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".

Yeltsin Nostalgia.

Today’s tensions with Vladimir Putin probably make American policymakers nostalgic for the days of Boris Yeltsin. If we wish to understand today’s Russia, we have to look at the way the Federation emerged from the tumultuous collapse of the USSR. Putin’s allegiances were clear from the beginning. He was not a mindless KGB thug, as he is often portrayed.His intelligence career ended with a principled stance in support of Mikhail Gorbachev, and against his superiors, when he opposed the Communist attempt to overthrow the leader and turn back the tide in 1991. Years later, much of his ideology would be affected by its fallout.

The possibility of a new order was realistic in the days before the attempted coup. Gorbachev had initiated a modicum of reform. The bloody war in Afghanistan was over. It looked as if the US might actually want a settlement on missiles. Bush had promised the Soviet leader that he wouldn’t expand NATO any further eastwards. It’s no wonder  that the majority of Russians, along with Putin, were on the side of glasnost and perestroika.

However, Yeltsin, and his backers, had other plans. His ambitions were right for the time, although they were wrong for Russia. His ascendency came at the heel of the Bush administration’s efforts to back nationalists in Yugoslavia, adjusting its aid policies accordingly and ending Josip Broz Tito’s dream of a state for all Southern Slavs. Following suit, Bush took the side of Russian nationalism in order to definitively break up the Soviet Union.

The “great reformer” Gorbachev, and his supporters, were a hindrance to these objectives. Thus, the United States backed Yeltsin, who became instantly popular in the aftermath of the botched coup. Many democrats hoped that their new political centre would guide Russia into a new era. However, the enthusiasm wouldn’t last, since Yeltsin’s real agenda had little to do with democracy.

The right-wing consensus was that a selection of tiny, fractured states would succeed the USSR. They were designed in this manner so that they could easily be picked off, and be subjected to economic underdevelopment. These plans aligned with Yeltsin’s personal aims for power and grandeur in the post-Cold War era.

The Russian President was integral to it happening. In a series of manoeuvres, Yeltsin cut deals with the various leaders of Soviet republics, including Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine, and saw the Soviet Union dissolved. Yeltsin could do this because Gorbachev had guaranteed a policy of non-intervention towards Eastern Europe. Signalling just how much the balance of power had shifted after the events of 1991, Gorbachev’s resignation was accepted pre-emptively.

Shock Therapy

The fall of Gorbachev marked the end of the Soviet era and set things in a completely new direction. Russia’s Parliament gave Yeltsin free reign to implement an economic programme of rapid deregulation and privatisation, known as shock therapy. Yeltsin had the advice of US economist Jeffrey Sachs and Clinton administration official Larry Summers, who is often blamed for the post-Communist Russia’s first, and most severe downturn. The plan was to establish the conditions for a market society as fast as possible.

First, price controls were eliminated. The resulting hyperinflation quickly ate through the savings of most Russians. This was soon followed with a rapid privatisation of over 200,000 state-run companies.

The Russian people suffered greatly for this and the rouble was tremendously devalued. Living standards plummeted. Millions fell into unemployment. Even the employed were not guaranteed a wage. Every Russian was given vouchers to buy shares in the newly private companies. However, since most were desperate for cash, they sold their vouchers cheaply to ruthless businessmen who began to organize the early phases of “mafia rule.”

After a year of ruling by decree, Yeltsin’s struggles with wresting government controls from parliament and state institutions reached a head. Apart from its effects on citizens, the privatization program had also led to a credit crunch and heavy taxes, causing a prolonged depression. Legislative-executive tensions peaked with the 1993 constitutional crisis, when Parliament presented its own draft constitution.

This quickly led to a general repeal of ‘shock therapy,’ and Yeltsin responded by dissolving the legislature and suspending Russia’s constitution. The Clinton administration, along with many Western governments, backed Yeltsin’s decision to shell Moscow’s White House when it was occupied in protest. This was the bloodiest non-foreign violence that Moscow had seen since the October Revolution. Yeltsin justified it by saying it was necessary to remove impediments to a market economy.

After he regained control, the market reforms went further. More price controls were removed, going as far as basic food stuffs like bread. State expenditure on social services was slashed, and the rate of privatization increased dramatically. Yeltsin found enthusiastic support in a newly ascendant upper-class, later to be dubbed “the oligarchs.” He assisted them in wiring approximately $2 billion out of the country per month. He also undersold enormous industrial assets and resources to his constituents at sometimes less than 2% of their actual value.

The end result was that by 2000, 74 million people were in poverty, with 37 million of them ranked as “desperate.” Meanwhile, Moscow became home to more billionaires than other city in the world.

Yeltsin was a barely functional figurehead by 1999, and kept a coterie of close advisors and friends around him at all times. It included oligarchs like Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky. Although corrupt, and exploitative, many Western leaders were relieved to see the Federation controlled by people who were reliably compliant. This same entourage would be the one that ultimately selected Putin as Yeltsin’s successor.

He was an appealing choice. Yeltsin may have survived multiple crises, but the Kremlin was wracked with corruption scandals. Putin was head of the Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB, and oligarchs thought it could use him as a battering ram against their enemies who were looking to crack down on their activities. Putin was soon made Prime Minister in 1999, and Yeltsin’s resignation was secured the same year.

Putin’s Wager

The oligarchs had underestimated Putin. He skilfully used a series of terrorist attacks as a justification to wagewar in Chechnya and consolidate his rule. The conflict boosted his popularity, and also legitimized his budding push for an Orthodox Christian nationalism.

He followed up by turning on The Family, rather than simply rubber-stamping their extraction of wealth. Shortly after Putin became President in 2000, Boris Berezovsky fled to London to escape arrest, and was soon joined by other oligarchs who now live in exile. They were smashed by Putin, who strengthened his position as a Hobbesian force of stability after the disarray of the 1990s.

Putin didn’t take long to find new oligarchs to support his rule, ones that were subservient to him and disproportionately employed in the energy industry. He reasserted the role of the state and buttressed his rule with tough appeals to populist chauvinism, which affected such decisions as the 2002 storming of the Dubrovka theater.

Putin is now seen as the man who can flush out all the “problems” affecting Russian society, whether they be Chechen terrorists, corrupt oligarchs, or more recently, homosexuals. The contrast with Yeltsin is stark. The Soviet Union isn’t back, but for Putin’s supporters, Russia is strong again.

This is exhausting for Western leaders, who yearn for a Yeltsin Kremlin. The difference between Putin and Yeltsin is the spin of the strongman policies. Yeltsin’s policies rarely antagonized the West, while Putin almost craves the opportunity.

This is how we should read the international outcry against Russia’s most recent military incursions: one in Georgia, with Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008, and Ukrainian Crimea in 2014. Both efforts were preceded by Yeltsin’s decision to invade Chechnya in 1994, setting off an ongoing conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people. However, Chechnya still rarely gets substantive coverage in Western media outlets, and certainly did not provoke the same level of Western outrage when Yeltsin was at the helm.

The real problem is Putin himself, who is comparatively disagreeable to say the least. His Kremlin is also much less willing to accept the expansion of NATO outposts into bordering states. Putin’s Russia is a brutal one, which deserves the fear and loathing it provokes. However, for Western leaders, it is despised mainly because of what it represents. Putin’s Russia is a Russia that has abandoned Yeltsin’s subservient market reforms, and positions itself against the United States in a manner that many believed had died with the Soviet Union.

The evaporation of Viktor Yanukovych’s government was welcomed by many in Ukraine and in the West. It was not welcomed in Russia, partly for reasons that any military historian can grasp. Russia has long been vulnerable to invasion on its Western frontier. One of Stalin’s major motivations for building the Eastern bloc was to create a buffer-zone between “the motherland” and Western powers. This is understandable, given that 23 million Russians died during World War II. Those concerns also framed the vicious crackdowns of 1956 and 1968.

However, since the world appears to have moved beyond major interstate warfare, these concerns are moot, for the most part. They make for strong rhetoric, but the real problem is that Putin recognizes how the EU’s and NATO’s presence in Ukraine will affect gas pipelines. This is part of the reason that Russia’s military assets in the Crimean Peninsula are so important: a state’s military presence bolsters its market activity in an area.

Putin’s actions are currently forcing a political compromise that Yeltsin wouldn’t have dared to even mention.

It is likely that Crimea will leave Ukraine, giving Putin a major strategic victory as well as a domestic image of rebuilding a foregone era of Russian glory.

He has proven himself so cunning that a future Ukrainian NATO bid is now effectively impossible, even if it does slip into the European orbit. It appears that due to Russian hostility, the future of the EU may be tied to it easing away from NATO.

Putin can also be a little more secure about the state of gas pipelines in the country, which are an even greater concern for him now that North America’s fracking boom threatens to corner Russia out of the market.

The wider picture, though, is that Putin has continued his original allegiance to Gorbachev into a rollback of the short-lived dream of a Western-friendly Russian Federation. For better or worse, the West now has to deal with a Russia that is an opponent again. Hence the fond memories of Yeltsin. Statements of “remember when we didn’t have to deal with this” are probably ringing through every Western capitol at the moment.

Originally written and published at Souciant Magazine on March 12th 2014.

Permanent Austerity.

Bound in white tie, but not gagged, merely primed for performance as always, the Prime Minister finally admitted what some of us had suspected from before the beginning. In his speech David Cameron came out with the rhetoric of small government, that we have to do more with less and shrink the state to a more effective role. So the point of the austerity measures is not to reduce the deficit necessarily, it is to slim down the size of the state. Of course, it is worth saying that the ideological mission of a shrunken state is one and the same with the claims to 'necessity'. It is no coincidence that the claim that the spending cuts are 'necessary' comes with added promises of greater 'productivity', 'innovation' and 'efficiency'. In fact, a government euphemism for cuts is 'efficiency savings'. This is the lexicon of neoliberal managerialism.

If we are to take David Cameron on his word then we might say that the austerity is meant to be perpetual and never ending. The key part being when he said "We are sticking to the task. But that doesn't just mean making difficult decisions on public spending. It also means something more profound, it means building a leaner, more efficient state.  We need to do more with less. Not just now, but permanently." The sight of the Prime Minister in his white little frock at the throne dripping gold and these words coming out of his mouth was something to be seen. Unfortunately the irony of the Head of Her Majesty's Government proselytising on the virtues of 'small government' is lost on conservative opinion. Meanwhile the handful of liberal and leftish rags immediately seized on the words of the Prime Minister. But no one should be so surprised really.
 

Just observe the fact that the original proposals by George Osborne were meant to reduce the deficit to naught by 2015 and now the plans to wipe the deficit have been extended to 2020. To this picture we may add the claims that the NHS is facing a shortfall of £10 billion, that was back in 2010, it was Andrew Lansley, who used the figure to justify the cuts he was making at the time. Now there is talk of a coming shortfall by the end of the decade of £30 billion. One wonders if Cameron's lot will ever feel they have lowered the rate of spending far enough. Every problem of the public services and welfare state are seized on by these vultures as proof of the need for deep cuts. The various scandals to be endured by the NHS of late fit the example perfectly. Hunt will make a statement on the problem at hand (which is no doubt real) to buttress his position as a competent Health Secretary coming up with the prescription for a better health service. Cuts and more cuts.

The examples the Prime Minister reaches for are quite interesting for this reason. He singled out for praise the accomplishments of Michael Gove, the 40% cuts to administrative staff at the Education Department to be specific. Then there are the 3,000 'free schools' and academies set up under the watch of Gove. He lumps in the shrinkage of the department with the use of public assets and money to ensure education for the children of sharp-elbowed middle-class parents. 'Free schools' are established at the expense of the tax-payer and even at a cost to comprehensive and other state schools in terms of resources. This is the same ministry to rearrange the pensions system for teachers with the hopes of devaluing their retirement funds by 15% and raising their payments by 50%. Over the same timeline you'll find tuition fees introduced and raised almost at every university to £9,000, apparently to reduce the deficit when HE funding accounts for 0.7% of GDP.


This is the manifest reality of what Cameron means when he speaks of a "leaner, more efficient state". The idealised slim-line state of libertarian imaginations is not to be taken seriously as a realistic prospect. Really we're looking at the possibility of living in a society where the social safety-nets is non-existent while the state intervenes to create markets, boost supply and ensure vast profits. There will be plenty of bailouts to come. In some respects the neoliberal period seems much more like a state of flux than a rigidly set social order. It is partly identifiable by its oscillations, the sudden shift in gears from taking a chainsaw to financial regulations to diving into the public purse to save the lemmings before they go over the cliff. Though it is a very narrow and restricted spectrum with serious limitations. There is only so many regulations to burn and so far the taxes can be cut.

Jumping each hurdle might become much more difficult as we go long. Crises will offer opportunities to reconstitute the economic formations as they were prior to them. Schumpeter called it 'creative destruction': the field of competitors is wiped clear for old forces to go from strength to strength. A better diagnosis from Naomi Klein would be economic 'shock therapy' whereby the crisis provides a cover for a series of assaults to be launched on the living standards of working-class people. It's worth bearing in mind that the current order took shape in the way that the Thatcherites circumvented the crisis of social democracy: 1) cutting public expenditure, 2) privatising state industries, 3) smashing the unions and 4) deregulation of finance. Incidentally the average rate of growth in the 70s was 2.5% and it remained the same in the Thatcher decade. So those who think the austerity is about high rates of growth are sadly mistaken, at best.

Not surprisingly then 0.8% of growth is enough for George Osborne to declare a great victory, a strange position given that there has been no opposition in Parliament to his agenda. Only a brat as expensively educated as the Chancellor could perceive competition in a game rigged in his favour. The Cameron lot want to patch up this sorry set-up, not to fundamentally alter its trajectory. The failures of the past are accentuated, and framed in a certain way, by the abstract principles of today. A high-rate of public expenditure is measured by a criterion not of the social democratic era. The 1970s was a terrible time in British history not because it necessarily was so awful, but because the conditions differ so greatly to today. To be specific, the scope of the state - particularly in the ways that helped poor people - in those days is what outrages conservative-minded people.

The standard of a high level of government debt was changed by the Thatcher-Major era. Suddenly it was set at a benchmark of 40% when this country has seen rates as high as 250% in the wake of World War Two. And that was a well managed economic situation. The Labour government of 1945 established a social democracy complete with the trimmings of a welfare state and universal health-care. The story of how the social democratic post-war consensus developed systemic problems and crises is a long one and a subject for a different article. What may be said is that the failures of that epoch have been accentuated in the years since. The abstract principles of today are applied to those yesteryears with the self-serving results one would expect. The rightward trend of discourse leaves the state-led settlement of the 50s and 60s looking almost Soviet to too many people today. This is the death of social democracy.

Brand Obama - Prospects for a Second Term.

It has become fashionable to attack Barack Obama not just from the Right but from the Left as well. We should not lose sight of the magnitude of the election of the first African-American to the Presidency, especially as it was slavery which built the White House and provided the material conditions necessary for American capitalism. But the election of Obama was not the fulfilment of the dream that we all pay lip-service to. The ideological goal-posts of America have been shifted under Obama in a way which was unthinkable under just another white male politico. With that in mind it is impossible to deny that Obama would be a better President if he had not backed the coup in Honduras and slashed the wages of Haitian workers in the aftermath of the earthquake. The same goes for the way Obama has extended the war in Afghanistan to Pakistan. Let alone the drone attacks on Somalia which have been conveniently ignored in the mainstream media.

It has been a long strange trip since 2008 when the first African-American became President-elect and the American people were ready to say "Adios!" to George Bush. That year the Obama campaign team won the award for the Best Marketing Campaign, with commiserations to Apple and Nike. The election was the subject of an enormous flow of corporate dough and grass-roots campaigning which succeeded in electing Obama. Soon the word was out that the US had finally gotten over it's silly little race problem, it had become a "post-racial" society overnight and just around the corner the 'birthers' were on their way to tell the world that the President was a "closet Kenyan". There had already been attempts to pin the label of Muslim to Obama's lapel, the point being to call him a "terrorist" without actually saying it. Soon the favourite substitute for the n-word was "socialist". By now we can listen to the odious Newt Gingrich calling Obama a "food stamp President". Notice all of this has no relation to reality.

There is very little of substance for Republicans to complain about. Obama has conceded on health-care reform (which were conservative changes anyway) as well as the Bush tax-cuts, the National Defense Authorization act and on the stimulus which was wiped out by cuts at other levels. So the GOP shout about debt and they would love to run on economic issues, but they can't win on the economy because their policies only appeal to the top income brackets. The Republicans need more than just the ultra-rich to vote for them, the Democrats can appeal to ethnic minorities, gays and women to seek refuge in their party. The GOP are in a truly desperate situation. It was most astonishing to see the Republicans take a contorted anti-capitalist position last year, when they tried to block the rise of the debt-ceiling and in doing so acted to undermine the accumulation of wealth. At this point Karl Marx would just smugly remind us that "the contradictions of capitalism work in mysterious ways."

It is common knowledge that the outcome of American elections are basically bought. Back in September, Obama had the lead on Romney with a gap between them of over $50 million. Now we find the Republicans have leaped in front of the Democrats by almost $6 million. In 2008 Obama raked in around $750 million which was far more than McCain could muster. The estimates for the costs of 2012 are running as high as $11 billion and probably about $2 billion poured into the campaign war-chests. The core base of the Obama campaign were the same financial institutions which caused the Crash of '08. The small donors to Obama's campaign should not be ignored, but they amounted to $300 million at most which still leaves $450 million on the table. Large donors have been donating enormous amounts of cash in small chunks as to appear as small donors in the stats. This is something the Obama campaign encouraged from day one and probably still does.

It is corporate interests which shape American politics and every so often there is a convergence with working-class interests. The Obama health-care reforms were designed to drive down the costs entailed by the private system on manufacturing companies. It costs General Motors $1,000 more to produce a car in the US than it does in Canada. A system of universal provision would have a significant impact on the deficit, it would reduce it heavily. This is why a national health service is an inevitability.  In fact the Republican Party put forth these proposals when Clinton pushed for health-care reform in the 1990s. The former draft-dodging pothead Newt Gingrich is still a defender of the individual mandate and Mormon vulture Mitt Romney imported the same reforms in Massachusetts. Both Gingrich and Romney have been attacked for this by the ultra-Right for whom there is no "pure" conservative. These are the people who want to reduce the deficit through cuts and no tax increases, but insist on a "strong military" which costs $1 trillion.

The deciding factor could be turnout in this election, there is an extreme disillusionment in the electorate and both parties could feel the brunt of this. But it isn't just apathy in this situation which could tip things over. The GOP are well aware that the White House could be seized if they the opposition simply doesn't vote against them. Remember George Bush only came to power because the GOP managed to disqualify black voters in Florida. On average the Americans who earn less than $100,000 lean towards the Democrats, that actually accounts for 75% of the population - which only had 36% of the vote in the 2010 midterm elections. The forces of reaction are well aware of this, thus the Republicans have opted to make it as difficult as possible for Americans to vote. It was conservative Paul Weyrich who told a gathering of evangelical leaders in 1980 "our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." Almost 40 states have introduced measures to deliberately hinder voters.

The voter is now expected to provide proof of citizenship before registering in some states, ex-felons have been barred from voting, in some states you'll need to produce a government-issued ID before you can vote. This would exclude that 10% of American voters, 18% of the youth and 25% of black voters. This is comparable to the use of poll taxes and literacy tests to prevent blacks from voting out the racists in the South. Ironically, the Republicans have pulled this off on the grounds that there needs to be tighter guidelines to eliminate "fraudulent voters". Naturally the same billionaires who bankrolled the Tea Party are in the shadows seeing to it that the cogs in the machine are well oiled. This could be the divine, or should that be satanic, intervention to save the Republicans grabbing at political power wildly. It's even possible that the GOP are looking towards 2016 at this point. With that in mind, we should remember the words of Hunter S Thompson "The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but to those who see it coming and jump aside."

Capitalism is Dead.

The Monstrosity of Capital.

To report the death of capitalism is to exaggerate, to say the least, given we find ourselves subject to austerity measures as the global economy stumbles from one crisis to another in a little under 4 years. In the past capital has been likened to a vampire insofar as it is parasitic in its relation to labour. But it is no longer a suave count as capital is seemingly dead when it comes to the suffering of ordinary people. At the same time it is still capable of violent bursts of energy and it is mindlessly destructive in the pursuit of it's sustenance. So it seems appropriate to describe the current order as zombie capitalism, it requires a minimum of 3% compound growth in order to continue and that translates into a need for profitable investments of $1.5 trillion. In the future the system might demand even more, maybe $3 trillion in growth and we are struggling to find $1.5 trillion right now. One day the banking sector could be so big that it cannot be saved and we will be dragged into the abyss as it collapses. For us to gauge where we are today, and where we might be heading, it is important to remember the causes of the Crash of 2008.

A Popular Capitalism?

As David Harvey has noted, this crisis can be understood if we go back to the crises of the 1970s when organised labour posed a threat to capital. To the extent that the workers' share of GDP peaked in 1967. The unions had demonstrated a capacity to undermine the Establishment in Britain with the fall of the Heath administration in 1974. So the need for a broken labour movement emerged, which gave rise to Thatcher and Reagan to impose such discipline on the working-class. With the full-on assault on organised labour and its political allies came the mobilisation of a global labour surplus; the development of labour-saving technology and increased competition as neoliberalism emerged. The consequence was a sharp decline in the share of wages in total GDP almost everywhere, an enormous disposable labour reserve emerged and survived under marginal conditions. In fact some of the biggest wage-cuts in the world were endured in the US in 1985 and the UK in 1990 which was a direct consequence of the way trade unions were crushed.

The structures of monopoly power was undermined, with the state-monopoly capitalism being displaced in the meantime as the system was opened up to fearsome international competition. Ultimately the intensity of global competition led to lower corporate profits in non-financial domains. The early signs of a hegemonic shift of power towards East Asia came as uneven geographical development and inter-territorial competition had become key factors in capitalist development. The most fluid and mobile form of capital was utilised to reallocate capital resources at a global level, which led to the deindustrialisation in traditional heartlands of industry whilst new forms of industrialisation and resource extraction began in emergent markets. The character of these new forms might be labelled appropriately as ultra-oppressive, for instance in the Congo around 4 million people have been killed for the extraction of coltan. The ultimate aim was to enhance the profitability of financial corporations, thus the need for new ways to absorb risks through the creation of fictitious capital markets.

There is No such Thing as Society.

Accumulation by dispossession became a means to increase class power for the ultra-rich and so a new round of primitive accumulation - against indigenous and peasant populations - was in order to augment the asset losses of the working-classes in the developed world. We have only to turn to the African-American victims of the sub-prime housing crash. The mass-privatisation of social housing in Britain, which took place in the 1980s, appeared as a gift to the working-classes as it enabled them to convert from rental ownership at a relatively low cost to the control of a valuable asset which might make them rich. Speculation soon took over the housing market, eventually pushing low-income earners out to the outskirts of cities. David Cameron is about to further this process as part of a bid to recreate the property boom. It used to be that the capitalist invested in production. But for the last 30 years the economy has underwent financialisation as the capitalist has invested heavily in making money out of money rather than out of anything productive.

The increase of sagging effective demand was accomplished by pushing the debt economy - in governmental, corporate and household spheres - to its limits. This became standard method in the West, so it should be no surprise that in the US the household debt relative to income doubled from 1982 to 2007. By 2007 the ratio of financial assets to GDP had doubled since the early 80s. Incidentally the household debt in the UK was around £1,560 billion in 2010 and may rise to £2,126 billion by 2015 as a result of the cuts. The compensation for anemic rates of return in production came in the construction of a whole series of asset market bubbles and culminated in the property bubble that burst around 2007. Each of these asset bubbles drew upon finance capital and were facilitated by extensive financial innovations, specifically derivatives. The control of assets and resources at the heart of international finance became central to the system in the last 30 years. We no longer make things, we just make money out of money.

There is no Alternative.

The way that the crisis of the 1970s was circumvented led to nearly 16 years of growth in Britain from 1992 to 2008. It led to Gordon Brown claiming that Boom and Bust had been abolished. The current crisis has to be circumvented somehow, in the past that has required the enforced destruction of productive forces, the conquest of new markets and an even more thorough exploitation of old ones. So British manufacturing went into a decline from which it has yet to recover under Thatcher, employment in that area plummeted by 30 years from 1979 to 1990. The very means by which the system regenerates itself typically paves the way for even more extensive and destructive crises, as the means whereby crises are averted are diminished in doing so. The financialisation of the economy led to the financial crises of the last 30 years. The infinite capacity of capitalism to regenerate itself at the expense of the majority of the population should not be underestimated, but with each recovery the foundations for another crisis are laid.

The pressure is on for the ruling class to crank out profitable investments for $1.5 trillion, so it can meet that minimum of 3% growth for the time being. The state's reaction to the crises has opened a door which we're being led through and we don't yet know what is on the other side, it is just a mysterious darkness to us right now. This is nothing new, with the Crash of 1929 came such an opening and we all know what happened in Europe as Germans were marched into the darkness. Then there was the crisis of 1973 in Britain as a result of the oil crisis, which led to the collapse of the Heath government then the pathetic reign of a weak Labour government and then the emergence in 1979 of Thatcherism. This is not cheap fear-mongering, it doesn't seem realistic that either of these will emerge but we have to keep in mind what is possible. We might take comfort in the fact that when the Americans were marched into the same abyss it was the New Deal which emerged and not National Socialism. But it is not necessarily the case that history is on our side.

We're All in this Together.

A Crisis of Ideology.

Apart from the dire socio-economic consequences of the ongoing crisis the endemic contradictions of capitalism has led to a crisis of the prevailing ideology and the dust has yet to settle. As Terry Eagleton notes the tendency of market rationality runs towards the rationalist and materialist, as well as secular plurality, relativism and pragmatism. Naturally the forces of the market exert a subversive force on the metaphysical and ideological superstructure. Rather than question whether or not what we're saying meshes with what we're doing we might have to invoke the Virgin Mary at the World Bank. In the same way that Alan Greenspan took refuge as the crisis hit in the claim that it all down to human frailty, predatory instincts and so on. It is true that it was human behaviour which led to the crisis, but Greenspan resorted to this explanation only to protect the immaculate conception of free-market capitalism. The irony being that Alan Greenspan is an Objectivist dinosaur - a devotee of Ayn Rand - who buys into the virtues of selfishness.

The criminal assault on Vietnam and Indochina was a case in which there was an enormous gulf between the political justifications of the war and the grotesque details of the actions undertaken to devastate a country. It was claimed that the war was to combat and contain the spread of Communism, as the red flag was flying in North Vietnam and so the US embarked on a noble mission to fend off the tentacles of Communism - it then began bombing South Vietnam. The US had blocked every attempt at a peaceful settlement in the 1950s and installed the Diem regime in South Vietnam. As the Diem regime aroused resistance to it as it slaughtered around 70,000 people and in reaction to the resistance the Kennedy administration invaded South Vietnam. Even though he knew better Lyndon B Johnson continued with the line that "We have to stop the Communists over there [Vietnam] or we'll soon be fighting them in California." This was not enough after so many years spent bombing the country the ideological fissure was torn open with the wave of student activism.


A ideological crisis can emerge in the midst of a performative contradiction between what you're doing and how you explain those actions to yourself. To account for the gap there is a need for a new discourse complete with a theoretical understanding of the situation and the potential to establish a new orthodoxy. As the system requires new theories to justify itself and strengthen the ideological apparatus it seems to be struggling in it's desperate search for any such means of defence. The media has yet to find a narrative which could fill the void which has been opened up as political power came to the rescue of the financial colossus to which David Cameron and Barack Obama are bound almost as slaves. It was unthinkable that the banks should be allowed to collapse, it was a forced decision which no one can rightly oppose. But it seems that the system has lost it's sheath of market fundamentalism out of its own pragmatism. The utopia of the market has been stripped down for all to see, it is difficult to see how the system could ever double back on itself.

Today it is still rare to hear of the horrific details of the Vietnam War in spite of the memory of the demonstrations against it lives on. The objectives of the war will never be acknowledged in the media. The virus of independence and development in Vietnam had to be killed, and the region had to be inoculated, in order to preserve the accomplishments of the US in the Second World War. The virus might have spread to Thailand and Indonesia, then Japan might have to accommodate to an independent East Asian bloc and would no doubt become it's industrial heartland. The US aimed to maintain the Japanese empire under American control, the rise of Communism in China and Korea undermined these aims. The wars in Vietnam and Korea were fought for the same reason that the US installed Suharto in Indonesia. There are no apologies for the crimes, certainly no reparations and not even any recognition of the barbarism unleashed upon Indochina. Rather it has been swept under the rug as a noble quest which went awry and possibly an atrocity necessary in the Cold War which we will not repeat in this post-political world.

The system has lost the automatic claim to legitimacy, as Slavoj Žižek points out, the field is open in this time of crisis as the prevailing ideology has been disturbed. The limitations and perversions of the system can be seen publicly, we can see the desperate need for an alternative and we know not of an alternative. But this is not the basis for the system's legitimacy as the Thatcherites claimed. The greatest utopian belief is that the system of capitalism can go on indefinitely. Infinite growth in a world of finite resources is a fantasy even if you believe global warming is a liberal hoax cooked up to sell carbon credits to corporations and make you pay the congestion charge. There is a need for another kind of utopianism, not in the sense of the ideal society which ca never be realised but as a new space created out of the innermost urgency for survival. It is the way out we are forced to imagine by the impossibility of circumstances, which cannot be resolved within the coordinates of the possible. As Lenin said "There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen." Right now, we need to make decades to happen!

Crisis, Change and Progress.

"Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change." - Milton Friedman

In the midst of the revolutionary contagion currently sweeping Africa and the Middle East, the Obama administration actively opposed calls for new elections in Haiti. This is consistent with the neoliberal understanding of 'progress' as the constant and rapid accumulation of capital without an end in sight - or as described by Hayek change for the sake of change. In accordance with this understanding of progress, people have to be coerced into accepting privatisation, deregulation and huge public spending cuts. This is in line with Hayek's influences from the radical Right, from where an authoritarian regime can be seen as justifiable along pragmatic lines, which was the reasoning Hayek used to defend Pinochet. The values of civil society, moral values and civic duties can disregarded in the pursuit of self-interest. Through the blind obedience to the artificial rules of the marketplace - e.g. price signals - 'progress' can be ensured. In the name of such 'progress' the Austrian economists called for us all to embrace inequality, and so it is being enforced in the developing world.

So naturally the US jumped on the opportunity, the earthquake last year, to further it's influence over Haiti. The unofficial branch of the US Treasury Department, formerly known as the IMF, did not waste any time to offer a loan of $100 million to Haiti with some very interesting stipulations that included: raise the price of electricity, refuse pay rises to all public sector workers (except those making minimum wage) and keep inflation low. The funds were needed in Haiti desperately and the stipulations were accepted for this reason. The Haitian people have had to put up with these new economic changes, let alone the earthquake and an outbreak of cholera, and the new American military base being built on the island. The repression in the developing world is partly to crush any signs of independence, but also to secure economic interests as the system requires 3% compound growth every year in order to perpetuate itself.

The neoliberal project is global in scale and not confined to the developing world. We see similar instances in the West, with the US and UK beginning to pursue austerity measures after the Crash of 2008. To further globalisation as led by the US there requires even greater repression in the developing world, countries like Haiti are a prime target. There are concerted efforts to crush the mass-demonstrations which have sprung up across the Middle East. As the people have risen up in Libya and Gaddafi reacted with horrifying ultra-violence, the West responded with sanctions (which left Libyan banks exempt) and has stepped up to a full blown intervention in the country. Meanwhile the GCC is active in exporting Libyan oil from the rebel-controlled east, as well as providing the rebels with arms whilst crushing rebellions in Bahrain and elsewhere. The recent crisis of capitalism and the ongoing military 'misadventures' in the Middle East demand repression and violence in order to reassert the dominant ideology. It was the Falklands war which did so for Britain in the 1980s.

In this context we can understand that the US has seized on the opportunity to build a military base in Haiti and suppress the activities of trade unions, it is partly to prevent any currents of independence from succeeding and to beat back the tide of independence in the region. In the long-term it is about making a grab for resources in Latin America. So it should not be surprise us that the Haitian election in 2010 were rigged to produce a government submissive to these objectives. The US have blocked Aristide from returning to the country and  have let "Baby Doc" Duvalier return instead. The Duvaliers who ruled Haiti for almost 30 years with black nationalist rhetoric and vicious repression of all opposition. The dictatorship kept the republic in a state of subservience to US penetration and racked up huge amounts of debt. In 1990 a truly free election produced a government led by Aristide, but the US did not approve of the radical theologian who had once won 67% of the vote.

Haiti is the first and only case of a slave society which liberated itself from the Europeans. The Haitian revolutionaries had humiliated the French, though not by the standards that the French had humiliated the Haitian people through slavery. The French retaliated with demands for $21 billion in "reparations" to the former slave-masters. The "reparations" were paid by accepting loans from European and American banks, which led to a huge accumulation of debt in the country. Any attempt made by the republic to free itself of foreign interference have been crushed, with the US formally occupying the country and propping up the Duvaliers. The revenge of the white man on the first republic of freed slaves is evident today, which is the reason that Haiti is considered a "failed state" and often described as "cursed" in the media. The murky history of interventions in Haiti by the US are commonly ignored, along with the real reparations owed to Haiti. Instead the media prefer to tell feel good stories about Haiti and humanitarian efforts by the West.

Elsewhere in the developing world we find the same practices. The reactionary regime headed by Pepe Lobo was installed in Honduras in 2010 by the military in a suspect election last year. It was the military which "resolved" the constitutional crisis of 2009 and exiled Manuel Zelaya, the democratically elected President of Honduras. Since then there have been infringements on the rights of Honduran citizens, which have gone as far as state-sanctioned rape and murder, used particularly against the opposition to the coup. Since he took office in January 2010, Lobo has initiated the process of smashing the teachers' unions and soon after seizing power, with the support of the US, $100 million was stolen from the teachers' pension fund leaving many on long waiting lists. Pepe Lobo signed an agreement with the IMF to secure a $200 million loan, the stipulations of which included a slashed education budget.

There were wage cuts for Honduran teachers by October 2010 and as the teachers began to resort to industrial action, the right to strike was suspended and the control of education has since been devolved to municipalities. The regime has been working to redirect funds from schools to the military and the police. This is a deliberate move to create the pre-conditions, a crisis of schooling, in order to privatise education later. A similar process destroyed the supply of drinkable water to the majority of Hondurans. Now a neighbourhood which cannot be provided with drinkable water at a profit it will not be provided at all. We have seen similar disasters of privatisation across the region. The response from the teachers have been further strikes and occupations across the country. Other sectors of society have also joined in the demonstrations against the government.

The Honduran government has declared that the strikes "illegal and has moved to repress the unions with ultra-violence that has killed and injured strikers. The repression of the strikes are imperative to the neoliberal project as the movement to defend education has become the backbone of resistance to the Lobo regime. The security apparatus of the state has ignored the laws which bar police and soldiers from entering university campuses, which was introduced to prevent the kind of 'disappearances' of student leaders seen in the 1980s. Students have resorted to hurling rocks at police officers trying to enter campuses. The media has become subject to an intense campaign by the state, with journalists sympathetic to the dissidents being threatened and even killed. In some cases entire media outlets have been shut down by the government.

All judges who opposed the coup have been fired and the regime has been keen to see that any teachers taking part in strikes are to be jailed for 'sedition' and denied bail after participating in a strike. The threat to fire all strikers on mass has led to strikes being called to a stop. The endemic corruption of the political class, a total disregard for human rights and civil liberties is nothing new to Latin America. In the 1980s over 200 people were 'disappeared' in Honduras by another US-backed regime. The return of Manuel Zelaya to Honduras, along with other exiles, should not be interpreted as a sign of the return of democracy to Honduras. It is the result of an agreement between Hugo Chavez, Pepe Lobo and Juan Manuel Santos. The regime that has killed around 100 dissidents and 40 leaders is still in place with the support of Washington. Let alone 8 homophobic murders and the killing of 11 journalists, with no sign of investigation from the police.


The teachers continue to protest against the effective privatisation of schools, suspension of hundreds of teachers and the theft of pensions. Some are now camped out in front of the National Congress on a hunger strike for more than 20 days in spite of harassment - which went as far as threats of rape - by the police and the military. Within hours that the agreement was signed by Lobo to secure the return of Manuel Zelaya to Honduras, the regime attacked a group of students who were protesting against the suspension of their teachers. The security forces used live rounds and tear gas against the students. But the resistance to the regime remains active and organised. Sadly the reactionary forces of the state are backed by the US and that would mean only a thorough overhaul of the regime would secure public services in Honduras. But it looks as though this could be the beginning of a repression on an international scale to defend further neoliberal reforms.

Intervention without Illusions.

Imperial Arrogance.

The history of Western imperialism could be chartered as a series of humanitarian missions gone "awry" and adventures of liberal interventionism. Every war is supposedly a war of self-defence or of noble intention. The calls to intervene in Libya are hardly any different here. After so many years of economic support to Gaddafi the West calls for intervention once the regime lost control of the country. The conflict affected the flow of Libyan oil, at a time when there was growing concern of a potential oil shock, the rebel forces have agreed to respect old relationships with oil corporations. This is the same reason that the French were quick to recognise the coalition based in Benghazi. Gaddafi had outlived his usefulness and had become a blockage to the neoliberal project, the sooner the regime in Tripoli is toppled the sooner that the oil trade can resume business as usual. The only hope Gaddafi has of keeping power is to crush the uprisings in oil rich areas of Libya. Only then might, and that's a big might, the support shift in favour of Gaddafi and against the rebels.

The West has an ignoble record of military intervention, whereby the soldier and the policeman hold the "native" down while the businessman rummages through his pockets. This is imperialism, whether old or new, it has not changed much. The 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq was illegal as well as immoral. The slaughter, displacement and dispossession of millions in Iraq are the result of such intervention. It has to be pointed out that there are numerous differences between the situation in Libya and the imperialist invasion of Iraq. In Iraq there was no grass-roots based democratic movement pushing for social justice that could be empowered by a benign intervention. Let alone the crusade for oil that took place in 2003, which opposed to democracy and social justice. The country and the regime had been crippled by war and economic sanctions. It is true that if there had been no invasion Saddam Hussein would have remained in power, though the recent uprisings could have overthrown the regime.

The Arab League supports intervention, though it should be noted that these Arab states are dictatorships backed by the US. These regimes are actively trying to crush the uprisings which threaten the established order. These are not the friends of democracy and neither are they the friends of Gaddafi. King Abdullah has a personal hatred for the obnoxious Colonel, who tried to have him assassinated in 2010 and represents a secular nationalist model that is the traditional enemy of Islamist monarchy. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are actively helping to stifle an uprising in Bahrain, no doubt with the full support of the US, but there are no calls to intervene in Bahrain. The logic of the Arab dictators is to snuff out any alternative political systems which might stir up the people against them. In regards to Bahrain, a predominantly Shi'ite country ruled by a Sunni elite, the repression is to avoid a revolution which could seize hold of oil reserves. This is the reason for the general hostility towards Iran, Tehran offers an alternative to the Shi'ites living in oil rich east of the Saudi Kingdom and other states.


However, we should not ignore the fact that the West has consistently backed illegitimate and authoritarian regimes in order to secure economic and strategic interests. The French government supported Ben Ali in Tunisia, as well as other regimes in North Africa. The support given to Libya was reciprocal in this case and Sarkozy received campaign funding from Gaddafi in 2007. Britain has retained a close relationship with Egypt since the 1952 revolution, with British investment amounting to £10 billion. Egypt, Morocco, Syria and Uzbekistan (among others) have all been stations to which the US has sent "terrorists" to be tortured with the sanction of the regime. This is on top of the amount of support given to the Arab dictatorships and Israel, who are tacitly aligned against the Palestinian people as well as Kurds and religious minorities like the Ahmadiyya. The people of the Middle East have legitimate grievances with those who govern them and by extension the West. Ideally the intervention would be made by an Arab state, like Egypt which is sending weapons to the rebels in Benghazi but that alone is not enough.

 Potential for Disaster.

Because of the intimate relationship between Gaddafi and the West, that the arms being used to massacre the Libyan people are mostly Western in origin and that the funding which the regime is reliant on came out of oil deals. The arrangement between the coalition in Benghazi and energy corporations might indicate that the best scenario possible is a liberal democracy complete with greater freedoms and rights. It is unlikely that the influence of multinational corporations would not set limits on the democratic system which the rebels are fighting to establish. The calls for economic justice might also be played down, steps forward might be made but with great flaws and limitations. In a sense the revolution has been diluted already, though it is still the alternative to the Colonel. With Gaddafi in power there is no hope of a democratic system emerging in any form, nor is there a chance of economic justice with the exception of the bribe of civilians in Tripoli.

On the other hand, there is a possibility that the UN sanctioned air-strikes could escalate and lead to a full blown invasion. In the worst case scenario this could lead to the partition of Libya along tribal lines to create a NATO enclave positioned perfectly to suppress any further uprisings and strangle any further revolutionary developments in the region. Inaction is itself a form of intervention in itself which brings the possibility of a successful counter-revolution, which would not only sustain the power of Gaddafi but send signals throughout the Middle East and these signals would not be progressive in any sense of the word. The Arab states might easily opt for similar methods of counter-revolutionary violence in order to retain control. In both scenarios the tacit alliance between the Arab dictators and the Israeli government would be secured, with US power left relatively unscathed by the uprisings. Though Israeli interests may be maintained even if the revolution in Libya is successful.

It is likely that the intervention will be used by Gaddafi to play the anti-imperialist card against the rebels and rally support for himself along nationalist lines. The problem here is that the anti-imperialist card is already being played, along with every other card available, to crush the uprising. In a sense there is a ring of truth to the claim that behind the revolt are imperial interests, as the coalition in Benghazi has made deals with oil companies and out-manoeuvred Gaddafi on that front. It is possible that the masses of Western Libya and some officials might be deterred from defecting by the intervention, particularly the air-strikes. The regime has proven it will use any ploy to stay in power, even going as far as to bribe citizens and to hire out death squads from Chad. Even if we opted for the minimal amount of intervention, e.g. selling off Gaddafi's assets to fund the revolution, this card would still be played and it would be played if there was no agreements between energy corporations and Benghazi.

Remember Jimmy Carter, who now criticises Israel but did nothing to help the Palestinians and, during his time in office, effectively exacerbated the suffering of oppressed peoples in the world. In his "heroic liberalism" or "virulent anti-Semitism", depending on your political disposition, Carter's critical remarks about Israel only serve to reaffirm the "superiority" of the West as no responsible actions 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 Libyans, Sudanese, Rwandans and Slavs are left to be butchered as we claim to be in "solidarity" with them. 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.

Body Bags for Peace.

In the case of Afghanistan the conditions under which the decision to invade was made included the knowledge that the invasion might exacerbate a famine in the country. It was predicted that this could lead to the deaths of 7 million people. Whereas in the case of Libya we do not have such knowledge, but we do know that Gaddafi's forces have pledged to "cleanse" Benghazi. There is a distinction between the imperialist intervention and the kind of intervention which might enable the revolutionaries to topple the Gaddafi regime. The invasion and occupation of Libya should be opposed, as that would no doubt be imperialist, but a no-fly zone would not be inherently imperialist. It may even be too late for a no-fly zone and we have the crimes of Srebrenica, committed long after a no-fly zone had been established over Bosnia, to keep in mind. Though the variables differ and any "cleansing" in Libya would be political or tribal, not along explicitly racial lines.

It is undeniable that in the past the United Nations have supported interventionism in order to expand the American empire, protect Israeli interests and maintain the established order. But it is also undeniable that in the cases of Rwanda and Sudan (along with lots of other places) the West effectively stood back and watched as the violence reached new heights of depravity. Similarly it is undeniable that the Western powers are considering intervention out of economic interests. The West fears a long drawn out conflict and for that reason there might not be an occupation of Libya in the works. If Gaddafi was allowed to commit a major massacre, e.g. far worse than the massacres he has already orchestrated, an embargo on Libyan oil would have to be imposed and this would keep oil prices high at a time when the US and other countries are recovering from a major economic crisis.

In the mantra of the SWP "No to intervention in Libya! Victory to Arab revolutions!" conceals a certain perversity. In order for the revolutionary ideal to be achieved in it's purest form, it must fail to be "saved" for the Left as this radical ideal. Though this is ignorant of the fact that the Libyan revolutionaries have already made deals with the oil corporations. So the best outcome, e.g. if the revolution succeeds without Western interference, might only be bourgeois democracy. To "save" ourselves from this inconvenient truth we need Gaddafi to crush the rebellion. Similarly the Soviet intervention in Prague '68 "saved" the myth for us that there could have been democratic socialism in Czechoslovakia. We needed the Tiananmen Square protests to be repressed in order to preserve the ideal of Chinese democracy, missing the point that a democratic China might well be chaotic. Let's not dwell in these safe illusions, where we are comfortable in resistance and welcome failure.

We should have no illusions about intervention, let alone the interests of the Western governments, of which we must remain fiercely critical. The fall of Gaddafi is only preferable to them because he has outlived his usefulness as a "reformed despot" and a freed up political system will be less of an embarrassment now. Gaddafi might just be replaced with a softer, and more insidiously pro-American, version of himself and therefore even harder to drive out. But that is contingent and does not justify Gaddafi's regime as life under even a bourgeois democracy, which is a possibility, would be an improvement. Intervention to enable the rebels to overthrow Gaddafi is the lesser evil, no form of intervention is a bloodless solution to the conflict. The revolutionaries are right to hold a sceptical view of Western military power, especially in regards to an occupation, but a no-fly zone is a necessary evil.