LENIN'S TOMB

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

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Salma Yaqoob posted by Richard Seymour

This is a big deal for the Left:

Dear friends
It is with deep regret that I have decided to resign from Respect. The last few weeks have been extremely difficult for everyone in the party. I feel necessary relations of trust and collaborative working have unfortunately broken down. I have no wish to prolong those difficulties, and indeed hope that they may now be drawn to a close...

This is obviously a calamity for the Left, particularly for anyone interested in building any kind of radical left-of-Labour alternative. At a time when the two major parties are lockstepped in the austerity drive, and when we can hardly count on the TUC to lead the resistance (this notwithstanding), yet another disastrous quietus was the last thing we needed. That is not Salma Yaqoob's fault, obviously. The usual suspects will spread vicious gossip ("she's taken the New Labour shilling" etc etc) but as far as I can see, her decision is perfectly justified. I'm sorry to say it, but George Galloway did it to himself: he ought to have had the humility to retract his statement rather than relying on the diminishing fan club to issue cloying rationalisations.

There are serious questions raised by this nadir, and not only about the gender politics. If, only months after Respect's second coming, the whole thing could come crashing down like this then there are wider issues about the politics, institutional setting and tactics of left-of-Labour formations that need be thought over. Not much else I wish to add for now.

Labels: labour, left, misogyny, patriarchy, respect, socialism, socialist strategy

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Mayor debate posted by Richard Seymour

The organisers of tonight's mayoral debate, London Citizens, took it upon themselves to vocalise #whatlondonwants. That is, as a civil society organisation rooted in the churches, synagogues, mosques, community groups, trade unions and so on, it drafted a moderate agenda for very mild and temperate social reform, and put this to four of the mayoral candidates: Boris Johnson, Ken Livingstone, Jenny Jones and Brian Paddick. The agenda included things like community land trusts and cracking down on dodgy landlords, extension of the living wage, more power and money for civil society groups like London Citizens (this is called better government), safer streets, jobs for young people, and so on.

The actual debate was surrounded by much adornment and ballyhoo. A school choir singing "Lean on Me" while the audience clapped. Many upbeat preacher types exhorting the accomplishments of community and the power of positive attitudes. Headteacher types treating the audience like a school assembly. Children summoning all their courage to mumble their scripted words. "Community leaders" aplenty - a slimy phrase which I detest. I thought to myself: what this event really needs is some corrosive cynicism.

Of genuine interest, however, were testimonials from campaigners and workers, relating stories about a side of London that seemed to make Boris Johnson's head slowly sink forward into his big fat-fingered hands as if to be cradled to a gentle sleep. The most shocking example was of cleaning workers in Hilton hotels, overworked, given no overtime remuneration, and payed such a miserable sum that after rent and utility bills they have only £7 a day to spend on essentials. In London, that's an impossibly small sum. You might want to bear that name in mind: don't caught in a bad hotel.

A few points about the main debate, then. First, quickly, it was only out of politeness that Brian Paddick was actually invited. He's a nice enough fellow for an ex-copper, and he's sporting some very sexy new glasses. And I thought to myself, I thought: "blimey, Brian, you ain't as ugly as I thought". And he even has some policies that aren't complete dogshit. But he's a Liberal, ergo he's a dead man walking. And he didn't do anything to improve his chances. If Jenny Jones wasn't such a repellent candidate for the Greens (more in a momen), they would easily take third position. Aside from anything else, Paddick is far too fond of cliche phrases along the lines of: "not just once a year, but 365 days a year", "taking this forward", "passionate about London ... passionate about people", "same old punch and judy politics". And I thought to myself, I thought: it's lucky Siobhan Benita isn't here as she would have nothing left to say. Which just goes to show, Brian Paddick is not a natural politician. He would be far happier giving up all this lark, growing his hair a bit longer and living with some scrumping hippies in the West Country.

Second, this was a naturally Labour audience. It always is. The organisers make a point of being polite to the point of obsequious to all the candidates, and this ensures a warm reception for everyone. This was true during the general election, when Clegg and Cameron were both feted with every sign of being returning footballers holding aloft a shiny new cup. Yet, despite this, you may recall, Gordon Brown carried the event on a wave of euphoria, and had one of his few real moments during that campaign (because he sounded briefly and vaguely like a Labour person). So, it's Labour territory. This was Ken's to lose; and, he didn't lose it. His fares policy was extremely popular, but not as much as his pledge to restore the EMA for London students. The latter, I would think, he should probably be making more of. His housing policy is pretty bland and not that distinguishable from his rivals. On the police, he hasn't changed his schtick - he's about getting Londoners and coppers 'on the same side again', and putting more officers on the beat. Soft on police crime; soft on the causes of police crime. But it was mainly on issues of national significance that he pulled ahead of his rivals. He beat on the government's public spending cuts, and said that as the economy had just tipped into recession it was obvious they'd taken the wrong course. (Well, they don't think so). He also hammered the bankers, and said that the problem was fundamentally about how they and their greed had been allowed to set the tone in politics and industry for a generation or so. This was all very popular. So, I think he was the de facto London Citizens candidate. And I think he will push Johnson very close in this race.

Third, Boris Johnson confirmed every thesis I have advanced about his campaign, which makes me even cleverer, if that is possible, even cleverer than you imagined me to be. First of all, Johnson wanted nothing to do with being a Tory. He did not once rise to defend Tory ideas. The only whiff of it was when he gently patronised the audience over the call for youth jobs, by saying: "I don't want to create 100,000 new jobs if there aren't young people out there with the skills and the aptitude to do them". But this was small beer when he wouldn't even defend public spending cuts - far from it! When his chance came, he rose to echo Ken Livingstone in saying that, of course, Mr Obama was absolutely right and one should never cut public spending in a recession. He then went on to list his various investments. Then there was the dog that didn't bark. You see, when faced with a simultaneous campaign to impose a Living Wage and create jobs, the Tory's instinctive response is to say, "no, you create jobs by cutting wages. You can have high wages and high unemployment, or low wages and low unemployment. But you can't have high wages and low unemployment, by the power vested in me by hidden hand of the free market." Boris? He was all for the living wage, all for more jobs, all for everything the London Citizens wanted. And, well, if he was inconsistent or coy, he is such a skilled gaffeur that he could amiably bumble and bluster his way out of tight spots. He didn't even raise an eyebrow when he said he would put Ray Lewis - yes, Ray bonkers Lewis - in charge of the Living Wage. Now, of course, it's true that Boris was addressing a Labour audience. But this hesitancy to come out as a Thatcherite, the unwillingness to be seen dead near the government's policies, the desire to come through this without bearing any of the stigma of actually being a Tory, is indicative of what he's about. Boris Johnson wants to lead the Conservative Party. Moreover, his willingness to publicly bash government policy - such as the granny tax - shows that he is unafraid of anything his old friend Cameron might do to him. He knows the leadership is weak.

Finally, and apologies for the slight change of tone, but just who the fuck does Jenny Jones think she is? If you want to patronise and berate people, probably you shouldn't stand for election. If you don't like the sound of other people's voices, maybe just go stand in a corner. Of course, this will sound harsh. But when I tell you that, first of all, she was boring - very boring - you will begin to see my point. And patronising. She patronised the audience not just on the detail of policy, but in every nuance of her tone. Like Brian Paddick, she had a few policies one wouldn't completely turn one's nose up at, but I got the feeling she was there mainly to heighten her profile in the GLA and shore up Ken for a future working relationship. And when she opposed the idea - advanced by London Citizens - of free transport for students, she did so in a tone of voice that was rather like mummy saying 'you can't have that, but it's for your own good'. She explained that her opposition was partially on the grounds of environmentalism, which strikes me as both dishonest and reflecting the worst elements of green anti-consumerism. After all, it isn't as if most students have any choice but to use public transport - all keeping these punitive fares does is ensure that they spend more of their money on the necessary commutes, and less on things they need. Then, when booed for this policy, she chastised the audience "no, you're not allowed to boo me, they [the organizers] said so". Not a joke, this - complete poker-face all the way through. Yes, it's true that the organizers had proscribed booing, but a) this is a pretty risible, pettifogging prohibition at a political debate, and b) if you're a politician and you get an audience this friendly booing, blame yourself. You fuckwit. Jenny Jones lost votes tonight. And if this is her form, which I believe it is, she's a terrible candidate.

So there you are, London. Your choice. You lucky, lucky city.

Labels: boris johnson, green party, ken livingstone, labour, london, tories

Thursday, April 05, 2012

Galloway to speak at Marxism posted by Richard Seymour

Given all that has happened, this is certainly worth plugging:

Galloway's magnificent by-election victory in Bradford West shocked the political establishment. He trounced Labour and won an overall majority of votes cast.

The result sums up the anger at the pro-austerity consensus of the three main parties. As Galloway put it: "who would have thought a backside could have three cheeks?"

We are very proud to announce that he will be speaking at the opening rally of Marxism 2012, helping to give the event a flavour of how resistance can break through

Labels: george galloway, labour, marxism, marxism 2012, respect, socialism, swp

Sunday, April 01, 2012

Guess who's coming to vote? posted by Richard Seymour

BBC to Galloway: will you represent Muslims or the white working class? Labour to press: we have a problem with incorrigibly reactionary Muslims voting for left-wing Catholics, or with the incorrigibly reactionary white working class who won't vote for a Muslim candidate. Salma Yaqoob:

The fact that Respect won in every ward in the constituency, and won by a massive 10,000 majority, testifies that that disillusionment goes way beyond the Muslim community. In the predominately white, middle-class ward of Clayton approximately 900 votes were cast for Respect compared to 40 for Labour.

Labels: capitalist ideology, george galloway, islam, labour, muslims, respect, social democracy, white working class

Friday, February 10, 2012

We are all precarious: on the 'precariat' and its misuses posted by Richard Seymour

"In this article, I will argue that it is mistaken to treat the precariat as a class. Attempts to make it into a class are theoretically incoherent, and the facts of precarious labour and social precarity are misunderstood if boxed into an ‘emerging class’ thesis. This is important because class analyses underpin political strategies. In the case of the concept’s chief populariser, Standing, the analysis is bound up with a particular set of political articulations and strategic orientations that are more ‘Big Society’ than ‘Critique of the Gotha Programme’. I will argue that precarity exerts effects right up the chain of class strata, throughout the working class and into sections of the middle class, especially the petty bourgeoisie. The appellation ‘precariat’ thus works as a kind of populist interpellation, a claim I will explain in more detail in the conclusion. This interpellation, this ‘naming’, operates on a real antagonism. It is one that emerges between the ‘power bloc’ and the rest, particularly in the age of austerity. The precarity built into financialized accumulation was always pushed downward as far as possible. But it is affecting ever wider layers of people, such that only the capitalist class and a few sections of the middle class seem to be protected from it, their security purchased through our precarity. We should embrace the concept of the 'precariat' in this sense, and use it to help found a new, radical majoritarian politics with a distinctly anticapitalist core."

Labels: class, class politics, labour, marxism, middle class, precariat, precarious labour, precarity, ruling class, socialist strategy, working class

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

Thursday, January 05, 2012

White people need to shut up posted by Richard Seymour

Not me, obviously. (Good luck with that.) And probably not you either. But, you know, those white people. The endless parade of white victims, the oppressed white, the white who can't say what they really think and yet endlessly say it at length, for a living. I fucking hate these people with every last residue of bile I can muster. Send them back, I say. These are the people now calling Diane Abbott a 'racist' for saying that 'white people' love to use 'divide and rule', it being an old colonial tactic. Abbott says she was trying to express a more complex idea, nuances of which were lost in Twitter's 140-character limit. But I don't really care. I'm not even going to waste time explaining what's wrong with the idea that white people are the victims of racism. You think your feelings have been hurt by Diane Abbott? Come talk to me for five minutes, and I'll fill your ear with some hisses you won't forget.

The counterpart to reactionary outrage-mongering, of course, is liberal condescension: in the vein of "oh, she's a very silly woman, saying these provocative things, giving the right a cause to change the subject". This is wrong in many ways. First of all, what Abbott said was, in a very loose sense, correct: 'white people' do indeed love to play divide and rule. Not all of them, good lord no. Not you or I. Not the good whites (there are some good whites). But I think we all know that there's a troublesome minority in our midst, the ones who give us all a bad name, whom we must root out and expose, and hand over to the authorities. That's all I'm saying. Second, I would rather have a politician who expresses things bluntly and occasionally blunders but is usually on the right side of the argument (Abbott, for all her flaws, is better than most Labour politicians in this respect), than a calculating mountebank who plays for position in the spectacle. The fact that this is the main line of criticism coming from liberals is indicative of the kind of domesticated, gentrified political game they're playing. Third, Abbott's comments may provide the occasion for the right to go on an offensive, but let's not pretend this wasn't inevitable. Following the verdict against the two Lawrence suspects, and the way in which this drew attention to the facts of institutional - no, structural - racism in British society, it was a dead cert that the media would search for a way to restore white victimhood.

The real problem is not that Diane Abbott says "silly" things. It is that public speech is regulated according to conventions largely dictated by the powerful; that the social ideas and images that govern what is acceptable in speech are produced by people with a definite interest in domesticating dissident perspectives. This is something to be opposed, not adjusted to. But first, before all that, white people need to shut up.

Labels: 'reverse racism', capitalism, colonialism, diane abbott, labour, racism, uk, white man's burden, whiteness

Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Labour's strategy of right-wing populism posted by Richard Seymour

"...More specifically, the tenor of his latest intervention fits into a wider Labour strategy of articulating a politics of the "squeezed middle". In Miliband's bland cadences, this sounds anodyne. But, in fact, it is a strategy taken over directly from rightwing populism. To understand this, one need only revisit the rightist backlash against social democracy and New Deal liberalism. This had a racist component, visible in the seemingly evanescent campaigns of Enoch Powell and George Wallace. But race wasn't all there was to it, and the techniques of populist mobilisation continued to be deployed long after these two had passed into obscurity.
"Rightwing populism is not merely transparently "representative": rather it seeks to create the division that it articulates. Societies divided along multiple lines are simplified into a dichotomy between "the people" and its other. The working class is redivided into the hard-working taxpayer and the slothful undeserving poor, with the former subsumed into the "people", the latter into its other. The people are then construed as a "middle" whose sovereignty has been abused by bureaucrats, tax-avoiding plutocrats, criminals, protesters and clamourous minorities alike. Thus, Wallace complained that "middle America" was squeezed between the "silk-stocking crowd" and the poor and criminal.
"The "middle", thus defined, is a depthless discursive entity: "the people" supposedly bracketed by the term share little by way of work, culture, housing, education or daily experience. They are united only by what they oppose. Nonetheless, this type of appeal would underpin Ronald Reagan's attempt to forge a Republican majority. In the same way, Powellism would pass into mainstream politics in the form of Thatcherism, which championed a squeezed "middle England" of hard workers against a bossy state and the grasping poor: a form of politics characterised by Stuart Hall as "authoritarian populism". Since then, capturing the "centre ground" has often meant genuflecting to an incorrigibly reactionary "middle"..."

Labels: austerity, ed miliband, labour, neoliberalism, new labour, populism, reactionaries, welfare

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

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

Friday, November 04, 2011

Labour can't woo Occupy London while defending the City posted by Richard Seymour

My latest for The Guardian:

Even though some voices within the Labour party have been trying to woo the Occupy London protesters recently, the recent comments of Ed Balls on the "Robin Hood" or Tobin tax reminds us that his party isn't necessarily on the side of the 99%. The idea of taxing financial transactions at 0.05% – hardly a radical proposal – is to give national states some leverage against the power of international financial markets. Back in the 1990s, it was a demand taken up by the radical French group Attac, and was debated in the anti-capitalist movement. But it was opposed by leaders such as Gordon Brown on the grounds that it would restrain growth.
Things have moved on since then. Following the credit crunch, only the intervention of national states prevented the complete collapse of global capitalism. There is no doubt that doing so would have been easier had the Tobin tax already been in place. Thus, Brown declared his support for the tax in 2009, as did the chair of the Financial Services Authority, Lord Adair Turner. The United Nations approves the tax. And just this week, trying to save the moral high ground for the Church of England, Rowan Williams reiterated his endorsement. Recently, it is leaders of the European right such as Merkel and Sarkozy who have argued for a version of the tax to apply across Europe.
Yet, this is apparently too radical for Balls, the shadow chancellor, who timorously suggested this week that "we must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater". While he supports the tax in principle, he has intervened in the debate over an EU-wide Tobin tax, arguing that "doing it only in Europe and not including major financial centres such as New York risks real damage to the City". In this, he is offering nuanced support to the government's position, which is to reject the tax unless it is implemented on a global level. This is a far cry from the "euthanasia of the rentiers" that Keynes prescribed...

Labels: anticapitalism, capitalism, capitalist crisis, city of london, finance capital, labour, socialism, tobin tax, tories

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