LENIN'S TOMB

David Harvey on 'The Enigma of Capital'

2009-07-06T16:47:00.004+01:00

Well, since you ask, my own talk was 'okay', though I fear David Edgar did a better job of plugging my book than I did. In fact, he plugged it about three times and quoted extensively from it, and I was very flattered. I'll post a 'version' of my speech another time. Anyway, since Harvey's talk hasn't been posted online yet, I thought I'd do a quick report.

What are the limits to capital, and how does it overcome those limits? This is a pressing issue given the global crisis. We need, at the very least, to understand the he prospects for getting any half-way decent settlement out of it for the working class. Capitalism is a perpetual expansion machine and, as Marx noted, it cannot abide limits. It has to conquer all social and spatial barriers, and "annihilate space with time". A simple way to see this is to describe the capitalist transaction: one starts the day with some value (money), purchases labour power and some means of production and - if one has a good day - generates a surplus which is realised in the market. What then happens at the other end of the transaction? A reasonable person would spend the money on a good time, but a capitalist is coerced by competition to reinvest some of the surplus in expanding and generating even more surplus. Expansion is a structural imperative of the system: capitalism requires compound growth.

Angus Maddison has provided some figures which give a sense of the scale of this. In 1820, $694bn circulated through world markets (on 1990 dollar values). In 1913, it had risen to $2.7tn dollars. By 1950, it was $5.3tn. By 1973, it was $16tn. By 2003, it was $41tn. The current World Bank report puts total world output in current dollar values at $56.2tn. The average compound growth rate has been around 2.2% per annum since 1770. The current position of Gordon Brown and Barack Obama is that they want to restore the world economy to a growth rate of roughly 3%. But while 3% growth may seem feasible when you're talking about a productive system thriving in a few industrial centres of the UK and a few places beyond in 1750, it looks like a different bargain altogether when you have a capitalist system operative in the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, Africa, North America, and all of Europe. Three per cent growth on current output means that the system needs to find profitable investment opportunities for $1.5tn. In twenty years time, the system will have to find profitable investment opportunities for $3tn. This leads to the "capital surplus absorption problem". Where will all this capital go?

In order to circumvent existing barriers and find new avenues for investment, financial innovation is necessary. The savings and investments of capitalists have to be deployed in a new way to perform specific functions, and the history of capitalism is a history of such innovations. If capital is unable to adapt in this way, a new barrier is erected, the circulatory system of capital is obstructed, and investment dries up. Another barrier might be that the inputs necessary for the means of production to produce your desired outputs are not available. This is a point discussed in Capital Volume II. Another problem that might freeze circulation could be excessively well-organised labour, so driving up wages that there is insufficient profit to be had in any major investment. There is also the question of whether capitalists will find the right organisational form and the right disciplinary structure for managing labour, both of which can provide blockages to the system of accumulation. Then there is the problem of effective demand: will there be enough need backed by purchasing power to absorbe your product? If not, yet another blockage is created. Perhaps the largest barrier is that provided by nature, and its inability to sustain the kinds of growth that capitalism requires, both in terms of the shortage of necessary raw materials and in terms of the threat of ecological collapse as the natural system reaches the limits of its tolerance for capitalist production. If these blockage points are not successfully negotiated, the system slows down and capital is de-valued. Reviewing this, we might conclude that the theory of crisis needs to be updated. Any one of these single points can produce a blockage and a crisis in the ability of capitalism to reproduce itself.

The neoliberal strategy of accumulation arose from several crises in the system in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Strong unions and social democratic parties enhanced labour's bargaining power. One way to transcend this limit was initially to encourage immigration. The French relied on Maghrebian labour, the British drew on its empire, the US threw out anti-immigrant legislation in 1965. This strategy didn't work. The other idea was to off-shore, but to achieve this it was necessary to restructure capital accumulation, so that parts production and so on could be moved offshore, which meant reshaping spatial relations with containerisation and new transport technologies. This didn't really take off until the late 1970s. Another idea was to 'invent' Reagan, Thatcher, and Pinochet, people who would really bust up organised labour, destroy its bargaining power and depress wages.

The last solution was to turn to technological innovation, producing technologically induced unemployment. This could only come about effectively if the monopoly capital that characterised the fifties and sixties was broken down to some extent and exposed to competition. Monopoly capital - big auto companies, for example - had been able to meet labour demands and offset it somewhat by raising prices. That was part of the social compromise between capital and labour. This had to be broken for capitalism to repair itself. But to introduce competition, one could no more rely on start-up firms than one could expect a small internet venture capitalist to destroy the Bill Gates oligopoly. It meant opening up the US to foreign competition from rising German and Japanese firms. Detroit has experienced several crises, each worse than the last, as a result of this. But because American capital has preferential access to the American state, each crisis has resulted in a bail-out for US firms, but not their overseas competitors. Heightened competition had another interesting effect - it reduced the profitability of investment in productive industry. It also reduced prices, so that price growth stabilised in the 1980s. Overall, then, low wages, low prices and technological dynamism looked like a satisfactory way for the system to survive. But then, at the other end of the capital cycle, a new problem arose. The US economy and culture was dependent on conspicuous consumption. Consumption accounted for 70% of the dynamism of the US economy (I don't know how Harvey measured this), but where would consumerism come from if wages stagnated? The society became dependent on speculation and debt. A new set of financial innovations had to be developed to resolve not only the problem of allocating capital efficiently, but also ensuring that at the other end, the problem of effective demand was dealt with. Thus, financial institutions would lend money to developers at the same time as they lent money to house-buyers, therefore controlling both the demand for and the supply of housing. But even if buyers' credit-ratings were poor, the financial institutions still had to lend to them in order to realise the investment they'd made in the developers. This partially accounts for the drive toward deregulation and the subsequent 'subprime crisis'.

There is also the question of upper class income. Wages are depressed, but this means that more wealth is accumulated by the rich. Not only that, but successive governments from Reagan to Bush II engaged in a sort of ruling class Keynesianism, slashing taxes for the rich and financing it through debt. The question, then, is what do the rich do with their money. They invest it, of course, but increasingly not in productive industry which, as mentioned before, yields poorer profits these days. Instead they invest it in 'asset values', which are ponzi-like in the sense that any investment automatically raises the value of of the asset being invested in, and thus they have a propensity to produce stock market bubbles. These investment strategies require yet more financial innovation. This has naturally produced several financial crises, variously annotated as 'Black Monday', 'Oh Shit Tuesday' and 'Dead Bankers Wednesday'. It has led to the collapse of major financial institutions long before 2008, notably the Savings and Loans crisis in the 1980s. Between 1987 and 2002, over 1000 banks went under in the US, and the total bailout cost $2bn. Noticeably the worst crises over the last few decades have been property-led, as capitalists have preferred to invest in property rather than productive capital as such, and this has certainly been true of the latest crash and recession. The one thing that is different this time is that the crisis started in the US and went global this time.

This leaves the question of what the ruling class can do now to save its position. One option is to hang in there, defend their assets, and hope to restore something like their previous condition of profitability with the same basic structures of accumulation. Those who have preserved themselves and kept enough money are now in a position to buy up assets very cheap, and this new, narrower class is in formation, a 'bankocracy' based on a set of boutique investment banks which will take the place of Lehman Brothers et al. The assets being given to the banks by various states are not by and large being used to restore lending, but to shore up the existing banks, enable them to buy up others, and consolidate existing class power. They will try to come out of the current crisis with a slicker and more careful mode of control, and are increasingly centralising credit, integrated into the state, but under the control of central bankers. Politically, this class will have tremendous power. They can, if they want, push for the clobbering of labour and the evisceration of remaining social democratic protections, especially if this is necessary to restore the position of financial institutions. There is one serious difficulty for this solution. If there is going to be high unemployment - currently 10% in the US, probably 15% by the year end - then where will effective demand come from? The credit system can no longer back it up. This leads to other forces coming to the fore, arguing for a real Keynesian programme of deficit-financing that is not the same as bailing out the banks, a stimulus programme intended to create full employment and redistribute wealth and incomes. But if this is the only way out of the problem, the US has a problem - they have an enormous debt problem before they start, and politically it is very difficult to defend the redistribution of wealth, even the modest kind that Obama supports. Moreover, for the new phase of accumulation to be viable, it has to involve a total re-design of urban structures so that city life is commensurate with ecological survival. But neither capital nor its political leadership has the foresight and imagination to engage in such a plan. Instead, politicians look for technological fixes to the environmental problem. Interestingly, those who can afford the Keynesian solution are states like China and nearby south-east Asian economies. So, China could potentially lead the system out of the mess.

There are thus two prospects facing the working class. If there is to be a neo-neoliberal solution, then it will so immiserate most workers that some sort of popular uprising is surely indicated. Such a concentration and centralisation of wealth and power is full of peril for us. If there is to be a Keynesian solution, then we have to intervene to see what we can get out of it, and how far it can be radicalised. Keynes supported full employment, a shortening of the working day, the redistribution of income, and it may well be that the adoption of a Keynesian solution will open up opportunities for us to demand these things. There don't appear to be any other options for capital at the moment.

Tariq Ali on Obama and Pakistan

2009-07-05T21:27:00.002+01:00

Filmed by Ady Cousins:

Paul Gilroy on the state of 'black Britain'

2009-07-05T19:24:00.003+01:00

Paul Gilroy always likes to be a little bit "disagreeable", as he puts it, not to say contrarian. And perhaps the bleak prospect before us requires a little discord, after all. It was in this spirit that he addressed the topic of 'black Britain' by arguing that he wasn't sure whether such a place really existed anymore. There is, he argues, no longer any sense of a distinctive black political community. In part this is because the idea of black people 'belonging' to the national community has been won. Some people responded to this by 'moving in' and accepting a multicultural 'British' nationality; some responded by 'moving on', trying to find new networks of solidarity internationally; some gave up, and 'moved out', with Carribean communities disappearing due to migration.

One also has to register the way in which expressions of racism have changed tack in response to gains made by black Britons in the 1980s. The BNP, though not in good faith, argue that they have 'no problem' with the children of hard-working immigrants who helped build the country in the 1950s and 1960s. They say their problem is with those recent immigrants who they claim, falsely, haven't contributed anything. Another response to the gains made has been the sense that somehow racism is no longer a issue, something that has been helped by the shift to religion as the main basis for social divisions, and also by the development of a 'cultural crust' in which black people are integrated into television and popular musical culture. Despite this - or perhaps because of it - casual racialisation especially on issues of crime continues to take place without arousing much controversy. Thus, The Sun labelled the murderers of Ben Kinsella "ignorant animals" - not human, in other words. Meanwhile the story of the murder of two French students, Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez, was treated differently, with the headline "freed to kill". It was a story of failure in the government and prison system, not of barbarian criminals, despite the hours of torture that the killers put the students through.

Partly, what has happened to 'black Britain', says Gilroy, is that it has fallen to the same destructive political culture in which New Labour thrived. The proliferation of NGOs and think-tanks, standing as subsitutes for party and class organisations, meant that talented black intellectuals and activists were creamed off with the promise that the issue of racism could be 'managed' away. In this view, neoliberalism and privatization are not a problem, but rather are part of the new post-racial landscape in which those who led 'black Britain' in the 1980s could become careerists, entrepreneurs, using their oppression to participate in exploitative and racist practises. Baroness Amos, once an anti-racist, feminist scholar, could become a New Labour peer before taking a directorship in Titanium Resources, enriching herself on the bloody trade in tantalum that has contributed to destroying the African continent. Trevor Phillips can also ascend in New Labour's ranks and make money by advising Channel 4 during fall-out over Jade Goodie's racist remarks about Shilpa Shetty. A host of organisations devoted to supporting what might be called 'bourgeois rights' have been drafted into supporting the government, talking about the 'white working class' out of one side of their mouths and 'social cohesion' out the other side.

A new wave of occult managerialism has taken hold, with a preoccupation with the US as the 'future' of race relations. There are few attempts to work outside the official language. Anyone talking of racism is speaking in an arcane, jurassic-era language and can be dismissed. If they want to be taken seriously, they must master the new idiom of management-speak, specifically the terms of 'social inclusion', 'social exclusion' and 'social cohesion'. A particularly laughable example of this is the former editor of a black nationalist magazine called 'Alarm' (I don't think I recorded the name accurately), who has written a book called Me PLC, which tells readers that "your life is your business". Rather like one of those Victorian etiquette manuals, it functions as a neoliberal primer on how to live life as a corporation. It perpetrates a cruel trick on the unwary, as all such books do, persuading people that success is in their reach if only they adulterate their attitude toward the world.

Other dangers in the loss of 'black Britain' are the fragmentation of different 'ethnic' groups, such as during the almost pogrom-like Birmingham riots, twenty years after the Handsworth riots. New media, mobile messages, internet forums and so on helped to disseminate the idea that Carribeans were being ethnically cleansed by Asians, and carried some of the worst incitements. And the underlying situation, the demise of 'black Britain' and the yielding to a more polyglot, divisive racial situation, a polarised multiculture, is what has contributed to the sad reversion to the idea that the US is the future - why can't we have our own Obama? A point, Gilroy avers, that demonstrates a need to inquire further into how official US racism operates. It is precisely by integrating black people such as Rice into the national political leadership that the US state is able to justify its race crimes - during and after Katrina, for example. Rice herself said that she would listen to criticisms from Europeans when they had as much black political representation as America did. But Obama absolves people of the need to think for themselves, and alongside his wife, a valuable cultural asset in global counterinsurgency, fulfil a sort of messianic function (here, he recounts a story of a visit by Michelle Obama to a state school in the East End, with wowed reaction from students who were amazed at being hugged by her, gasping "it was mental!").

Gilroy, though perhaps a little melancholic, is not nostalgic for the 'black Britain' whose rites of passage he has just read. He is interested in escaping from the present impasse, and particularly from the drift toward a US-centric approach to solving the problems of racism and oppression. He suggests as a first solution the need to restore imperial and colonial history in Britain, but also particularly the history of the very struggles that made a 'post-racial' Britain a plausible fantasy. He argues that we need to root the present struggles over civil liberties and the CCTV state in past struggles over policing. And he maintains that we need to universalise the issues of oppression and exploitation - some may insist that class is the axis that universalises such questions, but Gilroy argues that despite his sympathy for this claim, there is no off-the-shelf class answer to the issues that we face today.

I think it's worth adding one thing, as a sort of postscript to a straightforward report. Gilroy, attempting to stay ahead of the game on racism and not get locked down in nostalgia or fetishism, has made sustained efforts to grasp the current structures of racist oppression as well as the resources for resistance - in After Empire and Between Camps, for example. He has attempted to deal with the issues raised by 9/11, and the 'war on terror'. But I notice that he doesn't really get to grips with Islamophobia in any convincing way. I think he takes the idea that what is at stake in such racism is 'religion' as such, far too seriously. On the other hand, there are reductionist temptations lurking in some antiwar analysis - ie, the idea that racism is driven by empire, rather than in the daily processes of capitalism as such. This is a mistake that Gilroy would never make. His attention to the details of 'ordinary' capitalist life - the experience of job markets, schools, prisons, culture, family life, etc - as well as with the ways these intersect with global issues, is one of the things that makes his current writing so vital.

Not dead yet.

2009-07-04T20:16:00.003+01:00

Just checking in. Apologies for the few days of absence, but I have been ill, exhausted and also rather busy. I have been enjoying Marxism, though, and I will do a write-up of some of the talks and festivities at some point.

By far the best talk at Marxism yesterday was Gary Younge's discussion on Obama's election and the fall-out for the left, with much of the discussion following up on last year's assessment. One has to wade through mixed feelings. Testimonials of massive, spontaneous celebrations on Obama's victory in the US, and enthusiasm for his success in the UK, were supplied amply by speaker and audience alike. (I don't mind mentioning that there were a couple of speakers from the audience who were still out of their minds with Obamamania, or so it seemed to me.) Younge reported that in Chicago on the night of the election, cops drove up and down the streets yelling Obama's name through their speakers, while crowds stopped traffic. For days after the result, he swore, white people wearing Obama badges actually smiled at black people. Determinedly. Until they got a smile in return.

It is easy, and enjoyable, to mock this kind of mania. But it is also worth thinking about why it should be. Younge suggested one possibility: it has been a while since white people were asked, in a significant way, to be anti-racist, or to think that things could be better. And when asked, it turned out that there were more anti-racists than people might have suspected. It was a close-run thing: had it not been for Obama winning the mostly white state of Iowa, and proving that enough white Americans could get behind him, there were probably a lot of black voters in places like North Carolina and elsewhere who would have tactically backed Hillary. More importantly, Younge argued, there was a success worth celebrating. In a country with a disgraceful criminal justice system where one third of black males spends time in jail, proving that there could be a black president was important. Moreover, as he also pointed out, it was a comparatively progressive result, and not just because Obama is black - had black voters been asked to rally behind Condoleeza Rice, they would not have done so. Indeed, according to Younge, Obama's campaign marked a divergence - in presentation at least - from the trends in European social democracy and Third Way Democrats. He was not the DLC's man. He was not relying on 'Third Way' rhetoric. He raised expectations. And it was up to the left to gauge how much of the promise was purely symbolic, and how much was real; how far Obama would widen the margins for the left to operate in, and how much he would ultimately fuel cynicism about any progressive agenda by failing to deliver.

Some of us hoped that the frenetic popular activity during the election campaign could somehow be carried on into a movement to keep pressure on Obama. from the left. Younge reported that such hopes have, with some exceptions, not been borne out. Moreover, the success of the Obama campaign also makes it less likely that an independent class-based third party could emerge. So, with people demobilised, the pressure from the public is mainly passive - Obama knows he needs his popularity, and so has to offer something. The healthcare and climate change bills are inadequate, but are broadly in the right direction. Some parts of the stimulus package offer a modicum of support for ordinary Americans. There is some very mildly progressive talk of immigration reform, with pledges to reduce ICE raids and so on. I think one of the better moves recently has been from a right-wing Democrat, Senator Jim Webb of Virginia, who is pushing for a National Criminal Justice Commission to review the whole system and lower the appalling rate of incarcerations. I could be wrong, but I don't think such a move would have been feasible under the reign of Ricky Ray Rector's executioner.

You could add to that list, but you could also compose another, lengthier one, outlining the ways in which Obama has pursued a right-wing imperialist foreign policy, and pandered to ruling class interests. The current, more conciliatory posture of the US in the world takes us back to Clinton-style imperialism, with an attempt to restore the US as the 'indispensable nation'. The absence of some Bush-era excesses, in the context of escalation in Afghanistan and the bombing of Pakistan, are "small mercies, indeed". You could add another list of Obama's compromises and betrayals on even his most limited progressive agenda. Whether there is a 'net' amount of 'progress' over the next few years, however, isn't the only point of interest. Younge points to the emergence of an electoral coalition that will give the right some cause for reflection. The increase in turnout among black voters and Latin Americans, and the coalition with left-wing whites, especially unionised whites can provide, should it prove durable, a check on the kinds of racist dog-whistling that characterised the McCain-Palin ticket.

There were some good lines as well. Obama's solicitous efforts to win over white voters by avoiding too explicit association with African Americans made him "The Incognegro". The Euston Manifesto group were casually satirised as "the white boys' fight club". Asked about the right-wing argument that Obama's success proved that black people could succeed, he reminded people of the presidential tradition of pardoning a turkey on thanksgiving: "so you see, if this turkey can make it, there's no excuse for the rest of you." I paraphrase. Anyway, just to remind you, I'll be speaking on Monday morning, 10am at the Friends Meeting House main hall, with David Edgar, on the topic of 'left-right defectors'. Be there, or be a filthy apostate running dog of capitalism.

Imperialism and political economy.

2009-06-30T19:59:00.007+01:00

Here, I review Alex Callinicos' latest - one of his better books in my estimation - on Imperialism and Global Political Economy. I think the most theoretically interesting part of the book is that on the relation between capital and states. Drawing on some theoretical ideas he shares with David Harvey, he elaborates a theory of imperialism (in the sense of the term intended in the Lenin-Bukharin thesis, meaning capitalist imperialism and inter-imperial rivalry) that deals with one of the most difficult problems for marxist theory: namely, the question of the nation-state. Marxism sustained serious body-blows from competing theorists in the 1980s due to its apparent inability to adequately explain in historical materialist terms the rise of national states. This is important, because if you can't explain nation-states, then your theory of imperialism lacks something So, it is invigorating to see an answer to this conundrum begin to emerge.

In other 'complete and utter works' news, the Morning Star published an edited version of my Honduras article here.

Enemy flags

2009-06-30T15:26:00.004+01:00

In 1989, when the 'foulard' controversy first arose in France, the bicentennial celebrations of the revolution provided a political, intellectual and moral context for those who wanted to suppress the wearing of the Muslim headscarf. Ernest Cheniere, the headmaster who precipitated the row by expelling three Muslim girls for refusing to remove the garment, justified his decision in terms of a need to defend the republican principle of laïcité, the separation of civil and religious affairs. These girls were not poor students, not did they have disciplinary issues. They simply insisted on wearing their headscarfs. But according to Cheniere, this was a form of proselytism inimical to the Republican tradition, consecrated in a 1905 law establishing the separation of church and state. In fact, he later claimed, the wearing of such garments was part of an "insidious jihad". Sizeable sections of the left intelligenstia supported his claim, as when philosophers writing in the left-wing Le Nouvel Observateur asserted that since the school was the foundation of the Republic, the destruction of the school (by admitting the wearing of religious garments) would undermine the values upon which the nation was built.

The Conseil d'Etat ruled against Cheniere and there were numerous legal challenges. But Cheniere was not just any headmaster. He was a headmaster with political ambitions that went beyond who did what with the petty cash tin. In 1994, as an elected deputy for the department of Oise, representing the right-wing Raillement pour la Republique, he raised the issue again, launching a bill to ban all 'ostentatious' religious clothing. This failed at the time, but it is notable that such was the language used to justify later restrictions aimed at Muslims. In 2003, after Chirac had been elected in a presidential contest between himself and Jean Marie Le Pen, it was Socialist deputy Jack Lang who would bring it up again. Sarkozy was the interior minister at the time. A committee was convened to consider banning conspicuous religious garments in the schools.

The feminist writer Joan Wallach Scott, discussing the affair in The Politics of the Veil, notes that it was at this point that the media focused on the story of two girls, the Levy sisters, who had converted to Islam and chose to wear the hijab. What was interesting was that they were under no social pressure to convert. Their parents were atheists, and the father didn't approve of their conversion. But, seeing the hysterical media response, he suggested that his children might decide for themselves if they wanted to abandon their faith. He expressed astonishment at the attitude of the 'Ayatollahs of secularism' who wanted to boss his kids about. That this was the chosen symbol for the media campaign was telling. It would seem to indicate something about the complexities of faith, and of identity. It would seem to tell against the simplistic wisdom according to which the 'foulard' (or 'le voile' as it was increasingly called) is imposed by a patriarchical family. It certainly doesn't support the spurious racist conspiracy theory that Islamist troublemakers are simply using the garment to create "Muslim ghettos" and advance a state of conflict with "the West". But that isn't how it was received, and the ensuing debate corroborated the ultimate decision to ban the headscarf in French schools - a net loss for personal liberty, and for secularism at that, which was cheered as much by the far left as by the far right. It didn't maintain the state's neutrality as regards religion; it essentially said that Islam is incompatible with the Republic. It increased the state's interference in personal affairs. The justification for such interference was that the headscarf was too conspicuous a symbol of Islam, and therefore a kind of proselytism - not just for Islam, it was claimed, but for jihad. As Scott puts it, the garments are seen as "enemy flags" in the Republic.

This kind of 'laïcité' is therefore a curiosity. A particularistic universalism; an aspect of exclusionary nationalism that supposed internationalist embrace; a form of reaction and authoritarianism that some revolutionaries are willing to support; a harrassment of women of colour that so-called feminists endorse, etc etc. That it takes as its cue the legacy of Jules Ferry and the Third Republic - the high tide of French colonialism, the civilizing mission and kulturkampf in Northern Africa - is to be expected. Today's civilising mission is directed just as much against the indigenes.

It's worth noting that as this discussion has been reheated again and again, some British liberals and conservatives have looked across the Channel with envy. That such low politics, such vileness and stupidity, could be expressed in such grandiose language is a prospect that leaves these people breathless. Thus, from the liberals, Tories and 'decents' to the most reactionary elements in British politics, Sarkozy's broadside against the burqa has been a ralling cry over the last week or so. Now, Sarkozy was only last year on speaking terms with the Roman patriarch and floating the idea of "laïcité positive" in which religion might re-enter the public sphere. He was talking about his Christianity and his godliness as though he were the American that he obviously wants to be. But he is also someone who made his name with inflammatory attacks on Muslims in the banlieues back in 2005, which he promised to "karsherise". He knows perfectly well that from Le Pen to the left-republicans, there is a broad coalition of French voters that is deeply hostile to Islam. So, here he is baiting the burqa. And here we are, surrounded by the dim and the devious who cheer him on. And, as a speaker at the recent launch of 'Kafa' - a campaign against Islamophobia - noted, such racism toward Muslims is the cutting edge behind which every other form of racism follows. Islamophobia is correlated in the polls to other kinds of prejudice such as hostility toward asylum seekers and 'economic migrants'. The BNP are certainly using it in this way, and their supporters and voters largely seem to get this. The people who don't get it, or don't want to get it, are those who think you can flirt with 'progressive' Muslim-bashing today and not wake up with a more racist and fundamentally nasty society tomorrow.

Ahmadinejad and accumulation

2009-06-29T20:49:00.006+01:00

Oh, I know, this is so last week. It's over already. The twittering has stopped, the protesters have been beaten into retreat, the Youtube videos aren't being uploaded at the same frequency. This week is all about celebrities turned zombie. Still, indulge me for a moment. This image of Ahmadi the pious populist, I think, arises in part from a certain spectacle positioning. After all, the corporate media find it difficult to construe someone as an enemy without also implying that they are some kind of 'commie', one of those heretics who rejects the sacred wisdom of property rights, free markets etc. The election commentary, with its condescending subtexts about Ahmadinejad's ability to win over the ignorant poor by tossing sacks of potatoes their way, surely reflected this. And anyway, it is not within the media's repertoire to explain the underlying divisions in Iran's ruling bloc, or to give anything but a crayola account of the class politics of elections. Partly, I suspect, such crude plot devices is what drove Juan Cole to dismiss the issue of class in his own analysis. Some belated analysis worth paying attention to, then, includes this discussion of labour under Ahmadinejad; this discussion of privatization and accumulation in Iran; and this useful discussion of the elections from the Middle East Research and Information Project.

The main point that arises, I think, is that the division that has been posited between a kind of socially conservative resource populism on the one hand, and a socially liberal austerity programme on the other, is not adequate. The more that comes out about the elections, the more it is clear that they exposed a raging war in the ruling class over political ascendancy and property, with relatively minor differences on other matters exaggerated. The second point is that the right-wing bloc behind Ahmadinejad has tended to use anti-imperialist rhetoric to justify the most naked transfer of wealth from the public sphere to capital, particularly to more influential players in the bazaari class and state-affiliated capitalists. They shake their fists at Washington just as they're about to go further toward neoliberalism than even the IMF proposed. And they justify it by referring to the need to break the sanctions imposed by Washington. This policy is obviously designed not to enrich the poor or sustain them in the long term, or strengthen their bargaining power as workers, but specifically to reduce their long-term wealth and purchasing power by redirecting a larger portion of socially produced wealth to a specific sector of the capitalist class. Ehsani et al are far too soft on Mousavi in their discussion (Ehsani called Mousavi's programme 'social democratic' on a mailing list, which I think is about as credible as Hamid Dabashi's claim that the man was a hardline socialist). This appears to stem from their assessment that the faction backing Ahmadinejad are uniquely dangerous and authoritarian, posing far greater dangers to democracy and labour than even the crooked neoliberals supported by Rafsanjani. Their tone may be unduly alarmist, and their approach to the elections is not one I share, but it is hard to argue with the overall analysis.

Excursus on an author's vanity

2009-06-28T22:10:00.004+01:00

Every now and again, I hear about a new website offering free e-books. You will forgive me for the fact that, without fail, I first scour the site anxiously to see if someone has uploaded my book. This is pure vanity on my part. No one would waste their time, and if they did I should likely have the person flayed and generously doused in salt and vinegar before forcing them to appear on Britain's Got Talent. Well, I'd probably meditate on that image before telling myself to get a grip. In fact, I should be flattered, not pathetically worried about whatever marginal (and probably non-existent) loss of sales resulted. But this thought arises because of the growing profile of devices like 'Kindle' and other pda-like e-book-reading technology. We are told, somewhat pontifically, that the age of the printed book is over. That soon a great portion of our current consumption of wood-producing florae will be finished, resolved and absolved, by a technological fix. I look forward to any innovation that will reduce the clutter about my house, never kind the carbon footprint. But I remain sceptical nonetheless.

Here's the explanandum and explanans. I find myself buying a copy of a book that I know I can read for free as an e-book on, say, Gutenberg or any number of less august websites. This despite the fact that I have decent computer, and a pda device as well. I can re-format the text if I like, add pictures at a stretch, save it as a word document or convert it to pdf. There's a vast array of free open-source software that will enable me, provided I will invest a small amount of time and effort, to do more or less what I like with a document. Yet, I still go and get the Penguin classics edition of Pride and Prejudice rather than take a few moments to download, perfectly legally, a text file of the whole work. Why? John Sutherland has pointed out that the printed novel or book has some technological advantage that e-books and equivalents can't emulate (as yet). Just for example, you can use your opposible thumb to flick back and forth between pages. You can write notes in pencil where you feel like it, underline if you want to, fold page corners to mark a place - all in a very easy, manageable and physically satisfying way. Now, I know you're going to say that these functions can be replicated or simulated in the e-book reader format - true, but far more burdensomely. With a printed book, you can insert yourself anywhere in the text in a split second. You can dip in and out, use the index, find a page number in very speedy systems of reference that actually don't work very well with reader technologies. The tactile aspects of reading which we take for granted just don't seem to be assimilable to the current in-your-face interfaces.

There is also a sense in which the e-book reader profanes what was holy. Once, however much a book was mass produced, and was as commodified as a packet of biscuits or a VHS cassette, all one had to do to bless it with the seal of the author's pure presence and authenticity was to get him to sign it. (I have repeated this operation a few times, and you'd be surprised by how many people are called 'eBay', 'Seventeenpoundsisabitsteep' and 'Justfuckingsignityoutwat' - all Tibetan names, apparently.) Now, I suppose, they'll simply superimpose a scan of the author's signature on a limited range of the downloadable e-books and punt them for 2% more. If that happens, I'm just going to call it a day, loves. Without that occasion for intercourse with the Ordinary People, I'm lost, and so are they. Anyway, the point is, that isn't going to happen, because e-books are mostly crap.

Coup d'etat in Honduras

2009-06-28T15:27:00.007+01:00

So, is the six month old Obama administration taking ickle baby-steps towards its first coup? Eva Golinger thinks so. The background:

Supposedly at the center of the controversary is today's scheduled referendum, which is not a binding vote but merely an opinion poll to determine whether or not a majority of Hondurans desire to eventually enter into a process to modify their constitution.
Such an initiative has never taken place in the Central American nation, which has a very limited constitution that allows minimal participation by the people of Honduras in their political processes. The current constitution, written in 1982 during the height of the Reagan Administration's dirty war in Central America, was designed to ensure those in power, both economic and political, would retain it with little interference from the people.

Ah yes, the Reagan years, during which time Honduras was the base for CIA training of Nicaraguan death squads. This was also the era during which John Negroponte was helping flood the country with military aid so that Battalion 316 could murder and torture dissidents. Proceeding:

Zelaya, elected in November 2005 on the platform of Honduras' Liberal Party, had proposed the opinion poll be conducted to determine if a majority of citizens agreed that constitutional reform was necessary. He was backed by a majority of labor unions and social movements in the country. If the poll had occured, depending on the results, a referendum would have been conducted during the upcoming elections in November to vote on convening a constitutional assembly. Nevertheless, today's scheduled poll was not binding by law. In fact, several days before the poll was to occur, Honduras' Supreme Court ruled it illegal, upon request by the Congress, both of which are led by anti-Zelaya majorities and members of the ultra-conservative party, National Party of Honduras (PNH).

Zelaya has been irritating the country's ruling class for some time with his support for Chavez and the 'Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas', and his calls for drug legalisation, but the attempt to maybe, pending a possible future referendum, democratise the system a little was a step too far. The Miami Herald, naturally enough, vocalised the propaganda of the would-be putschists a couple of days ago, namely their speculation that the aim might secretly be to try to remove the cap on presidential re-elections and thus have some sort of elected dictatorship just like that Chavez monster. So, to forestall the possibility, the military has installed an unelected dictatorship. The White House is denying any involvement in the coup. Is it a plausible denial? Back to Eve Gollinger:

Another major source of funding in Honduras is USAID, providing over US$ 50 millon annually for "democracy promotion" programs, which generally supports NGOs and political parties favorable to U.S. interests, as has been the case in Venezuela, Bolivia and other nations in the region. The Pentagon also maintains a military base in Honduras in Soto Cano, equipped with approximately 500 troops and numerous air force combat planes and helicopters. Foreign Minister Rodas has stated that she has repeatedly tried to make contact with the U.S. Ambassador in Honduras, Hugo Llorens, who has not responded to any of her calls thus far. The modus operandi of the coup makes clear that Washington is involved. Neither the Honduran military, which is majority trained by U.S. forces, nor the political and economic elite, would act to oust a democratically elected president without the backing and support of the U.S. government.

Well. I would say that if the behemoth just to the north has a military base in your country, and funds your military and major pro-US parties, then you probably do have to get their permission before overthrowing the government. The Honduran army will presumably now have a brief to deal with the protesters, the social movements, the labour organisations, and everyone else who has been inconvenient in backing Zelaya and might now try to resist the coup. They're calling it a 'bloodless' coup... for now.

Update: well, well.

Total workers win

2009-06-26T09:39:00.002+01:00

The news is reporting that a deal has been reached between Total management and the workers undertaking wildcat strike action. This actually means that the workers got their jobs back and management caved in after losing 100m euros to the strikes. This is a stunning victory over a management that sought to break the strike movement by sacking hundreds of workers. It should be taken as a model of how unofficial action and widespread solidarity can win elsewhere - at Corus, for example.

Murder in Port-au-Prince

2009-06-26T06:35:00.003+01:00

Gabriel Ash at Jews Sans Frontieres has been doing a few posts highlighting instances of state murders caught on camera and not reported as avidly as the death of Neda Soltani (actually, hardly reported at all). This is worth adding to the list:

Acts of violence in Baharestan Square

2009-06-24T13:25:00.005+01:00

The attempt to drown the protests in rivers of blood have reportedly led to a "massacre" in Baharestan Square, outside the Iranian majles, today. Tens of thousands of basiji reportedly surrounded hundreds of protesters in this small square, and battered them, then opened fire on them. It's not just basiji - multiple reports indicate that young men without uniforms were given batons and let loose. How much of this is true is obviously impossible to tell, but given that dozens have been killed so far, the worst would not be surprising. The regime probably believes it has this situation locked up, for now. And maybe it does: who would dare to guess that protesters will continue to keep putting themselves through this? But the fact of having to resort to this level of brutality is indicative of a state in deep crisis. Police have been nicking protesters and parading them on television with confessions blaming the Western media for leading them astray. This would imply that the Iranian state has roughly the same idea as US neoconservatives - that democracy and protest is somehow the a cultural peculiarity of the 'West', which can only be imposed on Iran from without.

Various statements of solidarity with the protesters are being circulated. The NPA are pledging to join protests to show solidarity with the people and travailleurs of Iran. On the anti-imperialism front, I would draw attention to this statement by Venezuelan socialists. There also is an intervention by Slavoj Zizek, which has been circulated by Iranian academics, and is published here. I don't need to restate my scepticism about Zizek's broader politics, nor do I agree with every last word or emphasis. However, I do think it makes some very important points, perhaps the most important of which is that anyone on the left who doesn't see an emancipatory dimension in the protests is politically defunct. The bloodless lack of enthusiasm for what is manifestly a democratic movement in some of the commentary reflects not anti-imperialist sensibilities so much as political timidity. The key here is universality: these protesters are no different from those who have been beaten or killed in Genoa, in London, in LA, in Athens, and everywhere that the state is challenged by a democratic movement and responds in this way. Their case for solidarity is not diminished by the fact that they live in a society that has been threatened by imperialism. On the contrary, it means we ought to redouble our efforts.

The pitfalls of premature eloquence

2009-06-23T21:41:00.010+01:00

The dilemma faced by commentators of all kinds, not just bloggers, on the Iranian protests can be summarised by a single, annoying portmanteau word: instapunditry. The pressure to take a view prematurely in such a situation can only produce a series of stock responses, either based on CNN filtered news, or speculation from various samizdat-style websites, or material provided by the Iranian media itself. And after all, while these protests had precedent in previous student and workers rebellions, the sheer scale of upheaval had no precedent in the entire history of Islamic Republic. How to relate to that?

It has been possible to be both eloquent and consistent only be relying on an analysis made for a different situation that seems to fit. Thus, right-wing bloggers have tended to interpret the events in terms of the 'colour revolution', involving a relatively smooth transfer of power from a weakened, no longer hegemonic ruling bloc, to a pro-US faction. symbolised by a striking advertising symbol - the purple finger, the green fingers, etc. A few left-wing commentators look at it the same way, but simply reverse the value significations. It is a handy ready-made template, and if it were an accurate reading, then the protesters would have been little more than useful idiots for a comprador elite. But there is little evidence that anything like this is happening. The most we have seen is some bizarre rumours about Israel trying to promote a 'twitter revolution' (probably put about by Twitter, you know). Similarly, prefabricated ideas about Ahmadinejad representing the uneducated poor and Mousavi representing the articulate middle class, have been ubiquitous on all sides. And just the same, they have turned out to be wrong.

The difficulty is amplified by the fact that there doesn't appear to be a clear left-wing pole in this conflict. To try and find that pole, there has been a tendency to feed stereotypes about Ahmadinejad being a firm anti-imperialist and populist, neither of which really bear scrutiny. On the other hand, some have interpreted the reformists and Mousavi in particular as having far more left-wing credentials than they really do. Thus, in a typically interesting and fruitful discussion, Hamid Dabashi claims that Mousavi is universally known as a "hardcore socialist". He is not a socialist, of course. Even when he was on the 'Islamic Left', it would have been a stretch to call him a socialist. Then, he favoured nationalisation and redistribution of wealth, neither of which he supports now. (Of course, back then Mousavi was also co-responsible for quite brutal purges of the left from the government and public institutions, which he may now regret.) But this background is important for mapping out one dimension of the dispute. Since the early 1990s, the 'Islamic Left' that Mousavi represented has tended to retreat to various forms of social liberalism. The catastrophic experience of the Iran-Iraq war, followed by the collapse of the USSR, formed the background to this shift. They also faced increasing difficulty as many of their candidates were struck off the elections lists, and they lost control of the majles to a conservative-centrist coalition. As such, they drifted into the 'reformist' camp, de-emphasised economic statism, and focused more on questions of human rights and democracy. What remains of the Iranian left is almost certainly in the reform movement today.

Another problem with interpretation is that domestic social conflicts interact in a very complex way with imperialist pressure. Thus, even during Rafsanjani's 'pragmatic' reign which sought to improve relations with Europe and the US and expand international trade, Clinton imposed an economic embargo, starting with partial sanctions in 1993, and then a full embargo including on oil production in 1995. Why did he do this? It seems it was partly due to pressure from the pro-Israeli right, which wanted a much more aggresive response to, eg, Iran's support for Hezbollah and Hamas. This strengthened the position of the Iranian hard right who, because of their basis in the bazaar merchants, weren't particularly interested in opening up to international trade anyway. Even Khatami couldn't get the sanctions released, despite overtures to the US. Not because there weren't forces in American ruling circles interested in talking, but because the stubborn fact is that Iran is not about to abandon its geopolitical interests and those matter far more to the US than any internal liberalisation in Iran.

None of the current elite factions are going to deliver Iran to the US as a client regime, and there would be no popular basis for it - this, by the way, is one reason why they haven't been able to impose a 'colour revolution', and why Bush had to resort to violent forms of interference, sponsoring terror groups and bombings and so on. So, it can't just be assumed that a reformist success would necessarily be in the interests of the US - it depends how those interests are construed, and what the reigning strategy is. For example, it really seems at this point as if both the US right-wing and the Israeli leadership would much rather deal with Ahmadinejad, the better to expedite the case for war. This suggests, not that Ahmadinejad is an effective anti-imperialist, but that he and the conservative leadership backing him are actually rather poor defenders of the country. For the realpolitikers around Obama, I suspect regional stability is more important at the moment than either candidate.

In short, just as the neocons and their 'decent' allies are likely to be disappointed by the result of these protests, especially if they manage a decisive win, so there's no reason for leftists to panic at the prospect of the CIA taking control of the situation and engineering another client-state.

Total workers strike

2009-06-23T18:55:00.000+01:00

There's some good coverage of the strikes at the Lindsey oil refinery in Socialist Worker this week (not to mention the coverage of Iran, of which this discussion of the new student left is the pick). The last time Lindsey was in the news, there was a ferocious argument over the all too popular slogan 'British jobs for British workers'. This time it's much more simple. In order to defeat the unofficial strike wave that had kicked off among construction workers, the management decided to set an example by sacking hundreds of them. This has led to mass meetings campaigning for support, and unofficial walkouts and solidarity strikes across the industry. The GMB union is apparently going to ballot for official support for action by the whole union, but the workforce is way ahead of this. I particularly like this quote from the Unite shop steward:

“Would Total do the same thing in France?
“Absolutely not, because there wouldn’t be a tanker left on its four wheels.

“They’d all be turned over on their sides, blockading every road to this refinery, because the French wouldn’t put up with it.”

Not for the first time, I envy the French.

Iran: This Is Not a Revolution

2009-06-23T15:38:00.003+01:00

Let the Iranian people solve their conflict on their own. Defend Iran -- including both sides of the conflict -- from the Western powers. Then, one day, the Iranian people will perhaps choose a man -- or even a woman -- who is truly worthy of their fidelity, someone who thinks like Arshin Adib-Moghaddam and is capable of synthesizing the aspirations of those who voted for Mir-Hossein Mousavi (freedom) and those who voted for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (faith and democracy) and uniting people behind the new synthesis.

Iran: This Is Not a Revolution
by Arshin Adib-Moghaddam

Political power is never good or bad, never really just or unjust; political power is arbitrary, discriminatory, and most of the time violent. In Iran, the ongoing demonstrations sparked by the election results in favor of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad indicate that such power can never really be monopolized by the state. Iran's civil society is fighting; it is giving blood for a just cause. It is displaying its power, the power of the people. Today, Iran must be considered one of the most vibrant democracies in the world because it is the people who are speaking. The role of the supporters of the status quo has been reduced to reaction, which is why they are lashing out violently at those who question their legitimacy.

In all of this, the current civil unrest in Iran is historic, not only because it has already elicited compromises by the state, but also because it provides yet more evidence of the way societies can empower themselves against all odds. These brave men and women on the streets of Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan, and other cities are moved by the same utopia that inspired their fathers and mothers three decades ago: the utopia of justice. They believe that change is possible, that protest is not futile. Confronting the arrogance of the establishment has been one of the main ideological planks of the Islamic revolution in 1979. It is now coming back to haunt those who have invented such slogans without necessarily adhering to them in the first place.

And yet the current situation in Iran is profoundly different from the situation in 1978 and 1979. First, the Islamic Republic has proven to be rather responsive to societal demands and rather flexible ideologically. I don't mean to argue that the Iranian state is entirely reflective of the will of the people. I am saying that is it is not a totalitarian monolith that is pitted against a politically unified society. The fissures of Iranian politics run through all levers of power in the country, which is why the whole situation appears scattered to us. Whereas in 1979 the bad guy (the Shah) was easily identifiable to all revolutionaries, in today's Iran such immediate identification is not entirely possible. Who is the villain in the unfolding drama? Ahmadinejad? Those who demonstrated in support of him would beg to differ. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? I would argue that he commands even stronger loyalties within the country and beyond. The Revolutionary Guard or the Basij? Mohsen Rezai, one of the presidential candidates and an opponent of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who is contesting the election results, used to be the head of the former institution.

The picture becomes even more complicated when we take into consideration that some institutions of the state such as the parliament -- via its speaker, Ali Larijani -- have called for a thorough investigation of the violence perpetrated by members of the Basij and the police forces in a raid of student dormitories of Tehran University earlier this week. "What does it mean that in the middle of the night students are attacked in their dormitory?" Larijani asked. The fact that he said that "the interior ministry . . . should answer for it" and that he stated that the "parliament is seriously following the issue" indicate that the good-vs-bad verdict in today's Iran is more blurred than in 1979.

There is a second major difference to 1979. Today, the opposition to Ahmadinejad is fighting the establishment with the establishment. Mir Hossein Mousavi himself was the prime minister of Iran during the first decade of the revolution, during a period when the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, was president. Mohammad Khatami, one of the main supporters of Mousavi, was president between 1997 and 2005. Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, another political ally, is the head of the Assembly of Experts and another former president. They are the engineers of the Islamic revolution and would never devour their project. When some commentators say that what we are witnessing is a revolution they are at best naive and at worst following their own destructive agenda. The dispute is about the future path of the Islamic Republic and the meaning of the revolution -- not about overthrowing the whole system. It is a game of politics and the people who are putting their lives at risk seem to be aware of that. They are aware, in other words, that they are the most important force in the hands of those who want to gain or retain power.

Thus far the Iranian establishment has shown itself to be cunningly adaptable to crisis situations. Those who have staged a revolution know how to sustain themselves. And this is exactly what is happening in Iran. The state is rescuing its political power through a mixture of incentives and pressure, compromise and detention, due process and systematic violence. Moreover, when push comes to shove, the oppositional leaders around Mousavi would never question the system they have built up. As Mousavi himself said in his fifth and most recent letter to the Iranian people: "We are not against our sacred regime and its legal structures; this structure guards our independence, freedom, and Islamic Republic."

Born in Istanbul and educated at the University of Hamburg, American Universtiy (Washington DC), and Cambridge, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam lectures on politics and international relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. The author of Iran in World Politics: The Question of the Islamic Republic (Hurst/ Columbia University Press, 2007/2008) and The International Politics of the Persian Gulf (Routledge, 2006), he was the first Jarvis Doctorow Fellow at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford. He was also elected Honorary Fellow of the Cambridge European Trust Society at the University of Cambridge. His latest publication Iran in World Politics: The Question of the Islamic Republic is now available for worldwide distribution from Hurst & Co., Amazon.com, and Columbia University Press.

Iran's ruling class split widens

2009-06-23T12:49:00.004+01:00

I don't know if this is unprecedented, exactly, but I suspect the intensity of infighting among Iran's rulers is novel. Aside from the arrests of reformists, we have the open targeting of even quite establishment figures, members of the Rafsanjani family and so on. Now, the conservative majles speaker Larijani has said that 'most' Iranians think the election result was fixed. He has been condemning the protesters, but there are now reports that he's expressing 'concern' over the crackdowns. And he is being attacked in what would ordinarily be sympathetic right-wing papers. We've had Montazeri, apparently one of those who exerted a humanising influence on Iran's penal system in the 1980s, denouncing the election results and the attacks on the protesters. We've had Khatami attacking the 'hardliners' and condemning the government for outlawing protests. I don't encourage anyone to put their faith in any of these individuals, but the fact of the shift is significant and bears consideration. The protesters didn't just take advantage of a split; they stuck a big crowbar in it, and pushed. The neocons are trying to take credit for this on the bizarre assumption that the destruction of Iraq belatedly prompted a liberation movement in Iran. A sharp piece by Justin Raimondo points out that it is far more likely that "the Obama effect" (actually, the effect of the US facing defeat in Iraq) allowed Iran's system to open up a bit more, and enabled the establishment to air its differences a bit more openly.

If it was just a split in the ruling class, those who expected the movement to fizzle out would have been right. But so far, despite some premature indications from commentators, there is no sign that they are right. Yesterday's protests apparently spread well beyond Tehran, with this footage purportedly coming from the southern city of Kerman. Despite the ongoing violence of the state, the protesters kept coming out, in new places. Given the extreme brutality of the basiji, it is amazing that the protesters didn't just stop turning out. But it may be that the repressive strategy is blowing back on the state. For, after the murder of Neda Soltani, and the reaction against it, Mousavi seems to feel more confident to make his move. He and other 'reformers' are backing protests over this, apparently despite a government ban - quite unlike previous occasions where they have backed down and allowed protesters to brave the basij militias alone. He now says he is trying to organise a general strike, and is getting some interesting advice from people responding to his Facebook message. But if the protesters had followed his advice and stopped turning out when rallies were declared banned, he would not now be in a position to talk about a general strike. Unconfirmed reports on The Guardian have suggested that 30% of workers in Iran are already striking - which, if true, would be a phenomenal rebuke to the government, which threatened that anyone who didn't turn up for work would be fired. Try sacking 30% of the workforce.

The First Neoconservative

2009-06-23T07:29:00.004+01:00

The latest edition of Historical Materialism is now out, and it contains my lengthy review of a biography of John Spargo, arguably America's first neoconservative:

Markku Ruotsila's impressive new biography of John Spargo is an incisive assessment of one of the earliest architects of neoconservatism. Spargo, a British socialist who spent most of his life in the United States, had moved gradually to the right of the socialist movement, advocating a gradualist and anti-revolutionary interpretation of Marxism. Having defended the American intervention in WWI, he was an early and avid critic of the Bolshevik Revolution. It was Spargo who composed the Colby Note that formalised the Wilson administration's anti-communist doctrine, and engaged in a political alliance with Benito Mussolini which he maintained through Italy's Fascist years on account of Mussolini's intransigent anti-communism. A harsh critic of the Roosevelt administration's 'New Deal' and its recognition of the USSR, he moved to the hard right in his domestic politics, supporting the Dies Commission and McCarthy, and later supporting first Richard Nixon then Barry Goldwater in the 1964 elections. This review examines Spargo's journey to the right in the light, not only of the peculiar Hyndmanite Marxism into which he was initially inducted and the reformist socialism to which he later graduated, but also of his social Darwinism, his support for colonialism, and his perceptions of the global racial order. I argue that Ruotsila, while providing an unprecedented glimpse into a neglected prehistory of neoconservatism, is mistaken to see Spargo's transition as a logical and linear progression in which he successfully preserved the core of his 'Social Gospel' even as he became a Republican activist. He also understates, I will maintain, the role of Spargo's racial concerns in the fervent anti-communism that he espoused after 1917.

A question of solidarity.

2009-06-22T07:31:00.007+01:00

With the protesters, or with the state? The charge of some on the left is that by backing the protesters, one is de facto drafted into the camp of the crooked neoliberals behind Mousavi's campaign. Moreover, it is claimed, since there has been no proof as yet of an electoral fraud, it is also to support a movement that rejects the popular will. Such is the gist of the post that appears immediately below this one and, though I don't think the manner of putting this argument reflects well on those who are making it, this does need to be discussed. We admit that there can be no conclusive verdict on fraud in the Iranian elections short of a full and impartial investigation conducted by the Islamic Republic itself. That such an investigation is not forthcoming, and that the only concession in this direction was prompted by the protests, suggests that the interests of veracity in this matter are best served by the popular revolts we have seen. And if we decline to join those who are absolutely convinced that fraud was perpetrated, until matters become far more clear than they presently are, we equally refuse to align with those who take the contrary position as an article of faith.

The truth is, almost everything we are hearing on this topic from either side of the argument is hearsay and speculation. We are told that a poll predicted the results, though it seems it didn't, and was at any rate taken before the campaign had really begun. We are told that secret pre-election polling by the Iranian government predicted a massive win for Mousavi, though we have no way of telling how true this is, any more than we can verify the document circulating that purports to be a letter to Khamenei from the interior ministry confirming Mousavi's win. We are told that many of the regional results are hard to credit, but also that any statistical analysis at this point is inconclusive. A preliminary analysis by a team led by Iranian historian Ali Ansari for Chatham House suggests that in two provinces, the supposed turnout was higher than 100%. The report asserts that to believe the results we have to make improbable assumptions about Ahmadinejad's support. In many areas, he gained not only all conservative votes, all new votes, and all centrist votes but additionally almost half of previously reformist voters. Again, highly suggestive (and I do recommend a thorough reading of the document), but not conclusive proof. One could go on - secret polls, open polls, documents, pre-election violence, alleged irregularities, etc. Plenty of grounds for concern, nothing conclusive. Still, uncertain about the status of the recent elections, we are surely quite capable of discerning the grievances that led people - perhaps an overwhelming majority, we don't know - to support the Mousavi candidacy, and which now leads them to risk their physical integrity by taking to the streets even after veiled threats from Khamenei.

What do the protesters want? We know what Mousavi wants. There is no doubt that Mousavi stands for neoliberal economic policies, while also offering some political liberalisation to inspire progressive supporters. Mousavi, who bore substantial political responsibility for pushing through the nationalisation programme in the 1980s, now supports further privatization, and is in favour of constitutional amendments to make this easier. We also know that while Ahmadinejad initially expressed reservations about the agenda of liberalising state enterprises, one of his major planks of reform during his term was the proposal to privatise 80% of state assets, half of the shares of which were to be distributed through the stock market, and half to be distributed to those with low incomes. According to Kaveh Ehsani, despite the decision to distribute shares to the poor, the likely result is the radical reconstitution of wealth and political power on the Russian model post-1990. In 2007, under Ahmadinejad, the scale of privatization reached a record high, with total sales of $5bn. So, the main difference between the candidates on this question has been over the nature and pace of the reforms. It is also true that Mousavi wants to rein in the expansionary spending policies that have characterised Ahmadinejad's government, in a bid to cut inflation. It has been a complaint of some analysts that Ahmadinejad's spending amounts to 'bribery', and of his internal critics that it was unsustainable splurging that led to stagnant growth and such high inflation rates that any benefit to the poor from such spending was immediately negated. In truth, what Ahmadinejad's development projects have entailed mainly enriching those sectors of Iranian capital most closely imbricated with the state. His opponents think it more pragmatic to divert those oil profits into developing a more sizeable private sector. That is the basis of this division.

Ahmadinejad's clientelism obviously is not genuine defence of working class interests, nor has it been particularly effective as palliation. Apart from the fact that the suppression of trade unionism does tend to somewhat diminish the bargaining power of labour a bit, the redistribution hasn't really benefited Ahmadinejad's supposed supporters in the rural poor whose incomes have stagnated. Absolute poverty has not declined under Ahmadinejad, although it did under previous administrations - even under the neoliberal Khatami - while relative poverty has certainly increased. (It's possible that a slight change in inequality in 2007 favours Ahmadinejad's regime, but equally possible that the change is nothing to do with Ahmadinejad's policies, any more than the problems caused by high oil prices are necessarily his fault). Overall, there is little to suggest that workers or even the very poor have a deep material interest in electing Ahmadinejad, any more than his opponent.

Does this mean that the protesters, or those who voted for Mousavi, wanted a neoliberal strategy rather than the conservative 'populism' of Ahmadinejad? Does that range of options exhaust the range of popular opinion? There has been an assumption thus far that Ahmadinejad does well among the poor and working classes, while Mousavi's supporters are 'middle class'. But one begins to see a problem with such terms as soon as you investigate what is meant by 'middle class'. According to this analyst, 46% of the Iranian population is now middle class - but he defines "the middle class as being in a household with at least $10 per person per day expenditures (PPP dollars) and with at least a basic education (primary)." Now, if this reflects the common way in which the term is used, then marxists should be saying that what is actually happening is that large sectors of the working class backed the Mousavi camp. Indeed, we have already seen the most politicised and organised sectors in the trade union movement also back the protesters (they declined for obvious reasons to back any one candidate). So, at the very least, the lazy assumptions about the class basis of the vote and of the protests merit re-examination. In fact, the same analyst argues that a substantial layer of this supposed middle class vote comprises young unemployed people. If you're unemployed, by my book, you probably shouldn't be called 'middle class'. As far as this layer goes, we're talking about young, educated workers who are suffering in the economy and who lack the democratic right to do anything about their situation. They see no future from themselves in the current set-up. That is certainly a class grievance, but it can hardly be reduced to a petulant middle class cultural complaint - it's not the Gucci crowd, because you can't buy Guccis on $10 a day. While we appreciate the scepticism that some people entertain about these protests, and understand the reasons for this, the condescending claims and gratuitously nasty language about them does not bear examination. It actually redounds to the massive discredit of those using such rhetoric when the protesters are being murdered in the streets, with far less money and social power to their being than any of those who are deriding them as yuppies.

Further, from all that we are able to glean about the protests and their demands, the focus is overwhelmingly on changing the undemocratic nature of the Iranian state, going much further in their demands than Mousavi or his elite backers are prepared to go - abolishing the apparatus of repression, stopping the death penalty, stopping political imprisonments, democratising the state, abolishing the Council of Guardians. All these are the demands that we have seen repeated during this period, and none of them were adocated by Mousavi. The idea that the protests are just a flash mob for the crooked neoliberal sector of the elite is unsustainable. The question of whether, in practise, all these protests do is strengthen one faction of the ruling class will be decided to a large extent by the protesters themselves. There is a huge generational shift underlying these protests, and that means that even if the present wave were to fizzle out - which I don't think is likely - it is likely to recur in even more militant forms. So, the question is whether the protesters can take the independence in ideas and action that they have already exhibited and turn it into lasting movement. It is true that the left should have no illusions about this. There is no necessary reason why such a movement will take on a leftist hue. It hasn't so far. Only by engaging in the movement could the left hope to shift it in that direction. Far more important, however, is that the democratic demands and the bravery of those pushing for such changes, are worthy of support and solidarity in themselves. It isn't good enough to say that because Mousavi is a neoliberal, therefore the protests deserve no support. It isn't good enough to sniffily denounce the 'western left' on behalf of the supposedly univocal figure of the Iranian worker, the poor, or - as in the post below - Muslims. Especially since Muslims, the Iranian working class, many poor Iranians, can not be counted on as allies of either Ahmadinejad or the Iranian state.

What Western Leftists Lost in the Iranian Elections

2009-06-22T05:27:00.004+01:00

. . . is a chance to gain the trust of Muslims, such as Al Musawwir, regarding Western leftists' commitment to truth, democracy, and class solidarity, transcending the cultural divide:

Wittingly (for the most part) and (a few) unwittingly, the "western" left is, in essence, siding with the elite, upper classes, against the working class. Now, why are they supporting these elites -- well, the twisted logic is that this has "politicized the Iranian people" and that civil strife of this kind is good, even if the cause they are supposedly fighting for is not real "fraud or no fraud". This is like saying, that running towards a mirage is good, hey, at least you are running, it'll get you energized. That is the kind of nonsense one would expect from those who engage in psyop destabilization, because their aim is to create a chaotic situation, and then swoop down and take the spoils.

Strange as it may seem to some, these days, Muslims are, probably on average, better at being historical materialist than Western leftists, who prefer fantasy to reality.

Protesters clash with basij militias...

2009-06-21T20:18:00.003+01:00

...and force them to flee:

Isfahan

2009-06-20T09:04:00.002+01:00

I got these pictures in the post, as it were:

Be Like Rostam

2009-06-19T14:25:00.003+01:00

Had I lived in Iran at the time of the Iranian Revolution, the Islamic republicans running Iran today would have killed me at worst or put me under house arrest at best, like Iran's Red Princess Maryam Firuz in her last years, because I'm a socialist. But still and all, a majority of the masses supported, and still support, the Islamic republicans, because they are populist Muslims, not socialists.

In the history of social revolutions, it often happened that leftists helped to bring about social revolution (socialist or nationalist), and then, after the overthrow of the ancient regime, a faction of revolutionaries (usually centrists) liquidated left-wing and right-wing revolutionaries as well as defenders of the ancient regime.

That's what happened in Iran, too. The revolution did in its leftists, as well as rightists. But, over all, the Iranian Revolution has done more good than bad for a majority of Iranians, making Iran the best country -- the most democratic! -- in the Middle East today.

The fate of leftists in many countries (excepting Cuba) is often the fate of Rostam: serve the rulers who are unworthy of your support, because the nation ruled by the unworthy rulers still must be defended from its many enemies.

Attacks on Romanians in Belfast

2009-06-19T08:36:00.004+01:00

Now, you might be thinking, "bigotry in Belfast? Well, I never!" True, the attacks on Romanians earlier this week come after years of assaults and intimidation of Chinese workers which reached a bloody crescendo in 2003 and 2004. And it follows attacks on Polish workers earlier this year, in which Unionist politicians tried to cover up the extent of what was happening. Actually, Unionist politicians like Sammy Wilson - one of the few people in the world who really does have a face like a well-smacked arse - have been openly encouraging discrimination against migrant workers. But I do consider it significant that the attackers were chanting BNP and Combat-18 slogans as they did this. Not because there's a powerful Nazi organisation in Ulster, but it does look as if Northern Ireland's disproportionate number of violent young bigots have been heartened by the recent success of fascism in the mainland. Eamonn McCann, noting the lack of BNP presence in the areas affected, suggests that the attackers are "invoking an established brand rather than acting at the instigation of an organisation". (Mind you, it seems the BNP have just established their national call centre in Dundonald, and presumably intend to try and build a little family of fascists in the area: can't you just hear the pitter-patter of tiny goosesteeps?)

Over at Splintered Sunrise, I see that the UDA boss is ventilating over the BNP's malevolent influence, desperately trying to deflect any blame that might be placed on his right-wing paramilitary outfit: "It seems that what is exercising Hard Bap is the possibility that the UDA’s good name might be besmirched by commentators linking it with the BNP. Which sort of says something about Nick Griffin’s push for respectability." This won't fly, of course. Studies have shown that 90% of racist crime in Northern Ireland takes place in Loyalist areas. It may not be that the UDA are actually encouraging such attacks, but there is a powerful continuity in the methods of violence and intimidation, and the bigotry underwriting them. Moreover, it seems that some other things don't change either: most of Northern Ireland's minorities consider the Police Service of Northern Ireland (née RUC) to be institutionally racist. Well, of course it is. It is the still largely unreconstructed authority of an occupying power that has spent decades terrorising Catholic estates. On top of that, the Crown Prosecution Service only seems to try a fraction of the reported cases of racist violence. So, if you're being driven out of your home by some jumped up Rangers fans with an admiration for the fascist way of doing things, you can't rely on the police, and you can't rely on the courts. And as for the Assembly, they've done fuck all about it for years, despite having pledged to do so. (The lack of consideration given to migrants in policymaking is discussed in this lengthy and useful report [pdf]). The efforts of solidarity campaigners is all that is coming down the pipeline.

McCann argues that the root of this is more than a deflection of older forms of sectarian violence, though, and I think this is crucial:

It is not to excuse the assaults to point to the fact that the Protestant working class, and its young people in particular, have been the main losers from change in Northern Ireland. It's not that they have taken a hit that their equivalents on the Catholic side have not also suffered. Whatever your religion, the poorer you are here the more likely you are to have not benefited at all from the agreement hailed around the world as ushering in a peace based on mutual tolerance. It's no accident that the Real IRA draws its support almost exclusively from the least well-off in the Catholic community.
The snarling young men who forced the Romanian families out have the additional grievance that the Protestant community's sense of itself as living in "their" state has been shattered by the developments symbolised by Sinn Féin sitting snugly in government with the DUP. That none of them can remember the glory days of untrammelled unionist rule matters little. They feel – and it's a feeling they know is endorsed and welcomed by many nationalists – that Catholics are on the way up, Protestants on the way down.

I know that complaint very well. One used to hear quite a bit (from Protestants) in the 1990s, that while once it was the Catholics who were being victimised, now it's the poor Prods. The neoliberal consensus reinforces this sense of grievance by reducing the sphere of legitimate arguments about public spending and resources to sectarian ones: not, will we close this hospital, but will this hospital be closed in a Protestant, or a Catholic area. This entails McCann's conclusion that, while it is necessary to confront these thugs - physically, if it comes to that - it is also essential to build the kind of radical anti-neoliberal left that has just done so splendidly well in the south of Ireland.

The Iranian working class and the revolt

2009-06-19T07:17:00.002+01:00

It was a commonplace in the build-up to the elections that Ahmadinejad would hold the working class vote. This had been the case in 2005, and it was assumed it would be the case in 2009. The reason given was that Ahmadinejad had supported the working class with various benefits paid for from oil profits. And of course he is himself a working class kid made good, as it were: the son of a blacksmith who got himself a PhD, joined the right-wing in the revolution, and eventually became president. Finally, it was inferred that the workers were socially conservative and had little time for middle class people who wanted more liberal legislation. This picture, while touching on important truths, is also rather patronising in its assumption that the workers only care about bread and butter issues and that they tend toward sullen bigotry when it comes to issues of democracy and womens' rights.

The electoral coalition around Mousavi, by contrast, was seen to be middle-class, based disproportionately among professionals and students, with the loot provided by ruling class interests. (As one dyspeptic analyst called it, the "Gucci crowd" in alliance with Iranian capitalists). Mousavi was pushing an austerity agenda, with privatization and counter-inflationary measures at its core. To broaden his appeal, therefore, he touched on the progressive concerns of a layer of the population which has had enough of the basij militias and the media clampdowns and the political prisoners. He didn't actually offer much reform, but all was in the branding. (It is telling that, in much of the Anglophone media coverage, these concerns are emblematized by the status of the chador - as if the major issue is the right to expose one's hair). So, when these protests began, it seemed a reasonable assumption that it was overwhelmingly a middle class revolt - perhaps not for neoliberalism as such, but against what they saw as an electoral fix-up and the obviously undemocratic system behind it. If Mousavi's base was so middle class, however, it would be difficult to see how he could possibly have been in the lead. If the protest movement were exclusively middle class, it probably couldn't win, and could be expected to dissipate.

Some liberal analysts disputed the idea that Ahmadinejad had decisively won the working class vote. Robert Dreyfuss, reporting from Tehran, claimed that it was almost impossible to find a supporter of Ahmadinejad even in the poorer areas. Juan Cole, disputing the primacy of class in interpreting Iranian elections, pointed out that neoliberal reformers such as Khatami had won 70% of the vote in 1997, and then over 78% in 2001. Khatami obviously had to win support far beyond his business supporters. This did not prove that the reformers had a majority in 2009, of course - we aren't going to get proof, whatever the truth of the matter is - but it does mean that caution is called for in the assumptions that we make. Reza Fiyouzat makes what seems to be to be a far more compelling point, though: "The most class-conscious, the most politically active of the Iranian working classes, are by far the most anti-government. How do we know this? We know this because they invariably end up in jail." Well, quite.

The issue of class is important here, not because the workers are angels with whom we may not ever differ, but because their organised power is necessary to make even these democratic demands effective. Even if the protesters were all middle class, I would want them to win. Truth be told, I would want them to win even more than they bargained for - to win so comprehensively that they gave a shot in the arm to the working class and facilitated their rapid self-organisation outside of the Islamic Labour Council approved unions. Never mind a general strike: what is urgently needed is the reappearance of the shoras. And we have seen the riots spread chaotically to working class areas of Isfahan (see also), where the protesters drove out the police, and the southern city of Yazd. The protests have spread to workers districts in southern Tehran. Reports of working class turnout are appearing, albeit infrequently, in some of the English-language press.

There is an understandable tendency to think of this upheaval in terms of the 'colour revolutions'. I have even seen reports quoting figures from the March 14th movement attempting to associate themselves with the revolt. It's fatuous on their part, since there is clearly a lot more going on here than just another 'Cedar Revolution', with the upper and middle classes (and their much abused Syrian maids) turning out to be admired by photographers. The demonstrations have not been restricted to middle class areas or richer parts of Tehran. They have not been orchestrated set-piece protests with glory days in the sun and an atmosphere borrowed from a Coca-Cola commercial. At any rate, what the self-styled cedar revolutionaries typically neglect to mention is that Hezbollah's protests were far bigger than theirs. That isn't the case in Iran, where Ahmadinejad's supporters have plainly been outnumbered by far more militant protests.

Oxford Working Class Bookfair

2009-06-17T17:34:00.003+01:00

Just a quick reminder for those who can make it, I will be speaking at the Oxford Working Class Bookfair this Saturday from 4pm, discussing The Liberal Defence of Murder (details here). I see David Renton is also there, talking about different traditions of anti-fascism, which is a useful discussion to have these days. Be there, or be somewhere else.