A CRISIS OF TITANIC PROPORTIONS: The European Union in Uncharted Waters.

The difficulty these days in writing a two-weekly column of political commentary on current events is that things are moving so fast that by the time the column is posted, the commentary and any opinion offered, may be out of date. At the time of writing (04.11.11) the global political elites are gathered in Cannes for the G.20. summit which was, just a few days ago, heralded under the laughably inappropriate slogan “New World; New Ideas”. If only!

Whatever wishful thinking may have prevailed in the citadels of Europe’s two economic “powerhouses”, Germany and France, it was soon dispelled when Greek prime minister Papandreou threw a mighty spanner in the works by announcing that he intended to put the latest austerity measures to be imposed on the country to a referendum. Shock and horror! The last thing the arbiters of Greece’s destiny want is to allow the Greek people to decide on such important matters. They are expected to grin (or grimace) and bear whatever is coming to them. It has long been apparent that decision-making in the EU does not involve consulting public opinion in the member states unless it is absolutely unavoidable. Even then, as the resounding Irish “No” vote on the Lisbon Treaty showed, voting the wrong way is unacceptable. A further referendum must be held in which the preparatory propaganda and the question must be framed in such a way as to guarantee the right outcome. Papandreou was leant upon very heavily by Sarkozy Merkel and members of his own cabinet and he duly abandoned the proposed referendum. On news of this, share prices recovered after the earlier panic which had produced sharp falls in the FTSE 100 and in bank shares. But such market volatility is likely to continue as the roller coaster of the European debt crisis continues on its precipitous course.

The further dose of austerity that the Greeks are forced to swallow in exchange for the latest 8 billion bailout, will only exacerbate the problem. The bailout will enable the government to pay the salaries of public sector workers but it will do nothing to stimulate economic recovery. It will make things worse because, as with every preceding bailout, the draconian austerity measures demanded in return result in slashing wages and pensions, decimating public services and privatizing state assets. Consumer spending will be depressed further as purchasing power is cut yet again. Inevitably the reaction of growing sections of the population is to take to the streets in protests that are already making the country ungovernable. It now looks as though Papandreou’s government will be forced to resign, to be replaced by a caretaker administration pending new elections. Whatever happens in the next few days, there is no prospect of any solution to the crisis that will begin to release the Greek people from their deepening misery. They seem to understand this perfectly well, for they have lost faith completely in the political elites of all parties. Should opposition leader Samaras replace Papandreou as leader of a “national unity government” he is no more likely to win popular support than his predecessor. As a “fiscal conservative” he also accepts the terms of the EU bailout and has absolutely nothing to offer the people. The same may be said for the other option being touted by some of the business elites, namely a “non-political” government, led by a technocrat.

It is now likely that Greece will be forced out of the eurozone.  There is little point in speculating about what the consequences of this might be for the country. The EU leaders are mainly concerned to ensure that the banks that lent to Greece and are now having to “take a haircut”, do not go under. It is possible that they have already written Greece off as insolvent. Given such a collapse, the Greek people will have to take their destiny into their own hands. Should it come to this it is to be hoped that they will seek a solution through the creation of a popularly based government of the left rather than allow ultra-nationalists to take power.

The real problem that looms like a nightmare for the EU leaders is Italy. While it may just be possible to deal with Greece without breaking the banks, Italy is an entirely different matter. The third largest economy in the eurozone, it is nevertheless steeped in debt. For years Italy has claimed the headlines because of the shenanigans of its ludicrous prime minister, multi-billionaire media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, who only recently declared that he regarded his duties as prime minister as a part time job. His full time occupation was “bunga bunga” parties, and, in the words of his ex wife, “consorting with minors.” This is quite apart from legal proceedings against him for fraud and consorting with prostitutes. It now seems that his days in office are numbered, which, if true, will enable him to devote his time exclusively to his more enjoyable pursuits.

Heavily indebted eurozone countries begin to be judged according to the percentage interest rates on their governments’ bonds. Once the yield on such bonds edges closer to 7% they are deemed to be in serious trouble and in line for a bailout to prevent default. So far this has been the case with Greece, Ireland and Portugal – all small countries with small economies. Italy’s public debt stands at 1.9 trillion euros (120% of its GDP) and the yield on its bonds is above 6%. In short, the country is in deep trouble. But the funds that have recently been put together for such eventualities are quite inadequate to cope with a threatened default by an economy the size of Italy’s. The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) with funds of 400 billion euros would require a five-fold expansion to 2 trillion euros to be fit for purpose. Or, maybe it would require 3 trillion. No-one seems to know. Therefore another plan has been hatched to set up something called SPIV – the Special Purposes Instrument Vehicle, in an attempt to muster the funds necessary to fill the coffers of the ESFS. (For once the Daily Mail got it right with the observation that “This is one of life’s more perfectly formed little ironies. In response to a financial crisis caused by spivs selling opaque financial instruments, Europe’s leaders are actually creating an opaque financial instrument called SPIV to sort the whole thing out.”).

As the Greek crisis rumbles on with no signs of abating, the much larger Italian storm is brewing. The EU pressure on Italy is increasing relentlessly. Brussels is demanding the same austerity that has failed so dramatically in Greece. Like Greece, the Italian economy has muddled along with declining levels of productivity, large-scale tax evasion and widespread corruption at all levels. A blind eye could be turned to all this before the financial crash of 2008. But now the only remedy the G 20 and EU leaders have to prevent Italy becoming insolvent, is the one applied unsuccessfully to Greece. Essentially this is all about protecting the banks. Merkel is adamant that the European Central Bank will not be allowed to become the lender of last resort for the euro. A humiliated Berlusconi is obliged to agree to the IMF monitoring the austerity “reforms” demanded by the EU. He claims that he has “dreamed all my life of making these reforms to the economy, but it hasn’t been possible because of the socialists and communists.” It is certain that any attempts by the EU and IMF to solve Italy’s problems at the expense of the Italian working people will be met with the same resistance that has met such measures in Greece.

What may we conclude from all this? It is looking increasingly as though not only Greece but probably Italy also will default. The G 20 summit ended yesterday (03.11.) in disarray with no agreement about how to deal with the crisis enveloping the EU and preventing it from spreading to the global economy and tipping the world back into an even deeper recession. There is a distinct sense that the political elites are fiddling while Rome burns. Yet they cannot agree to a simple measure that could (without bringing down capitalism!) raise the funds necessary to return to economic growth without recourse to the draconian austerity measures that have so signally failed – namely, the Tobin tax – a small tax on all financial transactions. The British government is opposed to this just as they are opposed to introducing a new version of the Glass-Steagall banking act (introduced in the USA by Roosevelt in 1933 but repealed under pressure from the Banking lobby by Clinton in 1999) which separated retail from investment banking. The reason for this is obvious: they do not want to offend their friends and supporters in the City of London who have always lobbied so hard and so successfully against regulation of the financial sector. This, after everything that has happened since 2007.

The Occupy London encampment that has now entered its fourth week of occupation at St. Paul’s Cathedral, has succeeded in bringing the discussion about the nature of the present crisis to the attention of a wide public. The occupiers have raised vital questions about inequality and injustice, greed, excessive wealth, poverty and unemployment in Britain. They are camped close to the Stock Exchange, initially the intended site of their occupation. They have their sights on the banks and finance houses that were responsible for the crisis of 2008. The protesters have no intention of ending their occupation soon. They are aware that they are part of a world-wide movement and they are strengthened by their sense of solidarity with millions of others. They will not be deflected from their objectives by the misrepresentation, the cynicism and the disdain of their detractors. And it must be said that whatever their shortcomings, their clarity of vision, their humanity their determination contrasts strikingly with the confusion, incompetence and sclerotic immobility of the global political and financial elites who are supposed to be responsible for the future of world capitalism. A phrase about re-arranging deckchairs comes to mind.

“WE ARE THE 99%” THE GLOBALIZATION OF RESISTANCE

On October 6 Naomi Klein (author of the 2007 best seller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism) addressed thousands of supporters of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement gathered in New York’s Zuccotti Park – re-named Liberty Park by the occupiers. Echoing her Shock Doctrine message, she told the protesters “If there’s one thing I know it’s that the 1% loves crisis.” Natural disasters and severe economic crises are embraced by advocates and practitioners of the shock doctrine as opportunities to “push through their wish-list of pro-corporate policies: privatizing education and social security, slashing social services, getting rid of the last constraints on corporate power.” In the present economic crisis, she said, “this is happening the world over.” The only thing capable of stopping it from happening, she continued, is the 99% against whom the shock doctrine is directed. “And that 99% is taking to the streets from Madison to Madrid to say ‘No. We will not pay for your crisis’.”

Naomi Klein’s message to the OWS protesters expresses perfectly the newly awakened mood of anger and defiance that is rapidly spreading like a prairie fire through US cities, across national boundaries in Europe and throughout the world. This movement is still in its infancy and it is too early to tell how it will develop and how far it will go. It is surprising that it has taken as long as it has to emerge. From time to time over the past two or three years, Letter from the UK has remarked on the absence of any significant left wing response to the crisis in Britain and elsewhere. Of course there have been exceptions. In Greece, where the cuts to the public sector have been most draconian, there is a powerful and effective working class fight-back involving mass strike action and barricading of ministerial buildings. But generally, until very recently, response to the crisis from traditional sections of the left has been conspicuous by its absence. Now, something new and exciting is happening.

From Spain, where the rate of unemployment is 21.2% (with youth unemployment at 43% and rising) the “Indignado” movement that started in Madrid earlier this year, has inspired similar outbursts of anger and indignation at the gross greed of a bloated financial elite, the 1% who wrecked the economy only to be bailed out at the expense of the 99% who were blameless for the wreck. In London an encampment of mainly young people has established itself on the space in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral after being denied access to Paternoster Square, home of the London Stock Exchange. Their banner proclaims “Capitalism is Crisis.” Like the OWS they plan to be there for the long term and they are gathering support daily. The most striking characteristic of these occupations is the diversity of their membership. Some of the more jaded commentary, from both left and right, sees this as a weakness. Those fundamentally hostile to the protesters dismiss them as incoherent, juvenile hippies, incapable of articulating their purposes beyond sweeping generalizations. Some of the more sectarian sections of the left lament the lack of any programme or clear socialist direction and probably feel somewhat aggrieved that they have failed to assert their “leadership” of the movement.

For the time being at least, such objections should be ignored. As with their precursors, the “UK Uncut” movement, the energy and activism of the protesters should be welcomed and applauded. They have tapped the deep well of anger and indignation rising amongst wide sections of the population at what is happening in society. Since 2008 the overriding mood in Britain has been one of cynicism about “politics” and contempt for most parliamentary politicians and bankers. Until the cuts started to bite this year, bringing with them rising food prices, rising unemployment and rapidly declining public services, this cynicism and discontent did not translate into support for active opposition. Now things are beginning to change. As in the United States the political establishment cannot afford to dismiss these protests. The ranting of a Russ Limbaugh who applauds the ravings of the Tea Partygoers but condemns the OWS activists as “anti-American”, has no equivalent on the right here. So far the more discreet British conservatism has remained quiet, if disdainful. But that has not been the reaction of the wider public where sympathy for the protesters is widespread and apparently growing. This is hardly surprising given the state of Britain and the wider world. Let’s consider for a moment some of the things that are causing concern and impacting painfully on the lives, not only of the working class, but also, increasingly, of what Ed Miliband has termed “the hard pressed Middle” – the middle classes. People read the newspapers or follow the news on television. They have some notion of what is happening world-wide.

The economic crisis here is severe. The “austerity programme” has failed. The economy is flatlining, unemployment has topped 2.5 million, with youth unemployment over 1 million. Inflation is presently running at over 5%. Rising food and fuel prices are biting harder by the week. It is now public knowledge that many low income working families, including many who consider themselves middle class, cannot make ends meet and are increasingly dependent on food hand-outs. Young professionals cannot afford mortgages to start buying their own homes, in a society that was supposed to have become a “property owning democracy”. Decent private rented accommodation is too expensive for even those with salaries above £35.000. For young workers and unemployed youth faced with a shrinking social housing stock, the situation is dire and the future looks hopeless. Faced with this situation the deliberations of government ministers usually give the impression that they live on a different planet.

The crisis in the Eurozone goes from bad (which is very bad) to even worse. At the time of writing (22 October) yet another of the interminable round of meetings by EU finance ministers is in progress (perhaps not the right word) to deal, yet again!, with the debt crisis. Another (final) EU summit has been scheduled for next Wednesday. They have a few days to conclude an agreement that requires them to recapitalize about 70 of Europe’s so-called systemic banks to the tune of 90 billion euros to help them withstand exposure to “debt defaults.” They also need to persuade the main banks and insurers exposed to Greek debt to take a 60% “haircut” (write off of the debt), when just a few weeks ago these same investors were balking at 20%. The big issue though is how they propose to increase the funds available to the European Finance Stability Facility (EFSF) from the present level of 400 billion euros, to 2 trillion euros. How are they going to turn one euro into five? As far as it is possible to tell, no-one seems to know. In a deep hole, the only message that gets through to them is ‘keep on digging.’ Keynes’s advice that if you want to get out of a recession you don’t impose austerity measures that increase unemployment, destroy consumer spending and close down businesses, is one that was rejected long ago by the enthusiasts for neo-liberal capitalism. They are in no mood to listen to reason now.

But, as Naomi Klein has made clear, the Hayekian/Friedmanite school of neo-liberalism still bestrides the global stage. The financial wizards who have presided over the worst crisis since the Great Depression and are now driving headlong towards the precipice, do not, to use Tony Blair’s phrase, have a reverse gear. They will use the crisis to try to implement the Shock Doctrine world-wide. It needs to be said loud and clear, that we have reached a point where we face the prospect of global disaster. Either the 1% will prevail or the 99% will stop them. Should the multi-billionaire minority of corporate predators impose their will, it will amount to a final victory for a neo-liberal capitalism that will reduce the globe to a pleasure park for the super-rich and a squalid wasteland for the rest of us. The OWS protesters and their growing army of supporters worldwide are right. They are the core of the resistance movement that will go from strength to strength. We will be belittled and dismissed as irrelevant for a time by those who are either part of, or in hock to, the 1%. But the bankruptcy of a system that is clearly collapsing under the weight of its internal contradictions is now clear for all but the willfully blind to see.

The banner raised by the London occupation reads “Capitalism IS Crisis.” Before 2008 this would have resonated with only a tiny minority of committed leftists. Now it provides food for serious thought to all whose lives are adversely affected by the crisis. Prior to this crisis the term “capitalism” was rarely used in the mainstream media. It was hardly ever used by those who operated the system and whose interests it served. They talked only of “democracy” and the “free world” and the “free market” – all these terms were interchangeable. This was the only way, the best of all possible worlds. There was no alternative to it. It operated as near to perfectly as it was possible to get. As Gordon Brown constantly told us and as the financiers of the City of London nodded in approval, there would be “no more boom and bust.”

But now things have changed. The emerging global resistance is gaining ever wider support, uniting the burgeoning new movement of youthful activists with a rejuvenated labour and trade union movement. The OWS and its kindred spirits world-wide have seen through the obfuscation of the propagandists of corporate power. The financial crisis denotes the systemic break-down of global finance capitalism. The power elites in whose interests that system operates will not be able to fix it. If we are to avoid global economic catastrophe and irreversible environmental despoliation, there has to be an alternative that transfers power from the 1% to the 99%. That is, a form of social organization fit for human beings. In addressing the movement dedicated to achieving this goal, Naomi Klein concluded her address to the OWS activists with these words: “Let’s treat this beautiful movement as if it is the most important thing in the world. Because it is. It really is.”

HENRY METELMANN: Through Hell for Hitler

Until a week ago I would never have thought of devoting this column to Henry Metelmann To almost all readers of Letter from the UK his name will mean nothing. In Britain, where he lived for most of his long life, he was known only to those who may have read the few autobiographical books he wrote or happened to have watched the 2003 BBC Timewatch documentary devoted to him. For most of his working life he was a signalman for what was once, before privatization of the railway network, known as British Rail. After his retirement he worked as a grounds-man at the prestigious private school, Charterhouse. A very ordinary life. He died in July of this year, aged 88.

Had his life before he reached the age of 24 been similar to the lives of most of his fellow workers in Britain it would have aroused little interest beyond his immediate associates. But it wasn’t. Henry Metelman was a German, born in Hamburg in 1922. His childhood, adolescence and early manhood were spent in Nazi Germany where he was subjected to  the conditioning common to thousands of young people like him. Aged eleven when Hitler came to power, he entered the Hitler Youth. Like millions of others, he came to adore the Fuhrer. In 1941, at the age of 18, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht. As part of the 22^nd Panzer division he became a tank driver, and in 1942 was transferred to the Eastern Front. It was this experience that was to change his life forever. In his own words, the Nazi nonsense was knocked out of him when his arrogant nose was rubbed in the mud at Stalingrad. Unlike so many of his compatriots whose war came to an end on the flaming banks of the Volga in February 1943, Metelmann was fortunate enough to escape the Soviet encirclement of the 6^th Army. He managed to make his way back across thousands of miles of war-torn Russia until he reached Germany. Finally, after a period of convalescence, he was sent west in the last hopeless attempt to check the Anglo-American forces advancing on the Reich. He finally surrendered to the Americans in western Germany in early 1945. He was sent as a prisoner of war to the U.S. where he spent a year before being handed over to the British. Finally released from captivity in 1948, he returned briefly to Hamburg where he discovered that his mother had been killed in the British bombardment of 1943. He returned to Britain where he spent the rest of his life. In 1952 he married Monika, a Swiss au pair he had met earlier while working in captivity on a Hampshire farm.

The bare outline of his life gives little indication of what it was that set Metelmann apart from many other German prisoners of war who chose, initially at least, not to return to their homeland. Unlike most of them his experiences had turned him into a passionate anti-Nazi. Despite the lack of any formal education, he dedicated himself to informing young people in British schools and colleges about the horrors of Nazism. He chronicled his childhood and wartime experiences in two books, Through Hell for Hitler (1990) and A Hitler Youth (1997). He was a captivating speaker whose modesty and transparent sincerity won the admiration and respect of all who heard him.

I first met Henry Metelmann in 1989 at a student conference on Nazism and the Holocaust at the Imperial War Museum in London. I remember that he was asked by a student whether he had personally participated in any atrocities. I fully expected him to say that he hadn’t, but he ruefully admitted that in Russia he had been ordered, in the depths of winter, to evict a peasant family, including old people and children, from their shack. The shack was then incinerated and the peasants left to freeze to death. He admitted that, to his eternal shame,  he had been a dedicated Nazi, believing that he was participating in a noble civilizing mission to rid the world of “Untermenschen”. He also recounted an episode prior to Stalingrad where his unit was visited by a group of SS “educators”. According to Metelmann, they asked the soldiers why they thought they were in Russia. The soldiers replied that they were there to subdue the “Untermemschen” and to prevent the triumph of “Judeo-Bolshevism”. The SS “educators”, he claimed, dismissed this explanation as “Goebbels propaganda”. The real reason, they explained, was to conquer the Caucasian oil fields, drive on southwards towards the Middle East and finally link up with Rommel who was then advancing on Egypt. Once this objective was achieved, the oil reserves of Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia would be in German hands and world domination would be in sight.

This clearly had a big impact on Metelmann. He rapidly came to the conclusion that Nazism was the most aggressive form of capitalist imperialism. He seems likewise to have undergone a rapid change of heart and mind about Nazi racism. In his talks to students he would tell them about a Russian girl called Anna, with whom, as a 19 year old, he fell in love. His almost universally favourable impression of the Russian people – so different from the racist fanaticism of so many Germans of that generation – led him to reject everything he had been led to believe. In his book Through Hell for Hitler he describes witnessing a passing line of cattle-trucks transporting Jews to the extermination centres, further strengthening his detestation of the regime he had served. I became aware of the great difficulty he still experienced in dealing with the Holocaust when some years ago I suggested to him that he might participate in a discussion with Holocaust survivors. He responded that he would very much like to do so, but that he doubted whether the other participants would feel able to accept him as a participant.

I am sure that his great repentance for his past was influenced by the memory of his father. He was the only child of working class parents. His father was an unskilled labourer, his mother a religious woman from a rural background. His father was a socialist, though Metelmann does not make clear whether his loyalty lay with the communists or the social democrats. He died on the outbreak of war in 1939 when Henry was 16. He was dismayed by his son’s enthusiasm for the Hitler Youth. He regarded the Nazis as the “brown plague” and apparently warned Henry that if and when he became disillusioned, the pain would be terrible. Henry loved his father dearly but being “so young and with the Nazi drums drumming in my brain” he pushed aside the promise to heed his warnings. It seems surprising that someone as thoughtful as Metelmann, with the literary and communication skills that brought him plaudits as a writer and educator, should have spent his life as an unskilled worker. One explanation might be that after the war he pledged himself to penance for the rest of his life for what he saw as the betrayal of his father’s ideals. This may also account for the somewhat idealized admiration he conceived for the Soviet Union and for the Russian people. In the epilogue to A Hitler Youth, referring to his experiences with the Wehrmacht in Russia, he wrote:

“Especially during the winter’s retreat, we often stayed with the peasants in their primitive but mostly warm cottages. I had many conversations, arguments and quarrels mainly with the women – their menfolk were at war – whom I learned to respect and even trust as fine human beings. When some of them asked me why I had come to their country to conquer, burn, kill and destroy, I half-heartedly gave a stock Nazi answer in terms of a quest for glory and national honour. Their rejection of this banality revealed the emptiness of my words, ands I stood naked and totally devoid of any meaningful explanation to give them, and when they suggested that I had come in the service of my masters, the mighty arms manufacturers, bankers and land-owning Junkers to secure for them the enormous mineral wealth and land of Russia, I painfully realized that at root they saw things through the same eyes as my father.”

I last met Henry Metelmann several years ago. We rarely discussed British politics, but I knew that his heart was on the left. He told me that after his release from captivity in 1948 he returned to Hamburg where he discovered that his mother and all members of his closest family had perished. He found that most people he talked to expressed no guilt for the Nazi regime and blamed their plight solely on the allies. He found the atmosphere intolerable and came straight back to Britain.

After our meeting something rather strange occurred. Our discussions about the war in the Soviet Union had reminded me of a poem by Brecht – “To the German Soldiers in the East” – written while he was in exile in 1942. Probably the greatest poem to come out of World War II, it is an anguished cry from the heart against the heartless military machine that had been moulded from the bodies and minds of millions of young men corrupted by a monstrous inhuman regime. It is also a scathing damnation of the abominations perpetrated by those very same men, who, in Brecht’s words, have donned the garb of robbers and arsonist murderers. He recognizes the German soldiers as brothers but condemns them as murderers. (The tremendous power of Brecht’s poem cannot be adequately rendered in translation.) My discussion with Henry Metelmann recalled this poem to me and I looked it up to re-read it. As I did so I received a telephone call from Henry. He had called to recite for me a passage from the very same poem. We had never discussed it and, as far as I recall we had never referred to Brecht.

A few weeks ago Henry’s name came up in conversation and I said that I would try to arrange to see him and introduce my friends to him. I was still intending to call him when, on the 23^rd September his obituary appeared in The Guardian. He died on the 24^th July. One thing he never mentioned to me. He was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and remained a member until it was wound up in 1991.

THE ONWARD MARCH OF NEO-LIBERALISM FALTERING?

Commenting on British elections in the late nineteenth century, Frederick Engels remarked that British voters go to the polls every four or five years to decide which section of the ruling class will continue to exploit them. In similar vein, Dutch anthropologist Joris Luyendijk, writing about the City of London last week (15.09.11), says that “in some countries democracy is beginning to look like the system by which electorates decide which politician gets to implement what the markets dictate.” Plus ca change. The last Letter from the UK (09.11) noted the absence in Britain and throughout most of Europe of any effective opposition on the left to the harsh austerity measures that in country after country are impacting so disastrously on the lives of working people. Part of the explanation for this, it was argued, had to do with the legacy of Stalinism. With the demise of the Soviet Union and the international communist movement, the resurgent right was able to assert that socialism = totalitarian tyranny, and that there was not and could never be any  socialist alternative to “free-market” capitalism, that did not replace democracy with dictatorship. The neo-liberal onslaught was directed not only against the defunct Soviet bloc but against the whole social-democratic heritage. Marxism and every variant of socialism were declared bankrupt. Nationalization, mixed economies and Keynesian economic theory and practice were lumped together and damned as statist constraints on the “free market” and on human freedom itself.

It is extraordinary, particularly after the financial crash of 2008 and the subsequent manifest failure of the remedies that were supposed to stimulate economic recovery that the neo-liberal enterprise is still on the road. Can it really be that all our futures are to be shaped by the operation of  this threadbare and discredited ideology? Is there really no alternative to a profoundly unequal, conflict-ridden world lurching from crisis to ever more intractable crises? It is becoming daily more evident that this is the road to economic and environmental ruin. But, sadly, it seems that for all its self-evident bankruptcy, neo-liberalism remains ideologically hegemonic. This is the opinion of British cultural critic Stuart Hall. If so, it looks like an example of an ideology that retains its mystique for a ruling class and its media-minions, despite the fact that it is no longer able to guarantee the future survival of the economic system it is supposed to advance.

In Britain at the moment it seems that in spite of the grim prospects their policies have imposed, the position of the Con-Dem coalition remains fairly secure. The deficit-cutting austerity measures are now beginning to bite; there is no sign of economic recovery; unemployment has topped 2.5 million for the first time in two years (a long predicted outcome, which the prime minister finds “disappointing”, of severe cuts to the public sector), and youth unemployment has reached almost 1 million. There have been serious riots in the streets by thousands of disinherited young people deprived of jobs and hope. Decline in purchasing power and in living standards has been steeper than any experienced for eighty years. Social inequality has reached levels not seen since Dickensian times. In spite of this the government ploughs on regardless, sticking dogmatically to its austerity program, without a “plan B”. Of course, for the wealthier and wealthiest sections of society there has been no recession at all. Those making over £150.000 a year may grumble about the 50%  tax rate on their incomes – still reluctantly retained by the government – but their discomfort is not such as to seriously affect their style of life.

For the pessimistically inclined, there seems a lot to be pessimistic about. In spite of everything there are grounds for optimism, but optimism must be grounded in realism if it is not to be mere wishful thinking. That there will be no easy way out of this crisis – which is at root a systemic crisis of global finance capitalism – is obvious. But a way out must be found.

One weakness of much, including some of the more sensible, commentary on the ongoing financial crisis is a tendency to treat it primarily, or solely, from the standpoint of the governing elites involved. For example, for the past week or so there has been a growing sense of alarm about the prospect of a Greek default on its debt and the impact this will have on the Euro-zone and possibly on the survival of the EU itself. Commentators opine solemnly about whether “the Greeks” will be able to avoid a default; whether they will be sufficiently robust in imposing the further severe austerity measures and privatization necessary to persuade “the markets” and their EU paymasters of their seriousness. “The Greeks” referred to are the Greek government and the elites, who will not bear the burden of mass impoverishment that has fallen on the millions. The plight of the Greek working people is either not considered at all or dismissed as an irritating factor that should not be allowed to get in the way of “doing the right thing”. Whatever unimaginable pain has to be endured by those who were not responsible for causing the crisis, that’s just too bad; it has to be borne.

The same goes for the millions who are suffering from the “deficit-cutting” austerity measures in Ireland, in Spain and Portugal and who will soon be suffering in Italy and France. To the rulers of these countries, supposedly proud of their democracies, it is perfectly acceptable to wipe away at a stroke the rights and livelihoods of the workers, to slash their wages and pensions, to relegate their youth to the scrapheap before they have had a chance to work. The crisis brought on by the systemic failure of casino capitalism must be solved at the expense of millions of working people who were not responsible for its failure. If they protest and organize to resist the erosion of their livelihoods, to protect their pensions and to fight to retain their jobs by taking industrial action, they are accused of “holding the country to ransom” and “acting against the public interest”. All those who take such actions are, it seems, no longer members of “the public.”

In Britain, the Labour Party opposition in parliament has been lily-livered in its response to the Con-Dem government’s assault on the public sector. In the absence of any well-organized mass party of the left, a great deal of hope rests on the trade union movement. And, to their credit the main public sector unions have signed up to a program of industrial action against the cuts, with a coordinated strike on 30 November and expressions of support for civil disobedience. Yet Ed Miliband has refused to support such actions. He condemned the one day strike by teachers and civil servants in June. Although there are welcome signs that he has moved to dissociate himself from the disastrous legacy of New Labour, there is no sign that he intends to support extra-parliamentary action against the government. If he were to do so it would be seen as a decisive break with the Blairite past and it is likely that he would have widespread public support. With or without Miliband and the parliamentary party, if there is to be effective and sustained opposition to the government’s cuts, a broadly based popular movement must and can be built.

Another respect in which much of the commentary in the mainstream media in Britain fails to come to terms with the seriousness of the ongoing crisis, is the apparent inability to grasp its global implications. For example, in this country there is a certain smugness about being outside the Euro-zone, as though somehow this will shield British banks from the impact of a Greek default because they are not as exposed to Greek debt. But the inter-connectedness of British and other European and US banks which will suffer as a result of a Greek default means that British banks will also be exposed. Likewise, the deepening debt crisis in other Euro-zone countries will result in the drying up of Britain’s main export market, putting the final nail in the coffin of the Con Dem government’s elusive economic recovery. The fact that US Treasury secretary Geithner is due to attend the emergency meeting of EU finance ministers in Wroclaw, Poland, this week, is a pretty clear indication that the seriousness of the Euro crisis has not been lost on the Obama administration. This is the biggest crisis in the history of the European Union and no-one has any idea about how it is going to end. If the European banking system goes down as a result of the Greek debt crisis, Obama’s recovery program is finished too and the US will be plunged back into recession.

And that’s just looking at the financial/economic crisis. The US and the UK are still up to their necks in Afghanistan, a war which has cost billions of dollars, countless lives and is clearly lost. The Anglo-French-US intervention in Libya which amounts to a Nato-led revolution for secure oil revenues, has all the hallmarks of a fiasco. The civil war looks like continuing for some time and even if it doesn’t, the motley conglomerate of tribal, sectarian and Islamist militias constituting the NTC is already in considerable disarray and doesn’t look like the basis of a stable government.

It’s still too early to guess the outcome, but the Arab awakening has already thrown up some interesting prospects for the Middle East. The flowering of democratic forms of expression and the mass participation of its citizens has focused attention on Egypt.  The emergence of a likely new accord between Turkey and Egypt at Israel’s expense,  and the forthcoming vote in the UN General Assembly on a Palestinian state, is likely to alter the whole landscape of the Middle East and put increasing pressure on Israel to reach a just and long-lasting agreement with the Palestinians. In South Africa, pressure is growing on the ANC government to jettison the neo-liberal shock program adopted post-apartheid at the behest of the multi-nationals in place of the promised Freedom Charter. This was a betrayal of everything the movement had fought for and resulted in the continuation of economic apartheid to the present day. Now there is a demand to return to the Freedom Charter with a program of large-scale nationalization.

These are just a few signs of a growing restlessness throughout the world. It is to be hoped that such resistance to the depredations of neo-liberal shock doctrine will continue to grow and, before it is too late, help to achieve a future more conducive to human development.

CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM, AND THE LEGACY OF STALIN

When the scale of the global financial crisis became clear with the collapse of Lehman Bros in 2008, Will Hutton, the Observer’s Keynesian economics columnist, pointedly remarked that the crisis of capitalism was upon us but the Marxist left, which had been predicting it for decades, was in no position to do anything about it. More recently, just a month ago, Nouriel Roubini, who almost alone amongst economics forecasters had predicted the financial crash, told the Wall Street journal that Marx had been right in claiming that capitalism was doomed to destruction. The re-discovery of Marx is, outside the small and largely marginalized groups on the left in western countries, still very much a minority interest. However, given that for the past twenty years at least, it has been taken for granted amongst mainstream political and economic theorists that Marx and all his works were truly dead and buried, the revival of interest is significant. Francis Fukuyama’s triumphalist 1992 celebration of ‘The End of History’ has turned out to be amongst the shortest-lived of mistaken ideas. Whether the first decades of the twenty-first century will turn out to herald the ‘final crisis of capitalism’ we cannot know. But only willfully blind defenders of the crisis-ridden status quo would confidently predict that its future is assured. Given the grave and growing instability of the global financial system, - and, if one wanted to compound the problems by mentioning the impact of wars, military intervention and revolution in the Middle East, Afghanistan and elsewhere, as well as the small matter of man-made global warming and climate change – a burning question presents itself. Why are there no mass movements committed to halting this headlong rush to catastrophe? Why are there no effective radical parties of the left dedicated to changing the system once and for all? That is the question. Given the patent failure of finance monopoly capitalism to achieve the ‘free market’ nirvana preached by its Hayekian and Friedmanite ideologues, one might have expected a vigorous revival of socialism. It is important to consider why there has been no such revival.

In seeking an answer we must look once again at the Soviet experience and its impact on the rest of the world. For our purposes this means primarily addressing the question of Stalinism. It would be neither appropriate nor possible here to go into the complexities of the debate about the meaning of Stalinism or the precise nature of the regime over which Stalin presided. The Marxist left in Britain has for more than sixty years been divided in its interpretation of the nature of the Soviet regime between the late 1920s and its demise in 1991. For most communists, following the Moscow line, the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe and elsewhere allied to it, were regarded as socialist. For most orthodox Trotskyists, the Soviet Union and its allies were bureaucratically deformed workers’ states. For some neo-Trotskyists, these countries were not considered to be socialist at all, but were regarded as versions of ‘state capitalism’.  Whatever the differences between Marxists, all accepted the undeniable fact that the Soviet Union and other self-proclaimed socialist countries had put an end to private ownership in the means of production; all had established nationalized industries and largely collectivized agriculture, and operated their economies on the basis of centralized state planning. This was the system widely regarded by both left and right as ‘socialist’ or ‘communist.’

During the 1930s, through the years of the great depression, there existed a world-wide communist movement, closely allied to Moscow through the Communist International (Comintern.) In many countries the communist parties led mass working class and peasant movements. Communists were to the forefront of social struggles and of the movements in opposition to fascism and war. The Comintern organized the international brigade volunteers who fought to defend the Spanish republic against Franco fascism.  During the Second World War, in which the Soviet Union played by far the largest part in the destruction of fascism, communists were to the forefront in all the resistance movements in occupied Europe. After the war mass communist parties emerged in France and Italy and communist movements led successful revolutions in Vietnam, China and later, Cuba..

Between the late 1920s and 1953 the Soviet Union was led by Stalin. Whatever its accomplishments, and they were in many ways astounding, the regime over which he came to exercise iron control, developed into a tyranny. The forced march to transform the vast territory from a backward agrarian country into an advanced industrial state, cost the lives of millions. In 1931, at the beginning of the four year plans, Stalin declared that the country was 50 to 100 years behind the west in terms of its industrial development. It had, he said, 10 years to catch up. It would either succeed or perish. Exactly 10 years later the Nazis invaded. After unimaginable sacrifices, Soviet armed might, made possible many argued by the forced march of the five year plans, succeeded in defeating the greatest war machine history had ever known. Some have argued that this accomplishment justified the means employed to achieve it: ‘You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.’  This claim might possibly have some flimsy credibility if it could be shown that (a) there was no alternative to the draconian forced march onto which Stalin dragooned the country, and (b) given that, the sacrifices of millions of lives were inevitable. Neither of these is true.

Stalinism was a complex phenomenon that cannot be reduced to any simplistic formula. It is not helpful to use the term as a label to characterize all communist-ruled countries as diverse, for example, as Yugoslavia and Cuba, or for that matter to describe the Soviet Union and other states of Eastern Europe at different stages of their history, as for example, 1950 and 1980. But it is possible to point to certain definitive characteristics of Stalinism. From the late 1920s, following the defeat of the Left (Trotskyist) Opposition, Stalin’s policy of building ‘socialism in a single country’ came to be imposed as the state orthodoxy. There could be no alternative. Any suggestion of a possible alternative to the five year plans and forced collectivization of agriculture, was rejected tout court.

Given that the country existed isolated in a hostile capitalist environment it was easy and convenient to treat any deviation from the ‘correct’ course as evidence of opposition to socialism itself. ‘Those who are not with us, are against us’ was the watch-word. Stalin regarded himself as the true disciple of Lenin and the interpreter of ‘Leninism’. In the circumstances of the 1930s, particularly with the rise of fascism in Germany and the knowledge that the exiled Trotskyist opposition was engaged in a sustained ideological attack on Stalin, claiming that he had betrayed the revolution, the search for ‘hidden enemies’ inside the country became a paranoid obsession. Under a regime which allowed no legitimate voice of dissent, the imagined scope of hidden and conspiratorial dissent became limitless. This is the background to the purges of the late 1930s which eliminated the majority of the old Bolsheviks from the leadership of the communist party and spread like wildfire throughout the lower ranks of the apparatus and beyond. From the early 1930s to the end of the decade and the onset of war, millions perished, either in the famine induced by forced collectivization and the elimination of the kulaks, or through incarceration in slave labour camps in the ‘gulag archipelago.’ The full horror of what had happened during the years of Stalin’s dictatorship did not become widely known until after his death.

It was then revealed beyond any possibility of doubt that the trials of leading communists during the Soviet purges of 1936 – 1938, and those in Eastern Europe between 1949 and 1952, were grotesque frame-ups in which confessions to the most preposterous crimes were obtained through torture. The truth that emerged after Stalin’s death led indirectly to the splits within the world communist movement and, finally, played a part in its disintegration. What is the relevance of all this to the weakness of socialist opposition movements in the western world today?

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the states of Eastern Europe between 1989 and 1991, the world became safe for rampant neo-liberal capitalism. From 1945 to around 1980, western capitalism had to some extent been constrained by the need to compete with the communist world for economic and ideological influence in the newly independent ‘Third World’ countries whose anti-colonial stance inclined them towards closer association with the Soviet bloc. Also, in the advanced capitalist countries, particularly in Europe, the Keynesian/social democratic model of economic development based on mixed economy, was to some extent an attempt to counteract the influence of a more assertive socialist movement, often influenced by the perceived successes of Soviet and other communist countries. Thus, the continued existence of the Soviet Union and other communist-ruled countries who, whatever their faults, appeared to have achieved a more egalitarian distribution of wealth, acted as a brake on unrestrained ‘free-market’ capitalism.

But perhaps the most far-reaching propaganda triumph of neo-liberal capitalism in its drive to globalization, has been its equation of socialism with Stalinism. This perpetuates the old Hayekian canard that any attempt to constrain the ‘free market’ is ‘the road to serfdom’ leading inevitably to Stalinist tyranny. To be able to claim that ‘There is No Alternative’ to capitalism has enabled a vast army of propagandists in the media and academia to write the obituary of socialism and of Marxism. It is incumbent on the left to challenge this dangerous myth. Stalinism has done incalculable damage to the socialist cause and it is absolutely essential that this is properly understood. What happened to the Soviet Union under Stalin was not inevitable; it was not an inevitable outgrowth of Marxism. As US academic, Professor Stephen F. Cohen (Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History since 1917) has argued very persuasively, the outcome of the Soviet debates in the 1920s could have been different; a different course, leading to a very different version of socialism could have been undertaken. It suits both the apologists for Stalin and the advocates of neo-liberal capitalism to claim that there was no alternative to Stalinism. There is an alternative to both Stalinism and capitalism. It has yet to be tried and unless is tried humanity cannot be guaranteed a viable future.

THE FIRE THIS TIME: Rioting in English Cities

“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”

Frederick Douglas Speech on the
24th anniversary of emancipation,
Washington DC, 1886

At the time of writing, (August 12), rioting by thousands of young people on the streets of English cities, which first exploded last weekend, appears to have died down. The relative quiet of the past three nights may be no more than the lull before another storm. As the circumstances that gave rise to the rioting and looting have not changed and are unlikely to change, it is probable that before long there will be further outbursts. But for the time being, a greatly increased police presence and the threat of water cannon and rubber bullets seems to have prevented a repetition of disturbances on the scale witnessed on the first three nights. What has caused these riots?

Not surprisingly, opinions about the causes, and attitudes towards the riots themselves, differ wildly. For the Tories and the news media that support them, the explanation is simple: those responsible are simply asocial mindless thugs, ignorant and indolent, products of dysfunctional families. They have no sense of social responsibility or morality. The only way to deal with them is to bring them to justice and lock them up. Such a view rests upon no sophisticated causal explanation about the presence of so many hardened criminal elements in our midst. That is the way they are and any attempt by bleeding-heart liberals and deluded leftists to seek explanation or excuse for such behaviour, amounts to complicity in their criminality. According to Prime Minister David Cameron, the root cause is “mindless selfishness and complete lack of responsibility in our society.” It’s worth pondering that phrase.

The financial crisis that broke in 2008 saw the near meltdown of the banking system. Those responsible had for years indulged in a bonanza of profligate multi-billion pound risk-taking based on the accumulation of ever increasing volumes of debt. When their antics brought the system to the brink of collapse, catastrophe was only avoided by bailing out the banks, deemed “too big to fail”, at taxpayers’ expense. The draconian austerity measures introduced by the Con Dem government are a direct consequence of the gross irresponsibility of the bankers. Now the bailed-out banks are back in business as usual and the bankers are paying themselves the same mega-bonuses as before. But they have not been accused by the government of mindless selfishness and complete lack of social responsibility. The consequences of their selfishness and irresponsibility are incomparably greater than the damage done on Britain’s streets over the past couple of days. The global operation of finance capital over which they and their kind preside has not recovered from the crisis into which they have plunged the economy. The casualties of their dysfunctional system are numbered in ever-growing millions throughout the world.

There is a connection between the deepening financial and economic crisis which is rapidly assuming global proportions, and the riots on Britain’s streets. It is not one that representatives of the ruling class in Britain are keen to admit, but to those with eyes to see, it is inescapable. Britain is one of the most socially unequal countries in the developed world. In terms of inequality of income, Britain rates 20^th amongst 23 affluent states. Only the USA, Portugal and Singapore are more unequal. In a 2010 study of social inequality in Britain (Injustice: Why Britain’s Social Inequality Persists. Polity Press, 2010) Danny Dorling wrote: “In countries like Britain, people last lived lives as unequal as today measured by wage inequality, in 1854, when Charles Dickens was writing ‘Hard Times’.” As this inequality gap has grown, the super-rich have accumulated record levels of wealth.

To treat the riots that exploded on the streets of London, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester as though they had nothing to do with this grim and growing social inequality can only be regarded as willful blindness. Yet the leaders of the three main parliamentary parties have done just that. Parliament was recalled from the summer recess. Party leaders and London’s mayor rushed back from their holidays. They all spoke from the same script. This was pure criminality and the crack-down would come swiftly and sharply. Magistrates’ courts are already handing down stiff custodial sentences. The only dispute between the government and opposition parties is about the policing of the riots. Labour leader Ed Miliband is leading the demand to abandon the proposed cuts to police numbers. In this he clearly has the support of the Metropolitan Police themselves.

So, not surprisingly there are no signs of serious analysis from that quarter. How then, is this sudden upsurge of looting and burning to be explained? Some sections of the left beyond the Labour party seem to have a simple answer. The riots, they believe are “an explosion of bitterness and rage” by a “lost generation created by the Tories.” The disturbances are described as “struggles” by those who have been pushed to the wall and are now fighting back. Such a view, while apparently addressing the social deprivation at the heart of the unrest, is hopelessly romantic and simplistic. Only by the wildest stretch of the imagination can the activities of the rioters be considered “struggles”. The term has a long and meaningful pedigree on the left. It is used to refer to the ongoing conflict between classes, between oppressor and oppressed. The “class struggle” referred to by Marx and his followers, refers primarily to the politically conscious engagement of the working class and other subordinate classes against the exploitative rule of capital. To say the least, the term “struggle” is not appropriate to describe the upsurge on the city streets last week. The rioters were not the harbingers of revolution.

At the outset, on Saturday August 6, the riots were sparked by the fatal shooting by the Met of Mark Duggan. What had started as a peaceful protest and demand for information outside Tottenham police station, soon escalated into much more serious disturbances. In communities blighted by high levels of unemployment, and subjected to heavy-handed police stop-and-search operations targeting young black men, the fact that there is deep-rooted resentment of the police comes as no surprise. The shooting of Duggan and what seems certain to have been a false claim by the police that he had fired at them, was certainly the spark that lit the tinder box. The combustible material was waiting to explode. However, to claim, as some on the left have done, that all that happened subsequently was a conscious reaction to Duggan’s shooting, is to give the events a political character they do not deserve. Certainly the rioting has political significance, but this is primarily in the sense that the sheer scale and bravado of the thousands of young people involved is symptomatic of the terrible alienation and desperation that scars their lives. It would be encouraging if this class of culturally, educationally and materially impoverished young people, casualties of a brutal system that has given them no hope, had been enrolled in a political movement capable of challenging the system that has blighted their lives. But they have not. So their inchoate rebellion can only express itself in terms of the destructive, anti-human norms of the dominant culture of rampant consumerism and possessive individualism. And if they behave violently it should come as no surprise, given the violent imagery that surrounds them - both real in the form of a decade of wars, and simulated in the video games that many watch compulsively.

This is the inescapable reality. Every waking hour of their lives – indeed of all our lives – is saturated with images encouraging them to consume endlessly. Myriads of commodities are “must have” and “to die for.” The value of life is measured in brand names. Built-in obsolescence compels them to possess only the latest technological gadgetry. “I shop, therefore I am” is the unspoken motto of the age. But for so many of those who took to the streets to loot last week, so many of the commodities they want, so much of what they are encouraged to believe is essential to establish their identity and command respect, is unattainable. They do not have the means to purchase the inessential things they have been persuaded are absolutely essential.

One of the most depressing and alarming aspects of the rioting was the extensive damaging done to shops, houses and cars, and to other members of the community who tried to stop the rioting. This included physical attacks on innocent people which resulted in five deaths. Hundreds of people have been burned out of their homes, losing everything. It is worth recalling a few details because some of the reporting on the left has failed to mention, let alone deal with this. Three young Asian men, seeking to protect their property were deliberately mown down and killed by a car. A 68 year old man in London who tried to put out a fire that had been lit, was beaten to the ground by several young people. He later died from his wounds. Another man was shot in the head at point blank range as he sat in his car. In another case, caught on CCTV, a young Malaysian student who had been beaten was helped to his feet by rioters who then went on to rob him. The fact that these instances were widely publicized and no doubt used to demonize all the rioters, in no way detracts from the brutal callousness of such acts. One left-wing journal argued that the rioting and looting was not an attack on the community as the shops looted and burned were chains such as J.D. Sports and Curry’s. This won’t wash. One store was burned out despite being located beneath an apartment block. Everyone living there lost their homes. Small shops were attacked; in one part of London the waiters in Turkish restaurants defended their workplaces with baseball bats.

This is mentioned not to reinforce the rightist agenda which seeks to deflect attention from the underlying causes of the rioting, but to counter the evasiveness by some sections of the left who seem reluctant to face up to the alarming behaviour of some of those who took part in the riots. Likewise, there seems to be reluctance to acknowledge the extraordinary community spirit of those hundreds of people, from all ethnic groups and backgrounds, who came together with brooms, on the morning following the last of the riots in London, and began to clear up the mess.

Unless the underlying conditions of alienation and impoverishment that gave rise to these events are confronted and dealt with, they will recur and the government will use them to turn different communities against each other and prevent the growth of a united popular opposition to the cuts they are trying to impose. Dealing with those conditions will require the mobilization of just such a mass movement, capable eventually of confronting the power of the state. Romanticizing an inchoate upsurge of rioting and looting by disenfranchised and alienated youth will not help to build such a movement.