The year we found our rulers out

As 2013 draws to a close, we can say with some certainty that while none of the major questions facing humanity are any nearer finding a solution, there is a renewed determination amongst ordinary people to reject how things stand in the search for answers.

So we have to thank our political classes for small mercies. Their ineptitude, arrogance, indifference and sheer inability to counter powerful capitalist economic and financial forces has spurred people on throughout the year.

Three inspiring examples of resistance that all began in June stand out from the countless actions around the world this year. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in Brazil against government corruption and the diversion of resources towards next year’s World Cup. The country’s dash for growth at any price has made a poor population even more impoverished.

The same month, Bulgarians revolted agains the oligarchy that has left the country bankrupt and almost entirely dependent on imported goods, including food. In Turkey, a nation-wide rebellion was prompted by plans to pave over green space in Istanbul. But the quasi-Islamic government’s attack on democratic rights was also a significant factor in the revolt.

As for individual heroes, the awards go to two Americans. Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning defied the might of the American state to blow the whistle and leak evidence of illegal mass surveillance and war crimes. Sentenced to 35 years in a military prison, Manning rebuked her government with the following words:

“Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability…We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government.”

Snowden became a man without a passport as he fled the clutches of the National Security Agency. A conservative in his politics, Snowden was appalled by the secret programmes run by the NSA and GCHQ in Britain to spy on the electronic communications of its citizens. His actions have shaken Washington and London, revealing how fragile these states are behind all the bluster.

That was shown when a groundswell of public anger on both sides of the Atlantic prevented an attack on Syria. Both Congress and Parliament was paralysed by the reaction of the people. It was the first time in modern history that an illegal war was thwarted at the outset.

Nothing demonstrates more sharply the useless nature of our political system than the response to the clear and present danger presented by runaway climate change. In September, a report by thousands of scientists found that humans have used up between a half and two thirds of the amount of emissions possible before we dangerously overheat the planet.

The UK government’s response? To expand gas-fired power stations and to open up half the country to fracking, both of which will add to dangerous emissions. Madness. An international agreement on cutting greenhouse gas emissions is not even on the agenda. Business interests have prevailed – again.

So we have a socio-ecological impasse. The system cannot deliver what we demand in terms of a sustainable environment, decent living standards, affordable shelter and a democracy that reflects our aspirations rather than those of shareholders. Instead, in Britain in particular, there’s a policy race to the bottom between the major parties.

All this suggests in the strongest terms that  the present political and economic system is a barrier to a real democracy and has effectively disenfranchised the majority The right to vote, won in centuries of struggle, has been undermined by a corporatocracy. Increasing numbers of people evidently recognise this to the case, which is perhaps the greatest achievement of 2013 and provides a basis for optimism for the year ahead.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Chile joins year of 'global indignation'

The political temperature continues to rise in Chile since last week’s killing of 16-year-old high school student Manuel Gutiérrez in the capital Santiago.

The country, which is the world’s major producer of copper, has been viewed as a rock for global capitalism in an unstable South America. But now it is seeing – horror of horrors for its right-wing rulers – a united workers and student movement which has the support of the majority of Chilean citizens.

Interior minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter has been forced to announce that the bullets that killed Gutiérrez matched those in a 9mm UZ submachine gun belonging to police officer Miguel Millacura. Hinzpeter has been compelled to ask for the resignation of deputy chief of the Metropolitan Zone Sergio Gajardo.

The discrediting of the police – and the continuing 37-day hunger strike by a high school student - will intensify the political and social crisis facing President Sebastian Pinera.

Over the last three months, massive student protests for an egalitarian education system followed close on the heels of the longest-ever strike at Collahuasi, the world’s third largest copper mine. In July, miners struck at the state-owned Codelco mine, followed by workers at the world’s biggest copper mine, Escondida.

An estimated 70-80% of Chileans support the student movement with parents and grandparents joining their children in massive street protests. Last week, up to half a million people took part in strikes and demonstrations around the country as the Workers United Center of Chile joined in with a 48-hour strike. Over a thousand arrests were made as the state struck back.

Although the country’s booming economy is growing at 6.8%, it also has a 15% poverty rate and the widest gap between rich and pour in the region. Chile ranks as the world’s 16th most-unequal country, along with El Salvador and Panama.

Its workers know that the wealth they generate is being creamed off by a tiny elite. And, with an average debt of $45,000 which is around 174% of a student’s annual salary upon graduation, no wonder there is anger amongst young people.

Chilean students are part of a global “indignation” movement that is seeing protests from Honduras, where a 17-year-old Nahum Guerra was shot on August 22 during protests for public education, to Venezuela and the Dominican Republic and other mass movements in Europe, North Africa, Middle East and India.

Most important of all, just as in Spain and Greece, an entire generation of students and workers feel disenfranchised as they do not see themselves represented by established political parties. The “leftist” Concertación bloc, which took over after the military dictatorship, is scoring only 17% in the polls, even lower than Pinera’s 26%.

The CUT union leadership is discredited by its close relationship with the official parties as is the Chilean Communist Party (CCP). And whilst students are fighting against government strategies for private profit-driven education, the CCP is running a profit-oriented university in the country’s capital!

The rise of local and territorial people’s assemblies amongst students and around the country is opening up new avenues for a mass movement to devise strategies to go beyond capitalism. Helped by social networking, Chilean students are linking up directly with the real democracy movement (DRY and 15M) in Spain and elsewhere.

The rise of Chile’s mass worker-student movement is proof, if proof is needed, that 2011 is indeed the year of “global indignation”. Understanding the experience of how democratically-elected socialist president Salvador Allende was overthrown by Pinochet’s military junta in 1973 is vital. This is the spectre that haunts not only Chile every mass people’s movement.

The development of people’s assemblies in Chile and elsewhere shows the urgent need to go beyond resistance - and the mistaken belief that the existing state can be reformed - to a strategy for wresting economic and political power away from those who hold it.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Real democracy on the march

In a bold and inspired move, Spain’s Real Democracy Now! movement is taking the struggle to towns and villages throughout the country, so that the issues they have raised can be presented and developed by many more people.

The movement (DRY or M15) is organising marches from towns in the north, east, south and west of Spain: Valencia, Barcelona, La Rioja, Galicia and Andalucía. It is in line with the desire of the democracy campaigners to be as inclusive, to break down barriers and to have the widest possible debates about the way forward.

Two legs are already underway, with over 100 marchers setting off from Barcelona earlier this week. Despite soaring temperatures, the protesters hope to walk 21 kilometres each day. The Valencia route is around 500 kilometres long. The plan is for all the marches to arrive in Madrid on July 23 for a rally and the presentation of demands to parliament.

Last Friday, as the Spanish parliament passed new laws against the rights of unions, democracy collectives agreed to begin planning for a general strike on October 15 to coincide with other direct actions.

The M15 campaigners are not, however, asking the largest trade unions – the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) and Confederación Sindical de Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) to call strike action. They feel that these unions are too closely aligned with the Socialist Party (PSOE) government.

DRY has been holding rallies, assemblies and encampments in city centres since May. The occupation of Madrid’s Puerta Sol saw tens of thousands of demonstrators – young and old – gather to reject the country’s established political parties, the PSOE and the right-wing Popular Party (PP).

With slogans like “They don’t represent us”, and “Don’t Vote for Them”, the DRY movement denounced the privileges of the ruling elites, insisting that “the current status of our government and economic system does not take care of these rights and is in many ways an obstacle to human progress.”

Assemblies in Barcelona, Madrid and elsewhere have posted lists of demands ranging from greater democracy and political change to basic rights to jobs, quality of life, housing, public services, respect for the environment, reduced military spending and the abolition of the monarchy.

The call for a general strike poses the question of what such an action is for. Showing politicians and businesses that “if we stop, everything stops”, as a spokesperson from the M15 movement suggests, will not be sufficient to achieve the aims of the marchers. And, whilst rejecting their politically-compromised leadership, the members of the major unions cannot be ignored, if a general strike is to succeed.

A general strike as a protest – such as the two-day strike starting in Greece today – cannot by itself reverse the course of events, politically or economically. Both are inextricably linked and driven by a globalised crisis of the capitalist system of production as a whole.

Just as the unrepresentative political elites are inseparable from the system of private ownership of the means of production, so the financial system sits on top of the system of production for profit. Changing that means addressing the issue of ownership and power.

For true economic and political liberation, the issue of the state and power cannot be evaded. As A World to Win has noted: “The present state has to go and power has to change hands, from the minority to the majority, in revolutionary practice. Corporate and financial power could be co-owned and controlled and exercised through a network of people’s assemblies.”

In our view, that is the precondition for establishing real democracy now in place of the capitalist version that is discredited in the eyes of large sections of ordinary people. This is an urgent question because undoubtedly the far right is waiting in the shadows with own sinister plans of its own to “clean up democracy”.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

The great deception

The reasons for hanging on to your vote at the general election next month are mounting. But surely the most significant is the fact that the electorate is being kept in the dark by a conspiracy of silence by all the major parties capable of forming a government.

How can people vote for parties that are refusing to say what their immediate post-election plans are in relation to cutting the budget deficit? Despite all the squabbles between New Labour, the Tories and Liberal Democrats over national insurance contributions, no one has admitted the truth: that savage reductions in public spending are on the cards.

Leaving aside for the moment whether the deficit ought to be cut as opposed to repudiated, from a capitalist point of view there is no choice. The deficit is close to 12% of the value of annual output (GDP) and similar in size to that of Greece, which is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

The government is forced to borrow on the bond markets to finance the gap between state spending and income – and the cost of this is rising. Currently, the Treasury is charged about 4% on borrowing and this is expected to rise to 5% this year. Interest payments alone are running at over £40 billion a year – adding to the total debt every day.

Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist at Capital Economics, is typical of City observers in noting after last month’s budget that “the current plans to halve the deficit over the next four years rely both on spending cuts which have not yet been properly detailed, and on almost certainly over-optimistic projections for the economy”.

His view that “the momentous task of tackling the UK's fiscal crisis will get under way after the election – and it's going to hurt" (my emphasis) is self-evidently true. But as that is the case, how can people actually take part in the election? Why should they vote when the major parties are effectively lying about what’s to come?

After all, you wouldn’t buy a car or a fridge or even a pint of milk without making some sort of check, would you? If you knew the milk was off, you wouldn’t buy it. So how can voters be expected to “buy in” to what’s on offer when the information on the label is pure fiction?

The great deception is what this election will be known for, therefore. And it is all part and parcel of the great wipe-out of democracy, where corruption and the big lie have undermined not just the significance of the right to vote but eaten into the very heart of the capitalist political system. Which is another good reason – perhaps the most important of them all – to hang on to your vote.

To those who say we have to use our vote because people died fighting for it, we say that their sacrifice was not made so that we could participate in a charade. The plot of the major parties is actually to steal our votes. Let’s not give them that opportunity.

We have to open a campaign that challenges the right of the political elites to impose the burden of a crisis created by their complicity with financial and economic powers on to the backs of ordinary people. That means withholding our vote, denying them a mandate to make draconian cuts. At the same time we favour building support for People’s Assemblies that would find ways to reorganise the economy and state finances along lines that benefit the majority instead of the privileged few.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Clegg sounds the alarm bells

Media pundits made fun of the Liberal Democrats’ new leader, Nick Clegg, when he split his party over the European Union treaty referendum vote. But over the weekend, he defied predictions of disaster by winning over spring conference delegates with a sweeping condemnation of “establishment politics” in a bid to position himself for the outcome of the next general election.

Clegg attacked class divisions in Britain, where “some people are still more free than others” saying that Labour had “sold its soul and became the second Conservative party”. He pointed out that children born into poor neighbourhoods might have a life expectancy far shorter than the rich. Clegg tapped into the growing disaffection with existing political structures, especially the two-party system that has dominated British politics for so long.

Casting himself and his party as rebels against the political establishment, he said, “a new type of government” was needed - “a new system, that empowers people not parties”. He called for a 100-strong citizens’ jury to join forces with parties, churches and other groups in a Constitutional Convention to “redesign the way Britain is governed”. He noted how there is a “vast and growing army of people who want something different than the main political parties” who rejected the two main parties. Clegg also called for a mass movement of millions of people to take action to protect the planet and tackle climate change.

The Lib Dem leader spoke of liberty taken and abused by government officials and “a faceless state”. He referred to Brown’s “obsession” with building bigger and bigger database systems. He denounced New Labour’s pride “that Britain is leading the world in fingerprinting children at school” and “that the identity card database will be the biggest and most complex that the world has ever seen”. He warned of the impact of a US recession on Britain, saying: “We’ve been building castles in the sand. And the tide is coming in.”

All of these things are undoubtedly true. But behind Clegg's bold words and “high-risk strategy”, he is in fact positioning his party for a possible coalition in the event of a hung parliament. When he refers to “the rotten old system”, he actually means the two-party system, NOT the profit-driven, debt-based system of production, which is now spiralling out of control. He is aware that increasing numbers of people know and feel the existing political structures are neither democratic nor representative. But the bottom line is that Clegg is seeking a way of shoring up faith in the present political system, by offering the pipe dream of capitalism with a democratic face. He is sounding alarm bells about the political system with an eye to backing a Tory or Labour minority administration in the event of a hung parliament.

Many observers, especially those far to the right of Clegg, have noted the sea change in Britain over the last few decades, particularly since New Labour came to power. There is a vast alienation from what is seen as “politics” – in other words the existing undemocratic and somewhat corrupt parliamentary system of rule. The Liberal Democrats’ re-positioning is not just speechifying but a desperate attempt to balance an extra-parliamentary movement with one still chained to the old system. It should be seen as a clarion call to develop a truly alternative economic and political vision to bourgeois democracy and corporate power. A World to Win’s next discussion on April 3 will be another step in this direction.

Corinna Lotz
AWTW secretary

Democracy, revolution and British values

The Brown government wants to "reinvigorate our democracy" through a series of changes to the constitution. But proposals in The Governance of Britain published by New Labour last week are superficial and essentially aimed at trying to restore public support for a failing process by "renewing our trust in our democratic institutions". Lurching towards populism/nationalism, they are also intended to "achieve a stronger sense of what it means to be British". The overall concept of a corporate-driven, security-obsessed, state shines through the whole document, which is how it should be for something published by a government like Brown’s, where business is directly involved as ministers and top advisers.

The executive summary openly states: "Only a confident UK will be able to adapt to the economic challenges of globalisation." [emphasis added] It adds: "Only a country sure of its identity will be able to come together to ensure our mutual security: common, inclusive values can help us overcome the threat from extremism of all kinds." [emphasis added] The Governance of Britain’s central assumption is that the real issue concerns the relationship between the executive, or government, and parliament. To that end, there are a proposals to transfer from the executive to MPs the power to declare war or ratify international treaties. All the emphasis is on giving parliament "more ability to hold the government to account" . [emphasis added] In the end, however, these are entirely cosmetic proposals not least because the governing party literally has the whip hand when it comes to driving their MPs through the division lobbies when votes take place. After all, MPs did get a vote on the invasion of Iraq – and voted in favour, despite the pressure of 2 million people on the streets.

Transferring a few powers, or bringing into the open the mysteries of the appointment of judges and bishops, will not suffice because the causes of the deep political malaise in Britain go much deeper than The Governance of Britain cares to acknowledge. Democratic rights to representation were won only as a result of mass struggle – something the document glosses over – and most people lent the political system conditional support so long as it appeared flexible, open to pressure and delivered reforms. This support has fallen away precisely because social and economic conditions have altered in a substantive way, with consequences for the political process. At the heart of these changes lies the corporate-driven globalisation process, which began in earnest almost 30 years ago. At one level, the national state has ceded powers to international and regional bodies like the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union. At another, the transnational corporations have set the agenda for national governments to follow if they want to stay competitive in the global market economy. While the Tories floundered under the weight of these historic challenges, New Labour embraced them to the extent that Brown cannot speak too highly of the alleged virtues of the City of London and corporations like Microsoft.

The decline of the welfare state and the transition to a market state, with its emphasis on self-help and commercially-driven public policies, has witnessed a parallel decline in voter support for a state political system that is openly partisan, having abandoned its post-war role of mediating between different class interests. So when the government launches its debate about the future of the constitution, there is no point in our trying to breathe new life into something past its use-by date. In truth, parliament has never held any significant power since the emergence of capitalist rule, while the state as a whole has always sided with the status quo of private ownership of land and property.

The Governance of Britain refers in the introduction to political reform through revolution, before hastily adding "although not for centuries", in an oblique reference to the overthrow of monarchy by Cromwell in the 17th century. Reinvigorating democracy can only come through a modern revolutionary process. This would extend democracy into areas like the workplace, handing power to producers and consumers, ending corporate and financial rule, and creating new democratic institutions that directly represent ordinary people’s diverse interests. Now, that would be a much more progressive way to affirm historic British values!

Paul Feldman, communications editor