spaces of our campus. To strike. To occupy.

The university is a factory – shut it down.

Statement from Sussex University Occupation 

The introduction of £9,000 a year fees in English universities has inevitably forced the marketization of the educational establishments. They are, contrary to any sensible or moral approach to learning, now opportunities for profit. This is the goal, ultimately, of neo-liberalism; not only to chase 'growth' and profit to further than logically possible, but to undermine and crush any dissent towards it. Neo-liberalism is the fusion of a free market with a strong state - the latter allowing the former to flourish by force. 

Universities are cultural and social centres, as well as ones of learning. From the earliest years of education, schools and colleges also operate on this basis. This is further being undermined by the coalition government, as they push for on-line learning to disrupt student movements coalescing and growing on campus.

The recent occupations at Sussex University - one on-going, and two flash occupations - protesting at the privitisation of 235 jobs - those of cooks, cleaning staff, janitors - shows that the student movement is alive and well, despite the best attempts of the NUS to neuter it. Pictures from their Twitter account show speeches and marches to be well attended, and have already attracted the likes of Owen Jones, Laurie Penny, Caroline Lewis and Josie Long.

What is important about Occupy Sussex is that it shows that the student movement can surpass it's pre-occupation with the fees. The initial protests in London, and around the UK, were given a focal point by this, but they melted away when the cap was taken up. As the pillars and foundations of education are attacked, so must the student movement react and fight battles on all fronts. 

We can also see the rejection of the decay of university life in the growing actions of members of the Letters Of Public Terror group, who reacted to the stifling  anti-social aspects of their university and their management with a campaign of graffiti [PDF].

The rejection of neo-liberalism and marketization within universities, and within education wholesale, must be at the forefront of any struggle which aims to combat these destructive economic systems. Education establishes patterns followed throughout life - results in high school can dictate everything. Similarly, the indoctrination of life as a ruthless hunt for profit begins here. 

The university is a factory - shut it down!

How Labour have bought into Thatcher's hegemony

Classifying Thatcher’s hegemony

Stuart Hall’s The Neo-Liberal Revolution [PDF] is an analysis of the contrasting views and systems which have shared the popularity of the British public since 1945.

Firstly, the aftermath of the Second World War prompted an almost-unilateral level of support for the creation of a welfare state. It was the Labour party of Attlee that first pulled it together; but William Beveridge, upon whose famous report the welfare system was based, was a Liberal, and the plans even had support from the Conservative members of the wartime National Government. While Labour, at the time still a party which could claim to represent the working people of Britain, had made great gains in working class and poorer areas, it was not until the war that the wider population began to take notice of the situation of those in poverty around the country this happened when children from destitute inner-city areas were evacuated to the homes of wealthy country families. Although the level of camaraderie and collective British spirit at the time has been overplayed, this, perhaps, also had an effect. The desire for a cradle to grave support system was so deep that the Tory party were unable to win despite their entire campaign being based on the fact that ‘they’ had won the war with their candidate for PM Churchill.

It was not until 1979 that the idea of the welfare state was challenged, when Margaret Thatcher led the first of her three successive governments into an ‘ungovernable’ (as Ted Heath referred to Britain) maelstrom.

               

In 1979 Thatcherism launched its assault on society and the Keynesian state. But simultaneously it began a fundamental reconstruction of the socio-economic architecture with the first privatizations... Thatcherism thoroughly confused the left. Could it be not just another swing of the electoral pendulum but the start of a reconstruction of society along radically new, neoliberal lines? ...

[Thatcher] impelled people towards new, individualized, competitive solutions  'get on your bike', become self-employed or a share-holder, buy your council house, invest in the property owning democracy. She coined a homespun equivalent for the key neoliberal ideas behind the sea-change she was imposing on society; value for money, managing your own budget, fiscal restraint, the money supply and the virtues of competition. There was anger, protest, resistance - but also a surge of populist support for the ruthless exercise of strong leadership.

Hall is right to note the role of Thatcher as a strong leader in the eighties, which contributed hugely to her popularity. Unlike Heath, she did not appear to buckle under the pressure, did not resign Britain to being 'ungovernable'. At the end of eighties Thatcher and Thatcherism uncoupled, taking different trajectories. Thatcher was deposed by her own party in the wake of the poll tax riots, as they feared that she had pushed the people of Britain too far, and a decade of resentment had been building towards the party. John Major took over the party in 1990, and steered them back to the middle ground, reaching there before a Labour party which, under Neil Kinnock, had also moderated itself, largely by expelling the Trotksyist group Militant from its ranks. It was not until the re-branding of Labour under Tony Blair in the mid 1990s that they finally took back power.

This is where the political theory of Thatcherism returns - a Labour party willingly bereft of its social democracy, working class roots. As Hall notes:

But the 'middle ground', the pin-head on which all mainstream parties now compete to dance, became the privileged political destination. New Labour believed that the old route to government was permanently barred. It was converted, Damascus-like, to neoliberalism and the market.

Rather than attempt to reverse the destruction of industrial communities around the country, Labour simply forged on with the Thatcherite view that humans are inherently selfish. It catered overwhelmingly to the expanding middle class (which, in reality, was merely a brand of proletariat with a different quality of life and a collapsing class consciousness). Take, for example, the case of being able to buy your own council house. Remove the status symbol of a mortgage, and there is little difference between owning your own and continuing to rent. All you have done is contribute to the growth of a profit-driven market in housing, which, as a basic human need, should not be given over to the realm of private sector profit (as with health or education). New Labour persevered with this idea, as it believed that the free market could be used to lift people out of poverty - this runs parallel to the belief that working can lift you out of poverty, and is no less inaccurate.

One thing that Thatcher recognized about neoliberal economics, and capitalism in general, is that it must combine the opposed concepts of a free market with a strong state, in that the market must be protected so that it can flourish. Thatcher started the erosion of civil liberties in Britain, attempting to smash its enemies as much as possible. Her government used the police as a private army against striking miners, going out of their way to protect the police from any prosecution. It also eagerly took part in collusion with loyalist terrorist groups in Northern Ireland to murder civilians (when it wasn't just using the army to murder civilians, that is), and used a war over a tiny rock in the Atlantic Ocean to further the cause of British nationalism and imperialism into the twentieth century. This flexing of state muscles continued with Blair, who ignored the vast majority of people who opposed his illegal Middle East wars, and happily ignored the concept of human rights - be it against peaceful protesters, or terrorist suspects who were tortured. There was also nothing done to reverse laws which clamped down on trade union activity, giving Britain the staunched-policed workforce in Europe.

The Coalition government are happily advancing the free market/strong state idea (as they obviously would) but what is more worrying is the complicity of Ed Miliband and Ed Balls to conform to the neoliberal blueprint. Miliband has spoken of his admiration of Thatcher before, but the willingness to lazily conform to this hegemony is no more apparent in the case of the recent 'strivers' vs. 'shirkers' development.         

‘Strivers’ vs. ‘shirkers’

Classifying the people of Britain in two distinct camps was, in this case, Cameron's idea (he used the word skivers, but the intent was the same). Strivers are people who work hard, shirkers are people who attempt to avoid it.

It is, of course, a lazy, and horribly reductive. It is, politically speaking, a good move, as it means you do not have to stretch yourself attempting to appeal to more than one group - just set out two camps, and wait for the people to come to you. It does not look at the role played by people who are out of work, and want to be in employment, but cannot because there are not enough jobs being created. Or people who are in work, but skive their way through it. People who cannot work. The idle rich.

It is a classic, simplistic case of divide and rule, motivated by a series of lies and slanders aimed at the poorest people in society. And Labour have bought it.

The Independent today has ran a front page story highlighting the truth behind the stats which roll from the tongues of Tory ministers who want to shame anyone on benefits - at the same time the Labour party have unveiled populist new plans to force anyone unemployed for over two years to take a job lasting six months, otherwise they lose their benefits. This again, is simplistic, ignoring the reality that there are not enough jobs being created, and playing into the idea that anyone unemployed for that length of time is simply 'idle'.

The complexities and failures of a jobs program by both main parties are for another blog post - what it serves as here is an example of the unwillingness of the Labour party to take the tough road (the 'old route' as Hall referred to it above) back to power. It has neglected its roots as a social democratic party for electoral reasons, which, at first, seem common sense. It was Thatcher herself that showed that hegemonies and established systems in Britain could be challenged, through her dismantling of the welfare state. Labour could channel the dissatisfaction with neoliberalism, and highlight its obvious failures. In this context, it would prove to be a greater opposition than it could ever be currently. There is a timidness in the way with which Labour approach politics these days - it no doubt fears electoral ineffectuality. On its current path, it is already ineffectual.        

Dreams of a united left

In Britain the political left is in a dire way. Save for rape-loving cod-socialist George Galloway smarming his way into the Commons through Bradford North, there is scarce representation across the country. So why, deep into yet another crisis of capitalism, is it this way? Why are the Labour party, dragged centre-right by Blair and Brown, refusing to budge from their new perch? Why, when radical left parties are on the rise in Europe, is Britain remaining fixated on neo-liberalism?

As Marx predicted, the internal contradictions of capitalism would inevitably lead to it self-combusting, not just once, but over and over again. As it has done, as it is currently doing. Greece,Spain, Portugal and Italy are all moving closer to complete collapse, and are in a much worse way to Northern European countries, but Britain is under the threat of a triple-dip recession, zero growth, jobs stagnation etc. – all the signs of economic failure. As a result of this the mistrust of the usual politics and politicians is growing, manifesting itself in a growth spurt for new protest party Ukip.

So where are the British left in all this? Absent, largely. Galloway’s Respect Party is the main force for the British left at the moment, gaining votes in traditionally Labour-dominated inner-cities. A smattering of various socialist and communist cliques can often be found propping up the running order of votes, defeating only the ‘Elvis Pensioner Party’ and the ‘9/11 Was An Inside Job’ candidate. It is strange, because in a time of such economic turmoil, the left should be finding its feet, offering, again, itself as a true alternative to the destruction of capitalism. 

More so, left wing parties offer a sane alternative to the even greater danger of fascist and far-right parties who aim to stoke a climate of fear around asylum seekers and outsiders, both as an outlet for the working class who are baring the brunt of austerity, and capitalism in general; and also, more simplistically, as a protest vote. 

One of the frequent criticisms of radical political movements is their inability to remain as a coherent group. There are schisms and rivalries inside the mainstream political parties, certainly, but it is rare that the tensions emerge as a definite split, and with such dogmatic factionalism, as fringe groups do (the same goes for the far-right as the far-left, as we have seen with the splintering of the BNP and the EDL). In Scotland the SSP was designed with the aim of bringing disparate left-wing groups together. It worked, briefly, until Tommy Sheridan split off to form Solidarity, bringing about the same weaknesses that had existed previously. The SSP’s vote sank from a high of six seats in a few years, and it remains mainly as a protest organising group with one councillor nationwide. Overcoming this factionalism and in-fighting is essential if the left are to regain their standing as a serious political group. It would prevent similar groups from taking votes from each other, and present a clearer alternative to mainstream politics for voters. Various political parties in Europe who have achieved much greater success than expected, such as Jean-Luc Melechon’s Left Front or SYRIZA inGreece, have operated as a rough coalition of parties and independents from across the left spectrum – eurocommunists to greens.
Pooling support and resources in this way is essential, but difficult. The aforementioned SSP/Solidarity split is a wound that is yet to heal. Groups like the SWP have gained a reputation as unlikeable cults, distrusted and mocked as much by the rest of the left as they are by the centre, if not more so.

Plus, looming on the horizon is a bigger problem for the radical left – the Labour party. The Labour party are no longer a left-wing party, no longer a party with the good of the working class at their heart. They are uncomfortable with trade unionism, uncomfortable with the risk of breaking with the Thatcherism, neo-liberal consensus which was established in the 1980s. But, because of the proud history of the party, and it’s undeniable left-wing roots, it continues to draw in well-meaning (but naïve) socialists and left-wingers, who believe that the party can change. The Labour party, as is, is a blockade to getter political representation for real left wing parties, draining voters and high profile supporters who would be better served by a united left front.

I am not naive. I do not believe this is an easy task, one which can be accomplished before the next election. It will take a lot of hard work, from all sides - some gritting of the teeth, some hiding (if not burying) of hatchets. It is also important to remember that politcal action is not, and cannot, be limited to the parliament. It needs to take place on the streets, in the forms of protests, strikes and occupations. It is socialism from the group up, discussing with people their desires and fears - not remaining aloof in a distant parliament, recording 60% attendence and fleecing the expenses system. If this happens, any left-wing politicans would be just as bad as the Labour party, or the Conservatives, or the Lib Dems. It is about making a radical change in the way politics is not only shared, but conducted. Parties are an open forum, and representation in power of the will of the people - could a left bloc be that?

Republicanism: the only option for an independent Scotland

Something very exciting happened in Glasgow yesterday: the (first and hopefully annual) meeting of the Radical Independence Conference, (RIC) a meeting of pro-Scottish independence groups and individuals, aimed at out-lining the shape of a future Scotland, should the country vote 'yes' in 2014. Unfortunately I was unable to attend, but over 800 people did, along with speakers from a variety of backgrounds. Jean Urquhart, the MSP who quit the SNP over their pro-NATO policy, spoke, as did Patrick Harvie, of the Scottish Greens. There was representatives from around Europe as well, such as SYRIZA, the Greek left opposition, and Basque separatists from Spain. Overall, it was heartening to see not only a strong turnout, but one which had representation from across the left-wing spectrum, and which was happy to tackle a number of issues, economically and socially. A strong base of support from across a usually-divided political sphere is essential to ensuring a 'yes' vote in two years.

One of the comments that most made me pleased with the outcome of the RIC were those of Dennis Canavan, a former MP and MSP who has been one of the more recent political figureheads to join the pro-independence movement. He said:

The existing Scottish Parliament was based on the Claim of Right, which enshrined the sovereignty of the people of Scotland. That to me makes the principle irreconcilable with the sovereignty of a non-elected hereditary monarchy... If those who think that today’s monarchy has no or little relevance to the big picture in terms of building a fairer Scotland, let me remark that the Westminster parliament passed a bill to take a considerable amount of money from the Crown Estate and hand it back to the Royal Family. There was hardly a murmur of protest at the House of Commons. The Crown ­Estate should be the People’s Estate. And it should be the Scottish Parliament that decides.

The issue of the monarchy raises it's head again - Alex Salmond has put forward the terms of the split, and offered that, even in the event of a yes vote, the Queen would still be the head of the state of Scotland, essentially offering Scotland to be part of the Commonwealth, a system dedicated to keeping antiquated ideas of British Empire jingoism alive in the 21st century. It is part concession to the belief that Britain is better off with the monarchy, part acknowledgement that the Union of the Crowns pre-dates the 1707 Acts of Union by a little over a decade, meaning that Scotland, England and Wales were joined by a collective monarchy well before a collective parliamentary and economic system.

This view is ridiculous - republicanism is the only way forward for an independent Scotland.

Firstly, the view that Scotland, and Britain as a whole, is better off because of the monarchy is a fallacy. This is often seen in purely economic terms, that the tourism generated by the royal family offsets the amount spent on them. It's impossible to accurately measure these respective amounts, as tourism is not motivated solely by wanting to stand outside Buckingham Palace in the rain, and it is difficult to say how much tourism would be lost if the monarchy is abolished. The royal family ranks below Legoland on a list of tourists' reasons for visiting England, so perhaps not that much. In a Scottish context, how much of this money actually benefits the people of Scotland is also negligible. To argue it from a solely financial point of view is, in fact, quite depressing - it negates the role that democracy plays in the choice between monarchy and republic, of the simple self-respect of not having an unelected head of state in the 21st century. To entertain the idea that the monarchy is till suitable to modern life is ridiculous - this is all we will get from Britain, who still holds the Queen close to their chest; a blindfold to their weakened standing as a world power, and to a disintegrating empire.

Futhermore, if the goal of Scottish independence is to work towards a more egalitarian, progressive nation (and it certainly should be - this should be the goal of every country) then the monarchy is a blockade erected as a representative of the ruling class. Every act towards a more equal society is an act against the upper class - more rights and freedom leave them open to questioning, higher wages cut into their profits, more rights for workers make it harder for them to continue their exploitation. As a cornerstone of the ruling class, the monarchy is invaluble to them. It is inherantly British, and manifested in British pop culture to an extent that the vast control it has is largely unchallenged. The Queen still has the right to dissolve parliament, control the army, stop any legislation she desires.

The monarchy, as much as it pains me to say, is still popular in Britain, and in Scotland. People have become too used to it, unaware of the ridiculousness of the whole thing. In the run-up to the 2014 vote, pro-independence voters must not only try to convince people to vote yes, they should argue, as part of a yes vote, against the monarchy. Otherwise it may all have been a waste of time.

 

What is the point of the NUS?

Today saw the first national protest called by the NUS in two years - specifically, the first since the occupation of Millbank Tower on the tenth of November 2010. It was, without wishing to glorify violence, a glorious moment. The student population, long since thought dormant and uninterested, swung into action, staging campus occupations and a series of protests which led to an attempted storming of the Treasury building in Whitehall.

It was also the moment that cleaved the student movement in two. As with any violent demonstrations, many people were turned off, and the large scale street protests which continued throughout the winter of 2010/11 never quite reached the same levels of attendance.

The march today, a 'rainy walk to Surrey' in which the media and police both waited for something big to happen. Nothing did - the most interesting part of the day was when protesters stormed the stage in a Kensington park where NUS president Liam Burns was making a speech. He walked off and continued through a megaphone, and that was that. By that point anyway, the majority of the marchers had left (this isn't first-hand reporting, by the way, all the information I've got comes from the always good Guardian live blog) for the pub, and shelter from the rain. The story will barely scratch the surface of the mass media, an added failure given that the protest was intended to reopen the dialogue about this generation of students and their economic future.

There is growing disquiet in the student movement about the leadership of the NUS. The majority of student unions at universities feed into it, and ones that don't tend to be entirely independent, so it's status is largely unshakable. Therefore, it is placed at the forefront of a movement it helped to kickstart, but has never shown any enthusiasm for. As the wreckage of Millbank was picked over, the NUS immediately distanced itself from the student movement. It never called another national protest in London, until today, and backed away from any support of student occupations - something it had promised beforehand.

Whether the NUS is still suffering a hangover from the one-year reign of Aaron Porter (whose motto seemed to be 'No Fees! Actually, if it causes you a bit of hassle, then perhaps we should get fees! Sorry for the mess!'), or is in a perpetual state of pointlessness. I feel it may be the later, as any hope given to a more radical view of the movement when Liam Burns succeded Porter has all but evaporated.

The real problem with the NUS is that it remains obsessed with the notion of civilised dialogue, of rational, open debate. It exists, however, in a field where these things are dismissed. The coalition government has no will to back down on education cuts, as students do not represent a core voter base for them (or any party). With the help of the Met Police and Territorial Support Group, the government had managed to sideline and nullify any attempt by protesters to take some sort of action. Occupations of any kind are considered illegal, the police are able to arrest people on a whim on a charge of 'aggrivated tresspassing'. The police, ahead of one rally last year, sent letters to attendees threatening them with rubber bullets if there was violence, which helped to drive people away.

The NUS have helped in this, routing their protest away from the Houses of Parliament, and into a posh area of London where nothing important is. They claim they don't want to disrupt anything in central London, which means their march is essentially a large, organised stroll. It is the same as trade unions who say that a proposed strike 'should not cause distruption' - surely removing the exact aim of a strike!

The nadir of the NUS 'fight' again tuition fees arguably came in October 2010, when Aaron Porter secretly met with government ministers to agree a deal with them - a £800 million cut to maintainance grants (which are given to the poorest students to help them afford to live while at uni) to avoid fees. A betrayal of those worst hit in the first place, and an attempt at dialogue which admits the need to austerity and attacks on the welfare of ordinary people.

The antipathy continued today, and will continue as long as the NUS continues it's lacklustre campaign against the cuts. So is there any hope for the student movement? Less than two years ago it was vibrant, alive, straining with activity was rooms and halls were occupied at universities across the country. It even inspired solidarity marches from students in France and Greece at times - yet it has visably withered, falling from public consiousness. The same thing happened with the trade unions, who failed to capitalise of the momentum of the historic 500,000 march in London earlier this year. The problems are the same with both leaderships - a fear of action, a fear of risk taking, a fear of offending the middle ground (the ground on which politics, regretably, is largely fought). The movements to not attempt to reframe the austerity argument.

The advantage that the student movement has is that it is more autonomous than the workers unions. They do not operate under the same strict guidelines as trade unions do (students, for example, can protest about a general political problem, where strikes, under British law, must concern a direct act of government or piece of legislation). Individual branches can also operate with more freedom, holding walkouts and protests seperate from each other if needs be. The rise of alternative groups, such as the NCAFC, which played a large part in organising the later demonstrations, show the way forward for the student movement. As I argued in a previous post, (although concerning mainstream political parties) organisations like the NUS will move with the largest group of the people -  a large scale, independent student movement would either rescue the NUS from centre-ground, inoffensive oblivion, or force it there, leading it to be replaced with a group fitted to the needs and the desires of the student movement as a whole. Again, the fight against austerity must be led by the people who oppose it, not the organisations who do.

United Europe: Can #14N be the start of something bigger?

Today is a European-wide day of action against austerity. Trade unions across the continent have called strikes and protests against the actions which have been replicated, to varying degrees, by every government in the EU - actions which pointlessly pump blood into the hemorrhaging veins of the neo-liberal economy. The levels of disruption varies by country - for the most part, it is the southern states which have taken part the most, with general strikes called in Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, Cyprus and Malta.

The actions follow, for some countries (Greece especially) several years of strikes and protests, each challenging the government spending cuts which were all meant to be the last. The message has been, and will continue to be - the people can take no more. And yet, the governments of Europe do not listen, further pulling their economies down into the abyss. Measly job growth figures for Britain, no matter what the coalition government say, cannot hide this fact. Much of the work created is part-time, in an economy geared towards full-time employment (for full-time consuming). We are set, one day, to join Greece and Spain, and Portugal and Italy, and France and Germany, staring to the abyss. With those 700 million European people there, it might actually be a bit cosy.

Britain sees itself as a European rebel, not even really part of the continent. Physically and mentally it sits aloof, an outcast. There is a seam of anti-Europe sentiment in Britain, stereotypically mined by the political right. Far right parties like the BNP push this agenda, but in the mainstream it is carried by the right-wing of the Tory party (which always finds itself at odds with the less-right-wing faction, a rift which threatens to rupture every few years), and, increasingly, Ukip, which has always done well in the European elections (although less so in strictly domestic polling). The standard is: to oppose Europe is right-wing, to welcome Europe is left-wing.

Europe, in this case, does not particuarlly refer to the continent itself, or the countries which comprise it, but the European Union, and the various facets and organisations through which it governs. In this case, is there any reason for the left to support 'Europe'? Owen Jones recently wrote an article lamenting the tendency of the British left to blindly support Europe and the EU, which, as he says, is 'an institution which both threatens democracy and the interests of working people'.

Democratically, the EU is indeed a worrying sight - it is controlled largely by the Council of Ministers, which is undemocractically elected, being picked by the governments of each country rather than by the European people themselves. European interegration also means submitting to the will of the European Central Bank, which 'obsess[es] over inflation while parts of Europe crumble'. Jones also points out various measures which, if implimented, would make the lives of working people in Britain better - the nationalization of the train network, and the introduction of a living wage - which are blocked by a European Union driven only by free trade and privatisation.

In short, the EU has been a sustained attack on both liberty and workers rights, and yet the left sit on their hands, uninterested in trying anything to change this. People across Europe are unhappy with the current functioning of the EU, but they are not far-right xenophobes who don't own passports and are suspicious of all other cultures. European interegration as a concept is not the problem, merely the current method of it. Mainstream centre-left parties across Europe need to wake up to this realisation, and face down the right-wing who do oppose Europe on paranoid xenophobic grounds.

As these parties are, by definition of being mainstream political parties, vote chasers, it must be the people of Europe which drive this change in the anti-EU discourse. Days of continental solidarity like #N14 are examples of this. The general strikes in the south have been complimented by solidarty meetings and protests across Europe, in places too innumerable to mention. Like the Occupy movement, they share a common, international bond while retaining a focus on local matters. They oppose neo-liberalism austerity in whatever shape it appears to them. The Glasgow march, for example, while titled 'From Scotland To Greece: No Justice, No Peace!' and designed solely as a solidarity meeting was altered to focus on the recently-announced privitisation of George Square.

The European Trade Union Confedertation, which called todays day of action, must push for further integration with unions across Europe. Most of the time when general strikes are called in each country the unions go out on their own. No longer - further solidarity must be shown. The concept of a strike is simple - when the workers stand together, they can win. When scabs begin to drift back to work, the strike is weakened, perhaps not in numbers but in spirit. The site of an open workplace is demoralising to a picket line, essentially a failed task in this case, is hovering about outside.

If Europe is really to be 'shut-down', as some blogs claimed it was, then a greater cohesion of the worker's unions must be achieved. A 24- hour general European strike, comprising of all public and private sectors unions from all countries, would be a start. It would do two things - firstly, reclaim the anti-EU dialogue from the political right, who are currently using it to channel their own jingoistic views.

Secondly, stop the ability of the EU and the ruling class to divide us - "it's the Greeks! They only work for about three hours a day over there! And they retire at fifty!", showing the true nature of an integrated Europe which the EU promises, but could never provide. An EU for the people of each and every country, united against greed, profit and neo-liberalism.

Considering patriotism in the context of anti-establishment politics

Two things happened to me this week that made me consider what it means to be patriotic.

First, I got hold of a copy of the new Titus Andronicus album Local Business. Titus Andronicus, especially on their last two albums, have a strong sense of patriotism and love (sometime begrudging) towards America.

A photo from the lyrics booklet of Local Business

Second, a few days after that, I attended a Yes Scotland meeting/debate in Falkirk, which aimed to continue the spread of grassroots activism which many people say will be the key to Scottish independence.

Throughout my life I have been uncomfortable with the concept of patriotism and, especially, nationalism. Not just uncomfortable, in that I felt these terms could never apply to me, but also struck with a sense that to pride yourself on what imagined community (to use Benedict Anderson’s phrase) you were randomly born in was absurd.

Similarly, although until recently my politics were ill-defined I’ve always desired to be ‘anti-establishment’ in some way. I’ve long idolised punk music and the protests of May ’68. I was enthralled by the anti-globalisation protests in Scotland against the G8 when I was younger, even though I had no real idea what they meant. Patriotism/nationalism – essentially, allegiance to ‘the state’ and its historical, usually conservative context – was against what I scratchily believed in.

Back to Titus Andronicus – one of the reasons I love them is that they are a proper punk-rock band, in ethic more so than aesthetic. They, like all punk should, eschew the mainstream, corporate music industry. And yet they, as I pointed out above, have a strong current of patriotism that runs through their music. Is this compatible? An excellent Stereogum article by Liz Pelly asks this question, framing the attempts of Titus Andronicus to bridge the void between punk and patriotism (a quest made explicit on several occasions by several members of the band, as Pelly notes) in a wider sense of where Americans, of their generation, also belong in this context. Pelly, like TA, believe it is possible to be both and patriotic. In fact, to be both can even be radical - the virtues of the Founding Fathers are so different from the current American values, yet actually similar to the values of punk. Therefore, embracing true' Americanism, and at the same time punk ethics, are a rebellion against contemporary neo-liberal, Christian right America. 

This I find very interesting, mainly because listening to Titus actually makes me feel faintly patriotic for the US (to put this in context, I never been to America and, as befits my radical politics I talked about earlier, have long considered them 'the enemy'). I feel as if I can believe in the early disciplines of America, which were based on liberty and equality. Current America has twisted the 'American Dream' to mean that the only way to be truly free is economically, and this, to some extend, makes me sad. America could - should - be a great country. It is not. It may never be.

So how does this fit into Scottish patriotism? I could not consider myself an American patriot, as I am not American. Can I consider myself a Scottish patriot?

I do not love Scotland - at least, I do not love it unconditionally. There are things I love about Scotland, certainly. The country has a fantastic scientific and cultural legacy for it's size. Two of the greatest novels I've ever read, Alisdair Grey's Lanark and James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner are both particularly Scottish novels, in that they would lose their impact of separated from their national context. Both novels aim to say something about Scottish national identity - Lanark through politics, Confessions... through religious mortality (I'm aware this is a hugely simplistic explanation).

I love that in certain parts of Scotland (Glasgow, and the general Western Scotland area) it's acceptable to use the otherwise offensive word 'cunt' as a term of affection (e.g. "See that cunt over there?" "You're an alright cunt!"). I even love Scottish football, grudgingly. 

On the other hand, combined with a dislike for kilts and bagpipes, I still cannot feel comfortable with patriotism. Therefore, I could never love Scotland in the way that many of the people at the Yes Scotland meeting certainly did.   

In that case, why am I so devoted to the cause of Scottish independence? Other than a hatred for Britain as an entity and identity, I love what Scotland could be. I've written before about the strain of working class pride that is deeply ingrained in parts of Scotland, and that these would come to the forefront of Scottish politics were independence to be achieved. The Scottish Labour party, traditionally the main Scottish party (although heavily defeated by the SNP at the last general election here) are inexcusably tied to the reactionary British Labour party, which is still shrouded by New Labour and ashamed of it's working class, trade union roots. It is hopeless, and the Scottish Labour party is tainted by association*. People on Scotland (including myself, until recently) overwhelmingly voted for Labour as a way to combat the legions of Tories from across the border. We would no longer need to do that in an independent Scotland. At the Yes Scotland meeting, local author Alan Bisset laid out his vision for the future of Scottish politics. It goes:

• Under independence, the centrist SNP would become the party of the establishment
• The current largely pro-union, right of centre Labour party would disintegrate, being reborn as a smaller but left-wing Labour party, comprised of those MSPs who were pro-independence
• The Tories, entirely pro-union, would also wither away to even greater political insignificance than they already have**. The Lib Dems have already done so.
• The Green party, currently with two MSPs and numerous councillors around the country, would be resurgent, as would the SSP (or, even better, a Left Front-type group of the various small 'People's Front of Judea' parties of the Scottish left)
• Therefore, the shape of the Scottish parliament would be overwhelmingly left-leaning to openly left-wing.

This all brings me back to what we can justifiably be proud of - what we are working to. In this context, patriotism could be seen as something to earn. We must build a country to be proud of, not just settle with mild pride for what we have. Independence is just a facet of this. The problems in Scotland will not disappear overnight come a Yes vote in 2014. Years of hard work will follow. What differs from the rest of Britain (I could be a British patriot, but I am vehemently not) is that in Scotland this remains a faint possibility. The nature of Britain, with it's power structure concentrated in the hands of the rich and the privileged, a power solidified through time.

As Alisdair Grey said in my linked article above, "Work as if you live in the earlier days of a better nation". A nation that one day we could concievably be proud of. 


*A month or so ago two incidents concerning these two Labour parties almost motivated me to write a mocking obituary of the party. The first being Ed Miliband admitting in an interview with the Telegraph that he admired Thatcher. The second being Johann Lamont attempting to remove Scottish Labour's dedication to the welfare state. I never wrote it, but I meant it - the Labour party can no longer be seen as the party of social progress.

** I follow the situation of the Scottish Conservative party with some interest, and, given my hatred for all things Tory, a good deal of laughing. They exist in a strange nether-zone - big enough to have a good presence in the Scottish parliament, but not quite big enough to actually have any real impact on the goings-on. The Greens only have two MSPs, but they a fringe party, and so shouldn't be expected to have a huge number. The Tories also have such a toxic reputation in Scotland that no one dare work with them - there are certainly smaller parties with less supporters, but perhaps no major party endures the hatred that the Tories have in here. It's so bad that one of the contenders for the party leadership wanted to disband the entire party and re-brand it as something non-Tory, as to avoid the bad rep.


http://500revolutions.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/album-review-titus-andronicus-local.html

Random thoughts on: the American election

Drones

One thing that creeps up in commentaries of the election now and again is that Americans don't really care that much about foreign policy, certainly not much further than advancing American superiority. The last of the three presidential debates, held earlier this week in Florida, focused on foreign policy, and drew the smallest TV audience of them all, the bigger concern of the economy having passed by. I'm not sure whether this has always been the case, but it certainly would explain why so many atrocities carried out by America have gone unpunished by the electorate.

Obama's use of drones in Pakistan, with the aim of tackling al-Qaeda, should be the subject of endless criticism, certainly by his own party. We can expect the Republicans to endorse such measures, but the Democrats have lost any sort of moral highground they may have had. Obama supporter Joe Klein offered a stunningly vile defence of the drone tactics, heavily criticised for the indiscriminate murder of innocent people, killed because they happen to be within half a mile of a suspect (I'd imagine the term 'suspect' in this case is stretching it, slightly). Glenn Greewald offers a brilliant dissection of Klein's comments on the Guardian, but they boil down to the fact that Klein believes, among other things, that the killing of children in the Middle East could be justified if it stopped the killing of American children. Greenwald notes this is the same mentality that many terrorists have - that their killing of American children will, in turn, protect their own. He places the life of an American above that of the life of anyone else, for the sole reason that they are an American.

As I said, coming from a neocon party that also wants to ban abortion and disenfranchise Democrat voters, would be sad, but expected. In the context of the 'liberal' or 'left' side of American politics (if such a thing even exists, it is made even worse. They are the 'good guys' - now, sunk to the level of the classic villains, they have rendered themselves worthless.

Mitt Romney

Obama is lucky to go up against Mitt Romney - Romney, hides Obama's many faults by simply showing off his far greater ones. The man is an idiot, to an astonishing level.  What's even more surprising is that this is somewhat of a trend for America, which is beginning to make a habit of support morons.

With Obama hemorrhaging liberal support, and the economy still suffering, had he gone up against a strong opponent he likely would have lost. Romney is, to use the media term, 'gaffe prone', much in the same way that Larry David is. This, perhaps, is why Obama's put down in the recent debate, where he explained to Mitt that the army doesn't need horses and bayonets anymore, was so popular - people perhaps believed that Romney literally had no idea how the army worked or what it did. It furthered the idea that Obama is more effortlessly comfortable than Romney could ever be. Obama, for all his faults, always has his cool.

Implications worldwide

A recent poll found that 40% of people worldwide would like to vote in the American elections, such is the influence of the country. But would this make a difference? America is not really a democracy - America, the self-regarding superpower functions outwith the poltical sphere of the country. It continues to remove whatever democratically elected governments it feels like. It supports coups, sells weapons to dictators at a profit before claiming they are glad to see them go during the Arab Spring. It launches global campaigns against 'evils' - communism, Islamic fundamentalist terrorism etc., rampaging around the world in pursuit of vaguely defined goals of victory. It will, no matter who is elected, remain run by businesses, and will murder innocent children in pursuit of killing someone who might be a member of al-Qaeda.

The elections surrounding the American machine are nothing more than way to choose the representative of said machine.

The end of the BNP is not the end of racism

Picture taken from politicalscrapbook.net

 

Nick Griffin severed another artery of his already mortally-wounded career earlier, tweeting the private address of a gay couple who had won a ruling against the owners of a B&B who had refused them entry based on their sexuality. The original story emerged a few years ago, if I remember correctly, but the court case only wrapped up today.

 

Griffin's basis for these tweets was apparently that people should be allowed to turn away anyone they want from their house - which is a neat way of disguising your homophobia, I reckon. As is using the phrase 'heterophobia', which has afflicted literally no one in history, except those who think not being about to daub 'fag scum' on a gay neighbour's car is classed as a breach on their human rights, and a breach undertaken solely because they're not gay. To complain about being disadvantaged as a heterosexual - in the same way a person would claim to be disadvantaged because they were a white, western, Christian male - is hugely offensive to those groups who have been genuinely disadvantaged in society, and continue to be at all junctures.

 

So Griffin's career is gone, even more than it was already. His BNP party, which for all intents and purposes he embodies, has limped through a collapse in finances (it couldn't even raise enough money to stand candidates in last Scottish local council elections), in-fighting (Griffin has used party rules to solidify his standing as leader, meaning that disgruntled members leave than attempt reform) a splintering of the far-right in Britain, between both political groups and street-level protest movements, and, as a result of all three, a hemorrhaging of votes at all levels. The surge of support the party experienced as a result of Labour voters leaving their traditional party has subsided as the Tories have regained their 'hatred figures for the working class' throne.

 

The BNP, once the figurehead of the British far-right, have faded from view, and will only keep fading. It didn't even seem that long ago that Griffin was panicking the establishment and provoking swathes of though-pieces with his impending appearance on Question Time. How he sits at home, tweeting angrily into the virtual abyss like the rest of us.

 

I for one, as someone who would proudly call themselves an anti-fascist, am happy to see the BNP go. Thousands, millions of people across the country will cheer their demise, which is becoming clearer even to those with only a casual interest in politics (the initial signs of the death of the BNP came by piecing together the tabloid-style gossip articles of Hope Not Hate). However, I still feel uneasy. 

 

The BNP are not British racism as a whole. As a figurehead they essentially gave a face to the movement - a face to be egged, a face to be despised. But the demise of the BNP does not mean the demise of racism and fascism in this country. Many people who voted for the BNP were disaffected Labour voters looking for a protest vote, and the party were able to fill the void - something that the Lib Dems couldn't do, and the Tories wouldn't even bother trying to do. These people will perhaps not vote for them again, and may go back to Labour, which is fine.

 

But many more voted for the BNP because they genuinely hate and fear immigrants, Muslims, or homosexuals. These people require an outlet. Parties like the English Democrats, the British Freedom Party allow for this, despite their petty squabbles. More worryingly, the EDL, and it's Scottish and Welsh associates (which are, admittedly, less popular) have allowed frustrations with the slow movement of the BNP to develop into a hooligan-based street movement.

 

For example - the BNP promise a break-through at the next election. Months of campaigning follow, but they finished 5th, barely retaining their deposit. Wait another five years, they say, and we'll have another crack at it. For all that the BNP have warned of a current crisis of immigration and Sharia law, they don't seem capable of doing anything quickly.

 

Along come the EDL, which is able to hold flash-mobs just a few hours after they find out that ASDA is selling Muesli, which looks a bit like it says MUSLIM! They have a bad demonstration, they can just try again next weekend, rather than next year, or at some point within the next five. The EDL are a greater threat that the BNP ever were, mainly for this reason - they allow the mobility and physical manifestation of this hatred. We can only bless them for being a disorganised, drunken mess - had they taken on the usual neatness of fascism and all started wearing the same colour shirts the people would have got behind them years ago and the government would have fallen.

 

What has puzzled many people is why significant numbers of the electorate choose Nick Griffin and his BNP as their representatives, and, now, how they can also back the EDL, and their various off-shoots. One answer is the simplest - support for extreme politics always surges in times of economic crisis. It happened, perhaps most notably, in the Weimar Republic, where the vote of the Nazi party directly correlates with the state of the economy. Greece has experienced a rise from both sides, with SYRIZA and Golden Dawn both emerging from electoral obscurity in the past few years.

 

But the real answer is more worrying, and harder to face. The racism which manifests itself directly in the far-right comes from our society as a whole. It comes from the newspapers, like the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the Sun, the Daily Star, which regularly run negative stories about asylum seekers and Muslims. These institutions would deny that they are racist, and will attack far-right groups (although the Star has, in the past, ran pro-EDL stories) they contribute to the creation of a racist hegemony. They maintain the idea of Britain as a white, Christian, straight country, and their attitude in the stories reflect this. 

 

If the only news you got about Muslims was from The Sun, and the only person you talked to about Muslims got their information from the Daily Star, the allegedly-subconsious pattern of anti-Islam stories would likely forment in your mind - especially if these people are made a scapegoat for your problems*.

 

Celebrating the death of the BNP, and perhaps soon the EDL, is good, and I surely will. But we, as a society, must not only be wary of the other groups that spring up in their place, but of racism as a whole. Racism does not only exist when manifested in a political group. It seeps into every area of society, usually hidden in plain site - on the front page of a national newspaper, for example.

 

*Just thinking aloud here (well, typing aloud, or something) but can there be any correlation between the fact that many people in post-industrialised areas live in deprivation because of the policies of Thatcher, and that the newspapers which run stories claiming that 'immigrants took all our jobs' supported Thatcher?    



 

On Caitlin Moran and feminism

The above (taken from the STFU Moffat tumblr site, which is doing lots of good stuff) created a Twitterstorm (are they still called that) based around Caitlin Moran, who is probably the British figurehead for feminism at the moment.

For a bit of context, Moran stated that she did not care that Dunham's hit TV show Girls contains no ethnic minorities, despite being set in New York, a city with a huge variety of people of different races. I haven't actually seen Girls, as I don't think it's been shown in Britain yet, so I don't know if the 'complete and utter lack of people of colour' refers just to the main characters, or to the cast as a whole. Either way, this seems like a strange case of casting.

The main issue that people took with Moran was that she stated that she didn't care about the race inequality in the show, prompting people to argue with her. Later, in an act of self-aggrandisement that would make Ricky Gervias baulk, proceeded to personally thank everyone that defended her.

The problem with Moran's statement is that she acts as if the role of race in the media doesn't matter. It does. Everything does, in terms of the media. Moran, as a feminist, should be aware that patriarchy is spread - partially, but not totally - through the portrayal of women in the media, the prime example being the prominence of rape culture.

In the case of Girls, which was frequently labelled the successor to Sex In The City, there's a belief that it may become one of those cult shows which people will want to model their life around - there's a consensus that the growth in popularity of coffee-shop socialising in the nineties was due to Friends (Friends wasn't quite a cult show in the strictest sense of the word - it had a devoted fanbase, but the fanbase was massive. It's not cult in the way Arrested Development is.) I'd imagine that Sex In The City prompted groups of women in fours to sit in cocktail bars and talk about their sex lives. Emulating lives lead on screen is a natural extension of escapism.

But Girls (as with all the shows mentioned above, in fact) the lack of a variety of race, though subconscious, will have an effect. All the above groups are populated entirely by white people - usually middle-class white people. What does this say to people - it says that the perfect group of friends you can have are white, middle-class, cis-gendered, straight, etc.

Moran's brand of feminism - I guess you could call it 'liberal feminism' - fails to address the theory of intersectionality - that social inequality is not simply found on one plain, and that gender inequality cannot be separated from the class struggle, the civil rights movement, the fight for homosexual rights - essentially, all fields of identity can, and should be considered.

I've touched on this once before on this blog, during a post about George Galloway's 'in the sex game' comments about Julian Assange. He claims to be a socialist, but, by being a misogynist, he simply cannot be - equality, in class terms, cannot just be for men.

Many people have had objections to Moran's liberal feminism, largely critquing her massively successful book How To Be A Woman. I haven't read it, so my views of it do come from blogs which have written about it. These blogs do quote heavily from the book, and usually give as much context as it is possible to give, so hopefully I am not too far off from what Moran meant, and won't look like too much of a fool.

From what I understand Moran regularly makes jokes about woman, jokes which you'd expect to find being made by someone who reached their twenties before poltical correctness emerged.* Jokes about woman being overly emotional, or scared of spiders, or being unable to drive. Essentially, jokes which force woman into a single hegemonic grouping. Moran's use of these jokes is an extension of the point which I made above - her ignorance of the cultural hegemony which allows patriarchy to survive.

Similarly, and this a point which I don't understand, she asks for over-the-top praise of male feminists. Treating a male feminist in this way, and worshipping his body in such a way, is problematic for a number of reasons. Us men shouldn't be congratulated for being pro-feminists/feminist allies - it should be expected. Certainly, not enough men are pro-feminists, but we should not be treated as superior to female feminists for being so.

Secondly, the sexualised imageary advances the stereotype of men pretending to be feminists so that they can sleep with women. Under no circumstances should this idea be popularised, as it would build a hollow-shell feminism which would crumble as soon as the men found a new way to talk women into bed.

I don't doubt that Moran is actually a feminist, and, like the poster on STFU Moffat, think that she has done of good job of pulling feminism back into the mainsteam (slightly) and helping to remove some of the stigma attached to calling yourself a feminist (although this still has far to go). The problem is that Moran has limited this burst of feminism to a type that ignores the factors surrounding gender equality.

My belief, for what it's worth, is that patriarchy is implicit in capitalism. Capitalism reduces people to the roles exploiters and victims on all levels; the standard bourgeoisie and proletariat system; the system of imperialist nations and colonies; and, in amongst all this, the relations between men and women. Women are tasked with a vast amount of unpaid labour - raising children, looking after the family home. This idea is being erroded, slowly, but it is still commonplace. By taking apart the class system, we can remove the patriarcal aspect of society. The women's rights movement and class struggle are interlinked. I would hate for Britain for transform into a socialist state, only for women to still be subjugated.

So when we embrace feminism, we should not embrace it as a singular, isolated cause. Feminism must be used in tandem with the struggle for equality of all people. 
  

*Or, alternatively, on of those morons who think they're being clever by being willfully politically incorrect. People who think not being able to use the n-word in public is a disgrace to the concept of human rights. They can often be found saying things like 'You can't even say the word blackboard anymore!' I call this Clarkson Syndrome.

A rant about Gerald Warner

Sunday is Funday, especially if you are Gerald Warner, professional misery-guts and right-wing writer. He is Richard Littlejohn, if Littlejohn were a Will Self-level thesaurus botherer, and wrote a column for the Scotland on Sunday.

Warner's work can be boiled down to two main strands - he hates socialism, and he hates political correctness. He also sees them as being intertwined somehow, so essentially his work follows that one strand.

His column this week, "The whole myth of the Spanish civil war is sustained by lies" starts by accessing the BBC's obituary of Spanish communist leader Santiago Carrillo. He fought to defend Madrid from fascist forces during the civil war, and, after years of exile, helped Spain in it's transition to democracy. Sounds like a decent person, but several historians, and Warner, have tied him to the massacre of civilians and fascist soldiers, something which was carried out by both sides during the war.

What Warner objected to most was the overly-positive tone that the BBC took when reeling through Carrillo's life - to Warner, he is a murderer, and worse: a communist.

Criticising Carrillo for his earlier war crimes in Madrid (which he always denied) is fair enough - using it as a reason to ignore his role in the transitional period (when Carrillo moved towards social democracy) is stretching it. But Warner uses the example of Carrillo to springboard into strange critique of the Republican forces of the civil war, and their historical representation. Why this is a big deal I have no idea, by Warner perseveres playing down the bombing of Guernica, without any hint of a reference. He points to faked war photos, ignoring the fact that, in all likelihood, the majority of famous war photos are probably faked to some extent. The famous picture of American troops hoisting a flag pole on Iwo Jima is faked, and it may be the most recognisable war photograph ever.

With such a strong-headed assault on the Republican forces, Warner almost seems to come out on the side of the fascists - for all the faults he lists on one side, Franco's army - which committed massacres and disseminated propaganda just as much, if not more than, the democratically elected government they were overthrowing. Not to mention - I doubt there is a single army in history that has fought a war without using propaganda and massacres as a weapon.

To further the point of him defending the fascist forces - he never actually uses the word 'fascist' to describe Franco's troops. Using that would remove any audience sympathy which he is trying to garner. Imagine the opening scene of a film where a character is being badly beaten in an alleyway. As his assailants runs off, he is revealed to have a swastika armband - would this not drastically change the audience perception of him immediately? Maybe you wouldn't feel the beating was justified (it depends on the extent to which you believe 'an eye for an eye', I suppose) but it would certainly remove a great deal of empathy which you had felt originally.

Interestingly, he does, once, use the word 'falangists', a more obscure term than fascists, but one which is associated mainly with Franco's strain of politics. It's like using the term autonomism to refer to marxism. Both are more niche terms, and much less emotive.

This tight control of words, the shying away from openly calling what he is partically defending 'fascism', jarrs with one of his recurring themes - the cultural control he believes marxism is gaining in British society.

As a writer, Orwell’s stock in trade was words. He therefore recognised earlier than most people the bastardisation of language that was a principal instrument of leftist subversion of objective reality. Marxists have always been obsessed with linguistics, for a very good reason: if the means of communication can be manipulated, if words can be made to take on a new meaning supportive of the programme of those in power, it will become impossible to articulate views hostile to the regime.

 - from 'Statue of George at the BBC would be truly Orwellian'

He is obsessed with what he terms 'Frankfurt Marxism', persumeable a reference to the Frankfurt School, which pioneered marxist cultural studies and revisionism in the early twentieth century.

You see, Warner is one of those anti-PC people who believe their right to say racist terms trumps the right of people not to be abused. He sees political correctness as a form of 'Newspeak', rather than as an attempt to sideline offensive language in our culture. In the above article on George Orwell, he has a final paragraph meltdown, listing the various 'invented' words which, to him, signify nothing but an attempt at mind control - 'sexist' 'homophobic' and 'multicultural'.

And, in case you hadn't worked it out, a week before his 'daring'/factually-inaccurate critique he revealled himself to be homophobic by not only standing against gay marriage, but declaring the arrival of totalitarianism if same-sex marriage were to become legal. He backs this up, apparently, by saying that it represents as attack on religious freedoms (specifically Judaeo-Christian, obviously). The logic in this falls apart in seconds - no one is being stopped from practising their religion by this new law. If anything, it will bring gay men and women back into the faith - the number might not be very big after the way the church has attacked them, but I assume there will be some same-sex couples who want to get married in a church. And denying people the right to marriage because of their lifestyle - is that not itself totalitarian?

Warner is vainly expanding on the argument I pointed out above - that his right to say whatever he wants, to whoever he wants (it would be something offensive, as I have no doubt that Gerry is very much a bigot, a word I would use to describe him mainly because he hates it so much) trumps the right of people not to be abused because of their race, gender, sex or otherwise. He claims to rebel against cultural totalitarianism, but he himself practises it, in his desperate attempts to promote WASP values at the expense of genuine freedom.

On the fallacy of 'post-ideology'

Frank Turner caused a minor furore recently, when Michael Hann uncovered some anti-left comments Turner made a few years in an interview with Moon and Back Music. A lot of people had mistaken his ‘don’t tread on the little guy, but don’t try to help him either, everything will sort itself out’ as socialist rhetoric, for some reason. This has helped mould Turner into the Billy Bragg of his generation (my generation, sadly), a moniker which apparently applies to anyone with an acoustic guitar and a vague knowledge of current affairs.

Bragg and Turner are friends, you know. Bragg tells us this in a Guardian article, where he shares tales of him and Turner enjoying a few matey beers backstage before a gig at Wembley Arena, and, more to the point, blames Turner’s libertarian views on this post-ideological age.

As you might expect from a ‘socialist’ who owns a huge house in a part of the country dominated by Tory politics, Bragg’s arguments don’t quite hold up.

This ‘post-ideological’ age is a fallacy. The argument that society and politics have moved beyond the need for vastly differing points of view originates in Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book 'The End of History and The Last Man'. By disintegrating, the Soviet Union had dragged communism into irrelevance. Given the perceived influence of the USSR in far-left movements worldwide, they too were expected to fall apart at the feet of all-powerful Western capitalism.

 

The votes for communist and socialist parties around the world, especially in Europe, went into an even steeper decline than they already had (a decline which began after the Hungarian uprising of 1956 was quelled by Russian tanks and machine guns), and, as Bragg notes, British Labour removed Clause Four from its party legislation. Neo-liberalism had the upper hand, thanks to Thatcher, and Blair followed suit, shifting a once left-wing party into a different brand of Tory.

The idea of capitalism and democracy as intrinsically linked, and the latter not being able to exist without the former, also grew, as a reaction to the horror of Soviet autocracy. It mattered little that Marx never wrote a word that could be seen in being in favour of the persecution of the working class that Stalinism practised – as far as most people were concerned, Stalin could have went through the selected essays of Marx and Engels with Tippex and a biro, whiting out large passages and writing ‘all for me’ over the top.

So then – the twentieth century was battle between communist dictatorship and capitalist democracy, and capitalist democracy had won in the end. Fascism, of course, died in a bunker with Hitler, after a mortal wound sustained hanging off of a Milan petrol station.

This is a strikingly Atlantacist view to take, of course. In many parts of the world, communism still lives on. Whether China operates a communist country is debatable, but it still calls itself that. Cuba, resting under the nose of the Unites States, continues to follow the guidance of Castro, despite a growing flirtation with consumer capitalism. Elsewhere in South America, the ‘Pink Wave’ continues to gather speed – a series of democratic socialist governments have improved the lives of countless millions of people, from Brazil to Venezuela. The media in Europe and America is largely at a loss to explain why this has happened – as the countries modernised over the past decade, they no doubt expected them to follow the path set out by Europe in achieving short term prosperity.

Ideology did not end – it was stagnant, and the crisis of capitalism has reawakened it. Specifically, the austerity measures which have affected huge areas of Europe. Nowhere has felt the grip of austerity like Greece, and nowhere has seen such a resurgence in anti-capitalist politics either.

The Greek situation is a desperate one – as it drowns in the Mediterranean, the ECB stands on the shore with a fraying rope shouting ‘Swim harder! I’ll throw you the rope if you just swim harder!’ The centre-left party in power at the time, PASOK, has atrophied in the face of public anger, surviving only as a junior power in a rickety pro-austerity campaign headed by centre-right former rivals New Democracy. What was most surprising in the Greek election was not the collapse of the PASOK vote (any left-leaning party who commits itself to such austerity should expect their supporters to baulk) but who replaced them. The Eurocommunist/green activist coalition SYRIZA moved from a tiny share of the vote, pre-austerity, to becoming the official opposition. It flew past the PKK, the parliamentarian communist party who had retained a significant level of support in Greek elections over the past couple of decades.

                                                          SYRIZA election poster

More worryingly, the far-right also experienced a rise in support, as fascist movement Golden Dawn entered parliament for the first time. Its supporters act like the SA and are referred to by the party leadership as ‘stormtroopers’. It is no surprise that some people predict civil war in Greece, perhaps the natural progression from the breakdown that social order has already felt.  Anarchist squatters, who attend protests in black bloc mode, fight with Golden Dawn, who fight with immigrants, while the police attempt, and fail, to keep order.

The Greek situation signals the fallacy of the post-ideological belief in several ways. First, Greek politics sheltered a communist party which still achieved a good level of support in elections. The PKK’s role in Greek politics has added dimensions which are not present in other countries – the party’s role in the Greek revolution of the seventies, for example – but, in any case, there was clearly still an appetite in Greece for radical politics.  

Secondly, the rise of both SYRIZA and Golden Dawn has shown that a strong belief in centrist politics has evaporated. Elsewhere in Europe, both the far-right and the far-left have made gains over the past few years. Ultra-nationalist parties, claiming to counter what they termed a ‘worldwide Jihad’, operated on an Islamaphobic message to make electoral gains – in France, Marine Le Pen’s Front National finished third in the latest French elections. Also at these elections, the UMP of Sarkozy (who styled himself as the French Thatcher, dedicated to union breaking and individualistic pursuits of wealth, and failed) were replaced for the first time in years by the Socialist Party, while forth place was taken by a resurgent Left Front, led by Jean-Luc Melenchon, who planned to introduce a minimum wage. In the Netherlands, where the far-right’s European figurehead Geert Wilders was enjoying support, the formerly-Maoist Socialist Party has taken back votes.

Even in Britain, where the rise of neo-liberal anti-politics was, arguably, first heralded by the three election victories of Thatcher and the demise of working-class unionism, both radical sides of the political spectrum have began to grow in influence. The BNP, while enjoying success in the last decade, have collapsed in on themselves, suffocating under the weight of voter apathy and lack of funds, but clearing the ground for the EDL and various splinter factions to fight it out. And whatever you think of the man, the Respect Party has got someone who at least claims to be a socialist into Westminster.

The final argument against Fukuyama's optimistic but naive comment is not taken from votes polled or party membership, but from political philosophy:

"They do not know it, but they are doing it"
 

said Marx, originally in relation to false consciousness. Marxism concerns itself greatly with the way in which capitalist ideology worms its way into the mind of the people without them knowing (Gramsci's hegemony, for example). The End of History is not possible because the end of ideology is not possible. Ideology is inescapable, no matter what one you subscribe to - communism, capitalism, fascism etc. It is the way politics is structured, on every level, and, therefore, seeps into everyday life.