Occupy Has Nothing to Say? I Blame the Parents

 Socialism, or at least its 20^th Century version, collapsed for two main reasons: because it couldn’t find a political form which demonstrated at least much personal freedom and democracy as the Western liberal democracies it opposed, and because it failed to deliver economic progress at the same speed or to the same apparent degree of efficiency as capitalism. 

Like everyone else of a certain age I watched this collapse on prime time TV in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It had a profound effect on me. I was, after all, a card carrying Communist at the time – a historical materialist stranded on what appeared to be the wrong side of history.  

It very quickly became clear that there was no ‘easy intellectual retreat’, as it were, to social democracy. Generations of refugees from Marxist parties had made that journey before The Fall, comforting themselves they were still pursuing the aims of socialism but by defensible, democratic means.

Actually, a very large slice of the Marxist tradition had, by the 1980s, made a serious attempt to make this shift within its own intellectual framework anyway. Classical Trotskyism had its own (to me, always unconvincing) version of this which ran broadly along the lines of laying stake to the heritage of a purified and re-claimed ‘democratic’ Leninism; the libertarian Marxists had a more root and branch version, and my own tradition, that of Eurocommunism, somehow accepted the theoretical inapplicability of much of Leninist political theory in the West ( I mean, what else was all that bigging up of Gramsci about?) whilst still maintaining an institutional allegiance to the broad hope encapsulated in the ‘moment’ of 1917. All three, were, in their different ways, quite keen on refusing the supposed gap between ‘politics’ and ‘economics’ of course, and laying stress on the economic and workplace democratic element to a vision of socialism – something they held in common with ‘advanced’ social democracy, at least in Bennite/Livingstonian form. 

Yet none of these positions – not social democracy, not Trotskyism, not libertarian Marxism, not, most of all, Eurocommunism - survived the Fall in any meaningful sense. Sure, there are fragments of each of these traditions still knocking about the margins of the political scene - but the intellectual ‘oomph’ has gone from all of them. I don’t think this is because people looked at their political solutions to the evident lack of freedom in the Soviet bloc and rejected them.

I think this is down, in large part anyway, to none of them actually having a set of economic answers to the critique capitalism posed in 1989-1991: why aren’t you as rich as us ? It was the question that those glossy shop windows in West Berlin in 1989 shouted in the face of the newly arrived Ossi, still grasping the newly hewn piece of The Wall. It stubbornly remains as a question, even though most versions of leftism now have a critique of growth for its own sake and at least a Greenish tinge. The left lacks an economic policy, or even a vision of what a socialist economy might look like.

Given that the centrepiece of Marx’s own intellectual life was subtitled ‘a Critique of Political Economy’, there is a howling historical irony here. Capitalism is now in deep trouble – systemic trouble. So, to put it mildly, it is not immediately obvious to the average Greek that capitalism will make them richer - and fears of the same nature abound throughout the once triumphant West. But no one has any non capitalist economic language with which to discuss alternatives.

& that's down to my generation, not the predominantly young people who constitute the new foot soldiers of the Occupy movement. Good on 'em I say: they may not be practicing socialist politics as I understand it - in fact, it seems more like a usurping of the old religious tradition of 'bearing witness'. But they are practicing anti-capitalist politics, and perhaps such is the poverty of radical inheritance my generation of leftists have handed down to them that is all they can possibly do. But I'm very glad they're doing it.

What's My Line?

A comment in the post below has just reminded me that the single most convincing outline of an alternative 'what-to-do-about-the-banks' policy was provided by Richard Murphy, back in October but no one, absolutely no one as far as I can see, ever took up the idea and ran with it. &, on the net, last October might as well be neolithic times, as we've all got the attention span of goldfish. So go read it now and see what you think.

It's not a strategy for socialism tomorrow. But it is a strategy for structural reform, for breaking the hold of Big Finance on our economy. It is, to use that well worn phrase, a 'modernization' strategy of the Left. (Remember when the Left used to think it knew how to surf the wave of the future? Ah, such memories....)

Now, think about it, what is the Left without a vision of a future? It is a group of people who fight, and quite often lose, defensive battles. Battles to stop things changing for the worse rather than battles to make things change for the better. & I've had a lifetime of it and I'm feeling really, really sick at the prospect of doing it over again when the cuts come after the election.

So let's have Richard's network banking; let's have Boffy's and Chris' self managed organisations (which are more productive anyway); let's have an industrial programme of arms conversion; let's have a Greening of the economy; let's have a different way of looking at public service value In short: let's have some reason to live through the economic pain. Let's have a future.

It is true that the Tories and their allies are trying to log roll the country into the default assumption that cuts must come, and must come quickly and severely after the election whoever wins it. No doubt all those Keynesians are right to say we should wait till the upswing to cut, but the gilt markets might turn at any point and give us very little choice. & whilst I agree with Duncan's newly discovered Texan Post Keynesian that it's about income and wealth equality in the long run, I detect no enthusiasm for an equality of national decline.

It ain't enough for the Left to say 'it-was-the-rich-wot-broke-it-so-they-should-fix-it'. We need a programme. A new AES.

The Hold of Reality TV and the Legitimacy Crisis

Q. How do I know this expenses thing ain't going away?

A. Because the non political people around me keep voluntarily raising the matter for discussion. Normally any one with a political bent, be they activist or simply someone used to viewing the world through that particular prism, has to work out a modus vivandi with other folk. They'll make allowances, sure, but at the end of the day you're just another person with a particular bee in your bonnet to them. Matters political might be endlessly fascinating for you, but to them it might as well be West Bromwich Albion or Clarice Cliff teapots. They'll talk to you about your obsession, but only if there is a unstated agreement on your part not to always keep banging on about it to the exclusion of anything they want to talk about. But, right now, they do want to talk about the expenses fandango.

Q. So what are they banging on about then?

The TV news seems to have got this about right: there seems a huge degree of disbelief at the apparent excesses of Westminster culture, and a general 'plague on all their houses' feeling - which seamlessly merges into a 'just string the lot of 'em up' mood at extremes. But there is one other factor I think worth mentioning. There is a undercurrent of disbelief that they can't immediately vote these people out. I don't mean they want a general election - though a few do. But general elections are a part of the very package of 'politics as normal' which many people are reacting against. No: I have a very real sense that the apolitical public is so used to 'reality' TV shows like Big Brother and the Apprentice that they can't believe you can't just ring someone or click on a website and get these shysters booted out.

So Where Are We Now?

We're in the middle of a very strange crisis of political legitimacy. The unseating of Michael Martin is the first stage of a fightback by the political classes, an initial step of a 'yet-to-be-decided-upon' emergency programme that will reseal their right to rule in the same old way.

But it can only be an initial step, and not necessarily that an effective step either. For all the hushed and shocked tones of the commentariat about a Speaker never having been hounded out since the Paleolithic Era, I'd hazard a guess that the public at large isn't really that impressed that a bloke most of them had never heard of gets the boot. A few of the sharper knives in the drawer may remember all that stuff about his wife's shopping and taxis but his name hasn't featured prominently in the recent Telegraph allegations. So there is more work for the political classes to do.

The next part of this work, of course, is to do a bit of party specific stable cleaning. Cameron seems to have got a head start on this with his famous repaid wisteria cutting bill, and all purpose ability to explicitly link this whole problem to the government. But yesterday Brown came very close to suggesting Hazel Blears is going to be disqualified as a Labour candidate. A game of competitive chicken may yet develop between the parties, based on who can sack the largest number of really senior people. I think Hopi's insider instinct that neither party leader really wants a general election until this stage is over is probably correct. There are dangers here for both of them - but especially for Brown, who may have to reshuffle a cabinet after a drubbing in the Euro elections with many fewer experienced ministers to draw from.

But even if Cameron and Brown do mange to negotiate these particular rapids, they would still be doing work 'inside the Beltway' as it were. They'd merely be creating the conditions for restoring some legitimacy, not restoring the legitimacy itself.

So the Guardian has gone to town today with the full Why-don't-we-have-our-own-1789-well-without-the -guillotines-but-with-the modernising-bit package this morning. Freedland wants a elected second chamber; Gary Younge wants a Republic; Garton Ash wants a written constitution; Polly T wants a smaller but effective Parliament; Milne wants to clean up party funding and so on.

Now, I support every single one of these suggestions. But I have this horrible feeling that they are all wildly, madly beside the point in the context of the current legitimation crisis. I have a hunch that what people want to see is precisely the guillotines but not necessarily the reform. There is a public revulsion at the conduct of parliament, and at what a de-politicised electorate consider to be 'politics' in general, not any great settled political will to an alternative way of doing things. A call for the 'smack of firm (but fair) government' or a supposedly apolitical 'clean hands' candidate - one somewhat more convincing than Esther Rantzen - seems more likely to draw a positive response than the Guardian's proffered alternative.

It's a strange and febrile time. Don't believe anyone who tells you they know what is going to happen next. But I reckon the public want to see an awful lot more humble pie being eaten yet...

Q. Is it actually possible for a government to die of shame?

A. Only if party discipline breaks down, I suppose.

Q.At what point might party discipline break down?

A.When it becomes electorally imperative for those with clean hands (still a fair majority of the PLP*) to dissociate themselves from the knaves (all the property flippers, including Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper) and the rogues (Moran, Blears, Malik) and the just plain purblind (Michael Martin) in order to maximise their individual chances of survival at a general election.

Q.When exactly might it become ‘electorally imperative’ for those with clean hands to act to save themselves?

A. After a catastrophic defeat in the European elections, perhaps?

Just an idle musing, forgive me....


*This opinion ( "a fair majority") may be subject to revision.

Recovery: It's Not a Geometric Question

Duncan picks up the ball from Stephanie Flanders with a thought provoking post on the geometry of recovery – will this be a ‘V’ shaped recession, or a ‘W’ shaped one and so on. (Steph’s going with a square root shaped one apparently. Willem Buiter goes one better and offers a moving sine wave graph. You regret asking now, don’t you?). Dunc makes the fair point that he’ll judge the recovery by the (un)employment figures.

Well, yes, partly, of course. If a social democratic government can’t minimise unemployment it really isn’t much use for anything at all is it? (Not that I accept that New Labour is a social democratic government, but that's a matter for another time...). But I understand economists describe unemployment as a ‘lagging indicator’- not, you may be surprised to hear, anything to do insulating your boiler, but simply a reference to the fact that first comes the crisis then comes the unemployment some time later. So whatever happens, unemployment is going to go up whether or not those green shoots really do constitute a recovery. So this is going to be weak ground for any political party to stand on over the next couple of years. "Yes, unemployment is really high but it would have been higher under the other lot", is going to sound particularly fatuous coming out of the mouth of a Labour canvasser on the doorstep.

Rob asks a perhaps more pertinent question - and in the Times no less: What is Britain For? The fact that I utterly reject his Spiked influenced answer - he's totally blind to the catastrophic climate implications of getting behind technological 'innovation' in Big Pharma and aerospace, and has a touching faith in 'leadership' - doesn't mean it isn't the right question.

A long time ago someone patiently explained to me that the function of downturns in the business cycle - even severe ones - was to destroy unproductive capital and realign investment into new channels to lay the basis of further expansion of the economy. Or so the theory taught in Econ 101 has it. In real life stuff is more complicated, I know. But a party that wants to ride out this crisis has to be able to explain how we're going to live in the future if the 'old way' of living off the crumbs from the City of London's table doesn't seem so viable any more.

What can we sell to the world? How do we develop competitive advantages in different areas? What new industries and services are we going to invest in? What is the balance we are seeking to develop between private, state, municipal, not-for-profit and co-operative enterprise? Where is the seed money going to be sown to ensure our children a decent future? How do we change our patterns of settlement, work and travel to reflect a greener future?

It's not just about employment - you could, eventually, boost employment by attempting to put Humpty-Dumpty together again and restore the status quo ante model of political economy. I'd say that is the broadly shared aim of Tories, LibDems and New Labour. & that might work for a while - until the next speculative bubble came along.

Some say the world economy is on the cusp of a great change - the Long Wave view of history, Kondratievian or Schumpterian according to taste, suggests we might be entering a new period of upswing based on the wholesale adoption of a bundle of new technologies. This, some versions of the theory say, will mean a rebalancing of the importance of speculative Finance capital, actual industrial/IT capital - and the State. (I've blogged before about how Mike Davis sees this panning out in Obama's America). I haven't got the background in economics to assess such contentions - but I do think that this points to the fact that it is quite possible that if the Left fails to 'grab the future' by asking the sort of questions I've outlined, some other political current will.

It’s not just about employment. It’s about the future we want.

Austerity

Will Hutton puts it as graphically as anyone:

"... 5% of Britain's GDP has disappeared forever. ...This means that the path to sustainable public finances is going to be astonishingly painful. We can live with national debt doubling, but it cannot double again... The problem is that so much economic capacity has permanently disappeared, along with those parts of the economy that used to deliver rich tax revenues; the post-recession economy will only reduce the deficit by a quarter. The rest has got to be found by tax increases or reductions in planned spending....

Britain is going to feel very different in the years ahead. .... the pound has suffered a devaluation since 2007 that is bigger than those in 1931, 1949 or 1967. The British economy, in dollar and euro terms, is now emphatically smaller than those of France or Germany, and our new peers are Italy and Spain. ..... Like the empires of Venice, Spain, the Netherlands and Austria before us, Britain no longer has an economy large enough to finance our ambitions and overseas commitments.

The next government, of whatever hue, will surely raise the basic rate of income tax; 22 pence is certain, 25 pence likely. Public sector pay and pension benefits will be frozen or cut. The state pension will not be indexed to earnings growth. The national ID card scheme is dead. We will need a network of public infrastructure banks to finance capital investment, otherwise it will be goodbye to CrossRail and a modernised rail system and any hopes of improving our housing stock. But all this will still be insufficient.

There is no way that Britain's defence, overseas aid and foreign commitments can survive the next decade without swingeing cuts. Trident, the Eurofighter and the planned aircraft carriers must go. A review will cut the defence budget by a third, the aid budget by a similar proportion. Embassies will be shared or sold. Our permanent seat on the UN Security Council will become indefensible. The special relationship will be a joke; Britain will not have the capacity to invade anybody. Suddenly, the European Union will seem a more attractive way of retaining influence.

An urgent debate will begin about how to grow, because unemployment is going to rise by at least another one and half million by 2012 and fall only very slowly thereafter. The Faustian deal New Labour struck with the City cannot be repeated."

Duncan is patiently explaining to the Labour loyalists the reality of this. I'm not sure this Labour Party will be able to take that much reality - look, even the very clever Hopi resorts immediately to attack dog mode. I think the next election will be fought on the basis of lies, more or less consciously. Neither the Tories nor New Labour will quite be able to admit to this sort of prospect. Who would vote for either of them if they did?

The trick for the much derided and usually invisible Left though is rather different. It's time to move from almost ritualised denunciations of bankers , or even denunciations of capitalism in general, and find a way that a meaningful austerity programme can be re-packaged as sustainability. Sadly, I'm not holding my breathe.

It's Not the 1930s as Long as We Have a Policy Re-brand Option

In the last fortnight or so Ian Dale has slyly set off a no doubt intended brouhaha in the left blogosphere by claiming that Socialism and Fascism were kissing cousins; the dread Nick Cohen further fuelled this with a review of some book which absurdly claimed that Liberal America shared intellectual roots with Fascism. Lots of the left have lined up to disabuse them of this silly conceit. A moment’s thought – actually, a moment in a GCSE History class – shows the reason why: Fascism was a rightwing response to the challenge Socialism and the growing power of organised labour posed, a century ago, to the rule of capital. Insofar as it shared some policy features with the left it did so to defuse the challenge, and re-found the rule of capital on what was intended to be a more secure basis. It didn’t work out like that, obviously, but that was always the intention.

Anyway, both Fascism and, somewhat later, the challenge of labour faded. Free market ideology ruled the intellectual roost. Till now. Suddenly we find quite a lot of what appear to me to be serious devotees of capital suddenly accept that bank nationalisation may be the immediate way forward. There is no currently visible ‘challenge from labour’ in the sense Europe experienced such a challenge in the years around WW1. There is no viable way out of this* crisis which doesn't involve a re-founded capitalism because there is no significant body of opinion anywhere on the globe demanding that there should be. So the advocates of the rule of capital probably don't need a formal political movement like Fascism which aped Socialism in a nightmarishly warped manner in order to undercut and destroy it.

No: all they need today is re-branding. The so called Swedish solution - temporary nationalisation of the banks, the setting up of a bad bank and resale of 'good' assets back to private sector - isn't really nationalisation at all. Oh no - its 'pre-privatisation'.

*I’ve not given up hope for the next crisis, though. People’s views will change as this one bites.