Letter publishewd in Guardian 24 May 2011 on Labour Party policy
Ed Miliband says he ‘has listened’ to what the electorate wants, but his latest policy statement is nothing more than a rehash of his acceptance speech after winning the Labour Party leadership. So what has he learned by listening? ( ‘Why I’ll never hug a husky’; Guardian 21 May)
He says the last Labour government ‘made mistakes’, but it wasn’t mistakes it made by adopting its ideological obsequiousness to big business. It accepted the precepts of the global financial institutions and believed, sailing blithely on the wave of incontinent consumer spending, that ‘boom and bust’ were of the past. It is its failure to understand the incendiary characteristics of casino capitalism that has led us into the present ongoing crisis.
His language, too, shows that he hasn’t understood the need for ideological change. Giving people a chance to ‘get onto the housing ladder’, as he writes, reveals the same blinkered thinking that characterised New Labour. Housing should be a right, and most people want simply that: a decent place to live. The ladder concept is a Thatcherite one and implies buying to invest, moving up the property and status chain, and it is that sort of thinking which created the housing bubble in the first place.
Until the Labour Party is able to offer people an alternative vision to outdated capitalism and imbue them with realistic hope of a society based on justice, fairness and stability, they will be doomed to repeat the sad history of social democracy throughout Europe.
Wednesday, 25 May 2011
The No-Nonsense Guide to Global Surveillance
By Robin Tudge
Pubs. New Internationalist (2011)
Pbck £7.99
In Berlin recently I happened to drive past a new building site which looked like an enormous prison complex or brutalist housing estate. Curious, I read the sign and learned that this will be the new HQ of the quaintly-named Federal News Service (BND) - the German equivalent of our own MI5. It is a salutary reminder of the central power such spying agencies occupy in our societies today. In his book, Tudge offers numerous examples of the epidemic-like spread and tentacular reach of surveillance systems everywhere.
This is the 12th in the excellent New Internationalist series of guides to vital subjects ranging from Islam to human rights, from global terrorism to Green politics. Tudge demonstrates how seemingly innocuous TV shows like Big Brother help inure us to the idea that surveillance is merely entertainment, with no insidious purpose. He takes us on a historical rollercoaster of how surveillance systems have developed from our earliest historical beginnings. God, of course, is the prototypical ideal of omniscient surveillance. Tudge demonstrates how ruling elites throughout history have developed and refined systems of surveillance as a means of controlling their underlings.
His research is meticulous and comprehensive, but he does, inexplicably, call the Tsarist secret police, the Ochrinka instead of its correct name Okhrana. It is a good read, not short on black humour, but also much useful detail. My main criticism is that it builds a scary scenario of a future ruled by TV cameras, data banks and ID systems, in which we will all live permanently on a ‘Big Brother’ planet, but he offers no suggestions as to how to combat or avert such a scenario.
END
By Robin Tudge
Pubs. New Internationalist (2011)
Pbck £7.99
In Berlin recently I happened to drive past a new building site which looked like an enormous prison complex or brutalist housing estate. Curious, I read the sign and learned that this will be the new HQ of the quaintly-named Federal News Service (BND) - the German equivalent of our own MI5. It is a salutary reminder of the central power such spying agencies occupy in our societies today. In his book, Tudge offers numerous examples of the epidemic-like spread and tentacular reach of surveillance systems everywhere.
This is the 12th in the excellent New Internationalist series of guides to vital subjects ranging from Islam to human rights, from global terrorism to Green politics. Tudge demonstrates how seemingly innocuous TV shows like Big Brother help inure us to the idea that surveillance is merely entertainment, with no insidious purpose. He takes us on a historical rollercoaster of how surveillance systems have developed from our earliest historical beginnings. God, of course, is the prototypical ideal of omniscient surveillance. Tudge demonstrates how ruling elites throughout history have developed and refined systems of surveillance as a means of controlling their underlings.
His research is meticulous and comprehensive, but he does, inexplicably, call the Tsarist secret police, the Ochrinka instead of its correct name Okhrana. It is a good read, not short on black humour, but also much useful detail. My main criticism is that it builds a scary scenario of a future ruled by TV cameras, data banks and ID systems, in which we will all live permanently on a ‘Big Brother’ planet, but he offers no suggestions as to how to combat or avert such a scenario.
END
Monday, 2 May 2011
The Banker who knows his Kapital
Edgar Most has recently retired from his position as a director of the Deutsche Bank in Berlin, but still works a full week using his banking and financial skills to argue forcefully for an end to jungle capitalism. His outlook and career are unique in the financial world. In GDR times he was Vice-president of the State Bank and knew the socialist economy inside out. With the demise of the GDR and its incorporation into the Federal Republic, he immediately founded German Credit Bank – the first private bank on the territory of the former GDR. By doing so he was able to secure the jobs of 13,000 ex-GDR bank employees who would otherwise have ended on the scrap-heap. When this bank was taken over shortly after unification by the big Deutsche Bank, he was made a member of the board.
Most makes no secret of his former membership of the Socialist Unity Party or his pride in what the GDR achieved. Born during the war, the son of a Thuringian miner, he was given every opportunity by the GDR state to gain the necessary qualifications for a career in banking. His abilities and commitment to the socialist state saw him rise rapidly to become, at 26, the GDR’s youngest bank director and later Vice-president of its State Bank.
‘My father was a simple man with a high sense of morality and ethics. Today in our society I miss that. This society produces so much immorality. Politicians are corrupt, many lawyers feel no obligation to justice and law. There is fiddling, chicanery hustling, tax fraud is an everyday sport and even doctors can be bribed by pharmaceutical companies. I know that making such criticisms is deemed populist, but it’s still true that this latent immorality brutalises and perverts society.’
‘I don’t have dreams of a communist utopia any longer,’ he says, ‘the new human beings that would require are simply not there. I’m a pragmatic thinking person, who has genuinely studied his Marx. I completely agree with his analysis of capitalism - how it becomes deformed once you loosen the reins. But I too, as a left-thinking person, have not given up seeking ways to bring about a more just society in which everyone has the freedom to develop their potential. However, ‘without capital human society can’t function,’ he emphasises, ‘but of itself it is not fair, democratic or scrupulous. In the world of capital, there is no constitution, no submission to an electorate and no moral code. Capital is oriented towards profit maximisation and becomes an explosive mixture that threatens the stability of states, economic systems and societies.’ Of course many people are now asking how this crisis was caused, was it bank managers, corrupt rating agencies, dilettante regulation or are politicians to blame or, as I maintain, capitalism itself.
For Most the central question is how the state can rein-in jungle capitalism, to prevent it devouring itself. The vital need, he argues, is for the relationship between capital and state to be re-structured. He is optimistic that it can be done and very clear that what we are now experiencing is not simply a financial crisis but a crisis of the system itself and, he says, it demands a new ordering of the world-wide economy. Part of his solution is to break up the big banks, nationalise the ratings agencies and introduce a global currency. Sadly, the strongest symptom of the continued crisis is the mass flight of the so-called elite from any sense of responsibility, he says.
‘The effects of this crisis can only be controlled to a limited extent by individual governments or institutions. There can be no return to the previous situation; we have to look to the future and deal with the real problems and introduce the necessary regulatory mechanisms commensurate with a globalised economy. The World Bank should be placed under the governorship of the UN and an attempt should be made to introduce a global currency with strict regulatory mechanisms in place, under uncompromising oversight. If we wish to puncture the balloon of casino capitalism and its system-endangering speculative bubbles, then we have to go down this road.’
He has written two best-selling books ‘Funfzig Jahre im Auftrag des Kapitals’ (Fifty years working for capital), a form of autobiography and ‘Sprengstoff Kapital’ (Explosive Capital) in which he is interviewed about his ideas.
He feels that with his experience at the top of a socialist bank for 26 years and then working in a capitalist bank, has given him unique insights which he is determined to pass on to others.
When he first started working for Deutsche Bank, he says his new ‘West German’ colleagues saw him as an oddity and felt themselves superior. They didn’t take kindly to his criticisms and suggestions for improvement. He tried to tell them that in the GDR they had dealt with a number of social and economic problems that the new Germany and Europe as a whole were now facing, but that only irritated them. The GDR, he says, was more conscious of these problems and offered better solutions.
He vehemently refuses to accept that the GDR was, as the German government and the mainstream media describe it, as an ‘Unrechtsstaat’ (an unjust and illegal state). He makes no secret of his feelings of affection for the GDR which he still views as his real homeland. Of course there was good and bad in the GDR and he had his own difficulties battling the bureaucrats and officialdom, but he was ‘nevertheless hundred percent behind the state and what it stood for’. Most blames Gorbachov for what happened with the GDR. He maintains that the country could have survived in a different form and most of the industries and jobs could have been saved if there had been no rush to impose the West German currency and if Gorbachov had not preferred a quick agreement with Kohl the conqueror rather than one with his defeated comrades in the East.
‘Here in Europe we are confronted with appalling levels of imbalance. There are also the inequalities in wealth distribution. The numbers of badly paid and short-term contract workers is mounting in the so-called ‘wealthy’ countries; German salaries have been almost static or sinking for years. These widening disparities of income and wealth are not only socially corrosive and unjust, but signify a decreasing purchasing power.
Instead of re-investing in productive capital what would make economic sense, many big firms have accumulated financial capital and use it for speculation, much of it abroad, and in the deficit countries of the EU (Portugal, Ireland etc). Today the financial conjurors are borrowing low interest money from the European Central bank and lending it to these countries that are in deep trouble at interest rates of 8, 9 or 10%. That’s great business!’
‘For a long time now I’ve been of the opinion that the term “worldwide financial crisis” is not a proper description. It’s abundantly clear that we are facing a crisis whose root causes lie within the system itself; in that sense spending millions in order to rescue banks is only tinkering with the symptoms. In the system that rules at the moment, finance and the real economy have become de-coupled. More and more capital flows into financial instruments instead of into the real economy. That’s happening not only in the USA where Wall Street’s contribution to the Gross National Product, in comparison with the producing sector, has increased enormously. The stock exchanges have speculated with borrowed money – there are a few winners and countless losers. Economic experts have calculated that the total indebtedness within the global financial markets between 1970-2005 rose by a factor of thirty times and the monetary value of shares rose by a factor of forty. In the meantime trading in the financial markets at 4,400 trillion dollars annually is larger by a factor of seventy than annual worldwide economic output. That signifies an incredible expansion of income from financial and property transactions, making it only logical that the contribution made by the productive sector has, in comparison, continually decreased.
‘With the power of the dollar and its military the US wanted to prevent the spread of socialism in the world. What during the Cold War was masked under the cloak of ideology and was accelerated by the collapse of communism, is very clear today: money became a thing to be traded in its own right.’ What was a symbol for expressing value, a simplification of the bartering process, took on a life of its own. Money was no longer the oil keeping the wheels of real industry and commerce turning, but a means of reproducing itself.
‘For years the sanctity of deregulation and reducing the role of the state to a minimum has been preached along with the theory of the self-regulating market with, in Most’s opinion, devastating consequences. Capital and the market became the rulers of the system and began to determine economic policies, politics and social processes. Capitalism was given a totally free rein. But Capital is not of itself ‘social’ and cannot be.
If the political powers only tackle symptoms of the crisis instead of fixing the structural deficiencies in the system, then capitalism will destroy itself in the short or longer term,’ he says categorically.
‘Our society is as sick as the banking system – individual states have profited from a financial system that is now seen as obnoxious. In the USA and UK for instance the financial sector now accounts for at least a third of GDP. This makes me furious because the consequence of their shameless financial greed and the crash is that there has been and is an ongoing redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top, from the many to the few, from individuals to capital conglomerates. But in the end the bankers and financiers have only taken the opportunities opened up by the politicians in a de-regulated market.’ This crisis has also exposed the vacuousness of the establishment economic theorists.
‘From my experience as a GDR state banker,’ he says, ‘I have always said that internationally we need to control the amount of money in circulation and enforce limitations if it increases beyond the values created by society. In the GDR we had long debates on the question of credit and inflationary tendencies and felt that credit needed to be tightly controlled.’ In the West the opposite approach was taken. ‘Money-making machines can always be set in motion, he says, ‘but the products and consequences of this are seldom recognised or understood. Because we in the GDR had a non-convertible currency and a reasonably insulated market so we were able to regulate the amount of money in circulation and keep inflation under control.’
‘In the East, we took some steps in this direction. I wouldn’t want to spread illusions, but Comecon was set up to regulate trade between the USSR and the other socialist countries and for this purpose the ‘Transfer Rouble’ (as a common trading currency) was introduced and the system functioned very well over many years. But many view such examples only through ideological blinkers and reject them out of hand. What is also vital is that the political sphere reasserts its primacy over the economy and re-orders the relationship between state and capital. After all, the end goal is that capital serves the needs and requirements of society. If politics can’t achieve that – and on a global scale – than the financial world will continue to be unregulated and will carry on as before. Every day over 4 billion dollars are being traded around the world in currency speculation and the profits from that end up in private pockets. One doesn’t know what the immense credit and credit card deals mean for the banking system, let alone the exorbitant state debt that has brought whole countries to the edge of bankruptcy.’
Finally, he says, perceptively: ‘I take care not to make money my ultimate goal; then you become a slave to it. Because you don’t have the freedom to handle money but continually worry how to make it grow.’
Most quotations are taken from the book, Sprengstoff Kapital by Edgar Most in an interview with the journalist Steffen Uhlmann Pubs. Das Neue Berlin 2011.
Edgar Most has recently retired from his position as a director of the Deutsche Bank in Berlin, but still works a full week using his banking and financial skills to argue forcefully for an end to jungle capitalism. His outlook and career are unique in the financial world. In GDR times he was Vice-president of the State Bank and knew the socialist economy inside out. With the demise of the GDR and its incorporation into the Federal Republic, he immediately founded German Credit Bank – the first private bank on the territory of the former GDR. By doing so he was able to secure the jobs of 13,000 ex-GDR bank employees who would otherwise have ended on the scrap-heap. When this bank was taken over shortly after unification by the big Deutsche Bank, he was made a member of the board.
Most makes no secret of his former membership of the Socialist Unity Party or his pride in what the GDR achieved. Born during the war, the son of a Thuringian miner, he was given every opportunity by the GDR state to gain the necessary qualifications for a career in banking. His abilities and commitment to the socialist state saw him rise rapidly to become, at 26, the GDR’s youngest bank director and later Vice-president of its State Bank.
‘My father was a simple man with a high sense of morality and ethics. Today in our society I miss that. This society produces so much immorality. Politicians are corrupt, many lawyers feel no obligation to justice and law. There is fiddling, chicanery hustling, tax fraud is an everyday sport and even doctors can be bribed by pharmaceutical companies. I know that making such criticisms is deemed populist, but it’s still true that this latent immorality brutalises and perverts society.’
‘I don’t have dreams of a communist utopia any longer,’ he says, ‘the new human beings that would require are simply not there. I’m a pragmatic thinking person, who has genuinely studied his Marx. I completely agree with his analysis of capitalism - how it becomes deformed once you loosen the reins. But I too, as a left-thinking person, have not given up seeking ways to bring about a more just society in which everyone has the freedom to develop their potential. However, ‘without capital human society can’t function,’ he emphasises, ‘but of itself it is not fair, democratic or scrupulous. In the world of capital, there is no constitution, no submission to an electorate and no moral code. Capital is oriented towards profit maximisation and becomes an explosive mixture that threatens the stability of states, economic systems and societies.’ Of course many people are now asking how this crisis was caused, was it bank managers, corrupt rating agencies, dilettante regulation or are politicians to blame or, as I maintain, capitalism itself.
For Most the central question is how the state can rein-in jungle capitalism, to prevent it devouring itself. The vital need, he argues, is for the relationship between capital and state to be re-structured. He is optimistic that it can be done and very clear that what we are now experiencing is not simply a financial crisis but a crisis of the system itself and, he says, it demands a new ordering of the world-wide economy. Part of his solution is to break up the big banks, nationalise the ratings agencies and introduce a global currency. Sadly, the strongest symptom of the continued crisis is the mass flight of the so-called elite from any sense of responsibility, he says.
‘The effects of this crisis can only be controlled to a limited extent by individual governments or institutions. There can be no return to the previous situation; we have to look to the future and deal with the real problems and introduce the necessary regulatory mechanisms commensurate with a globalised economy. The World Bank should be placed under the governorship of the UN and an attempt should be made to introduce a global currency with strict regulatory mechanisms in place, under uncompromising oversight. If we wish to puncture the balloon of casino capitalism and its system-endangering speculative bubbles, then we have to go down this road.’
He has written two best-selling books ‘Funfzig Jahre im Auftrag des Kapitals’ (Fifty years working for capital), a form of autobiography and ‘Sprengstoff Kapital’ (Explosive Capital) in which he is interviewed about his ideas.
He feels that with his experience at the top of a socialist bank for 26 years and then working in a capitalist bank, has given him unique insights which he is determined to pass on to others.
When he first started working for Deutsche Bank, he says his new ‘West German’ colleagues saw him as an oddity and felt themselves superior. They didn’t take kindly to his criticisms and suggestions for improvement. He tried to tell them that in the GDR they had dealt with a number of social and economic problems that the new Germany and Europe as a whole were now facing, but that only irritated them. The GDR, he says, was more conscious of these problems and offered better solutions.
He vehemently refuses to accept that the GDR was, as the German government and the mainstream media describe it, as an ‘Unrechtsstaat’ (an unjust and illegal state). He makes no secret of his feelings of affection for the GDR which he still views as his real homeland. Of course there was good and bad in the GDR and he had his own difficulties battling the bureaucrats and officialdom, but he was ‘nevertheless hundred percent behind the state and what it stood for’. Most blames Gorbachov for what happened with the GDR. He maintains that the country could have survived in a different form and most of the industries and jobs could have been saved if there had been no rush to impose the West German currency and if Gorbachov had not preferred a quick agreement with Kohl the conqueror rather than one with his defeated comrades in the East.
‘Here in Europe we are confronted with appalling levels of imbalance. There are also the inequalities in wealth distribution. The numbers of badly paid and short-term contract workers is mounting in the so-called ‘wealthy’ countries; German salaries have been almost static or sinking for years. These widening disparities of income and wealth are not only socially corrosive and unjust, but signify a decreasing purchasing power.
Instead of re-investing in productive capital what would make economic sense, many big firms have accumulated financial capital and use it for speculation, much of it abroad, and in the deficit countries of the EU (Portugal, Ireland etc). Today the financial conjurors are borrowing low interest money from the European Central bank and lending it to these countries that are in deep trouble at interest rates of 8, 9 or 10%. That’s great business!’
‘For a long time now I’ve been of the opinion that the term “worldwide financial crisis” is not a proper description. It’s abundantly clear that we are facing a crisis whose root causes lie within the system itself; in that sense spending millions in order to rescue banks is only tinkering with the symptoms. In the system that rules at the moment, finance and the real economy have become de-coupled. More and more capital flows into financial instruments instead of into the real economy. That’s happening not only in the USA where Wall Street’s contribution to the Gross National Product, in comparison with the producing sector, has increased enormously. The stock exchanges have speculated with borrowed money – there are a few winners and countless losers. Economic experts have calculated that the total indebtedness within the global financial markets between 1970-2005 rose by a factor of thirty times and the monetary value of shares rose by a factor of forty. In the meantime trading in the financial markets at 4,400 trillion dollars annually is larger by a factor of seventy than annual worldwide economic output. That signifies an incredible expansion of income from financial and property transactions, making it only logical that the contribution made by the productive sector has, in comparison, continually decreased.
‘With the power of the dollar and its military the US wanted to prevent the spread of socialism in the world. What during the Cold War was masked under the cloak of ideology and was accelerated by the collapse of communism, is very clear today: money became a thing to be traded in its own right.’ What was a symbol for expressing value, a simplification of the bartering process, took on a life of its own. Money was no longer the oil keeping the wheels of real industry and commerce turning, but a means of reproducing itself.
‘For years the sanctity of deregulation and reducing the role of the state to a minimum has been preached along with the theory of the self-regulating market with, in Most’s opinion, devastating consequences. Capital and the market became the rulers of the system and began to determine economic policies, politics and social processes. Capitalism was given a totally free rein. But Capital is not of itself ‘social’ and cannot be.
If the political powers only tackle symptoms of the crisis instead of fixing the structural deficiencies in the system, then capitalism will destroy itself in the short or longer term,’ he says categorically.
‘Our society is as sick as the banking system – individual states have profited from a financial system that is now seen as obnoxious. In the USA and UK for instance the financial sector now accounts for at least a third of GDP. This makes me furious because the consequence of their shameless financial greed and the crash is that there has been and is an ongoing redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top, from the many to the few, from individuals to capital conglomerates. But in the end the bankers and financiers have only taken the opportunities opened up by the politicians in a de-regulated market.’ This crisis has also exposed the vacuousness of the establishment economic theorists.
‘From my experience as a GDR state banker,’ he says, ‘I have always said that internationally we need to control the amount of money in circulation and enforce limitations if it increases beyond the values created by society. In the GDR we had long debates on the question of credit and inflationary tendencies and felt that credit needed to be tightly controlled.’ In the West the opposite approach was taken. ‘Money-making machines can always be set in motion, he says, ‘but the products and consequences of this are seldom recognised or understood. Because we in the GDR had a non-convertible currency and a reasonably insulated market so we were able to regulate the amount of money in circulation and keep inflation under control.’
‘In the East, we took some steps in this direction. I wouldn’t want to spread illusions, but Comecon was set up to regulate trade between the USSR and the other socialist countries and for this purpose the ‘Transfer Rouble’ (as a common trading currency) was introduced and the system functioned very well over many years. But many view such examples only through ideological blinkers and reject them out of hand. What is also vital is that the political sphere reasserts its primacy over the economy and re-orders the relationship between state and capital. After all, the end goal is that capital serves the needs and requirements of society. If politics can’t achieve that – and on a global scale – than the financial world will continue to be unregulated and will carry on as before. Every day over 4 billion dollars are being traded around the world in currency speculation and the profits from that end up in private pockets. One doesn’t know what the immense credit and credit card deals mean for the banking system, let alone the exorbitant state debt that has brought whole countries to the edge of bankruptcy.’
Finally, he says, perceptively: ‘I take care not to make money my ultimate goal; then you become a slave to it. Because you don’t have the freedom to handle money but continually worry how to make it grow.’
Most quotations are taken from the book, Sprengstoff Kapital by Edgar Most in an interview with the journalist Steffen Uhlmann Pubs. Das Neue Berlin 2011.
Wednesday, 6 April 2011
Dancing with Dynamite - social movements and States in Latin America
By Benjamin Dangl
AK Press
Pbck. £12.00
History teaches us that one of the central problems of any successful revolution is that once revolutionaries gain power they become conservatives or, even worse, congeal into authoritarian regimes. How can we ensure that a revolution maintains its momentum for change and radicalism? How can the grass-roots movements that brought about the change ensure that they are not neutered and absorbed into the new power structures? Mao was very much aware of this dilemma and the Chinese Communist Party’s Great Leap Forward, followed by the Cultural Revolution were attempts to maintain a ‘permanent revolution’ and prevent ossification happening.
Dangl takes seven Latin American countries that have recently experienced radical grass-roots movements that have successfully led to progressive governments. He examines the relationship between these movements and the new governments in the context of how radical and democratic grass-roots movements can maintain their momentum without undermining the progressive governments that are fulfilling many of their hopes.
His is an anarchist perspective, but he knows Latin America well and he provides a clear and sympathetic account of the tectonic changes that have happened there over recent decades. In a mixture of factual narrative, vivid description and interviews, Dangl gives us a comprehensive overview of what has been happening and poses some apposite questions.
In Venezuela, for instance, he shows how a radical restructuring of political power, never before seen in Latin America, has transformed the country. On the other hand power is very centralised around Chavez and clientism is still inherent in the system. Chavismo could easily be transformed into even more of a personality cult than it already is. Dangl, while fully supporting the present governments, certainly doesn’t wear rose-tinted spectacles and pinpoints the potential problem of charismatic leaders like Chavez, and Morales in Bolivia, who are the repository of people’s hopes and aspirations, and wield enormous power. They won power on the tsumani of a mass movement of the poor and dispossessed, but they still have to build the effective power structures to maintain their revolutions. Since coming to power, Chavez has devolved an enormous amount of power to the people and encouraged participatory democracy at grass-roots level, but will that be maintained? Some elements in the government undoubtedly do see local movements and organisations merely as transmission belts of state policy (similar to what happened in the socialist countries) A dependency upon such central and powerful figures holds its own dangers.
The anarchist solution to radical political change probably places too much faith in the effectiveness of local autonomy and fully devolved power, but a highly centralised state system is certainly not the answer either, as has been well demonstrated. A useful and thought-provoking book.
END
By Benjamin Dangl
AK Press
Pbck. £12.00
History teaches us that one of the central problems of any successful revolution is that once revolutionaries gain power they become conservatives or, even worse, congeal into authoritarian regimes. How can we ensure that a revolution maintains its momentum for change and radicalism? How can the grass-roots movements that brought about the change ensure that they are not neutered and absorbed into the new power structures? Mao was very much aware of this dilemma and the Chinese Communist Party’s Great Leap Forward, followed by the Cultural Revolution were attempts to maintain a ‘permanent revolution’ and prevent ossification happening.
Dangl takes seven Latin American countries that have recently experienced radical grass-roots movements that have successfully led to progressive governments. He examines the relationship between these movements and the new governments in the context of how radical and democratic grass-roots movements can maintain their momentum without undermining the progressive governments that are fulfilling many of their hopes.
His is an anarchist perspective, but he knows Latin America well and he provides a clear and sympathetic account of the tectonic changes that have happened there over recent decades. In a mixture of factual narrative, vivid description and interviews, Dangl gives us a comprehensive overview of what has been happening and poses some apposite questions.
In Venezuela, for instance, he shows how a radical restructuring of political power, never before seen in Latin America, has transformed the country. On the other hand power is very centralised around Chavez and clientism is still inherent in the system. Chavismo could easily be transformed into even more of a personality cult than it already is. Dangl, while fully supporting the present governments, certainly doesn’t wear rose-tinted spectacles and pinpoints the potential problem of charismatic leaders like Chavez, and Morales in Bolivia, who are the repository of people’s hopes and aspirations, and wield enormous power. They won power on the tsumani of a mass movement of the poor and dispossessed, but they still have to build the effective power structures to maintain their revolutions. Since coming to power, Chavez has devolved an enormous amount of power to the people and encouraged participatory democracy at grass-roots level, but will that be maintained? Some elements in the government undoubtedly do see local movements and organisations merely as transmission belts of state policy (similar to what happened in the socialist countries) A dependency upon such central and powerful figures holds its own dangers.
The anarchist solution to radical political change probably places too much faith in the effectiveness of local autonomy and fully devolved power, but a highly centralised state system is certainly not the answer either, as has been well demonstrated. A useful and thought-provoking book.
END
Sunday, 3 April 2011
Letter to NS
The description of many socialists and social democrats as being essentially conservative is a not a new concept, but conservatism needs to be properly defined. Maurice Glasman (NS 3 April 2011) seems to confuse this with ‘blue’ Conservatism. Many on the left wish to see the reinstatement of the essential human values of community, solidarity and equality of opportunity – all conservative values. The so-called Conservatives are the real revolutionary wreckers because they are prepared to destroy any sense of society, of social cohesion and human progress in their worship of market forces and the profit motive. We have allowed them to hijack the conservative idea with our own amour fou for revolution. The majority of citizens want, above all, stability and security in their lives, not revolutionary turmoil. The Conservatives can never offer that because their belief in the sanctity of market forces means that life will be continual turmoil, marked by financial crises, job insecurity and destructive individualism. Socialism, based more on co-operatives than state-run enterprises, can offer that security and stability, as long as the necessary checks and balances are in place to prevent state domination, as happened in Eastern Europe.
The description of many socialists and social democrats as being essentially conservative is a not a new concept, but conservatism needs to be properly defined. Maurice Glasman (NS 3 April 2011) seems to confuse this with ‘blue’ Conservatism. Many on the left wish to see the reinstatement of the essential human values of community, solidarity and equality of opportunity – all conservative values. The so-called Conservatives are the real revolutionary wreckers because they are prepared to destroy any sense of society, of social cohesion and human progress in their worship of market forces and the profit motive. We have allowed them to hijack the conservative idea with our own amour fou for revolution. The majority of citizens want, above all, stability and security in their lives, not revolutionary turmoil. The Conservatives can never offer that because their belief in the sanctity of market forces means that life will be continual turmoil, marked by financial crises, job insecurity and destructive individualism. Socialism, based more on co-operatives than state-run enterprises, can offer that security and stability, as long as the necessary checks and balances are in place to prevent state domination, as happened in Eastern Europe.
Thursday, 24 March 2011
Libya and the myth of humanitarian aid
Once again military intervention, this time in Libya, is justified on the basis of ‘humanitarian concern’. Despite the recent devastating experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, lessons have not been learned.
I, like many Star readers no doubt, was shocked to see that all but 15 MPs, including a number of left-wingers, voted with the Con-Dem coalition in support of military intervention in Libya. Why do so many blindly accept that this is justified? They argue that ‘we’ cannot just stand by and see innocent civilians being murdered by a despot, but they don’t ask why it is apparently all right to do so in the many cases of other despotic rulers. Why has Gaddafi been singled out?
There are few, if any, examples in the whole history of mankind when states have intervened militarily in other countries’ affairs for humanitarian reasons. In the past, nation states always undertook military adventures for pure economic gain, even if these were masked by slogans of imperial glory and of ‘liberating’ the natives. In the more recent past, with nation states superseded by globalised financial capital, we have been witnessing supra-national interventions, still for economic gain, but now in the interests of global capitalism rather than individual nation states.
Even the war against Hitler, upheld as a fight of good against evil, of democracy versus fascism, was waged for economic reasons – Hitler threatened British world dominance. Yugoslavia is the most recent aggression to be cited as a successful ‘humanitarian intervention’ and used to justify the same in Libya, but again this obscures the real reasons. Professor Gibbs of the University of Arizona pointed this out recently in his article in the Guardian where he said that ‘The idea that Kosovo is a model of humanitarian intervention in Libya is based on a series of myths’. Before military intervention, Yugoslavia was still nominally a socialist country and refused to kow-tow to European Union dictates and open up its country to neo-liberal privatisation. Its break up was essential to bring all European countries under the one umbrella of global capitalism. Germany, in an unprecedented move, began the process by unilaterally recognising Croatia. Serbia, in a desperate attempt to hold the federation together, began a counter offensive. Atrocities were committed, but not on a large scale to begin with – these only escalated after armed NATO intervention. Once Muslim mercenaries were brought in to fight on the side of the Kosovans, and NATO began its bombing, things deteriorated rapidly. Subsequent atrocities and ethnic cleansing of the Serbs by Kosovans have elicited few words of condemnation and no calls for international intervention. So much for humanitarian concerns.
The left opposing such wars is accused by the warmongers of knee jerk reaction: of blindly condemning anything the USA or Britain does. There may be some who react in this way, but to dismiss all opposition to such ill-planned military adventurism in this way is no argument. What this dichotomy of views really reveals is that some understand the dynamics of social change, and politics as a class-based struggle for hegemony in the world and others see things through class-neutral glasses. If you fail to understand the underlying economic and class mechanisms of social movements, then you fail to understand the principles of history and will always be in danger of falling into the trap of supporting ruling class action, believing the fig-leaf justifications, rather than looking for the underlying motivations.
The supporters of Cameron and Sarkozy’s gung-ho Libyan intervention should ask themselves why the West has not called for intervention over the killing of civilian protesters in Bahrain or Yemen on in Israel over its bombing of unarmed civilians in the Gaza Strip, but there is only an embarassing silence.
The reason Libya has been targeted is that Gaddafi, despite a recent rapprochement with the West, was always a maverick and not an easily controlled puppet like those ruling other Middle-East oil-rich countries. Of course he is a dictatorial leader, but little different from the dozens of others with whom the west has very close relations.
The real knee-jerk reaction here is that of NATO forces imposing a no fly zone and bombing Libya with no thought-out long-term strategy, with no political solutions on offer. It is simply another example of a member of the awkward squad being taught the lesson that you stand up to western imperialism at your peril.
END
Once again military intervention, this time in Libya, is justified on the basis of ‘humanitarian concern’. Despite the recent devastating experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, lessons have not been learned.
I, like many Star readers no doubt, was shocked to see that all but 15 MPs, including a number of left-wingers, voted with the Con-Dem coalition in support of military intervention in Libya. Why do so many blindly accept that this is justified? They argue that ‘we’ cannot just stand by and see innocent civilians being murdered by a despot, but they don’t ask why it is apparently all right to do so in the many cases of other despotic rulers. Why has Gaddafi been singled out?
There are few, if any, examples in the whole history of mankind when states have intervened militarily in other countries’ affairs for humanitarian reasons. In the past, nation states always undertook military adventures for pure economic gain, even if these were masked by slogans of imperial glory and of ‘liberating’ the natives. In the more recent past, with nation states superseded by globalised financial capital, we have been witnessing supra-national interventions, still for economic gain, but now in the interests of global capitalism rather than individual nation states.
Even the war against Hitler, upheld as a fight of good against evil, of democracy versus fascism, was waged for economic reasons – Hitler threatened British world dominance. Yugoslavia is the most recent aggression to be cited as a successful ‘humanitarian intervention’ and used to justify the same in Libya, but again this obscures the real reasons. Professor Gibbs of the University of Arizona pointed this out recently in his article in the Guardian where he said that ‘The idea that Kosovo is a model of humanitarian intervention in Libya is based on a series of myths’. Before military intervention, Yugoslavia was still nominally a socialist country and refused to kow-tow to European Union dictates and open up its country to neo-liberal privatisation. Its break up was essential to bring all European countries under the one umbrella of global capitalism. Germany, in an unprecedented move, began the process by unilaterally recognising Croatia. Serbia, in a desperate attempt to hold the federation together, began a counter offensive. Atrocities were committed, but not on a large scale to begin with – these only escalated after armed NATO intervention. Once Muslim mercenaries were brought in to fight on the side of the Kosovans, and NATO began its bombing, things deteriorated rapidly. Subsequent atrocities and ethnic cleansing of the Serbs by Kosovans have elicited few words of condemnation and no calls for international intervention. So much for humanitarian concerns.
The left opposing such wars is accused by the warmongers of knee jerk reaction: of blindly condemning anything the USA or Britain does. There may be some who react in this way, but to dismiss all opposition to such ill-planned military adventurism in this way is no argument. What this dichotomy of views really reveals is that some understand the dynamics of social change, and politics as a class-based struggle for hegemony in the world and others see things through class-neutral glasses. If you fail to understand the underlying economic and class mechanisms of social movements, then you fail to understand the principles of history and will always be in danger of falling into the trap of supporting ruling class action, believing the fig-leaf justifications, rather than looking for the underlying motivations.
The supporters of Cameron and Sarkozy’s gung-ho Libyan intervention should ask themselves why the West has not called for intervention over the killing of civilian protesters in Bahrain or Yemen on in Israel over its bombing of unarmed civilians in the Gaza Strip, but there is only an embarassing silence.
The reason Libya has been targeted is that Gaddafi, despite a recent rapprochement with the West, was always a maverick and not an easily controlled puppet like those ruling other Middle-East oil-rich countries. Of course he is a dictatorial leader, but little different from the dozens of others with whom the west has very close relations.
The real knee-jerk reaction here is that of NATO forces imposing a no fly zone and bombing Libya with no thought-out long-term strategy, with no political solutions on offer. It is simply another example of a member of the awkward squad being taught the lesson that you stand up to western imperialism at your peril.
END
Thursday, 17 March 2011
Letter to Guardian
Garton Ash offers the Arab countries advice on overcoming their dictatorial pasts by holding up Germany as a model: ‘out of the experience of dealing with two dictatorships contemporary Germany offers the gold standard for dealing with a difficult past’ (Guardian 17 March - Germany can show reborn nations the art of overcoming a difficult past). His description is a good example of how not to conduct Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with history). His amnesia or ignorance of the way West Germany dealt with its Nazi past is astounding. Hitler’s chief of counter insurgency became the Federal Republic’s top intelligence agent, Nazi generals like Hans Speidel continued to serve in the top echelons of the army (General Bastian, who became a leading Green and peace campaigner was forced out of the Bundeswehr by unreconstructed Nazis still in positions of power); leading judges, doctors and academics who served the Nazis with ardent commitment continued in their former posts while those who had fought the fascists were often persecuted, had their pensions docked and were treated as lepers. The present meticulously orchestrated campaign against the GDR state security forces has more to do with extirpating any remaining ‘nostalgia’ for the GDR and of the idea of an alternative to capitalism than it does with a genuine desire to overcome the past.
Garton Ash offers the Arab countries advice on overcoming their dictatorial pasts by holding up Germany as a model: ‘out of the experience of dealing with two dictatorships contemporary Germany offers the gold standard for dealing with a difficult past’ (Guardian 17 March - Germany can show reborn nations the art of overcoming a difficult past). His description is a good example of how not to conduct Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with history). His amnesia or ignorance of the way West Germany dealt with its Nazi past is astounding. Hitler’s chief of counter insurgency became the Federal Republic’s top intelligence agent, Nazi generals like Hans Speidel continued to serve in the top echelons of the army (General Bastian, who became a leading Green and peace campaigner was forced out of the Bundeswehr by unreconstructed Nazis still in positions of power); leading judges, doctors and academics who served the Nazis with ardent commitment continued in their former posts while those who had fought the fascists were often persecuted, had their pensions docked and were treated as lepers. The present meticulously orchestrated campaign against the GDR state security forces has more to do with extirpating any remaining ‘nostalgia’ for the GDR and of the idea of an alternative to capitalism than it does with a genuine desire to overcome the past.
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