Crime Pays!

We live in fictitious times where Thatcher and Reagan are a lot like Gods for the present-day conservatives of Britain and America. It was demonstrated well when Reagan gave up the ghost in 2004 and we could see that the Republicans had succeeded in their efforts to elevate Ronald Reagan to almost deified heights. Of course, the death was just what George Bush needed to take the heat off the administration as the horrors of Abu Ghraib shook the world. The Reagan administration had some great tacticians, who had the sense to wage war on Grenada just as the US Marine Barracks in Beirut had been bombed. But the timing of Reagan's demise was a masterstroke that not even the Reaganite tacticians could have pulled off. It came at just the right moment. As if the funeral had not demonstrated just how far the deification had gone - how deeply the termites had feasted - Obama marked the 100th year since Reagan's birth with the words "President Reagan helped as much as any President to restore a sense of optimism in our country."

Perhaps it was the moment when Reagan added Nelson Mandela to the terrorist list (where he would remain until 2008) that restored so much optimism in America. The South African government only murdered 1.5 million people in their African neighbour-states. No wonder the Hoover Institution noted that Ronald Reagan is revered as a colossus whose "spirit seems to stride the country, watching us like a warm and friendly ghost." It can barely be muttered today that Reagan was perched as ornament to a criminal government. You might be called a conspiracy theorist for recalling that they gave the CIA permission to deal in guns and drugs in the funding of terrorist groups in Latin America. And if not then you will be called an extremist for recognising Reaganomics for what it was - a monumental disaster. For the reactionaries on both sides of the pond the post-war period was the real disaster, with its steady rates of growth, development and productivity. The crises of the 1960s and 70s opened up a space for the life to be snuffed out of this model.


The post-Thatcher period in which we are currently held captive holds that the time before the Iron Lady was a time of stagnant mediocrity. There were plenty of problems in Britain that had been a product of the post-war settlement. But we can't seem to see the mediocrity of what we're currently living in. The average growth rate of the 1980s was 2.4% which is what it was in the 1970s and even less than it was in the 60s. Supposedly Thatcherism rejuvenated sickly Britain and restored Greatness to its shores. Even though the same pathetic worries lingered around such topics as European integration, immigration, anti-social behaviour and crime alike. The English mind was still obsessed with the decline of status it had endured since the Empire fell. And in many ways, we the British are still in the fits that inevitably come with a disordered understanding of the past. It was actually decades of steady growth and significant development which were brought to a close in the 1980s. The golden age of capitalism was no more.

We now endure the society that the Thatcherites have laid waste to and the people who have done so well out of the devastation now tell us that the real problem are the immigrants and the dole queue. The old aim of full employment was dumped and the government effectively acted to increase unemployment in order to smash the trade unions and pacify the working-class. Before there had been a time when we were close to full employment and the wealthy paid a rate of tax which was relatively progressive. Incomes for workers had tended to rise alongside productivity which was partly driven by a strong labour movement. The bedrock of institutional power for the working-class could be found in a variety of industrial sectors and the extraction of natural resources. The Thatcherites embarked upon a savage deflation which destroyed a fifth of the industrial base in two years and oversaw a 30% decline in employment in manufacturing. The unions were blown away one by one, most famously with the mines shut because it was cheaper to import.

Since the Thatcher government smashed the unions the workers' share of national income has either stagnated or declined. With the defeats of trade unions in the 1980s the right-wing mutation of the Labour Party easily picked up pace. The socialist codger Michael Foot was soon replaced with the Welsh windbag Neil Kinnock, under whom the Labour Party served as an incompetent and hopelessly complicit opposition to Thatcherism. There was no serious opposition to take over the government, just as there wasn't in the Blair years and today under the Coalition. And yet these governments have each played the populist game, the Thatcherite mantra was "power to the people" as British Telecom was sold-off for £3.7 billion. In that decade the government transferred £14 billion from the tax-payer to the investors and paid banks £3 billion to handle these transactions. The programme consisted of giving away state assets to private companies at a reduced price to ensure maximum profits and to safeguard the interests of the private sector.

The Tories handed over a lot of public money to banks from 1992 onwards as part of the Public-Private Partnership, which sold-off public aid and gave greater power to bankers. As Michael Hudson wrote "The financial giveaway had the effect of increasing prices for basic infrastructure services by building in heavy financial fees – guaranteed for the banks, who lent the money that banks and property owners used to pay in taxes in more progressive times." The theory goes that the banks will create jobs as they invest the funds in British infrastructure, specifically public transport, but it was really a way for real estate speculators to get even richer. The extension of the Jubilee Line to Canary Wharf cost £3.5 billion as it raised property values along the route by £13 billion. The public investment in transport could pay for itself simply with a tax on the higher rent-of-location and the site value. But the government would rather the banks rake in the cash.

As Noam Chomsky has pointed out when politicians prefer to talk about 'jobs' than even utter the filthy word 'profits'. The allies of the super-rich then moved to sell-off British Rail and saw to it that the railways carry an over-flowing gravy train for the wealthy. It is standard practice in a privatisation for the state to make sure the buyers are well served with comfy pillows stuffed with the taxes of working-class people. Last year Richard Branson gobbled up £18 million of tax-payer's money as the system underwent a multi-billion state upgrade. The privatisation opened up a space for private ownership safeguarded by public investment and, even as standards of service have slipped, there has been no attempt to re-nationalise the railways. The government contributes £4.6 billion to the railways as the private sector pays just £459 million into the set-up, most of which goes towards stock rather than anything in the real world.

Looking back on it all, its clear that it was just the beginning. We shouldn't forget the real content of such policies when David Cameron talks the same way about hospitals and schools. The same goes for the talk of selling off the woods and the exposed plans to sell bits of the police even. The first decision of New Labour was to abandon the last lever of the state to the markets, the Bank of England became 'independent' of the government. It was clear that there would be no dramatic shift from the post-Thatcherite line that has been safely established to stand its ground. The pillaging and the pig-out for the rich has yet to cease, the same can be said for the pains of the poor. We may live to see the state reduced to a slither of what it once was before we see a change in paradigm. It isn't clear just how far this model can be pushed before something has to give, but it can be said that this is not the final crisis of neoliberalism.

One Cheer for Interventionism.

 

There have been many attempts over the years to define neoconservatism and in his attempt Francis Fukuyama summarised the distinct features of the neoconservative persuasion. The first is the position that the foreign policy ought to be the embodiment of the body national's internal character, values and ideals. This should mean that American foreign policy instills the liberal democratic values on which the American Republic was founded. There is truth in this because there are many bones in the foundations  of the American Republic, its ideals then are a veneer that covers the horrors of the past. It isn't simply that the neoconservatives are strictly traitors to classical liberalism in their support for torture and so on. Rather these democratic revolutionaries stand for the underside of the classical liberal tradition. To be specific, that the means to defend liberal values amount to the adulteration and ultimate destruction of those same values. This is in the same sense that the neoconservatives look to install a democracy, only in the form that will ratify the ideology to which they subscribe.

It is often said that just because we can't do everything doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything. Usually by these words come from the chops of a man with an arrogant bone-structure, think Niall Ferguson's jaw. But it could be said that just because we shouldn't do everything that there is something we can do. Don't forget Jimmy Carter, who now criticises Israel but he actively exacerbated the suffering of oppressed peoples in the world as President. Carter's critical remarks about Israel came too late and only served to reaffirm notions of Western "superiority" as no responsible action towards a settlement are pursued from these remarks. Instead of the racist "White Man's Burden" - that as the superior race we are obligated to "civilise" the inferior races - we reassert our own "superiority" by insisting on our guilt without acting to redeem ourselves and correct past injustices. Meanwhile the people we claim to be in "solidarity" with are butchered.

For years Muammar al-Gaddafi stood as the mirror-image of an American neoconservative as he saw a moral obligation to intervene where necessary on the side of the victim against the oppressors of the world. Of course, the side of the victim can be chosen selectively in accordance with the geopolitical value of fending off a particular oppressor. The same is true of the neoconservatives who wanted to fight the Communists in Afghanistan in the name of "freedom", but quietly supported Ceaușescu in Romania at the same time. We find similar contradictions in Libyan foreign policy, Colonel Gaddafi was on board for war crimes in Sierra Leone but backed the ANC at a time when Nelson Mandela was smeared as a "terrorist" in the US and Britain. The same reasoning was deployed to justify sending Libyan agents across into Egypt with the stated purpose of "subversion", even though Gaddafi was an admirer of General Nasser and wanted to emulate him as a "strong man".


It was a great irony to see the regime that had ruled Libya for forty-odd years come to an end in the midst of NATO airstrikes. During the debate around whether or not the West should intervene in Libya it was debated in Britain whether or not the revolutionaries should be given the funds from Gaddafi's assets in the country. There was even talk of organisations in Britain forging links with the rebels in Benghazi to provide not just funding but equipment. This demonstrated that there isn't an anti-interventionist position. It has to be noted that inaction is a form of intervention insofar as it has an effect on the situation. The blocks kept in place on the flow of arms into Bosnia left Muslims vulnerable to the onslaught from the Serbs. If anything this talk of a Live Aid style bid to save Benghazi confirmed the need for a kind of intervention by way of support for the rebels. It would have been easy to cheer on if there had been a revolutionary government in Cairo to batter down Gaddafi's regime.

We might as well just revert back to the most overt form of comfortable resistance and start calling for "world peace" and "universal love". Resistance is not supposed to be comfortable, responsible decisions have to be made and there has to be accountability for the consequences. There needs to be a serious preparation for what it means to play with power. If there was a revolution in the West could the Left as it is really form a government? I doubt it given the shoddy state of affairs it has been in for so long. There was a time when the Left could muster thousands in organisation, millions in unions and talk seriously about alternative models. Sectarianism has always been there on the Left and in some ways it has been diminished over the years, but it's too little too late. The tendency to take a simple and cheap moralistic position which is distant from power can't be taken as anything less than problematic. This is vital for a deeply fractured and weakened movement.

Dr Cornel West saw reason to call for a military intervention in South Africa to overthrow the Apartheid regime. The struggle against Apartheid went on for decades with non-violent means exhausted as the racist state proved that it could not be simply reformed. Not only that, but that the Western relationship with the Apartheid regime was profoundly sordid. The reason that the ANC had to found the Spirit of the Nation to launch a campaign of sabotage to paralyze the state was that the non-violent means were no longer viable. There is a level of duty, the obligations of solidarity in the struggle for black liberation and then there is the need to respect the wishes of the people actually in the situation. The consequences of bombing South Africa would be different to opening up the flow of arms to the ANC. This is all within the context of the anti-imperialist struggle. The particular context of the struggle is vital, as that would determine whether or not it is right to intervene in a sovereign nation.

It is necessary that the radical Left develop a criterion by which we can determine what should be done in crucial situations of foreign policy. It can't simply be that there is nothing we can or should do, that there is no such thing as a just war that the capitalist state should fight. There are deontological and consequential aspects to take into account, in the sense of what we may be obligated to do and what the consequences of say a no-fly zone could be in the end. There could even be situations when it is inappropriate to evaluate in terms of duty or the consequences. It has to be clear that the lives of the vulnerable are enhanced to the extent that they can determine their own destiny. There are times when there is good reason to stay out as it were and then there are times when something must be done. What is to be done can range from small efforts to violence. This seems like a workable trichotomy, though the real difficulty is in the determination of which course to embark upon.

In Saddam's Shoes.

Some of you might've watched David Aaronovitch lock horns with George Galloway on Question Time back in April. It was a refreshing sight, George Galloway insisted that the unpopularity of New Labour comes down to the Party's responsibility for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq which caused the deaths of over 1 million people. He went further to denote the trilateral consensus on foreign policy as well as on domestic economic affairs. It was a welcome sight to see Yvette Cooper being put on the spot over Afghanistan and Iraq. That being said it was quite something to see Mr Galloway trying to outdo Aaronovitch in a bout of mudslinging over Abu Qatada. Gorgeous George even slagged off Aaronovitch for the years he spent as a Communist. This spectacle reminds one of Galloway's flaws. But I suppose it's too late to rise above the tide of sewerage flowing through the streets of Whitehall. Aaronovitch is one of a few journos to leap across the chasm between the anti-establishment Left and the Right over questions of humanitarian intervention.

We owe to Rousseau the republican notion of freedom as non-subjection, but freedom comes in three forms for Rousseau. Natural freedom is simply the absence of impediments that people experienced in the state of nature, the only possible restraint being the forces of individuals. Then there is civil freedom which comes out of the association that does away with natural freedom insofar as it introduces limits. Freedom guaranteed by unfreedom. The limits imposed safeguard the individual's freedom in a certain way, which is the reason that the civil state is formed. Out of this convenient arrangement comes moral freedom as a by-product of it. This is the freedom which ix experienced in the submission to laws prescribed to oneself. Rousseau seems to presuppose a democratic system in his conception of moral freedom. It isn't a teleology, the social contract is not forged in order to generate moral freedom but to secure civil freedom. The advent of moral freedom is really accidental, but it is only possible after the establishment of civil freedom. 

Imagine taking on the project of setting up moral freedom under conditions that had yet to see civil freedom. There is a similarity with the dilemma that the Russian revolutionaries were confronted with just before the October Revolution of 1917. The Mensheviks argued that the end of Tsarism in Russia would have to be followed by a period of bourgeois democratic capitalism in order for socialism to be attained later on. The Bolsheviks thought that an alliance of workers and peasants could hasten the development of capitalism in a democratic framework. It's easy to take a side here and even easier to forget that Karl Marx had been willing to support democratic nationalism. You can find this when Marx expressed support for Abraham Lincoln, the abolition of slavery and ultimately the bid to maintain the American union. Another instance of democratic nationalism was when Marx supported the reunification of Germany for the cause of opening the passage to socialism by strengthening the capitalist system. He later backed off of this position.

Perhaps in the hope that socialism was a historical inevitability Marx had held that there had to be a period of bourgeois rule before the working-class could triumph in Germany. The inevitability of capitalist decline would open up the space for political agency and revolution. This could be taken as though injustice now may be necessary for justice later. We should resist such a teleological reading, Marx was neither a cold determinist nor a teleological snake-charmer. He acknowledges that history could culminate in the "common ruination" of all classes and provides an excellent description of human freedom in the Brumaire. Nevertheless, we shouldn't forget Marx in the moments when he praises free-trade and the middle-class legacy of human rights and civil liberties. In his mind a democratic culture is a vital precondition for socialism. By contrast, in Aaronovitch's mind, to hold free-elections was the reason to bomb Afghanistan as well as the justification for and ultimately the function of the intervention - democracy by airstrike.

For Aaronovitch the interventionist promise of democratization opened up the possibility for social democratic achievements like universal health-care in Afghanistan. This is what Oliver Kamm calls 'liberal democratic internationalism'. It is a view that has more in common with the Chinese Communists who foster capitalism in China with the stated purpose of nurturing the proper conditions for socialism. As Marx saw it the end and the means are eschew, the process to attain communism requires misery and injustice for most members of the human race. This is because capitalism is the system which amasses the surplus to provide the material preconditions of communism. Freedom is the fruit of unfreedom. Socialism is inseparable from exploitation and violence insofar as it required the fruits of the accumulative processes of capitalism, which is in turn indebted to slavery and feudalism. There is no teleology here, not in the sense that class society can't provide the material precondition for emancipation but in that socialism is not inevitable.

Before his death Christopher Hitchens wrote that the fall of Saddam Hussein inspired elements within the pro-democracy movement that had swept the Middle East in 2011. He argued that the Arab Spring would not have come about if Saddam Hussein had remained in power. Apparently the crippled regime had the capability to hold down demonstrations in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Not to mention the yet to be successful revolts all over North Africa and the Middle East. Saddam Hussein would have been a great threat to the people within Iraq's border and perhaps nearby neighbours. In the same way that the Assad regime is the principle threat to Syrian citizens. We shouldn't forget that Iraqi society had been almost destroyed by the economic sanctions that had been imposed and this had strengthened the isolated Hussein regime. Hitch is eager to mention that the fall of Saddam was an inspiration for the pro-democracy movement in the region, he neglects to mention that their enthusiasm for Saddam's departure was not an enthusiasm for occupation.

It could just as easily be claimed that Saddam would've been overthrown by the Iraqi people in the Arab Spring given the crippled state of the Iraqi military. That's not something Hitchens was ready to concede. It's interesting, Hitchens told his friend James Fenton that Iraq will become is an American protectorate - overtaking Saudi Arabia in this role in the Middle East - and the base for the export of democracy. This comes out of the Jeffersonian vision of an imperial America which promotes freedom and democracy at every turn. To export the American Revolution was reason enough to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention the primary justification and function of the intervention (until the wars got under way at least). There is no third camp between Islamism and Americanism. Only a democratic strike against totalitarianism can be made to defeat the forces of nihilism and take the side of the victim against the oppressor. Notice, this is compatible with his view that Indian democracy was a necessary by-product from the period of British colonial rule.

It's not as easy to remember that the British had no intention of establishing a democratic India independent of the empire complete with a socialist constitution. The same goes for the instance of the demise of European Fascism and the emergence of democracy in Germany and Italy. The outcome slotted neatly into the imperial ambitions of the Allies, the British were looking to takeout the Continental rivals to secure India while the US was looking to wipe-out the European competition. The elections in Iraq were a by-product, not the creation of a benevolent strike to build democracy through "shock therapy". Rather the elections were a means to legitimize a series of illegal economic reforms imposed soon after the invasion. The best outcome, for the Americans, would have been a Sunni military junta but in the end Washington had to compromise. But that was not guaranteed from the outset. It was the horrors of the war that were easily foreseeable from that stance.