American Insurgents: book and events posted by Richard Seymour

The latest book, American Insurgents: A Brief History of American Anti-Imperialism, will be hitting the shelves soon - certainly it should already start to be available in the US, and will be arriving in the UK very shortly.  I will be doing a launch in the UK probably next month, but US readers should be aware of the following events that will take place while I'm visiting to do my PhD research:

• Richard Seymour visits Busboys and Poets in Washington D.C. to discuss his latest book, American Insurgents: A Brief History of American Anti-Imperialism Sponsored by Teaching For Change, Busboys and Poets, & Haymarket Books Saturday, May 26, 2012 - 5:30am Bus Boys and Poets 2021 14th St NW Washington , DC 20009
• American Insurgents: A Brief History of American Anti-Imperialism, Book Launch Wednesday, May 30, 2012 - 7:00pm TBD Philadelphia , PA 19103
• American Insurgents: Brief History of American Anti-Imperialism, Saturday, June 2, 2012 - 7:00pm Puck Building 295 Lafayette Street 4th floor New York, NY 10012

If you do happen to be one of those east coast socialist intellectuals I've been reading about, make an effort to come to one of these events.  I'll make it worth your while.

The other thing is, there will be a paperback version of The Liberal Defence of Murder.  It will have a new chapter taking things up to date, and will be released (when else?) on 4th July.

Labels: american anti-imperialism, american insurgents, anti-imperialism, antiwar, imperialism, liberalism, socialism, US imperialism

Jim Wolfreys on the French elections posted by Richard Seymour

This is a detailed talk that explores the context of the far right's success.  Well worth watching:

Labels: austerity, fascism, france, french elections, merkozy, neoliberalism, nicolas sarkozy, socialism

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

Bloggery posted by Richard Seymour

Just to point out, I figured out that the best way to overcome the problem with the comments was to shift to a new domain.  If you recall, the issue has been caused by the fact that Google insisted on introducing new country-specific URL codes for Blogspot blogs, ending in .co.uk, .co.ca, .co.au, etc., depending on where you accessed the blog from.  This meant that an individual post might have several URL codes.  Disqus, the comments service I use, would then treat each version as a separate article with a separate comments thread.  There's no good reason that I can see for Google having imposed this change without allowing any opt-out.  But that's what you get with a free service.  So, the solution I have decided upon is to purchase a new domain, www.leninology.com.  From now on, you should in theory find yourself being redirected to this domain if you try to access via www.leninology.blogspot.com, but it would be easier for you just to bookmark the new URL.  This does involve a 'year zero' for comments, until I can get Disqus to 'migrate' the threads.  But in the long term it will solve the problem with the comments thread and also give us internet 'personhood' about ten years after everyone else.

Labels: bloggery, comments, everyone is banned, lenin's tomb

Quebec's extraordinary student rebellion posted by Richard Seymour

Students in the UK who are struggling to mount an effective resistance to the coalition's policies, and to the neoliberal orthodoxy in their universities, would do well to study what's happening in Quebec right now - the biggest student uprising you've never heard of. This is an information quarantine that needs to be broken, so that we can mine the strategic lessons from this movement. We are well used to seeing students brutalised by riot police in the UK; we are less used to scenes like this. I don't have time to write it up now, but here's some socialist pedagogy:

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Left Front and the Fascists posted by Richard Seymour

I don't have time to digest and analyse this as thoroughly as I would like, but yesterday's elections in France deserve some kind of discussion on the blog.

Following his victory in Bradford West, George Galloway's article in the Morning Star argued that the conjunctural factors making his success possible were the same that are undoing the neoliberal consensus in France and Greece, and shortly across the EU.  There are, caveats aside, obvious parallels between Galloway and Mélenchon; we will see whether a UK equivalent to the Left Front emerges.  If yesterday's election results in Paris are anything to go by, you might think this a rather worrying comparison.  Not only did Mélenchon not receive the 15-17% the polls promised him (far less the 19-24% an internal government poll prophesied back in April), but the Front National gained a fifth of the vote. 

We should keep this in perspective.  First, the total left vote is (I am assured) the highest since 1988.  Second, the Left Front has still improved the radical left vote since 2007, in a situation where that was by no means a guaranteed outcome given the sharp decline in working class struggles over the last few years.  11% for a radical left candidacy is far from insignificant.  We should have problems of this kind, where millions of votes for the radical left is a disappointing result.  It is particularly not to be sniffed at when Mélenchon so rattled the capitalist class that the president of the French business confederation MEDEF referred to him as the heir of Terror.  And what did Mélenchon say to induce such drool-spattered venom?  Oh, this:

"Anything above €360,000, we take it all. The tax bracket will be 100%. People say to me, that's ideological. I say too right it is. It's a vision of society. Just as we won't allow poverty in our society, we won't allow the hyper-accumulation of riches. Money should not be accumulated but circulated, invested, spent for the common good. ... Look, we have to smash this prejudice that the rich are useful just because they're rich."

The Left Front seems to have really shaken things up and even, in the short campaign, forced the establishment parties to make some concessions.  Sarkozy adopted a Mélenchon policy of pursuing tax exiles and forcing them to pay their taxes.  Hollande adapted to Mélenchon's rhetoric, eventually sounding 'left-wing' enough to give the jaded, faded old liberal hack Nick Cohen "an erection".  (Do I really misrepresent him?)

But with the results as they are, it is now the fascists who are exerting the stronger gravitational pull on the mainstream.  Both Sarkozy and Hollande have cited Marine Le Pen's strong vote as a reason to be all the more protective of France's borders - exploiting legitimate fears which we must not ignore, you know the drill.  I am assured by people who know better than I do that the FN also adopted a sort of 'Strasserite' platform of protectionism and corporatism that went down well with sections of the working class, and may have contributed to their becoming more 'respectable'. 

But the single biggest issue that galvanised far right voters according to the polls was immigration.  Integrally linked to this was Le Pen's campaign against Islam, and the 'footprint' that it is said to be leaving in French cities.  Alas, she was only expressing in radicalised form the Islamophobia that is respectable in almost every section of French society, and in almost every party.   Mélenchon was the only major politician who came out fighting against Le Pen, and defended Muslims against racism.  Unfortunately, even he is compromised by a problematic left-republicanism, which led him to vote for the ban on the 'foulard'.  I am just saying that the racial populist idioms that have availed the far right are bound up with this doomed, crisis-ridden French republicanism, and with the failure of any sizeable section of the French left to come to terms in any meaningful way with the colonial legacy.  This is one issue on which I genuinely don't envy the French left (allow me to have one).  Moreover, there is no national organisation with any weight in France giving expression to its traditions of militant anti-fascism (please don't say SOS-Racisme unless you want me to laugh-barf), which is a serious absence in terms of the impediments that could exist for the far right.

Lest I seem to be giving an overly political reading of the fascists' success, allow me to qualify what I am saying.  I can agree, readily and enthusiastically, that certain factors such as the specific composition of classes in France, the large rural population, the way in which its rapid imperial decline and the absorption of the pied-noirs was experienced, the effect of this loss of imperial fantasies of omnipotence on the petty bourgeoisie, and the effect of regionally concentrated long-term unemployment, have presented conditions favourable to the growth of fascist politics in France.  All of these aspects, conjoined with the crisis of the Socialists, the Eurozone calamity, the demise of le petit Nicolas, are undoubtedly present as overdetermining factors in Marine Le Pen's ascendancy.  Nonetheless, ultimately these conditions and the multiple antagonisms they produced have had to be resolved (or not) at the level of political struggle; there is nothing automatic about the way these factors impact on politics.  The fascists continually reconstruct and maintain a fairly huge coalition behind far right politics, (at present, some 6.4m votes) by working on these antagonisms, by producing racist-populist articulations that 'mention', in their own idiom, the conditions alluded to already.  And they can do so to the extent that a) their 'quilting point', the issue of racism around which they organise their whole popular platform, is supplied almost free of charge by the bourgeois parties, and b) the left refrains from efforts at systematically disorganising their actions, at mobilising the constituencies who would be their victims in self-defence.


There's more to say, but I'll leave it for the comments thread.

Marxism 2012 posted by Richard Seymour

It's coming up to that time of year again. The timetable for Marxism 2012 is up on the website. You'll see that I'm speaking on 'Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism in the Liberal Tradition' on Friday 6th June. There'll be time later to explain what that's all about. As for other speakers, well... I mean, do you need another reason to go?

Labels: anti-imperialism, historical materialism, liberal imperialism, liberalism, marxism, marxism 2012, socialism

Tahrir: "the revolution is not over" posted by Richard Seymour

Labels: dictatorship, egypt, imperialism, mubarak, occupation, revolution, socialism, tahrir square, US imperialism

The material existence of ideology posted by Richard Seymour

Labels: althusser, base and superstructure, capitalist ideology, class consciousness, determination, dominant ideology, ideology, poulantzas

The state in capitalist crisis (part one) posted by Richard Seymour

In trying to think through the changes that we're going through, that are being imposed on us, we constantly find we have to account for the state's role in managing and mediating the crisis and the forms it takes. For what is happening now, unmistakeably, is the re-organization of the state's presence directly in productive relations; its provision of investment conditions; its socialization of the costs of investment; and its disciplinary apparatuses.  In the terms used in a previous essay, it is a process of state re-formation, given the name of 'austerity' because of its implications for popular constituencies historically benefiting from the welfare state.  And I wanted to know whether it was possible to say anything general about this subject; that is to say, whether there are principles governing marxist research into the role of capitalist states in specific crises that are distinct from those governing marxist research into capitalist states tout court.  This is the first in a series of posts trying to work out what these might be.

Before proceeding with this, I want to point out that the return of 'the state' (or a theoretical concern with the state), however tentative at the moment, is the result of two developments: first, the anticapitalist movement and it sequel in the Occupy movement; second, the aggressive assertion of imperialism and thus the re-emergence of anti-imperialist critique during the last decade.  This means that the discussion of capitalist state in crisis must be a strategic one, conducted with a view to confronting the state as a factor in our struggles over the social product.  But it also means that we cannot begin to discuss the reorganization and fiscal down-sizing of welfare states without situating them in relation to the imperialist chain, and the patterns of exploitation of the dominated societies.  To put it simply; the politics of austerity cannot be decoupled from the question of inter-imperialist rivalry between the US, EU and China, and their competitive alliances in the Middle East, and sub-saharan Africa.  And since I intend to focus on austerity in the UK, its unique position as an 'Atlanticist' EU member, the once favoured 'link' between the US and Europe, must play a role here.  Both of these issues will be raised in more detail in future posts.

***

First, I think it's important to say that while austerity has as its primary justification the imperative of reducing public spending, cutting the deficit and thus maintaining the fiscal 'credibility' of the British state with financial markets, and while suppressing the growth of the state budget is a real institutional commitment, the policies introduced under its rubric are much broader than those which could plausibly be related to cutting spending.  Whether it is cuts to the minimum wage, the introduction of private provision in the NHS and schools, or changes in the tax structure to benefit the wealthy, these are policies whose overall thrust is unlikely to increase revenues to the Treasury.  In fact, as regards the changes to public services, the involvement of private companies such as Virgin, as well as the wasteful 'markets' imposed on providers, will probably drive up costs and lead to further fiscal crises.  No one is suggesting that the state will stop collecting the taxes to fund core services such as pensions, healthcare and education.  And even if they are under-funded, and the provision is rationed in ways that favour residents of relatively wealthy, middle class areas, it is highly unlikely that the costs will stop increasing.

This isn't to say that the welfare system isn't being pared down drastically, with lamentable results for millions.  But I think it is best, following Claus Offe, to characterise welfare state capitalism as a form of crisis management: or, more accurately, a crisis-ridden form of crisis management.  And despite its limitations, capitalism cannot simply wish away this form of intervention.  The fact is that, just as in the most controversial reforms being undertaken the state isn't so much withdrawing from the provision of public services as out-sourcing and marketising it, so in general the state isn't so much cutting its costs as shifting them around.  No doubt there is an aim to suppress costs, and this commitment is institutionalized in various ways, but I would be surprised if the capitalist state in the UK cost much less in 2022, as a proportion of GDP, than it has over the last two decades.  In the period from 1987-2007, during which there was only one recession of medium severity, public spending was generally kept at or below 40% of GDP, a feat last accomplished during the high growth years of the 1950s.  In a period of sustained crisis, this becomes extremely difficult because not only is growth depressed and social overheads inflated, but the relative costs of investment are higher, and the capitalist class constantly needs incentives from the state to put its money into circulation.  Even once the crisis recedes and a period of relative capitalist dynamism resumes, this particular neoliberal format of capitalist dependency on the state will continue to drive up costs.

Relatedly, it would be mistaken to conclude that what is happening is a de-regulation of capitalism; it is a re-regulation.  This is true not only in the sense that even supposedly privatized utilities quickly accumulate a plethora of regulations and government interventions just to prevent the most egregious abuses and keep the system basically functional, but above all in the sense that the state's regulative powers are becoming all the more necessary to capitalism in a period of organic crisis, even as their limits are disclosed.  For example, it is a well-known factoid that the number of financial regulations in the neoliberal period, and particularly after the repeal of Glass-Steagall, actually increased dramatically; because the financiers had more freedom did not mean that they were less regulated.  The regulatory structure was simply reformed to increase their powers; this only appears to be a contradiction in terms if you assume that real freedom is 'negative freedom'.

So what is happening under the rubric of austerity is neither simply cost-cutting nor de-regulation, nor any kind of withdrawal of the state from 'the economy'.  Rather, the combined effect of the measures will be to shift the balance of power between classes, as condensed in the institutional ensemble of the state, in such a way as to fundamentally enhance the advantage of capital, with the rationale being a 'growth model' in which such policies are said to improve the wealth of the whole society through a temporary tightening of the belt.    The logic is clear, for example, from Vince Cable's argument for freezing the minimum wage for under 21s: lower wages equals (more profitable investment therefore) more growth and more jobs.

***

One of the arguments we have made against austerity is that the fiscal crisis isn't really real: the debt can be paid off through growth, which won't be assisted by austerity politics.  And in a sense, this is true.  The idea that the UK is in a situation like Greece, held over a barrel by bankers, the IMF and EU finance ministers, is palpably absurd.  The UK's debt situation is far from unmanageable in either historical or comparative terms.  Further, the UK ruling class has sufficient clout that were it, through the state, to embark on an alternative growth pact for one reason or another, few international creditors would be seriously alarmed.  Actually, given the way speculators and lenders are responding to austerity programmes once they are imposed, a stimulus-based strategy might actually endow them with more of that fabled 'confidence'.

But there is nonetheless a 'rational kernel' in the notion of a fiscal crisis.  The capitalist welfare state, even in the neoliberal period, demonstrates a tendency (note, tendency) to exceed in expenditures what it is able to collect in taxation.  The reasons for this can be enumerated thus: i) the periodic crises of accumulation, which not only reduce tax receipts in the short-term but result in pressure from business, on pain of investment strike, to reduce taxes on profits and investment; ii) the pressure from popular constituencies for services and provisions, based on expectations raised by the welfare state itself, which acts as a limiting factor on any fiscal cut-backs that state personnel are able to make; iii) the tendency for long-term regulative and growth strategies coordinated through the state (and here I don't mean just the 'Fordist' corporatist strategies deployed in the post-war era) to fail in the context of unplanned, competitive and exploitative production relations.  The latter results not just in sectoral imbalances within 'the economy', but more importantly sustained sectional struggles within the capitalist class, and class struggles over the social product which always upset any long-term calculations, and make it impossible for a capitalist state to impose a rational, planned growth strategy even through its considerable leverage as a factor in production.

The attempt to get this tendency under control has been an institutionalised commitment of capitalist states throughout the neoliberal era.  In the United Kingdom, this has taken the form of constant class struggles with public sector workers to facilitate down-sizing, as well as the embedding of policies such as 'Compulsory Competitive Tendering' based on the orthodoxy of public choice economics, which holds that bureaucratic budget-maximising is responsible for spending increases.  It has also, due to the first factor mentioned above, resulted in a shift of the structure of taxation so that employers pay less, and workers more, toward the 'social overheads' of capital - that is, the reproduction of labour power in its complex forms, as well as of the growing 'reserve army' of labour.  With the increase in VAT and various indirect taxes, and the cuts in corporation tax and other taxes on profits, this trend is being amplified.

More broadly, the suppression of public spending, as an element in the austerity formula developed in West Germany, has been institutionalised in the EU since the Treaty of European Union, and certainly since the Stability and Growth Pact in 1997.  How well has this gone?  Well, the Pact ruled that member states should have a public deficit at no higher than 3% of GDP.  Prior to the crisis, this was achieved by most member states, barring 'periphery' economies like Hungary, Greece and Portugal.  We have seen that, despite being 'peripheral', such economies can nonetheless can have disproportionate significance, condensing all the weaknesses and instabilities of the system in one 'weak link'.  At the moment, however, the problem is far more general: across the Eurozone at the moment, the public deficit is more than twice the permitted level.  And the Merkozy axis aims to drive this back down by forcing punitive austerity measures on the weakest economies.

***

But there is another aspect of the transformation we are witnessing, and here we have to return to the commodification of health, education, and social security.  The state is not just a political factor in the capitalist mode of production, securing the 'general conditions' for the reproduction of capitalism but otherwise abstaining from direct involvement in 'the economy'.  In several respects, even if not in its totality, it acts as a capitalist.

The capitalist state doesn't only reproduce the capital-labour relation externally in relation to its action (infrastructural investment, social outlays), but also internally, through its exploitation of waged labour in nationalized or semi-nationalized industries.  Whether it is in the direct ownership of post, banking, or railway companies, or in the heavily subsidised, incentivized and bailed out industries such as cars, energy, armaments and, of course, finance, the state is involved not just in appropriating surplus value through fiat, the better to invest it for the 'general good', nor just in realizing surplus value or redistributing it but, in a number of key instances, extracting surplus value.  It is true that, in the neoliberal period, the British capitalist state has taken the lead in withdrawing from the direct or complete ownership of productive industry, but it has still been involved in putting part of the total surplus value back into circulation as capital in various industries.  And even where it doesn't directly extract surplus value, it is involved in the realization of surplus value generated by productive labour, just as capital-intensive industries are.

What appears to be happening with the re-commodification of core services is that the government is giving capital-intensive industry sectors that work in the orbit of the national state - those involved in financial and other services particularly - the option of realizing a considerable share of the surplus value produced across the economy.  This sort of action can temporarily act as a spur to investment, in a way that benefits the politically powerful sectors of capital, but it also contributes to solving the underlying crisis of profitability to the extent that the spread of 'market conditions', the erosion of 'spaces of resistance' in the welfare state, and the suppression of wages that it allows affects the general balance between capital and labour to the former's benefit.

***

Some general features of austerity, then:

1) the state is not withdrawing from 'the economy' - it is never absent from 'the economy' - but changing its mode of presence in productive relations.

2) the state's cost-cutting commitments are subordinate to its crisis-management commitments, the former tending to be defeated by the latter due to the growing relative costs of investment and the long-term tendency toward crisis.

3) state institutions act within a context of a class struggle between labour and capital, and as such their policymaking must respect the relative strengths of each (hence, the state acts as the material condensation of the balance of class forces), but the state also has a form-determined selectivity in favour of the capitalist class.  These factors determine the form that crisis management takes.

4)  nonetheless, the state acts not on behalf of capital 'in general', but in the interests of hegemonic fractions of capital, and any charge that state managers are behaving 'ideologically' and 'non-pragmatically' must be understood in those terms.

5) the relationship between the state and the social formation that it regulates and reconstitutes is permanently characterised by dysfunction and disequilibrium. This is not to take the absolutist position that there is in essence no distinction between 'Keynesian' and neoliberal remedies.  The fact that 'Keynesian' solutions based on demand management and state investment, cannot resolve the crisis in the long term doesn't mean that they cannot play a role in abating the most egregious features of the crisis.  But the fact is that 'Keynesian' welfare and nationalization policies, by raising expectations of the state, and by empowering resistances, can only in the long run deepen the dysfunctions of capitalism.  As such, they make most sense in the context of a 'transitional' approach, of which more will be said in future posts.

These are not quite the theoretical principles that I sought at the beginning of the post, but rather theoretically informed descriptions.  But in future posts, we can deepen these observations by drawing more on Offe's analysis of the 'contradictions of the welfare state', and the 'crisis of crisis management'.

Labels: austerity, british state, capitalist crisis, capitalist state, class struggle, marxism, neoliberalism, public spending, welfare

Galloway to speak at Marxism posted by Richard Seymour

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

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

Of media bubbles, comfort zones and twitstorms posted by Richard Seymour

You know, I like Mehdi Hasan, or those bits of him which can be read.  He makes the right enemies, opposes Islamophobia, is antiwar and is far more critical of both Obama and the Labour leadership than most in his position are willing to be.  I also notice when he RTs my stuff on Twitter, and glow a little inside.  (Oh, save your sanctimony, I need the approval.)  But then this: a big whatthefuck sandwich.

In effect, I would argue, the article faces in two directions simultaneously.  Formally, it is addressed to British Muslims, a wake-up call, an appeal to get their skates on and join in more in wider political issues.  Substantively, it is addressed to a wider audience, as an explanation for the seemingly inexplicable and aberrant behaviour of Muslim voters in Bradford West.  It says, Muslims are obsessed with foreign affairs, and thus appear to be foreign; they care only about war and don't join in the wider arguments about inequality or the NHS; they respond only to that which specifically affects Muslims as Muslims, the least expansive kind of identity politics, and in effect isolate themselves from wider British public life.  Acknowledging the chilling effects of so-called anti-terrorism legislation on political activism by Muslims, it nonetheless blames them for inhabiting an "antiwar comfort-zone" and exhorts them to abandon it.

Addressing Bradford specifically, the article insists that Muslims weren't enthused by the anti-austerity message of Respect, and only knew that its candidate George Galloway was antiwar and pro-Muslim.  The authority for this piece of information is a local Labour student.  So there you have it: the degeneration in our parliamenary democracy, the fragility of mountainous Labour majorities (demonstrated well beyond Bradford West), the collapse in coalition parties' support, the polarisation and volatility of politics in the age of austerity... all of this can be set aside, for the main cause of the result in Bradford West is a political pathology among British Muslims.

Okay.  This isn't the worst example of its kind.  Given the source, it is a disappointment, but you come to expect this from pundits.  And most of the British punditocracy just did not get it about Bradford West; never mind foresight, twenty-twenty hindsight would have been nice.  They were left trying to cobble together ersatz explanations from an impoverished analytical language that rarely knows how to ascribe political and tactical intelligence to voters.  Watch them at work on the television: the same old dull, leaden psephological cliches from the same dull, leaden pollsters and pundits which we've been hearing for forty years to no avail: voters are becoming less tribal, more like consumers, sick of party politics they gravitate toward single-issue campaigns, except for Muslims who vote en bloc along tribal lines etc etc.  So, Hasan's piece hardly stood out. 

However.  If you follow me on Twitter, you might already know that I took some of this up with Hasan.  I asserted that the article was filled with unfounded, unfair and patronising generalizations about British Muslims that would do nothing but feed into the stereotypes which Hasan usually opposes, and I challenged him to back up his assertions.  This generated a terrifically rancorous twitstorm.  What struck me is that those defending the piece, including Hasan, have one argument, and one argument only: he is a British Muslim and is thus perfectly placed to make the kind of judgement calls that he made in this article.  That is the only defence offered, the only defence available.  Variations on the theme were offered: you, ghetto leftist, shouldn't attack someone with Hasan's record; you, provocateur, have stepped over the line this time; you, non-Muslim, have no basis for disputing Hasan's arguments; how many Muslims have you met, known or been related to anyway?  I will spare you the various tiresome interjections along the lines that "guys, this is booooring, please stop".  As if they don't know what Twitter is; as if they don't know how to scroll past lines of text.

In essence, the defence rested on an appeal to authority.  In fact, for it to be coherent, for it to sustain the sorts of arguments made by Hasan without external support, it really has to be an appeal to omniscience.  So, now, I have to explain that an argument stands or falls on its merits, on the proofs that can be assembled for it, not on the merits of the person making it?  I doubt it.  I doubt that a simple logical fallacy is responsible for such a streak of emetic twaddle.  I assume that, to defend it on such sycophantic and illogical lines, either you have to be sympathetic to the thesis in the first place, hence grateful that a person of suitable authority gave voice to it, or you must have a conception of political etiquette (cf. 'coalition-building') in which one doesn't publicly criticise luminaries, or at least not too strenuously, and always 'constructively', ie on favourable terms.  Talk about comfort-zones. 

Labels: bradford, george galloway, islam, islamophobia, liberals, media, muslims, twitstorm, twitter

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

	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

	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

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