Jean-Luc Mélenchon (1951-) is a French politician. Politically active for 50 years, his sharply anti-neoliberal and anti-austerity positions have placed him firmly on the political Left, often with further descriptions of his politics as “far-left” or “left-populist”, the latter of which Melenchon embraces. Known for his fiery personality, and razor-sharp tongue, Melenchon’s prominence in contemporary French politics comes from the discontent produdced by austerity in France – itself a consequence of the 2008 financial crisis, and loss of political legitimacy of the Socialist Party (PS) with frustrations towards it as a ruling party overseeing austerity, as well as the perception reality of their degeneration from its founding social-democratic politics left a space for a more forthright left-wing electoral platform.
Born in Morocco when it was still a French colony to a postmaster of Spanish descent and primary school teacher of Italian descent, Melenchon grew in Morocco until his family moved to France in 1962. He was educated at a state school and received his degree in philosophy from the University of Franche-Comte, and would later work as a teacher for some time before entering politics. He was a member of the Trotskyist Internationalist Communist Organisation in the early 1970s, before eventually joining the Socialist Party in 1976, quickly acquiring a position as secratary for the local branch in Montiagu and running a party newspaper – with its platform advocating an alliance between the Socialist Party and the Communist Party of France (PCF). He would eventually become the private secretary of Claude Germon – the mayor of Massy in Essonne – a municipality in northern France. Mélenchon became a prominent advocate of “Mitterandism” – concentrated around the radical left politics of Francois Mitterand, in opposition to the “second left” represented by Michel Rocard, and the left-nationalism of Jean-Pierre Chevenement. Mélenchon became senator in 1986 – at 35 years old, he was the youngest person to be elected in the Senate at the time. However, Melenchon remained an otherwise marginal figure – at least until 2008, when he broke from the Socialist Party, which by then had succumbed to the “Third Way” heyday which captured centre-left party across Western Europe. He co-founded the Left Party – a mass party coalition of other parties and organisations from the socialist, ecological and republican movements – with Marc Dolez in 2009. The party in collaboration with the Communist Party of France, set up an ‘anti-liberal front’ and campained for a Social Europe, and in opposition to the Lisbon Treaty. In the following general election in 2012, Mélenchon represented the Left Party and came fourth – behind Francoise Hollande, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Marine Le Pen – receiving 11.1% of the vote. Melenchon ran for President again in 2017 after launching another platform called La France Insoumise (“Unbowed France”), and only received 19% of the vote, coming fourth – and being excluded from reaching the second round of voting. Later that year, he becmae a member of the National Assembly, representing the constituency of Bouches du-Rhone. He was the subject of notoriety for his vociferous opposition to worker flexibilisation, and for receiving a suspended prison sentence for an altercation with police as they served a warrant to La France Insoumise headquarters in Paris. In 2022, he ran again for President – coming third with 22%, behind Emmunuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, who narrowly edged out second.
With the formation of the New Ecological and Social People’s Union (NUPES) on May 1st 2022 (May Day 2022) – a red-green political alliance formed for the 2022 legislative election, Mélenchon assumed leadership of the alliance, and prevented Macron’s liberal political coalition Ensemble from acheiving a majority, but only receiving 22% of the vote.
While he is no longer a Trotskyist, Melenchon nonetheless still describes himself as a historical materialist – albeit his “left-populism” is heavily inspired by post-Marxist theorist Chantal Mouffe and of the ‘republican socialist’ Jean Jaures. The narrative that fuels this populism is the demand for a new national narrative for France – a “left-nationalism” or even a “progressive patriotism” if you will, though the cynic in me calls it “social-chauvinism”. This leads to Mélenchon taking standard positions on the Left, such as opposition to neoliberalism and its institutional avatars – such as the EU and the IMF, a demand for the withdrawal of France from NATO, a radically redistributive income, and for the security of worker’s rights. The nationalist aspects of his positions come in regarding his praise for the French spirit of republicanism – to the point of demanding the creation of a ‘Sixth Republic’, his embrace of France’s ‘creolisation’ (multiculturalism). This nationalism is also rather problematic in several aspects – notably his refusal to acknowledge continuing French imperialism, accusations of alleged baiting of Islamophobia (though it should be noted that he has a better track record of defending the rights of Muslims as citizens than most of the major politicians in France today – including and especially, Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour – the latter calling him an “Islamo-leftist”, though given the institutional racism that Muslims often experience in France, it isn’t saying much), and his instistence on acknowledging the role of ‘Republican’ France in World War II and not that of Vichy France – which not only collaborated with Nazi Germany, but also took part in the Holocaust, criticizing Emmanuel Macron for apologizing for France’s role during the Vichy period in the Holocaust*. On this occasion, he should have kept his mouth shut.
Such is his disdain for neoliberalism, especially then-recent austerity measures imposed on Greece, his campaign team created a video game called “Fiscal Kombat”, where his character gets to shake down then IMF director Christine Lagarde for the people’s money.
The current relevance of Mélenchon serves as a case study on the various strategies employed by democratic socialists in a post-GFC world. Melenchon went with an unabashed and self-described ‘left-populism’ held together by a nationalist narrative. The prominence of globalisation and its assertion of a supposed ‘trans-nationalist’ modernity has led to a view, especially in the European left, that a reassertion of national sovereignty is an effective means of combatting it via its institutions. However, what Ellen Menikins Wood reminds us is that globalisation cannot exist without the participation of the advanced capitalist nations – especially if they stand to benefit from it. Socialists of any stripe** should be conscious of this before embracing any politician who struggles to admit his country’s complicity in this process.
Notes:
*- All of the now ‘democratic’ countries who allied with the Nazis in Europe have all but refused to properly acknowledge their roles and apologize for their atrocities during World War II. Even the process of purging elements of fascism and bringing to justice prominent war criminal has been less than satisfactory and all the more so when the capitalist powers decided that having unrepentant fascists would be great in the struggle against communism. Germany itself has not only done so, but had set up various memorials dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust and the Nazi regime, alongside giving reparations to the Allied forces (most notably the Soviet Union, and even then – all of that was from East Germany) as well as the victims of Holocaust. However, the extent of Germany’s commitment to atoning for its acts is much more complicated than it initially seems, and is the source of controversy that affected everything from its political composition in the aftermath of World War II, the very political formation(s) of Germany and territorial claims, as well as the composition of institutional structures – much of which was complicated by the Cold War. In spite of the show of justice meted out to the Nazi leadership via the Numenberg trials, many former prominent Nazis found themselves well-placed in administrative positions in civil-political structures of both West and East Germany – albeit the former was much more lax, even conscious of their integration, and the latter were far more thoroughgoing in having them purged (the reasons for both should be obvious by now). Nevertheless, the furore around “denazification” and the degree it was pursued within West Germany (whether it was too punitive or whether it was too lax) as well as whether a clean break was truly made had reverberated throughout its history even after reunification – the reaction of the West German New Left in the 1960s as well as recent scandals regarding revelations around underground Neo-Nazi networks, and the signifant presence of former Nazis in the intelligence services.
**- Of note are the democratic socialists, who sometimes have a tendency to overlook the more problematic aspects of a popular leader’s politics, or in recent terms explore the contradictions formed within so-called ‘left-populism’ as viable route to socialism, even if it apparently falls short of its more universalist precepts.
The “peaceful road to socialism“, is a term used to describe almost exclusively the government of Salvador Allende in Chile, which lasted between November 1970 to September 1973. Allende’s government undertook a wide set of initiatives intended to redistribute wealth across the country, and make Chile more economically self-sufficient. But these set of policies earned the ire of sections of the Chilean middle-class and especially the Chilean right, as well as drawing the attention of the United States – who immediately set about working to destroy it. The “peaceful road to socialism” is often used pejoratively by those critical of the stance that socialism can be achieved through parliamentary means, and the eventual collapse of Allende’s government in three underscores that, but it is also used by those sympathetic to the legacy of Allende’s struggle for social and economic justice. A more neutral term is “the Chilean road to socialism”.
On 5 September 1970, Salvador Allende, who represented the Socialist Party and Unidad Popular (Popular Unity), a coalition party of various groupings running the gamut from centre-left to far-left, won the 1970 presidential election. Allende became the very first Marxist brought to power through liberal democracy – undermining the notion that if socialism were brought via ballot box, it would lose. However, the US – which tells the world that it doesn’t deal with the democracies of other countries, had serious concerns.
The Allende government did not simply have importance in the context of Chilean political history – particularly the history of working-class struggles and the legacy of the “Socialist Republic of Chile” of 1932 which lasted a mere 100 days, or simply the context of Latin American governments adopting dirigisme policies – The “peaceful road to socialism” is also to be understood in the context of the latter half of the Cold War that it existed in. There is of course, the descent into (or in some cases, the installation of) military dictatorships that would arise between the 1970s and 1980s, and of importance were a set of high instability for both the capitalist and socialist worlds. In the latter case, the Sino-Soviet split had not only led to severe tensions in Soviet-China relations (to the point of border skirmishes, and the threat of open conflict), it had forced socialist states to side with one power over the other, and risk the antagonism of the opposing nation. Even so-called “non-aligned” countries had to gamble whether on what power they wished to maintain relations with. In the case of Chile, it chose to favour the Soviet Union, with the possibility of positive relations with Cuba also influencing this stance (altough the latter as well as Chile would make steps to normalizing relations with China). Even so, even the Western Communist Parties – which held a pro-Soviet stance, would eventually break from this as a result of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, adopting what was called “Eurocommunism” – rejecting Marxist-Leninist vanguardism for seeking legitimacy through a parliamentary framework. Meanwhile, capitalism was also not without its crises: in response to the global economic slump, and the failure both of Keynesian-inspired methods to reverse inflation and of the currency devaluation of a numbers of Western nations (West Germany & UK), President Richard Nixon suspended the convertability of the US dollar into gold – which would later turn out to be permanent: The “Nixon shock” had smashed the ‘gold standard’, leaving the dollar – the international reserve currency, a ‘floating currency’: it had nothing backing it at all to stabilise prices.
The UP coalition were well aware of these global problems, and Allende referred to his politics as representative of a “third way” between capitalism and communism – now both in crisis. Socialists, revolutionary and reformist – watched with great interest on how this program would play out. The UP adopted a ‘developmentalist’ set of policies intended for economic redistribution, social welfare, and control of its own resources. One course of action, signifying the seriousness of its nationalisation projects as well its anti-imperialist defiance, was Allende’s decision to nationalise the copper mines without any compensation to the foreign companies in control of it, particularly ITT & PepsiCo.
The developments in Chile received the massive support of Chile’s working class and indigenous populations. However, capital – both domestic and foreign, were not pleased, and the Chilean right – who held substantial power in the Constituent Assembly and penetrated the armed forces. There were murmurs between them that Chile had succumbed to communism, and this demanded a nationalist struggle. The US was also happy to help: the advice Nixon gave to the State Department was to “make the economy [of Chile] scream”. Everything from strikes (from landowners, capitalists, and notably the wives of various military personnel), ‘lawfare’, assassinations, and coup attempts were set up and enacted to cause disruption and chaos.
In the perspective of revolutionary socialists who criticised Allende for class-collaborationism, these scenarios were the inevitable response to social democracy in Latin America, and the building of socialism required a firmer approach than parliamentarianism. However, the Chilean road to socialism was not merely a path of nationalised indutries, and considerable thought and planning was dedicated towards the transition from capitalism to socialism with the use of newly emergent systems planning.
In 1971, economists within the Allende government sought the assistance of the British cybernetician Stafford Beer to apply his theories to Chile’s economic development. Beer would meet with Allende in November 1971 to explain the cybernetic models that was to be applied to economic management. Allende understood very well what Beer was proposing, and called for the system to encourage worker participation, to be decentralised, and anti-bureaucratic. The project would acquire the name, “Synco” among the Spanish-speaking peoples of Chile, but in English it was called “Project Cybersyn”. Cybersyn was supposed to network all of the firms in nationalised scetor of the economy, link them to a central computer in Santiago, and provide a measure of the status of production, and give real-time responses to economic crises. It had only been used once to respond to a truck driver strike ostensibly motivated by the massive shortage of goods in 1973, but organised by various private industrialists to prevent the distribution of these goods; leading to the mobilisation of 200 truck drivers to distribute goods into the cities. Cybersyn was, even in its prototype stages, declared a success. However, the 1973 coup ushering in Pinochet regime would put an end to the project – its full potential never realised.
When tensions emerged between one of the parties which formed UP – the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) with the Allende government over the pace of socialist transition, Allende himself was forced to respond to the attempts to restrict his executive power from the right, by enacting policies by plebiscite. Unfortunately, whatever the pace Allende moved, his enemies moved faster. The Chilean congress had passed a motion accusing Allende of violating the Chilean constitution and of various abuses of power, which allowed for the Chilean armed forces to take action. It was the signal to the coup in motion, and the beginning of the end of the Allende presidency.
The end and aftermath of the journey to socialism
By 1973, two coup attempts had been made on Allende. By September 11 of the same year, the third time was marked by its success. Tanks entered the capital, and figher planes flew over the presidential palace, shelling it. The putschists in the Chilean military demanded that Allende surrender, while the members of the Socialist Party plotted their escape asked that Allende join them so that they could launch a counter-coup in a future time. Allende refused both options. In what would be Allende’s final speech to the Chilean people, broadcasted by radio, he declared that the putschists in the Chilean armed forces had betrayed the oath that they were sworn to protect, that he would defend the constitution to his dying breath and that as dark as the days events were, brighter days will return to Chile. Allende was dead by 2pm. The Chilean military arrested everyone, including their own who showed loyalty to Allende and refused to side with the coup. People who were associated with the political left, or suspected of left-wing sympathies were rounded up, beaten, tortured and killed. The “peaceful road to socialism” was over. What Chile went towards was the road to fascism and the bloody path to neoliberalism. The Chilean coup was a prelude to a period of political repression which saw the deaths and disappearances of 3,000 people over 17 years in Chile, and a wider campaign of ani-communism called Operation Condor, installing right-wing or military dictatorships across Latin America, leading to the deaths of 60,000 people – half of which from Argentina. Chile would return to liberal democracy in 1990.
Legacy
The collapse of the “peaceful road to socialism” had brought international discussions among the Left globally on its successes and failures. For the revolutionary left, it represented an ultimately naive (if promising) and tragic attempt to acheive a society beyond capitalism without class struggle, and treating the state apparatus as a neutral tool, rather than a weapon of class suppression. Even among the New Left intellectuals, notably Ralph Miliband, commented on the moderacy displayed by the Allende government in its programs (while also commenting on the somewhat celebatory responses found in the press of his country, even from so-called “democratic socialists”) and reemphasized the neccessity of class struggle.
For democratic socialists, particularly those committed to the expansion of democracy via a constitutionalist framework (and certainly ones more internationalist than the chauvinistic types Miliband referred to), there is an emphasis not on Allende’s failures, but on his steadfast courage and principled commitment to his politics, in all of its complexity. Of particular inspiration is the pursuit of the “peaceful road” up until its final moments – of particular symbolism is the manner of Allende’s death by gunshot. The rifle from Fidel Castro was offered to Allende to signify Cuba’s solidarity with the Chilean path, which Allende declared would be peaceful. Given the choice to seize power, or even to defend himself, the risk of other people being harmed, or his principles violated was not one he was willing to take, and so Allende’s rifle took the life of one person in his entire struggle: himself.
In both opposing perspectives, Salvador Allende occupies the role of a martyr of socialism – all the more significant in the afttermath of the Cold War, and in the Chilean left – he occupies a position close towards beatification, if not outright apeotheotic.
The 2021 election of the leftist Gabriel Boric, has little resemblance to the context in which Allende was brought to office. Organisations such as the Progressive International, and the movement of the “Pink tide” within Latin America, are circumstances created in the shadow of a post-Cold War climate which the Left is only started to step out of. But the legacy, iconography and continued relevance of the tragedy that beset the Chilean people, with the fall of Allende’s government, continues to drive Chilean politics. Even now, even if his laws have been overturned, the deep privatisation of Chilean economy installed by Pinochet is something that Chile has not yet overcome – and it remains an open question as to whether it eventually can even through the parliamentary means. A ‘peaceful road’ so to speak.
“In so far as neoliberalism values market exchange as ‘an ethic in itself, capable as a guide to all human action, and substituting for all previously held ethical beliefs’, it emphasizes the significance of contractual relations in the marketplace. It holds that the social good will be maximized by maximizing the reach of market transactions, and it seeks to bring all human action into the domain of the market.”
David Harvey
Neoliberalism broadly describes an epoch in capitalism in which the dominant set of ideas, and political and economic practices are characterised by the emphasis on limited regulation on markets, increasingly financialised set of practices emerging in various institutions, the introduction or expansion of marketisation to services previously held by the public sector, the lowering of barriers to free trade, and the free-flow of capital to anywhere in the world. To put it simply, neoliberalism is “the subordination of the social world to the will of the market”.
Neoliberalism is sometimes believed to be a buzzword in left and progressive circles, but it is a very real political and economic ideology with promoters and practictioners who sought to bring 19th century ideas and practices into the 20th century. It should go without saying that neoliberalism replaces an epoch of Keynesianism which has at times been described as “the golden age of capitalism” due to the rapid economic growth, high social mobility, strong welfare systems and relatively limited unemployment in the advanced capitalist nations. This is not to say that neoliberal programs implemented in various countries (e.g. the so-called “Asian Tigers”) did not lead to economic growth – just that it never did so without undermining nearly all of the features that made Keynesianism seem attractive. Despite this, neoliberalism has endured from the 1970s until today, defining not only modern economic practices, but our political and social life.
It is believed that neoliberalism emerged sometime in the 1970s, and even argued that the basis that its building blocks were set up right after the Second World War. However, its ideological framework was developed in the 1930s by a group of classical liberal economists in a conference held in Paris in 1938 – Among them were Friedrich A. Hayek, Walter Lippmann, Louis Rougier and Ludwig von Mises. The aim of these conferences is to develop a means of combatting what they believed to be the rise of collectivism throughout the world (in the forms of communism, Nazism and social democracy) by introducing a set of laissez-faire capitalist principles fit for a new era. They agreed on the term, neoliberalism to define their ideas described as “the priority of the price mechanism, free enterprise, the system of competition, and a strong and impartial state”.
Many of these economists would set up a think tank known as the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947 as a hub for their ideas, and eventually – the locus of a global network of think tanks, with the accompanying deluge of financial backers and a coterie of academics, journalists, corporate leaders and politicians moving within and through the MPS – they existed as a niche movement during the heyday of Keynesian capitalism, and its alternative in communism across the world, with pockets of fascist-inflected corporatism. The influence of the neoliberal ideas emerging within the MPS led to the creation of various institutions such as the Heritage Foundation, the Institute for Economic Affairs and the Adam Smith Institute, as well of the reconstitution of others such as the University of Chicago via its economics department, even the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) – organisations which were the brainchildren of Keynes, came to embody neoliberal programs. The early German neoliberals were able to forge an alliance between the intellectual, business and political forces to build an early iteration of what was to come known as ordoliberalism – a system that eschewed the Keynesian welfarism, and maintained competitive markets in exchange for state interventions in prices. The once marginalised collective of classical liberals became an international movement that was reshaping the Western world.
The crisis of capitalism that emerged in the 1970s had forced the decoupling of the US dollar from the gold standard, leaving it a floating currency. The introduction what would become neoliberalism took place in Chile, which was already a target of covert involvement by the American intelligence services, who sought to overthrow the socialist government of Salvador Allende. In 1973, a coup was launched by several high-ranking members of the armed forces led by General Augusto Pinochet, with the assistance of the CIA. The result was the collapse of the Allende government, and the emergence of a dictatorship led by Pinochet. The Pinochet regime’s economic policies were informed by a team of economists trained in the University of Chicago (nicknamed the “Chicago Boys”) who advocated monetarist policies, resulting in 40% of Chileans thrown into poverty.
As the compromise between capital and labour became unmoored, as the former sought greater profits – the labour unions which maintained the security of social welfarism would be smashed – in many cases literally, and their power would be legally curbed. In the United Kingdom, the Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher sought to place Britain at the centre of the increasingly fierce global economy, and decided to do so by bolstering the financial services sector. Commission rates were abolished and trading was was deregulated, while a state-of-the-art digital trading system was introduced. The changes took effect on the 27th October 1986 – the spike in market activity from deregulation of the City of London was dubbed “the Big Bang”. Many old firms were swallowed up by larger banks – both foreign and domestic; it had solidified the British economy’s shift to financial capital over industrial capital, and indeed – it had come to place London among other financial centres as the preeminent hub of global finance. It was part of an overall process called ‘financialization‘, where financial institutions and financial elites become more influential in the economic policy of nations.
With the onset of various global commodity booms experienced during the ‘high’ point of neoliberalism, the socialist world attempted an rapproachement in order to have access to the global market by either opening up its markets through internal restructuring of their economies, or through IMF loans to those seeking to develop their economies after the success of their anticolonial struggle which had achieved the same thing. The most violent result of this has been the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc nations, and the adoption of some form of market socialism to the surviving communist nations. The IMF’s ‘structural adjustment’ packages had also imposed a retardation of the so-called post-imperial nations of the Global South, ensuring their continued dependency to Western economies – making a mockery of their struggles for independence.
In the 1990s, thanks to the IMF and the World Bank, a set of policies promoting low tarriffs on trade, privatisation of key sectors of the economy, and deregulation – spread across the world; the trend had come to popularise the term, “globalization” to reflect its scope. As if to solidify this trend the GATT had reformed into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1994 which promoted anti-protectionist policies. The absence of a rival system counterposing capitalism, and concurrent trends in Western societies (post-Fordism, new managerialism, “knowledge economy”), gave rise to highly optimistic predictions (some of which ironically made during the Keynesian epoch) by a number of academics around a supposed “post-materialism” defining social and political engagement, a supposed “death of class” resulting in the decline of organised labour and decomposition of political bases in favour of a politics by value frameworks.
In political and cultural analyses, globalization was also perceived as potentially leading to a relative peace, and also a synthesis between disparate cultural frameworks across the world – a(nother) ‘benign’ era of capitalist world economy. This conceit only served to obscure the intensification of exploitation in the world outside of the Western Hemisphere. And even then, some of the claims with respect to “the death of class” in advanced capitalist societies were shown to be flat-out wrong, confusing the specialisation of work – especially the rise of immaterial labour (knowledge is a key example), and increasingly fecund expressions of consumption for the disappearance of a unified experience of class (which never existed), to say nothing on the wage/capital relation. The new system ushered in globalization was not a harmonious interconnected world, where all commodities and cultures mix evenly. It was the unfettered expansion of new markets, the free flow of capital, the creation of a new global working class (many of them experiencing the same labour protections resembling that of the 1920s for advanced capitalist societies), and if anything – in a cultural sense, was closer to the “Americanisation” of the world.*
Rather than enact a new kind of freedom and autonomy, neoliberalism had in fact led to the immiseration of large scores of people, the retreat of the social safety net, and the atomisation of the experience of social life. In the Global South, this is felt even sharper – with the presence of transnational corporations (TNCs) exploiting the local labour force in their pursuit of ever-greater profits – with the advantage of weaker labour protections offered by underdeveloped nations**. Neoliberalism has also transformed almost all spaces of social and political life – from education, work, healthcare, to even the conduct of politics. Interestingly, neoliberalism has been a feature of global capitalism for a period even longer than the Keynesian era***, which should give sobering reflection towards the context of the dominance and eventual decline of Keynesianism, and what its purpose actually was, along with that of neoliberal hegemony. But neoliberalism had produced its own set of contradictions, with global consequences.
Chaos in the market New Eden
The progressive reaction was the anti-globalization (or alter-globalization) movement emerged using the uprising of the Zapatistas against the Mexican government after it accepted the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreements (NAFTA) launched on January 1st, 1994, as a launchpad. The movement demanded greater political transparency, the scaling back of the power of corporations, and the restoration of public institutions. They tried to bring to attention how TNCs were exploiting the Global South, and their facilitation by the WTO and the World Bank; and operated in a decentralised and horizontalist style, drawing inspiration from the Zapatistas. They were said to represent a new kind of anti-capitalism, or resembled one that had not been seen for over two decades. The dynamics of the movement culminated in the protests in Seattle, Washington outside the WTO conference in 1999; the World Trade Center attacks in New York, US in 2001 had shifted their momemtum and they were largely integrated into the anti-war movement in the 2000s – in so far as the Global North is concerned, this movement, while key to the establishment of the World Social Forum, and raising concerns around debt relief on an international scale, its capacity for systemic change had diminished significantly following the War on Terror (see below)
The reactionary emergence of right-wing “anti-globalism” was also a feature, developing into outright conspiracism around the formation of a global elite establishing a “new world order” (ironically taken from the 1991 speech of George H.W. Bush). Former Nixon consultant Pat Buchanan and Vladimir Zhirinovsky were prominent figures around movements which promoted ultra-nationalism in face of what they believed to be the loss of national sovereignty to financial and political elites. Given that anti-materialism is a consistent feature of this kind of nationalism, all kinds of mystification around globalisation ensued, such as the belief that the UN had the kind of hard power usually assumed from the US, and so hysteria arose around a planned invasion of UN armed forces to signal a “new world order”; and the belief that a globalised world economic system is some kind of Zionist conspiracy. A nationalist worldview reduces everything to national struggle. Figures like Buchanan and Zhirinovsky initially caused concern over their popularity within their respective countries but events overtook them and their chauvinistic causes taken up by their leaders (the 9/11 attacks and the rise of Putin, and the swift conclusion of the Chechen War respectively created a fervently nationalistic sentiment in the US and Russia) leading to their decline. However, the conditions that created them, and what they represented did not disappear….
The collapse of nationalist movements in an anti-colonial struggle in the Middle East, had led to a movement which synthesized a revivalist Islam with insurrectionist politics known as Islamism. While Islamism was already a political force which had adopted the party form, this new version mostly eschewed the capture of state power, they nonetheless claimed authority within the Islamic world, and some of their most prominent figures adopted special titles to signify their authority. The primary concern of the new Islamists is the presence of the American empire on what they considered to be Muslim lands, and the acquiesence of the leaders (religious and political) of these countries to the West. For them, it solidified that they indeed lived in an “age of jahiliyya” (‘age of ignorance’), in which even established Islamic authorities were corrupt – indeed they were seen as false Muslims. The aims of Islamism are restorationist in their function, in that it seeks to remove all elements of jahiliyya and revive the ‘true’ expression of Islam, and to purge the cultivators of this jahiliyya – which they attribute to Western and Zionist influence. Islamists – particularly Salafist Islamists/jihadists differed on questions around the creation of a caliphate; who represents its foremost leaders; and whether the “near enemy” (the ‘corrupt’ Arab nations) or the “far enemy” (the West, principally the United States) should be the main target. Since the 1990s, the focus of the jihadists was primarily to go after the “far enemy”: in part due to the optimistic enthusiasm in the aftermath of the Soviet-Afghanistan war and the following collapse of the Soviet Union, which had convinced them of their ability to challenge the imperialism of the premier economic superpower and bring it to its heels. The attack on the World Trade Center in September 11th, 2001 was the most notable engagement with Islamism and its adversaries, although cells claiming affiliation to active jihadist organisations are active across the world – in particular, South-West Asia, Africa, and East Asia. The features of Salafist Islamism was the creation of non-state entities which drew the ire and the military might of the United States – along with her allies, the accompanying disdain of the religious establishment and of the majority-Muslim governments, the rejection of a democratic practice, an emphasis on direct engagement with the Qur’an over the long-standing exegetical and legal traditions of Islam as justification for their acts, the decentralised networks that these organisations functioned in, effective usage of new technologies in propaganda, and rearticulations of Islamic concepts like jihad, shari’a and the ummah emphasizing individualistic interpretation. It is for this reason why Suzanne Schneider argues that modern Islamism, contrary to claims that they represent a call to pre-modernism, are in fact hypermodern; in that they represent an expression of the tensions produced by globalisation, the dialectic between individualistic ethos and highly authoritarian practice, and the decentralised nature of the organisations and the claim by Islamic State of a “global caliphate” with authority over all Muslims across the world reflected the neoliberal era it arose from.
The social dislocation experienced by the working and middle-classes of Latin America as a result of the authoritarian governments between the 1970s-1980s, and the emergence of neoliberal/’Third Way’-type policies meant that the anti-globalization movement in Latin America took a different form. Various social movements around indigenous rights, feminist groups and trade unions mobilise in opposition to Latin American governments (some of them center-left) which had enacted neoliberal policies, and the colonial system which still defines their existence. These groups would become incorporated with left-wing political parties which went from strength to strength, starting with capturing municipal governance to their ascent to forming national governments, often with the alliance – even incorporation of the social movements to their political base. The rise of left, and centre-left governments of the 2000s was dubbed: the ‘pink tide‘. These governments focused on programs emphasizing the nationalisation of companies, massive social welfare programs intended on tackling poverty, and incorporating the participation of various marginalised groups (women, black people, indigenous people, etc.) The combination of these programs came to be dubbed ‘post-neoliberalism’; the rapid economic growth experienced by these countries as a result of the high prices of their main exports (oil. gas, etc.) and the Chinese commodity boom of the 1990s/2000s was what sustained their ‘interventionist’ programs. The ‘pink tide’ had also saw an attempt of economic integration across the South American nations, as Cuba and Venezuela spearheaded the establishment of the Bolivaran Alliance for Peoples of Our America or ALBA – a supranational organisation which had come to incorporate the membership of several countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. ALBA is explicitly stated to be anti-imperialist and anti-neoliberal – in some contexts, even anti-capitalist. It was used as a means for its members to use the oil brought from Venezuela to support various social welfare programs and even set up a virtual currency called the sucre. However, the success of the ‘pink tide’ had apparently relied strongly on the Chinese commodity boom, and the high price of oil on the global market – the resulting slump in the price of oil would lead to a reversal…
And this is describing global trends even before 2008. You know what happens next…
The big crash
In 1999, US President Bill Clinton repealed the Glass-Steagall Act. The act was introduced by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 to prevent commercial banks from dealing with non-governmental securities for clients in Wall Street. Clinton argued that the bill was all but dead anyway; he had simply finalized what was the new normal. Banking regulators had since the 1960s interpreted the Act as allowing for commercial banks to engage in some securities activities – a list that had gradually expanded over time. The result was the immediate frenzy of mergers between firms which created huge financial conglomerates hungry to get into securities ventures well outside the scope of their underlying business. The introduction of computer-based mathematical models to financial risk management led to the promotion of increasingly complex financial instruments to buy and sell securities loans. The billions of investment dollars flowed into ‘residential mortgage-backed securities’ with the promise of big payouts from the mortgage securities. This created a massive property bubble which burst around 2007, leading to the devaluation of housing-related securities, hundreds of thousands of foreclosures, and collapse of major financial institutions such as Fannie Mac, Freddie Mac, IndyMac Bank, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch – and many more, had either declared bankruptcy or faced it, leading them in desperate need of salvation.
The Bush, and later – the Obama administrations made it their priority to issue massive bailout packages to save the financial institutions deemed “too big to fail”. The UK and other advanced capitalist nations followed suit. The massive injections of capital to rejuvenate the financial markets came at a price: the US government would own shares in the businesses that were affected. The banks seeking to rebuild their capital base could no longer afford to give massive loans in the way they did before. Due to the global credit freeze, businesses reliant on credit found it harder to obtain, leading to massive layoffs of workers. Unemployment skyrocketed as a result of the slump in industrial output, and the stock markets dropped substantially.
The Group of 20, or G20 – 19 heads of state/government along with the President of the EU, were hastily assembled to discuss solutions to the global financial crisis – the first of the meetings took place in Washington, D.C. on 14-15 November 2008, and the second in London on the 2 April 2009. Their overall goal was to “start the process of reform so as to manage globalisation as a force for good in the medium term”. A $1.1 trillion stimulus package was agreed to several programs in order to improve international finance, credit, and trade, and provide overall economic stability and recovery. Other outcomes were the creation of a Financial Stability Board to work with the IMF, and rising economic powers – China and India, having the ability to determine IMF and World Bank policies.
The global financial crisis had created a profound scepticism on the viability of neoliberalism, and that the outcome of the G20 summits did not conclude with a commitment to establishing greater regulatory oversight on the national and global level had, for many observers marred the entire summit. When arch-libertarian Alan Greenspan, who formerly served as the Federal Reserve Chairman, says that the entire period had shown that neoliberalism no longer worked, then one should take heed. Naturally, the period had for many people in the Global North led to a discontent around globalisation, with one outcome being a more explicitly socialist**** politics reviving, and another being the reemergence of nationalist or nativist ideologies. Some commentators observing these developments described these phenomena with the flattening and unsophisticated term “the rise of populism”; The following ten years through this paradigm saw a kind of chaos engulf the world. A much more materialist analysis would suggest that the contradictions produced in the neoliberal mode of capitalism gave rise to new social, national and global tensions, producing various reactions in response.
When you just keep doing wrong knowing it’s wrong
Whatever sentiments emerged from neoliberalism, its institutional operation was not going to disappear. No international commitment to build an alternative economic system emerged from the Great Reccession. However, what came next was the very opposite of a return to the normality of the period prior to 2008 crisis:
Fury towards the government bailouts of the major banks, worsening standards of living, the layoffs of workers, and the economic recession, protests across the US built up occpying university buildings, until enough momentum built up to an action to occupy Zuccotti Park on the 17 September 2011. Organised by the anti-consumerist activist group Adbusters, the inciting demonstration was coined #OccupyWallStreet, and was believed to be one of the first large-scale demonstrations organised via social media. The general demands of Occupy Wall Street were for the major banks to be reformed, for the influence of money to be removed from politics, for the forgiveness of student debt, and for a more distributive income. The latter underpinned the OWS slogan: “We are the 99%” (of which late anthropologist David Graeber was credited with coining), in opposition to “the 1%” made of CEOs, hedge funders, industrialists, and other capitalists or “elites”, distorting the ideal of democracy. The protest itself lasted 59 days before the police were ordered to clear Zuccotti Park of the protestors. From there, the targets shifted to banks, corporate headquarters, foreclosed homes, to universities to be occupied by protestors. The spirit of OWS spread internationally, and similar protests were held in the UK, France, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Cyprus, Nigeria, Brazil, Colombia and the Czech Republic. OWS did not necessarily have a firm ideological base beyond its call for a more democratic process, and had everything from anarchist to libertarian tendencies – some of which declaring to represent the ‘real’ character of OWS. However, its general economic concerns, reliance on direct democracy , and overall reformist character has lead some observers to describe it as ‘left-populist’. OWS is said to have overall failed in its goals, however segments of people who engaged in OWS and were politicised by it had gone on either to incorporate their radical democratic politics into the institutional political framework. In turn, the innovations from the Occupy movement – from the “human microphone”, engagements in participatory democracy and general assemblies, and use of the “progressive stack” – giving priority to people from marginalised communities to speak first, had all had significant influence on the expression of the New New Left of the 2010s, especcially those in the Global North. The politics of OWS is also said to have led to the rise of left-wing politicians such as Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, Jean-Luc Melenchon, as well as the formation of the Progressive International. Ultimately, Occupy Wall Street at best can be seen as the final form, or logical conclusion to the kind of formation seen in the alter-globalization movement – its commitment to the liberal framework – especially in its understanding of democracy had ultimately limited its ability to create a new kind of politics, and ultimately to address the economic problems that created the movement.
The Arab world, dominated by autocratic leaders faced their greatest test of legitimacy since the end of the Cold War. The spark was said to be a Tunisian street vendor setting himself alight after police confiscated his material, the outrage from this incident – along with broader issues around economic inequality, and poor living standards – exacerbated by the Great Reccession, government corruption, and political repression, had led to the eruption of protests – largely organised by labour unions. After 28 days, the government of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was toppled. Popular unrest spread across several Arab nations – in particular: Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain; as well as smaller protests in Lebanon, Kuwait, Jordan and Sudan. While Tunisia and Egypt were the most successful revolts resulting in a change of government – and even then, the latter resulted in Mohammed Morsi of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood briefly taking charge, before removed in a coup installing military dictator Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi; Libya and Syria descended into civil war. If the entire regional conflagration were not initially great power politics struggling for influence in the Arab world, then this was eventually the character of the ‘revolution’: Libya, abandoned by the Arab League – was subject to a NATO intervention primarily led by the US, UK, and France, to assist the rebels opposing the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. Gaddafi was brutally executed by these rebels in Sirte, and in no time, Libya was turned into a glorified slave market – with its stock primarily being (guess) able-bodied dark-skinned Africans. African refugees seeking to escape the barbarity found themselves blocked from entry into the European Union, and returned to the Libyan Coast Guard. Two civil wars have erupted since the overthrow of Gaddafi; Libya is now under a so-called “unity government” formed of the competing factions. Time will tell how long this will last. As for Syria, The government of Bashar al-Assad at first had to contend with the “Free Syrian Army” formed by defected members of Syrian Armed Forces, and other groups unhappy with his regime, to the emergence of Islamic State. While the US surreptitiously provided aid to the FSA and other anti-Assad forces, and attempted to mobilise a coalition for an outright invasion; The presence of Islamic State had pushed Russia to directly intervene and assist the Assad government in fighting Islamic State along with any anti-governmental forces. Meanwhile, the stateless Kurds in Northern Syria declared the creation of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) – popularly known in the West as Rojava, fighting off the Syrian government forces, along with IS and the FSA. Turkey, threatened by the presence of armed forces controlled by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), invadedSyria once the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG) went into alliance with the US to fight IS – to prevent the Afrin region from linking with the rest of Rojava. They had in effect created a proto-state in Syria, leading YPG to allow the Syrian government to form a buffer zone between them and Turkish-controlled Syria. In short, the whole situation there is a mess. Yemen likewise descended into civil war following the overthrow of Ali Abdullah Saleh. Saudi Arabia – concerned with the regional stability and its threat to national security from Iran – suspected of backing the Houthi insurrectionists, launched a military incursion pounding Yemen with drone strikes – provided primarily by the UK and US. The humanitarian crisis is dire – indeed it is the worst in the world: UN figures suggest that around 375,000 people were killed as a result of the war – 70% were children. Over 3 million people are dying on their feet due to starvation or disease: The coronavirus outbreak had made things even worse. 6 million people have been displaced as a result of the war; 4.5 million internally. With these into account, there have been accusations that the Arab Spring was not really a popular revolution – with one or more powers – notably the US – accused of weaving it wholesale. That the movement had no intellectual anchors, or even a demand for a new social order (even for Islamism); not to mention that the monarchic regimes in Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia were left virtually unscathed has only fuelled suspicions of foreign interference. The US State Department-supported National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is even alleged to have been involved in the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings. Whatever the truth of foreign involvement, the issues around the results of the Arab Spring – which is said to have inspired by OWS above; underscores the abject ineffectuality of horizontalism, and the hollowness that the “NGOfication” of a civil society does to a people in need of tools for revolution. That the ones who gained the most out of this were organisations with a political program or long-term aims (Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian officer class, Gulf state monarchies, ruling elites of regional hegemons), or that the whole thing turned into regional power plays is perhaps fairly unsurprising. At least the AANES has armed militias (oh, and a concrete idea of what they want their society to look like). A case study of “capitalist realism” on an entire region.
The Great Recession had built up enough economic turmoil that the Eurozone itself came to be under threat in what was known as the European Sovereign Debt Crisis. The crisis had deeply affected one country in particular – Greece. The Greek government was trapped in deficits that it couldn’t meet and its funds were running out. The explanations given to the Greek crisis was generally ‘government corruption’ once the Greek government revealed that it had been underreporting the extent of its debt for years. The reality is much more stark: Greece was allowed into the Eurozone with knowledge (or at least, indifference) of the financial irregularities performed by the Greek government. In fact, Greece was the hub of a financial bonanza in the 1990s, as investors – in anticipation for the euro bought government bonds as if were a fire sale, as interest for them drove the prices for the bonds down – a manner curiously similar to the subprime mortgage crisis – though at the time, it was politically convenient for the Eurozone project to ignore signs of the Greek economy overheating. In 2002, the Greek government struck a dealwith Goldman Sachs with the offer to swap government debt with dollars and yen as currencies, in exchange for euros for a brief period of time – to be exchanged back to the original currency at a later date…but the 2008 crash put the kibosh on that. As a result, much of Greece’s expenditure was used to pay off these investors who lost money as a result of their own speculation. The crisis had threatened the stability of the Eurozone, and so the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Commission – the ‘troika’ – stepped in with the offer to bailout Greece in exchange for harsh austerity measures – Greece agreed and received £275bn as various cuts to public services – especially welfare. As Greece experienced severe economic hardship, its economy shrank, and unemployment rose to 25% – massive anti-austerity protests spread throught the country. The political consequence was that the ruling party, PASOK – a giant of social democratic politics for four decades, collapsing. The decline of PASOK, and of various centre-left parties across Europe gave rise to the term, “Pasokification” by political analysts. As PASOK smouldered, the left-wing Syriza Party superseded them – led by Alexis Tsipras, Syriza secured victory in the 2015 national elections, on the pledges to reverse the austerity measures. However, Syriza’s time in the sun would not last. Multiple times did the troika offer bailout packages which was rejected by the government. Not wishing for Greece to crash out of the EU, yet also trying to make good on his promise, Tsipras decided to put the decision to the Greek people in a plebiscite whether Greece should accept the package deals offered by the troika. The referendum resulted in 61% voting “no” to the deal – an overwhelming rejection. However, pressures from the EU, the Greek Parliament, and fears that Syriza will be held responsible for the economic ruin of Greece, had put Tsipras between a rock and a hard place, and he eventually acquiesced to the demands of the Troika, and accepted the deal. As expected, tax increases were given to Greece’s farmers, and the public pension system received major cuts. The capitulation of Syriza and Tsipras in particular to the EU and IMF, had to many disgruntled citizens and to international observers, signified that they had disregarded the weight of a public vote, which had severely harmed Syriza’s popularity and that of the prime minister. The EU creditors offered further packages to last over three years with austerity demands, to which the Greek government accepted – but with the slow economic growth, a lack of improvement into the lives of the Greek people, and the fact that the money had primarily gone to pay off their creditors – notably major German and French banks, Greece experienced sharp social divisions, and social unrest; the climate was fertile for the spread of nationalism and anti-immigration – seeing the rise of the far-right Golden Dawn. The 2019 general election had led to Syriza was thrown out of power to the right-wing Democracy Party, led by Harvard-educated lawyer Kyriakos Mitotakis. With Mitotakis as prime minister, promises were made to the Greek people that Greece will become economically stronger under his leadership, and the key to Greece’s recovery, according to Mitotakis – is stricter immigration regulations. As it stands, the Greek debt crisis is a prime case study on the effects of financialisation to a middle-tier economy, and had generated profound scepticism on the supposed benefits to globalisation – and more specifically, to the European Union – whose purported aim was to create a federal institution where all members had equality, yet promoted the neoliberal politics that saw Greece as a subordinate member, and then saddled them with debt bondage after a global economic crisis.
‘We hate this ride and want to get off!’
As the ‘New Tens’ set in, across the world, recovery from the Great Recession introduced social dislocation, and a decidedly negative attitude to transnational organisations or institutions said to determine or influence policy of the nations within them. Public figures and politicians associated with globalisation, of technocratic managerialism, who spoke of the inevitability of the market – specifically the global market – were denounced as out-of-touch elites removed from the concerns of the people. Popular appeal for globalisation had evaporated. The only kind of leader that had many sway among their people seemed to be ones who rejected the kind of modernity globalisation represented, but such politicians is as likely to be outside ‘traditional’ or consensus politics as is generally understood. As mentioned before, popular support for a redistributive politics in Europe had resurged leading to the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, Jean-Luc Melenchon, Podemos, and briefly – the aforementioned Syriza. Their positionings were firmly reformist, yet their prominence had represented a commitment to break with the neoliberal order.
However, they had also come in an age of a particular international crisis: the aforementioned Arab Spring as it had taken place in Syria had led to a massive exodus of Syrian refugees to Europe. It is often suggested that had the European Union not been ‘constrained’ by the capacity of the member states to make policies affecting their respective nations, then the EU would be much closer to realising its universalist ethos, and a much more humanitarian response to the Syrian refugee crisis would have been possible.
This assessment generally ignores that the EU could have easily objected to the border security measures – but is itself committed to hard borders as part of the project of ‘securitization’ it had followed since its creation. The Syrian refugee crisis was a catalyst for the rise of nationalist sentiment across Europe, and the emergence of a new kind of reactionary politics to articulate the festering anxieties. Sentiments around a declinist narrative of the United Kingdom had produced the Brexit referendum in which 52% voted to leave the European Union*****. In the United States, similar anxieties around deindustrialisation and the outsourcing of jobs, unemployment, and declining living standards led to the rise of Donald Trump as he secured the presidency of the US. Viktor Orban of Hungary maintained political legitimacy by appealing to national anxieties around globalisation erasing the domestic culture – and so used convenient scapegoats like immigration, LGBTQ+ communities subverted traditional culture, and multiculturalism. He blamed his one-time ally, the Hungarian-born American billionaire George Soros, for orchestrating Hungary’s problems. In India, the rise of Narendra Modi in 2013, saw the culmination of the project of Hindu nationalism that lay in the shadows of India since independence. Jair Bolsonaro, a retired military officer, soared into office amidst a severe reccession in Brazil, and the collapse of legitimacy of the Workers’ Party through the supposed ‘anti-corruption campaign’/military orchestrated coup plot “Operation Car Wash” – leading to the impeachment of Dilma Rouseff, and the imprisonment of Lula de Silva.
The post-GFC left, or so-called ‘left-populists’ promoted the reassertion of state intervention, and for a reversal of austerity programs ushered in after the Great Reccession. However, lacking institutional influence, inability to meet the challenge of nationalism (either through the effective promotion of a new universalism, or succumbing to its ideology) their social bases composed of disparate ideological tendencies either without undergoing a process of synthesis or even a stable enough coalition, and the very parties they led (or parties embedded in the establishment) reacting to their politics like an organ transplant rejection – and it was eventually defeated, with only authoritarian nationalism, or the so-called ‘right-populisms’, the new normal. These nationalists promised to turn away from globalisation and cater to the national economy, but their purported protectionism did not break from neoliberalism – quite the opposite.
The Trump administration consciously converted the affairs of American politics more overtly into that of a corporation, with Trump himself as the CEO. Trump introduced anti-labour regulations, tax cuts to major corporations, and advanced deregulation as part of a neoliberal logic just like all the presidencies before his up to the time of Nixon. The US trade wars with China had expressed a ‘neoliberal protectionism’ of which the US has yet to deviate from. The Modi government introduced neoliberal reforms opening Indian agriculture to national and foreign companies in the ability to produce, sell and market agricultural products. The fury from Indian farmers was such that it led to the largest recorded strike in history. Bolsonaro likewise opened up the rainforests to domestic and foreign capital – a process that meant the erasure of fauna, wildlife and the indigenous peoples there, as well as evacerbating the climate crisis in the long term, while committing to deforestation and triggering forest fires in the short term – removing the indigenous groups from their home, and exacerbating the climate crisis.
A world in stasis; a runaway planet
The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant effect on global economic activity as governments across the world initiated lockdowns to reduce the spread of coronavirus. The global response was far from effectively coordinated, and even today, a “vaccine apartheid” – where an inequitable distribution of vaccines between the Global North and the Global South became apparent, undermining the goodwill and ambitions of organisations like COVAX, was itself catalysed by the patenting of COVID-19 vaccines; Intellectual property rights had hampered aims around the development of a global supply of vaccines ready for distribution; as it stood, access the vaccines couldn’t be paid for by its poorest nations*****. In response, India (a rising economic superpower), and South Africa appealed to the WTO seeking a waiver on vaccine patents, which was granted in mid-2022. The results have been mixed: While the waiver has been beneficial to India, Africa still continues to have low vaccination rates, highlighting the continued dependency of the continent to the Western capitalist powers.
Tensions were still building in Latin America, specifically Chile – over the the expansion of privatisation as the national protests, briefly interrupted by the lockdown, mobilised again to topple the government of Sebastian Pinera. “Pink Tide 2.0” had brought into power left-wing governments in not only Chile, but Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Nicaragua, Honduras and Bolivia as well as Venezuela’s PSUV staving off a coup attempt. Brazil’s Worker’s Party and Bolivia’s Movement for Socialism avenged successful coups with their electorical victories – and in both instances, reactionary agitation resulted in violent protests ending in the jailing of many of those involved. Peru is the exception as it was subject to ‘lawfare’ by its National Congress – largely composed of ministers either affiliated with or had their tenures going back to the period of dictator Alberto Fujimori, resulting in the impeachment and imprisonment of the left-wing Pedro Castillo.
In the West, the results of the 2020 presidential election in the US had confirmed that Joe Biden would be the 46th President of the United States, with Donald Trump out of office. Having built his reputation as a force against globalism, Trump and his political allies were able to organise a protest outside of the Capitol, which later turned into a riot and attempted capture of the Capitol. The restoration of order by the security services and the military had suppressed the insurrection, and led to the discrediting of Trump. Even so, Biden was broadly not deviated significantly from the “neoliberal protectionism” characteristic of Trumpism. In the UK, Boris Johnson – who completed the Brexit process – resigned from his positions as leader of the ruling Conservative Party and as Prime Minister. Beneath accusations of his conduct during the pandemic, forces within the Conservatives were unconvinced that he was a suitable neoliberal steward, and so after a party leadership contest, Liz Truss emerged victorious. However, Liz Truss – inspired by the ideas of the neoliberal Institute for Economic Affairs – introduced a wildly unpopular tax bill, which the party elites panicked after seeing the reaction to it. Truss was pressured to resign, and another party election – albeit a carefully managed one, brought in Rishi Sunak as the leader of the Conservative Party and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. In France, to see off the far-right in Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour as well as the hard-left Jean-Luc Melenchon, the centrist Emmanuel Macron leaned in to the former’s anti-immigration rhetoric, to considerable success, and retain a second term. Macron has since restructured the political party which brought him into power – including a rename from Republique en March to Renaissance in an effort to insist on neoliberal modernity. In Italy, following the collapse of the unity government (which itself was a non-partisan government brought into being after the collspse of both left and right-based coalitions) in response to domestic challenges of its very own ‘cost-of-living crisis’, in October 2022, the Brothers of Italy – a far-right party drawing its lineage to the post-World War II neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, became the ruling party on September 2022, with its leader Georgio Meloni becoming the Prime Minister of Italy. The result has led observers to claim that there had been no party so far to the right until the current one since the end of World War II. The “post-fascist” Meloni has made an effort to tone down (or conceal) the more radical of her political stances – including the repudiation of some of Mussolini’s policies, and her opposition to the EU. Almost certainly, Meloni is conscious of the suspicion within the European Commission of her – and for good reason, since their fear is of the development of a hard-right bloc from the formation of an alliance between Meloni and Orban. The EC are also fearful of the rise of the far-right Sweden Democrats in Sweden, and of Vox in Spain.
Institutions, along with political and economic figures in support of the continuation of globalisation, have now come to terms that the luster associated with it had long-since disappeared, and are ever reliant on leaders committed to a managerial approach to maintaining neoliberalism. One of the side-effects are political figures coming out of the discontent of globalisation finding expression…and thus far, the institutions that maintain its operation had used its sheer weight to push them into line, at least for the time being. In a sense, neoliberalism today operates as what it always was in clear sight: not as an integrative process melding all societies, and bringing them into prosperity; but the unfettered expansion of markets across the globe, unequal exchange in the periphery, and a vigorous form of capital accumulation concentrated in the core (US, Canada & Western Europe). To put it simply, it is the current form of capitalist-imperialism – only that unlike in the Keynesian era, even who gets to share the world’s wealth is largely denied to the masses of the global North.
So will neoliberalism ever end?
One way or another, neoliberalism will certainly come to an end. What is depends on, is the terms that it does end on. After the financial crisis of 2008, many commentators said that neoliberalism has come to an end. And after the COVID-19 pandemic, a new batch of commentators that neoliberalism has come to an end. Neoliberalism is very much trudging on, although it is long past its sell by date – either already one foot in the grave, or already undead. With that said, studies have shown that even in such volatile conditions such as a global pandemic and a global economic downturn, the largest firms will somehow find a way to make more profits – either because of government patronage, or because of being economically well-suited to profit out of the circumstances. Workers’ wages have not slowed in rising, they stagnated altogether since before the pandemic; and with the rise of the cost of commodities, the conditions for inflation and the ‘cost-of-living crisis’ emerges. But even those on their own are not enough to bring an end to neoliberalism. Time and again, we have seen that the business and political elites are very invested in its continuation – no matter the cost. But in order to properly explore why neoliberalism continues to define our era, we must also understand why it is it became our current reality in the first place.
As mentioned before, the 1960s – 1970s was the period that global capitalism was in crisis, and Keynesianism had reached its limits. The major economies experienced the slowdown in growth, and inflation was high. The intervention of US President Richard Nixon by way of an incomes policy had failed to reduce inflation. Moreover, unemployment was rising in places like Britain, the US – which had created a ‘stagflation’ crisis – and was resistant to Keynesian methods to curb inflation and unemployment, making both worse. Wider context being the fallout of the Vietnam War (The US were printing money like crazy just to fund it, and many countries placed the influx of dollars into their reserves), and the energy crisis caused by OPEC (Saudi Arabia) raising the global price of oil.
When the neoliberals came with their solutions, they saw the pillars of Keynesian capitalism in strong labour securities eg. high wages, interventionist state willing to issue payments to firms and support those who were unemployed; and argued that to restart economic growth that you can have low inflation, or high wages – but you can’t have both: one has to go. The neoliberal epoch exists primarily to resolve the falling rate of profits in global markets. This worked, for about two decades – now economic growth even in the advanced capitalist nations has slowed down, with them increasingly reliant on financialization and the creation of new mechanisms to deal with the flow of financial capital. This led to the buying and selling of securities, which led to an economic bubble, which to led to…you know the rest.
In other words, the very thing that the introduction of neoliberalism was supposed to address: economic stagnation, has itself become a feature of the neoliberal era – the difference is that within the nations that make up the Global North, stagnant and low wages in proportion to profits generated by capital are a common feature – to say nothing of the discrepancy generated in the Global South. With the end of neoliberalism over the horizon, we find ourselves at an impasse. The real question appears to be what comes next?
To its advocates and detractors, neoliberalism gave the appearance of the terminal point of capitalism – its most advanced manifestation to date. And depending on how you look at it either from the left or the right, the acceptance of this reality can either be very distressing or a very positive state of affairs. But what possibilities appear on the routes beyond neoliberalism?
The crisis of neoliberalism has led to calls within the US and Europe for new social welfare proposals such as the introduction of a universal basic income, or setting up an enivronmentally-conscious economic program as the Green New Deal. Other proposals include the creation of a new Bretton Woods system, with added restrictions on transnational companies (TNCs) from interfering with a country’s economic goals. Naturally, all three – especially the first reflect concerns within the Global North. The more pessimistic possibilities include the manifestation of new methods of social control: the first by corporations, specifically the companies in online communications, in the compiling and selling of personal data; with the potential from anything to tailor-made advertising to the management of “digital dossiers” on people as a liaison for the security services. The emergence of an immanent “surveillance capitalism” means the potential of new disciplinary powers at work (such as breaks, attendance, performance, etc.), management of consumer activity, and the profiling of subjects deemed to be potentially threatening.
And the second, a product of domestic and international politics in response to the climate crisis: in the event that measures to halt or reverse the problem become untenable, climate change will almost certainly impact the Global South earlier and significantly harder than anywhere else, with the largest refugee crisis the world will ever see an existential risk. This is likely to be met with a highly securitized border regime maintained in the global core – especially the US*****, and in Europe – with steps to establish these hard borders already in place. “Exterminism” is the appropriate term for a future where most of the planet is doomed to conflicts over resources, starvation, displacement, and in the possibility of entry into the wealthy nations – near-permanent second-class citizenship in a hostile culture. And the rest represent, in effect, a permanent global underclass, with the global elite shielded from the worst effects of climate change.
It is for this reason that within the Global South, the search for an alternative has led towards a restart of dirigismes and “post-neoliberal” programs – except that in doing so, they would be attached to the “Belt-and-Road” initiative launched by China; with favourable loans that they would not receive from the IMF, and the push towards “de-dollarisation”, with the Chinese yuan as the reserve currency over the US dollar, for more amenable conditions for import substitution. Basically, an ‘inverted Keynesianism’ even with the hypothetical anti-Bretton Woods system.
One thing is clear: neoliberalism has proven and made simple that the interests of capital and the interests of labour are diametrically opposed and irreconcilable. With 600 million people in the Global South dragged into the global working class, they have the greatest impetus to put an end to neoliberal capitalism. Any project, organisation, or general demand for the end of neoliberalism has to acknowledge and be in solidarity with the global working class – and overcome any boundaries, whether cultural, social and especially material – to accomplish this, and bring about a more equitable, and freer world.
Components
Privatization – The transfer of companies from the public space to the private sector.
Deregulation – The removal of state regulation in the economy, i.e. parts of the industrial sector.
Liberalization of trade – The removal or reduction of trade barriers between nations.
Financialization – The increased role of finance via markets and institutions in economic functions.
Ideological inspirations
Liberalism
Libertarianism
Austrian school
Chicago school
laissez-faire capitalism
rational choice theory
Organisations & Institutions
Mont Pelerin Society
Business Roundtable
International Monetary Fund
World Bank
World Trade Organization
World Economic Forum
Organisation of American States
European Union (you heard me)
Heritage Foundation
Institute of Economic Affairs
Centre for Policy Studies
Adam Smith Institute
American Enterprise Institute
Cato Institute
Brazilian Institute for Democratic Action
Institute of Public Affairs
Hayek Society
Liberal Institute of Rio de Janeiro
Institute for Liberty and Democracy
Tools ‘of the trade’ (or weapons)
Structural adjustment program (generally comes with an IMF loan)
This is something slightly different than usual in that it isn’t really a regular post, although it is an update of sorts in that this presents an opportunity to flesh out something that I’ve been wanting to do for over a year. I’ve just been reminded that next month (effectively) is the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War – a grotesque conflict which had set the standard for imperialist conquest in the 21st century. The Iraq War raged for eight years, and led to the deaths of nearly a million Iraqis and displaced millions more. Quite often to people in the West, what makes a war ‘bad’ is the cost of what happens to the soldiers involved in these conflicts, how many of ‘our boys’ are getting killed in war compared to the supposed progress met in achieving the objectives. This is a line of argument used from political and military figures at the very least critical of aspects of the war, to sections of the anti-war movement itself. I think that such framing is at least implicitly chauvinistic – especially given that they always serves the role as aggressors and occupiers, and renders the largest victims of the conflict invisible, or without the form of human dignity afforded to soldiers. In the case of the Iraq War, less than 200 UK military personnel died in the entire conflict, while the US in comparison lost 7,000 military personnel. The question that needs to asked that is in the heart of these conflicts, and how they are framed is: what are the lives of a million Iraqis – men, women, and children – worth to us in comparison? Too often, the answer given is that the lives of people under occupation is worth less than their occupiers.
Many of us who are critical, or had in time come to dislike the Iraq War, are very familiar with the mendacity of the leaders who launched the war, and of the kinds of lies that were used to sell the war to their people – some of which are still used to justify commitment to subsequent wars. Many will recall the ‘link’ been made of Saddam Hussein’s regime and that of al-Qaeda, that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction according George W. Bush and Tony Blair, that he could even launch them within 45 minutes according to Tony Blair and more specifically, Alaistair Campbell. We saw Colin Powell hold up a vial of what he said was anthrax produced in Saddam’s chemical weapons plants before the UN. We know full well of these lies, and the liars who told them. In the run-up to the anniversary of the war, documentaries and perhaps even online video essays will be released going over the consequences that these had. It is likely that even the people themselves who launched the war will get another opportunity to tell lies – only ones more self-serving. As some of the architects behind the war are now deceased, what may follow is a hagiography, a eulogy, or at least a more sympathetic assessment of their actions.
What will not be highlighted in these vignettes will be the activities of members of the Western intelligentsia who pushed for the war persuaded by, or found useful, one of the most deceptive narratives mobilised to curry its support: that it was a war for democracy, and an effort to stamp out a new form of totalitarianism in the turn of the century. The people who said this believed not only were they progressives, democrats, socialists and so on – but they represented the real Left tradition – and those who did not share their position, those who were completely opposed to the Iraq War, were either: useful idiots to Islamism – or Islamists themselves, cultural relativists (and therefore ‘moral relativists’), possessed by a inverted Manichean conception that perceived the West as a uniquely malign force, were hysterical or maniacal or foolish, etc.
These people called themselves the Decent left or were alternatively called either the Decency tendency or The Eustonites. The other name, the ‘pro-war left’ does not properly situate them in a historical context, but can reflect as part of a larger trend in advanced capitalist societies. The ‘decent left’ as a movement is gone. But unlike Bush and Blair, who received a clear and significant damage to their image among the American and British people respectively due to the war, the war cheerleaders who were too bourgie for Fox News slunk back into their universities, their newspapers and their parties with little – if any reputational damage. They believed themselves to be a ‘non-totalitarian left’, the true believers of a universal humanism, and heirs of Enlightenment principles. What they actually were, was a callous crew of liberal chauvinists, post-Cold War converts to neoconservatism which the shame to admit was nearly all-consuming, yet animated by the prospect of a civilising mission as much as any old colonialist. They created an intra-left culture war that is largely forgotten save for old blogging fogies reminiscing their best years, and impressed with the perpetual paranoia of the security state built in the era. Their influence still remains, and their story is yet to be told. The question is in how to tell it?
Why this project should be in video (or audio) form
It’s all well and good doing write-ups of what this actually was, and indeed – I do intend to write about it even if it is simply part of a script for an online video. But I find that for something like this, an audiovisual format is more suitable than another drop in the deluge of blog posts around this movement mostly stemming from the mid-2000s. It would be the best way to inntroduce to a generation of leftists what was taking place domestically during the Iraq War, what networks were established, and how far the whole thing ultimately went to before falling apart. I also believe that it will be far brisker than a sertoes of articles could be.
What will be covered
What I plan to cover is extremely broad, but it will be done to emphasize that the emergence of the ‘decent left’ as a phenomenon under a certain historical context, even if it is a phenomenon that follows a continuous historical trend in the European Left, and the American Left for that matter. The topics that I have in mind to be under discussion broadly circle the following:
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the self-confidence of the left in Europe
The emergence of neoconservatism and the globalised world
The ethnic conflicts that took place in the former Yugoslavia – and the reglossed “humanitarian intervention”
Post 9/11 media culture, the case for war in Iraq, and the left-wing arguments in support
The creation of Saddam Hussein
The building of Decency and the networks formed around it
The works and publications around Decency, and the building of their foreign allies
The demonization of Noam Chomsky
Decency versus Stop the War
A ‘people’s history’ of the Iraq War; Iraq’s transformation into a client state – hollowed out for privatisation
The Euston Manifesto- and the signees
A post-mortem on why Decency ‘failed’; how the reality of the war sharply differed from their proclamations
The afterlives of Decency
So what do you think? Sounds pretty huge, but I definitely see this in multiple parts.
When will it be done?
I don’t know. I’m spinning quite a few plates at the moment. For all I know, it could take anything from 3 months to a year to get done. But when it is, it’s probably going to be the best work I have ever done. I’d rather sooner than later, but life doesn’t always give you that you want. Incidentally, I’m still trying another post, so you can imagine what it might feel like to work on this every weekend, alongside the ‘regular stuff’. So, I don’t really know if will get done at all.
Anyway, thanks in advance, and for your continued support.
There are two meanings to the term ‘Fortress Europe’.
The first is its former usage as a military propaganda term used by both sides of World War II. Fortress Europe for the Allied forces was the battle honour given to the Royal Air Force and Allied Squadrons during operations against the Axis powers in the European theatre in the period between France falling to Axis powers and the Allied invasion of Normandy. Additionally, the Nazis used the term to describe Hitler and the Wermarcht’s plans to fortify all of Nazi-occupied Europe which included the construction of the Atlantic wall to deter invasion from the British Isles, and a restructuring of the Luftwaffe to reflect an increased focus on air defense, after invasion plans of the British Isles were thwarted as a result of the Luftwatte’s battles with the Royal Air Force.
Said Atlantic Wall extended 200 miles from Denmark to the Spanish-French border. Over 17 million cubic metres of concrete and 1.2 million metric tons of steel was spent in the fortifications, and Hitler boasted he was the greatest fortress builder of all time. After two amphibious assaults on the wall in 1942, the Allied forces launched Operation Neptune – or D-Day – the largest seaborne operation in history, setting into motion the liberation of France and what would later be the Allied victory in the Western Front.
The other meaning of Fortress Europe in modern contexts is as a pejorative to describe the border security measures exercised by the European Union.
Migrants and refugees coming mostly from Sub-Saharan countries await at the dock of Catania port before being identified by the Italian authorities and Frontex. ; On 14 November 2015, 407 people were disembarked from the Norwegian vessel Siem Pilot at the Sicilian port of Catania. They were rescued from four different boats that departed from Libya. Among the migrants and refugees were 72 women, 37 minors, 35 of which were unaccompanied. Most of the people came from Sub-Saharan countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia, Guinea Bissau and Guinea Conakry, Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Cameroon. There was also one person from Egypt. Since the beginning of January 2015 more than 800,000 people have done the dangerous journey via the Mediterranean Sea in order to reach Europe.
Migration is always mediated through economic demands and the domestic concerns of a territory that receives them. This is as much the case with the European Union in which freedom of movement is one of the “four economic freedoms” enjoyed by citizens of an EU member state. In the mid-to-late 2000s, the EU enjoyed the greatest expansion of its territory as ten former Eastern Bloc nations (Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania) joined the EU, in addition to Cyprus and Malta. Hysteria around immigration from Central and Eastern Europe had pressured politicians – especially leading politicians to signal that they were indeed going to restrict the flow of migration; for instance, the slogan, ‘British jobs for British workers’ associated with former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown to allay anxieties of displacement, especially around the deindustrialised sections of Britain. For the most part, the flow of migration though the EU has gone unhampered. Which is more than that can be said for the treatment of migrants outside of the EU – particularly those seeking refuge.
People from outside the European Union are permitted to stay for 90 days, if they wish to come over for work, study or join a family member – though an EU nation can have a specific set of requirements for residence and work permits. Those non-EU nationals who are eligible for an extended stay beyond 90 days would have to be the following:
highly-qualified workers
intra-corporate transferees (essentially employees of a company with a branch in an EU territory)
seasonal workers
researchers
students
trainees and volunteers
Non-EU nationals staying in an EU country are permitted to bring their family members, and become a long-term resident after 5 years of residence. Non-EU nationals are also granted the same rights as nationals and can stay up to 6 months if they lose their job within a year and register with the relevant authority as ‘involuntary unemployed’. EU countries can also require that non-EU nationals report their presence to the relevant authorities within a time-frame after arrival (usually 3 months) – they would need a valid identity card, certificate of employment, and if self-employed, proof of status – after which they receive a registration certificate.
The nominal protections for residency rights for non-EU nationals even then implies that the EU has a preference for so-called skilled workers, prioritizing the potential of immigrants as human capital, and in turn – illustrating that the EU’s priorties lie in the management of the globalised market economy, rather than lofty notions of the development of the global citizen. The EU’s migration policies also reflect a wider trend towards highly securitised border protections from those seeking to enter its territories.
At its height, as much as 1.2 million applications were made for asylum from non-EU nationals in a single year (2015) in a period between 1990-2021; Most of the applicants of that year were Syrian nationals affected by the Syrian Civil War. The EU while known to grant protections to refugees and those seeking asylum, it is much more likely to stymie attempts to entery in the first place. At the end of August 2022, Lithuania announced the completion of its 502km border fence – four metres high, and made with razor wire, built on its border with Belarus – to deter migrants from the Middle East and Africa.
This is still far less perilous than entry through the ‘natural border’ into the EU – crossing the Mediterranean Sea. Refugees and migrants undertaking this journey often do so travelling on highly unsafe boats and dinghies. According to data produced by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), as much as 3,231 people ended up dead or missing at sea attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea in 2021. According to the Missing Migrants Project, the number is over 25,000 dead or missing since 2014. The UNITED Network put approximately 50,000 deaths of migrants and refugees attempting to enter EU territories since 1993. The EU’s priority in meeting the migrant challenge is primarily in border security which the European Border and Coast Guard Agency or Frontex advances.
A notable method that Frontex deals with migrants crossing the waters of EU territories are in “pushbacks” – the forcible return of people without an assessment of their rights to claim asylum or any other form of protection. It is illegal under international, and even EU law. The European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) concluded a report that Frontex covered up several instances of pushbacks of migrants, including the sharing of unreliable (incorrect or biased) information with EU institutions such as the European Commission and the European Parliament. In April, Fabrice Leggeri resigned as the organisation’s head following the allegations of human rights violations towards migrants. Even so, Frontex in 2022 received a budget of €754m (a €200m increase from last year) and expanded its staff to over 2000. It is likely that trends towards increasing funding towards Frontex will continue.
Border security has proven to be a highly lucrative endeavour for enterprising corporate lobbyists seeking to offer surveillance technologies and military hardware for those juicy procurement contracts from the EU. Investigators are calling it the “border-industrial complex” – the merger of corporate interests with (trans)national security.
Migration from the Global South is fuelled by regional destabilisation as a result of war, political persecution and climate change. Faced with the impending migration crisis set to occur over the following decades, the European Union has chosen the path of violence, increasingly focused on the securitisation of its frontiers. European governments, including ones outside the EU have tiresomely given blame to human traffickers putting migrants in danger, when the problem is the lack of safe routes towards Europe, a situation which these governments have been hesitant to remedy. Traffickers themselves don’t give migrants the idea of travelling to Europe either – the obvious wealth of European nations, and the possibility of new economic opportunities are also powerful incentives – though again, some European nations (eg. Italy) respond by restricting the rights or access to welfare available to migrants in comparison to those with citizenship with an EU nationality.
Even with all of these measures to make migration as hostile as possible, it will still not be enough to deter people attempting to move to Europe. The EU’s desire to stop the flow of migration from outside its territory would require it to give up its neocolonial program with the Global South – which appears to be integral to the European project.
For a large segment of the British left, today is a sombre commemoration – it is the 3rd anniversary of the 2019 general election which saw a Conservative Party led by Boris Johnson comprehensively defeat the Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn, and consolidate a 80-seat majority – owing largely to the collapse of traditionally held Labour seats, the so-called ‘red wall’, as the Conservatives seized them. There are many reasons as to why this election went the way it did – and some of them are down to the Labour Party and even Jeremy Corbyn, and others within his inner circle. I don’t think that I’ll talk so much about how it was that Labour came to lose than go over what the entire experience was like for myself, and how I’ve come to terms with what had come afterwards.
In pretty much most of my life, I didn’t have very much – or rather, what I had didn’t feel as much as what my peers had. And once I had to take responsibility for own finances – it always felt precarious and fleeting. 2019 was no different. I’d left the second and so far – last job with a contract with the company on my 28th birthday – health issues, various engagements, and ironically enough – finances, made continued employment unworkable, and I partially suspect that there were attempts to get rid of me at the workplace anyway. While I was an enthusiastic supporter of the Corbyn project, the reality of the precarity was keenly felt, and it affected my involvement in the local Labour Party’s various activities – and even ones that weren’t local. This wasn’t entirely new for me – after all there were various points during the nine years that I was a party member – when I did canvassing without a penny to my name. There were even runs that I attempted to join that most would probably try to reach by bus, but I decided to walk there to see if I could find them. Was it all to see a left-winger actually win? To see a different social arrangement than the one I was used to? The emotional need to feel like a part of something amazing? I don’t know – it could be any one of those things, none, or all of them. But by late November, with my favourite uncle passed away, my therapy sessions long over, and the benefits and personal earnings from my job drying up, I got sick of it all.
There were a lot of left-wing commentators online or otherwise around the UK who talk about how excited and energised young people were to see themselves represented in Corbyn and trying to fight for it. By November 2019, I wasn’t one of them. And it had nothing specifically to do with Corbyn, McDonnell, or any of them. What it had more to do with, is seeing people around you who you called ‘comrade’ in two-hour long canvassing sessions get to go home to their cozy middle-class lives – and plan their holidays, while I every day received headaches either from not eating enough, or trying to figure out how I’m going to manage using the 20 quid in my wallet over the week for food and transport. It was this maudlin, saccharine tripe – the sloganeering, of ‘getting tough’, that I once parrotted – that began to weigh on me. I was getting blamed for my own financial hardship by people who are supposed to help me. It was shit. Even as I signalled solidarity for the social media to see. When I discovered that yet again, I had no money in my account near the end of the month – I had reached my limit. I had decided that days weren’t going to get any better so I might as well try to act normal and have it as good as possible, because it was going to be my last. I don’t know how it happened, but on my way to Croydon – I received messages from an old friend. I think that my nerves were pretty fried, so didn’t feel joy – but told him of my intent to end my life. I think that he phoned me to distract me and at the time, I wish that he didn’t because I got scared of the passing cars again. When he hung up, I got upset – because I realised that I wanted to live, even with everything as painful as it was. It was then that I called my other friend and told him about what had happened, sobbing as I did. I said that I’ll wait at the nearby McDonald’s and that he was coming over.
Somehow, I was still able to engage in ‘political mode’ in my head, even as it was coloured by my depression. I expressed scepticism that so much of what was promised could really change – more so, that I could feel it change – and he agreed. I think at that moment, I felt recognised in a way that I didn’t from my other fellow members. There was another fallout from Croydon Council that we were still reeling from that was also personal – but that might be for another story for another – likely distant, time. In any case, I am grateful, that he came when he did.
I think that it was about a week until in a lot of respects I was back to activism mode. I even went to a Stop the War rally the week before the election, even getting a People’s Assembly T-shirt. Throughout that week, I leafleted – even in the rain, and canvassed the doors of Central Croydon. One memorable evening canvassing session had me forgo the advice I was given (not by a campain organiser – who in Croydon, was likely to feel strongly about it) to not talk about Brexit, and discuss housing and public services – only to learn that this was what all anyone on that street would go on about – one have out with its line about how he wouldn’t vote Corbyn because “[he didn’t look] strong” like he used to in his birth country. Eventually, it became simply about getting the party’s supporters out to vote – the televised backdrop is Labour MPs such as Jonathan Ashworth causing stirs with openly antagonistic statements towards the Corbyn leadership for the voyeuristic press to chew on. Another one with Rebecca Long-Bailey explaining the free broadband scheme with a vast fiberoptic infrastructure concentrated in the deindustrialised north, was given the caption: “Broadband communism?” by the BBC, demonstrating that infamous impartial reporting of Auntie Beeb. I was very much burnt out at this point, and commented on feeling like a cog in a machine, and I was consoled by mostly fellow activists – many of whom have since left.
The final day was spent doing one last canvass run, and completing a proxy vote for another friend and his wife, and getting soaked in the process. With the final evening run, by the time everything was finished, it had taken me more than an hour to walk back to Ruskin House in South Croydon. I went there with the belief that we probably lost, but at least gave a good showing. When I walked into the building, it was so much worse than I imagined. A large fella, who I number met before clasped his hands onto my shoulders something indeterminable – but I sensed it was bad. As I walked into the bar room, I mused that whatever it was, it couldn’t possibly be that horri-holy fuck! Is that the results on the screen!? I saw that the Tories had roughly a hundred more seats than Labour. I was baffled, how could our failure be so complete? Weren’t we going to take Boris Johnson’s Toxteth seat from him? Wasn’t he a blatantly dishonest and cowardly politician? So why did this happen? Another room – titled the Nelson Mandela room in which I enter, full of Labour activists with wistful and sour expressions, even though Croydon North and Central were secure – MP Sarah Jones had even increased her share (though MP Steve Reed’s clear majority fell by a third from the prior election).
Apparently, the country never believed in the change that Corbyn represented, for varying reasons – but I suspect that what it broadly comes down to, is that he challenged so many comfortable certainties. Certainties like “will my property value raise?”, “will I get paid by that private firm that wants a stake in the NHS?”, “Will my shares I have in this company raise in value?”, “Will I finally get the peerage or title I’ve been aching for years under this?”, that sort of thing. The kind of worries poor little boys who roll in worn-out jackets can’t imagine. The irony is that a lot of those things would still would happen, and as for stock – well – it’s actually hilarious how emotions like fear and anxiety from capitalists, can so easily affect the markets, which tells me all I need to care about financialisation as a good. The other problem comes with nostalgia – used and abused alike by both sides of the insipid Brexit screaming match which allowed people to take leave of their senses. I concluded that Britain is governed by a deep, self-indulgent pessimism emanating from segments of the propertied class, and the embourgeoised – this malaise is highly infectious and difficult to control, but it robs any emergent possibilities, which is the tragedy experienced by those living and working precariously.
Aftermath
Some time later in the following year, during the election post-mortem in the Momentum meeting, I got given an officer position. Not sure if I deserved it, or did a lot with it – certainly not as much as I wanted to. But I did canvass like a motherfucker, so I took it. Some time later, the mission was to save Corbynism by supporting Rebecca Long-Bailey and Richard Burgon, which I threw myself into, to the point of getting heckled outside the Indian YMCA. Even as I went further into it, I wondered if it really was the final days that I got engaged with social democracy. All the Croydon nominations werestage-managed farces, but beyond my frustration around them, I came to realise that from hearing Starmer’s supporters, that Labourites use the term “socialism” in a very weird way. Both those on the Left and Right seem to believe that it’s – to reference Richard Wolff, “when the government does stuff”. Starmer did win, and I ignored social media for three days – lest I bitch out all of Croydon Labour, especially the councillors I was convinced voted for him. The reality was I’d be painted as a divisive, marginal asshole, so I stayed largely silent – if somewhat snarky. It was the pandemic, and lockdown nearly everywhere, so it’s not like I was going to do anything else.
I did attend nearly every meeting Momentum had that year, and I think co-hosted one, though by the end of 2020, any enthusiasm that I had for Labour snapped like a twig after Jeremy Corbyn was suspended. Mentally, the only thing that I wanted to give left to Momentum was my prescence, a few stuff that I planned to either finish or put forth to them (like stuff involving political education and presentations), and would pop my head up for stuff that piqued my interest, like housing, or democratisation of the party. By 2021, I was done with all of it, and left. I was going to hop off the boat anyway, but the straw that broke the camel’s back, was hearing how malicious locally the Labour right bureaucrats and jobsworths could be.
So that’s that. I think that I will accept a marker of my politics as “disgruntled post-Corbynite” or something, even though it did admittedly take a while to get into it and came in later than most. What else can you call me after writing so much on Labour? I don’t think that had Corbyn won, it would be all sunshine and rainbows. In fact, I was expecting to for him to compromise on many things in his program, and for our role to change to push for a commitment to it. I’m now unsure that given the revelations around the 2017 campaign of the dirty tricks from the Labour apparatus, not even from the Tories – that such a government would not be allowed to last very long. Whether it’s backbench rebellions, recalcitrant civil servants, a rabidly hostile media, even foreign intervention (not in the Latin America-kind, just the kind where ‘Atlanticism’ is revealed to be a one-sided relationship), or Civil Assistance-style plots, these were the possibilities of a Corbyn government.
Other Corbynites, ‘post’ or otherwise, seem to suggest that it would lead to the beginnings of the creation of ‘New Jerusalem’ or something, but I kinda think that this is the kind of melodramatic mush the Labour left have been prone to. I don’t believe that anything close to the story of how Corbyn’s Labour came to lose the 2019 election has been told, and what has been given is this shallow narrative for media pundits, and Social Review-style wonks to tell: that he was incompetent, or some kind of Assadist maniac who will run Jewish people out of the country, or the most personally irritating – that just as Blair went too far to the right, Corbyn went too far to the left, conspicuously leaving out any discussion around the Party apparatus, its functionality, and even whether it worked towards the same agenda as the LOTO office. I think that there are questions to had around whether Corbyn’s personal demeanour was suitable for the pressures of leadership (and it appeared that he mostly led a pack of fucking jackals), or around whether there was a serious commitment to the deepening of party democracy, or a serious attempt to incorporate dying Labour strongholds, instead of what appeared to be a purely electoral strategy which focused heavily on comms, centralised management, and backroom dealing.
For myself, I’m not really emotionally attached to those questions anymore. I don’t think ‘exposing betrayal’ would be as emotionally satisfying as it was two years ago. As I like to tell myself, I’ve bypassed the Labour Party, and don’t imagine joining back in the forseeable future. Out of all the quotes the laconic Tony Benn gave, the “toughen up” one is one of my least favourite ones. Toughen up for what? So I can get fucked by petit-boug bully boys for some dream of a fleeting settlement? Nah, that doesn’t enthuse me at all. Given the narrowing of horizons, we should in etching out new possibilities not measure ourselves by our tolerance of abuse and suffering – especially from those that are, ostensibly, ‘on the same side’; we should instead measure our capacity to embrace other, to show understanding, to feel love, and to have solidarity – for those would be the foundations upon what the new society will be built on. If anything else, although it was funneled into a parliamentary program, it was indeed many of those features that did emerge in the Corbyn project – it’s a reason to be wistful, but also an inspiration to build in another, more expansive form.
On October 25th 2022, Rishi Sunak became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Despite losing the first Conservative leadership election in September to Liz Truss, in little more than a month, another one took place sealed off to the party membership to crown him leader. The Labour Party is demanding that a general election take place on the basis that the Conservatives have lost credibility and needs to be put to the test on their legitimacy to govern. Outside of parliament, the national demonstration to address the cost-of-living crisis and a decade of privatisation has now adapted itself into a general demand for a general election – some of the biggest advocates for a GE are the critics of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party – many of whom occupy the far left, who believe Sunak came in without a mandate, and is tantamount to an undemocratic appointment. In this essay, I will attempt to explore why it is, that sections of the British left have pinned their hopes on the possibility of a Labour Government that they know – and aren’t shy of telling anyone – will push anti-immigration policies, will severly punish protestors, will almost certainly encourage stop-and-searches, will be hostile to trade unions, will securitise further an already highly securitised state apparatus, will cater to the whims of the ruling class, will issue in austerity measures and call it “everyone doing their part to spend a little less”, will commit to a neoliberal sensibility long past it’s expiry date, and will not do anything for the working class beyond a few scraps; and why I think that calling this ‘plan’ utterly absurd doesn’t even cover the folly of it.
"We must do something!"
"What should we do?"
"I already told you! We must do something!"
In recent times, it’s not been very easy for the left in the UK: Left-wingers committed to the Labour Party have, and continue to experience repression by the party bureaucracy – if suspensions and expulsions, including retroactive expulsions by association is not the order of the day, then the ‘mild’ withdrawal from a candidacy is also a common enough measure. The anti-war movement had failed to even so much build a presence for its case on the war in Ukraine, easily outflanked by the pro-West chauvinism of the likes of Paul Mason, and slandered in the press, notably by ‘progressive’ commentator George Monbiot characterising critics of Western imperialist involvement in Ukraine as “Putinists”, “tankies”* and “Assadists” and aided in the slander by none other than the leader of the Labour Party itself: Keir Starmer, who after penning an article slamming the anti-war position, made clear of his intent to sanction MPs in the party who took an anti-war stance by threatening to remove the whip. Far more serious, and damning was the failure of the “Kill the Bill” protests which concerned the interests of environmental and racial justice activists, and trade unionists, as well as for migrants and people from GRT communities – as the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill passed, and worse, some good and passionate activists were arrested and jailed for participating. It’s not all been bad, but it does present a very sobering situation.
On November 5th 2022 – an auspicious day for resistance to parliament, a demonstration planned and organised by the People’s Assembly Against Austerity took place. The People’s Assembly had a list of demands: an end to the wage restraint imposed on workers and the profiteering from their employers; a wealth tax to fund social care, social security and fuel poverty; a nationalisation of energy, water, rail and mail; a demand to meet the housing crisis by building council homes; an end to the outsourcing of public services and the privatisation of the NHS; and a general election to overturn an undemocratic government imposed by the Tories. The demonstration itself was planned for months, and hoped to synthesize the energy built from the already existing industrial strike actions that had taken place. Indeed, it was discussed in Parliament as an early-day motion and signed by the Labour MPs comprising the Socialist Campaign Group, in addition to a few progressive Scottish MPs on July 5th 2022. The recent addition is the demand for a general election following the collapse of the Johnson and Truss premierships within a 110-day period.
The People’s Assembly, allied with eight trade unions, and over a dozen left-wing organisations, exists as an adjunct for the parliamentary left. And the trade unions themselves which support it, themselves also believe that the best chance that it has for securing a fair pay for its workers exists in a Labour government. With such an ecosystem, it is forgivable or at least understandable that they would commit to a electoral demand and specifically a Labourite demand as the government that exists, a Conservative government, has shown itself to be deeply hostile to worker’s rights. The question, however, is that does it say about the left’s current ability to etch out new political bases, much less push for higher horizons?
‘Nowhere else to go’
In the late 1990s, as the New Labour project went underway, the parliamentary left found it had become a weak and very marginal bloc. This was not due to any active attempt on the part of those New Labour project to suppress their influence, indeed it never needed to – as much of their atrophied state was the result of internal disputes during the so-called modernising process overseen by former Labour leader Neil Kinnock. Thatcherism had already set the terms of how British ‘common sensibility’ were to regard public services – from housing, to transportation, to even healthcare – the public sphere was colonised by marketisation. The Labour Party then, either for electoral calculations or that they were themselves committed to a more marketised society, decided not to challenge this sensibility, because they viewed earlier collectivist expressions of Labourism as outmoded. Whatever the views of the critics of New Labour prior to its electoral breakthrough, they were able to get the unions on side with the promise of reversing the curbs to their rights which Thatcher introduced – only to completely and gleefully renege on that promise once in power. They were also able to convince the activists and supporters of the Labour Party to support it over John Major’s Conservative Party as despite the character of New Labour, “A Labour Party in power is always better than a Conservative one”, and they were desperate to put an end to nearly two decades of Tory domination. Even as it did admittedly commit to social welfare policies, they came tied with the expansion of private finance initiatives (PFIs) to fund them, much to the anger of the unions affiliated to Labour, such as Unison and the GMB.
The unions were antagonised by an incarnation of the Labour Party which seemed willing to break with its connection to the former – the “parliamentary expression of trade unionism” was now considered to be a historical baggage unfit for the modern problems New Labour believed required technocratic solutions. It is to the surprise of both sides, that in spite of the mutual hostility between the unions and New Labour, they both had coinciding interests (the unions sought to have some influence within the increasingly centralised party bureaucracy, and Labour still needed their donations as even the courting the wealthy was not enough to finance the party’s operations), and so that final break did not happen. The parliamentary left, in the form of the Socialist Campaign Group offered its resistance by voting against the party whip in terms of war, social welfare, and for better treatment of asylum seekers. But this resistance only served to demonstrate its overall impotence, for rather than serve as a moral conscience in the body of New Labour, they were regarded as overall irritations.
Strangers in familiar land
As for the revolutionary left, it had also entered a sombering period defined by its decomposition; the last great industrial action – popularly known as the Miners’ Strike had been defeated – and the mobilisation on the basis of class politics seemed to be increasingly untenable following the end of the Cold War, as a result of the fracture of the power of organised labour and the decline of the industrial regions that came with it. The solution they turned was the broad campaigns formed with the wider extraparliamentary left on issues of racial justice, anti-fascism, environmental justice, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ and so on, embedding itself into the milleu of activist groups. Within the revolutionary left in Britain, there had been no greater commitment to this practice than in Trotskyism.
The Trotskyist narrative has it that in vying for inflence in working class organising, they were suppressed by labourism and Stalinism – parallel bureaucratic tendencies respectively each undertaking class collaborationist projects, and stifling working class militancy. Even accounting for the pressures from the Labour and Communist Parties domestically, and anti-communist subversion by the British state, the Trotskyist movement in Britain had been on several fronts of industrial action but as with the wider revolutionary left, they lacked the capacity to turn these struggles to build into a wider revolutionary situation – not least because it was common for Trotskyist organisations to suffer various internal and theoretical disputes, which often precipated their splintering. As with much of the revolutionary left, Trotskyists were faced with the question of how to deal with the Labour Party: Grouplets within the Tortskyist milleu tried various strategies from entryism into the Party and established pressure groups to an active opposition to Labour and its parliamentarianism. The first is most well-known, and a common source of intrigue for observers.
It is through the entryist strategy the Trotskyist movement, or at least organisations committed to Trotskyism had its successes in social movements that it had become involved in: the International Socialists – later the Socialist Workers Party, for example, was influential in the early days of CND, Vietnam Solidarity Movement, the Anti-Poll Tax demonstrations, and anti-fascist organisations such as the Anti-Nazi League. Entering the Labour Party itself had proven to be a riskier gambit, as it had already cultivated a history in its sharp opposition to communism. In spite of the Labour Party’s willingness to expel the organisations, Trotskyist groupings came involved with Labour’s left-wing. While some like Socialist Action preferred discretion in their activities, those like the infamous Militant Tendency were overt in their declarations as a revolutionary socialist party – albeit one embedded in a parliamentarian institution. At least in this respect, they had better headway in incorporating itself in the Labour Party than for example, the Communist Party – which was admittedly a more obvious target, was already a useful scapegoat for the Labour leadership’s frustrations with worker militancy.
All the same, even as these groups told themselves that they would be able to convert members of the Labour Party receptive to revolutionary politics and organise a militant proletarian movement within the Labour Party – a scenario that is by now – the subject of much media hysteria about the Labour Party and its affiliated trade unions succumbing to the influence of revolutionaries, the sobering reality reveals the stupidity and vacuousness of this chavinistic moral panic and common Trotskyist self-deception alike. For it is not the Labour Party – whether under Lansbury, Wilson, Foot or even Corbyn that had seen instances of Trotskyist permeation into Labour’s thought and practice. Rather, it is the Trotskyist groups – believing that they are building a class for itself through the unions, issue groups, and the Labour Party – that had internalised the very labourism they often criticize by incorporating themselves to its various organisational structures, and committing to these organisations – their political programs broadly echoed that of the parliamentary left in its calls for nationalisation of public infrastructure and opposition to wage cuts to the workforce. It could not transcend a social democratic framework, and constructing a route to revolutionary politics was out of reach, even if their sloganeering suggested otherwise.
Entryism in perpetua
The global reccession, which saw a resurgence in enthusiasm for socialist politics, and 2010s-era austerity, which opened the space for left-winger Jeremy Corbyn to become leader of the Labour Party, when various parties on the far left turned to support the Labour Party as it was led by a figure who was a mainstay of various demonstrations and political campaigns. The Trotskyist groups were cautious yet were supportive of the Corbyn project (some even incorporated themselves into it), while amongst themselves having differing set of responses to Brexit, and even opposing stances based on what was prioritised – for example, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty (AWL) stood in opposition to Brexit – considering it a right-wing project – and demanded that Corbyn’s Labour Party oppose it, while the Socialist Workers’ Party – which stood outside of the Labour Party calling for it to make the final brake with the EU on the basis that it is a neoliberal institution that would oppose a socialist program. The parliamentary left itself was divided on the issue – which led to Labour’s electoral defeat in 2019. Whatever the conclusions around what the correct stance was, and how the fatal error was committed – the result was another failed project around a Labour left leader, just as it was with Tony Benn before. At least for the Labour left, they are – as they will always be, committed to not just a Labour victory even if the party apparatus is adversarial to them, but to one day control the levers of the party, so that the work towards a New Jerusalem can be realised. In other words, it is a setback – but a setback that for them can and must be overcome. For the revolutionary left outside, and especially inside the Labour Party, it represents at best a blocked route to social transformation, and perhaps a feeling even more pronounced than even among those on the Labour left, that invites a reassessment of their strategy – if not their overall politics – and certainly their relations to a Labour Party quickly reorienting itself towards the right (of course, that question hasalready been answered for some of the parties in question). But if the line about Labour “no longer being a worker’s party” is active again and more so a rallying cry, then it begs the question as to what they stand to gain from hovering close to Labour-adjacent demonstrations.
‘The movement everything, the final goal nothing’
When we take into account the fact that broad left organisations like the People’s Assembly push for a general election, and specifically for a Labour victory – they do so with the belief, to paraphase the American Left, that they can somehow “push Starmer left” or the even less ambitious conclusion, is that the crumbs from the table that you’ll get from Labour will be bigger and more plentiful than with the Tories. The Trotskyist grouplets which occupy these campaign groups generally do not share this illusion, but cynically insist in using demos like the one that took place last week to push for a GE anyway, with some preposterous verbiage about the ‘sancticy of democracy’ or whatnot, knowing full well that British parliamentarianism is a particularly opaque form of government, and therefore lacks any fundamental accessibility to the working class. And when it is pointed out that they are committing to a Labour with an outright anemic social democratic program, the defence is something to the effect of that the contradictions of labourism will expose it for what it really is, and a class-conscious British working class will arise. A suggestion to readers unconvinced by this line would be to press on this point to anyone committed to uttering it, and ask them – how exactly did this work out in 1979 – when Callaghan was resolute on bringing the unions to heel, large sections of its members rather than commit to a revolutionary program, put Margaret Thatcher in power? Or in 2007, when Blair was finished and New Labour had almost completely ran out of steam, on the eve of the Great Reccession – the ‘new workers’ party’ somehow failed to materialise? And if the responses to these questions are less then edifying, suggest that maybe waiting on the failure of Labour governments for class consciousness to spontaneously emerge out of disaffected labourism is really fucking stupid?
That said, it would be remiss to leave out that the Communist Party of Britain (CPB), while not inclined to utter this spiel, also broadly agreed that a GE should be held on the basis of democracy and to support the some of the ‘progressive’ policies Labour still has, such as they are. Any suggestion that stalking labourism and the organisations that it has significant sway in has dulled their radical politics does not invite reflection. This is particularly problematic among Trotskyist groups which, having presented itself possessing a revolutionary edge that the Communists no longer had, replicated many of its flaws in addition to its exhausted strategies in entryism in perpetua to Labour.
What if we said, ‘I’m sick of this shit, here’s what we’re going to do’?
Just Stop Oil, an environmentalist group now known internationally for their public disruptions, may to some engage in a form of protest that seems Dadaist in style. But their brand of direct action makes a clear point: in a world hostage to runaway climate change – there is no time to stop and appreciate public art. Just Stop Oil had since then escalated their protests to defacing car dealerships, and blocking the M25. The British state has responded in kind by arresting several of their activists, and intensifying this process in preparation of the COP27 meetings. At the very least, Just Stop Oil have been clear – they lay the blame on governments unwilling to commit to a transistion away from fossil fuels, and are not swayed by hollow promises from leaders of so-called progressive parties. Likewise, said leaders by dint of electoral calculation and the desire to purify any iteration of Corbynism also are more than happy to denigrate and dismiss Just Stop Oil, and utter a commitment to ecomodernist responses to climate change.
The Sunak government has also retained the anti-immigration policies characteristic of the previous two governments, and is indeed likely to see an intensification from that period. The Home Secretary Suella Braverman pushes the boundaries of parliamentary respectability by using dog-whistle rhetoric describing Britain as victim to a hostile invasion of immigrants, particularly those originating from Albania – using the moral panic of Albanian gangsters. The nationwide Anti-Raids Network is a mobilised couter-power to brutal state racism towards migrants unfettered by labourism and its consistutionalist instincts. The same is also true of renters’ unions which have also been clear that that they will not subordinate their task of defending and organising renters, and taking a militant stance against landlords – private or corporate (local councils), and also likewise recognise that however supportive of their goals that individual councillors may be, the agenda of the councils that they represent are fickle, and willing to enforce evictions in the properties that it has ownership over, or even support the claims of landlords – the most vulnerable of these renters will be immgrants with ‘No Recourse to Public Funds’ (NRPF) exculding them from access to various forms of benefits.
The General Election if and when it comes may be won by the Labour Party, but whatever the form of government, we are looking at another decade of austerity at the very least. The sites of resistance demand a space that will not simply be curtailed into a parliamentary agenda, and certainly does not need (grumpy) sheepdogs with a radical veneer doing aiding in parliamentary dilution based on some attachment to a ‘norm’ (really a Thatcherite innovation) of bourgeois democracy. It is not a ‘class war government’ that is creating immersation of the working class, it is class war, period. At the end of the day, when a Labour government engages in the same repressive policies, the same ‘culture war’ obsessions, and a similar acquiescence to business elites, it will be the parliamentary left that apologises on behalf of the Labour Party for not living up to whatever expectations that it believes that its supporters have, will of course engage in resistance to the worst of said government’s measures, but will be constrained by the demand of loyalty to the party. We need not wait for this to happen. What we need is a strong left current independent of parliamentary limitations, and perhaps one that synthesises the aforementioned organisations committed to direct action against an increasingly repressive state, and the complicity of the major parties in Parliament. How this will happen, I have no idea. But it there’s one thing that is clear, that stalking the parliamentary left to build class struggle is not a viable option.
Notes
* The term ‘tankie’, initially used to mock members of the Communist Party of Great Britain who were too uncritical of the Soviet Union – particularly its aggressive enforcing of the Warsaw Pact (Hungary, Czechoslovakia) and came to describe a faction or tendency within the CPGB, is now deployed by Monbiot to mock those who are opposed to the war in Ukraine. If anything can be said about the term – it’s that it lost the power of its original connotation.
See also
Enough Is Enough
Parliamentary cretinism
Extra-parliamentary left
Politics is not just what happens in Parliament
Labour left
Labour Party and the trade unions
The People’s Assembly Against Austerity
British Trotskyism
Entryism
United front (What Trotskyists who supported this believe that is what they are doing)
On the 20th October 2022, Liz Truss resigned as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Given a rebrief from scrutiny due to overseeing the arrangements for the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, calamity ensued as soon as her then Chancellor of the Exchequer introduced introduced a mini-tax budget that was to impose a £2,500 increase in annual payments for gas and electricity, a reduction to 19% to the basic income rate tax brought forward to April 2023, and a 45% tax cut for those earning over £150,000/annum removed; stamp land tax cuts as a wink and nod to large property investors. The budget also announced that those on the UC take a more active approach to finding work that pays, or face sanctions, and a reverse on the 1.25% rise on National Insurance contributions (NICs).It was a budget that had proven to be deeply unpopular, with a lack of clarity on how the tax cuts are going to be payed for – the slump in the bond market had thrown the Bank of England into a panic, so by the time the 2022 Conservative Party Conference took place, it was already being walked back. Kwasi Kwarteng found himself out of a job merely a month into the job, and was replaced by Jeremy Hunt, who jettisoned the mini-budget completely. Internal warfare within the Conservative Party consumed the Truss government and the political legitimacy she had to lead. Suella Braverman resigned from her post as Home Secretary on the 19th October 2022, leaving Grant Shapps to replace her – he had formerly being the Transport Secretary and nemesis of the striking transport unions.
Somehow, the prospect of being electorally steamrolled by the Labour Party was something that the Parliamentarian Tories were resigned to – but sensing Truss’ unrepentant tone, insisting that her mini-budget represented a communication problem rather than the policy that was the problem. It cemented in the minds of many of these MPs that Truss represented a threat to the national, rather than political interest. Over the past week, meetings with the 1922 Committee discussed the feasibility of a Truss premiership into a GE, and the possibility of her removal. Apparently, to them it represented enough of a crisis to forgo all their rulings around giving the leader a year – something which they were already reviewing during the Johnson premiership. On October 19, 2022, Truss in Prime Minister’s Questions struck a defiant tone to Keir Starmer – who sensed weakness, the former insisting she ‘wasn’t a quitter’, despite knowing full well she was living on borrowed time. The following day, she resigned – at 45 days, Liz Truss was the short-serving Prime Minister in British history.
The rush for a successor had come to a contest from a pool of MPs to place on the final ballot, where the only involvement from the wider membership was to confirm the winner. The PCP had already indicated that they had already had preference for Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt. There was a suggestion, that became increasingly serious was of Boris Johnson returning again – with a social media compaign, involving Jacob Rees-Mogg had already underwent – tweets such as #BorisOrBust and #BackBoris. Johnson, despite his allies insisting that he had the required support of 100 MPs (almost ceertainly a lie), and intimations of his desire to run – suddenly pulled out.
Johnson seemed to sense that it was a losing battle for him when only 62 MPs publicly announced their support – in contrast to Sunak easily securing 152. Johnson loves being loved, and more so having a stacked hand to victory. Penny Mordaunt failed to secure the 100 nominations and pulled out, resulting in Rishi Sunak winning the leadership race, becoming leader of the Conservative Party and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on 25th October 2022.
Sunak is regarded as a ‘safe pair of hands’ who will not resist the call to implement spending cuts to public services and issue a second round of austerity. He built up a lot of goodwill (some of which was lost via Partygate) with the British public with his ‘Covid Keynesianism’ in furloughs and ‘Eat Out To Help Out’ schemes. Those of us who are poor and on Univeral Credit aren’t as inclined to sing his praises: Make no mistake, Sunak is a “New Rightist”, with all the dismal political instincts that it implies. He is also the richest Prime Minister in British history, with a net worth of £738 million – twice the personal wealth of King Charles III. It’s enough to make Blair green with envy.
Sunak is considered by the British commentariat to represent a ‘pre-Brexit return to normality’, even Ian Dunt seems to believe that Sunak’s mistakes will remain within the boundaries of rationality. He must’ve been hungover all day when Sunak announced during his first candidate race that ‘anti-Britishness’ will be met with an expansion of the definition of radicalisation to be met within the remit of the Prevent programme. Also, while he’s sacked 11 Boris & Truss hangers-on and loyalists – he’s brought back Suella “Cultural Marxism” Braverman to serve again as Home Secretary. Kemi Badenoch is Minister for Women and Equalities – Badenoch is quite happy to call transwomen “men”, so this indicates that a Sunak government will be fighting the “war on woke” more fervently than the Johnson one. Cleverly and Hunt retain their positions as Foreign Secretary and Chancellor respectively. Gove comes back into the Cabinet as the Minister for Levelling Up. Mordaunt returns to her position as Leader of the Commons, to her chagrin.
What the hell was that all about?
The simple answer is that this is a crisis of the Conservative Party. I’ve alluded to it earlier, but beyond electioneering apparently, a single project is not something that the Tories can stick to because there are so many competing ones, even after Brexit. The short-lived tenure of Truss and Kwarteng was said to represent capture by the neoliberal Institute of Foreign Affairs, but the embarrassment that ensued actually implementing their program without regard for even attempting to build a settlement suggests contrary to the erroneous points I laid out here, Truss was really unfit for managing the British state, even if she is a fairly decent Tory networker. Interviewed in Politics Theory Other, Richard Seymour seems to be of the opinion that British parliamentary democracy is particularly weak thanks to the influence of powerful (and unrepresentative) interest groups, and the outsourcing of its functions in the form of quangos; and that a fusion of Big Data, new technologies, finance capital and the new media in the culture industry and political parties, blendered into a volatile system, which only so-called ‘disruptors’ can navigate around and set the terms for.
I don’t know what to make of Seymour’s overall argument – the first part about parliamentary democracy I don’t particularly care for, since despite or because the hegemonic presence of parliamentarianism, the actual inner functions of Westminster are notoriously opaque and byzantine. It’s this cover that creates the various non-government networks that MPs are involved in, which is even older than the advent of European neoliberalism that supposedly weakened the link between MPs and the public interest. What I am saying is the degree to which the interests of the public sphere was fully, or even mostly represented through the mechanism of parliamentary democracy is often exaggerated. Revolving door phenomena has been a feature, and not a bug of our politics for a very long time, and indeed, it is baked into parliament rather than infecting it. To me, this is only a few steps above this ‘dark money’ (from Russia) narrative, corrupting the sarcosanct British political system, pushed by the likes of George Monbiot.
The second bit is at least interesting enough because it represents, well, media representation as a form of politics in of itself – and with the demand to represent British capital, and various marketing companies consulting or actively engaged in political parties introduces a terrain which made the image-obsessed era of New Labour took like the 1960s. The kind of politician that can survive in such a rapidly fluctuating environment would be, or had a team capable of manipulating both the media and the boundaries of norms within parliamentary space. A ‘disruptor’, for lack of a word. If this is the only kind of politician who can really thrive, then by Truss’ example, Sunak or even Starmer – if he does lead a Labour victory, have not shown they can last for long in this new setting. The interests of the elites reflected by a frontline politician might not even be enough to ensure survival.
With the ‘revolt of the elites’ addressed, next I’ll talk about this supposed ‘revolt against the elites’ via the call for a general election – essentially a Labour Party call. Why are there large sections of left echoing this call? And in light of everything, should it even be pursued?
The Labour right (1900-) is a term used to define the right-wing of the Labour Party. In the context of this article, it refers specifically to the UK Labour Party and the organisations and groups within or affiliated with the UK Labour Party. Its origins began with the formation of the Labour Representation Committee with the coalition of British trade unionism and the various socialist societies. It is the fusion of the two that produced labourism – a principally reformist movement for working-class power expressed through parliamentarianism. The Labour right is its conservative elements; the union leaders who simply wanted a “fair share” of the profits and were still influenced by Victorian era reformism, and the Fabians – who espoused a gradualist interpretation of the road to socialism.
The people who make up the Labour right today run the gamut from activists, party bureaucrats, union big-wigs, think-tank wonks, party grandees, members of parliament and a few former prime ministers. Lazily, the British press calls them ‘the moderates’ or even the ‘social-democratic wing’. The Labour Party is social democratic. The Labour right, dare I say, is owed a better explanation than that. It’s a broad enough coalition with people who are committed to some kind of localist thought buttressed by an interventionist state, liberal cosmopolitans, to fanboys (and even fangirls) of neoliberal globalisation of the Blairite sort. Generally they are defined by, and openly identify with Fabianism, although Fabianism is not exclusive to the Labour right – among the ‘soft left’, and even among the Labour left you can find Fabians. Fabianism itself degenerated from an incrementalist path to socialism to liberal capitalism. However, its distinctly elitist philosophy remains without debilitation, and so is proudly expressed by the Labour right. Of course, many of them do not have a clear or at least coherent ideology beyond overweening electioneering.
The Labour right has been said to be defined by either strict constitutionalism or philistinism and an incurious hostility to anything beyond its interests. These charges were made however, of labourism in general – left or right, by the British New Left. They believed that labourism was committed almost religiously to the avenue of parliament for its political actions, and lacks any binding theoretical framework explaining its ideology, leading to an incurious hostility to ‘foreign’ ideologies with explanatory power. As suggested before, The Labour left tends to project these tendencies onto the Labour right although the accusations also apply to the Labour left as well. The Labour right exemplify the suggestion of alleged philistinism by declaring that “Labour owes more to Methodism than Marxism”, or other such verbiage, more sophisticated articulations of this rely on some critique of Marxism drawing from some empiricist notion e.g. MacDonald’s ‘evolutionary socialism’, and even ones that aren’t eg. Healey’s invocation of Popper to as a critique of historical materialism, Durbin’s tendency to psychoanalyse the radical left and the radical right*, etc.
It is inaccurate, or at the very least an exaggeration to stay that labourism, and in particular the Labour right did not produce any theorists, and more so that they did not draw from sources external to the domestic context of British labourism, as in the examples of Philip Snowden, R. H. Tawney, Tony Crosland and Richard Titmuss – all of whom were influential even if specifically counting the Labour right. Today’s ‘big thinkers’ in this position are but a few gradients higher than psephologists and campaign strategists – its most formidable currently probably being John McTernan. The Labour right however does play on to this anti-ideological hostility in its dealings with the Labour left to build some conceit that it is more representative of Labour principles than its opposite, easily swayed by Marxist or syndicalist influence when allowed the chance, though it is also true that the opposite suggestion – that they are too prone to the influence of liberalism or even toryism is sure to deeply offend members of the Labour right, even if the charge is usually more provable.
Markers of a Labour right politician is a joint membership of Labour and the Co-operative Party: the latter itself a prime example of an organisation functioning as an empty signifier long after everyone stopped believing in the ideas it represented (in this case, the ideas of the cooperative movement which were pretty parochial and concillatory to the role of capitalists). Should they bother to read or write anything about grand ideas, they’ll have written something in The Guardian or The Telegraph if they want everyone to read it. If they wanted just their mates to read it, it would have appeared in the party publications like New Fabian Essays, Forward, Socialist Commentary, or even Encounter if they have buddies across the pond to worry about the schemes that Uncle Joe cooked for capitalist civilisation. Nowadays, it’s Fabian Review or Renewal. In the online world, if we’re lucky, it might even be openDemocracy or Left Foot Forward.
They have internal pressure groups like Campaign for Democratic Socialism, Campaign for a Labour Victory, Progress, and Labour to Win. They hate ‘parties within a party’ like the Militant Tendency or Momentum. Even if Momentum is not actually a party within a party but basically left-wing Progress with better social media savvy. They overrepresent to the party bureaucracy to the point that ‘the (Labour Party) bureaucracy’ is used synonymously with the “Labour right”, even though the ‘soft left’ are also a sizeable component of this bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is largely composed of jobsworths graduating from the Blairite School for the Terminally Unimaginative Labour Students, and even the National Union of Students – the latter’s former presidents have influential New Labour alumni in Jack Straw and Trevor Philips. Rising Labour star Wes Streeting was also President of the NUS and very influential in Labour Students. The Labour right talks in purple prose about its commitment to the principles of democracy outwards in parliament, but in its internal party affairs, it is anything but, many of them gleefully taking up the jumped-up bullyboy roles they were denied as children. The authoritarian tendencies found in the Labour right is barely justified by an appeal to the need of electoral viability.
The Labour right possess a characteristically chauvinist streak. This is entirely due to the formation of labourism in the first place – and its attempts to balance the importance of class with its loyalty to the nation. When Ramsay MacDonald became its first Prime Minister, the Labour Party became the party of class and nation, but nation foremost – to the MacDonaldites, class is but a component of nation. This line of thinking was concretised throughout the Labour Party, and felt strongly in the party right, until it was sublated by the post-war electoral victory in 1945. It was the experience of the Second World War, and the presence of Labour ministers in the National Government that the leadership of Labour would identify with the agenda of British state. The success of the Attlee Government, the creation of the modern welfare state, and the professionalisation of the higher ranks of the Party, allowed Labour to only speak of ‘national interest’ that it served, and little of class. Ernest Bevin, the most powerful union leader in the country at the time, was emblematic of labourist chauvinism, and a ‘social-imperialist’ if there ever was one. He openly criticised the notion of developmental aid to the British colonies on East Africa on the basis that should they ever develop beyond their status as a dependency – they would become potential competitors. I’ve come across few arguments in favour of underdevelopment so clearly stated without even the pretence of polite respectability, and certainly none by labourists. But this was the racist rhetoric Bevin said. This chauvinism continues even to the modern era – local party campaigns have been held exploiting residential fears around Muslims or immigrants rather than making an effort to dispels these fears; while some it can be chalked up to ‘taking the path of least resistance’ and electoral opportunism, there has been multiple instances where these acts were based on committed beliefs that organisers, candidates, councillors and MPs alike held.
In our social media era, some on the Labour left share a photoplast of the comedian Alexei Sayle, who is not a Labour member – talking about how nice the people on the left of the Labour Party compared to the right of the Party, filled with unpleasant sorts. I want the people who share this photoplast around Facebook and whatever form of social media to understand, that even if this is true, that it is a substitute for an explanation behind the function and aggregate motivations fuelling the Labour right. These people on the Labour right do not undertake the actions they do, simply because they are tosspots. They do it because of an ideological tension unresolved since the founding of Labour, beginning and ending with its desire to integrate itself into the British Establishment with all the chauvinist and imperialist characteristics it implies. The pervading attitudes and practices of the Labour right today are the consequence of this tension.
It really isn’t a personality contest
There’s a saying that in the Labour Party from sentimental types given to the ‘broad church’ stuff that it needs two wings (and a ‘beak’): The left, the right (and the ‘soft left’). The calls for Labour ‘unity’ to tackle its electoral opponents are marred by accusations of factionalism with cynical strategies such as fabricating or exaggerating the details of incidents to the press, personal harrassment and bullying, suppressing or distorting its internal democratic process, and even open alliances with ethnonationalists by members of the Labour right (the documentary “The Labour Files” highlights many of the alleged practices aforementioned). What is now often questioned is that in light of the collapse of Corbynism, whether the Labour Party’s left and right have fundamentally irreconcilable social visions running deeper than their opposition to the Conservative Party**. The question may have something to it in that in many respects, a lot of the historic goals for the Labour Party that occupied the thinking of the Labour right had already been accomplished: the task of labour representation culminated in the Labour post-war government, the modern welfare state was established, addressing healthcare, mass employment, education, industry, etc.; the union leadership were incorporated deeply into company management and even state management; rapid changes in the workforce allowed for greater social mobility, and more fundamentally – a broad political sensibility, dubbed in our history books as “the post-war consensus” on what the new society should had been concretised. Labour thought had become establishment thought, perhaps even hegemonic in the British state, or at least this narrative denies it could ever had been the other way around. All that was left is concerns of the management of society, and even questions away from nationalisation to remove the fetters of a new consumer paradise. There’s also the problem in that sections of the Labour right began to wonder about whether it was even possible to transcend even its labourist features following the greater expansion of the middle class as a consitituency, and this came in the notions of decoupling from the unions and correcting the ‘historic mistake’ of separating from the Liberals. However, even within the Labour right, these are dangerous notions – as many are committed unionists, and so implementing these ideas had been forestalled.
The project of ‘Labour revisionism’ which had emerged in the 1950s was to reject commitments to nationalisation, encourage the expansion of the private sector, focus on commitments to social justice and to shrink the influence of the trade unions on Labour policy. By 1976 it been completely exhausted following the collapse of the Wilsonian “Social Contract”, which would have ensured a wage freeze on workers as Britain entered into austerity as Keynesian economic strategies ceased effectiveness.
New Labour emerging near twenty years after the collapse of ‘Labour revisionism’ represented the most ambitious attempt to push beyond labourism – the goals of the project consciously violated so many traditionally held principles within Labour, that incredulous observers initially assumed it to be a marketing gimmick that was bound to fail electorally. However, the first salvo of the seriousness of New Labour’s intentions was when Tony Blair had managed to succeed where Hugh Gaitskell had failed in the rewrite of Clause Four in the Labour Party Constitution, to reflect a prevalent neoliberal sensibility. New Labour’s tensions during the run up to, and during its time in power was to maintain and even expand privatisation, having accepted the neoliberal dogma that public services represented bureaucracy and inefficiency – and that the market was the best decider of demands and human needs. Incidentally, New Labour was quite content to maintain and even expand the bureaucracy of the party, and to centralise policy and decision-making to a managerial elite. New Labour had also expressed a hostility towards trade unionism that was unsurpassed before or since – maintaining all the anti-trade union legislation built from the Thatcher years, and even boasting of the unpalatable environment for trade union actions in Britain.
Even so, New Labour had failed like the ‘revisionists’ before them: While New Labour attempted to court wealthy donors so that they could flood the party with enough money to sever the connection with the trade unions, or at least saturate their influence as to make them irrelevant. Many trade unions were indeed infuriated enough by New Labour’s attitude towards them and the policies they implemented to disaffiliate from it or reduce their financial support – it ultimately did not lead to a final break between the party and the unions. Also, attempts to ‘atone’ for the ‘error’ of splitting with the Liberals in the creation of an electoral alliance was thwarted by the parliamentarians within Labour and the Liberal Democrats – the final nail in the coffin being the removal of the plan’s architect – Peter Mandelson, and the resignation of Paddy Ashdown as the Liberal Democrats party leader. Despite these failures, the ideology of New Labour left enough of an impression that it remains a point of contention in evaluations of what New Labour was – mostly around whether it was a perversion of Labour’s principles, or had been able to articulate them in a manner consistent with the evolutionary process of Labour.
I personally believe that New Labour is and was very much a labourist project in spite of itself: It had the same overidentification with the British establishment consistent with the ground laid out by the MacDonaldites, the ‘corporatist socialists’, and the ‘revisionists’. It carried a chauvinist and imperialist programme even if given a glossy veneer in the era of globalisation: the anti-immigrant culture it fostered, and its ventures in the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq are indicative of this. It also represented a very typical kind of labourite opportunism in shedding its egalitarian commitments to adopt a stance consistent with the capitalist modality it exists in – for New Labour, that is neoliberalism. Where it was new was in how far apart Fabianism could unmoor itself from unionist influence to embed itself in the lifeworld of the ruling class. It’s one thing to get a knighthood or end up in the House of Lords. It’s quite another to set up a network of business-dealings among the elite and creating a highly opaque money-making empire.
Now that capital had again reasserted control over labour, the consumer paradise is now a consumer perdition, which the current Labour still seeks to manage. No grand transformation from the Labour right is forthcoming save perhaps for it internally as the question of “post-labourism” comes up again. The modern social project seems to be an attempted reconciliation of a communitarian vision with blatant servility to the ownership class – even if it succeeds electorally, it will likely fail in this endeavour as New Labour had failed.
The unionists on the Labour right that are actually committed to some completion (or revival even) of labourism justify their bureaucratic tendencies as the means to a modern social democratic project. There exists a very real risk that their tactics are fully instrumentalised, and producing nothing, certainly not anything close to approaching its historic horizon acheived nearly a lifetime ago. Of course, this is also true of the ‘new liberal’/neoliberal elements of the Labour right committed to a social democracy resembling that of the Scandinavians. While they might have a more internationalist vision, they seem to have no solution to the decay of neoliberal centrist consensus in advanced capitalist nations – including the one that had afflicted the country they so envy.
People associated with the Labour right:
Ramsay MacDonald*** – Former leader of the Independent Labour Party, successor to J.R. Clynes as the Leader of the Labour Party. and Labour’s first ever PM: he eventually was expelled from the party in 1931 after forming an alliance with a National Government with Liberals and the Conservatives. He later came to represent the “National Labour Party” until his death in 1937. He believed that class conflict had already come to create the trade unions to rectify social inequality – despite this, he really disliked striking workers, considering it a crude attempt to act out grievances. His conception of ‘socialism’ envisioned workers as with capitalists and even the aristocracy as playing essential interconnected components in society akin to a cell. In this respect, he saw socialism as a matter of fairness and equity, not class conflict, in a national body. Lenin dismissed him as an opportunist. Clement Attlee at one point even compared MacDonald’s vision to that of a fascist.
Philip Snowden*** – One of Labour’s foremost economists, until he wasn’t – in Labour that is. His economic policies resembled Gladstonian liberalism, despite his belief that socialism would grow out of the old order. Wrote The Christ That Is To Be in 1903. Once regarded as a man on the left, Snowden joined MacDonald in the National Government and denounced his former colleagues in the Labour Party.
R.H. Tawney
Ernest Bevin – Trade unionist, chauvinist and imperialist statesman: Bevin led the Transport and General Workers Union, was highly influential in the Trade Union Congress (TUC). Thus, the failure of the 1926 General Strike can be placed on his burly shoulders. An illegitimate child, he was born into poverty, his firmly labourist outlook was formed in the industrial unrest of the 1910s as an official in the Docker’s Union. A skilled organiser and bureaucrat, he became a key member in the National Government during the Second World War, and later edged out Hugh Dalton for a position as Chancellor in Clement Attlee’s Cabinet. He struck an unlikely friendship with the economist John Maynard Keynes whose models were to shape the capitalist world – Bevin took the time to grasp the economics and keenly understood the implications for Keynesian policies on setting up a planned economy via public control of industry, and state intervention of finance. He was instrumental in the founding of NATO and the Information Research Department (IRD) – the latter tasked with disinformation, and pro-colonial and anti-Communist propaganda. A boorish, hectoring sort – he was a chauvinist par excellence and largely unconcerned with the affairs of other nations save for how they could advance British interests. Even Andrew Adonis regards him as an “unreconstructed imperialist” for his call to expand the Commonwealth countries and to take on a more ‘hands-on’ approach to the administration of the Empire. Well known for his enthusiastic declaration for a British atomic bomb – “We need to have one of those things and slap a bloody great Union Jack on it”.
Evan Durbin
Bessie Braddock
T.H. Marshall
Antony Crosland – Influential ‘revisionist’ theorist, and MP for Grimsby. He argued that the post-war welfare state had flattened class tensions to the point of negligence, and what had emerged was a ‘post-capitalist’ society. The implication was that this rendered social revolution unnecessary and had rendered Marxism erroneous and a dangerous error at that. Curiously, Crosland did not link the prosperity offered to the post-war welfare state with neocolonial gains, but apparently it was common for labourists of various stripes even today to overlook these things. An anti-communist, he supported Britain’s aquicision of the atomic bomb and was a regular contributor to the Atlanticist CIA-funded Encounter magazine. He spat teeth when Denis Healey accepted the IMF loan to the tune of $3.9bn – issuing in a three-year austerity, and destroying any chance of him seeing his egalitarian vision of Britain. He denounced the IMF, and the Callaghan government as “the most right Labour government [in] years”, He passed away in 1977. He was a source of inspiration to the New Labour project which hosted the 50th anniversary of his seminal book, The Future of Socialism in 2006 to the Fabian Society. New Labour, of course were actively neoliberal, and did more than just put in monetarist policies that Margaret Thatcher ran with. Just one of many in the line of bad weathermen declaring the abolition of class struggle since Eduard Bernstein.
Hugh Gaitskell – Labour leader from 1955 to 1963. One of the army of university-educated wonks that Labour gained, Nye Bevan described passingly described him as a “desiccated calculating machine”. He further pissed off Bevan by introducing charges in the NHS for dentistry, but Bevan sought not to antagonise the former when he became party leader, mindful of his earlier marginalisation. He did take rather curious positions for a man so influential to the Labour right – he was critical of the Suez crisis, finding rare common ground with the emerging Campaign for Nuclear Disarmanent, and opposed integration into the European Economic Commitee. Beyond that, he was a very firm Atlanticist opposing unilateral nuclear disarmanent reinforced by his anti-Communism. His attempts at forging a ‘post-labourist’ sensibility were met with limited success – after Labour’s election loss in 1959, he took aim at Clause Four and lost that battle, even so ‘Labour revisionism’ was in ascendancy and took a dominant role in the political expression of the Labour Party. While alternate history enthusiasts fantasize about what would’ve happened if Gaitskell didn’t die and led the party to victory in 1964, the ‘left-wing’ Harold Wilson had come to accept ‘revisionist’ ideology and practice, so the question is pretty irrelevant.
Denis Healey – a ghoulish figure motivated by realpolitik, he was a Communist before in Harold Wilson’s words, “[taken] in hand into the RAND Corporation of America, where he was brainwashed and came back very right-wing”. From then on, he became a fierce anti-Communist and committed Atlanticist and integral to Britain’s nuclear strategy. Had connections with the IRD and the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom. Healey was heading the Ministry of Defence as it supported the reactionary military officers led by Suharto to launch a coup against the left-wing President Sukarno in Indonesia. The result was a violent purge of suspected Communists and trade unionists leading to the deaths of 650,000 people, and Indonesia becoming a corporatist military dictatorship led by Suharto. During the third Wilson government, he boasted of putting in a budget “that will make the rich howl in anguish”, only to go cap in hand to the IMF for a loan. Britain received $3.9bn in exchange for an imposition of austerity measures. Retrospective assessments suggest that the IMF loan was even unnecessary, which is just too bad – because they were exactly what brought an end to the five-year tenure of Labour, brought in Margaret Thatcher, and led to 18 years of Conservative dominance.
Roy Hattersley – Once regarded as “the doyen of the Labour Right”, Hattersley headed the renogitation of terms between of UK membership in the EEC, but this period is better known for him heading the UK in the “Cod Wars” with Iceland – the dispute being fishing rights in the North Atlantic Ocean. He served as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party between 1983 to 1992, during the period of ‘modernisation’ under Neil Kinnock, despite him being long past his prime. Hated the MPs who left Labour to form the Social Democratic Party, regarding them as turncoats. Became a critic of New Labour as representative of “old right” of party, although of course was critical of the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.
Dianne Hayter – Former member of the NEC, and veretan of ideological struggle against ‘hard left’ as part of the organisation Solidarity. Wrote Fightback! chronicalling her experiences and that of her comrades in thwarting the left’s ascendacy in the party.
Margaret Beckett
Patricia Hewitt
Tony Blair
Gordon Brown
Peter Mandelson
David Miliband
Hilary Benn – War hawk. One of the central figures behind the ‘chicken coup’ during the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, only to be thwarted by the support of the wider Labour membership base.
David Blunkett – Formerly of the left, turned a hard right. Cruel towards benefit claimants, opposed teaching of LBGTQ+ relationships, and tried to accelerate deportations of asylum seekers. Also authorised bulk collection of data from telephone communications without oversight.
Simply put, the term “Third Way” in politics has been commonly used to denote a position said to be either a mediation or simply a distinction from two sharply opposing political ideologies. For this reason, there are many times, particularly during the 20th century where the term “third Way” was used to describe an ideology or framework that is supposedly novel and better than the two contrasting ideologies it competes with.
Democratic socialism during the Cold War, especially as practiced by Chile’s Salvador Allende and France’s Francois Mitterand, often declared itself as a ‘third way’ between capitalism and communism. Ironically, France and Chile were affiliated to differing blocs – France is a NATO power, and Chile under Allende hovered closely to the socialist bloc.
‘Ordoliberalism’, a sort of German proto-neoliberalism which emphasized the state maintaining a proper environment for competition in a market-based economy, and actively seeks to prevent the emergence of cartels and monopolies. Some ‘ordoliberals’ had even used these principles in pursuit of their idea of social justice – anticipating ‘left’-TINAism and New Labour by about half a century. Wikipedia brings a definition describing it as a third way between Classical liberalism and collectivism, but the ‘ordoliberals’ were really a reaction to Nazism, which is not all that collectivist. Having gone through the Weimar system and Nazism, the ‘ordoliberals’ decided on an economic system which was opposed to the welfare state, yet saw the state intervene to maintain price stability.
Fascism was seen as a ‘third way’ alternative to capitalism and Bolshevism – both of which undermined the “volk”, or the “nation” as fascists generally put it. For Mussolini, fascism represented an age where the demand of politics that demanded a ‘rational order’ i.e. liberalism, parliamentary democracy, communism etc. had been exhausted. German fascism – or Nazism, was overtly racist and eliminationist, as seen its “racial hygiene” and sterilization programs targeted at people with various physical and mental disabilities, and sexual minorities. Even so, fascism seeks both to create a binding national politic with a ‘national myth’ to weave social ties, but also to construct sharp social hierachies and a social and cultural purity to in the name of maintaining national strength. So racial and sexual minorities, and foreigners are likely to be targeted by the policies of fascist societies. Fascism while appropriating many concepts from socialist movements (workers’ struggle, vanguardism in some cases, etc.), it maintains the existence of private property – indeed, Fascism comes to power with the support of major capitalists. In fascist corporatism, heads of private industry determine working conditions, prices, working hours, etc. while independent workers’ organisations cease to exist without input from the State in these matters. The State subordinates both the private sphere and civil society to its function.
See also: ‘fascism is capitalism in decay’, Was fascism ‘rational’?
‘Yugoslav socialism’ or “socialist workers’ self-management” was a system adopted by the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and described as a ‘third way’ between Western capitalism and the Soviet socialism – including the Eastern Bloc. It implemented socially-owned cooperatives – allowing the workforce control over various aspects of production and decision-making within the enterprise, under a market-oriented system subject to increasing liberalisation over the decades – particularly after the death of Josip Broz Tito. Implemented in the 1950s and lasting until the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1992, its emergence was the consequence of Tito’s defiance of Stalin over the geopolitical situation of the Balkans*, souring relations between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union and culminating in Communist Party of Yugoslavia’s expulsion from the Cominform. Yugoslavia had beforehand maintained a command economy consistent with the communist governments at the time, but following the split, the party leadership pursued an economic approach that in their eyes eschewed bureaucracy, emphasized self-management and instilled discipline into the workforce. Markets were allowed on the basis that Yugoslavia sought to have enough capital accumulation to trade with the West and have access to its markets in light of the cooling of relations with the Soviets. These relations somewhat improved in the mid-1950s after Stalin’s death, but Yugoslavia was insistent on pursuing its own way to socialism. As for the West, Yugoslavia began to accept more foreign capital from the US, to build its infrastructure under a set of conditions demanding greater market liberalisation. The most standout example was the IMF package given in 1983, which made demands so stringent that the country was unable to access credit to its own central bank and fell into austerity and then a recession. Other loans from the IMF finally led to internal tensions between the constituent republics and, well…balkanisation entering the 1990s – with the violent breakup lasting a decade. As far as systems go, this was one of the better Third Ways, in my opinion. Czechoslovakia was also beginning to attempt a similar approach to the “socialist worker’s self management”, only to be shut down by the Soviets invading it, justified by accusing the country of deviating from Marxism-Leninism and violating the Warsaw Pact; the example of Czechoslovakia in particular is subject to liberal maudlin nonsense due to the popular slogans used in this period**.
See also: Socialist Yugoslavia, socialist workers’ self-management
Third World socialism presented itself as an alternative to capitalism and communism. This approach was coloured by the independence movements and decolonialisation process taking place across what would become the Third World. Much of the Cold War was fought for the influence of these territories – The US now presented itself as promoting freedom and democracy with imperialism increasingly seen in a negative light on the international stage***, while the Soviet Union presented itself as an anti-imperialist and anti-colonial force – even as it itself was accused of imperialism by the West and later China and Albania****, providing assistance on many occassions to the newly independent Third World nations on several fronts. Many Third World nations sought to pursue an independent line from competing sides of the Cold War, notably culminating in the Non-Aligned Movement, but otherwise found themselves closely drawn to one faction over the other (though that was also dependent on the period), and even in some cases – tried to play the Americans and Soviets off against each other. The countries that chose to implement socialism were drawn in closer relations to the Soviet Union or at least accused of being all but satellites, and found themselves targeted by the Western powers – especially the US, in various destabilisation plots and attempted coups. Third World socialism had had sub-categories within it such as Arab socialism (Ba’athism), African socialism, Asian socialism, Melanesian socialism, Islamic socialism, Buddhist socialism, and more. In the 1960s and 1970s, they were characterised by their developmentalist economic policies – a protectionist framework with high tarriffs on imports and high concentration on internal markets of domestic products. Many of the nations which implemented this model seemed to grow wise that developmentalism was convenient for the West, in that it dictated a program consistent with the historical-social practices in Europe and the US – attempts to pursue an independent model were stymied by coups, invasions or even changes in direction in national and foreign policy. The collapse of the Bretton-Woods System in 1971, resultant debt crisis of 1980s in several Latin American countries, and the deployment of IMF-proposed “structural adjustments” ensured that various aspects of Third World socialism were stillborn, surviving mostly in South East Asian “actually existing socialism”, Cuba and the “Pink tide” in Latin America. Many advocates of this approach believe that the greatest impediment to its remergence is unipolarity in the form of American hegemony, and are supportive of America’s imperial decline/the emergence of rival great powers to recreate a multipolar world. That said, the reason why Third World socialism lasted as long as it did is because of the presence of a socialist bloc. Even assuming that it is still socialist, whatever bloc China exists in will not be anti- or even non-capitalist. China has also been at best, non-committal (and even adversarial) to various liberation struggles and socialist projects across the world since the 1970s. It is unlikely to change this trajectory after pursuing it for 50 years****.
See also: Third World, Non-Aligned Movement, 1955 Bandung Conference, Nehru and China, Nkrumahism, African socialism, Socialism and the Arab world, Ba’athism, Socialist feminism and the third world,Pink tide
Muammar Gaddafi of Libya formalised and endorsed a version of Third World socialism he explicitly called “The Third Way” or “The Third International Theory”, contrasting it with liberal democracy and Soviet Marxism; and drawing upon Islamic socialism, pan-Africanism, Yugoslav socialism, and the Three Worlds Theory promoted by Mao Zedong in the mid-1970s as influences. Gaddafi eschewed representative democracy – comparing it to the struggles of tribes of clans, in favour of direct popular democracy through people’s congresses. For Gaddafi, socialism was a matter of pursuing social and economic justice and in the Green Book – he proposed that workers should control the enterprises in which they work in, that private property should be eliminated, that living in a domicile made it yours, and that the surplus wealth should be put to the good of society. Libya was and is an oil-rich country, and so Gaddafi supplied oil exports to the West to fund his social welfare policies, urban development projects, and to build his national army. Libya received sanctions in relation to the Pan Am 103 airline bombing over Lockerbie, United Kingdom (Scotland) in 1988 and its refusal to hand over the alleged culprits. The result was Libya’s gradual economic decline. In the 2000s, Gaddafi pressed for a rapprochement with the UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W. Bush in light of the War on Terror, allowing UN inspectors into Libya for WMDs, and signing a deal to allow BP to operate in Libya. Whatever worth Gaddafi’s latest iteration of the “Third Way” still had for Libya as a national ideology, it had ceased having any promise for anti-imperialism. Gaddafi himself switched from calling for Palestinian liberation, to calling Palestinian nationalism as false as Zionism. Upon the 2011 Libyan civil war, and Gaddafi’s death, Libya removed Gaddafi’s “Third International Theory” as its guiding ideology.
See also:Muammar Gaddafi, The Green Book, Libya under Gaddafi
Finally, the contemporary expression of the “third way” in politics is…the “Third Way”. The “Third Way” has the distinction in the fact that it self-consciously calls itself the Third Way other than ‘Third International Theory’, ‘ordoliberalism’, ‘socialist worker’s self-management’ and what have you. Drawing from the ‘risk society’ sociological model of Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens, Third Way politics came at a fascinating time, with somewhat millenarian proclamations such as ‘the end of history’ and ‘the end of ideology’ that were made following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. Giddens did not subscribe to either belief, but noted that modernity had changed significantly – and believed that globalisation was creating a new kind of citizen – conscious of their place in the world, and of global affairs, and of the worldwide problems that demand attention by international institutions e.g. climate change, environmental disasters by new technologies like nuclear power, etc. For Giddens, this meant that the ‘old forms of organising’ (such as trade unions) and large-scale transformation through social programs initiated by centralised state management (which Giddens identified in what he called “old-style social democracy”) were obsolete. The Third Way was advertised as bypassing the ‘old Left’ and the ‘new Right’ for a viable centre. More explicitly, it supposed a space between social democracy and neoliberalism for centre-left politics to occupy. The Third Way is identified with New Labour and the New Democrats – with cross-pollination between both parties in terms of political strategy, though much of the groundwork had been laid out by the Australian Labor Party leadership, specifically the governments of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating between 1983 to 1996 – which loosened economic tariffs, issued deregulation, and held anti-union legislation. Blair and Clinton – two Third Way politicians who were leaders at the same period were characterised increasingly by personality-driven politics (all the more startling with the former since the UK until Thatcher repudiated a “presidential style” to the premiership). They explicitly rejected what they regarded as “the old-style politics” which for Blair meant the union influence in the Labour Party*****, and Clinton repudiated the unions and various coalition organisations. Third Way politics for the ‘centre-left’ that practices it, is a concession to or a belief in the free market as the best determinant of resource allocation. It means stringent anti-union laws by the parties of labour, it means a ho-hum attitude to deindustrialisation in many former industrial strongholds, welfare-to-work schemes advertised as Clinton put it “a hand-up, not a handout” and punishes those who “don’t hold up their end” among the unemployed, and what social welfare programs it does do are funded by public-private ‘partnerships’ – an incursion into the public sphere by private companies until the social services are hollowed out and privatised. For democratic socialists or more ‘earnest’ social democrats, Third Way ironically represents the ultimate betrayal – despite themselves historically positioning themselves as a ‘third way’. Revolutionary socialists regard this kind of politics as the logical conclusion of the former pursuits under capitalism – which they insist cannot be managed, certainly not for very long. After the global recession of 2007-9, Third Way politics went into sharp decline. There’s been a lot of curious talk around “polarization”, “populism”, and such since then from the commentariat which speaks a lot on the sort of cultural mores set in when this kind of politics was dominant. The only one earnestly pursuing it is France’s Emmanuel Macron who practically boasts his centrism. Anthony Giddens himself had criticised New Labour on various matters, such as its reliance on spin, its inability to tackle irresponsible businesses or curb massive pay-offs to leaving boardroom executives of collapsing firms. In the 2000s, there was something of an academic debate (and revived in the late 2010s among commentators comparing it to the Corbyn leadership) as to whether New Labour was really neoliberal – these people apparently thought that neoliberalism was something that Conservatives did – rather than a globalised process in the current era of capitalism, and won’t concieve of a left or centre-left party or leadership advocating neoliberal policies. Leftists generally do not have such illusions, and have over a century of experiencing (or claiming) betrayals and concessions to hold on to such naive notions. For those at home or abroad: yes. New Labour was neoliberal. We can’t understand what New Labour was trying to do, and why it did the things that it did without this understanding, or why Margaret Thatcher when asked what her greatest achievement was, replied “New Labour”. A not mentioned feature of Third Wayism in practice that isn’t mentioned very much is their advocacy of hard borders – which runs up against their projected liberal universalism. A manifestation of this leads to the promotion of anti-immigrant rhetoric, and an opportunistic championing of nationalism, undermining the “culturally liberal, fiscally conservative” adage. If Third Wayism is anything, its triangulation writ large – given the pretence of an ideology.
See also: Third Way, The Third Way: A Renewal of Social Democracy, New Labour, New Democrats, Anthony Giddens, risk society, ‘progressive-neoliberalism’
So there you have it. A history of “third ways”. Not included is Trotskyism presenting itself as a third way between capitalism and Stalinism. Maoism as a ‘third way’ from the capitalist world and Soviet revisionism, the New Left a ‘third way’ between labourism and Stalinism, Keynesianism as a “third way” between lassez-faire capitalism and socialism, Harold Macmillian’s “middle ground” between capitalism and socialism (really social democracy), and so on. So what is to be learned? Well, that so-called “third ways” rarely last long, and that it’s really, really hard to distinguish a position as “different” from opposing ideas – especially if they’re still integrated in this “third way” project. A lot of this stuff has been earnest, but a lot more had been outright opportunistic.
Notes:
*- This ‘Balkans situation’ was Tito sending armed support to the Communist Party of Greece and the partisans of Albania, and pursuing a pan-Balkan unification project – going as far as to set up military airbases in Albania. This frustrated Stalin due to the detente he held with the other (read:capitalist) Allied forces promising that he would not support revolution by communists (he also felt it impractical to allow sole CPs control due to their marginality over them joining forces with bourgeois nationalists), and in particular the secret deal he set up with Winston Churchill to effectively to split Yugoslavia in two. There was also the fact that the Soviet Union treated the other newly socialist states less as brother socialist nations and more as satellites. Tito’s pursuits in forming partnerships with other Balkan nations like Hungary took place behind the backs of the Soviets on many occasions, and even ignored their calls to moderate the process. In other words, this was Balkan nationalism (specifically a Yugoslav-dominant version) clashing with the realpolitik between the powers of the disintegrating alliance between the UK, US, France & the Soviet Union, particularly the Soviet hegemony over the Eastern Bloc. The result was this plan for a Balkan federation going up in smoke. Enver Hoxha, leader of Albania, while initially receptive to the merging of Yugoslavia with Albania – changed his position, in part due to loyalty to Stalin, but also more importantly – he felt that that the Albanians were being deliberately stunted and subordinated to the Yugoslavians. Once the split between Tito and Stalin became irreconcilable, Hoxha denounced Tito as a revisionist, and continued to do so until his death. The leadership of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia purged members suspected of being pro-Stalin or ‘Cominformists’ in response – many of the alleged ending up imprisoned, exiled or killed.
**- As shitty as the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia was, if the example of Yugoslavia is anything to go by, then the western capitalist institutions would only be too happy to “assist” in the project that Alexander Dubcek was pursuing through its structural adjustment loans, and perhaps starting early the hideousness and misery that followed the collapse of Yugoslavia. That said, both the slogan “socialism with a human face”, and the appearance of tanks from the Soviets to ‘correct’ Czechoslovak errors only served to harm communism as a global force more than CPCz could have done if left to his own devices. This is exactly why liberals romanticise his image and that of the Prague Spring specifically because it failed. No one was giving Nguyen Van Linh any humanist awards.
***-It can be said that the Second World War did quite a lot to discredit the idea that empires are good, having them is ‘normal’ for strong countries, and any talk about its supposed benefits to the colonies. So, imperialist countries simply stopped talking about that stuff. After the war saw the rise of universal humanism as a project, and decolonisation came at a peculiar time in light of these developments. For instance, the United States, if it was going to present itself as a beacon for freedom and democracy, had to improve its human rights and address the Civil Rights Movement. It also sought to improve relations in the developing world setting up agencies like the Peace Corps, yet it was organisations like it that were used as clear examples of the US’ neocolonialintentions.
****- The Sino-Soviet split drew accusations from China that the Soviet Union had become social-imperialist (“socialist in name, imperialist in character”) and a threat to world peace worse than the United States. Hidden beneath the accusations of revisionism and counter-accusations of adventurism were disputes over foreign policy, national security, global and regional influence, and boundaries (China challenged the Soviet Union over some of the territory of its borders, and was also incensed when the latter supported India during its border skirmishes in 1962) and determining the direction of the global communist movement and which power was more relevant. The Soviet Union initiating ‘de-Stalinization’ presented a problem on two fronts – firstly because of how the Soviets treated other socialist states as subordinate to them, and also because it presented Stalin’s contributions to Leninism as a great error – something that wouldn’t wash with Mao if he was to present himself as the inheritor, foremost developer and new theoretical head of Marxist-Leninist practice. China was also displeased with the “peaceful coexistence” with capitalism about-turn, since it implied the notion that Marxism-Leninism; “Marxism in the age of imperialism” is incorrect, or needed correcting on the point of imperialism as it existed in the modern world, and how to respond to it. Hoxha echoed many of the critiques Mao made of the Soviet leadership, and these critiques themselves also partially hid an anxiety around Albania’s national security – fearing a possible invasion from Yugoslavia and a Soviet Union shifting its own foreign policy significantly enough to ignore it. In any case, Maoism as it synthesized into a coherent ideology (a process that would not be formally completed until the 1980s) around the world echoed China’s charges against the Soviet Union as social-imperialist and the “Soviet bloc” as neocolonial puppets of the Soviet Union, and indeed, many Maoists to this day uphold this charge. In a lot of important ways, this had brought importance to Maoism and its revolutionary potential and influence in the iterations of Third World socialism. However, China’s influential role in world revolution would not last. The accusation of ‘Soviet social-imperialism’ also coincided with the West’s own accusations of the Soviet Union as imperialist, and was still upheld even after China initiated relations with the United States in 1972 (which in turn dissolved China’s own curiously warm relations with Albania), implying that the charge was largely – perhaps mostly over China’s national interests conflicting with the Soviet Union’s, or at least it had increasingly came to define it. The subsequent note will explain a bit more of this in detail.
*****- China’s foreign policy in the 1970s during and after the process of normalisation of relations with the United States took an…unusual turn, hedging closely to the United States’ own in some cases, and mostly acted out to spite the Soviet Union, than to challenge imperialism. Rather than support the Bangladesh liberation movement, it instead sided with the Pakistani military junta mostly due to its long-standing positive relations with Pakistan. The consequence was that China wouldn’t recognise the state of Bangladesh until 1975. It was also among the first to recognise the government of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, just after the coup that collapsed Allende’s social democratic government and refused to open its embassy to dissidents of the Pinochet government, it supported the right-wing and apartheid South Africa- backed UNITA forces against the MPLA forces supported by the Soviet Union in Angola, supported and continues to support Israel over Palestinian liberation, supported the Khmer Rouge as the Soviets backed Vietnam, fought its own war against Vietnam, and supported the mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Soviets. The period was a reckoning for international communism as it became clear that China was not interested any longer in supporting Third World liberation struggles and world revolution seemed impossible. The collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989 brought home how easily the Communist Party of China could lose power, Deng Xiaoping met with Mikhail Gorbachev to normalise relations between China and the Soviet Union in 1989…on the eve of its collapse. The point is, part of what allowed room for China to behave in this manner is the existing of a socialist bloc what it sought to place itself as the centre of, but that socialist bloc is gone – only outposts are left. China, having accepted market reforms in an era of globalisation had given it less incentive to support revolutionary movements, what China has been doing is using trade that happened to support whatever development programs nations in the Global South were undertaking: this had remarkable benefits for the “Pink tide” governments in 2000s. China’s Belt and Road initiative is seen as a possibility for the Global South to pursue developmental programs with the money from Chinese loans. Whereas the aim to make itself the centre of global socialism failed, its current aim to become central to global trade would at the very least push it to superpower status. The promise of a developmentalism without the strings attached by Western imperialism, or at it is often argued – without China dictating the process – is an alluring one for many contemporary anti-imperialists especially in the Third World, and the creation of a China-led power bloc for these nations in the Global South to join – establishing multipolarity is the last, or the best chance to disrupt Western imperialism following the end of the Cold War. That said, we return again to the absence of the socialist bloc, and more importantly, to the fact that this view appears to underplay class conflict in favour of geopolitical alliances. Even for liberals, observing Latin American politics for example – persistent interference with its politics by the West led to “Pink tide” projects undermined and its leaders overthrown, in place of neoliberal lackeys. The ‘great hope’ for China’s rise and multipolarity is that a new progressive developmentalism can rise, but doing so requires that these countries pursue even so much as a social democratic/progressive-nationalist system, which social democratic or progressive-nationalist governments need to be in place for this to even happen (or the right-wing or centrist governments would have to identify how the policies of the previous government are in their national interest). And in light of the Russia-Ukraine war, consolidation of this bloc came with greater urgency in light of the US’ tug-of-war with China for currency domination. I hope the reader can see why I find this optimism for multipolarity to be a little misguided.
******- That said, as sharp as New Labour’s, particularly Tony Blair’s conflict with the trade unions were, which at one point after Blair’s characterisation of them as “conservatives” opposing his privatisation policies with even GMB of all unions, openly adversarial to New Labour, the grumblings of the party loyalists – even Blair loyalists, never led to a serious consideration of severing the Party’s links to them. They understood that even the ‘high value’ donors like David Sainsbury, Rupert Murdoch and Alan Sugar couldn’t replace the money coming in from the unions. Neo-Blairite posturing from acolytes of the Starmer leadership (naturally immune to “name and shame” by our pliant press) intimating severing the union connection will unlikely lead to anything serious.
Because It Doesn't Affect You 