Pax Europa: Obama and the European Dream.

The last time Barack Obama intervened in European politics was during the Brexit referendum campaign. Coming out for the Remain camp, Obama backed the UK’s membership of the EU on the grounds of economic stability. He even appeared to dangle a sharp object over the Leave camp. The outgoing president claimed Britain would be at the “back of the queue” for a trade deal with the US. In other words, the UK is worth more in the EU than outside it.

The British right began circling Obama soon after his speech. Anti-American jibes became fashionable among conservatives again. Suddenly, you could read Boris Johnson rambling on about the president’s Kenyan ancestry and how these roots informed his anti-British prejudices in utero. It was a bizarre few days. Apparently, Obama always hated the British. That’s why he handed back the Churchill bust.

These same quarters began to see Donald Trump’s victory as an opportunity to renew the ‘special relationship’. British politicians were soon climbing over each other to kneel before the next president. It caused some fuss that Nigel Farage beat Theresa May to meeting Trump. All of this is a testament to the servility of the British political class. But they would rather dress it up as a ‘special relationship’.

Yet Obama’s relationship with Europe much broader than this. Obama’s time in office has charted key events. The EU has been shaken to its core by an economic crisis, everywhere right-wing populism seems to be on the march and Brexit poses a break with the status quo. Meanwhile the project seems to be facing new challenges on its doorstep: the refugee crisis, civil war in Ukraine and atrocities in Turkey.

A Greater Europe

The Obama administration has tried to maintain the American-European alliance. This meant support for the EU as the project for a ‘Greater Europe’. At the centre, Germany and France had come together to overcome the competition between their elites. This alliance was expanded to include the UK and other countries. It is now composed of nearly thirty member-states. But EU expansion has always been controversial.

History is full of ironies. Charles de Gaulle opposed British entry into the European Economic Community. He saw ‘perfidious Albion’ was an extension of the United States, the NATO agenda to bound Western Europe to Washington. The French right wanted to lead the European project, using the German economy as a horse for its own chariot. But this was not to be.

The whole point of the EU and NATO has been to wed the European powers to the US under German leadership. Much like in East Asia, where American governments would try to reinstate Japan as the leading economic power – the US wanted Germany as the leading power in Europe. This shows up the absurdity of the so-called ‘special relationship’. The UK is one major European state, it is not necessarily the main player in Europe.

Of course, peace in Europe really meant within the EU. Outside the EU, in places like Ukraine and the Balkans, the story has been quite different. For starters, European powers supported the breakup of Yugoslavia to expand southwards. In Ukraine, the Euromaidan uprising saw a realignment with the EU as necessary to move further away from Russian influence. Faced with this, Vladimir Putin sent Russian troops into Crimea and began to destabilise the rest of Ukraine.

The cases of Ukraine and the Balkans are not isolated. The periphery is where the EU project reveals itself. Thus, the Greek debt crisis threatens the credibility of the Eurozone. If Greece can default, then Portugal and Spain will soon follow. If Portugal and Spain can do this, Italy and Ireland could follow. As in other foreign policy areas, the Obama administration has sought out stability in the EU.

The Obama administration may have preferred a more restrained austerity in Europe, just for the sake of the economic order. This may be why the IMF was more sceptical of another round of austerity being imposed on Greece. Even still, the IMF found itself outvoted by the European Central Bank and the European Commission. Though the US is still the dominant power in the world today, its power is not absolute.

Old Enemies, New Crises

Much like in East Asia, where the US aimed to reinstate Japan as the leading economy to maintain its own hold on the Pacific. This plan was first threatened by the ‘loss’ of China in 1949, then came the wars in Korea and Vietnam. Both fought to secure the post-war settlement. Likewise, the US rebuilt West Germany to secure its hold on the future of Europe. Here we find Russia is the ‘outlier’ trying to maintain its own sphere of influence.

As the Euromaidan demonstrations forced out Viktor Yanukovych, the activists pushed for closer ties with the EU and the consensus in Ukraine was still very much against joining NATO. Once Russia invaded and annexed Crimea, the support for NATO membership increased dramatically in Ukraine. The tensions with Russia served to validate US policy, and vice versa Putin used NATO as a pretext for aggression. It wasn’t always like this, though.

Many Russian liberals began to look westward in the early 1990s. They saw Russia as part of a ‘Greater West’, fit to join the EU, even suited for NATO membership. Incidentally, Boris Yeltsin tabled this idea in 1991, but the US was totally opposed to Russia joining NATO. The US feared it would lose its allies should Germany and Russia forge closer ties. The North Atlantic alliance may be rendered void in such a scenario.

However, this also shows that the Russian government is not anti-Western by nature. Every US administration has tried to ‘reset’ its relations with Russia. Obama tried to repair ties following the Georgian war. But each time the relationship is ‘soured’. Most recently, the split reopened over Ukraine and Obama sought to contain Russia economically. Now Putin is vying for another ‘reset’ once Trump is in office.

As we look back on the Obama years, we find a cautious president looking to stabilise the system amid turbulent times. And the fundamental problems remain in place: tensions with Russia may be inevitable for if NATO continues to expand, and the EU will face economic crisis as it remains wedded to the neoliberal model. This in turn has reinforced the appeals of nationalism. These flaws may be fatal in the end.

This article was originally published at Souciant.

Nick Clegg has Only Himself to Blame.

Some of you may have tuned in to the LBC debate between Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage on the European union. This spectacle was hosted by reactionary lard-arse Nick Ferrari. It was everything one would expect. Nothing outside of the oscillation between mainstream liberalism and nationalism came up and this debate can largely be understood as a sign of the rightward trend of British politics over the last four decades. Liberal internationalism and conservative nationalism feed into one another, their relationship is dialectical, both oppositional and complimentary, and ultimately, they spiral into the same downward trajectory. It's no coincidence that the Liberal Democrats signed up for the Coalition with a party torn over Europe and he now finds himself poised against UKIP. For the Conservatives, Nick Clegg is the canary in the mineshaft and little more.

It must have been a disparaging experience for Liberal Nick. No longer a sponge sucking up all those disenchanted votes Nick Clegg stood as the establishment figure with his old place usurped by Nigel Farage of all people. Of course, the underdog status of UKIP is a falsehood. Nigel Farage railed against the bankrupt establishment, which Clegg now embodies so thoroughly, all the while UKIP stands in necessary relation to the status quo. He was probably expecting reason to triumph over reaction. He littered his phraseology with references to 'dogma' and appealed to common-sense. Bad moves by definition in this kind of debate. I don't know how he could have expected it to have gone his way. Without any grounding to maneouvre on economic and domestic policy (where he is wedded to Conservative policy-makers) the only issue of contention was going to immigration. That is hardly a threat to the Conservative Party. And of course UKIP has no interest in combating neoliberalism.

Outside of conventional politics the demagogue sets himself and poses as raising the real questions, the dangerous questions, to which the Establishment then reacts to preserve itself. As with Romania we find that the UKIP lot are playing this game again. The real issue that the people in countries like Romania and Bulgaria are fleeing from social conditions produced by neoliberal globalisation cannot be raised. Should we repair the damage? Now that's a dangerous question! It would only mean that the level of immigration would be based on the free movement of people, rather than on economic desperation. The Lib Dems can't make such a point because they've accepted the neoliberal model prescribed by Brussels, Whitehall, and Washington; while the only criticism UKIP may wage is that this hasn't gone far enough in tearing through all forms of state-ownership. This is why a key issue was never mentioned, namely the EU-US free trade deal currently being implemented by stealth.

The Liberal Democrats emerged from the consolidation of gains for a third party after the founding of the Social Democratic Party from the right-wing MPs who abandoned Labour. The loss of 10% of their MPs helped to secure Labour's defeat and a victory for Thatcher in 1983. So you can see how far the Party has come since helping to divide up the voters for Thatcherism thirty years ago. They have now graduated to joining those forces they helped deliver Britain to in the 1980s. This is the stinking filth of the body of liberalism: inaction, hot-air, and endless compromise. It's clear the trilateral consensus are not only complacent in the face of the nationalist reaction to the rapid internationalising trend of capitalism. We see this quite well demonstrated in Ukraine where a coalition of neoliberals, conservatives, ultra-nationalists, and oligarchs, have seized power only to wrench the country into the orbit of the European Union and open it up to the IMF prescription for an economic miracle.

Meanwhile here in Britain we find UKIP is looking to force the Conservatives further and further to the right as it condemns the EU. Clegg doesn't deserve our pity for his pathetic belief that if he just said the right words the audience would dutifully nod their heads for him. He was asking for the kicking he got.

Eurofreaks!

Much has been made of the democratic deficit in the European Union (and no doubt there is a battle to be won) yet the right-wing critics usually have little to offer by way of serious reform of the system. This is especially so as many rightists would just like to see the whole project crash and burn. The improvement of the system could only risk prolonging its existence. At best the Right offers to reaffirm liberal ideas of democracy and freedom in the nation-states currently held captive by the European bureaucracy. Naturally it appeals to the small government fetishists of libertarian ilk, as well as the hyper-nationalist herd and populist shepherds like Nigel Farage. It's an easy game to play as the European Union lacks the legitimacy of a liberal democratic nation-state.
 

It's no coincidence that the same people - namely UKIP - who want a referendum on the EU are for the elections for Police Commissioners. The same crowd have been hollering for elected judges, all of which could be of great advantage to smaller parties looking to break in where voter-turnout is light. In such instances, we find that direct democracy is rather convenient for certain figures, those who need a horse to ride to their destination. And yet the majority would prefer a job of such importance to be done well. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the turnout for the election of Police Commissioners was so low. The defects of democracy in such an area of public service are clear to most people. It's only when there is an obvious blockage in the democratic system, as in Europe, that the ideal of democracy can move us to a burning rage. This is why the Eurosceptics need Europe, just as American conservatives need liberals to rail against in the culture wars. Victory would be a defeat.

It is the undemocratic state of affairs in Brussels that the Right can't resolve, as that would mean the end of the basis for their 'scepticism'. The calls for 'democracy' are doubly shallow as the Right has no serious solutions, or even an alternative, to a project which is in fundamental accordance with the neoliberal agenda. The austerity junkies in Brussels are hardly leftists. Yet even as the EU seeks to permanently limit the expenditure of its member-states Cameron vetoed it and still poses as a heroic bulldog to Eurosceptics. It would seem this is really a clash between different concentrations of capital, not the people of European nations. Furthermore, we know that in historical terms the idea that it's wrong to establish a political entity, like a nation-state, without democratic means is groundless. The European Union has developed into a powerful and effective structure precisely because it has no electorate as such. There is no 'European people' in the same way that there is an American people. The EU couldn't have gotten this far without its democratic deficit.
 

Consider the wedge-issue of immigration with regard to the European project. Immigration is meant to be the disruption of our cohesive and well ordered society, through its corrosive impact on civil society by way of its 'otherness', its dependency culture, abuse of our public services and advantage-taking of Western privilege. Common claims like "They're taking the jobs!" and "They're all on benefits!" stand together arm-in-arm in ignorance without bliss. At least these complaints of many working-class people about immigration have an economic basis (a more about that later) which we can't say about the culturalist whining of conservatives. The Eurosceptic rightist tend to foam at the mouth over the apparent loss of British sovereignty, for we can only limit non-European immigration. It's at this point that the Right loses sight of the Muslim 'problem' to gawp at the hordes of Slavs unleashed by the death of Communism. This is the doomed battle of anti-immigrant populists, just like the battle for democracy it cannot be won.

If immigration were actually blocked ff forever then the rightists would have lost in their own victory. Limitations on immigration can't possibly satisfy the demands placed on them: firstly, because the migrant serves a structural need within capitalism for fresh labour to squeeze dry; secondly, migrants can become a point of division insofar as they form a labour reserve army to be deployed to hold down the wages of the working-class. For these reasons immigration can only be impeded temporarily out of a cheap electoral opportunism.  The increased scarcity of labour in Britain would hasten the need for such unpopular measures as higher taxes to support the growing number of retirees. Of course, a cheap way out of this would be to pull the rug out from under the pensioners and privatise the whole pension system. All the while the lack of a readily available reserve army of labour would deprive the system of a means to hold down wages for an ever dwindling workforce.

The real answer of an extensive unionisation across borders to accomodate free-moving labour is out of the question for the Right. Even though that would mean higher wages for 'native' and 'foreign' workers alike. The same can be said of the possibility of repairing the damage of the brutal transition to capitalism in Eastern Europe. The contradiction between the economic need for immigration and the widespread opposition to the unconstrained flow of labour across borders can't be resolved by the mainstream parties. So it is the stomping ground of demagogues looking to ride a wave of racism into public office.

Spain's Pain.

Santiago Carrillo just passed at the age of 97, perhaps the last major figure of Spanish leftism to have fought in the Civil War and participate in Spain's transition to democracy. He became a major figure in the rising Eurocommunist movement, which could be understood most fairly as an attempt by the Communist Parties of Europe to take an independent line from the Soviet Union. It took the form of an embrace of the democratic norms and institutions of Western Europe in a bid to differentiate itself from Trotskyism. As the Civil War broke out Carrillo was brought into the orbit of the Soviet Union and he was later complicit in the Paracuellos massacre - in which some 2,000 prisoners were shot. The massacre was taken up as an instance of "red barbarism" by Franco's Nationalists. General Franco claimed that the war he waged on Republicans and the Spanish Left in the 1930s was a crusade for Christian civilisation - and he found common cause with reactionary rightists of all stripes to this end.

Franco's Falangists had finished the Second Republic by 1939 and in its place crafted what would be Europe's longest reigning dictatorship. The anarchist revolutionaries of Spain were crushed by the combined forces of Fascism, Stalinism and Western democracies. For the reactionaries in Spain it meant the end of the social upheaval and rebellious unionism that had threatened the fabric of Spanish society for too long. Francoism in Spain was born out of a negation of radicalism, at first Franco only promised a return to order and an end to the revolution. Yet he endorsed liberty, equality and fraternity in his first proclamation. He was quick to promise the middle-class the reversal of land reform, the banning of trade unions along with the parties of the Popular Front. The General went further to promise the return of the monarchy and defence of Catholicism. Leading conservative intellectual William F Buckley, Jr. described Franco as an 'authentic national hero' and condemned the left-wing government as 'visionaries, ideologues, Marxists and nihilists'.

As noted by Richard Seymour, the priority in rural areas of Spain during the Republican era was land reform and the countryside was subject to high unemployment. This helped the Popular Front government to spring up with the promise of quick land reform. The unemployed peasants couldn't wait for the government to deliver and opted to occupy large estates, starting with 3,000 farms in the province of Badajoz. The government legalised the early occupations given the amount of civil unrest and hundreds of thousands of peasants were resettled. The seizures provided not just land and work, a democratic forum was opened up where arguments were waged over the whole future of how the society would develop from then on. It was this which General Franco conquered and destroyed, the peasants and leftist leaders were swiftly done away with. Franco set out to undercut the Left with promise of nationalisations, even the Falange flag was designed to mimmick the flags of the anarchists they intended to annihilate.

Today the very radicalism that the Spanish Fascists had fought to eradicate has resurfaced in the time of austerity and widespread despair. As Fascism collapsed and Spain became a monarchical democracy Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo came to power in Marinaleda in 1979 and, as the rest of the world fell under the spell of neoliberalism, embarked upon the construction of a pocket of what has been described as a 'communist utopia'. There in Marinaleda there is no need for mortgages, while full employment has almost been achieved Sánchez Gordillo has sought to move to a common ownership of land and establish wage equality. Housing is now a right in Marinaleda, taxes are low and the groundwork of a direct democracy laid down. This continues while the rest of Spain suffers an unemployment rate of 25%, even the rest of Andalusia endures a 34% unemployment level. The situation is actually more dire than it is in moribund Greece in this regard. Everywhere there is disaffection and it has taken on living forms in the streets.

The Mayor of Marinaleda has become a prominent figure seen as a surfer on the tall waves of popular anger at the sight of the government handing billions to banks and cutting services to cover the bill. It's obvious he is not a lone-wolf either. The 8 million strong indignados have protested for hundreds of days against the austerity regimes of the established Left and Right of Spain's mainstream politics. The indignados have no faith in the formal institutions of representative democracy anymore. The striking miners of Asturias have taken to firing homemade rocket launchers at riot police and blocking off roads. It was the Asturian miners who were put down by Franco's forces in 1934 only to awaken from their slumber in 1962 and fight valiantly. Franco killed 3,000 miners in 1934 and captured many thousands more, but still they rose up again. Now it's the austerity regime of the Spanish government backed by the Euroconservatives at the heart of the EU that the miners are fighting against.

The egalitarian pocket Marinaleda stands out in Andalusia where around half the arable land is owned by 2% of the land-owners. In the Mayor's own words "The concentration of land ownership in Andalusia is 10% higher than it was in the Second Republic. They tried an agrarian reform. But it was annulled with Franco's coup d'etat... The agrarian reform is still pending." Sánchez Gordillo has been most controversial for orchestrating the looting of supermarkets. It was an act of civil disobedience to grab lentils, oils, beans, chickpeas and milk in order to redistribute the supplies through food banks to the poor. The police have been unable to arrest Sánchez Gordillo given his immunity as the Mayor of Marinaleda. The renegade Mayor has issued calls for other mayors to follow his example and for the occupation of empty buildings owned by the banks. A welcome cry in a country with 800,000 empty homes and millions in need of affordable housing. The death of European social democracy gives many good reason to seek out a more radical solution.

What ever happened to Brotherhood and Unity?

Quite some time ago in the middle of a talk about a political union in Europe there was a debate on Newsnight. It was apt that Nigel Farage make an appearance in standard populist colours against the liberal multiculturalist elites. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as Farage drew a comparison between the European Union and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The UKIP leader suggested that the reason Yugoslavia collapsed into appalling violence in the 1990s was a result of the imposition of Yugoslavia over sovereign nations in a bid to craft a multiethnic federal system. Thankfully Farage is too thick to comprehend the implications of such an analogy. Effectively it would go as far as an endorsement of the Fascist movements - such as the Ustaša and the Chetniks - that devastated the region before the Partisans triumphed over them. This is nothing unusual, and it's not the first time that the analogy has been drawn between the EU and Tito's Yugoslavia. Farage has deployed it repeatedly.

After all it was the final victory over the Communist-led Partisans who had succeeded where the Left had been defeated in Italy and Greece where the West crushed left-wing movements soon after the War. Out of the warring chaos parts of the Yugoslav Kingdom fell into the hands of Hungarian fascists, as well as German and Italian occupying forces; the Bulgarians and Albanians. Croatia and Bosnia were unified under the clerical fascist Ustaša while the Serb Chetniks fought against the genocidal regime with the aim of building a Greater Serbia. The Croats became a client-state of Nazism where Jasenocav (the fourth largest concentration camp in Europe) was founded with the expressed intention of exterminating Jews, Roma and Serbs. There around 600,000 people were slaughtered. There was a great deal of collusion between the Ustaša and the Catholic clergy, going as far as forced conversions of Jews and Orthodox Christians. The establishment of a socialist Yugoslavia was the ultimate defeat of Slavic brands of Fascism.

The West took the side of Tito's Partisans for pragmatic reasons and the Serb Chetniks as well as the Ustaša of Croatia were defeated. The Soviet Union lent the Partisans support only to portray Tito as an agent of Western imperialism after the split between Tito and Stalin. It was clear that the new Yugoslavia was not going to bow to any foreign power. Instead Tito carved out a particular place for his country as a founder of the Non-Aligned Movement with an apposite place in Europe between the competing superpowers of West and East. The idea was that the unity of Yugoslavia would prevent it from being thrown about by international forces. This is contrary to Farage's warped wish to see a free-market world of nations, where every country is powerless to the onslaught of international finance and multinational corporations. In his invincible ignorance Farage fails to see that British withdrawal from the EU would undermine British sovereignty even more. Likewise Farage cannot understand the implications of what it means to say that the EU is just another Yugoslavia.

It should be kept in mind that there have been many right-wingers who found the sight of Yugoslavia's crumbling into barbarism absolutely beautiful. This differs strongly from the small band of leftists who supported Milosevic out of a misguarded belief that it was the last chance to hold together Yugoslavia. By the time of the explosion of violence it was already too late and Yugoslavia was dead on its feet. What did the Right see in this? Well, the multiethnic composition of the federalism and its dependence on a culture of solidarity could not have repulsed many rightists any more than it did. The Titoist campaigns against nationalist sentiment certainly worry backward types like Nigel Farage. No doubt the Eurosceptics fear a federal state where they will be stamped out. Even more freightening is the possible end of the racial tensions that the Right can exploit to its ends. A culture of solidarity doesn't stop at ensuring improved relations between countries and peoples, it could go as far as to build a strong working-class movement.

After all the primary reason for the policy of brotherhood and unity was to hold together Yugoslavia as a socialist system. Tito could not launch a Stalinesque collectivisation, as it would've torn the country apart. Instead Tito decided to give away power to the republics and build the country into a model of market socialism. It featured a limited place for private enterprise and markets combined with a decentralised state-planning apparatus and workers' self-management. It was a prosperous system of development and growth for quite some time. The average rate of GDP was 6% at one point and the standard of living increased significantly, with the establishment of universal health-care and education came a life expectancy of 72 years and a literacy rate of 91%. Every Yugoslav citizen had a right to a job, unemployment was reduced drastically until the 1980s and every worker had a free month-long holiday every year with pay. There was affordable housing and public transportation across the country, while the borders were held open.

It's this model that the Right despises. It is not coincidental that so many right-wingers wanted to leave the Slavs to slaughter one another. The more honest reactionaries have been blunt in their support for the violence. Michael Savage was an open defender of Serbian nationalists attacking Muslims. Later Savage went on to attack Bill Clinton during the intervention in Yugoslavia. He even labelled the President 'Clintler' with regard to the NATO bombing of Serbia. What else would you expect from this fascist? Then there was Nora Beloff who wrote to The Economist in condemnation of the critics of Serbian atrocities. The way she saw it the Muslims are guilty by virtue of being Muslim, she's of the Israel First brigade you see. In this view the Serbs are just exercising their right to self-defence as the Christians fending off the barbarous Muslim hordes. Hitler said about the same of the Poles. It's about the same line that Karadzic has used to defend his actions - such as sending snipers onto the roof of his hotel to shoot civilians as he made his escape.

Working-Class Heroism.

The trade union model has long tended towards reformism in its place within the capitalist system as a dependent. The union depends for its existence on the business class in it's role as the private owner of the means of production. Typically trade unions are content with the protection and promotion of working conditions, pensions, pay and so on. The labour movement on it's own is not an agent of revolutionary change for the simple reason it has a vested interest in the system. The labour movement is unlikely to overthrow the system or even try to take over the managerial duties to rearrange the workplace in a democratic form for workers’ control. The unions may even tend to dampen down radical currents by winning concessions from the capitalists. The great victories of the 20th Century came about partly as a way of "buying-off" socialism. The system has to survive for trade unions to remain necessary for empowerment of the working-class within its chains.

The preference is for a social democratic capitalism complete with strong welfare state institutions over the laissez-faire alternative of unfettered markets. In the 1980s right-wing administrations in the US and Britain staged a series of ram-raid attacks on the labour movement and the industries they sought to defend. The reactionaries succeeded in defeating the major unions and wiped out domestic industries such as cars and coal. The neoliberal turn has virtually destroyed the culture of solidarity in the working-class. In the aftermath the only union strongholds serve as defenders of the privileges of an almost ‘aristocratic’ layer in the working-class - what Žižek calls the ‘salaried bourgeoisie’. In Britain this recently took the form of defending the pensions of doctors and other public sector workers. This in turn creates the division between people who have no security because of the devastation of the last 30 years and the people who have managed to hold onto a raft. It’s the old division between the ‘deserving’ and the ‘undeserving’ poor.

The tube unions are the last bastion of working-class power left in this country and this is precisely the reason that the forces of reaction are out to destroy them. The widespread perception is that the tube unions are simply out to protect their privileges, which the rest of the working-class goes without. This is part of the death of the culture of solidarity and the devastation that the working-class has endured. But it isn't totally untrue of the tube workers. The strikes aren't, at the immediate level, about the preservation of the welfare state let alone any socialist dreams of overthrowing capitalism. The rest of the working-class can see this and are willing to support right-wing politicians to blow Bob Crow out of the water for the inconvenience he has caused them. Of course, this is a part of the very process of neoliberalisation which pits the working-class against itself in its bid to eviscerate the cultural solidarity. We are reduced to resentful individuals in this way, distant from one another and looking out for who's getting a better deal than us.

No longer is the trade union simply an instrument of workers’ power even as it was in the days when Arthur Scargill fought valiantly against Thatcher’s policy of mass-unemployment and deindustrialisation. It might seem that the working-class movement is totally finished because it has been de-industrialised and, at this point, unions have been reduced to xenophobic suspicions of anymore ‘foreign rivals’ coming over here. This isn’t to say that the deindustrialisation of the North was fine and that we should oppose the efforts of the fragments leftover of organised labour. Rather it should demonstrate the urgent need to reconstruct the working-class movement in a much more radical form. It's fine to propose unionisation of workers on a European scale. It would be wrong to confine the prospects of unionisation not just to the nation-state but to the traditional industries that have been wiped out. The unionisation of the indebted could serve as the means to undermine the power of the financial institutions.

Take a look at some of the stats. The household debt in Britain is set to rise from £1,560 billion to £2,126 billion in this time of austerity. I would assume there is something similar going on with household debts around the world given the attempts of government to patch up the system as it is. Household debt in the US was at 115% in 2011 down from 135% in 2008, the dip is probably the result of the crisis. In the years of the bubble, 2000 to 2007, households doubled their debt to almost $14 trillion while personal consumption shot up by 44% from $7 trillion to nearly $10 trillion. Over a period of 5 years American households ringed $2.3 trillion of home equity loans and cash-out refinancing from their homes. That's an injection of nearly $500 billion into the economy every year. So you can see why Obama's so-called "stimulus package" was a cop-out, $787 billion for 2 years doesn't cut it! Especially when it's left to the sort of self-glorified bureaucrats who would rather cut than spend.

There is actually an opportunity in this. It might seem that the working-class movement is finished because it has been de-industrialised and, at this point, unions have been reduced to xenophobic suspicions of anymore foreign rivals coming over here. That extends to the opposition of trade unions to European integration, these are supposed to be organisations that are internationalist. It's fine to propose unionisation of workers on a European scale. We're wrong to confine the prospects of unionisation to traditional industries that have been wiped out. The formation of debtors into unions on a cross-continent scale could potentially give the working-class a way to yank at the banks. A straight refusal by the majority of people with debts to make the payments unless the rates of interest are cut could work. It could also be a way to wipe away household debt altogether. This isn't to say that the capitalist system could not incorporate this into it, it could do easily, but it is a starting point in accordance with conditions which are radically different to the 20th Century.

The Politics of a Litterateur.

With the campaign slogan "You'll get more with Gore", Gore Vidal ran for Congress in 1960 in a traditionally Republican district of New York. The planks in the platform including recognition of Mao's China, federal aid for education and progressive taxes. He received more votes than any Democrat in five decades, but still lost. Though Gore Vidal has strong links to the Democratic Party through his family as well as his own affiliation in the early 1970s he chaired the People's Party alongside prominent socialists like Benjamin Spock. The Party campaigned for withdrawal from Vietnam, legalisation of cannabis, a higher minimum wage and the introduction of a maximum wage. Ultimately Vidal opted to support McGovern against Nixon, to avoid splitting the anti-war vote and hopefully end the Vietnam war. It would be the last chance for New Deal liberalism to save itself. He ran for the Senate in 1982 and campaigned to tax Church income, nationalisation of natural resources and the replacement of the current system with a Parliamentary democracy.

In 1988 Gore Vidal presented five proposals to improve the American Republic. The first of which was to limit elections to 8 weeks and secondly to ban any candidate or party from buying time on television, radio and newspapers. In Vidal's America the media ought to provide free time and space for the candidates to be interviewed and debate with one another. No more, no less. The growing decay of political language and the system at large was a great worry of Gore's in his later years. The costs of advertising must be eliminated as a necessary step to the removal of money from the political arena. Thirdly, social security should be factored out of fiscal policy in order to expose the bloated military expenditure to the American people. This is all a part of Vidal's isolationist convictions. He goes further to recommend American withdrawal from NATO and all foreign adventures, as well as an end to military aid to foreign countries (e.g. Israel). The line is populist as the cash can be put to better use at home, for infrastructure and public education Vidal stresses.

The fourth proposal was to legalise the use and sale of all drugs because Prohibition only made the Mafia rich while alcoholism sky-rocketed in the 1920s. Addiction cannot be eliminated through criminalisation. This fits into his own commitment to civil liberties and rights pitched since the 1960s when Vidal first moved to the Democratic Left. He later corresponded with Timothy McVeigh and found that he understood the libertarian reasoning for a rebellion against the government. After all the Clinton regime had the FBI incinerate 80 people at Waco with the broad approval of the liberal Left. Vidal remained a scourge of civil authoritarianism when the Bushites stole the election and launched the country into war. The last proposal was to end the Cold War and initiate the beginning of economic integration between America and Russia, justified by self-preservation in a world increasingly centred around China and Japan. It would seem Vidal was internationalist on economics and isolationist on foreign policy.

The propositions are reformist, even conservative, in tone as the recommendations of are about the preservation of the body politic. The ruling-class and prevailing politics had become a drag on the Republic in his mind. The national security state would inevitably threaten the foundations of the United States. Its rapacious growth would eventually devour every chunk of the mountain of revenues from the American tax-payer. It was in this same presentation that Vidal delved into the details of the 1986 US Budget. He breaks it down for us: out of $794 billion in revenue a total of $294 billion goes to social security while $286 billion goes to defence, $12 billion on foreign arms to client states and $8 billion on energy (e.g. nuclear weapons); $27 billion on benefits for war vets and $142 billion on interest payments for loans used to prop up the national security state. Other federal spending came to $177 billion, partly the size of the deficit. Out of the $500 billion left over after social security around $475 billion is spent on the national security state.

 

 

Out of all the Founding Fathers it is Aaron Burr who is most admired by Gore Vidal, not Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson or even Tom Paine. For Vidal it is the man who was never President but served as Vice President under Jefferson who is most important. He notes that Burr introduced a degree of professionalism to American politics. Later, Aaron Burr challenged Alexander Hamilton to a duel before shooting him - a standard maintained by Vice Presidents until Dick Cheney mistook a lawyer for a quail. It's clear that Vidal saw himself as a man of the Jeffersonian revolutionary tradition. He remained concerned that the US was desecrating its republican ideals. The way Vidal portrayed Jefferson in Burr was particularly controversial back in 1973 as it included an account of Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings. The historians of the time argued that a gentleman would have never had sex with a slave and since Thomas Jefferson was the consummate gentleman he would've never had an affair with Sally Hemings.

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.

Blizzards of Shame!

How long must this go on?

You may have heard of the recent discovery the long lost Bulldog spirit has been found finally as it was manifested in Mr Cameron when he said "No!" to Merkozy. It was not national interests David Cameron was defending, it was the interests of banks who don't want to be taxed or be regulated that he was defending. The revolting servility this filthy Tory has shown has nothing to do with patriotism, though it is symptomatic of the whorish relationship between the Conservative Party and the financial colossus in the City of London. The fact that this can even be considered patriotic is the sign of the crass state of the political discourse in this country. The nationalist Right are experiencing something of a resurgence amidst this economic turmoil, so there's nothing to lose in a bit of flag-waving especially after a round of shit-flinging on the Continent. The choice we face is between Brussels and Washington, but European integration cannot be anti-democratic as it is right now. Cameron is no democrat for standing in opposition to the treaty, the politics of Cameron have a great deal of commonality with Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy.

David Cameron seems to embody the Progressivism of Victorian liberalism, at once a creature of the market forces as well as a cultural puritan and a proponent of history as progress. The crisis is just a cyclical phenomenon to him, in the long-term it is a blockage to the path of the march towards a utopia of the free-market. The theoretical doctrines of monetarism have been replaced by a pragmatism which cuts through theory to the reality, where the old state system of health-care and education has to be discarded. The debt has to be managed through a deficit reduction which will thereby enable us to circumvent this obstacle. The key elements here feed into one another: the market is perfect so the crisis is cyclical not structural and will pass in time, therefore there are no grounds to justify state intervention to create jobs and the deficit is the real issue. The regulation and taxation of financial institutions has to be stopped then, as the problem will pass as the structures of finance are adjusted through the reforms being implemented already.

In the light of Mr Cameron's transformation from Etonian Toff to British Bulldog, the talk of Christian values is quite interesting. David Cameron has listed the following as Christian values: responsibility, hard-work, charity, compassion, humility, self-sacrifice, pride in working for the Common Good and honouring the social obligations to family and community. This is where Mr Cameron's edge in public relations (which used to be called 'propaganda' in more honest days) comes across in his presentation. The man knows how to dress an agenda and not just the monkey he keeps for a deputy. Cameron can spin the line on it's head and roll out commonsensical rhetoric at just the right moment. No one opposes the basic concepts Cameron endorsed and for this reason they do not require endorsement. What matters most about the endorsement relates to the standards he has set in office already. For instance, the banks clearly are not about "self-sacrifice" as made evident by their refusal to tolerate even modest levels of progressive taxation and regulation.

It shouldn't be a surprise that Cameron is looking after the principle constituents of the Conservative Party. This cultural conservatism is superstructural to the economic base which it has the potential to undermine and may be threatened by itself simultaneously. In other words, the endorsement of Christian values amounts to an outgrowth of market liberalism. The particular appreciation of charity in Cameron comes out of the harsh Victorian hatred of the undeserving poor as it posits a deserving poor, which should be helped and has been shafted by the welfare state. Compassion should be rationed then. Humility too, only applies to the poor who should know their place. Of course, the banksters have no time for responsibility and any hard work which actually produces things has largely declined in this country. And yet the masses are meant to be committed to sacrifice themselves for the super-rich. These supposedly Christian pronouncements by Cameron reveal a profound hatred for the working-class in this country.

Can you taste the Irony?

The liberal philosopher John Locke provided a theoretical justification for private property, market relations and bourgeois conceptions of freedom. But it was the Whig circles in which Locke moved that would eventually bring down the King and in turn provide the incentive for Locke to provide such a justification in the first place. Locke was a close friend of Lord Shaftesbury who founded the Whig Party, though Locke did not share the Paganism of Shaftesbury and a number of the aristocrats of the day. The ruling-class feared that the Catholic King was loyal to the Vatican, so there would be a forced rival of Catholicism in the country which would mean violent upheaval. The violence that it would take to the reverse the process which established the Church of England and Protestantism would inevitably undermine the power structure. So the Pagan ruling-class conspired to overthrow a Catholic King in order to install a Protestant King and maintain the status quo.

Shaftesbury's friend John Locke was eager to provide a philosophical justification for the replacement of King James II with William of Orange. The foundations of liberalism were laid with a Christian gloss in the defence of the interests that the English ruling-class had vested in property. Christianity was for the poor and the ruling-class remained Pagan in Britain until the 19th Century. The liberal pronouncements of John Locke gave the coming market system a language of natural rights and freedoms. After feudalism had crumbled it ceased to be the 'natural order' and from then on capitalism would be considered in accordance with human nature. The irony is that the nationalism behind Cameron's veto comes from the old Pagan logic and not any kind of Christian value. Here we find a return to the Paganism of the British ruling-class as opposed to the Christian poor. In Christian love there is no hint of the Pagan logic that we must privilege our own clan above the rest.

An even greater irony is that the decision to veto the treaty may have actually maintained the limited democracy we endure in this country. The move was made to secure the interests of banking and finance, not out of any Bulldog patriotism. So the enemies of social democracy may have saved the possibility of a return to Keynesianism in Britain. As the treaty enshrines balanced budgets, near zero-deficits and has effectively abolished expansionary public spending in doing so. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone as the European Union was a right-wing project from the very beginning. This was just the latest attack on social democracy and a testament to the appalling state of affairs in Europe. We have only to turn to the unconscionable vandalism of Greece - a country which should have been allowed to default - to find an even more telling instance. The European elites are stopping at nothing to use this crisis to tear apart the welfare states created after WW2.

Not only would it seem that this is a time of creative destruction, but the social democratic model of yesteryear cannot save itself. We are caught between a giant douche and a turd sandwich, to borrow from South Park, in that we face a choice between Washington and Brussels. The reason that European integration should be pursued along lines which are democratic and offer an alternative model to that of predatory American capitalism. Meanwhile the Right will continue to shout as though the choice is between Whitehall and Brussels. There can be no referendum on the capitalist system and so we have to take a stand together as Europeans. There is a long way to go in this area, as we have yet to establish trade unions which can represent the European workers as a whole of entire industries. The kind of national discourse available in the United States is not available in the European Union yet. Complete withdrawal is just a nationalist delusion that has already been ruled out by globalisation. The more fundamental struggle is a fight against capitalism.

See also:
The Left must call the Right's bluff
Class Warfare

Democracy is not a given

Solutions for whom
We cannot abandon Euroscepticism to the Right

The ultra-Politics of Powell.

Delusions of Nationhood.

The economist Friedrich von Hayek was a member of the Mont Pelerin Society and so was Enoch Powell at the same time. Powell would later garner a reputation as a 'maverick' in the Conservative Party. He posed as a libertarian critic of the welfare state, immigration and European integration. Even though Powell voted for Clement Attlee in 1945 out of disgust over the way that the war ended and stood in opposition to immigration controls in the 1950s. As Health Secretary under Macmillan, Powell personally oversaw the employment of the Commonwealth immigrants at the NHS which was understaffed at the time. He was opposed to attempts to restrict employment of immigrants in the public sector on the basis that it was wrong to treat an individual differently on the basis of their origins. Powell was a libertarian and a staunch nationalist who believed in the Empire, which he saw collapse in his own lifetime and he yearned for it to be restored. As MP Powell drew up a plan to reconquer India in 1950, which Churchill dismissed as "madness". He was opposed to US influence, Irish reunification, Communism and European integration out of this belief in the British Empire.

Milton Friedman, a fellow member of the Mont Pelerin Society, praised Enoch Powell as a principled man. Powell stood by monetarism throughout the predominance of Keynesian theory and the widespread practice of social democratic policies throughout the Western world. The sumptuous distance from power that Powell enjoyed later functioned as a plateau from which a shot could be fired at the Establishment in standard populist manner. Of course, the distance served the ultra-right as a comfortable place for indulgence away from any chance of serious reflection on policy and theory. The point of excessive rhetoric for Hayek was to bolster support for the old system reconstituted behind the mythic guise of 'free-market'. The state-planners of social democratic capitalism would be placed by a managerial state-capitalist nexus, whereby the 'competitive order' is maintained. Powellism is no different, it was the standard Tory combination of classical liberalism and cultural conservatism. It parades before the rabble in the proto-populist garb of parochial nostalgia for the imperial glory and unfettered capitalism of the Victorian era.

Enoch Powell became a strident opponent of immigration after Ted Heath became Conservative leader in 1965, with Powell coming third behind him and joined the Shadow Cabinet as Secretary of Defence. Around this time Powell became increasingly critical of immigration and came out in opposition to Sikh men wearing turbans at work. It may have been a bid to position himself for the leadership role in the long-term. It couldn't have been pure opportunism on his part given that it was a position he maintained for the rest of his life. He saw himself as a prophet and it came through in his language, it was the words of Virgil he invoked. But it is clear that the 'Rivers of Blood' speech was timed to put Ted Heath on the spot and shape immigration policy dramatically. He was silent in opposition to the Race Relations act when it was discussed by the Shadow Cabinet just 10 days before he made his notorious speech. If Ted Heath failed to undertake tough policy-decisions on immigration it could have meant another Labour victory in 1970, after which Powell could have challenged Heath and become party leader.

Tried and Tested.

Once in power Ted Heath abruptly castrated Powell as a potential rival with the 1971 Immigration act, which reduced immigration to zero in the early 70s. Heath rejected the suggestion, as Powell had, that the state could manage the economy. The Conservative government embarked on a new approach to the economy, which hoped that the unhindered market would reconstruct British industry and society. Powell had long been a proponent of such an approach and now there was the chance to see it realised. But the Heath government abandoned the approach abruptly as unemployment started to rise and industry was left devastated. The new strategy was a "dash for growth" with the liberalisation of credit and a higher level of public spending. It was for a moment that the British economy boomed before the phenomenon of stagflation emerged as inflation and unemployment to rise simultaneously. The Keynesian orthodoxy was left perplexed and the monetarists found the chance they had been looking for.

Even though Heath had abandoned the market as the instrument to organise society and, much to the chagrin of Powell, saw Britain join the European Economic Community, the Conservative government helped set the conditions for Thatcher - which was heavily influenced by Powellite thinking. The Heath administration had removed exchange controls and opened up the UK economy to the international financial markets, money could now be moved in and out of the country on a whim. The threat to democracy of deregulated finance proved correct as we have witnessed a political stasis in the West since the global economy underwent the first stages of financialisation. It was the stagflation which opened up the space into which monetarism could enter as an alternative to Keynesianism. The failure to manage the economy gave credence to the position that the state could not manage the economy and should not be expected to. The way that the labour movement defeated the Conservative government demonstrated that the working-class had to be broken.

Powell was the consummate precursor to Thatcherism, in many respects, and had good reason to take delight in the collapse of the Heath government. Of course, Powell had a lot in common with Heath and a lot more than he would have admitted. The immigration policy of Heath was crafted to neuter him and the economic doctrine could only be salvaged for Powell as it was aborted. Under successive Labour governments there was an increase in deportations and the introduction of virginity tests on Asian women coming to live with their husbands in Britain. Again, Powell could languish at a distance from power and comfortably refuse any critical self-reflection at all. The Heath administration was not 'pure' in its approach to economic affairs and it sold out to the Europeans at the first chance. Powell could reassure himself that the ideas in his mind had yet to be realised. Then came the rise of Thatcherism and this time it would be different as Thatcher made clear when she said "To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say: You turn if you want to."

No more U-Turns?

This time the government did not back down to the trade unions and instead systematically crushed every union it provoked into confrontation. In many respects Thatcherism was Powellism adjusted to the processes of globalisation and financialisation. The austerity measures of the early 1980s led to violent riots across the country in some of the most deprived and vulnerable communities. The ideological justification for the cuts came out of neoliberal doctrines which Enoch Powell supported and propagated throughout his career. The process by which the state was "rolled back" left the population devastated. It required the shock of the Falklands war to bolster patriotic support for the government. But it also required a means to explain away the social problems that the process generated. This is where Enoch Powell is on the side of the Establishment. The riots just supported his thesis that there would soon be violence and destruction on a huge scale if immigration were not reversed. Conveniently Powell could spout this line and not confront the consequences of the economic policies which he supported.

At the same time, Powell could hide behind the fact that the policies did not go far enough and the social democratic settlement was not obliterated totally. The doors were periodically opened to permit a spurt of immigration in order to boost the supply of labour. The so-called "special relationship" between the US and the UK continued as the US permitted the British retaliation to the Argentine invasion of the Falklands. This was a war fought in America's backyard against an action undertaken by a dictatorship that Washington had supported. The days when the British rebelled against American foreign policy were long gone. Integration with Europe continued steadily as it had since the 1950s, with Thatcher pushing through the single European act - perhaps one of the most integrationist measures. Thatcher was also a member of the Heath Cabinet which took Britain into the European Economic Community in 1973 and campaigned for a Yes vote in the 1975 referendum. Margaret Thatcher was no bastion of 'national sovereignty' rather she never deviated from the traditional Conservative position on European integration which we might describe today in the vein of UKIP as Europhilic as opposed to Eurosceptical.

The Euro was a right-wing project from the very beginning as the European Central Bank has no qualms about the level of unemployment. Yet it is often portrayed as a leftist project by the ilk of Powell for the reason it is a state-system and we are reminded that the state fails to do good even on the rare occasions that it means to. The convenient blind-spot is to the neoliberal role of the state as a managerial system of a 'competitive order' in Hayekian theory. The right-wing opposition to social democratic capitalism was just an opposition to the particular form of the state-corporate nexus. Instead of state-planners looking to provide services and a social safety-net to the poor and most vulnerable, people like Powell were looking for a bureaucracy which would do more for business than society. As convenient as it may be for reactionaries like Powell to dismiss the Left for having ideas, it has to be said that the return to the glory of Victorian Britannia really is utopian. The only acceptable state project is on the side of 'national sovereignty' which has no place for the poor except as a dis-empowered rabble to be exploited.