LENIN'S TOMB

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

The worst has yet to come posted by Richard Seymour

I wrote this for Jacobin:

Recently, I proposed a few points about the conjuncture in Britain. None of these were offered in the spirit of hard and fast conclusions, but the aim was to begin to explain the stability and longevity of the coalition government in the face of quite serious social resistance despite its obvious weaknesses. One factor that certainly needs to be added to this list is the delayed, protracted nature of the crisis facing the British working class.

It is often said that this government forgot the lesson that the Thatcherites learned: the need to salami slice one’s opponents, taking on weaker quarries first and only moving on to larger prey after a few demonstrative kills. This government seems to be taking on everyone at once. Its attacks on the public sector have at times seemed to be reckless, its negotiating stances absurdly hubristic, the sweep of its offensive indiscriminate. Yet the two parties of government still have a plurality between them; they aren’t attacking everyone at once, they are attacking certain definite social constituencies, which are traditionally core Labour constituencies. Of course, in the context of the wider capitalist offensive, this means that the vast majority of the working class, and a significant section of the middle class, suffers. But they are doing so in a staged, multilayered fashion, and that has made a difference...

Labels: anti-capitalism, austerity, british capitalism, capitalism, capitalist offensive, the meaning of david cameron, tories, working class

Friday, September 28, 2012

A few points about the conjuncture in Britain posted by Richard Seymour

Like most socialists, I follow the Sard, who said that he didn't like to throw stones in the dark. That is to say, he always needed some opposition to stimulate his thinking about situations, philosophical problems, historical controversies, or political methods. A few recent arguments with people who are wrong, prompted a few thoughts-in-progress about how to analyse the conjuncture.

I. The primacy of politics. This doesn't refer specifically to the Leninist thesis of the primacy of politics which has a general application; rather it refers to the dominant level at which the major social antagonisms are going to be fought over and resolved in one class or another's favour in the coming years. But in what sense? One perspective I have encountered is that the weakness of the trade unions is such that if there is going to be an upsurge it is going to happen first through a general political radicalisation, and only thereafter produce a revival of working class organisation. I don't think such sequential schemas really respect the actual pattern of struggles. Look at the relationship between the anti-war movement over Gaza, the student occupations and uprising over fees, the germinal feminist revival, and the very large but bureaucracy-led trade union protests and struggles. I think what you find is not a sequence of 'first politics, then economics', but rather the unpredictable outbreaks of struggles on various levels of the social formation consistent with a system going through organic crisis, each having a reciprocal effect on the others. The sense in which politics is dominant is that it forms the edifice within which economic and ideological struggles take place, securing their unity and coordination, determining their tempo and efficacy.

Of course it's always true that in the last analysis politics is decisive. But it's not true that in every conjuncture political struggles are dominant. The dominance of politics today derives from the centrality of 'austerity politics' as a spatio-temporal fix for capitalism's woes, conducted through the state and centred on the neoliberal reorganisation of the public sector and welfare state. Mervyn King recently argued that in the short run it would necessary to restrain spending cuts, but in the long run there had to be a drastic rebalancing of the economy away from consumption and towards investment - in other words, put as much of the country's wealth as possible in the hands of the rich and hope they will put it into circulation as capital. This could only be achieved through state action, which has to be mediated through the political parties and their relationship to social classes. Therefore, politics predominates.

II. The crisis of authority. I have referred to an organic crisis. According to Gramsci, a crisis of capitalism becomes an organic crisis when it affects the state and its hegemonic apparatuses. And that is exactly what has happened. One of the significant insights of the state theorist Claus Offe was that this tendency for capitalist crises to become political crises is built in to advanced capitalism insofar as it has developed an expanded political administrative apparatus to cope with the dysfunctions of production and protect its legitimacy. As soon as there is a serious crisis, not just a recession but something that puts into question whether the system can reproduce itself, it is more likely to radiate into the state and from there into every aspect of production, politics, and ideology, etc., reached directly or indirectly by the state. This is just a tendency, not an inevitability - but for reasons mentioned above, the crisis has certainly reached the state. The question is how far advanced this process is.

The British capitalist state has always been one of the more stable of its type. Unlike continental rivals, it has not suffered revolution, invasion, occupation or defeat to a militarily superior rival for centuries. Its colonial losses were, it is true, considerable. And that loss of global power and prestige has been a source of constant axe-grinding on the right, the prism through which Northern Ireland, the Falklands and even Europe have been perceived. But the adaptation was managed without disrupting the continuity of the state. This matters. It also matters that the British state is still, for all its losses, a leading imperialist state with considerable global advantages, aloof from the eurozone while enjoying the benefits of EU membership. This confers a degree of independence of action not available to, say, Greece or Spain. This government can, if it wants to, increase spending to temporarily dampen a crisis. It can nationalise a company if it is too important to leave it to the market. It can bring forward infrastructure investments. It can even selectively increase benefits, or make certain tax concessions. As of now, the government and the Bank of England prefers to print money to stimulate lending, which has certain distributive consequences, but basically it has a range of options. The state also has a system of violence that, despite acute breakdowns, has effectively reinforced consent throughout its long duration.

Nonetheless, the concept of a 'crisis of authority' is a good criterion of historical analysis against which to measure the stability of the British state. What does a crisis of authority look like? One would ordinarily look for the withdrawal of consent on the part of the masses, the mobilization of large subaltern classes against the ruling class, and the detachment of social classes from their representative parties. Some of these tendencies are visible in the UK today. There is, first of all, no doubt about the de-alignment of social classes from their representative parties. This is a secular tendency that is becoming acute due to the successful rollback of representative democracy by means of neoliberal policy. (Chapter One of The Meaning of David Cameron outlines some of this.) Second, in some complex ways, consent is being eroded. Certainly, over the long term there has developed a nebulous and politically polyvalent sense of dissatisfaction with authorities, with officialdom, with the main parties, and with parliament itself. This doesn't by itself amount to antisystemic feeling, nor is it proof of political radicalisation. And not all institutions suffer from this general decline in respect. Trust in the police is resilient, despite constant disclosures of corruption, racism, brutality and murders. On the immediate questions of austerity and related policies, the balance of popular opinion is against the government - but not on all planks of its agenda, and not necessarily on the worst planks of its agenda. It is true that any presumed 'consensus' is very fragile, but the support for punitive welfare policies has been quite high. The current state of the Labour party is substantially responsible for this. Moreover, the way in which the state can mobilise consent against the enemy of the month (just recently, they used the face of Abu Hamza to conceal the crimes against Babar Ahmed and Talha Ahsan, and it worked a treat) does not indicate that its legitimating resources are running dry. This is related to the question of state violence which I'll return to.

Finally, what is the state of popular mobilisation? In and of itself, it is impressive - student occupations and 'riots', Tory HQ smashed up, coordinated strikes in the public sector, mass marches encompassing the breadth and depth of the organised working class and its periphery, even a 1980s-style youth uprising against the police. Yet these are notable for a) being episodic and apt to lose momentum very quickly, and b) being totally unequal to the problem, to the scale of the ruling class mobilisation and its goals. The credit crunch came just as the British social movements were abating, the left was entering a vicious downswing, and the Tories were pulling themselves back together as a fit team to replace the bruised, tired, shat-on-looking New Labour cabinet. The popular movements since the winter of 2010-11 have really been playing catch-up, and not actually catching up thus far.

Greece: that is a full-blown crisis of authority. If the British state does reach that condition, it will be catalysed by outbreaks of social struggles which are not visible today, and not possible to predict.

III. Violence and consent. It is a mistake to think that a turn toward greater violence on the part of the state is a sign of weakness, that it signifies a crisis of consent and thus an erosion of the civil society basis of the state. Violence and consent are not separate, opposed quantities; violence is one of the main ways in which consent is secured. Take an example. The British police, like no other police force, has embraced the tactic of kettling. It works in three ways. First, it is managed violence: it creates moving frontiers where a confrontation with angry crowds can happen within a predictable range of circumstances, with police able to concentrate their forces at certain points when necessary and according to the geographical terrain already incorporated into the kettling plan. Second, it is biopower: it acts on the fact that people have biological needs and tendencies, that they need to excrete, that they become cold and tired, that they have caloric requirements which, unsatisfied, leave them physically weak and vulnerable. Third, it is ideology. The very act of 'kettling' people communicates that they are dangerous criminals, if not bestiary. It also creates the scenario in which this point can be 'proved'. Notwithstanding the problems it has had in the courts, this has been one of the most effective means of shutting down protest movements threatening to gain momentum.

In this tactic, coercion and consent, violence and ideology, are combined. The 'rule of law' is the dominant form of the dominant ideology, the main area in which consent is organised; and it is precisely through violence that it is materialised. Thus, it isn't that the state turns to violence when consent has been exhausted, but rather that it must reorganise violence in the constitution of social categories (race, culture, nationality, citizenship, criminality, subversion, entitlement, rights, etc), to found consent on a new basis. It is therefore mistaken to see violence as 'making up for' a lack of consent, as a factor merely held 'in reserve' for when consent erodes. Recall Gramsci's metaphor: "State = political society + civil society, in other words hegemony protected by the armour of coercion". This quite an interesting topography. Rather than the core of the state consisting of repressive institutions, special bodies of armed men, etc., which is protected by the outward layers of civil society, the repressive institutions form an integument shaping and protecting the flesh of the body politic. One way to read this is to relate it to the concept of hegemonic practices in which the dominant classes attempt to organise a cross-class coalition in support of the historic goals they have set themselves. It would be mistaken to see hegemony as a state actually achieved for most of the time; it is best to see it as a tendency guiding the organisation of class domination in a capitalist democracy. When some form of potentially hegemonic coalition is achieved, there is always an excluded remnant of classes and class fractions that aren’t incorporated. In a genuinely hegemonic situation, the excluded remnant is an easily policed and suppressed minority; most of the time, it is actually a majority that must somehow be disorganised, stratified and divided. The role of violence in this situation would be prove the implausibility of resistance to both the dominant bloc, whose unity is thereby secured, and to the excluded, whose acquiescence is thereby gained.

One aspect of the complex political and ideological mix that was Thatcherism was its attempt to re-found consent on a new populist right basis, incorporating sections of the skilled working class alongside the petty bourgeoisie and big business in a new dominant bloc. Rather than 'from cradle to grave' provision, the traditional state philosophy of Labourism, 'the discipline of the market' became the new basis of consent. If the new regime was more violent, this was not to 'make up for' a lack of consent, though the regime was narrower in its social basis and had of necessity to disorganise a much wider coalition, but rather because the new regime had to simultaneously demolish the bases for militant leftist politics in order to viable, and construct a new form of consent based on penalising the poor.

The purpose here is not to deny that the ruling class is weak and fractious, and the social basis of the dominant bloc narrowing dangerously from its point of view. That is evident in the pathologies already mentioned, the degeneration of the main capitalist parties, the decline of legitimate institutions, and so on. Rather, it is to say that an escalation of violence is not in itself indicative of weakness. So long as the state’s violence is actually efficacious in securing consent, and disorganising the popular classes, and as long as it can be coupled with selective material incentives which are in themselves perfectly compatible with an overall increase in the rate of exploitation and a long-term material loss for most of the population, then it need not be. And the reason why it has become necessary to Defend the Right to Protest is that this violence is proving extremely efficient in the short run.

IV. The disorganisation of the popular classes. Thus far, there has been no general unity on the immediate goals, tactics or politics of an anti-cuts movement, nor has a viable compromise between the rival perspectives been possible. One result of this is that there is a vacuum in which fragmented groups and platforms are capable, at certain junctures, of projecting influence well beyond their real size and social depth. We have seen this with UK Uncut and, in a different way, Right to Work; we saw it with various small, radical, student and education groups during the student riots; arguably, a similar type of dynamic was visible in last summer's riots. (In localised situations, even smaller formations can acquire a significant role: eg, the campaign against the closure of Chase Farm hospital is now most visibly conducted by an infinitessimal sect, due mainly to the seeming collapse of the Save Chase Farm group since Nick de Bois was elected.) The result of the vacuum is that adventurism and stunts acquire an exaggerated importance - not that I'm remotely snobbish about these things, but they can only advance us so far, and they tend to dissipate as quickly as they take off. This state of affairs is a register of failure, to be sure, but it's not just a failure of initiative and leadership on the part of the radical Left. It's a measure of the disorientation and demoralisation of the most advanced, radical workers during the New Labour era, and particularly in the wake of the worst global crisis since the Great Depression.

In contrast to most continental equivalents, where there has been a left breakaway from the major social democratic formations fusing with Communists and the far left, resulting in some degree of electoral realignment, the political opposition to the Tories is hegemonised by the Labour Party in England and to an extent in Wales. This is all very fragile. George Galloway's breakthrough in Bradford was not a miracle; it reflected a wider volatility, a willingness to suddenly, sharply swing behind alternative reformisms where they appear to be viable - the SNP in Scotland, Caroline Lucas in Brighton, Galloway in Bradford, possibly Plaid Cymru in Wales, and it may well have been Kate Hudson or Salma Yaqoob next. There is nothing inevitable or secure about Labour's electoral and political dominance in the working class, or the absence of an alternative. The lamentable performance of Johann Lamont in Scotland seems to ensure that Labour will not recover there for some time, if it does.

Nonetheless, there is something different about the UK in this respect, which makes realignment a lot harder. First of all, no left-wing opposition developed and split away from New Labour as it implemented neoliberal policies, because the defeat of the Left after 1985 was so severe and sweeping that the Blairite leadership was able to win acquiescence for the main lines of its policies in advance. Even if the concrete realisation of those lines (tuition fees, PFI, etc) produced dissatisfaction, there was no underlying precept on which opposition could be founded. Second, even when an issue (the Iraq war) did arise which could potentially divide the Labour Party, it did not. Only George Galloway split away, because he was forced to rather than because he wanted to. This is partly because the Labour machinery had been so tightly sewn up by the Blairites that an internal opposition was almost impossible to mount; most people left the party rather than fight within it. Faced with this, there was no obvious basis for the small number of left MPs to lead a split-away, even if they were brave enough to do so. The result is that the radical left formation that did emerge, Respect, made much of its small, locally concentrated forces, but was inherently limited compared to its most of its equivalents. The SSP... oy.

The only serious, national resistance to the Tories' programme is coming from the trade unions. It is not being led by the rank and file. Rather, the rank and file pressures the union bureaucracy for action, but remains dependent on the bureaucracy to actually take the initiative. The shop steward movement hardly exists today. It is not just that it is numerical depleted, both in absolute terms and relative to the unionised workforce. It is that the role of stewards has changed dramatically, so that they end up as case workers rather than the people calling 'all out' when an issue arises. So there isn't a basis for a rank and file movement - that would have to be painstakingly constructed in and through struggles. Nor is there a big battalion of militant workers ready to take on the government by itself. No one has the confidence after decades of neoliberal assault and diminishing strength and influence, to risk everything in a big set-piece dispute with the government. This isn’t the 1980s but, alas, everyone still remembers the Miners. The result is that strikes are seen by the union leadership as a bureaucratic manoeuvre to force the government to soften its bargaining stance.

This brings us back to the dominance of politics. The unions, despite their relative historical weakness, have two potential significant strengths. One is that their private sector membership is concentrated in clusters of high value-added parts of the economy. The workers thus covered have considerable strategic power, as they can cut off crucial flows of surplus value very quickly. The second, more significant, is that most of their members are based in the public sector and exercise real political power as a result. It is not just that they can shut down vital processes in the extended reproduction of capital, thus indirectly disrupting the flow of surplus value; they can create a crisis for the state and for the government of the day. Whereas the government can take a certain tactical distance from private sector strikes (‘hope this is resolved expeditiously, both sides need to get round the table’ etc.), it is directly implicated when nurses, teachers, civil servants and rubbish collectors go on strike. This gives the unions the potential, and only the potential, to ascend beyond the ‘economic corporate’ mode of organising. They are historically narrowly based, yet their immediate problems – pension and pay cuts, longer hours, etc. – can be swiftly and logically linked to the problems of other sections of the working and even middle classes. They can create a broad system of alliances by fusing their struggles with those of students, pensioners, communities losing their hospitals and council services, and non-unionised workers suffering low pay and insecure work.

Recently, a motion was passed at the TUC supporting a general strike. In its core, it would be a coordinated public sector strike with some private sector support. But it could attract the wider support of social movements and those directly affected by cuts. I note that while most people won’t support a ‘general strike’ call, according to polls anyway, most Labour voters will. This is very interesting since it suggests that Labour’s voters aren’t necessarily persuaded by the leadership. It suggests that there’s a section of the working class, I would guess including those who are not unionised, who belong to the most precarious, low-paid or unemployed sections of the working class, which is apprised of the seriousness of the situation and ready for a fightback equal to the threat. For this to materialise, the ‘general strike’ call would have to be used as a lever to mobilise not just the rank and file of the unions but the most left-wing workers in general, and those involved in the social movements, while pressuring the union leadership into action. Nothing about that is easy, as there will be strong counter-pressures coming from the Tories, and the press (the recent Hillsborough revelations about the collusion between Conservatives, the police and the media rather make the case for ‘Ideological-State Apparatuses’ in a nutshell). But there is little else that is concrete, in the way of sustained resistance, to organise around.

V. Petty Caesarism. The consensual basis for the British capitalist state has been narrowed over the long-term by the hollowing out of parliamentary representation inaugurated by neoliberalism, combined with the sharpening of social antagonisms, above all class antagonisms. While social movements of one kind or another have become a more frequent feature of the landscape, there is a crisis in party-political organisation. The Tories and Labour have been undergoing a long-term decline, and now the Liberals are likely to be reduced to a small rump (even if the exaggerated interest of media and activists during their spell in government persuades them otherwise). The dominant political parties are poorly rooted in the population, and lack popular trust. Alongside party membership, voting levels have declined, particularly among the working class. One effect of this during the crisis has been the manifestation of petty caesarist tendencies. If, as Gramsci said, all coalitions are a first step in caesarism, the imposition of a Tory-Liberal coalition by civil service initiative is a typically British ruling class version of the type.

The decline and fragmentation of the traditional Right is an important, under-examined part of this situation. The Conservative vote has gone through a long, spasmodic period of degeneration since the late 1960s, punctuated by the collapse in 1974, the partial resurgence under Thatcher, the crisis at the tail end of Thatcherism deferred under Major and returning with a vengeance after 1992. This reflects not just a decline in traditional right-wing values, but the erosion by attrition of the social basis for even ‘secular’ Conservatism. Moreover, several crisis points have arisen to threaten the traditional ‘British’ basis of Conservatism – the weakening of the Union, and the integration into Europe. The Tories are badly placed to handle these crises, and the result alongside a sharp decline in the Tory vote is a fragmentation of the right. UKIP is ascendant not just as the Thatcherite pressure group that it once resembled, its ‘Save the Pound’ stickers defacing Westminster lamp posts, but as potentially a serious challenger to the Conservatives based on significant sections of the Tory middle class and medium-sized capital.

One outstanding fact about the British situation is that while racism remains at a historically high level, a result (as I have argued) of extensive state intervention to racialise social conflicts, the government would struggle far more than the last Labour government to use this advantage to re-organise its legitimacy in the crisis context. In principle, racist paternalism would be one way to organise material incentives in a controlled way that reinforces the neoliberal accumulation regime and the attack on the welfare state. Yet the Tories under Cameron are too hesitant and vacillating after years of being exiled as ‘the nasty party’, to really actualise such a strategy. Another striking fact is that the far right, despite their surge over the last decade, never gained a foothold in the UK in the way that fascists in other European societies did. Undeniably after Barking, Tower Hamlets and Walthamstow, the limit on the growth of the far right is primarily due to the successful model of antifascist action aimed at mobilising broad fronts to prevent and disrupt the local implantation of fascism. The existence of other right-wing fragments ready to absorb Tory defectors is also plausibly a factor, although the past decade has shown us that it is quite possible for fascist and hard right parties to gain support concurrently. But the effect of the current incapacity of the Right, coupled with the disorganisation of the popular classes, is precisely to reinforce the tendency toward petty caesarism. The coalition government is an unstable combination, but it allows the leaderships of both coalition parties a degree of autonomy from their active base. It renders acute the chronic insulation of parliament from the popular classes.

The final factor heightening caesarist tendencies is the division and uncertainty of the bourgeoisie proper. They are not united by what to do about Europe, or about whether now is the time to start making the cuts, or about how deep they should be. There is undoubtedly a significant section of bourgeois opinion that is gravitating toward Labour’s preferred solution of bringing forward spending now, and implementing the cuts later, in a way that is less egregiously offensive to working class interests. In this situation, the apparatuses of the state itself – the higher civil service, the Bank of England, etc. – acquire an elevated role, and the parties of government enter a kind of coalition with them.

Caesarism emerges because the contending classes have reached a stalemate. What I referred to as ‘petty caesarism’, then, is just the expression of this tendency in a muted form: not exactly a total stalemate but certainly a state of disarray; polarisation but each side hesitating to enter the fray wholeheartedly; both sides almost running on empty. One morbid symptom of this tendency is the emergence of rival hybrid forms of politics – ‘Red Toryism’, ‘Blue Labourism’ – in an attempt to short-circuit political polarisation and reconstitute the relationship between party and class. When people say ‘no one voted for this, how do they think they can get away with it’, the answer is clear: caesarism in this case is a symptom of mutual weakness. Yes, the ruling class is in crisis, yes it is divided and hesitant, yes it lacks political legitimacy; but as of now, its opponents are not in a better state.

Labels: caesarism, conjuncture, gramsci, hegemony, historical bloc, historical materialism, labour, labour movement, labour party, poulantzas, ruling class, socialism, working class

Friday, August 24, 2012

Precarity in 21st Century Britain posted by Richard Seymour

My latest piece for the Guardian on the growth of soup kitchens as the latest symbol of precarity in the UK:

Lambeth council is turning to food banks in order to manage the crisis of soaring poverty in the borough. This is never a good sign. When soup kitchens started to appear in large numbers in the US during the 1980s, it was supposed to be a form of crisis management. Now they have become a threadbare safety net for masses of jobless and working poor Americans as the welfare system fails them. Dependence on charitable food provision has soared during the recession. Evidence suggests that they don't begin to meet the nutritional needs of those who use them.

The trend is for what is supposed to be a temporary stopgap to become a permanent part of the welfare system. It turns welfare into an entrepreneurial wild west, dependent on often inexperienced providers, institutionalising and stabilising chronic insecurity and undernourishment for millions. Whereas in the postwar era poverty was residual or the product of the economic cycle, it has acquired a structural permanence. Nor can this be assumed to be an accidental outcome. States that cut welfare systems are knowing actors, well-placed to evaluate the predictable effects of their actions.

Labels: austerity, capitalism, cuts, neoliberalism, precariat, precarious labour, ruling class, unemployment, welfare, working class

Friday, August 03, 2012

I would very happily dance on Thatcher's grave. posted by Richard Seymour

Louise Mensch would be appalled. The Queen Mother had just died, and I was in a pub near Trafalgar Square. There were some shrugs, and baffled looks, as the news spread. I know I’m supposed to care, but…? Suddenly, a friend very loudly struck up the tune of “Ding-Dong! The witch is dead”. The uncertainty suddenly resolved into mirth. It was the first time that any royal has brought me genuine joy.

Now, according to Mensch, the Tory ‘feminist’, this sort of thing is as serious a form of unacceptable public behaviour as racism. Invited by a young Labour Party supporter to join a party planned in the event of Margaret Thatcher’s demise, she made an issue of it on Twitter. Demanding that the Labour Party “discipline or repudiate those who would celebrate Lady Thatcher's death”, she insisted on a “statement that rejoicing in anyone's death is, like racism, cause for expulsion”. Challenged by a member of the public, she redoubled her contention one could not wish for Thatcher’s death and be a member of the Labour Party.

As far as I know, Mensch is not a member of the Labour Party. She does not pay dues, or vote in its elections. Yet she presumes to have a say over the party’s internal life, and to effect a dramatic change in its rules by virtue of running a Twitter account.

Labour bosses gave in a little to this transparent ploy, issuing an eye-rolling, placatory condemnation. The Tory bloggers claimed victory, and Mensch preposterously waxed magnanimous, congratulating Labour for its good sense. But it is unlikely that Labour are dense enough to expel members for publicly wishing Thatcher’s death, as that would leave them with a rather emaciated party.

All this does not, by any means, make Mensch a bossy, priggish crackpot. I wholly concur with her logic. Like her, Ialso have a Twitter account, and what I want from the Tories is a simple statement that they will expel Louise Mensch at the earliest opportunity. I will keep tweeting until they concede my demands, or at least humour me with a vapid statement.

Still, I want to pursue the moral logic of Mensch’s stance. Mensch is increasingly notorious for taking stances. Readers may recall, for example, her defence of innocent “families” when UK Uncut staged an excessively civil protest at Nick Clegg’s home. Likewise, Mensch stood up for Rupert Murdoch when it was suggested that he was anything other than a great newspaper man fit to run a major company, and protected his son from parliamentary criticism.

Now she is standing up for “Lady T”, who is so reviled that social media like Facebook are overburdened with ‘events’ promising celebrations when she finally gives up her earthly mandate. What these cases have in common is that despite her propensity to speak in an annexed language of progress, she always defends the rich and the powerful, and those in the camp of reaction. In this case she does so while claiming that Thatcher-hatred is in some sense equivalent to racism. To make such a claim requires a degree of ignorance and tone-deafness that is actually difficult to find outside of the Conservative Party.

Racism is a type of oppression. It is linked to a set of practices which systematically exploit, marginalise and devalue those who are its targets. Those who perpetuate it inexcusably add to the sum of human misery. Hopefully it can be agreed, as a minimum, that Thatcher-hatred is not a type of oppression. It has no link to oppressive practices, and indeed no established link to any deleterious effect for anyone’s material circumstances, including those of Mrs Thatcher. This is to say nothing of anything Mrs Thatcher might have done to incur, and thus deserve, popular contempt.

Yet, if Mensch has a habit of this type of advocacy for those who are already rich and powerful, she also has a penchant for sneering at and lecturing those who are not. Who can forget her dim suggestion, delivered with Hooray Henrietta panache, that those protesters in St Paul’s had already enjoyed the full benefits of capitalism by virtue of being able to drink Starbucks coffee. So, you can run a newspaper if you bug a dead girl’s phone, but drink a latte you must foreswear politics. The hysterical denunciations of UK Uncut’s anti-Clegg protest, and now the pettifogging complaints about Thatcher’s haters, are merely typical of Mensch’s impostures.

This is not a difficult pattern to decipher. Mensch, despite her shallow ‘progressive’ rhetoric, is a sycophant of the rich. And anyone with a modicum of self-respect should scorn her pathetic Twitter campaigns, and vow all the more to raucously celebrate the demise of Britain’s most hated leader. And I believe I know a good song that revellers can dance to.

Update: Louise Mensch quits! I declare my crackpot Twitter campaign a success!

Labels: civics, civility, class struggle, conservatism, ruling class, socialism, thatcher, thatcherism, tories, working class

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Notes on passive revolution posted by Richard Seymour

I. ‘Passive revolution’ emerged at first to explain a particular kind of ‘bourgeois revolution’ (ie capitalist transition) effected without a radical-popular assault on the state. Gramsci’s focus was on the Risorgimento, but other examples would include German Unification, and Meiji Restoration Japan. In the period since 1848, Neil Davidson suggests in what is evidently the authoritative work on this subject, this type of transition has been the most common due to two factors: first, the emergence of the working class, whose minatory presence sapped the revolutionary afflatus of the bourgeoisie; and second, the emergence of other ruling classes or social groups capable of enacting the transition (in Germany, the feudal ruling class; in Egypt as in many neighbours, the officer corps). Since capitalism had emerged as clearly the most dynamic mode of production in a world system increasingly dominated by it, non-capitalist ruling classes could be persuaded to make the transition.

II. Thus, for Gramsci, the period after 1848 could be characterised in ‘the West’ as a shift from the ‘war of manoeuvre’ and open struggle against the feudal ruling classes, to the ‘war of position’, in which bourgeois domination is secured through molecular transformations in the composition of social and productive forces which become the matrix of new changes.

III. Later, the scope of ‘passive revolution’ was extended so that it could apply to major transformations within capitalism once that mode of production was established. These would be transitions aimed at overcoming otherwise potentially lethal limitations to the further accumulation of capital within the social formation – whether these limitations were posed by capital itself, by the working class, or pre-capitalist forms. This was based on Gramsci’s reading of two insights from Marx:

1. that no social formation disappears as long as the productive forces which have developed within it still find room for further forward movement;

2. that a society does not set itself tasks for whose solution the necessary conditions have not already been incubated etc.

‘Passive revolution’ is thus a tendency immanent to capitalist modernity as such.

IV. ‘Passive revolution’ implements changes that are formally ‘progressive’ from the point of view of permitting the development and rationalisation of the productive forces by means of the modification of productive relations, and the rationalisation of social/demographic forces. Despite this, 'passive revolution' is a conservative, adaptive process, and is apt to be led by conservative or reactionary forces. An example of this type of transformation is the Fordist re-organisation of American capitalism, in which demographic rationalisation and industrial modernisation is achieved. To the extent that this advances productive capacity, introduces collectivisation and planning, and acculturates masses to urban life, it is seen as historically progressive.

V. 'Passive revolution' is thus, in both its main senses, a particular relationship between political leadership and social transformation; political leadership becomes identical with state domination, through which transformation is achieved. The tendency in 'passive revolution' is for the bourgeoisie to be unable to rule directly, or alone. Partly for this reason, 'passive revolution' is internally related to the concept of 'Caesarism' which, despite being initially posited as an explicitly polemical formulation, is clearly drawn from Marx's discussion of 'Bonapartism', and which is also a tendency immanent to capitalist modernity. According to Gramsci, 'Caesarism' occurs where the two opposing fundamental classes are deadlocked, both sides evenly matched, potentially threatening mutual ruin: in such a catastrophic stalemate, a 'Caesar' can either play a progressive or reactionary role. It is in its reactionary sense that it is tied to 'passive revolution', as it is often the role of a 'Caesar' to carry through such a transformation. A 'Caesar' is not necessarily a great personality. The decisive thing is that 'Caesarism', whether it is personated in the form of a despot, or party, or faction, or alliance, represents some form of compromise between the classes, whether its general thrust is toward progress or reaction. That is why, as Gramsci says, ""every coalition government is a first stage of Caesarism". And, because of the enhanced role of the state in 'Caesarism', it can be an ideal type of regime to achieve 'revolution-restoration'. It is significant in this sense that Bismarck is given as an example of regressive 'Ceasarism'.

VI. ‘Passive revolution’ has an ambiguous relationship to other Gramscian concepts, such as ‘hegemony’. In one sense, it would seem to be a polar opposite of hegemony, insofar as ‘passive revolution’ is achieved as a form of domination without consent. In Gramsci's main example, Risorgimento Italy, ‘passive revolution’ occurs not with the bourgeoisie in a hegemonic position, but with two opposing forces (represented by Cavour and Mazzini, respectively) in a state of almost deadlocked equilibrium. Bourgeois domination, in this case, is not secured through a hegemonic alliance with subaltern groups, achieved through parliamentary democratic institutions. Rather, the active and leading layers of oppositional forces and classes are co-opted to the moderate, pro-capitalist centre, in a process known as 'transformism'. This has the effect of decapitating and disorganising the parties and organisations of the dominated classes - which is certainly a hegemonic practice, but is emphatically not the same thing as hegemony. Generally speaking, 'passive revolution' is carried out over and against the subalterns, rather than with their consent; by means of a bureaucratic organisation of the 'power bloc' rather than through the expansive unity of the 'historical bloc'.

Yet at the same time, 'passive revolution' is, as I have said, a process in which some compromise between the contending classes is struck. In some form, however partial and mitigated, popular demands have to be addressed; a material substratum for acquiescence if not active assent must be created. Moreover, although 'passive revolution' is often a repressive form of modernisation, it is worth recalling that consent is often as not produced through coercion and terror - that is, through the demonstration with physical force that 'there is no alternative, and the only people talking of an alternative are criminals and misfits who get beaten up and arrested'. (Cf. Poulantzas: "State monopolized physical violence permanently underlies the techniques of power and mechanisms of consent".) There is a sense in which 'passive revolution' must simulate elements of bourgeois hegemony in a context of weakness, stasis or underdevelopment. This is why some authors refer to a 'limited hegemony' in the context of 'passive revolution', despite the fact that the dominant tendency is toward domination without consent.

VII. The delimitations of 'passive revolution' are extremely unclear. If Gramsci extended the concept of 'passive revolution' in his own theoretical development, a further enlargement was attempted by Christine Buci-Glucksmann as part of a sophisticated Eurocommunist 'left critique' of Stalinism. According to Buci-Glucksmann, 'passive revolution', as a concept of transition, was not particular to bourgeois revolutions in Gramsci's useage, but was "a potential tendency intrinsic to every transitional process". This was so particularly where the state played a dominant role, as in the USSR. Thus, Stalinism was interpreted as 'passive revolution', resolving class antagonisms through a process of conservative reformism conducted in and through the state: far from the state withering away, it 'penetrates' civil society and assumes a 'total' dominance. This has some basis in what Gramsci wrote, at least insofar as he referred to 'passive revolution' as a principle of interpretation "of every epoch characterised by complex historical upheavals ... a criterion of interpretation 'in the absence of other active elements to a dominant extent'". Historically, this depends on the idea that Stalinism was carrying through the post-capitalist transition, albeit in a conservative way. Politically, it is in the last analysis an agument for a centrist approach to the state and parliamentary democracy: the democratic form, as the arena for the consolidation of the expansive unity of the historical bloc, must be the strategic axis of the transition, the counterpoint to a narrow 'revolution from above' which always contains restorationist tendencies. But the only way to resolve whether or not it is true to the terms of Gramsci's argument is to conduct a close philological reading. Here, it is most likely that Buci-Glucksmann's argument hinged on an over-interpretation of the phrase "every epoch", as well as perhaps an under-interpretation of the concept of the 'integral state', which leads to a problematic acceptance of the topography in which the state and civil society occupy separate, mutually hostile terrains.

VIII. The question, then, is how can the tendencies toward 'passive revolution', immanent to capitalist modernity, be interpreted today? The neoliberal transformation sharpened the tendencies toward 'passive revolution'. First of all, in the sense that it was a modernisation project, and that it rationalised the productive and demographic forces to an extent, even if it introduced all sorts of new pathologies and 'contradictions' in doing so. Second, in the sense that it involved some partial, limited concessions to popular interests - differentiation in the proletariat allowed this to be accomplished, even while the rate of exploitation was being driven up. Thirdly, in the sense that there were tendencies toward hegemony-building, an effort to shift the common sense, even though the main form in which transformation was achieved was through struggle. Fourth, in the emphasis on repression as a factor in building consent. Neoliberal reform did not merely rely on repression to enable its passage, but rather implemented a fundamental shift in the continuum toward repression: from welfare and material concessions to the carceral/punitive state. Finally in the transformist tendencies particularly evident in the latter phase of neoliberal transformation: following the open assault on low wage earners, union militants, the oppressed, the social movements and the left, there ensues the incorporation of the leaders of defeated or at least chastened social movements, unions and left parties into a new neoliberal social democracy.

IX. The global crisis has demonstrated the need, purely on capitalist terms, for fundamental, structural reform of the capitalist system. In fact, the only viable solution on capitalist terms would be simultaneously the most irrational solution - the destruction of masses of capital, through profound economic contraction or through war. But this is not politically viable. Not even Rick Santorum could win on that slogan, and the bourgeoisie wouldn't tolerate it if he did. For that reason, the debate is between a set of mediating, compromise solutions with the emphasis shifting between Keynesian demand management and neoliberal regulation. In Europe, the most punitive neoliberalism is consistent with a programme of re-regulating financial markets up to and including a continent-wide Tobin tax. Even in Greece, the EU's austerity project is bound up with rationalising tendencies - building a better tax-collecting apparatus, etc. So, the tendencies toward 'passive revolution' are, I would say, sharpened further. Coterminous with this, the 'Caesarist' tendencies are sharpening as well. If the coalition government is the beginning of Caesarism in a parliamentary age, then the emergence of cross-party coalitions around a 'technocratic' agenda of fundamental institutional and social restructuring represents the beginnings of a Caesarist legion. One thing that Buci-Glucksmann was certainly right about was that the historic bloc, in its 'expansive unity', is the antithesis of the 'passive revolution' based on cynical, bureaucratic power bloc manouevering. The question is whether a new historical bloc can be forged in the popular struggles, with its strategic axis the hegemony of the working class and its forms of democracy.

Labels: bourgeois revolution, gramsci, hegemony, historical bloc, passive revolution, power bloc, socialism, socialist strategy, state, working class

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Spanish miners posted by Richard Seymour

This is an amazing report from the Spanish miners struggle by The Guardian's journalist:

The Asturian miners have embarked on a new 'Marcha Negra', a repeat of a famous action twenty years ago in 1992, when miners marched across the country to Madrid in defiance of job losses and cuts. Last night, the miners arrived in Madrid, surrounded by approx 150,000 supporters, about ten times the size of the reception in 1992. The Spanish media blacked it out, but it feels more like ostrich behaviour than effective censorship. This is coming alongside a fresh wave of cuts and VAT increases. Unlike in 1992, the government is actively broadening the base of social and industrial rebellion.

Peter Thomas, in his Marxism talk about Gramsci and the 99%, made a defence of the concept of proletarian hegemony against certain misconceptions that might put people off it. Pointing out that the working class is numerically and proportionately larger than ever, he suggested that the 99% was potentially the name for hegemony as a principle of unity, rather than as simply a form of domination: what we all have in common, despite our immense differences in identity, social category, occupational culture and habitus, etc., is that we are all exploited. This is what working class hegemony means in practice today. Not, generally speaking, the unity of a national popular bloc of classes under working class leadership: this becomes less the case as capitalist mode of production has entrenched itself, and thus simplified the class system in one sense. Rather, it means the dominance of the working class as the axis of our common exploitation and thus as the strategically privileged basis for organisation. The arrival of the Asturian miners in Puerta del Sol, site of the Indignado rebellion, could be the the sign and sanction of this hegemony in motion. The question, then, is whether Spain's heteroclite social and industrial struggles can be stitched together under the banner of the 99%.

Labels: austerity, capitalist crisis, counter-hegemony, gramsci, hegemony, miners strike, neoliberalism, socialism, spain, working class

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

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Who are you calling a 'socialist'? posted by Richard Seymour

My latest in The Guardian:

Nick Clegg, a "communist". Vince Cable, a "socialist". This is the euphonious sound of the Tory right on the warpath – and with every marble intact. Dismiss such invective as mere boilerplate if you will, but the increasing tendency to reach for the S word as a polemical armament against the most humble proposals for reform from pro-business centrists has a lineage, which it would be a mistake to miss.

Labels: anticommunism, liberals, nick clegg, obama, sad sack liberals, socialism, tea party, thatcherism, tories, working class

Sunday, May 06, 2012

Syriza! posted by Richard Seymour

In recent days, the signs have been accumulating to suggest that the radical left coalition SYRIZA would perform some sort of remarkable upset in the Greek elections. Well, stow your cynicism because the exit polls say they're in second place in this election. In the actual vote, poll experts say they may even come first, though I hasten to say that we need make no such assumption in order to appreciate that this is a tremendous victory for the Left.

At present, SYRIZA appears to have 16-18% of the vote, with New Democracy first on about 19-20%, PASOK third on 16%, Independent Greece (right-wing anti-austerity) fourth on 10%, Communist KKE fifth on 9%, the neo-Nazis of the Goldan Dawn (note, actual hard-core neo-Nazis) on 7-8%, with other left parties and the Greens taking up the remainder. The distribution of the seats will probably favour a coalition of the capitalist austerity parties, with New Democracy and PASOK forming a government. But make no mistake: this is a cataclysm for the Greek and by extension European political establishment. It signals a fundamental realignment of Greek politics, to an extent that wouldn't have been predictable even weeks ago.

Importantly, SYRIZA have taken the lead in all of the major cities of Greece, meaning that they have made real in-roads into the core working class constituencies resisting the cuts. This party had less than 5% of the vote at the last election, which PASOK won. SYRIZA have now pushed the winners of the last general election into third place, and have become the leading left party. This is not only important because of the rejection of austerity politics that it signals (and the austerity parties are in a minority), not only because of the new possibilities for resistance that will now become apparent, but also because of the crisis and re-thinking it will create within the anti-austerity Left. For example, the KKE's consistently sectarian approach of staging separate marches, rallies and events from the rest of the Left, their refusal to countenance unity with forces to their own left, will come under scrutiny from the section of the working class which it still leads. Those workers who support the KKE will want to be united with, or at least open to, those workers who support SYRIZA. The argument that they can't do so because of the ambivalent attitude of some SYRIZA leaders to PASOK was always dangerously Third Period, and is unlikely to be persuasive now. That too will create new possibilities for unity in the workers' movement.

The neo-Nazis should not be ignored. Their emergence, almost out of nowhere, as a mass fascist organisation with actual Third Reich-style paraphernalia, shows how perilous the terrain is, and how much danger awaits Greece's most vulnerable communities. Recently, the state has been stoking up racism toward immigrants and planning a crackdown on the grounds that they 'spread diseases'. In this toxic, unpredictable climate, any gains made by the radical Left are likely to be subject to new tests on a routine basis. Any serious defeat for the Left amid continued austerity and the ongoing stalemate of the parliamentary system would certainly give the far right their best chance since the dictatorship. Already, they stand poised with their legions of voters and their parliamentary delegates and their marching squads of thugs to wreak havoc. Do not underestimate them.

But for now, the radical Left has siezed the initiative, upended the electoral system, and torn apart the austerity script so painstakingly drafted by the ECB, the presidency and the finance ministers. And in this context, the defeat of Sarkozy assumes a new significance. The mandarins of the EU are worried, as they should be, by the failure of the austerity formula to permit resumed dynamism even in the core European states. From rattled heads of state to the head of the ECB, they have started to wonder if there might not be a case for emphasising growth policies, stimulus rather than austerity. This is all very timid, and it is by no means intended to benefit the working class. But EU elites are also aware that they face an even graver climacteric than two quarters of negative growth if they cannot appear to offer some material inducement to the working class to acquiesce in the politics of austerity. In that situation, the deposal of PASOK as the main party of the workers in the weakest link of a weakened chain of national states, gives the EU leadership all the more incentive to rethink what they have been doing. And that means a more divided and uncertain ruling class than we have hitherto seen.

Labels: austerity, capitalist crisis, eurozone, fascism, greece, kke, nazism, new democracy, pasok, socialism, syriza, 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

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

Protests and Police Statistics in South Africa: Some Commentary posted by Richard Seymour

Guest post by Prof. Peter Alexander*

On 19 March the South African Minister of Police, Mr. Nathi Mthetwa, informed parliament about the number of ‘crowd management incidents’ that occurred during the three years from 1 April 2009.[1] Table 1, compares the new data with similar statistics for the preceding five years.

Table 1. Crowd management incidents[2]

	Peaceful	Unrest	Total
2004/05	7,382	622	8,004
2005/06	9,809	954	10,763
2006/07	8,703	743	9,446
2007/08	6,431	705	7,136
2008/09	6,125	718	6,843
2009/10	7,897	1,008	8,905
2010/11	11,681	973	12,654
2011/12[3]	9,942	1,091	11,033

In 2010/11 there was a record number of crowd management incidents (unrest and peaceful), and the final data for 2011/12 are likely to show an even higher figure.[4] Already, the number of gatherings involving unrest was higher in 2011/12 than any previous year. During the last three years, 2009-12, there has been an average of 2.9 unrest incidents per day. This is an increase of 40 percent over the average of 2.1 unrest incidents per day recorded for 2004-09. The statistics show that what has been called the Rebellion of the Poor has intensified over the past three years.

In 2010 the Minister of Police explained that: ‘the Incident Regulation Information System (IRIS) classifies incidents either as crowd management (peaceful) where the incident is managed in co-operation with the convenor and the police only monitor the gathering, or as crowd management (unrest) where the police need to intervene to make arrests or need to use force when there is a risk to safety or possible damage to property’.[5]

‘Gatherings’ may be sporting activities, for example, but the majority are related to protests of some kind.[6] During 2007/08 to 2009/10 ‘the most common reason for conducting crowd management (peaceful) gatherings was labour related demands for increases in salary/wages’. For the same period, the most common reason for ‘crowd management (unrest) was related to service delivery issues’.[7] The Minister’s new statement does not include similar information for 2010/12.

According to the minister’s 2010 statement the average number of participants in gatherings defined as ‘crowd management (peaceful)’ was 500 (2007/08) and 4,000 (2008/09), and the average number in those defined as ‘crowd management (unrest)’ was 3,000 (2007/08) and 4,000 (2008/09). In the new statement, the minister declined to put a figure on numbers of participants.

For the first time, the minister was asked to state the number of arrests that had occurred with crowd management (unrest) gatherings. These were given as 4,883 (2009/10), 4,680 (2010/11), 2,967 (1 April 2011 to 5 March 2012). These figures give the average number of arrests per unrest gathering as, respectively, 4.8 (2009/10), 4.8 (2010/11), and 2.7 (2011/12).[8]

Table 2 is based on a breakdown of crowd management incidents in each province as provided in the 2010 and 2012 ministerial statements. As we have shown previously, these figures (and the data in general) do not necessarily give a precise indication of the number of incidents.[9] There can be administrative weaknesses and human error. Nevertheless, they probably provide reasonably reliable approximations. Gauteng had the largest number of peaceful incidents and the largest number of unrest incidents, but it also has the greatest population, so this is not surprising.

Table 2. Total crowd management incidents, 2007/08 to 2011/12, by province and category,

and propensity to participate in crowd management incidents.

	2011 population estimate[10]	Peaceful incidents	Peaceful incidents per thousand	Unrest incidents	Unrest incidents per thousand
Gauteng	11,328,203	9209	0.81	1097	0.10
Limpopo	5,554,657	4066	0.73	222	0.04
North West	3,253,390	6980	2.15	695	0.21
Mpumalanga	3,657,181	1944	0.53	358	0.10
KwaZulu-Natal	10,819,130	8555	0.79	546	0.05
Eastern Cape	6,829,958	3578	0.52	322	0.05
Free State	2,759,644	2606	0.94	413	0.15
Western Cape	5,287,863	3148	0.60	599	0.11
Northern Cape	1,096,731	1990	1.81	243	0.22

Table 2 also compares numbers of incidents with size of population (as estimated by StatsSA for 2011). We need to add the rider that figures are for numbers of gatherings, and these can vary in size. However, when we take population into account North West and Northern Cape come out on top. Since it is likely that most of the peaceful incidents are related to labour protests and many are sporting events, the unrest incidents are probably more pertinent as a gauge of the scale of service delivery protests in particular and the rebellion of the poor in general. It is notable that the three poorer provinces (which are also the most rural) – i.e. Limpopo, Eastern Cape and KZN – have a lower propensity towards unrest incidents than other provinces. The implication, reflected in other studies, is that the rebellion cannot be explained in terms of poverty as such. It is mainly a movement within urban areas, but within those areas most participants and leaders can be regarded as poor, with a high proportion coming from informal settlements, where services are especially weak.

The main conclusion we draw from the latest police statistics is that the number of service delivery protests continues unabated. Government attempts to improve service delivery have not been sufficient to assuage the frustration and anger of poor people in South Africa. From press reports and our own research it is clear that while service delivery demands provide the principal focus for unrest incidents, many other issues are being raised, notably lack of jobs. As many commentators and activists now accept, service delivery protests are part of a broader Rebellion of the Poor. This rebellion is massive. I have not yet found any other country where there is a similar level of ongoing urban unrest. South Africa can reasonably be described as the ‘protest capital of the world’. It also has the highest levels of inequality and unemployment of any major country, and it is not unreasonable to assume that the rebellion is, to a large degree, a consequence of these phenomena. There is no basis for assuming that the rebellion will subside unless the government is far more effective in channelling resources towards the poor.

[1] The minister was responding to a question raised by Mr M.H. Hoosen of the Independent Democrats. See National Assembly (2012), 36/1/4/1/201200049, Question No. 397, 19 March. I am grateful to Mr Hoosen for asking this question.

[2] Data supplied by ministers of police in response to parliamentary questions, with the exception of 2004/05, where the statistics come directly from the South African Police Service’s IRIS. See Natasha Vally (2009), ‘National trends around protest action: mapping protest action in South Africa’ (Centre for Sociological Research and Development Studies Seminar, University of Johannesburg); Peter Alexander (2010), ‘Rebellion of the poor: South Africa’s service delivery protests – a preliminary analysis’, Review of African Political Economy 37(123), pp. 26-27; National Assembly (2010), 36/1/4/1/201000030, Question No. 194, 19 April.

[3] For 2011/12 the figures are for the period 1 April 2011 to 5 March 2012.

[4] Ibid.

[5] National Assembly (2010).

[6] Vally (2009).

[7] National Assembly (2010), National Assembly (2012).

[8] National Assemby 2012.

[9] Vally (2009), Alexander (2010).

[10] Statistics South Africa, Mid-year Population Estimates (2011).

*Peter Alexander. South African Research Chair in Social Change and Professor of Sociology, Faculty of Humanities, University of Johannesburg

Labels: police, protest, revolt, south africa, working class