I have had a few testy comments about my last piece, in particular my description of the English left having no politics just policies. It is clear that to some people the distinction is not clear. Perhaps I should explain.
A policy is some measure that one would like to see put into practice. Politics is about how one goes about exerting enough power to actually get a particular set of policies in place. The two are not wholly separable. If one wants, for example, to nationalise all the banks or create an independent Scotland then the kind of politics one engages in will be different to that if one wishes to, for example, alter the capital-reserve ratios of banks or give greater freedom to local councils to build houses. There are levels of policy change which imply different levels of political action. But there is a clear distinction: politics is about power, policy is about how power is used. And just as the formation of alternative policies requires a culture in which policy can be debated so any politics requires a culture in which alternatives can be considered, compromises reached and differences resolved ─ or not.
The English left (and specifically the English left) has taken a decade to find itself a culture of policy formation after the intellectual battering which it took under Thatcherism culminating in the sneering and condescension which it suffered in the early years of New Labour when just the curling of Peter Mandelson’s lip or the raising of Tony Blair’s eyebrow was enough to see off any faint effort to resist free market liberalisation. No longer. Mandelson’s reported histrionics in Cabinet, when he banged his head on the table at voiced opposition to privatising the Post Office, are no longer effective. The recession has clearly spelled an end to extreme neo-liberalism, simply on the grounds that it obviously doesn’t work, but there is also some solid spadework being done on what kind of policy alternatives might exist to this discredited paradigm. The Compass seminar just before the G20 summit showed off some of these and the current issue of Soundings magazine provides other examples. (http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/journals/soundings/current.html).
But what the left lacks is any political culture which is concerned with how these policies could be comprehensively implemented. I described in my previous piece how the English left has become almost an extension of progressive charities and think-tanks, bodies which are good at forming policies but whose political purchase is essentially one of lobbying the existing power centres. Such lobbying can be effective. The environmental NGOs such as Greenpeace have shown that strenuous lobbying combined with good PR can get results. But lobbying has its limits, ones shown most clearly in a time when some kind of fundamental shift in the way a society runs may be on the cards. There has been enough talk about the ‘end of capitalism’ to suggest that we may in the midst of such a moment now. In this situation, the limits of lobbying are very apparent for in the end all the left is able to do with its new policies is write a letter to Gordon or, after the apparently inevitable election defeat for Labour, hope that someone better turns up. A good example of the limits of such lobbying is the Compass campaign to stop privatisation of the Royal Mail. In the end its alternative plan, a good policy proposal, culminated in a meeting at No 10 with ministerial aides which ‘failed to convince’ them.
We all know that Britain in a political as well as an economic crisis with the former arguably being more serious than the latter. Already the Labour Party seems to be writing its own suicide note as the wrangling over the Brown succession begins. There are strong rumours that the right of the party is preparing an exit strategy based upon some kind of organised defection to the Lib Dems or, possibly, the Conservatives. However the left, both inside and outside the LP, seems frozen, unable even to think about its political response. The one independent action taken so far is the NO2EU campaign fronted for various far-left fractions by the RMT union-leadership (though without any consultation with its members). Apart from its slightly racist overtones (how could they dream up the slogan ‘It’s a Black and White Issue’ straight from the BNP lexicon), the very name seems like a throwback to the 1970s when opposition to the EU was devised as a substitute for genuinely radical policies. (See Gayle O’Donovan’s diary for more on this).
Apart from this bizarre distraction, there is a vacuum. There remains an almost pathological aversion to discussing the one obvious way forward ─ that the LP should split and that that the left should reform around a new political formation along the lines of those already formed in Germany and Italy. A key demand of this formation and one which could make it instantly popular would be the reform of the British electoral system. This aversion has long historical roots. Any suggestion of a split has been anathema on the left since the 1930s after Ramsay MacDonald’s defection pushed Labour outside government for a decade and more. The entire left, within and without the LP, from then on uniformly believed in the general strategy of winning it for the left though, of course, the precise tactics for achieving this differed acrimoniously between the various groups. There was a moment around 1980 when this strategy appeared to have been successful only to founder on the rocks of an intransigent right-wing prepared to sabotage electoral success to prevent any left victory. The same is likely to be true now unless the left is prepared to take a much tougher and more strategic approach, ditching the Labour machine which now wholly controls the party and preparing to face the task of rebuilding the left around a different organisation. It would be a difficult choice and one which would involve a great deal of hard negotiation. But it would at least be about politics.
Tuesday 5 May 2009
Tuesday 14 April 2009
A good word, palimpest
I have always wanted to use the word ‘palimpsest’. Now my chance has come. Technically it means an ancient manuscript cleaned for reuse so that the original writing was removed except for faint traces which can be seen by close examination. But it also acts as a political metaphor, something started by Marx and Engels, no less, when they criticised German revolutionaries for over-writing French socialist thinkers with inscriptions of their own pedantry and abstraction. And so to the English left which was displayed in all its glory in the days before the G20 summit.
As the website (www.putpeoplefirst.org.uk) of the march organisers put it “on 28th March 2009, 35,000 marched through London as part of a global campaign to challenge the G20, ahead of their summit on the global financial crisis” A couple of days later, Compass and the New Economics Foundation held what they termed a “Global Economic Summit: No Turning Back” for a hundred invited luminaries of the left (or more precisely what Compass sees as the ‘centre-left’). A couple of days later there was some generalised marching and camping around the City of London accompanied by various kinds of police control and thuggery ending with homicide.
But that was yesterday and today we have to ask just what were all these people marching and talking about and, perhaps more important, just how they hope to achieve whatever it is they want? The first is harder to answer than it might seem, not because they want so little but because they want so much. Global justice, nationalise the banks, support Palestine, effective action on climate change, stop the war, end world poverty ─ there is a list waiting to be made here that would fill this page. All want, in Compass’ term, to build ‘the good society’ and to build it now. Nothing wrong with any of this. In fact a good deal that is right about it. But the problem with such a massive package is that it needs some kind of organising principle to bring it about, in short it needs a politics and that, let us be clear, is just what all this great carnival lacked.
The problem could be seen in the workshop session I attended at the Compass/nef do on climate change. There was no lack of good ideas or original thought. But when it came down to the critical issue of how to carry the ideas through into practical action there was little suggested between individual behaviour ─ the lifestyle project ─ and government legislation. There was a complete absence of any intermediary agencies; parties, factions, councils, unions, anything that might be used to put these ideas into practical effect. At the final session, intended to be about implementing change, it became clear that this was a common thread; plenty of good ideas but nothing on how to implement them.
The most telling moment of the whole afternoon came right at the end when one young man had the nerve to ask the question which had hovered over all the main speakers without answer. We are beginning the run-up to the next general election; what would the panel suggest we do ─ vote Labour, sit on our hands or look elsewhere. There was one ‘politician’ on the panel, that is someone elected to some democratic assembly, John Cruddas, who inevitably pops up at all Compass talk-fests. In fact, looking over the list of the hundred invited luminaries, he seems to be the only person labeled in any party political manner. He gave an opening speech which forecast likely splits and crisis in the British political system though, perhaps oddly, he illustrated this by suggesting that the Conservatives were likely to split into UKIP and BNP fractions, something which, on the eve of an election victory, did sound a touch like whistling in the wind. Or was he trying to tell us something else? Then, in response to the question, he shook his head and passed, preferring not to answer. If a Labour MP cannot respond to this then we are indeed in trouble.
The fact is that neither the marches nor the seminar had any real political content if by political one means the search for functional ways to change how society works. Good ideas aplenty but, as for their implementation, the plan seemed to be write a long letter to Gordon Brown. Better still, write a pamphlet and send that to Gordon Brown. Looking down the long list of the march organisers and the jobs of those at the seminar it is easy to see why this has come about. Dozens of progressive charities, a number of institutes for this and foundations for that, a few unions; in short the left as a think-tank, a kind of extended intellectual academic seminar hoping that its discussions will be noticed by those who matter and that some participants will be invited over to No. 10. This is not a criticism of the ‘centre-left’ only. Those on the wider shores of the left, as might have been seen at the ‘alternative’ G20 summit which might have been held at the Docklands campus of the University of East London had the university authorities not, unhelpfully, closed the campus for the day, seem equally bereft of any political strategy. Ken Livingstone (Save the GLC), John MacDonnell (ditto, only still not talking to Ken), Tariq Ali (Save, save the LSE) would, no doubt, have all lambasted the bankers no end. But any idea as to political action to shift the government would have been in short supply.
So, the British left as a palimpsest; a blank sheet scraped almost clean but with faint traces of its past still to be seen on close inspection. Here an old Labour stalwart, there an old left activist, over there a left academic or two. A dozen or so remnants of the old Communist and Trotskyists parties still just visible. And on the margins, a host of environmental and social campaigning activists lacking any political leadership and largely disillusioned with the whole political process. It is all there waiting to be written on but so far the ink seems lacking.
As the website (www.putpeoplefirst.org.uk) of the march organisers put it “on 28th March 2009, 35,000 marched through London as part of a global campaign to challenge the G20, ahead of their summit on the global financial crisis” A couple of days later, Compass and the New Economics Foundation held what they termed a “Global Economic Summit: No Turning Back” for a hundred invited luminaries of the left (or more precisely what Compass sees as the ‘centre-left’). A couple of days later there was some generalised marching and camping around the City of London accompanied by various kinds of police control and thuggery ending with homicide.
But that was yesterday and today we have to ask just what were all these people marching and talking about and, perhaps more important, just how they hope to achieve whatever it is they want? The first is harder to answer than it might seem, not because they want so little but because they want so much. Global justice, nationalise the banks, support Palestine, effective action on climate change, stop the war, end world poverty ─ there is a list waiting to be made here that would fill this page. All want, in Compass’ term, to build ‘the good society’ and to build it now. Nothing wrong with any of this. In fact a good deal that is right about it. But the problem with such a massive package is that it needs some kind of organising principle to bring it about, in short it needs a politics and that, let us be clear, is just what all this great carnival lacked.
The problem could be seen in the workshop session I attended at the Compass/nef do on climate change. There was no lack of good ideas or original thought. But when it came down to the critical issue of how to carry the ideas through into practical action there was little suggested between individual behaviour ─ the lifestyle project ─ and government legislation. There was a complete absence of any intermediary agencies; parties, factions, councils, unions, anything that might be used to put these ideas into practical effect. At the final session, intended to be about implementing change, it became clear that this was a common thread; plenty of good ideas but nothing on how to implement them.
The most telling moment of the whole afternoon came right at the end when one young man had the nerve to ask the question which had hovered over all the main speakers without answer. We are beginning the run-up to the next general election; what would the panel suggest we do ─ vote Labour, sit on our hands or look elsewhere. There was one ‘politician’ on the panel, that is someone elected to some democratic assembly, John Cruddas, who inevitably pops up at all Compass talk-fests. In fact, looking over the list of the hundred invited luminaries, he seems to be the only person labeled in any party political manner. He gave an opening speech which forecast likely splits and crisis in the British political system though, perhaps oddly, he illustrated this by suggesting that the Conservatives were likely to split into UKIP and BNP fractions, something which, on the eve of an election victory, did sound a touch like whistling in the wind. Or was he trying to tell us something else? Then, in response to the question, he shook his head and passed, preferring not to answer. If a Labour MP cannot respond to this then we are indeed in trouble.
The fact is that neither the marches nor the seminar had any real political content if by political one means the search for functional ways to change how society works. Good ideas aplenty but, as for their implementation, the plan seemed to be write a long letter to Gordon Brown. Better still, write a pamphlet and send that to Gordon Brown. Looking down the long list of the march organisers and the jobs of those at the seminar it is easy to see why this has come about. Dozens of progressive charities, a number of institutes for this and foundations for that, a few unions; in short the left as a think-tank, a kind of extended intellectual academic seminar hoping that its discussions will be noticed by those who matter and that some participants will be invited over to No. 10. This is not a criticism of the ‘centre-left’ only. Those on the wider shores of the left, as might have been seen at the ‘alternative’ G20 summit which might have been held at the Docklands campus of the University of East London had the university authorities not, unhelpfully, closed the campus for the day, seem equally bereft of any political strategy. Ken Livingstone (Save the GLC), John MacDonnell (ditto, only still not talking to Ken), Tariq Ali (Save, save the LSE) would, no doubt, have all lambasted the bankers no end. But any idea as to political action to shift the government would have been in short supply.
So, the British left as a palimpsest; a blank sheet scraped almost clean but with faint traces of its past still to be seen on close inspection. Here an old Labour stalwart, there an old left activist, over there a left academic or two. A dozen or so remnants of the old Communist and Trotskyists parties still just visible. And on the margins, a host of environmental and social campaigning activists lacking any political leadership and largely disillusioned with the whole political process. It is all there waiting to be written on but so far the ink seems lacking.
Tuesday 24 March 2009
The man must be mad
Increase unemployment benefits! More student grants! Special social security payments! Tax rebates for low incomes! The man must be mad. Doesn’t he know that there are hungry bankers out there who need our money.
Luckily for us, the man is not Gordon Brown but Barack Obama who, unaccountably, does seem to have read the Keynes for Dummies book if not all of The General Theory of Money. The general stimulus package passed by the US legislature has to some degree been ignored here amidst the plethora of vast sums which are being handed out almost daily to ‘rescue’ the financial institutions. It does, however, reward a closer scrutiny.
The total cost of the package is $825 billion which amounts to about 2.8% of the US annual domestic product. The sheer size of this number makes it difficult to understand so let’s put it in UK terms. As the UK economy is, at current exchange rates, about 1/25 the size of the American, it helps to convert all the numbers to a British scale so in what follows everything has been divided by 25 and then converted to pounds. This means that in British terms, Obama proposes to disperse some £23 billion over two years.
A part of this is in the form of tax cuts for business which may not translate into spending but two-thirds of it goes to direct spending of various kinds. For example, a direct tax credit of £3.1 billion and an increase in unemployment benefits of almost £1 billion. Help to states to prevent education cuts comes in at £1.45 billion whilst money for highways and bridges amounts to £0.75 billion. £84 million will go to improving public parks, £37 million on rural water and waste facilities, on and on through dozens of items down to £1.4 million for research into alternative fuel pumps. (All this in UK equivalents remember).
There has been some criticism of this package on the grounds that it has too much ‘pork’, that is projects in the constituencies of influential politicians and there is probably some truth in this. It has also been criticised for being too little with some estimates for the level of stimulus required to return to full employment three times or more the proposed amount. But it is certainly a genuine effort to boost actual employment.
On 17 March, the New York Times reported on the ‘race’ to be first to actually implement a project financed by the stimulus package. (www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/us/17shovel) In a very tight finish, the winner was deemed to be the California Conservation Corps who had 18 workers doing “trail work” in the San Bernardino National Forest. And, lo, there is a picture of them, stalwart chaps in hard hats with their shovels hitting the dirt. Close behind was the Missouri Department of Transportation which had started the approval process for work on a dilapidated bridge within minutes of Obama actually signing the bill. Presumably the grants to train health workers might engage a wider spectrum of workers but it is a start.
How different to our own neo-Keynesians whose direct stimulus package to date consists of…well, what does it consist of? Nothing? Almost nothing? Something so close to nothing that it resembles an economic neutrino? Certainly the blessed Lord Mandelson does seem to go to a number of lunches which must count for something towards keeping the catering industry going. We know that on 20 March he visited the North East “to meet with local businesses and see how they are taking advantage of the new global low carbon economy” and that he had a breakfast meeting before going to the Nissan factory. We also know that his Department wants have a “vision” for a low-carbon economy and is anxious to hear our views on this. But actual hard cash seems to flow one-way only, that is bankwards.
The question has to be asked: do these boys really want to get the economy out of recession? Is this some kind of Manchurian candidate scenario where the long-time sleepers set up by various Trotskyite sects finally get to work to doom British capitalism? Or are they just so deeply, painfully in hock to their banker advisers that they cannot get their heads round Keynesian economics, Level 1. In the 1930s, my unemployed grandfather was given a shovel and told to get working widening the A11 nears Enfield just like the healthy men of the CCC seem to be doing. It was demeaning work for a craftsman jeweller but it did bring money into the house. Today, there have to be many more constructive ways in which people’s skills can be used. Have the intellectual powers of Brown, Darling and Mandelson degenerated to the point where they cannot even understand this basic point, that to reduce unemployment you need to get people working?
Luckily for us, the man is not Gordon Brown but Barack Obama who, unaccountably, does seem to have read the Keynes for Dummies book if not all of The General Theory of Money. The general stimulus package passed by the US legislature has to some degree been ignored here amidst the plethora of vast sums which are being handed out almost daily to ‘rescue’ the financial institutions. It does, however, reward a closer scrutiny.
The total cost of the package is $825 billion which amounts to about 2.8% of the US annual domestic product. The sheer size of this number makes it difficult to understand so let’s put it in UK terms. As the UK economy is, at current exchange rates, about 1/25 the size of the American, it helps to convert all the numbers to a British scale so in what follows everything has been divided by 25 and then converted to pounds. This means that in British terms, Obama proposes to disperse some £23 billion over two years.
A part of this is in the form of tax cuts for business which may not translate into spending but two-thirds of it goes to direct spending of various kinds. For example, a direct tax credit of £3.1 billion and an increase in unemployment benefits of almost £1 billion. Help to states to prevent education cuts comes in at £1.45 billion whilst money for highways and bridges amounts to £0.75 billion. £84 million will go to improving public parks, £37 million on rural water and waste facilities, on and on through dozens of items down to £1.4 million for research into alternative fuel pumps. (All this in UK equivalents remember).
There has been some criticism of this package on the grounds that it has too much ‘pork’, that is projects in the constituencies of influential politicians and there is probably some truth in this. It has also been criticised for being too little with some estimates for the level of stimulus required to return to full employment three times or more the proposed amount. But it is certainly a genuine effort to boost actual employment.
On 17 March, the New York Times reported on the ‘race’ to be first to actually implement a project financed by the stimulus package. (www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/us/17shovel) In a very tight finish, the winner was deemed to be the California Conservation Corps who had 18 workers doing “trail work” in the San Bernardino National Forest. And, lo, there is a picture of them, stalwart chaps in hard hats with their shovels hitting the dirt. Close behind was the Missouri Department of Transportation which had started the approval process for work on a dilapidated bridge within minutes of Obama actually signing the bill. Presumably the grants to train health workers might engage a wider spectrum of workers but it is a start.
How different to our own neo-Keynesians whose direct stimulus package to date consists of…well, what does it consist of? Nothing? Almost nothing? Something so close to nothing that it resembles an economic neutrino? Certainly the blessed Lord Mandelson does seem to go to a number of lunches which must count for something towards keeping the catering industry going. We know that on 20 March he visited the North East “to meet with local businesses and see how they are taking advantage of the new global low carbon economy” and that he had a breakfast meeting before going to the Nissan factory. We also know that his Department wants have a “vision” for a low-carbon economy and is anxious to hear our views on this. But actual hard cash seems to flow one-way only, that is bankwards.
The question has to be asked: do these boys really want to get the economy out of recession? Is this some kind of Manchurian candidate scenario where the long-time sleepers set up by various Trotskyite sects finally get to work to doom British capitalism? Or are they just so deeply, painfully in hock to their banker advisers that they cannot get their heads round Keynesian economics, Level 1. In the 1930s, my unemployed grandfather was given a shovel and told to get working widening the A11 nears Enfield just like the healthy men of the CCC seem to be doing. It was demeaning work for a craftsman jeweller but it did bring money into the house. Today, there have to be many more constructive ways in which people’s skills can be used. Have the intellectual powers of Brown, Darling and Mandelson degenerated to the point where they cannot even understand this basic point, that to reduce unemployment you need to get people working?
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