The Convention of the Left meeting in Manchester near the New Labour conference yesterday adopted a “statement of intent” that is intended to sustain a framework of ongoing discussion on policies and actions over the next few months. A World to Win’s participants voted for the statement because it represents a step forward.
John McDonnell, one of the few MPs who have consistently resisted the New Labour government, was right to stress caution. An attempt to create a “left unity” or to launch a new electorally-oriented party would not only be premature but futile. The dilemmas facing the socialist movement require more than what would amount to cosmetic political window-dressing along these lines.
The challenges arise from the fact that the conventional routes to social and political progress are now more or less closed off. Labour being transformed into capitalist New Labour – in fact, it is the self-appointed bankers’ party – is only part of the story. Two other inter-related developments within the state raise even more problematic questions.
Firstly, in Britain the post-World War II so-called consensus, welfare state has been obliterated by successive Tory and New Labour governments. In turn, policies of governments express profound changes in the demands of the corporate-driven globalisation process. What we have now is an undemocratic, unashamedly business state under which parliamentary processes and political representation count for nothing.
The priorities of the business state are clear: save capitalism and its financial system at all costs, including mass unemployment, homelessness, reduced wages and social division, provoked by racist, anti-immigration statements and policies. The events of the last seven days, with the US government offering to buy up bad debts and New Labour facilitating the takeover of HBOS, is a graphic illustration of how this is working out.
The Convention’s statement of intent makes no mention of these questions. Nor does it refer to the crisis now spreading like a contagion from the financial sector to other areas of the economy. Most observers now acknowledge that the crash of 2008, which last week claimed banks in Britain and America (and yesterday saw the last two investment banks change their status to try and escape), is only just starting to unfold.
The statement’s strength lies in the admission that there are no simple answers, declaring: “We must find ways to develop and promote alternative positive policies and demands – of peace, social and environmental justice, public ownership, workers’ rights, civil liberties and equality. We must join together with all those seeking a better society, as an anti-capitalist left fighting for an alternative socialist society.” The Convention also wants to define ways of joint working and is calling for local Left Forums to continue the discussion.
This is a positive initiative. For our part, A World to Win will want to discuss how to take forward the struggle for democracy that in its time produced parliamentary representation, the Labour Party and major welfare reforms. The termination of that period of history is not a matter for regret but can be made into an opportunity to create a new democratic state as a platform for overturning an economic system that is plunging the world into a catastrophe.
Paul Feldman
Communications editor
For revolutionary solutions to create a sustainable, not-for-profit economy in place of global capital alongside a real democracy based on People’s Assemblies. Visit our web site at www.aworldtowin.net
Showing posts with label Convention of the Left. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Convention of the Left. Show all posts
Monday, September 22, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
'Managing' the crash
Every passing day sees more of the consequences of the global meltdown coming to light. Financial institutions implode and disappear and increasingly desperate measures are taken by private sector banks, central banks and governments.
Now the focus has changed from trying to avert the crash, to managing its descent, softening its landing as it falls to earth, ensuring that the capitalist financial system survives, at all costs.
This is the real meaning of Alistair Darling’s statement that "financial stability had to trump the competition concerns". This justifies changing the law to allow the new Lloyds TSB-HBOS conglomerate to dominate the British banking system. "We will take whatever action is appropriate to maintain stability in the banking system," he said. "The entire economy depends on that."
On the other side of the Atlantic, the US Treasury is proposing a plan to absorb all of the bad debt arising from the mortgage crisis. Unsurprisingly, since this would pass the whole cost directly to US taxpayers and the Chinese financiers of American government debt, the US stock market had its best day for years.
It can’t and won’t last. This is a truly insane open-ended proposal, given that, as a result of the decades of unregulated explosion of fantasy finance, nobody in the world has any idea of the true value of the outstanding credit and debt. Hey, but we could then get back to raking in the profits.
For Darling, Brown and Bush, survival of the system that has failed, is broken, will come even at the expense of millions, perhaps billions of people who will be its victims as the markets find their “solutions”. With a week of dramatic, unprecedented contraction and consolidation in the finance industry comes the first wave of unemployment. Estimates of 40,000 job losses from the New Labour-sponsored takeover of HBOS by Lloyds-TSB are hardly even the tip of the iceberg. Predictions for the impact on the US workforce put job losses as high as 500,000 per month.
In response to the news that Britain has seen the biggest climb in unemployment benefit claims in 16 years, Trades Union Congress general secretary Brendan Barber said the "figures show that unemployment is starting to accelerate and it now looks very likely that total unemployment will reach two million during 2009." So what stirring message has he for the six million plus trades union members as recession engulfs the economy?
“the TUC is concerned that unemployment has been sneaking up in the last few months and it's up to unions, employers and the government to halt and reverse this trend as soon as possible. With unemployment rising, people are looking to the government for a response and economic measures will be far more welcome than yet another round of welfare reforms.”
The TUC’s “expert” was just as hopeless as his boss. Head of economics and social affairs Adam Lent said: "Poor growth and falling consumer confidence are a far greater risk to the economy than inflation, which is still relatively low. The Bank of England can play a key role in helping to reinvigorate the economy by cutting interest rates this month." To the TUC bureaucracy, we say: Thank you and good night.
Even the Tory Daily Telegraph has acknowledged that the crisis may have something to do with the “internal contradictions of capitalism”. One aspect of this is that New Labour is the party using the levers of the capitalist state to shore up the system, whatever it takes. We are witnessing not just market failure on a grand scale but the utilisation of the machinery of state by bankers and corporations to save their skins. This road leads in one direction only, as history has demonstrated.
The Convention of the Left starts tomorrow. Those attending have an historic responsibility to shape and build a movement that answers the capitalist crisis by posing the revolutionary alternative – an economy based on co-ownership and self-management and a truly democratic politics based on people’s power in place of corporate power.
Gerry Gold
Economics editor
Now the focus has changed from trying to avert the crash, to managing its descent, softening its landing as it falls to earth, ensuring that the capitalist financial system survives, at all costs.
This is the real meaning of Alistair Darling’s statement that "financial stability had to trump the competition concerns". This justifies changing the law to allow the new Lloyds TSB-HBOS conglomerate to dominate the British banking system. "We will take whatever action is appropriate to maintain stability in the banking system," he said. "The entire economy depends on that."
On the other side of the Atlantic, the US Treasury is proposing a plan to absorb all of the bad debt arising from the mortgage crisis. Unsurprisingly, since this would pass the whole cost directly to US taxpayers and the Chinese financiers of American government debt, the US stock market had its best day for years.
It can’t and won’t last. This is a truly insane open-ended proposal, given that, as a result of the decades of unregulated explosion of fantasy finance, nobody in the world has any idea of the true value of the outstanding credit and debt. Hey, but we could then get back to raking in the profits.
For Darling, Brown and Bush, survival of the system that has failed, is broken, will come even at the expense of millions, perhaps billions of people who will be its victims as the markets find their “solutions”. With a week of dramatic, unprecedented contraction and consolidation in the finance industry comes the first wave of unemployment. Estimates of 40,000 job losses from the New Labour-sponsored takeover of HBOS by Lloyds-TSB are hardly even the tip of the iceberg. Predictions for the impact on the US workforce put job losses as high as 500,000 per month.
In response to the news that Britain has seen the biggest climb in unemployment benefit claims in 16 years, Trades Union Congress general secretary Brendan Barber said the "figures show that unemployment is starting to accelerate and it now looks very likely that total unemployment will reach two million during 2009." So what stirring message has he for the six million plus trades union members as recession engulfs the economy?
“the TUC is concerned that unemployment has been sneaking up in the last few months and it's up to unions, employers and the government to halt and reverse this trend as soon as possible. With unemployment rising, people are looking to the government for a response and economic measures will be far more welcome than yet another round of welfare reforms.”
The TUC’s “expert” was just as hopeless as his boss. Head of economics and social affairs Adam Lent said: "Poor growth and falling consumer confidence are a far greater risk to the economy than inflation, which is still relatively low. The Bank of England can play a key role in helping to reinvigorate the economy by cutting interest rates this month." To the TUC bureaucracy, we say: Thank you and good night.
Even the Tory Daily Telegraph has acknowledged that the crisis may have something to do with the “internal contradictions of capitalism”. One aspect of this is that New Labour is the party using the levers of the capitalist state to shore up the system, whatever it takes. We are witnessing not just market failure on a grand scale but the utilisation of the machinery of state by bankers and corporations to save their skins. This road leads in one direction only, as history has demonstrated.
The Convention of the Left starts tomorrow. Those attending have an historic responsibility to shape and build a movement that answers the capitalist crisis by posing the revolutionary alternative – an economy based on co-ownership and self-management and a truly democratic politics based on people’s power in place of corporate power.
Gerry Gold
Economics editor
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
The Manchester Convention and 'ulterior measures'
Revolutionary, at times insurrectionary, movements against the state have a significant place in the history of the struggle for rights in Britain in the late 18th century and in the first half of the 19th. They used the device of a “Convention” to advance their cause, borrowing the term from the name of the revolutionary legislative and constitutional assembly which sat in France from 1792-95.
Which brings us to the Convention of the Left being held in Manchester in September. A World to Win supports this Convention as a timely opportunity to discuss the crisis of political leadership in Britain and how to go forward. The Convention is called not so much as to coincide with the New Labour “conference” being held in Manchester at the same time, but as a result of a decade of Blair and Brown governments and what they have done to the party.
Before New Labour, the party was the main political leadership in Britain of working people and those generally hostile to capitalism, and had been so since the 1920s. This is patently no longer the case. The reasons for this are worth rehearsing yet again because they can help explain the dilemma facing all those who will be at the Manchester Convention.
Put simply, the era of being able to deliver even modest reforms of capitalism has evaporated with the onset of the corporate-driven, transnational market economy, aka as globalisation. This is the process that produced New Labour, which has transformed Labour into a party that champions corporate and financial power. The evidence is stark, and includes the massive transfer of wealth to the private sector (see yesterday’s blog).
Moreover, New Labour has refashioned the capitalist state to make it fit for purpose. Every sector, from prisons, to housing and education, is driven by the mantra of markets and choice. This unholy alliance between capital, the state and New Labour cannot be undone in favour of some earlier political and economic period. It has to be shattered and scattered.
The conditions for achieving this are maturing. The growing hostility to New Labour coincides with and is driven by the raging financial crisis, which is taking a rapid toll of jobs, homes and living standards. Yesterday’s sudden takeover of the troubled Alliance & Leicester by Santander and the US government’s attempt to rescue the country’s big two home loan banks are striking indications of a profound crisis.
With the government intent on offloading the crisis on to the backs of ordinary people, and bankrupt of any other ideas, its future is limited. In fact, it would be difficult to envisage New Labour surviving a banking collapse. A weakness of the Manchester Convention’s agenda is the absence of major discussion on the global economic and financial crisis and what the response should be.
Another gap is to do with political perspective. With the reformist agenda in ruins, and the parliamentary state both paralysed and increasingly authoritarian, the question of a new, alternative political power is posed in an insistent way. Conventions called by the Radical movement in the 1790s and the Chartists in the late 1830s challenged the emerging capitalist state. The Chartists, especially, understood the relationship between political and economic power and that they needed a plan B if the state refused to concede to their demands.
The Birmingham Chartists Convention of 1839 drew up a “Manifesto of Ulterior Measures”, which included proposals for a general strike and the arming of the people. It asked its fellow Chartists: ”Whether by all and every means in their power they will perseveringly contend for the great objects of the People's Charter, and resolve that no counter agitation for a less measure of justice shall divert them from their righteous object?” Attempts at insurrection were carried through, with an armed uprising in Newport the high point.
The most militant of the demands were drawn up by the revolutionary and socialist, Bronterre O’Brien. He was the delegate to the Convention from Manchester. September's conference could do worse than draw up a modern version of the Manifesto of Ulterior Measures.
Paul Feldman
Communications editor
Which brings us to the Convention of the Left being held in Manchester in September. A World to Win supports this Convention as a timely opportunity to discuss the crisis of political leadership in Britain and how to go forward. The Convention is called not so much as to coincide with the New Labour “conference” being held in Manchester at the same time, but as a result of a decade of Blair and Brown governments and what they have done to the party.
Before New Labour, the party was the main political leadership in Britain of working people and those generally hostile to capitalism, and had been so since the 1920s. This is patently no longer the case. The reasons for this are worth rehearsing yet again because they can help explain the dilemma facing all those who will be at the Manchester Convention.
Put simply, the era of being able to deliver even modest reforms of capitalism has evaporated with the onset of the corporate-driven, transnational market economy, aka as globalisation. This is the process that produced New Labour, which has transformed Labour into a party that champions corporate and financial power. The evidence is stark, and includes the massive transfer of wealth to the private sector (see yesterday’s blog).
Moreover, New Labour has refashioned the capitalist state to make it fit for purpose. Every sector, from prisons, to housing and education, is driven by the mantra of markets and choice. This unholy alliance between capital, the state and New Labour cannot be undone in favour of some earlier political and economic period. It has to be shattered and scattered.
The conditions for achieving this are maturing. The growing hostility to New Labour coincides with and is driven by the raging financial crisis, which is taking a rapid toll of jobs, homes and living standards. Yesterday’s sudden takeover of the troubled Alliance & Leicester by Santander and the US government’s attempt to rescue the country’s big two home loan banks are striking indications of a profound crisis.
With the government intent on offloading the crisis on to the backs of ordinary people, and bankrupt of any other ideas, its future is limited. In fact, it would be difficult to envisage New Labour surviving a banking collapse. A weakness of the Manchester Convention’s agenda is the absence of major discussion on the global economic and financial crisis and what the response should be.
Another gap is to do with political perspective. With the reformist agenda in ruins, and the parliamentary state both paralysed and increasingly authoritarian, the question of a new, alternative political power is posed in an insistent way. Conventions called by the Radical movement in the 1790s and the Chartists in the late 1830s challenged the emerging capitalist state. The Chartists, especially, understood the relationship between political and economic power and that they needed a plan B if the state refused to concede to their demands.
The Birmingham Chartists Convention of 1839 drew up a “Manifesto of Ulterior Measures”, which included proposals for a general strike and the arming of the people. It asked its fellow Chartists: ”Whether by all and every means in their power they will perseveringly contend for the great objects of the People's Charter, and resolve that no counter agitation for a less measure of justice shall divert them from their righteous object?” Attempts at insurrection were carried through, with an armed uprising in Newport the high point.
The most militant of the demands were drawn up by the revolutionary and socialist, Bronterre O’Brien. He was the delegate to the Convention from Manchester. September's conference could do worse than draw up a modern version of the Manifesto of Ulterior Measures.
Paul Feldman
Communications editor
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