What kind of regime does Putin head?

The Western mass-media have had for many years the problem of how to characterise the Russian government under Vladimir Putin. The most often characterisation draws upon crude simplifications of Russian history: the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire. We're told Putin is a mini-Stalin and a mini-Tsar all in one. This is highly misleading for a number of reasons. Two come to mind immediately.

Firstly, it implies that the possibility of aggressive expansionism by Russia is a plausible likelihood. Putin has no plans to provoke a full-blown conflict with the European powers. He knows how vulnerable Russia is to such opponents. Putin now acts to hold-off encroaching Western influence and NATO outposts from the borders of the Russian Federation. It's not in the Russian interests to have NATO missile systems on its borders so close to major cities. He could live with Ukraine becoming a EU member-state, as long as the gas network is not effected seriously. In this regard, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and de facto annexation of Crimea does not compare to Stalin's 'spreading the revolution' by rifle and bayonet. Even when Stalin acted to build a buffer-zone of satellite states in Eastern and Southern Europe it was not a bid for global domination. It was about the consolidation of Soviet power by securing the country from any future Western intervention. The position Putin has taken is defined by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Secondly, the phase of development we currently see in Russia has little precedent in previous historical conditions. The Tsars of the 19th Century presided over a feudal society with an emerging industrial and capitalist base, perching over Orthodox Christendom at home and imperialism abroad. The USSR was defined by the exacerbation of such conditions of scarcity and dislocation in the First World War and Civil War. The mission was not to reproduce the feudal order of the past, nor to build from its remains a capitalist society, it was to establish the material pre-conditions for socialism. That amounted to the industrialisation of Russian society to create the material surplus of a capitalist society by non-capitalist means and ultimately to non-capitalist ends. The promised communist future never arose from this process. When the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991 the whole edifice was then broken down and digested by economic shock therapy. Putin emerges out of this historical conjuncture.

So we find the situation in Russia is a period distinct from preceding epochs. The Russian Federation emerged out of the collapse of the Soviet Union to be forced through primitive accumulation by the Yeltsin administration. The immense resources were handed over to a small clique around Yeltsin as the Russian state-sector and public assets were dismembered and chucked to these ravenous beasts. The transformation of the material base of Russian society inevitably reverberated throughout its superstructure. The state became so weighed down by its own corruption that the oligarchs around Yeltsin decided to replace him with Putin. The hope was that Putin would deal with the officials looking to crackdown on corruption while simultaneously reinstating authority in the government. The liberalisation of the economy had led to the formation of an internationalising class, which in turn spurred on a recrudescent nationalism.

I've written before that it seem as if the Russian President stands at the apex where anti-political purism and ultra-political nationalism meet. He initially presented himself as a non-political man of action, who will enforce order and stability. Of course, there is nothing 'non-political' about the man at all. He appeals to Soviet nostalgia, particularly with regard to the defeat of German Fascism. Yet only in nationalist terms, the Soviet era was a great era when Russia wielded power on the world stage. The world was not unipolar and Russians did not have to live in fear of Western aggression. The victories in Georgia and Chechnya and now Ukraine can be understood as reactive. Putin wants to fend-off encroachments of non-Russian influence, primarily from the US, but also from independent actors, such as Chechen Islamists and separatists.

Many like to talk about 'Putinism' as if it signifies a clear characterisation of the Russian government. It is certain that the managed democracy in Russia represents a new order. The rapid and chaotic pace of primitive accumulation under Boris Yeltsin has been slowed by Putin, but it is not over by any means. It was Putin who furthered the privatisation of land. The concentration of economic power in the hands of oligarchs sits side-by-side with the state power. 'Putinism' is a very misleading and vague term. It's mainly another way of carrying out the spurious comparison between Putin and Stalin. The phrase 'Stalinism' was really used to signify a deviation from Marxism by the Soviet leadership. Perhaps in a similar vein 'Putinism' refers to a deviation from the Washington consensus which the Yeltsin administration was completely embedded in.

Aleksandr Buzgalin calls it 'jurassic capitalism' where the old state-order, as well as even older feudal structures (i.e. the Church), stand alongside a capitalist economy. We might see this as a developing form of corporatism or 'national' capitalism, rather than the internationalist and liberal variety we are so comfortable with in Western Europe. It's certain that Putin is a part of the right-wing economic consensus that has been ruling Russia since the Soviet Union was dissolved. But it is not the same as it was in the 1990s. The sympathies Putin has drawn from Westerners have been insightful. Among them we find the British journalist Peter Hitchens, a cultural-traditionalist conservative, who sees Putin as taking a stand against neoliberal globalization in defence of national sovereignty. Then there is the fascist Nick Griffin who sees Russia as the last bastion of the "white race".

Rumours of Peace.

Few satirists could have conceived of such a scene. It was too perfect in its surreal edge. With Ariel Sharon lying entombed, Tony Blair took his position at the nearby podium and gave one of his usual performances. Sporting a yarmulke, most unnaturally, Tony oozed counterfeit solemnity “The same iron determination he took to the field of war he took to the chamber of diplomacy. Bold. Unorthodox. Unyielding.”

I wander what kind of ‘iron determination’ it takes to slaughter 69 unarmed and defenceless villagers of Qibya. Sharon later claimed that his men had no idea there were still people living in the homes that they were bombarding with gunfire and grenades. It was this sort of conduct that led David Ben-Gurion to dub the young man “a pathological liar”. No doubt the twenty to fifty unarmed and defenceless refugees killed at al-Bureig were witnesses to similar displays of iron. Both took place in 1953 at the hands of Unit 101 led by the departed commander on ‘reprisal’ attacks. We’re talking retaliation for the deaths of two or three people probably. Today the Israeli military still lacks a sense of proportionality, let alone any comprehension of the immorality of revenge. It was just the beginning for young Arik. He would soon be storming across the Sinai alongside Anglo-French forces determined to snatch back the Suez Canal.

Wherever the man went there seemed to be Arabs falling to the ground dead. At the battle of Mitla 260 Egyptians were left dead. The battle became a subject of controversy (a euphemism in common usage) as some claimed Sharon deliberately engaged in unauthorised aggression. General Sharon would later return to the Sinai with Israel’s most powerful forces in 1967 at the battle of Abu-Ageila. Then in the Yom Kippur War, Sharon disobeyed the orders of his superiors and instead set out to engage the Egyptian army across the Suez Canal. In doing so the General initiated a turning point in the war and was set in time as a hero of military might from then on. The fact that the General had graduated by then to terrorizing the inhabitants of Gaza and north-eastern Sinai isn’t so heroic. It went as far as expelling 10,000 farmers, bulldozing their homes, and destroying their farmland to make way for settlement. This is how Sharon earned the title of Bulldozer.

Around this time the Bulldozer had become enamoured with an array of right-wing forces taking shape into what would become the Likud Party. Ever mercurial, Sharon jumped at the chance to advise a Labour Zionist government before attempting to stand as the Likud candidate for 1977 only to find he wasn’t the favourite. He had been refused any support by mainstream parties, so he founded a small party to win himself a seat, and managed to barter his way into Begin’s Likud government. Sharon was the Minister of Agriculture for 4 years before being promoted to Minister of Defence. That was his proper place after all. Notably, as right-wing as Menachem Begin was he did believe in the rule of law to some extent and torture almost stopped for 4 years. The hiatus came to a close when the Bulldozer became Defence Minister.

The new Defence Minister had his priorities in order. Time interviewed Sharon and he showed no time for throat-clearing and spoke bluntly “I believe that the starting point for a solution is to establish a Palestinian state in that part of Palestine that was separated from what was to become Israel in 1922 and which is now Jordan.” He had known from early on that the Palestinians had to be restricted to cantons in order for settlements to be expanded further and further. The end was an Israel with its territory stretching from the Mediterranean to the Jordan. But he knew he could not do this alone.

When it came to regional power Lebanon became the battleground for Israel and Syria and the various forces aligned to either side and those caught in between. The General took the side of the Maronite Christian militias and especially the Phalange Party founded by Pierre Gemayel out of admiration for Hitler. The aim of a client state in Lebanon was what spurred Sharon to action. Then came the massacre at Sabra and Shatila. It just so happened that the camp of Palestinian refugees was under Sharon’s watchful gaze when the Phalange came to flush out the “terrorists”. The Israeli troops stood by and watched for nearly 3 days as the rampage snuffed the life out of 1,700 human beings. Bold. Unorthodox. Unyielding.

This is a rather light overview of the atrocities Sharon committed. Why then would he be heralded as a ‘peacemaker’ exactly? Anyone with this record would expect to never hold such a prominent position ever again. He lost his job after much protest, but he bided his time. After the failures of the Labour governments of the 1990s and amidst the Second Intifada the old man took advantage of the rightward lurch overtaking the country. He pledged no negotiations with the Palestinians until the Intifada ended. The so-called “peace plan” that Sharon proposed, and partially initiated, amounted to relinquishing 42% of the West Bank and establishing a ‘security barrier’ (longer than the Berlin Wall) to annex around 50% of the occupied territories. To this end Sharon reinvented himself as a man of peace and transferred around 9,000 Gaza settlers to the Negev and the West Bank. It’s clear what the real prize was in his mind.

A Picture of Settler-Colonialism.

Who the Unchosen?

 It has become apparent that Ethiopian Jews have been subjected to birth-control injections without their knowledge or consent in Israel. This is yet another revelation in issues and events in Israel that can only be summarised as a race problem. It's a real shock for a lot of people, and for others it's something to be brushed under the carpet. Israel's race problem is a necessary part of its national project, just as it was with the US - another state founded upon a great crime - where racism was a part of the state's order.

 It was just last year that Israel found itself shook by race riots in South Tel Aviv, with several African immigrants left injured. The Likudnik Miri Regev was quick on the scene, can of kerosene in hand, ever eager to put out the flames of racism. In her shrill populism Regev characterised the black refugees fleeing from genocide in Sudan as 'a cancer in our body'. She went on to stand by the comment, only apologising for the offence it may have caused to Jews reminded of the putrid effluvia of National Socialism. It's noteworthy that Regev thought it sufficient to apologise to Jews and, indeed, cancer patients who might be offended, but not to one black person in Israel. Race-baiting is a classic vote winner in times of economic instability. Nationalists are often so degenerate as to believe that as the ground shakes beneath you only flag-wagging will save the day. For nationalist politicians it certainly will save their salaries for many terms to come and this is especially useful in a country prone to coalition government. It's an endless well to tap into in a country where the buzzwords of discourse are 'national security' and 'self-defence'.

 That same year Bibi Netanyahu speculated that illegal immigration from Africa would "threaten our existence as a Jewish and democratic state". The calculating statesman chose his words carefully, it's a question of majoritarian definition that Israel remain Jewish in its demographics. The real trouble is the debate over what constitutes Jewishness and the dangers of racialising the definition can't be overstated. Yet Mr Netanyahu's ilk fear not such dangers, for his lot the Jews are white and Israel is an outpost of the Western world surrounded by dusky barbarians. Then there is the matter of whether Israel ought to be a Jewish state or a state for Jews. A subtle distinction never fully clarified in Zionist circles before 1947. If it's a state for Jews then it doesn't have to be a majority Jewish state, nor does it have to be run in accordance with religious law and the question of what constitutes Jewishness can be left aside. These problems are nothing new, they are fundamental questions of Zionism.

 So we find the race problem is entangled, not by coincidence, with Israel's origins, the need for a young country to define itself in terms of its identity, culture and values. To some this would seem a simple task, merely a matter of what aspects of Judaism to leave on the shelf. Actually it's incredibly complex given the lack of homogeneity in Judaism, the plethora of languages and cultures that Jews have picked up on over the millennia. The way this has been handled inside Israel is particularly important for analysts and commentators. The Ashkenazim enjoyed privileges and rights above those of the Mizrahi for a long time. Even as the Israeli elite are for a peaceful solution, the much more economically deprived and zealous citizens (e.g. the Mizrahi, the refuseniks, the kibbutzniks) are far more hawkish. To add to this mix the ruling-class has been busily eroding the civic institutions and welfare state of Israel in recent decades. The country was founded as a quasi-socialist and almost egalitarian (among Jews) arrangement, since then it has mutated into a country where 18 families control 60% of corporate equity.

 In a country as divided and dysfunctional as Israel there is a serious need for a means of mobilisation at elections. The dual role of racism is firstly the continuation of the occupation and maintain an electoral base for this status quo. It's inseparable from the conflict, and only a peaceful settlement may secure Israel and perhaps cure it of prejudice. That's one view of it. And it's easy to take it, recall the words of Moshe Dayan just after the conquests of 1967 when he said that the Palestinians will "continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads". So far that process has been a steady expansionism at the expense of the security of Israelis and the rights of Palestinians. The moments where this state of permanent crisis eventuates in bloodbaths do not rupture peace and harmony. There is no peace, whether Hamas fires rockets or not. The construction of the annexation wall around most arable land in the West Bank is incremental. Yet the demographic question will not be resolved by this expansion, far from it.

 The expansion into the West Bank with the annexation wall, which is longer than the Berlin Wall, is conveniently encircling the major arable land and resources of the area. This irredentism comes straight out of the same spawn-pool as nationalism and racism. The tendency of national discourse towards the völkisch should not be swept under the carpet where it will only fester in its own self-satisfying vulgarity. The prospect of a völk defined by 'chosenness' should not go unchallenged. The brilliant Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt had her reservations about the prospect of a Jewish state carved out of the body of colonial Palestine. The worst of all possible models was the European one, she thought, which rested upon a racial conception of the nation-state. This same model had proven successful in the are of pogroms, not forgetting slavery and other assorted atrocities. The preferable model would guarantee equal rights and recognition as citizens for Palestinians and Jews alike.

 This was a one-state proposal that preceded the coming decades of violence necessary to found a state. Arendt was prescient in her anxieties, she foresaw that the Jewish state would reside in permanent agitation with its Arab neighbours. The Jews would have to live in a precarious position surrounded by a hostile set of states and secluded inside ever-threatened borders. It's what drives Naftali Bennet's shameful calls for an outright annexation of 30% of the West Bank (presumably out of the 60% that Israel already has in settlements illegally). But you don't even need to look to Naftali Bennet for blunt-faced expansionism. It's an effective policy of the sitting Prime Minister and the barely restrained Russian thug at his far-right side. The precise end point of Israel's borders remains somewhat mysterious for those told to affirm the state's right to exist. There are neo-Zionist elements who would like to expand all the way along the river and ultimately absorbing Jordan.

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.