Why unemployment is not caused by worker organisation

In a 2003 paper (PDF) for the London School of Economics, Christopher A Pissarides argued that "the decline of trade union power" is one of the reasons for falling unemployment in Britain. Seven years later, this has been dredged up with much glee by the "Libertarian" blogosphere.

The Devil's Knife sums up the basic reasoning behind this;

Unions, in this day and age, exist to do only two things: inflate wages and protect their members' jobs (regardless of ability or need).

High wages reduce the number of jobs that are created—especially as technology becomes cheaper—and making it difficult to sack people not only means that jobs can be occupied by those who are not best suited to them, but also reduces the willingness of employers to take people on in the first place (thus reducing the available jobs).

This isn't exactly rocket science, is it?

It's not rocket science, indeed. But then it's not a science at all - it's economics, which is the business of blinding people to the obvious to suit the interests of certain classes.

I have already, previously, torn down the Devil's argument that worker organisation has no place or purpose in the present day. It is, quite simply, an absurdity and I feel no need to labour the point here. Suffice to say that workers, without organisation, face only a race to the bottom.

In fact, you will find this by going back to the writings of Adam Smith. Whilst workers "are disposed to combine in order to raise" wages, bosses are equally disposed to combine "in order to lower the wages of labour." More than that, "the masters can hold out much longer" than the workers if employment ceases. They can exist "upon the stocks which they have already acquired" from the labour of others.

The difference is that, in Smith's time, there was "a certain rate below which it seems impossible to reduce, for any considerable time, the ordinary wages even of the lowest species of labour." The "wages must at least be sufficient to maintain" the workforce.

With the advent of cheap credit, that is no longer the case. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (PDF), "a couple with two children needs [to earn] £29,200" in order "to afford a basic but acceptable standard of living." But many don't earn that. And many more have to work multiple jobs and live hand-to-mouth in order to barely scrape that figure.

Add to that the casualisation and ever cheaper labour that comes from un-organised workers, and the idea of a level below which employers cannot reduce wages quickly vanishes. Compared to previous generations, we are working for less - and harder.

Returning to the argument that strong unions increase unemployment, this may be true to a certain extent. But if lower wages mean more jobs, at what cost does that come? Talk to those stuck in precisely the casual work that such a market creates, such as Chugging, and you will see that trapped is exactly the right descriptor to use.

They have no base wages. They have no statutory entitlements. Attempts to assert their rights or to combine will see a target on their back and their arses out the door. They endure appalling conditions, for pitiful return, and often can find nothing better because of the declining standards of work.

Is this really an acceptable alternative to unemployment? Is this really the alleged prosperity created by the free market and the employers enjoying an unopposed monopoly of force?

The idea that high wages and job security leave those not employd out in the cold is an argument put forward in the past by Milton Friedman. In Free to Choose, he argued that unionisation frequently produces higher wages at the expense of fewer jobs, and that, if some industries are unionised while others are not, wages will decline in non-unionised industries.

But, from the left, this is a point that the Industrial Workers of the World (amongst others) make - in favour of more universal organisation!

One of the major left-libertarian criticisms of craft or trade unionism is that by organising along the lines of specific crafts or trades rather than across entire industries it creates a two-tier workforce and improves conditions for one group of workers only at the expense of another.

The alternative to this is not to get rid of organisation and equalise everything with a race to the bottom. That only benefits the bosses and makes the problem more acute.

Rather, the answer is to organise workers as a class, to unite everyone in any given industry under the same banner, and to challenge the broader injustices of the wage labour system. Rather than defending one insider group to the detriment of everybody else.

Part of which would involve pushing for greater investment and employment, both inside the workplace and outside through the organisation of the unemployed, to challenge exactly that issue.

But none of this increases the power and privilege of the ruling and propertied class, and so you won't here the right-wing (least of all self-styled "Libertarians") arguing for it. As Adam Smith noted so long ago, the combinations of the masters go unremarked upon, viewed as entirely natural, whilst the combination of workers is derided and scorned as the physical manifestation of evil or madness.

Unemployment is the product of an economic system built on theft and artificial scarcity. Those who would have us believe that combining to challenge that system is the real fault do so only because of ideological dogma. And, to be frank, they can fuck right off.

On Liverpool BNP's response to last Saturday's events

The Liverpool branch of the BNP have taken their time offering a write-up of their being run out of town on Saturday. They have obviously taken their time putting just the right spin on events to serve their purposes ... and still come up with semi-coherent garbage.

The new Liverpool BNP blog is far better presented than the Merseyside BNP one now controlled by the party's dissident "reformer" faction. But it is still a mess, not least because whoever writes it often forgets how to use hyperlinks and the text becomes clunky as you try to wade through web addresses thrown, seemingly at random, into the middle of sentences and paragraphs. If their aim is readability, they're self-sabotaging.

But anyway, returning to the main point, they begin with what is now a common refrain;

My companions and I are members of a legal, democratic political party and in our opinion the only alternative to global politics and world domination. Our Leader and local MEP Mr Nick Griffin has a mandate from nearly a million to serve the people of Merseyside and the North West. In fact it has just been announced Nick is the 2nd best performing MEP. Of course this to us is common knowledge but, of course media bias avoided this!
http://www.nickgriffinmep.eu/content/nick-second-best-performing-north-west-mep

It goes almost without saying that nobody has ever claimed that the BNP are "illegal," since to qualify as such you have to be proscribed by the Home Secretary. And if they want to believe that the BNP is the only viable alternative to the status quo, that's up to them - though I and many others beg to differ.

But the idea that they are "democratic" needs to be challenged. The recent farce of their leadership challenge demonstrated just what a dictatorial stranglehold Nick Griffin has on power in the BNP. Though I'm no fan of them either, the Labour Party had an open and fair leadership election, and many of the failed contenders will now be part of Ed Miliband's shadow cabinet.

Not so the BNP. Those who supported Eddy Butler have been suspended or expelled. The other challenger, Richard Barnbrook, has been booted. High-profile critics of Griffin - such as Lee Barnes - have jumped ship. And Griffin's personality cult has been cleansed of "spies," "homosexuals," and "cranks."

As for Griffin's "mandate" to represent Liverpool - it was only that the vote was across the entire North West that he scraped in. Those million votes didn't come from this city.

I pointed this out at the time of his "victory;"

In the North West, the increase in BNP support was marginal. They barely upped their share of the vote to 7.96%, just ahead of the Greens' 7.63%. In Liverpool, meanwhile, the locale of the defining moments in their North West campaign - from the arrest of 12 activists for inciting racial hatred in distributing the Racism Cuts Both Ways leaflets to prominent Merseyside BNP members Peter Tierney and Steve Greenhalgh's vicious assault on local anti-fascists - they polled at just 6.4%.

Moreover, "an incredibly low overall turnout, contrasted with the generally high turnout the BNP pushes for amongst its supporters, suggests that 6% may be an overestimation of BNP support in the city."

The events of this Saturday, and the similar occurrence a fortnight before that, bear this point out.

But the BNP, as you might expect, tell that differently too. The fact that "the general public are in full support of this campaign and most flock to sign our petition" can be boiled down to the fact that the public - including antifascists - are overwhelmingly anti-war.

But whilst those on the left try to do something about it, from enormous marches and support of deserters to direct action such as that of the EDO decommissioners, the BNP use the issue to hide their politics.

To labour the point, the "petition" they're touting is not a petition at all. As Griffin admits on the BNP website, it is part of a recruitment campaign, and those who sign up will only succeed in lining themselves up for his begging letters and BNP postal votes. Not to mention that, per their election manifesto, they would happily still leave "our boys" to die in that war if they felt it "in the national interest."

But I often wonder whether the BNP activists involved in this are deliberately masking the truth or  if they are utterly delusional.

They consider the chants of antifascists to be "government induced." And, despite the disproportionate arrest and harassment of antifascists and youth, their post rails against "the (left-wing, common-purpose ordained) Police," "the baying ‘Sponsored Anarchist’ crowd," and "the obvious ‘State protected’ confidence, which has been bestowed on these Anarchists." [sic, ad infinitum]

Hyperbole and excessive use of randomly-aligned adverbs aside, this betrays the cultish, barnpot mentality of those deepest in the mire of the far-right.

For them, there are only two sides: themselves, and the student-liberal-hippy-ethnic-politically-correct-common-purpose-communist-Marxist-anarchist-unwashed-left. Who are, naturally, all sponsored by the state. And "middle class" - despite being "unwashed."

Liverpool BNP tried to articulate this reasoning in "Meditations on a Lefty Mob "Demo""[sic];

all the UAF and Socialist librarian gimps had concentrated at the Echo Arena to perform a demo for the public and Media against the ConDem ‘Government’ in No. 10. However, on hearing that the nefarious BNP had the audacity to hold a Day of Action in Liverpool Town Centre Comrade McFadden hastened into the town centre. Surely enough there was the BNP! How dare they confront this glorious regime! http://www.stopcp.com/index.php Comrade McFadden was on the phone immediately.

...

Now whilst most ordinary folk seem to agree with the sentiment ‘Bring Our Boys Home’ the elite had other ideas and by mid morning Comrade McFadden had arrived and was on the phone to his government rent-a-mob. ... Then lo and behold The Government cash funded UAF and Socialist Workers Party and a few of the old Hatton Militant hard-liners abandoned the [Liberal Democrat] Party Conference to perform a merry dance around the BNP table top instead!!! Thus exposing the public to a performance of what it really is-a Thespian parade for the controlled Tabloids and Media.

So, because left-wing activists had abandoned a protest against the Liberal Democrats to protest the BNP, we are all of course in the pay of David Cameron and Nick Clegg. And protesting against them as a show for the media.

In reality, the "demo" was actually a small gathering aimed at lobbying attendees of the conference, attended by 20-ish people. The main march and protest was the next day and attended by a throng of several thousand people. But the idea that somebody can oppose both the present government and a fascist party such as the BNP is apparently really far-fetched. Or something.

Likewise, it would seem that opposing the BNP makes you no longer a local to anywhere they happen to be. Unless you're a member of an ethnic minority.

According to the wisdom of the BNP;

only about 5% of them are actually from Liverpool, and that 5% are ethnics. The rest are students from outside so they can by no means speak on behalf of the people of Liverpool!

Except that I am a white, working class person who holds a full-time job, was born in Liverpool and has lived here all his life, and I was amongst the crowd opposing the BNP. Unless I and my fellow white, working class, antifascist Scousers imagined the whole thing, of course.

I'd also point out that, as an anarchist, I was no doubt in a minority amongst the antifascist crowd. But it would no doubt fall on deaf and wilfully ignorant ears.

I'm not going to Fisk the entire article, because I have better things to do with my time. But it should be pointed out that there were no "indiscriminate[?] members of the public standing in the crowd observing this situation and then fearlessly challenging this mob’s week[sic] argument."

The BNP themselves would only get in the faces of kids, whilst members of Liverpool Antifascists would engage with passers-by and could hold our own in debate easily enough. Far from "watch[ing] the agitators shrivel when confronted with common sense debate," all the BNP could do was shout "fuck off" and call us "paedophiles."

Likewise, when "one of the protesters was caught by one of our group, and by the Police, vandalising our equipment," it was actually a young lad who hooked his mp3 player up to their loud-hailer so that it played rap! Whether it should be classed as "vandalism" or music is entirely subjective, I guess.

Thus, the writer of this pathetic diatribe may "honestly believe the UAF are above the law and they know it," but I wouldn't take his word for it since I doubt his grip on reality.

He rounds of his semi-coherent rant thus;

Is this the price we pay for being a Patriot in Britain today? The true concept of ‘democracy’ has been lost. Anyone who supports an opinion different from the Government/State is demonised. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx2YLFyp43Q&feature=player_embedded The media have aided the Government in the sanctioning of attacks on Nationalists/Patriots. There is and has always been a media bias against Nationalistic endeavours. http://www.nuj.org.uk/innerPagenuj.html?docid=1253

We are now, no-longer safe in our own land. Am I frightened? Yes, I am terrified for our Country’s future but I am awake and I cannot turn away from what is happening to my beautiful Land.

This ‘politically–correct’ Regime, is empowering alien cultures, at the expense of our’s. Are we not the Host-Nation ?

My Grandfather went to War for this Land and my Great Grandfather was in the trenches. I cannot stand by and let Traitors and fiends deliver this Land into the hands of foreigners. I will not apologise to Blacks for my Great British History. If I am to be condemned for loving my own culture, so be it! And if you want to call me names for trying to stop MY People becoming second class citizens in our own country, feel free. I don’t care.

In MY heart I am a Patriot-British till the end. The blood of the ethnic English runs through my veins. Onwards and upwards!

Well, he may be right about a couple of things. But the manifestation of the state demonising dissidents, i.e. left-wing activists being filmed, photographed, and documented as "domestic extremists," is utterly at odds with his view of us being "above the law."

If the BNP wants to think of us as "government-sponsored" and "traitors," that's their call. But the evidence doesn't bear it out.

We're not asking them to "apologise to Blacks for my Great British History," or "condemn[ing them] for loving [their] own culture." We're challenging their advancement of a fascist ideology rooted in bigotry and political violence.

Torture, murder, and state repression under Barack Obama

The hype of Obamania has long died down and the US President has slipped into his expected role as a typical Clinton-style Democrat. In the process, many of his supposedly "radical" campaign promises have fallen by the wayside - most notably that to close Guantánamo Bay.

Of late some quite specific consequences of this broken promise have come to light, as the blog Tiresias Speaks notes;

A US federal Judge dismissed a complaint Wednesday (9/29) brought by the families of two Guantánamo prisoners that alleged that the circumstances surrounding the men’s deaths had been covered up when they were declared suicides by the Pentagon in June of 2006. 

The families of Saudi prisoner Yasser al-Zahrani and Salah al-Salami of Yemen were asking US District Judge Ellen Huvelle to reexamine the case in light of new testimony from military personnel working at Guantánamo at the time of the “suicides” that directly contradicts official accounts. 

A third prisoner, Mani al-Utaybi of Saudi Arabia also died the same night, but his family has not filed a complaint. 

At the time of their deaths, Al-Zahrani, 22, and Al-Salami, 33, had been held at Guantánamo without charges for four years at the US naval base. According to the Pentagon, on the night of June 9th, 2006, Al-Zahrani, Al-Salami, and Utaybi were found at approximately the same time hanging from makeshift nooses in their cells. They were then rushed to the camp’s infirmary where they were shortly pronounced dead. 

The following day the commander at Guantánamo, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, put the base on lockdown. He ordered almost all reporters on the base to leave and told those already en route to turn back. He officially declared that the deaths were “suicides,” and he went on to say, “I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.” 

But new first-hand accounts from soldiers on duty at the base on the night of June 9th suggest that Admiral Harris’ and the Pentagon’s version of events is false and that the men may have actually died as the result of torture at a site off base known as “Camp No.” According to the petition, this site was called Camp No because if soldiers were asked if it existed the were supposed to say no. 

Army officer Joe Hickman says that he was supposed to log every vehicle that exited or entered the base. Even when Senator John McCain came to visit the base Hickman ensured that he was properly logged in and out. However, there was one windowless paddy wagon that was sometimes used to transport prisoners that he was not supposed to keep any log of. He and other soldiers say that they saw this van pick up three prisoners and drive them to Camp No on the evening of June 9th. 

When the van returned to base later it did not return the prisoners to their cells, instead it backed up to the infirmary. A medical officer told Hickman they had been sent to the infirmary, “because they had rags stuffed down their throats, and that one of them was severely bruised,” the petition said. 

When Hickman heard the official cause of death was suicide by hanging the next day he talked with the other guards who would have had to of seen if any bodies had been transported from the cells to the infirmary, but no one had seen any bodies being moved. 

The families of Al-Zahrani and Al-Salami demanded an independent autopsy, but when the bodies arrived they had already had all of their vital organs surrounding their throats removed making it impossible to 100% verify the cause of death.The medical examiners they had hired made requests for the organs to be sent from Guantánamo, but their requests were ignored. 

In her ruling Wednesday, Judge Huvelle did not really address any of these issues raised in the petition. Instead, she cited a decision by a federal appeals court in Washington stating that conditions at Guantánamo should not be investigated by the courts and should remain the purview of Congress alone due to national security concerns. 

In light of this ruling, it is unlikely that all of the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Al-Zahrani, Al-Salami, and al-Utaybi will ever be discovered. The Obama Administration has already made it clear that it not interested in looking backwards to investigate potential war crimes and there is no reason to think that Congress would investigate the Pentagon’s official account. 

The whole incident and yesterday’s ruling in particular serve as a stark reminder of Obama’s broken promise to close Guantánamo within one year of taking office. Even if Obama does end up closing Guantánamo down, it is difficult not to wonder how much of its true history will remain forever unknown?

On its own, this would be a troubling story. But it is not occurring in isolation - rather, it is part of a broader context of gross civil liberties violations by the Obama administration.

Just as, here in Britain, the Blair era never saw the restoration of freedoms taken by Thatcher, so Obama has failed to right the wrongs of the Bush era. The USA PATRIOT Act remains in force. The illegal war in Afghanistan drags on. And the US can now kill its citizens without due process.

Yes, you read that right. From a May article by Glen Greenwald in Salon;

The most recent liberty-abridging, Terrorism-justified controversies have focused on diluting the legal rights of American citizens (in part because the rights of non-citizens are largely gone already and there are none left to attack).  A bipartisan group from Congress sponsors legislation to strip Americans of their citizenship based on Terrorism accusations.  Barack Obama claims the right to assassinate Americans far from any battlefield and with no due process of any kind.  The Obama administration begins covertly abandoning long-standing Miranda protections for American suspects by vastly expanding what had long been a very narrow "public safety" exception, and now Eric Holder explicitly advocates legislation to codify that erosion.  John McCain and Joe Lieberman introduce legislation to bar all Terrorism suspects, including Americans arrested on U.S. soil, from being tried in civilian courts, and former Bush officials Bill Burck and Dana Perino -- while noting (correctly) that Holder's Miranda proposal constitutes a concession to the right-wing claim that Miranda is too restrictive -- today demand that U.S. citizens accused of Terrorism and arrested on U.S. soil be treated as enemy combatants and thus denied even the most basic legal protections (including the right to be charged and have access to a lawyer).

And last week Greenwald wrote of the shroud of secrecy around this process;

At this point, I didn't believe it was possible, but the Obama administration has just reached an all-new low in its abysmal civil liberties record.  In response to the lawsuit filed by Anwar Awlaki's father asking a court to enjoin the President from assassinating his son, a U.S. citizen, without any due process, the administration late last night, according to The Washington Post, filed a brief asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit without hearing the merits of the claims.  That's not surprising:  both the Bush and Obama administrations have repeatedly insisted that their secret conduct is legal but nonetheless urge courts not to even rule on its legality.  But what's most notable here is that one of the arguments the Obama DOJ raises to demand dismissal of this lawsuit is "state secrets":  in other words, not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are "state secrets," and thus no court may adjudicate their legality.

Which, as the The Agitator rightly points out, "Obama is arguing the executive has the power to execute American citizens without a trial, without even so much as an airing of the charges against them, and that it can do so in complete secrecy, with no oversight from any court, and that the families of the executed have no legal recourse."

This should give us all a cause for worry. Not least because Obama's is currently the most liberal administration of western governments. And that the actions of the United States all too often set a precedent for others, not least its British "junior partner."

What we see here is nothing less than overt tyranny, being pushed through with much noise on the blogosphere but little on the ground.

The important fact to remember is that, no matter how much we bitch and moan on "teh internets," nothing will change. Righteous anger and moral outrage has to be accompanied by direct action. Tyranny can only be defeated through active resistance, and that is exactly what Obama has wrought.

Where the libertarian left and right overlap, or don't - a response to John Demetriou

On Sunday, a conversation on Twitter with John Demetriou - a right-libertarian blogger - inspired him to write a post called "What have left and right libertarians got in common?" What follows is my response.

Demetriou, hereafter JD for brevity, is an interesting case amongst right-libertarians. I've cited him previously as being "far more honest and consistent in his libertarianism" than his peers, and I stick by that. He realises the utter lunacy of "anarcho"-capitalism and is closer to mutualism in his ideology.

But I digress. His post was prompted by my tweeting that "there are lots of areas of agreement between libertarian right and left. But blogging only seems to overlap on economics [where we disagree]."  And "it would be interesting, for example, to read right-libertarians on fascism, illegal wars, nationalism, migration, et al."

With a rapidity that my response has failed to match, JD rose to the challenge, offering his opinion on exactly those subjects.

On fascism, nationalism, and migration, his perspective diverged from mine quite broadly. I will come to that. However, having already written a great deal on the irreconcilable differences between left- and right- libertarianism - see here, here, here, and here - I would like to go first to the commonalities.

On this point, JD is quite eloquent;

I think the best way to improve relations with other countries and to encourage better relations across the world is to essentially trade. Trade civilises. Trade is good. Business and commerce is good. Why drop bombs on Afghanistan, when we should legalise all drugs and buy their heroin from them and sell it at below dealer rates in the UK in order to destroy the illegal drugs industry?

Why feed despotic, pernicious regimes in the Middle East (like Saudi) because we want to sate our miserable addiction to oil, when we can simply junk our dependence on oil and move towards a transport system based in renewable energy?

This is where left libertarianism comes in - it can energise and educate people to realise the destructive nature of the oil industry and why it poisons just about everything in the world.

Left and right libertarianism has much in common, and while our differences may seem stark, and our paths meander off into random directions, we can agree and shake a friendly hand on the fact that our one main enemy is the state. The further you go to the extremes (anarchism, Anarcho-Capitalism), the more you believe the state should not exist.

Let me leave you with this image from a great film I watched recently called 'The Bucket List' with Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. If you have seen it, you might want to muse on why I draw the parallel between this discussion and this film.

Because for me, Freeman's character is like a left libertarian and Nicholson's is like a right libertarian. One is a rich billionaire, the other is a man of modest means. One is brash, caustic and obnoxious, the other is charming and a gentleman. When brought together, they have a turbulent relationship, but dedicated common ground can bring great things...

I'm not of the opinion that the libertarian spectrum can or does play out like a political buddy movie. There is common ground, and there are even areas where opinions from the left and right compliment one another. But the elephant in the room is the economy, stupid, at as a result there will always be antagonism.

Perspectives on the state are part of this. For left libertarians and anarchists, the state is our enemy because (to varying degrees) it represents an authoritarian and hierarchical structure. We are equally suspicious of such structures outside of the state, whilst with many - if not all - right-libertarians there is the suggestion that authoritarianism is acceptable if privatised.

Nonetheless, sticking to common ground, I would agree there is a lot of it. For example, whilst we lefties "come in" on the issue of foreign wars and the oil industry, I have no problem letting the libertarian right have at it on smoking bans, free speech, and other such issues.

Going back to fascism and such things, here we find that common ground remains, but it is an awful lot more sparse.

For example;

For me, fascism cannot be blithely dismissed as a right wing political creed. This is lazy. Fascism is extremely similar to its opposite number; communism (or hardened socialism). They both want a massively powerful state, led by an elite, who dictates everything on behalf of the people who they pretend to laud and love. Both communism and fascism are scathing of capitalism, and Jews, and they are quite aggressive and imperialistic, though for slightly different reasons.

I believe the differences are tiny. The reason fascism gets the right wing tag is pretty much because of its latent nationalism and obsession with race and eugenics.

Although there is an issue with calling fascism "right wing" or "far-right" in terms of the economic left-right line, it does not follow from this that it is socialist or left wing.

As I have argued before, fascism is the logical, extreme of the status quo. That is, corporatism, nationalism,  authoritarianism, and rigid bureaucracy. It has traditionally found support from the business classes, and been used to smash picket lines and organised workers as a movement.

It should also be noted that capitalism is not synonymous - or, for that matter, at all compatible - with free markets. It is a social order, wherein state and corporate power are intertwined.

I won't defend "Communism," quite simply because I don't believe in it. The oppositional perspectives of anarchists and Marxist-Leninists is well known and doesn't need rehashing here. Suffice to say that the USSR wasn't socialist after 1921. At the latest.

JD's claim that "as long as left libertarians constantly see fascism as a right wing movement, they will persistently fail to spot the inherent flaws in socialism" is at best facile. We know well what socialism is and what it is not - which is why we are in non-hierarchical, decentralised groups such as the Solidarity Federation rather than towing the line of the Socialist Workers' Party.

Further to which, the idea that "can only really ever exist where it is guided by a very strong, coercive elite in dominance of a very strong state" is a falsehood.

Though it was short-lived, the Spanish Revolution showed communism to be quite the opposite. In fact, as in Russia, it was clearly the case that those "in charge of a very strong apparatus of thuggery and tyranny" destroyed communism rather than bringing it to pass.

JD is harsher on nationalism than I. I would agree that it is "an emotional sop" and "pointless way of seeking an identity and a way of seeking meaning."

However, where I have sought the root of such sentiments and ways to challenge it for leading working class discontent up a blind alley, he simply writes those who think that way as "the types of people who flip burgers and fit tyres to down tools every generation or three in order to 'defend the realm'."

Beyond which, JD is "ot one of these cunts who wants to do away with 'countries' and just have the world as one big meadow of goats with no borders and loads of women with lank hair dancing round Maypoles." But I am, and as he points out whilst there are a fair amount of minarchists on the libertarian right, they are few and far between on the left.

I won't go into the arguments in detail here. But in response to his suggestion that a minimal state is neccesary and anarchism "would only work in a very ideal world which can never exist," I suggest he reads my case against borders, and my posts on how community self-defence and self-organisation would work.

Anarchism is not a pipe dream invented by stoned students - it is an idea rooted in over 150 years of trial and error. After all, an ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

Returning to the original point, I would say that there is far too much difference for any kind of consensus between the libertarian right and left. But we are not two separate, homogenous camps - there is an entire spectrum of libertarian thought and so great potential for overlap.

With the exception, of course, of anarcho-capitalists, Randian objectivists, and big-L Libertarians like Ron Paul. I'm unrepentant that they're just corporate capitalists lacking access to the whip.

Israel asks for "peace," whilst resuming colonisation

Israel's 10-month moratorium on construction in the West Bank is over. Construction contractors are expecting to begin work on 500 to 600 new homes in the coming month. As a result, several Palestinian organisations are opposed to continuing direct negotiations with Israel.

However, according to the Jerusalem Post, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said that this shouldn't affect "the goal of reaching a historic  peace agreement between our two peoples."

In full, he said;

I hope that President Abbas will remain in the talks and continue with me on the path of peace which we started three weeks ago, after many in the world have now realized that my intentions of reaching peace are serious and sincere and that I honor my commitments.

I say to President Abbas, for the sake of both our peoples, let us focus on what is truly important – accelerated, sincere and continuous talks to reach a historic framework agreement within a year.

The only problem is that, for the vast majority of Palestinians, these settlements are "truly important." They represent the steady colonisation by Israel of all viable land within the occupied territories, whilst any "historic framework" will merely leave Palestinians crowded into the barren remains.

Already, Israel is siphoning off water supplies for itself and pumping raw sewage - shit, in a word - back to the Palestinians. And alonside the theft of resources is the physical occupation of land.

Before the moratorium was imposed, Israeli settlements saw their population grow over from 177,411 to 267,163in just the seven years from 1999 to 2006. At the same time, the Palestinian refugee population has been growing at a rate of 100,000 per year, the fallout from the 1948 and 1967 wars compounded by the continuing forced eviction of families to make way for settlers.

And the rhetoric of Danny Danon, Ayoob Kara and Tzipi Hotovely from the Likud Party, quoted by Ha'aretz, made clear the nationalist ideology underpinning the occupation;

"This is what I wanted to see - blue and white in every corner," said Kara, speaking to around 2,500 people at the annual World Likud convention at Revava. "I came to be with you all. Residents here respected the freeze; the most important thing is to continue the peace process. The result of the freeze was zero. It gave us nothing and it gave the Palestinian Authority nothing. As a wounded Israel Defense Forces veteran I think Israel's security depends on your settling here." 

Quoting a Talmudic saying, he said, "If [a man] comes to slay you, slay him first." 

Zeev said: "This day unites the entire people of Israel, not only World Likud. The residents of Judea and Samaria are native to Israel through a historical link. That's the issue that should lead us today regarding our rights in the face of the Quartet and the United Nations. We were born here and this is the land of our fathers forever. In the name of God we will succeed." 

Hotovely told the crowd she was "proud to be a member of a party that was elected to preserve our right to exist in this country."

One could well imagine the same rhetoric coming from any hard-right party in Europe or America. It is nothing less than the doctrine of racial-religious nationalism.

With such a tendency prevailing amongst the settlers, it is easy to be sceptical about any "restraint" they may show. And certainly ordinary Palestinians have no reason to trust that we won't merely see the continuation of business as usual.

Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has already complied with Netanyahu's demand not to protest the end of the settlement freeze. Repeated threats of a walk-out have come to nothing.

But Abbas appears to be in it for his own gain. His presidential term expired in 2009, and his unilateral extension a year later. Still, he remains at the head of the Palestinian Authority, his own position apparently the only thing he has managed to secure.

And with Hamas out of bounds for negotiation, based on wholly hypocritical reasoning, ordinary Palestinians have no voice.

No matter how "historic" the "framework agreement" may be, there will be no serious peace . Not when those negotiating at the top table are a nationalist pursuing a policy of colonial expansion and a "leader" willing to sell out the rights of his people to maintain his own position.

On the new Labour leader

Ed Miliband has been elected leader of the Labour Party. He snatched victory at the last minute in a leadership race that remained uncompromisingly dull and irrelevant to ordinary people. With the race over, that dull irrelevance is the Official Opposition to the Government's aggressive class war.

As I wrote three months ago, too much of the left still clings hopelessly to Labour, and has been watching this obscenely long contest with bated breath. But there was nothing new on offer.

Ed Miliband said "I get it" over and over. He has been talking about winning over the working class and reinvigorating the "left." But this is part of the same "change" rhetoric that everybody - including Tony Blair and David Cameron - is so fond of when seeking election.

But to see what we're looking at now, we only need to look at his record;

• Voted very strongly against an investigation into the Iraq war.
• Voted very strongly for more EU integration.
• Voted very strongly for introducing ID cards.
• Voted very strongly for a stricter asylum system.
• Voted very strongly for Labour's anti-terrorism laws.
• Voted very strongly for introducing a smoking ban.
• Voted moderately for replacing Trident.

Or, as I noted back in July, he is a "moderate hawk in terms of the mainstream political spectrum" and doesn't "not represent genuinely left-wing views" let alone "come close to the libertarian left."

Not to mention that, if we look at Barack Obama's record on "change" (or Tony Blair's), we find that a wave of enthusiasm swept in a candidate who was an eloquent speaker and very charismatic, but still an enemy of the working class. Although, in this case, you don't really have the charisma.

Ultimately, Labour have a faceless, personality-free drone as their leader. Those of us concerned with the class struggle faced by ordinary people ought to dismiss this irrelevance and move on.

Liberal Democrat members beg to get fooled again

In recent days, with Liberal Democrats have apparently decided that it was politic to come out with some pronouncements to sate the social democrats within their ranks.

First, Nick Clegg told party members that they must "hold our nerve." The Lib Dems had not "lost our soul" by entering into coalition with the Conservatives. They "haven't changed our liberal values" and "will have changed British politics for good" by the end of it.

He then had a pop at the last Tory administration, promising to "not repeat the mistakes of the 1980s, in which whole communities were hollowed out." Even though the cuts agenda remained the "only choice."

Then he repeated Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander's promise to target rich tax-avoiders in an effort to reduce the deficit. Playing it straight down the middle, he said "We all agree it's wrong when people help themselves to benefits they shouldn't get. But when the richest people in the country dodge their tax bill that is just as bad."

It was hardly a revolutionary line. Especially with a promise to "be tough on welfare cheats" preceding that to "be tough on tax cheats too." But he had a go at the rich, so he's not as bad as the Tories. Right?

Hot on the heels of that, we have Business Secretary Vince Cable taking it to the banks; 

Vince Cable has told the BBC that ministers are considering "potentially quite tough sanctions" against banks which give out large bonuses.

The business secretary said bankers should not walk away with "outrageously large sums" while others suffered due to a crisis caused by banking.

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg also said the government would not "stand idly by" if "offensive" bonuses were handed out.

A bank levy set to raise £8bn over four years is due to start in January. 

But Mr Cable and his party leader both suggested on Tuesday that the government could go further if banks paid out unreasonably high bonuses.

The business secretary was speaking during the Liberal Democrats' conference in Liverpool, at a fringe event organised by BBC Radio 4's World at One.

He said that, at the modest end of the scale, the government was looking at how to implement the Walker report into the corporate governance of UK banks, and force banks to disclose more information about bonus payments.

Bumper bonuses

 

"At the other end of the scale, there are potentially quite tough sanctions in terms of tax policy," he said, suggesting the government could look at a tax targeting high profits or a financial transactions tax.

All of which, clearly, is targeted at the "left" wing of the Liberal Democrats. The Yellow Tories are offering people a little more yellow in the hope that they'll notice a little less Tory. But we shouldn't be fooled.

Notice, in Cable's speech, how the fact that "others suffered due to a crisis caused by banking" isn't singled out as something to be rectified. Indeed, Clegg had already defended attacks on the public sector and working class by insisting that "you cannot build social justice on the sands of debt."

But, by saying that they were going to target those responsible for the crisis (alongside those who weren't, of course) he gives his party some political wiggle room. For those whose politics is confined to the minute differences between three capitalist, ruling class parties, it will be enough. Those who can see beyond that and realise just how narrow the mainstream spectrum is can be safely ignored.

Which is why there really is no point to mainstream politics. Those who pin their hopes on the Lib Dems, or any other party, are barking up the wrong tree. Our votes make no difference, our opinions are not taken into account, and our needs will never be met. It is a game for elites.

As I've noted before, there is an alternative;

Politicians play up a political bitch-fest for the benefit of a few who still believe in electoral politics, and pour scorn on a so-called "apathetic mass." But not caring about party politics does not mean people don't care at all. They want something different, and know that voting won't get it. Talking to them one to one, too, you soon realise that anarchism - but for the stigma of the name and a lack of exposure to the ideas - makes a lot of sense to people.

There's potential there. They already don't vote. The trick now is to get them to organise.

With the "nice" Liberal Democrats now in government, colluding with the "nasty" Tories, that potential is all but bubbling over. People know politics is bunk - now we need to give them ideas on what to do about it.

The TUC, the Echo Arena ban, and the Radical Workers' Bloc

In Liverpool, organised workers and trade unions are gearing up for a march and demonstration against the Liberal Democrat Autumn Conference on Sunday. As are those arguing for a more radical approach to the present crisis. But it seems their original plans have been scuppered. 

According to the Liverpool Daily Post;

TRADE unions have been banned from protesting outside the Liberal Democrat conference which gets under way in the city this weekend.

Union leaders attacked the ban as an “outrageous” restriction on freedoms enjoyed since the signing of the Magna Carta.

The Lib-Dems deny the ban is at their request, claiming the decision was the police’s on “safety grounds”.

The police claim that the area around the Arena is “not suitable for protest of any size”, although demonstrations were allowed outside the venue during last year’s TUC conference and the National Rail Conference.

Merseyside trade union campaigner Alec McFadden said there could be no excuses for denying the public the right to express their anger at coalition cuts.

He said: “It’s an outrage, a disgrace. Since the Magna Carta, every person in this country is entitled to petition and argue with ministers.”

A TUC spokesman added: “Our regional secretary had a number of meetings with police and other people inspecting the site, and there was no reason to question we wouldn’t be able to protest outside the Arena.

“But recently we had a meeting with the police, who are piggy in the middle in this, who told us they had been advised by the landowner [ACC Liverpool] that the client [the Lib-Dems] has refused us access to carry out our protest on their land.”

A Lib-Dem spokesman last night said: “It is completely untrue we have asked for it to be moved.

“There were two sites proposed by police and we allowed them to choose whichever they felt was the best. We have absolutely nothing against peaceful protests organised through the proper channels.”

The protesters will be expected to demonstrate from the entrance to Salthouse Dock, hundreds of metres away.

A police spokesman said: “For a number of reasons, including the area around the Albert Dock and ACC Liverpool being private property, the conference venue itself and surrounding area is not suitable for hosting a protest of any size.

“The presence of a number of temporary structures has limited the options for locating a protest site any nearer to the conference centre than the Salthouse Dock.”

Or, more succinctly, the police have done what they always do and found a pretense under which to keep protesters away from the objects of their demonstration. The TUC have pissed and moaned about the injustice, but ultimately are complying.

Thus, union leaders put on the appearence of being oppositional to authority whilst following orders and acting as a conduit to get the working class to do the same.

We oughtn't be surprised. This is, in fact, a microcosm of how the TUC and the unions under its steer act more generally. It is the very reason that the Solidarity Federation and Anarchist Federation are staging a Radical Workers' Bloc and arguing for a different approach in the first place.

It is also why we will be following the TUC to the Salthouse Dock rather than splitting off to attempt an "invasion" of the Echo Arena. Such a stunt would, without large numbers, achieve a grand sum of nothing. It would also be counter-productive.

Causing chaos and carnage would merely reinforce the media stereotype of anarchists and grab a few headlines. It would also prove that we offer nothing concrete to workers' struggles.

Clearly, this is not what we want to achieve. Instead, our aim is to make the case for militant self-organisation directly to other organised workers. This is not about gesture politics but about building a movement that can take on capitalism.

The myth of "the cuts that aren't cuts"

In timely fashion, the Devil's Knife has proved my point about the authoritarian tendencies of the "libertarian" right with a post called "Time to kill the unions." He opens the post with something else common across the right: the idea that talk of cuts is being blown out of all proportion.

He links to the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) - a think-tank which has nothing to do with the real Adam Smith - who tell us why we should "take a deep breath, look at the numbers, and then calm down."

In their own words;

the government's proposed cuts are pretty small beer. In nominal terms, spending will rise every year. In real terms (assuming 2 percent a year price inflation) this equates to small cuts in 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14, followed by small rises in 2014-15 and 2015-16. Compared to the c.60% real terms public spending rise that took place under the previous government, this is, frankly, insignificant.

...

What the coalition's spending plans really amount to is a five-year, real terms freeze of current expenditure, combined with three years of significant falls in capital expenditure. The overall impact of that is a a very small, real terms drop in TME [Total Managed Expenditure] (roundabout 1.5%) between now and 2015-16.

Although "you would be forgiven for thinking that the coalition government's planned public spending cuts are every bit as swingeing as the BBC would have us believe," the "fuss the unions are making" blows things out of all proportion.

So there's no need to go jumping out of windows just yet. Or so the ASI and DK would have us believe.

The main problem with the ASI's figures is that they'll go tits up with the comprehensive spending review. This is where the bulk of cuts come in, with a target of 25 - 40% reductions.

Before that arrives, we have promises of 800,000 claimants being thrown off incapacity benefit and £4bn being cut from the welfare bill. Cuts in housing benefits put 200,000 people at risk of homelessness, at a time when construction of social housing will slump by 65%.

In the workplace, the GMB union estimates there are nearly 150,000 job losses are already in the pipeline. The Sunday Times doubles that, whilst the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development expects the final tally to be closer to 725,000. Which, of course, gives the most conservative estimate to the "fuss-making" trade union.

Compared to the stale, impersonal figures of the ASI, this paints a more credible picture because it is a human picture. The economy doesn't exist in abstract, after all.

As I noted earlier this month;

Back on planet earth, it is the real economy which produces actually existing wealth, and upon which genuine economic stability is built. After all, it is no good having vast quantities of imaginary wealth if you can't keep your family fed and clothed and a roof over your head.

But the British government (among others) want austerity. That is, they want cuts in jobs, benefits, and public services. Even within the parameters of the existing economic system, this is little short of madness.

As workers, our labour power is reduced with less of us working. As consumers, our purchasing power is diminished with less money to spend on the goods being produced. Each impacts on the other, and production and consumption are driven into a downward spiral.

Thus, the real economy contracts. The effects of this, based upon the tangible rather than on generated figures, is far more damaging than of a recession in the financial markets.

But, of course, pointing this out makes me a "deficit denier." I could probably also be labelled a union thug for recognising that people will want to defend their livelihoods. And a filthy commie for not believing in the joys of capitalism or the self-evident divinity of "the market^TM."

In which spirit, I gladly ignore the ASI's advice to "take a breath," and will continue to organise against attacks on my class. No matter how bland the number crunchers make those attacks look.

Trade unions and the closet-Toryism of the "libertarian" right

Unlike their American counterparts, the "Libertarian" movement in Britain still has yet to achieve any significant influence in the real world. However, they are big on "teh internets" and unfortunately have the potential to emulate the Tea Party crowd, so it is worth keeping an eye on them.

Unfortunately, like reading the Daily Mail, the sheer dogmatic insanity of it all isn't for the faint hearted. In fact, it's made worse by the fact that - away from economics - they're occasionally reasonable and agreeable.

This is not the case when we get onto the subject of trade unions. As propertarians, defending the "liberty" of those with capital to hold a monopoly of violence within a private tyranny, they naturally go apeshit faced with the prospect of working class people standing up for themselves.

As the Devil's Kitchen so inelegantly put it, "the unions are such a bunch of fucking cunts and should be destroyed, utterly, at the soonest opportunity."

In a later post, he does take the time to clarify this;

The trades unions were formed to solve a specific problem...

Originating in Europe, Labour unions became popular in many countries during the Industrial Revolution, when the lack of skill necessary to perform the jobs shifted employment bargaining power almost completely to the employers' side, causing many workers to be mistreated and underpaid.

... and they were a good balance in these circumstances. This balance of power is, of course, entirely A Good Thing—as a libertarian, your humble Devil is against the use of force or fraud against people and it is usually when one particular group has far more power than another that this can happen.

Further, of course, I do believe in free association, etc. and would therefore not ban trade unions. Not to mention the fact that many trade unions also acted as Friendly Societies, which, as you will know, I am heartily in favour of.

However, the trade unions of today bear very little resemblance to those of the Industrial Revolution. The exploitation that they then sought to redress has largely been resolved, e.g.

• The development of the British economy has largely switched from a dependence on unskilled jobs to highly skilled ones (compared to screwing on the same nut onto the same mudguard 83,000,000 times a day, even a call-centre job requires more aptitude—if only an ability to read and write.
• This trend has led to a shift in the balance of power from the eeeeevil exploitative boss to the worker.
• Workers' rights are now enshrined in law, especially (and I hate to say it) as regards to health and safety, etc.

As such, the formerly minor political ambitions of trade unions shifted into overdrive and, in the Seventies, brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy.

Worse than that, however, in many cases the trade unions essentially ceased to be voluntary organisations. In many companies, the unions ran a "closed shop": in other words, if you refused to become a member of the union, then you lost your job, e.g. Reuters (and many other journalistic organisations) in the Seventies and early Eighties. Indeed, you could lose your job for belonging to the wrong union.

At that point, as far as I am concerned, the unions stopped being a voluntary organisation and also lost their legitimacy from a libertarian point of view.

In some instances, he has a point. For example, I am against closed shops (which are now outlawed anyway) as they effectively make the trade union a partner in the exploitation visited upon the worker. Much as cooperatives within a capitalist system result in workers imposing austerity upon themselves.

However, by the same token, I have previously dismantled the idea that unions "brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy" amongst other myths of Thatcherism.

Further, as John Demetriou points out, the idea that "150 years ago unions had a place" but have accomplished all they need to is absurd. "A bit like a chief medical officer coming out and saying: "well, we have got rates of cervical cancer, AIDS and hepatitis right down to minimum levels this year, so what we're going to do is basically close down all the hospitals and sack all the nurses.""

Demetriou far more honest and consistent in his libertarianism, and makes the following point;

The trouble with DK's brand of 'libertarianism', is that it places maximum trust in the Boss, and minimum trust in the lowly worker. The state and all its instruments and workers are deemed to be untrustworthy, self-serving and corrupt. But a business, that exists for profit, but that performs the same function, can do exactly as it pleases.

Which, from an anarcho-syndicalist perspective, is a point which I have made more than once before.

I certainly can't claim to agree with everything Demetriou says - even on unions, and we are both members of the same one. But he is the certainly rare in a libertarian blogosphere dominated by "anarcho-statists" and closet Tories.

All of which, brings me onto Charlotte Gore and her sub-Mailite ravings. I offer them up as an example of the ludicrous strawmen being thrown at the organised working class;

Governments, you see, just can’t stand it when Unions throw tantrums and won’t stop spitting, biting and crying. It’s bad for opinion polls. It’s not that people feel sorry for the kid that’s crying, because they don’t. People just want the noise to stop and don’t really care how the parent does it… and the easy way to make Unions go away and shut up is simply to give in. Pay them.

That’s what it’s really all about. Unions want X and they need the public to cough up the dosh to pay for it, so they make them suffer until the people “democratically” beg the Government to let the Unions have what they want.

Lacking even the minuscule sense of honesty that DK possessed when he spoke of the unions' role 150 years ago, Gore trots out the tired "bully" line and goes into hyperbole overdrive.

Then;

It’s a wonderful wheeze, when you think about it. Do you want a better job with better conditions by training and winning that better job in the face of competition from others (which, lets face it, sounds like bloody hard work) or do you want to pay £10 a month to an organisation which will magically take care of everything for you without you having to lift a finger? Yep, Unions actually sound pretty cool if you think about it.

Which is wilful fucking ignorance on a level I've never encountered before. And I've had an argument with somebody who thought capitalism was "the Jews" and kept offering me "straighteners."

The presumption on offer is that employment, renting a property, and all the other transactions within capitalism that socialists consider exploitative, are voluntary transactions between individuals. Gore, like so many others on the "libertarian" right, repeats it as a mantra and assumes it to be self evident.

Except, for those of us in the real world, it's nothing of the sort. The working class cannot engage in one-to-one negotiations and thrash out our salaries until a mutually acceptable agreement is reached. Unless you're a lawyer, a merchant banker, or a Premiership footballer, it just ain't happening.

The common response to this is that we can always get another job. But this is as much a non-sequitur as the nationalist's response to criticisms of his country "if you don't like it, go somewhere else."

The trouble - aside from the practicalities of getting to "somewhere else" - is that "somewhere else" isn't better than here due to the benevolence of its rulers. The political conditions in countries, as the working conditions in any given employment, improve only through the effort of people fighting for them.

Is this to say that trade unions are perfect and above criticism? No, of course not. Any regular reader will know my position on this, but I go into depth in a post on revolutionary unionism.

But then, I'm criticising the unions from the left, and the right know of no such thing. The idea that supporting worker organisation doesn't equate to supporting highly paid officials who sell their members out, or stifling bureaucracy, is a difficult concept to grasp for those more interesting in parroting a dogma they presume self-evident.

The libertarian-right's arguments are facile. They're on an extreme fringe of the dominant consensus. And UK Libertarian Party leader Chris Mounsey was torn to shreds on TV by a twat in a wig. So why should anybody care?

The problem is that, whilst just a fringe movement in themselves, their arguments and rhetoric are taken up by conservative capitalists, who most certainly are not. And, as a pressure group, they drag the political agenda rightward. Should they manage to follow their American brethren into street activism, they will go from a blogging curiosity to a considerable threat.

We need to dismantle the crentinous arguments of the "libertarian" right now so that we don't have to defend our picket lines against them in the future.