LENIN'S TOMB

Friday, September 14, 2012

Chicago teachers' strike posted by Richard Seymour

So, a right-wing provocateur and film-maker infiltrated the big teachers' protest in Chicago yesterday, part of the strike against Emanuel's education 'reforms' (see my article for background). Obviously attempting to make the protest look foolish, he actually made it look amazingly good:

Labels: american ruling class, american working class, chicago, democratic party, militancy, organised labour, socialism, strike, teachers strike, trade unions

Wednesday, July 04, 2012

Marxism 2012 posted by Richard Seymour

Don't forget to come to Marxism 2012, starting tomorrow. There is so much to discuss this year, so many arguments to have, so many people who are wrong about everything, and so much at stake. Greece, austerity, the eurozone, Spain, the coalition, Syria, Egypt, Syriza, Gramsci, Lenin, Althusser, Chinese capitalism, Bolivarianism, the unions, the parties, the bosses, the state, revolution and imperialism. Come. My meeting, you should know, is this Friday at 11.45am, on 'Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism in the Liberal Tradition'. I'll be your badchen for an hour or so, then sign books or talk politics if you want.

Labels: althusser, american anti-imperialism, capitalist state, class, egypt, feminism, gramsci, greece, imperialism, lenin, liberal imperialism, marx, marxism, marxism 2012, race, revolution, socialism, trade unions

Friday, June 22, 2012

London-wide strike: first for thirty years posted by Richard Seymour

My latest for The Guardian deals with today's bus drivers' strike:

The London-wide bus strike today is the first for 30 years. It is an offensive strike, in that rather than defending existing conditions the drivers want something more: a bonus of £500 for their work during the Olympic Games. It is also strategically offensive, since part of the aim of the union is to restore collective bargaining across the capital, rather than conditions being decided at the company level.

The significance of this may be lost on London's transport bosses. Most strike actions in recent years have tended to be defensive, attempting to either prevent or mitigate cutbacks. Moreover, the defining context for most industrial action today is the public sector's attempt to defend itself against the Tories' cuts. In this case, however, the vote for strike action over an offensive issue was 94%. The union says the strike is solid, and TFL is warning of serious disruption. This doesn't suggest that the workers are in a timid mood...

Labels: boris johnson, london, militancy, olympic games, strike, trade unions, working class

Tuesday, May 01, 2012

May Day posted by Richard Seymour

My latest in The Guardian is a brief history of international workers' day:

If you see a history of May Day in the newspapers this year, it is most likely to recount the mystical, medieval origins of a pagan fertility festival. And though you may never have seen a maypole in your life, you will be assured that a ribboned piece of birchwood is the sign and sanction of May Day.

Yet this has little to do with the reason that 1 May is celebrated in Britain, or why it is an international holiday, or why the Occupy movement is planning "global disruption" today. May Day is international workers day. As such, it is – in the words of Eric Hobsbawm – "the only unquestionable dent made by a secular movement in the Christian or any other official calendar". And its past is more rowdy than is suggested by the imagery of Morris dancers serenely waving hankies and bells around...

Labels: internationalism, may day, occupy, socialism, strike, trade unions, working class

Thursday, March 29, 2012

The sinister magic of Boris Johnson posted by Richard Seymour

My article for Open Democracy on Boris Johnson and London's mayoral contest:

In 2008, the outer ring of rich suburbs in the capital turned out en masse to elect Boris Johnson as their mayor. These suburbs, ripe in the spring air with the whiff of barbecues and bigotry, knew what they wanted. A mayor who would cut all the trendy programmes, put the frighteners on young thugs, sock it to the unions and practice a suitable ambiguity toward London’s unsettling multiculture...

Labels: boris johnson, ken livingstone, london, mayor, neoliberalism, reactionaries, sociopaths, thatcherism, tories, trade unions

Monday, January 16, 2012

Austerity in Canada: Canadian Labour at the Crossroads posted by Richard Seymour

Guest post by Doug Nesbitt:

A wage cut of fifty percent. An elimination of pensions. Cuts to benefits.

These demands have inevitably led to a major showdown at a locomotive factory in London, Ontario between the 700 unionized workers of Electro-Motive Diesel and Caterpillar, a massive US-based corporation. The workers, members of Canadian Auto Workers Local 27, responded to the employer’s demands with a positive strike vote of 97 percent. The employer, Progress Rail, a subsidiary of Caterpillar, locked the workers out on New Year’s Day.

In addition to facing down a notorious anti-union employer who hammered the American United Auto Workers in the 1990s, there are plenty of rumours about Caterpillar closing the London plant and moving operations to Muncie, Indiana. EMD workers in London make $CDN 36/hour while their counterparts in Muncie are paid only $CDN 12.50-14.50. Indiana is also on the cusp of becoming the first rust-belt state to introduce a "Right to Work" law, a notorious form of anti-union legislation made possible by the even more infamous Taft-Hartley law of 1947, the long-standing crown jewel of American anti-union legislation.

The response of organized labour to the lock out has been swift. The Ontario Federation of Labour is coordinating a mass rally in London on January 21 with buses coming in from numerous cities across the province and as far away as Sudbury and Ottawa. The OFL is anticipating at least ten thousand protesters.

Mainstream media coverage has also been extensive and the shocking nature of Caterpillar’s demands have so far ensured that coverage has been neutral and even supportive of the workers. The story is being covered by all major Canadian dailies, prime-time news hours on CBC and CTV, and has received coverage in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and now the European and Australian press.

Not surprisingly, the federal government has stayed silent. Since they won their first majority government in May, the Tories have gone to war with organized labour. In June, postal workers were locked out by Canada Post, the state-owned crown corporation. The Tories responded with back-to-work legislation which called for pay increases lower than the employer’s last offer.

Federal Labour Minister Lisa Raitt went further, twice threatening to legislate Air Canada flight attendants back-to-work, even though Air Canada was privatized in 1988. From a party espousing government non-intervention in the economy, Raitt’s reasoning behind intervening in the private sector was that Air Canada was essential to the economy. This absurdity was repeated in October when Raitt floated the idea of defining the “economy” as an “essential service”, thus providing some pseudo-legal justification for further interventions.

The government’s hypocrisy goes further. In March 2008, on the very shop floor of EMD London, Prime Minister Harper announced a billion dollar tax break to industry in 2008, $5 million of which went to EMD London. Two years later, EMD London was purchased by Caterpillar.

Despite its record high revenue and profits in 2011, stemming from sales of its machinery to a booming resource sector (tar sands, mining), Caterpillar is attempting to destroy a union. In addition to their anti-union stance, the threat of roughly two thousand jobs being lost in London, and their profiting off environmental disasters like the tar sands and mining operations around the world, Caterpillar supplies Israel the bulldozers it uses to carry out house demolitions in occupied Palestine.

This leaves labour – and all the political allies of labour – at a crossroads in this high profile, high stakes clash between workers and state-blessed corporate power. The implications for other workers – such as Toronto municipal workers, the locked steelworkers of Alma, Quebec, the York Region Transit workers, and all other workers, union and non-union – couldn’t be greater. Since the Tory victory in May, employers, public and private, have received the message loud and clear: the federal government is siding with them in a sustained attempt to hold down wages and benefits, slash them where possible, and break the ability of workers to resist these moves by breaking their only means of defence: unions.

Is labour up to the challenge? The OFL has already moved the rally’s location from the picket lines outside the factory, to downtown London’s Victoria Park eight kilometres away. The move is explained by the OFL as ten thousand being too many for it to be “safe” on the picket line. What nonsense is this? Fifteen thousand pickets peacefully shut down the Port of Oakland last November in an Occupy-initiated general strike.

Holding the rally in Victoria Park will ensure that is a symbolic display of opposition and nothing more. Only a few hundred of the ten thousand will likely take up Local 27’s invite to the picket lines after the rally. Thousands of protesters will be boarding buses after the downtown rally to head back home and won’t have time to make it to the picket lines.

If you’re having deja vu, you’re not alone. Last year, ten thousand people from across Ontario attended the Hamilton Day of Action against US Steel held January 29, 2011. On the steps of Hamilton City Hall, union leaders and labour politicians denounced the lockout and backed the steelworkers refusing to see their pensions gutted by US Steel. A short march made it around a few cold and deserted downtown blocks before returning to City Hall. As one of the hundreds who lined up for union-sponsored buses back to their respective hometowns, I later that we had marched past the old Stelco building, US Steel’s Hamilton office, without even stopping to do anything.

The days of action in Hamilton and London may boost the spirits of locked out workers, but what will it accomplish beyond this? In the wake of Occupy as well as the Capitol Building occupation in Wisconsin last year against the stripping of public sector bargaining rights, the time seems ripe for bolder action. Bold action could galvanize thousands of Canadians angry at the Tories and the one percent, could overturn the limited range of Canada’s political debates, and maybe just put employers and the Tories on the back foot for once.

The battle at EMD might be lost, but it could still be a turning point for labour by showing a new determination to take more controversial but increasingly necessary actions to counter the “race to the bottom” overseen by an entrenched federal government keen on hammering workers and dismantling hard-won social programs.

Drawing on the Occupy movement, the Spanish Indignados, and the Republic Windows and Doors occupation in Chicago from late 2008, occupying EMD London should be on labour’s agenda. In this sense, moving ten thousand pickets away from the factory is a lost opportunity for initiating the occupation. If this sounds too radical, Egypt and Occupy have changed what’s possible – an occupation could be a galvanizing moment for Canadians and become a worldwide beacon of resistance. And the story of EMD London exposes so clearly the intertwined problems of corporate greed and tax breaks, the war against workers, failing democratic institutions, environmental destruction and imperialism. And what better union than the Canadian Auto Workers, founded on the plant occupations in Flint and Oshawa in 1936 and 1937, to carry this out?

Even if an occupation doesn’t happen but the demand is shouted loud enough – “Occupy EMD!” – it normalizes the idea among networks of workers and activists and lays the groundwork for occupations taking place in inevitable future labour disputes.

The decision to occupy will have to be taken by EMD London workers themselves. But solidarity actions can be carried out across Ontario and beyond. Caterpillar owns Battlefield Equipment Rentals with over 30 locations in Ontario, two in Manitoba and five in Newfoundland. The activist networks built up by the Occupy movement could link up even more with trade unionists to spread the resistance to Caterpillar far beyond London itself. This is what Americans did last August when dozens of Verizon Wireless stores across the country were picketed in solidarity with the communication workers strike against Verizon. The union, Communications Workers of America, even launched an “adopt-a-store” campaign for local activists to show their support, leading to many weekly pickets of Verizon Wireless stores.

Where Battlefield Equipment Rentals can’t be found, pressure can be put on the 166 Tory MPs riding offices in every province, highlighting government complicity with the corporate tax breaks to EMD London. Ottawa labour activists already showed this could be done when they occupied John Baird’s riding office during the postal worker lockout.

In short, the Canadian labour movement needs to reinvent itself and abandon the long-standing attitude towards conciliatory relations with employers, hopeless appeals for government intervention, and a general neglect of the wider, non-union working-class. The lockout in London makes this reinvention both necessary and possible. London could be the place where the labour movement – or at least a substantial minority of activists, union and non-union – recovers a tradition of militancy on behalf of the whole working class and sees itself as a collective force for economic and political justice and transformation.

About the Author

Doug Nesbitt is Co-Chief Steward of PSAC 901 representing Queen’s University Teaching Assistants and Fellows. He was born and raised in London, Ontario and now lives in Kingston pursuing a PhD in History at Queen’s. He also co-hosts Rank and File Radio, a weekly labour news program on CFRC 101.9FM.

Labels: austerity, canada, capitalism, class struggle, labour, liberals, occupy wall street, tories, trade unions, working class

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

From the clutches of (partial) victory posted by Richard Seymour

It can't be that often that a Tory minister, anxious to look smart, does something stupid. Can it? I have watched this government with some perplexity, wondering if I have underestimated its cunning, or if they really do think they can arouse the whole labour movement and organised left in unified opposition, and trounce them in a jiffy. Their complacency as they embarked on a structural adjustment programme more extreme in its intended effects than anything accomplished by Thatcher, whether the blowback comes in the form of student protests, riots or strikes, seems extraordinary. Seemingly convinced that they need not offer any material substratum to secure the consent of a viable social bloc for their agenda, they simply turn to harsher policing. Apparently unable to imagine the riff-raff posing a real threat to them and their superior class allies, they forget the old salami-slicing praxis and just revel in the reluctance of their opponents to fight, pushing them around, taking their provocations to indulgent, extravagant new levels.

And just when it seemed that the government had finally revisited the old techniques of divide-and-rule, offering just enough concessions to win tacit acquiescence from Unison and GMB leaders while attacking and isolating the PCS, Pickles goes and spoils it all by saying something stupid that destroys it. For sure, the deal announced between the government and (some) unions over pensions was awful, so awful that it was a real question whether rank and file workers could be made to swallow it. The government conceded nothing in terms of its bargaining totals, nor the principle issues over which the two sides were in negotiation. Even a moderate, media-friendly Labourite like Sally Bercow was denouncing the agreement as a sell out yesterday. The idea that those who hit the pickets and streets on 30th November were more likely to take such a deal is dubious. But evidently the union bureaucracies who have been most reluctant to fight are now the most eager to call of hostilities and negotiate the terms of surrender. Without the support of union leaders in the big Labour-affiliated unions, getting strike action back on the agenda for the New Year is that bit harder. So, it is only reasonable to infer that Pickles just blew a tactical victory for the government.

The problem now is that the government and the union leaders will be back around the table to patch this up quickly, rush the deal through and make it a fait accompli as soon as possible. Trade unionists are now planning an emergency lobby of the TUC over this, to go with the emergency meeting (you should go) and emergency statement (I invite you to sign). This is a pivotal moment in the struggle against austerity. So much hangs on whether the organised labour movement will even put up a fight. That will make all the different between the vindication of Tory arrogance, and its humiliating reproof.

Labels: class struggle, labour, liberals, public sector workers, strike, tories, trade unions, working class

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

On Democracy Now about Nov 30th posted by Richard Seymour

Labels: austerity, class struggle, public sector workers, strikes, tories, trade unions

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Nov 30th posted by Richard Seymour

My ABC article explaining the background to tomorrow's strike:

The public sector strike on November 30 will be the largest strike in the UK since the general strike of 1926.
Two to three million workers could take part. Unlike our continental counterparts, coordinated strikes of this kind are extremely rare in the British trade union movement. As such, its political importance, if the action is successful, will be much greater than in the continent.
Why has it come to this? In a sense, the answer is obvious. 'Austerity' involves the most serious attempt to restructure the economy, to the detriment of working class living standards, in decades. It involves reducing wages and pensions, diminishing bargaining rights, cutting jobs and reducing the bargaining power of labour. Everywhere that these measures have been introduced, whether in Wisconsin or Greece, there has been resistance.
Yet, there was no guarantee that the British trade union movement would respond in the way that it has. Decades of declining union composition since the serious defeats inflicted on organised labour – notably, on the miners and the print workers – have left unions in a weaker position.
The orthodoxy among trade union leaders since then has been a form of tactical conservatism known as the 'new realism'. This approach involved unions avoiding confrontation in favour of bargaining with the government of the day. Every sign until last year was that the Trade Unions Congress (TUC) would adopt this approach in dealing with the government's cuts, negotiating to mitigate the effects of cutbacks rather than seriously attempting to obstruct them. Indeed, before grumblings from the shop floor scuppered the plan, union leaders had intended to invite prime minister David Cameron to address congress last year. So, what changed?

Labels: austerity, class struggle, cuts, militancy, public opinion, public sector workers, strikes, tories, trade unions

Monday, November 28, 2011

Strong public support for strikes posted by Richard Seymour

The government has lost the argument:

An opinion poll commissioned by BBC News suggests 61% of people believe public sector workers are justified in going on strike over pension changes.
More than two million people are due to walk out on Wednesday.
The research also indicates differences between men and women in their outlook on the strikes and the economy.
The polling firm Comres interviewed 1,005 adults by telephone across England, Scotland and Wales one week ago.
The poll indicates greater sympathy for the industrial action among women - at 67% - compared with men, at 55%.
Younger people, it also suggests, are considerably more supportive of the strikes than pensioners; almost four in five 18 to 24-year-olds back the action, a little under half of over-65s do.

Labels: class struggle, coalition, labour, liberals, militancy, public opinion, public sector workers, strike, tories, trade unions

Sunday, November 27, 2011

November 30 posted by Richard Seymour

Just a quick note. The political class knows that this strike is going to be huge. For a while, I detected an attempt to play it down, to say that it wouldn't be as big as planned, or to suggest that it would be welcome because the disruption would drive people into the arms of the coalitions and its cuts agenda. But the results from all of the unions have been unambiguous. In most cases, the vote for strike action has been in excess of 80%, and in all cases over 70%. That's an overwhelming mandate for a fight, right across the organised core of the working class. Now the stories of the scale of disruption anticipated are starting to pile up. Worse, the government fears that the strike itself will harden the attitude of the workers, making it more difficult for the union bosses to sell them a duff deal. Now, mark this. Labour, whose leader has repeatedly turned his rhetoric against the strikes, is starting to sound a slightly different note. Alan Johnson, the leading Labour right-winger (and a likely successor to Ed Miliband) came out and defended the strikers, saying: "If they can’t [strike] over an issue as important as their pensions then what can they take industrial action over?" Now, the shadow chancellor Ed Balls has felt compelled to add his "huge sympathy" for the strikers, and blamed the government. The political class are beginning to take note: as Mark Serwotka points out, this is the beginning and not the end of the struggle, but Britain will be a very different place on the day after November 30th.

Labels: austerity, class struggle, cuts, labour, liberals, public sector workers, tories, trade unions, working class

Monday, September 26, 2011

Review of 'Chavs' by Owen Jones posted by Richard Seymour

Guest post by Callum:

Since its publication earlier this year, Owen Jones’ Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class seems to have caught the mood. Longlisted for the Guardian first book award, the book has gained positive write-ups in publications as diverse as the New York Times and Socialist Review. Media interest in the book and its author spiked in the aftermath of the riots, taken by the Right to be the surest sign yet of the existence of a pre-social class beyond all redemption. Jones’ front-row seat to David Starkey’s meltdown on Newsnight was one unfortunate outcome of the increased demand for his insight.

The thesis of the book is one readers of the Tomb will be familiar with and sympathetic to. It goes something like this: on the back of its institutions and communities being decimated by 30 years of neo-liberal class warfare, the working class has been turned into an object of ridicule for Britain’s triumphant rulers. The vision of working class life dominant among political and cultural elites is of a thick, violent, criminal, over-sexed and proto-fascist rump whose ‘social problems’ are all of their own making. Robbed of the collective identity and sense of power that came with a strong trade union and Labour movement, the working class has been rendered defenceless to an onslaught launched by a media and political establishment dominated by the well-heeled.

The first reaction provoked by the book is one of anger. The author does an excellent job of building up evidence of the class bigotry that infects British public life. Given the invidious task of wading through the shit emanating from a variety of sources, from the detestable website ChavTowns, to the editorial pages of our newspapers, both broadsheet and tabloid, Jones convincingly demonstrates the hatred and bile that poor people have been on the end of in the last decade or so. Careful not to let his study become an account of ‘cultural oppression’, the author is always quick to relate his vignettes of mockery to political and economic processes. In a public discourse desperate to convince itself of the reality of Blair’s feted ‘meritocracy’, the poor had to be made responsible for their own poverty. The figure of the chav rump helped to feed the lie that ‘we’re all middle class’ and justify the gradual elimination of working class voices from the political debate.

Chavs is at its strongest when debunking this myth of the middle-class majority. While honest about the real damage and social disarticulation caused by the collapse of industry in some areas of the country, it paints a picture of a working class that has been transformed rather than abolished. Jones points out the grim reality of the ‘weightless economy’ for tens of millions of working class people. Whereas jobs in traditional industries were relatively well-paid, secure and high-status, the labour market that has replaced them is largely filled with badly paid, unsecure and low-status jobs in retail and ‘customer service’. The trade unions have struggled to reproduce the strength they had in the ‘old’ industries in the call centres and supermarkets that employ millions of working class people. This has had the effect of a creating a class that “objectively” is as numerous and economically vital as ever but “subjectively” experiences the world as a collection of isolated fragments, with no way to express politically its common interests. Chavs paints a picture of a working class that has been dislocated from its traditional strongholds in the trade union and socialist movement and is sorely lacking political representation.

This political weakness, Owen claims, lies at the heart of the cultural beating the working class has taken. In earlier days, our rulers were afraid of the ‘resolute mass brandishing red flags and carrying dog-eared copies of the Communist Manifesto’ and this sense of working class power was reflected in relatively favourable, if patronizing, depictions of working class life in popular entertainment. With the trade unions smashed (one issue I had with the book is that it tends to slightly exaggerate the scale of the defeat of the trade unions) and the Labour Party reduced to a neo-liberal husk, ruling class fear of the proletarian mass has given way to derision.

The problem of working class representation is central to the book’s political message. While the author is no doubt correct to emphasize the effects New Labour’s dismissive attitude to the party’s working class supporters, to have the question of ‘representation’ as the main focus seems to miss the point somewhat. Jones, a left-wing member of the Labour Party, seems at certain points to assign the working class a purely passive role in its potential re-awakening. He appears to see the working class as an abused ‘constituency’ of potential Labour voters who need to be mobilized by the right messaging and policy portfolio.

Those of us from a different socialist tradition would instead stress that a new working class movement with a strong sense of collective interest and identity can only emerge through a process of class struggle. Simply waiting, as Chavs sometimes seems to suggest we ought to, for some Labour MPs (or even Ed Miliband) to break ranks with the neo-liberal orthodoxy and speak about working class life is, to put it comradely, not sufficient as a political strategy. The strikes proposed for November 30^th could be set in motion a process in which the question of working class representation is posed concretely. If so, our political horizons will hopefully extend beyond putting pressure on E. Miliband to release some conciliatory press statements

In a chapter of the book entitled ‘Backlash’, Jones broaches the subject of the recent return of class into the political debate in the form of reactionary invocations of the so-called ‘white working class’. Again, regular readers of this blog will be aware of the debates surrounding this term. At this point, the author seems to lose some of the admirable single-mindedness that marks the rest of the argument. On the one hand, he gives short-shrift to the idea that the so-called ‘white working class’ are a bunch of drink-fuelled bigots who are just gullible fodder for fascist snake-oil salesmen. The working class, as he points out, is multiracial and multicultural. In a trip to Dagenham, a BNP stronghold before they were wiped out at the last election, the author meets anti-racist campaigners and ordinary locals disgusted with the fascist presence in the borough. He also meets worried locals airing what we have come to know as ‘legitimate grievances’ about the effects of immigration on the social housing stock in particular. (Jones points out that non-British nationals occupied just 5 percent of the council houses in the borough).

At this point however, the book veers into uncertainty. A discussion of the problem of fascism in economically depressed boroughs of London quickly morphs into a rather lazy attack on the contemporary political Left. The BNP’s support, the book suggests, results from a successful strategy of ‘community politics’ that the Left could learn from. BNP action on issues like ‘litter’ and ‘anti-social behaviour’ gave them a root in working class communities in which the political Left is largely missing. While the far-right were listening to the concerns of local working class people, the Left is charged with retreating into ‘identity politics’ and being more interested in ‘manning a stall about Gaza outside a university campus’ than in the “bread-and-butter” issues.[1]

Jones admits that things like war and widespread Islamophobia are important issues, and points out for instance that opposition to the war in Afghanistan in higher among poorer people, but, he says, the ‘problem comes with the priority given by the left to international issues’. Many working-class people care about these issues but not ‘above housing and jobs’. In other words, we can talk about what is going on in Helmand province or the treatment of the Palestinians but only after Mrs. Smith down the road has had her leaky drainpipe fixed.

No doubt to some readers Owen’s position will strike a chord, and maybe even come off as reassuringly “practically-minded” to others. Socialism focussed on local issues perhaps sounds “authentic” compared to abstract denunciations of crimes going on far away. Unfortunately, as soon as one interrogates this separation of bread-and-butter “class” issues from “international” issues, it becomes clear that there is nothing to it.

Take the issue of war: I do not want to be silly and make the clichéd polemical points, but they seem necessary. Firstly, it is an army disproportionately drawn from working class communities that is fighting and dying in the British state’s wars. I don’t suppose that there is an issue more ‘bread-and-butter’ for working class people than whether their sons and daughters should risk be risking their lives in ridiculous imperialist adventures. (I say this as someone whose cousin is currently posted in Afghanistan). Secondly, the argument that the billions spent bombing other countries could have been spent more productively on public services here is the most simple and easily understandable argument in the world to make to ordinary people. It also happens to be true.

More fundamentally, however, you cannot separate these issues because the political and cultural conditions created by a decade of war directly feed into the anxiety and division that prevent the emergence of working class unity. As Jones himself admits in the book, there is a connection between the traction gained by Islamophobia in this country and the fact that Britain is ostensibly fighting ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ abroad. In this sense, it is just not practical to say that we can sideline the “international” issues until we have a new class politics. Rather, a new class politics is only possible if it has a critique of Britain’s imperial ambitions at its centre. Sacrificing the construction of an anti-war movement in an effort to found a new class politics makes both things less likely.

One other major weakness with the book lies with its sheepishness when it came to identifying the class enemy, so to speak. We get much talk of elite politicians and journalists and the ‘middle classes’ and so on, but we get almost no mention of capitalists. The book’s index contains precisely zero entries for ‘capitalism’ or ‘capitalist’. (It also contains very little mention of socialism, except to slag off existing groups). You could pass this off as a meaningless terminological difference. It is clear where the author’s political allegiances lie.

It must be true, however, that if the left is to direct the anger created by the crisis and now austerity at those responsible, we are going to want to know who they are and give them a name. It could of course be ‘politicians’ or the ‘middle classes’, but unfortunately these categories are too diverse to form a stable enough referent for an oppositional political movement. It is also clear that having ‘politicians’ as such as a political enemy can quickly detour in a reactionary direction. The movement of the ‘indignant’ in Spain seem to have progressed slightly and has spoken of the ‘system’ as the enemy, but even this misses something. The value of the term capitalist is that it gets to the root of the division in our society – between those who own and tell others what to do and those who do not own and must take orders from others.

These political differences aside, I would recommend Chavs to readers. The enthusiasm with which the book has been greeted reflects, I think, a desire to put to bed the obscurantism of the New Labour era on the question of class. In an age when the working class is rendered either invisible or is invoked only as a repository of an ugly ressentiment, the book reminds us of the potential political and economic power that exists largely untapped in British society. While I think the solutions to the current state of class politics offered by Chavs are limited, the author ought to be thanked for creating a space in which discussion of this topic is again possible.

[1] As a side note, I have always been slightly puzzled by the claim that the far-right talks about ‘bread-and-butter’ issues that the Left ignores. At a time when the Left and the trade unions are mounting a campaign against the biggest assault on working class interests and communities in a generation, what is the main issue for the so-called ‘populist’ far-right? Whether Nando’s chicken is Halal.

Labels: 'chav', class struggle, labour, labour left, neoliberalism, reactionaries, ruling class, tories, trade unions, working class

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

The mass strike comes to Britain posted by Richard Seymour

You'll have gathered that I'm immersed in work at the moment, but it's definitely worth pausing to notice this. The leaders of every major trade union in Britain, from Unison and Unite to the PCS, GMB, NUT, FBU, and others have reportedly said they will back coordinated strike action on 30th November. They have named the day. This could result in 3 million workers on strike, the biggest single day of strike action in the UK since 1926. My article on the previous strike a few months back put it like this:

If Unison did join national strike action in October, and Unite participated along with the smaller unions, it would constitute a sea change in the culture of industrial relations in this country. Such co-ordinated action would be as close to a general strike as we've seen in Britain since 1926. It would have a much bigger impact in the UK than in the continent, where general strikes are a more regular occurrence. It would shock the government to its core.

That remains the case. Stuart Hall, writing in The Guardian the other day, warned that "popular thinking and the systems of calculation in daily life offer very little friction to the passage of [the Tories'] ideas". There is a great deal to this, and this is why people need a sense of their collective power. Importantly, a number of union leaders are talking about defying anti-union legislation, which has been one of the factors inhibiting militancy since the Thatcher era. It would, of course, be foolish to assume that what union leaders promise at conference will materialise without a struggle. The ballots are still to be held. Even if they are passed, union leaders can wobble and call off strike action. The government, if it panics, may offer the major unions just enough concessions to cause them to back off. The success of the strike ballots as well as the success of the action on the day depends on the arguments had, and alliances forged, between now and November.

Labels: class struggle, david cameron, general strike, neoliberalism, public sector workers, strike, tories, trade unions, working class

Monday, July 18, 2011

Unite reaches out to students and the unemployed. posted by Richard Seymour

I think this is excellent news:

Britain's largest trade union, Unite, is launching cut-price memberships for students and the unemployed as it attempts to boost its ranks and counter David Cameron's "big society".
Unite will offer students, single parents and the jobless 50p per week "community memberships" as it focuses on neighbourhoods as well as workplaces. Trade unions are battling falling membership numbers and government spending cuts that will put their finances under further threat by eliminating public sector jobs – their most fertile recruiting ground.
In an interview with the Guardian, the general secretary of Unite, Len McCluskey, also warned that strikes by millions of state employees are "inevitable" this autumn because of government inflexibility over pension reforms, while he criticised Labour party leader Ed Miliband for an "ill-advised" attack on last month's public sector walkouts...

Unite leaders are in a position to know that mergers and other short-cuts to holding back the decline of union density have proven to be ineffective in the long run. They need to engage in major recruitment campaigns, and inviting students and the unemployed to be trade unionists in defence of their community is a great basis for doing this. I hope it signals the beginning of a nationwide outreach campaign.

Labels: austerity, class struggle, labour, tories, trade unions, unite union, working class

Thursday, July 14, 2011

How can the Left win? posted by Richard Seymour

An updated and expanded version of my previous for Jacobin magazine:

The thrust of this article, focusing on the UK, will be that the Right has so far had the initiative because it has successfully piloted a series of ideological articulations that speak to a certain neoliberal ”common sense” and thus plausibly explain and offer solutions to the crisis. These articulations mediate between popular discontent (manifested in loathing of the bankers, distrust of the parliamentary process, and fear of penury) and ruling class imperatives. This strategy is obviously not limited to the Right: the Democrats in the US and social democratic parties in Europe perform a classically ”transformist” role, absorbing the elements of dissatisfaction among subaltern groups, expunging their oppositional content, and incorporating them into a politics of the pro-capitalist centre. Nonetheless, it is the Right that has played the dominant role in securing the ”austerity” narrative, tailed by the center and center-left. This shouldn’t be surprising. In organic crises, the forces best equipped to adapt and re-deploy are those of the ruling class and its allied parties.

For the Left to win, it needs to find adequate modes of political organization and an appropriate series of ideological mediations that explain the crisis, mobilize points of discontent and maintain the unity of the anti-austerity alliance. This should not be seen as opposed to ”industrial” struggles; rather, it will have a formative, organizing role in the economic class struggle, ensuring that localized conflicts are generalized (rather than isolated in a way that allows them to be picked off one by one by the ruling class), and giving the working class a chance to move into a ”hegemonic” moment in which it both leads and incorporates the interests and perspectives of allied groups. In none of the advanced capitalist states are revolutionary groups currently in a position to challenge for leadership of the working class – far from it – but they should be ready to take the initiative in alliance with sections of the social democratic left, as well as the left-of-social-democratic left...

Labels: anticapitalism, austerity, capitalism, capitalist crisis, class struggle, left, socialist strategy, tories, trade unions

Wednesday, July 06, 2011

What next after #30June? posted by Richard Seymour

About three quarters of a million workers took strike action on 30th June. This wasn't as big as some strikes in recent years, and certainly nothing close to the 'winter of discontent' evoked by the right-wing press. But I think it was far more important than the previous ones of the last decade, because it was a) far more political, b) not simply a sectional strike over conditions, and c) rooted in certain grassroots responses to austerity. It followed from a mass demonstration in London that was a concentrated manifestation of the working class in this country, representing far more than just the trade unionists present. At a big building meeting for the strike in the week before it happened, there was a wide variety of trade unions, parties and campaigning groups present. You can watch some of the videos from the event here. Here's a list of the groups represented:

Action for ESOL. Black Activists Rising Against Cuts (BARAC), Brent Fightback, Camden Keep Our NHS Public, Camden United Against the Cuts, Central London Right to Work, Coalition of Resistance (CoR), CWU London Region, CWU North/North West London, Day-mer (Turkish and Kurdish Community Centre), Defend the Right to Protest, Disabled People Against the Cuts (DPAC), Ealing Alliance for Public Services, Education Activist Network, Hackney Pensioners Group, Hands Off Our NHS, Islington Disabled People Against the Cuts, Islington Hands Off Our Public Services (IHOOPS), Keep Our NHS Public, National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN), NUJ London Magazine, NUT Camden, NUT Croydon, NUT Ealing, NUT East London Teachers Association, NUT Hackney, NUT Islington, NUT Islington 6th Form College, NUT Newham, NUT Southwark, NUT Wellington Park Primary School, PCS Central London Valuation , PCS DWP North London, PCS Euston Towers, PCS LPS London & South branch, PCS Office of the Public Guardian, Queer Resistance, Right to Work (RtW), RMT Eurostar, RMT Fleet branch, Southwark Save Our Services, TUC Barnet, TUC Greenwich & Bexley, TUC Haringey, TUC Slough, TUC Waltham Forest, UCU City & Islington College, UCU City of Westminster, UCU Conel, UCU Greenwich Community College, UCU Hackney, UCU Kings College, UCU Lambeth College, UCU Left, UCU Lewisham, UCU London Metropolitan, UCU London Region, UCU Richmond College, UCU South Bank University , UCU Tower Hamlets, UCU Westminster Kingsway, UK Uncut, Unison Camden, Unison Haringey, Unison LFEPA, Unison Tower Hamlets, Unison United Left.

I'm not bigging up diversity for the sake of it. Many of these groups would overlap in terms of their activists and politics, and anyway I don't suppose every group has the same social weight. But the point is that among these are groups that really need to work together, as well as some that aren't rooted in the labour movement but have nonetheless understood the importance of supporting it - just as the student movement has. Take UK Uncut, for example. It's contribution to the strike was a simple gesture of solidarity: they brought breakfast to striking workers on the picket lines. In a previous post, I argued that UK Uncut's major contribution so far had been to shift the field of signification, forcing a different kind of discussion about tax and spending into the mainstream media. This is doing a bit more than that, I would venture - it's building relationships between anti-cuts activists who aren't necessarily unionised and trade union activists whom the media try to pick on and single out as some sort of gluttonous alien presence within an abstemious, belt-tightening society.

Of course it isn't only UK Uncut that are doing this sort of thing, but it's an imaginative intervention. Such relationships need to be expanded and deepened. There will be more strikes. There needs to be a lot more industrial action if this government is to be defeated. And when that happens, communities of activists able to back up the strikers, counter the propaganda, raise funds, connect their strikes to wider political objectives, etc., will be essential. So, 30th June was an excellent start. And there will be a series of political campaigns between now and the next wave of strikes in Autumn - the campaign to save the NHS now being launched, for example, as well as the demonstrations outside Tory and Liberal conferences, which should be big - to keep the momentum going. Moreover, there will be furious debates in those unions such as the GMB, Unison, and Unite, which didn't participate in these strikes. The Labour leadership has made it very clear that it is opposing any strike action while negotiations are ongoing (even though, as Francis Maude made abundantly clear in his floundering BBC Radio 4 interview on the day of the strike, the government isn't actually negotiating on the main issues). I expect that this is part of the reason why the union leadership that is closest to the Labour leadership has felt compelled to sit the recent strike waves out. So, rather sooner than I expected, the anti-cuts movement is posing a hard question for the labour movement. Ed Miliband has signalled that he wants to reduce union influence in the Labour Party, and is broadly tilting toward the right, particularly the 'Blue Labour' types. The question now is whether the unions closest to Labour will act independently, or waste their energies trying to buttress a weak leadership for fear of something worse following him. Similarly, the CWU now faces the question of whether it will support strike action to stop the closure of mail centres in London, which are known to be militant strongholds being targeted to facilitate privatization. But there's more to it than this.

I argued before that a precondition of the success of anti-cuts movements was 1) a plausible, popular explanation of the crisis, 2) a set of solutions based on that explanation (an alternative economic strategy), 3) a unified political movement capable of taking those arguments to a wider public. I would pose this in opposition to what might loosely be termed 'syndicalist' responses to the cuts. These would involve the idea that 'struggle' alone is a sufficient basis for action, and that such 'struggle' can be conducted independently of the existing mass parties and unions, almost without reference to fixed political norms or concepts. Perhaps that doesn't seem to be a pressing danger. But syndicalism arises historically where the extant labour bureaucracies and associated reformist parties have become too invested in the current bargaining system to really fight for the interests of workers. I'm not really convinced we're at that stage with the trade unions, but in countries where reformist parties are in power, and implementing cuts, and doing so with the acquiescence of union leaders, such tendencies have already manifested themselves in one form or another. I can well see it becoming a tendency here among younger, unorganised activists.

But David McNally raised a different kind of issue in his talk on new socialisms, specifically with reference to Bolivia and Egypt. It was the issue of how to build a popular labour-based response to neoliberalism in a context in which traditional unionism is either in serious difficulty or has been repressed by the state. In Bolivia, elements of the labour movement recognised that workplaces in the neoliberal era were becoming very different to traditional mass production outlets, and as such unions were finding it harder to organise. Not only that, of course. The Bolivian working class also had to contend with imperialism in the form of the IMF and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA, now happily replaced with ALBA). The production centres were smaller, more geographically scattered, and were more difficult to reach. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the most class conscious sector of workers in the Americas was subject to continual erosion so that by the end of the 1990s, the organised working class represented just a fifth of the total urban working class. As a result, some activists turned toward outreach work, setting up stalls in town and city centres, inviting people to join unions. (For what it's worth, this part of McNally's analysis comes straight from Jeffrey Webber's book From Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia, which is thus far the best guide to the subject of the country's leftist turn since Cochabamba). The result was the leftist upsurge that resulted in a near revolutionary situation in 2005, followed by the election of Evo Morales.

A huge problem facing organisers in this country is the depletion of the density not only of the trade union movement, but also its militant rank and file. Martin Smith discusses these tendencies in his recent article on the trade union movement in the UK:

The decline of union reps over the last 25 years is worrying, but it is explainable. In 1970 there were around 200,000 stewards in Britain; by 1984 they had reached the 335,000 mark. This dramatic increase was due to the rising levels of militancy and the growth of trade unionism in the white-collar sectors—local government, civil service and health. There then followed a sharp fall in union membership and an even bigger fall in the number of shop stewards. As Ralph Darlington points out, recent estimates vary considerably: some believe that the number of stewards in 2004 was around 100,000, others as high as 200,000. Whatever the truth, it is a serious decline and one rooted in the defeat of key sections of the working class in the 1980s and the decline in industries with strong union representation.

The problem therefore is not wholly dissimilar to that in Bolivia, as a combination of defeats and the re-composition of the class has left the organised core of the working class slump to less than a third. Is there a case for an outreach campaign here? Surely there is. It would make perfect sense for the unions to be engaging in a mass recruitment drive on the basis of resisting the attack on working class communities. Organising and reaching into new workplaces would solve a number of problems. It would it do what mergers and so on have failed to do, in halting the decline in union density. It would help overcome the division that the Tories and Liberals are trying to create between public and private sector workers. And it would also be an important chance to articulate the union's case to members of the public well beyond those who attend organising meetings or protests. Ideally, such drives would involve the full range of anti-cuts bodies and activists. That, I think, would be an appropriate merger between the indignados and rank and file militants of the UK.

Labels: anti-cuts, austerity, labour, socialism, tories, trade unions, working class

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Greece protests posted by Richard Seymour

A 48 hour general strike has begun in Greece. Protests in the capital are being attacked by police. You can watch live footage of the protests here:

LIVE STREAMING: Γενική Απεργία ενάντια στο... by News247

Labels: austerity, capitalism, capitalist crisis, class struggle, eu, greece, neoliberalism, pasok, protest, trade unions

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Tories: losing the argument, sparking the fightback posted by Richard Seymour

The push for coordinated strike action was given another huge boost today, with overwhelming votes in the NUT and ATL teaching unions for strike action. My piece on why this is very, very bad news for the Tories:

The NUT and ATL teaching unions have both voted to endorse strike action over the government's changes to pensions. In the NUT, the "yes" vote was overwhelming – some 92%. In the ATL, a traditionally conservative union, the vote was hardly less compelling, with 83% backing strike action. The government's plans involve teachers working longer, paying more and getting less at the end of their working lives. Teachers will be expected to work until they're 68, increase contributions by up to 50%, and will receive a lower pension based on a new "career average" index when they retire. Their rejection of this could not be clearer, and the teachers' yes vote opens the way to mass, co-ordinated strike action on 30 June and beyond...

Labels: austerity, capitalism, class struggle, cuts, neoliberalism, tories, trade unions, working class

Monday, June 06, 2011

The Sage of Twickenham Strikes posted by Richard Seymour

Vince Cable threatens the unions, then turns up to speak at one of their rallies:

Labels: class struggle, coalition, democracy, lib dems, liberals, militancy, strikes, trade unions, vince cable

Unite the Resistance posted by Richard Seymour

Just fyi, there is to be a very important meeting for anti-cuts activists and trade unionists on 22 June, the week before the big 30 June strike action. Its call is to 'Unite the Resistance'. Sponsors include UK Uncut, Right to Work, Coalition of Resistance, the National Shop Stewards Network, and a list of trade union branches - which looks like uniting the resistance.

'Unite the Resistance': Wed 22 June, 6.30pm, Friends Meeting House, 173 Euston Road (opposite Euston Station)

Labels: austerity, capitalist crisis, class struggle, cuts, neoliberalism, tories, trade unions