624 pages. Yet again, proof that he certainly like to hear himself talk.

Labels: American Empire, Labour Party, Neoliberalism, Tony Blair, United Kingdom

Eventually, New Labour had to subject itself to the judgment of the voters, and the campaign has been underway for several weeks. After 12 years of pursuing policies of privatization, liberalization of the financial markets, expansion of public surveillance and, of course, war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Labour Party finds its Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and its parliamentary candidates generating little enthusiasm. Tory leader David Cameron finds himself in a similar situation, although the greater likelihood of victory necessarily energizes them a little more.

But the dirty secret of the campaign is the lack of any meaningful economic differences between them, and the other major party, the Liberal Democrats, as noted by lenin three weeks ago:

The 2010 general election will result in a victory for the nasty party, whoever wins. All three major parties, having supported the mammoth bank bailouts, stand for the deepest cuts in the public sector for over 50 years, far outstripping anything accomplished by Thatcher. Outdoing Thatcher in the cuts stakes is, in case the point passed you by, as nasty as can be. The chancellors' debate - which, underscoring the poverty of alternatives, was won by the drab former Shell economist Vincent Cable - reinforced this quite starkly. There is only a difference of emphasis and timing between the parties, and these differences all sound eminently reasonable and plausible within the terms of the discussion - but they are largely technocratic differences with policy flavours attached. And even if New Labour pretends to be protecting frontline services, the fact is that it is already driving cuts through the education sector. It is continuing its savage cuts in the civil service. Health departments are already budgeting for big cuts. For example, the London NHS Trust is conducting secret meetings behind locked doors, in which no notes are taken, in order to plan approximately £5bn in cuts. And that's just one city. Already, cutbacks in other areas, such as maternity wards and A&E departments in the north-east are causing difficulties for sitting Labour MPs - Gordon Prentice, the left-wing Burnley MP, is having to fight his own government over the closure of an A&E department in Burnley. To which the other parties say, amen, and faster, please!

If anything, the situation has gotten worse as a consequence of Greek financial crisis with commentators warning that, without the imposition of severe austerity measures, the UK could soon find itself in the line of fire.

The surprise of the campaign has been the emergence of the Liberal Democrats as a plausible alternative to Labour and the Tories. On a number of issues, the LibDems are better than Labour. They have resisted the curtailment of civil liberties and increased electronic surveillance implemented by both Blair and Brown. They opposed the invasion of Iraq and consider the modernization of the UK's nuclear submarine force, the Trident, a hideous waste of money, although they don't go so far as to say that they will promptly scrap it. Led by a young, relatively charismatic leader (remember, this is the UK), Nick Clegg, and promising the prospect of transformative political change by overcoming the duopoly, the LibDems now poll slightly ahead of Labour and slightly behind the Conservatives, a result that, if it is confirmed on election day, will bring about a hung Parliament.

Accordingly, for some on the left in the UK, the LibDems have an allure. With policies that appear to be less militaristic than either Labour and the Tories, while refusing to pander to anti-immigrant sentiment (which Brown has done, while privately describing his target audience as bigots), the LibDems have a reformist sheen, especially when one adds their insistence for proportional representation into the mix. Rightly or wrongly, many on the left believe that the adoption of PR will permanently cast the Tories into oblivion, with future electoral results that mirror the purportedly social reality of the UK as a center-left country.

But it is a little more complex than that. As Seamus Milne noted yesterday in the Guardian:

The Liberal Democrats, after all, have form. As Clegg demonstrated in last week's leaders' debate, the Lib Dems are more independent in foreign policy, and progressive on civil liberties, than New Labour. But in a dozen councils across England the party has opted to ally with the Conservatives – even when Labour is the largest party – and voted through cuts, closures and privatisations.

His conclusion is brutal, but accurate:

It's also becoming clearer that if Labour were to end up coming third in the popular vote, far from opening up opportunities for its revival on a more progressive basis, this could even risk its disintegration and the effective exclusion of any working class or union presence from mainstream politics.

Yes, indeed. The collapse of Labour will push the UK even more rapidly towards the political model of the US, where the working class has been almost completely erased from the process. In this sense, the comparison of Clegg to Obama is apt, as Obama is finishing the project of creating a purportedly classless society started by, probably Carter, but most certainly by Reagan and Clinton. For British workers to have any political voice, however faint, Labour must survive. Without question, that voice is a faint one. But, for those on the left in the UK who believe in the electoral process as the means for achieving political change, and still embrace a class conscious politics, the preservation of the power of the trade unions and activists within a compromised Labour is essential, even if it looks like a desperate rear guard action.

Just as in the US, it is hard to imagine the circumstances by which an effective class based left politics can emerge there, although, for now, there are more resources for it in the UK than in the US. The Labour Party was created in the service of the principle that the working class could peaceably take power through the electoral process, and more equitably distribute the fruits of the society for the benefit of all. With participation in the UK political system dependent upon larger and larger sums of money and media access, such a mission seems more implausible than it has ever been. Accordingly, the UK election is more evidence in support of the notion that liberal democracies are now only capable of reconstituting governments in the thrall of capital, or, as Baudrillard called it, alternation. Only in a region of the world where such a system has not yet firmly rooted itself, South America, is it possible for socialist alternatives, however pallid, to survive. As for the rest of us, we are on our own, until we find a way to collectively organize beyond an electoral process rigged against us.

Labels: Elections, Labour Party, Neoliberalism, Postmodernism, United Kingdom

Labels: Elections, Labour Party, Neoliberalism, United Kingdom, Vote or Die

An incisive piece by Tariq Ali in the Guardian Unlimited, a surgical political autopsy of the death of New Labour, that grand project whereby the British Labour Party would not only become electable again, but the dominant, unassailable political force in Britain:

The fact is that New Labour's time is up. When it came to power waving the Union Jack in 1997, the social landscape had already been wrecked by Thatcherism. The phallic architecture of the deregulated financial companies dominated the city, the old gents and their cozy networks were consigned to clubland. Silicon and pharmaceutical firms, funded by Japanese and American capital and immunised against a trade-union movement, neutered by the state, sprouted along the M4 corridor southwest from London and Reading.

The old textile towns were reduced to the status of cemetries; iron and steelworks had been ploughed to rubble. The old working class was dead. In the transference of class wealth and power, Thatcherism and its neocon New Labour worshippers were eminently successful. Wealth disparities had increased during the Blair/Brown years. The "modernisation" had fallen manifestly short as a solution to long-term problems of productivity and investment, leaving aside the archaic political structures of the British state. Many of the cash-starved utilities had foundered in private hands. Schools and hospitals continued to deteriorate. As railway privatisation proved a disaster, New Labour "radicals" were thinking of how the "revolution of choice" could privatise health and education.

From the start New Labour was pledged to consolidate the Thatcherite paradigm rather than offer anything different. Blair's model was to depoliticise Labour (and the electorate) by preaching against the sin of "ideology" (ie social democracy) in the name of a new, beyond left-and-right, trendy Starbucks-style capitalism. And so it was decreed that Labour should become little more than a British version of the US Democratic Party with cheerleaders and all, though it is more remiscent of the Republicans. Domestically, Brown would aim for fiscal-surplus levels usually only demanded of the Third World, to be ameliorated by a few low-cost anti-poverty measures. Globally, New Labour would, in its own words, station itself "up the arse of the White House and stay there". This was 10 Downing Street's instruction in 1997 to Her Majesty's new representative in the United States.

Of course, it is not difficult to find ascerbic eulogies about the death of New Labour. Consider, for example, this one by lenin over at Lenin's Tomb. Like mushrooms after a spring rain, they have been sprouting all over after the calamitous performance of Labour in local elections earlier this month. With the exception of Labour activist diehards, nearly everyone in Britain believes that the Tories will win the next parliamentary election.

As lenin emphasizes in his obituary, the right will be the beneficiaries of the collapse of centrist politics of neoliberalism in both the US and the UK unless the left responds to the crisis with urgency and imagination. I couldn't help thinking, though, as I read Ali's commentary, that I was actually reading something published in, say, 2013 or 2015, after the first term of President Barack Obama, an allegorical piece, if you will. Exuberant supporters recall the acolytes of New Labour in the mid-1990s.

Unlike the Democrats of the past, we are breathlessly told, Obama appeals to evangelicals because of the sincerity of his religious beliefs. He is pragmatic, willling to work with Republicans, Democrats and people of all kinds in a post-partisan political world devoid of ideological values. Just as Blair and Brown devised a political and economic strategy to persuade Middle England to vote Labour instead of Tory, Obama is going to shatter the red state/blue state paradigm, and possibly even rout the Republicans in parts of the old Confederacy.

Apparently, if elected, Obama is going to create a new governing coalition by withdrawing US forces from Iraq, and reinvesting the peace dividend in the US. But he remains a neoliberal free trader, anti-NAFTA rhetoric in Ohio and Pennsylvania to the contrary, and his intention to withdraw from Iraq is more tactical than strategic. He will inherit a Bush policy of regime change in Lebanon, Gaza and Iran, and has expressed no willingness to reverse it. And, of course, he considers Afghanistan a good war, and justifies the need to withdraw from Iraq partially on the basis of the need to provide more resources to fight the Taliban.

What will happen if President Obama discovers that Afghanistan is an even more intransigent conflict than Iraq, as explained recently by Ted Rall? What will happen if President Obama finds himself incapable of addressing increasingly sour economic conditions because of the constraints of neoliberal policies adopted over the last 30 to 40 years? Or will an Obama presidency be marked by a complete failure to significantly depart from an Bush policies, leaving us with hundreds of thousands of troops remaining in Iraq and Afghanistan, commodity price stagflation and the continuing shrinkage of home ownership among middle class Americans?

I guess that I shouldn't dismiss the prospect that the process of creative destruction associated with capitalism will result in another spin of the wheel of fortune, moving us out of the depths of economic distress into a brief new age of prosperity and contentment. But isn't it arrogant to assume that Americans will continue to benefit from it as we have done for over 200 years? So, I just have this feeling that 4 to 6 years from now, I'll look back at this Ali commentary, and recognize that one need only update it to incorporate the contemporary American context.

Labels: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections, Iraq War, Labour Party, Neoliberalism, Tariq Ali, Tony Blair

***A TALE OF TWO COUNTRIES***

Yesterday, in the Guardian:

David Cameron is on course for a possible general election win, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today that shows support for the Conservatives climbing to a lead that could give them a narrow majority in the Commons, while Labour has plunged to a 19-year low.

The Tories have gained over the last month while support for Labour has fallen heavily in the wake of the recent alleged terror plot against airlines. An overwhelming majority of voters appear to pin part of the blame for the increased threat on Tony Blair's policy of intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mistrust of Blair and the Labor government is pandemic:

The findings will shock many at Westminster who had expected Labour to gain ground following John Reid's high-profile handling of the alleged plot against transatlantic airlines. Carried out over the past weekend, following the series of terror arrests, the poll shows voters do not believe the government is giving an honest account of the threat facing Britain. Only 20% of all voters, and 26% of Labour voters, say they think the government is telling the truth about the threat, while 21% of voters think the government has actively exaggerated the danger.

Meanwhile, in the United States:

The arrest of terror suspects in London has helped buoy President Bush to his highest approval rating in six months and dampen Democratic congressional prospects to their lowest in a year.

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, support for an unnamed Democratic congressional candidate over a Republican one narrowed to 2 percentage points, 47%-45%, among registered voters. Over the past year, Democrats have led by wider margins that ranged up to 16 points.

Now 42% of Americans say they approve of the job Bush is doing as president, up 5 points since early this month. His approval rating on handling terrorism is 55%, the highest in more than a year.

The boost may prove to be temporary, but it was evidence of the continuing political power of terrorism.

Additional comment is superfluous, isn't it?

***MILITARY NEO-LIBERALISM***

In Afflicted Powers, the authors, Iain Boal, T. J. Clark, Joseph Matthews and Michael Watts, characterize this phenomena:

. . . It is only as part of this neoliberal economic firmament, as which a dominant capitalist core begins to find it harder and harder to benefit from "consensus" market expansion or corporate mergers and asset transfers, that this new preference for the military option makes sense. Military neo-liberalism seems to us a useful shorthand for the new reality; but in a sense the very prefix "neo" concedes too much to the familiar capitalist rhetoric of renewal. For military neo-liberalism is no more than primitive accumulation in disguise.

With Iraq proving itself a more difficult opportunity for such activity than anticipated (see Naomi Klein's seminal article, Baghdad: Year Zero: Pillaging Iraq in search of a neocon utopia), the field has been expanded to include Lebanon:

Lebanon's 15-year economic and social recovery from civil war was wiped out in the recent Israeli offensive against Hezbollah, the UN development agency has said.

"The damage is such that the last 15 years of work on reconstruction and rehabilitation, following the previous problems that Lebanon experienced, are now annihilated," said Jean Fabre, a spokesman for the UN Development Programme (UNDP) on Tuesday.

Lebanon's relatively healthy progress towards the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, which cover a range of social and economic targets, "have been brought back to zero," he told journalists.

"Fifteen years of work have been wiped out in a month."

Fabre estimated that overall economic losses for Lebanon from the month-long conflict between Israel and Hezbollah totalled "at least 15 billion dollars, if not more".

As a result, the country lacks the ability to fulfill basic human needs for survival:

The most urgent issues are the need for clean water and sanitation and to clear unexploded munitions, relief agencies said Tuesday.

Underground waterpipes and sewers were destroyed in 10 out of 12 war-struck communities visited by the UN Children's Fund in recent days, and a similar scale of damage was reported elsewhere.

"Everywhere we go... everybody is talking about water and the need for it," said Paul Sherlock, a UNICEF water specialist.

To stave off more immediate needs, 100,000 litres of bottled water will be delivered every week to villages in southern Lebanon where thousands of people have tried to return to their homes, the agency said.

Meanwhile, temporary water tanks will gradually be set up in Nabatiyeh and villages along the Israeli border until water systems are restored.

"There's a huge job to be done on the infrastructure," Sherlock said.

"But access to water also runs into the problem with unexploded ordnance, because you have to dig among the rubble to sort pipework out, so it's a very dangerous game right now," he added.

At least five Lebanese children were killed in recent days when they picked up unexploded munitions, and more than a dozen have been injured, UNICEF said.

No need to worry, though, G-8 donors are riding to the rescue:

Upcoming donor meetings to raise funds for rebuilding war-damaged Lebanon could be an opening for Western lenders to look for fresh commitments from Beirut to resume politically difficult economic reforms.

Lebanese officials say the 34-day Israeli war against Hizbollah guerrillas will erase growth this year and increase the country's already massive public debt load, which has been rolled over thanks to economic support from the Arab world.

An August 31 donor meeting in Sweden will seek to raise immediate reconstruction funds for the estimated $3.6 billion in war damages and will likely be followed by a later meeting in Beirut for wider economic support.

The country was growing at a healthy 6 percent before the war broke out on July 12 but Lebanese politicians have bickered for months over draft reform plans, especially the privatization of the power and telecommunications sectors, higher taxes and lower spending.

Western lenders are signaling they are willing to help with overall economic support if Lebanon agrees to adopt reforms, possibly seeking an International Monetary Fund program as a signal of its commitment to reform and to frame how donor money could be best used.

The enthusiasm for IMF involvement is telling, if one recalls recent analysis by Gabriel Kolko:

. . . the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been undergoing both a structural and intellectual crisis. Structurally, its outstanding credit and loans have declined dramatically since 2003, from over $70 billion to a little over $20 billion today, leaving it with far less leverage over the economic policies of developing nations--and even less income than its expensive operations require. It is now in deficit.

A large part of the IMF's problems are due to the doubling in world prices for all commodities since 2003 -- especially petroleum, copper, silver, zinc, nickel, and the like -- that the developing nations traditionally export. While there will be fluctuations in this upsurge, there is also reason to think it may endure because rapid economic growth in China, India, and elsewhere has created a burgeoning demand that did not exist before, when the balance-of-trade systematically favored the rich nations.

Kolko identifies the alarming consequences:

As early as 2003 developing countries were already the source of 37 percent of the foreign direct investment in other developing nations. China accounts for a great part of this growth, but it also means that the IMF and rich bankers of New York, Tokyo, and London have far less leverage than ever. Growing complexity is the order of the world economy that has emerged in the past decade, and with it has come the potential for far greater instability, and dangers for the rich.

Kolko's article is fascinating, and well worth reading in its entirety, which you can do through the link provided. While it is certainly a stretch to say that the G-8 actively instigated this war (although certainly not nearly so much if one limits the accusation to the United States), such concerns place the willingness of the G-8 to support Israel from the inception of this conflict, as well as its subsequent insistence upon a UN ceasefire resolution in favor of Israel, despite defeat on the battlefield, in a new light.

Labels: Israeli/Lebanese/US War, Labour Party, Lebanon, Neoliberalism