LENIN'S TOMB

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Ireland's left breakthrough posted by Richard Seymour

Looks like the United Left Alliance has made a breakthrough in the Irish elections gaining three confirmed seats, with two pending. The formerly ruling Fianna Fail had its first preference votes slashed by 24%, with the surplus distributed among Fine Gael, Labour and Sinn Fein. The Greens got less than 2% of first preference votes and lost all their seats (I hope the Liberals are taking note). Here's the analysis:

Voters have given the main Irish bosses' party a drubbing in the country’s general election. And the radical left has made a breakthrough, getting at least three TDs elected, with more results to come.

The biggest shift is the slump in support for the Fianna Fáil. Its share of the vote fell to less than 15 percent nationally – compared to 42 percent in the 2007 election.

This is the worst ever defeat for the party that has dominated Irish politics since independence from Britain in 1921 and that has been in power since 1997.

Fianna Fáil’s support in Dublin stood at less than 8 percent. They went from 13 to 1 TD in the capital. This is from a party that historically had 100,000 members when the country’s population was 3.5 million. It previously would have expected to get 40 percent of working class votes. Political dynasties that have controlled constituencies for decades are gone and places that have returned Fianna Fáil TDs (MPs) since the 1920s are now looking elsewhere.

The Irish Green Party, which had slavishly propped up the Fianna Fáil government in coalition, was decimated at the polls and now has no member in parliament.

The Irish Labour Party vote rose massively. But its determined lack of radicalism means that it will not look to use that vote to campaign against austerity. Instead, it is likely to go into coalition with the bosses’ second preference party Fine Gael. Sinn Fein gained and looked set to be the biggest opposition party after getting around 18 percent of the vote.

The radical left made a significant breakthrough with the candidates who are part of the United Left Alliance.

Newly elected TDs in the Alliance include Joe Higgins of the Socialist Party, Clare Daly of the Socialist Party, and Seamus Healy of the Tipperary Unemployed and Works Action Group.

Richard Boyd Barrett for the People before Profit Alliance and Joan Collins of the People before Profit Alliance and could both be elected, as the counting continues. Other members of the United Left Alliance polled strongly but are unlikely to win a seat.

The vote was so close in Richard Boyd Barrett’s Dún Laoghaire constituency that a recount has been called for tomorrow.

And here's the essential background.

Labels: bankers, fianna fail, finance capital, fine gael, green party, housing, ireland, labour, neoliberalism, recession, sinn fein, united left alliance

Friday, May 28, 2010

The age of austerity posted by Richard Seymour

David Harvey:

"One of the basic pragmatic principles that emerged in the 1980s, for example, was that state power should protect financial institutions at all costs. This principle, which flew in the face of the non-interventionism that neoliberal theory prescribed, emerged from the New York City fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s. It was then extended internationally to Mexico in the debt crisis that shook the country to the core in 1982. Put crudely, the policy was: privatise profits and socialise risks; save the banks and put the screws on the people (in Mexico, for example, the standard of living of the population dropped by about a quarter in the four years after the financial bailout of 1982). The result is what is known as systemic 'moral hazard'. Banks behave badly because they do not have to be responsible for the negative consequences of high-risk behaviour. The current bailout is this same old story, only bigger and this time centred in the United States." (David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital And the Crises of Capitalism, Profile Books, 2010, pp. 10-11)

And from Paul Mason:

"As the price of the bailout, the industrial giants of northern Europe want rigid rules on tax, spending and borrowing enforced.
Northern Europe has seized control of southern Europe - and for me, this completes a process of risk-transfer that's been under way since Lehman collapsed.
In the autumn of 2008 all the risk was in the banking system.
Then, states all over the world took on that risk and for a year they contained it.
Now the risk is passing from small states to big states. And it's passing to somewhere else - to the streets.
Those narrow streets around Exarchia Square are world-notorious for radicalism and bohemianism. But you will find the same social mix in the 1,000-year-old streets of Oviedo to Perugia to Bratislava.
A generation of adult workers who will now see their wages and pensions slashed. A young generation of college leavers who can see no future.
For them austerity, even if it saves the euro, may never bring back the lifestyle they were promised. And the risk is they might reject austerity." (Paul Mason, 'Will Europeans accept a generation of austerity?', BBC News, 27 May 2010)

Labels: austerity, bankers, capitalism, finance capital, neoliberalism, redistribution, ruling class, working class

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

The ratings agencies speak posted by Richard Seymour

From Though Cowards Flinch:

The banks have pronounced which party they want to govern us, and the Credit Rating Agencies are preparing to tell us who’s really in charge

An alliance of the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties to form a British coalition government would “almost guarantee” a credit downgrade, BNP Paribas SA said, recommending investors sell the pound against the dollar.

A cut in the rating is likely “since both parties agree that early expenditure cuts could harm the economy,” a team at BNP Paribas led by London-based Hans-Guenter Redeker wrote in a research note today. “A Labour/Liberal government is the least- liked option by markets.”

You know, I really don’t know why we bothered with an election.

I predict this will be all over the Tory media within an hour.

I still can't muster much enthusiasm for the Lab-Lib-nats rainbow coalition, but it would be nice to see the bankers forced to work that bit harder for their pound of flesh (or, rather, their 167 billion pounds of flesh), and a delicate coalition of the 'progressive' parties would be just the ticket on that score.

Labels: bankers, credit crunch, credit ratings agencies, cuts, liberal democrats, new labour, public spending, tories

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Cameron: I'll cut immigration, not bankers' bonuses posted by Richard Seymour

So, earlier this week you may have noticed that Cameron had supported a campaign with the stated aim of stopping the UK population from reaching 70 million. This is a specifically anti-immigrant campaign, following Lord Carey's divine intervention in the nation's affairs, which ran thus:

"The sheer numbers of migrants ... threaten the very ethos or DNA of our nation.... Democratic institutions such as the monarchy, Parliament, the judiciary, the Church of England, our free press and the BBC ... support the liberal democratic values of the nation. Some groups of migrants, however, are ambivalent about or even hostile to such institutions. The proposed antiwar Islamist march in Wootton Bassett is a clear example of the difficulties extremists pose to British society."

Yes, he did include the monarchy and the C of E among Britain's democratic institutions. Yes, he did invoke DNA in a very palpable instance of dog-collar-whistling. And yes, hearing said high-pitched trill, Cameron barked. Cameron's reasoning doesn't invoke 'British values', but a supposed threat to public services which makes immigration caps necessary. Cameron, like the former Prime Minister of whom he is emulous, is not as stupid as he is intellectually insubstantial. He may not trouble himself too much about theory - the latter being equivalent to ideology, itself a short step to baggage, which is something no careerist can afford to be laden with. One travels light when going up the greasy pole. But he is, I think, reasonably perceptive, and it would have occurred to him that immigrants will provide the taxes and employees to build up public services as much as they are likely to use them. This is especially important to bear in mind when we are constantly told that the working population is not growing enough to support the taxes and national insurance necessary to maintain a decent public pension.

Moreover, as Socialist Worker points out this week, the reference to immigration is an extraordinary red herring. Most of the projected population growth is due to births, and the real "pressure" on public services in the coming years will be from the cuts intended by both parties, though with predictably greater gusto from the Tories:

Cameron also made his starkest statement yet about his cuts plans this week.

Asked if he wanted to make more cuts or make the cuts earlier, he replied, “It’s both, and one leads to the other. We think it should start now.

“We would have an emergency budget within 50 days. It would start to do some of those things.”

Meanwhile, John Redwood, Cameron’s economic adviser, wants cuts too – cuts to the taxes of the rich.

He said, “Tax cuts must be cuts in taxes on enterprise. Cut the higher rate of income tax, cut the corporation tax rate.”

You remember John Redwood. He is the Thatcherite windbag who asked John Major out for a fight and couldn't take him. He has been orbiting the moon ever since, but now seems to have been called to earth by Cameron to help craft the Conservative Party's pitch to big business - the ruling class, in more accurate terms - in advance of the coming election. You think New Labour kisses your arse?, he seems to say. Well, we can spit-shine it too. So, an important lesson for the coming elections. Attacks on immigration are almost invariably an opening shot in a class battle. Those who intend to attack the working class must first divide the working class. Start by singling out immigrants, then move on to public sector workers, trade unionists, welfare recipients, and any other likely target of invective from the steaming shit-sewer of the scum British press. Then tell everyone that focusing on class is petty and juvenile, and beneath the conduct of responsible statesmen. This is why fighting racism and fascism, defeating it in the streets and challenging it in the media, is not separable from class issues nor from the matter of resisting the recession. It is a vital aspect of securing a minimum of working class unity in the coming, highly volatile, period.

Labels: bankers, capitalism, cuts, david cameron, fascism, public spending, racism, recession, ruling class, taxation, tories

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

This is a stick up posted by Richard Seymour

So, the banks have won again. They've expropriated billions from the public treasury to cover their dodgy dealings, insisted that the public have to pay for it, and now they've got the official benediction of the supreme court. They don't have to worry about the OFT ruling out their excessive charges, and millions of people who might have expected some refund from their banks will now be met with hard-faced refusal. This is not just a consumer issue (as if there is ever such a thing as 'just a consumer issue'). Unfair bank charges are a significant part of the means by which the banks extract a levy from workers' wages, as is interest on loans and mortgage repayments. These charges necessarily affect the poorest most, as it is they who are most likely to go into the red without being able to anticipate or prevent it. As to the scale of this overcharging, up to a billion pounds had already been repaid to a number of customers by UK banks, and some headlines suggest that they may have had to pay up to £20bn back to 8m customers, plus they would have lost £2.6bn a year they make in profits from the practise. Now they will be able to continue - in the short run at least - to appropriate this particular form of rent from working class wages.

So, here I am on this same old hobby horse again: nationalise the banks already. Take them over. They are public utilities. Debt is a public utility. It should be disbursed on the basis of need, and no one should make any profit from it. At the very least, the banks already partially nationalised should be converted into a socialised banking service (PostBank, The People's Bank, the Woolworths Comeback Tour, you pick the name). I am betting that the costs of running such a system would be so low, and the improvements to service sufficiently great, that millions of customers would switch to it immediately. It could be like the 'public option' of banking, forcing down costs in the short term, and leaving open the possibility of a Kenyan-born Islamofascist turning the country communist in the long run. In the meantime, if you'd like to continue lobbying your bank for some of your money back, check this site out.

Labels: bankers, banks, capitalism, finance capital, profits, recession, wages, working class

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

The more things change, the more New Labour stays the same posted by Richard Seymour

The government, you will be heartened to learn, has something else on its mind aside from prominently displaying its mean streak toward the disabled and single mothers. The cabinet has been sick with worry about your welfare in this recession. For this reason, the nationalised bank Northern Rock, having slashed jobs and shed mortgages from its books for months on end, is now offering some first-time buyers mortgages on 10% deposits. And the government has also persuaded Lloyds to expand its lending to consumers and small businesses, on pain of full nationalisation. Wonderful. Orgasmically peachy. The trouble is that in the current climate, no one wants to borrow, given the real knowledge that they won't be able to pay it back. Who would be a first-time buyer today, when 1.2m households are in negative equity? Who would borrow money for an expensive consumer item that didn't have to? As for small businesses, forget it. Business investment has shrunk by 7.7% across the economy over the last year. Demand is plummetting, there is tons of spare capacity, and businesses are more likely to sell assets and cut jobs than borrow more to invest more.

But before you go drawing the conclusion that senior ministers think in terms of amusing demographoids such as ‘Vauxhall Man’ and ‘Bognor Regis Woman’, and designs policies on the basis of flattering said specimens’ alleged ‘aspirational’ propensities, please consider the stimulus. Because, after all, a giant middle finger aimed in your direction can be quite stimulating. Aside from the fact that the supposed spending increases comprise cash that was already in the pipeline, brought forward a couple of years, don't forget that the Chancellor is still intending to cut public spending by £5bn this year. Schools and hospitals, the latter already suffering from the burden of soaring PFI costs, are expected to fare the worst. There’s your stimulus – do you feel that? So, with unemployment expected to reach 3 million next year, and with the government pushing through cuts in public services and welfare, where are these millions of confident, spendy consumers going to come from to bail out the economy and get investment flowing again? It seems that the government is essentially committed to restoring the City of London and the housing market to their prior importance after the recession. They still think they can rely on the financial sector to generate jobs, and a strong housing market to give people collateral to borrow against. This is the only explanation that I can think of as to why they are still committed to keeping even the worst banks alive as profitable enterprises while refusing to do anything substantial about the massive housing crisis that the country faces.

And even as the government rushes to repeatedly inject billions into the financial system and (temporarily) nationalises failing banks, the rush to privatise existing (and comparatively well-functioning) public services continues. 30% of Royal Mail is to be sold off, following up on the pre-Xmas orders of the latte-moustached Secretary of State for Business Peter Mandelson. This is ostensibly to help recoup sufficient funds to make up for the pensions deficit and introduce modernising measures. The trouble is, the government has already pledged to fund the deficit, and all it is doing is handing over a profitable part of the enterprise to a private company. Taxpayer still gets milked, private capital gets the cream. It has absolutely nothing to do with pensions. This is a move that the government is by no means obliged to undertake. It is not politically popular, it will split the Labour Party, and it has galvanised serious opposition even among ordinarily spineless backbenchers. 125 Labour MPs have signed motions against the policy, and even that former left cheek of Blairism John Prescott is opposed to the plans. The government will have to rely on Tory votes to push the policy through. So, the government's slogan come election 2010 will be: "If you value it, vote for it; then we'll smash it up and sell the parts."

Still, at least you can rely on the government, having alienated voters on the left, to pander to voters on the right who are going to vote Tory anyway. Thus, even as the flow of migrant workers decreases sharply under the impact of recession, the Home Secretary still wants to ban thousands of them. That 'British jobs for British workers' bollocks has a lot to answer for. Meanwhile, Hazel Blears, having been taken to pieces by George Monbiot, is preparing her comeback as an archnemesis of political-correctness-gone-mad, in a madcap re-enactment of Margaret Hodge's campaign to give half of her constituency over to the BNP. When this bizarre mix of haughtiness, arrogance, elitism and pseudo-populism leads to electoral annihilation, Blears will be the first one to blame it on the government's refusal to use her purloined Jimmy Carr jokes in the campaign.

Labels: bankers, banks, financial sector, new labour, postal workers, privatisation, royal mail

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Weirdo nation posted by Richard Seymour

In this country, we do things differently. We have "show trials" without the requisite executions. We have a bailout with little real stimulus (notwithstanding Tory hysterics). We have the slow nationalization of the banks, even as the manic drive toward privatization and cuts in public services continues. We have a government supposedly determined to fight unemployment, while actively shedding jobs. We have a Prime Minister who apparently feels 'betrayed' by the bankers, but persists in giving them the greatest possible latitude because he is in awe of the rich. We have a Chancellor who thinks the economy is at a 60 year low, and a Treasury chief who thinks that we are faced with the worst recession in 100 years, and a government still basing policy on the preposterous idea that this will all be over by 2011 and that the people and policies that got us into this mess can get us out of it. We have the absurd fringe fetish of 'Red Toryism', which tries but fails to add a suggestion of principle to the constant vacillations of the Cameronites. We have polls showing that people don't believe a word Cameron says, think he's a lightweight, don't trust him with the economy, and yet 43% will give him their votes in 2010 because the alternative is Gordon fucking Brown. This is a weirdo nation.

Labels: bankers, economy, financial sector, neoliberalism, new labour, privatisation, tories, uk