July 19, 2010
Anti-Fascism is a Left Wing Issue
I live in graduate accommodation, which I share with a high percentage of overseas students from India and China. The other day I was doing my washing and a group of 6-7 East Asians were in the room at the same time. There was a bit of confusion about a semi-broken washing machine, and the Asian students were all talking to each other in, in part (I presumed) about me.
At that moment a thought popped through my head that shocked me: “Oh for God’s sake speak English, this isn’t bloody China”
It took me by surprise. To some extent I was just feeling irritated about the washing machine being broken again, and nobody likes to be talked about without understanding what’s said. But nonetheless it surprised me how quickly this line – beloved of racists and racist-sympathisers – came to me.
So am I a racist? The answer, I think, is no…but that I could be.
On the one hand I know racism is daft for all the well-rehearsed reasons. That a person’s genetic racial background has no meaningful effect on their character. That whilst different cultures of socialisation may promote different trends of behaviour, the enormous variation within “cultures” makes a mockery of racially-determined personality classifications.
But whilst it’s tempting to say that such high-falutin’ thoughts ensure my non-racism, I suspect it isn’t the whole story. Abstract reflection of such sorts can certainly guard against casual lazy racism (of the “all [...] are [...]” kind, beloved by pub boors and garden variety prats). But what about the altogether more troubling breed of racism; the sort that provokes to anger and hatred, that seeks to blame other races and persecute them accordingly?
A huge part of the reason why I’m not that sort of angry, hateful racist is that I have neither the time, inclination, energy nor disposition to hate other people with such burning prejudice. Hating people takes a lot of energy – and I’d rather expend mine cycling, reading books and going to the pub with friends.
Which is easy for me to say, isn’t it? Because I live on a fat government subsidy and am lower-middle class with financial and emotional security. If, by contrast, I was poor, unemployed (or under threat of being made so), had debts to pay and children to feed, and was living under the constant threat of losing control of my life situation (which was already stressful enough) then I might not be so high-minded. Indeed the frustrations and angers of the daily grind might well be eased by expending energy in the hatred of a suitable blame-group.
What I’m describing is poverty, of course. But what I’m not trying to say is that all poor people are racist – on the contrary, history shows that some of the most committed anti-fascists have been working class. What I am trying to highlight is how much easier it is to be anti-racist when you’ve got security and other, more enjoyable, things to do with yourself.
Which, for me, is a big part of the reason why anti-fascism is a left wing issue. Not just in terms of the on-street campaigning done by organisations like Hope Not Hate and UAF, but from the perspective of removing the long-term breeding grounds for racism. It’s the left that takes seriously – and tries to alleviate – the hardship and poverty of society’s most vulnerable. The right simply does not; empty rhetoric about a “Big Society” notwithstanding as cuts are implemented that hurt society’s poorest on the assurance that the market will sort it out anyway.
Although the BNP is hilariously threatened with financial ruin for a copyright infringement which can only be described as colossally imbecilic, fascism is a political zombie that always comes back eventually. A while ago people like Iain Dale were alleging that the BNP is an “extreme left wing party”. It’s worth remembering for the long-run that this is fatuous distraction from the real issue: that wherever we stick the BNP and its ilk on the political spectrum, those who attempt seriously to neutralise the racist breeding-grounds of fascism are on the broad political left.
June 30, 2010
China-Fetishism and the Usefulness of History
Via Dave Semple, I’m alerted to a recent bit of China-fetishism at the Socialist Unity blog. Actually, by the standards of China-adoration this piece isn’t particularly egregious. On the face of things you’d do well to distinguish this from a China People’s Daily article. Except that Chinese propaganda tends to shy away from explicit statements about the means of economic organisation, insofar as that might suggest there are working alternative systems.
It can seem mystifying that self-identified (hard) leftists turn to China as a laudable example of counter-capitalism. Because it’s astonishingly obvious that China’s massive economic development of the past 20 years has not been achieved via anything like communism or the collectivisation of the means of production.
Rather, it’s been achieved by the CCP deciding to allow a form of capitalist activity to take place within fairly controlled sections of the economy, where the state remains a key player with (part-)ownership of industries whilst a new class of western-style entrepreneurs and businessmen have been allowed to emulate (in particular) Anglophone capitalist practices.
The means of production have not been collectivised (or rather they were collectivised and that resulted in famines and a peasant-level economy), and the means of production are not in the hands of the proletariat. On the contrary, the enormous proletariat subsists with no labour rights, no rights to free speech, no rights to free press or association and no right to choose – or remove – the country’s leaders. As well as myriad human rights abuses, this also ensures no proper political accountability, allowing for the possibility of disasters such as this. Even the capitalist class walks on eggshells: a multi-billionaire today, but piss-off the wrong CCP official and your property can be seized in an instant tomorrow, appropriated by a state upholding no meaningful contract law or property rights.
China-fetishists usually reply that Chinese economic development has lifted millions out of poverty (which it has). But this is usually used as a fig-leaf to ignore the CCP’s systematic rights abuses such as forcibly relocating entire villages to provide cheap labour for new economic projects, or razing entire cities to the ground to facilitate 5-year plans regardless of who happens to be living there. And given that – as above – poverty reduction is not the result of socialism but of a hybrid of extreme American-style capitalism in the economy combined with top-down Stalinist authoritarianism in politics and society, it’s difficult to see how the “but there are fewer poor Chinese now” reply can be used as a socialist/Marxist defence. Oh, and it’s also inconsistent: western capitalism has lifted billions out of poverty, so if that’s the mark of a desirable economic-political system why fetishise China in particular?
What we’re seeing on the modern far left, of course, is the time-tested practice of ignoring inconvenient facts in order to adhere rigidly to a political ideology – namely some variant of Marxism – that is predicated upon condemning Western capitalism as the worst form of socio-political arrangement. Quite logically (at least, within the paradigm), “better” alternatives are sought out in existing world regimes…ironically going against the work of Marx himself, who argued that communism would develop (gradually or via revolution) out of mature capitalist regimes.
Such ignoring or inconvenient facts by the chaps at Socialist Unity – or for that matter Ken Livingstone, his former adviser John Ross, or pop economist Philippe Legrain – is in this day and age of no particular importance beyond intellectual frustration. But in other times and places the adherence to ideology over inconvenient fact has had altogether more sinister outcomes.
Being on the wrong side of such ideologists in the Russia of 1922, the Catalonia of 1937-8, or the Czechoslovakia of 1948 (to pick three examples from hundreds) would be as good as a death sentence. The 20th Century stands as a marked warning to the dangers of ideology unfettered by fact, and the terrible things this can induce individual human beings – of left and right – to do. As Anthony Beevor puts it at the end of his history of the Spanish Civil War:
“Ideological and religious invocations deliberately tried to make the violence abstarct. There was said to have been a sweet-natured youth among Moscardo’s defenders at Toledo, who was called the Angel of the Acazar because before firing his rifle he used to cry, ‘Kill without hate!’ This depersonalisation existed on the republican side as well. David Antona, a CNT leader, said that ‘the bullets which ended the lives of the officers at the Montana barracks did not kill men, they killed a whole social system’. People were encouraged to submerge their identity and individual responsibility into causes with either mystical or superhuman auras…It was this dehumanization of the enemy which made the war so terrible, along, of course, with the modern weapons and the tactics of terror aimed against civilian populations.”
The economic, social and political failures of 20th Century communist systems were enormous (whatever the real, but ultimately far lesser, faults of capitalism). The persistent refusal to acknowledged this – and to act towards China as Soviet apologists did towards Russia 70 years ago – rather implies that contemporary China apologists should be taken outside, lined up against the wall…and forced to read some bloody histoy.
Pun intended.
February 2, 2010
Progressive London
Following my last post I’ve had an email exchange with Nick Cohen. Unsurprisingly given that I disagree with him on quite a lot, it’s been a little heated (the fact I insulted him in the last post doesn’t help).
But Nick has made me pay attention to a few things about “Progressive London“.
Firstly – and as Sunny had already noted – “Progressive London” is little more than Ken Livingstone’s re-election platform. This in itself might be no bad thing, in principle. It becomes so when we remember Ken Livingstone himself.
I’m not just thinking about the fact Red Ken probably doesn’t have the numbers to beat the abominable Boris Johnson. I’m thinking of the fact Livingstone himself is quite an unsavoury character. A latent authoritarianism in his politics seeped out at the Fabian Conference in his enormous enthusiasm for compulsory national service. His extolling of China and Vietnam as models for Britain added to my concerns on Saturday. And in fairness to Nick Cohen, two years ago he wrote a solid piece casting light on Livingstone’s shady past.
Yet Ken Livingstone himself was not the only problem at the Progressive London conference.
I’ve already noted the presence of his former economic adviser John Ross, a man who likewise extols the virtues of China whilst remaining gleefully silent about the issues of judicial murder, totalitarian dictatorship and suppression of basic rights.
But let’s not forget George Galloway, who just happens to be my MP. Another old leftist who spent his youth in the ultra-hard left, Galloway rose to his 15 minutes of international fame by personally saluting Saddam Hussein’s “courage”, “strength” and “indefatigability”. Now I was very much opposed to the Iraq war, and believe that history has proved myself and those who stood with me right.
Yet there is clear blue water between opposing illegal war and personally supporting a vicious, neo-fascit tyrant who gassed sections of his own population.
George Galloway is a national disgrace. He ought to occupy a pariah status on the left . Not a privileged position on a panel debate for so-called “progressives”.
Also present at the Progressive London conference was Bairbre de Brún MEP of Sinn Féin. Now let me say this loud and clear: I am no supporter of the loyalist cause in Northern Ireland. I am aware of the many horrors perpetrated by loyalist factions, and of the frequently uneven hand of British “justice” in Ulster.
But Sinn Féin remains the political wing of what was a terrorist organisation responsible for the deaths of thousands. Their presence at a conference for “progressives” is simply unacceptable. If a representative of the Irish nationalist cause was desired, the invitation should have gone to someone from the SDLP.
Questions might also be raised about the presence of Venezuelan Ambassador Samuel Moncada, in the light of this Human Rights Watch report. Ken, of course, has long-standing ties to Hugo Chavez. He does not appear to share many on the left’s mounting concern at Chavez’s slide into repressive authoritarianism, however.
Of course, many sensible and respectable people spoke at the event. There were also a few harmless idiots like Ann “North Sea Oil is irrelevant to growth” Pettifor, of the insufferable New Economics Foundation.
But regardless, we on the London left need to look carefully at Ken’s electoral machine, and see who he’s taking along for the ride. Then we need to decide whether it’s something we’re willing to be part of.
Personally I will not be joining Progressive London, nor attending any more of their events.
January 30, 2010
China: A Very Bad Example
There’s a worrying tendency emerging in some sections of the left. I noticed it in this blog post. Today I saw it writ large. The willingness of some leftists to cite China as a positive example for the UK.
At the appalingly-titled “Progressive London” conference, Ken Livingstone gave a speech in which he declared that the proof that government investment ends recessions lies in China’s staggering rates of state spending, and enormous correlate levels of growth. (He also claimed that British kids should have fewer holidays, so that they can receive the structured educations that will make them good British citizens who are competitive with Chinese children studying “from 7am to 6 at night”. They don’t call him Red Ken for nowt, eh?).
Later, John Ross of Socialist Economic Bulletin (and Ken’s former economic adviser) took some time out from claiming that Britain’s national debt didn’t need to be repaid, that the triple-A rating is meaningless, and that all spending cuts are completely a choice and not imposed by brute economic circumstances, to cite China as proof-positive that government-led investment ends recessions. He waxed lyrical about China’s 9% growth in the last quarter, and how the Chinese government simply told banks to lend and – hey presto – they lent.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for keeping government spending as high as possible to protect the tentative recovery. But citing China as a model for UK growth is idiotic, and deeply troubling.
Firstly, it relies upon deliberate economic simplification. Why might China be experiencing such high rates of growth? The fact it possess enormous and largely untapped natural resources, which it is beginning to put to use, has something to do with it. That China is still in a stage of rapid industrialisation from what was effectively a peasant society, ravaged by the Cultural Revolution, helps too. Britain is incomparable on both these metrics.
Likewise, Chinese growth is in large measure driven by enormous government-led infrastructure projects (as a component of rapid industrialisation). It also has as an enormous manufacturing base, fuelling western demand for cheap consumer goods. Britain, by contrast, relies heavily on its financial and service sectors. The two economies are thus radically different.
So pointing at China and simplistically saying “look, they have lots of government spending and lots of growth, QED” is stupid. You might as well point to Angola and its 12%+ oil-driven growth, and it would tell you as much about the UK’s situation (we, after all, still possess some reserves of North Sea Oil). Indeed, if one wants proof that government spending leads to economic recovery, why not turn to history and take the case of America’s New Deal? That at least tells you something about relatively comparable economies and circumstances – though again one would need to adjust for situation and the complex nature of macroeconomic recovery. (h/t)
But more importantly than all that, let’s remember a key method by which China achieves its phenomenal growth: by systematically denying the civil and economic rights of its domestic population.
Chinese workers have no meaningful rights whatsoever (their right to unionize, for example, means a right to join the union which reports to the Communist Party). They are paid pitifully low wages (averaging around $0.50 an hour in 2006), and have no hope of securing anything better. That’s a key way in which China’s export-manufacturing sector booms: low wages equal low costs, after all.
Another way China grows is by doing what I observed last summer: going to places like 1000-year old Yancheng, raising it to the ground, and erecting a city the size of Chicago in its place. And what do you think happened to the people living in Yancheng who didn’t want to have their homes demolished. Do you think they were consulted nicely and offered new places to live with guaranteed legal redress? Or do you reckon they were forcibly re-located as is the Communist Party’s preferred approach?
China may have very high growth rates. But it has no democracy, no civil rights, and no effective rule of law. It is a totalitarian dictatorship, achieving “economic miracles” at a cost no desirable society would ever contemplate.
Yet when John Ross was pointedly asked why Iceland and Ireland don’t simply adopt the “Chinese approach”, he simply claimed that the political consensus in those countries wouldn’t tolerate a more state-centred economy. He made it perfectly clear that he thought this a mistake: that China was leading the way, and should be followed.
We have been here before on the left. From the 1930s to the 1980s there were many who persistently claimed that Soviet Russia was a workers’ paradise, a successful alternative to capitalism. They were wrong, and millions of graves testify against them.
The left must not repeat the mistakes of history. China is an example of what we must always be against, not what we must aspire to. We forget that at our peril.
–
End Note:
The irony, of course, is that the nutty left are usually the ones blithely decrying “neo-liberalism”. If “neo-liberalism” is anything, it is usually claimed to be an economic approach which privileges growth and profit above the welfare of ordinary people.
For reasons I cannot comprehend, some of those rabidly decrying “neo-liberalism” suddenly forget those concerns about growth über alles when it comes to hailing the totalitarian dystopia of modern China.
–
UPDATE
John Ross’ views on China are well laid-out at this Guardian article. You will notice that NOT ONCE does he mention China’s horrific record on human rights, or the fact of its totalitarian dictatorship.
The comments beneath his piece are almost universally spot-on in calling him out on this matter.
Also, Nick Cohen (and you know it’s bad when Nick can successfully call you out on your shit) made the following observations of this nasty neo-Soviet Apologist two years ago:
“John Ross, Livingstone’s economic adviser on £121,000, is typical. He is so lacking in economic knowledge that he decided that the Russian Communist party was a force for the future in 1991, two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. His economic advice at the time was for the ruling class to learn ‘that they will be killed if they do not allow a takeover by the working class’.”
December 3, 2009
Copenhagen: An introduction to philosophical paradox and why you’re all going to die
Sunny Hundal today put up a 6-point plan for how to get realistic about climate change campaigning. It’s a good list. I applaud it – in principle. You see, I’ve no doubt that man-made climate change is happening. I just think the odds are overwhelmingly against us stopping it. To see why, let me take you on a little philosophical tour.
We start in Greece, roughly 2,400 years ago. Meet Eubulides. He’s a philosopher, who put forward what was known to Greeks as “The Heap” problem. (FYI “heap” in Ancient Greek = sôritês, so modern philosophers call this a sorites problem, or paradox)
It goes like this.
If you have one grain of wheat, is that a heap? Manifestly not! What about two grains? Don’t be ridiculous! Three? Pah!…and so on. Seems fairly obvious that so few grains can’t make a heap. Except: if we keep adding one grain at a time, at some point then we’re going to get a heap. The problem – or paradox, if you like – emerges when you lay things out a bit more formally, as the nice Stanford Enyclopedia people have done:
1 grain of wheat does not make a heap.
If 1 grain of wheat does not make a heap then 2 grains of wheat do not.
If 2 grains of wheat do not make a heap then 3 grains do not.
…
If 9,999 grains of wheat do not make a heap then 10,000 do not.
——————————————————————–
10,000 grains of wheat do not make a heap.
…except, for course, we all want to say 10,000 grains certainly does make a heap. Something has gone wrong. Our impeccable reasoning leads to untenable and obviously false conclusions. But that’s not what I want to talk about here.
Instead, let’s focus upon something the sorites problem brings out: the way individual contributions can, when taken alone, fail to make any significant difference, but if enough similar contributions occur then a difference definitely is made. One grain of wheat added to the pile doesn’t make the difference between “pile” and “not-a-pile”. But it’s manifestly the case that enough grains will end up constituting a pile. One grain is irrelevant, but lots of grains makes vital the difference.
Let’s fast forward 2,400 years to Denmark where the climate talks are about to get underway. The world’s leaders are round the big tables. Let’s imagine some brave head of state (probs not the Candian PM) gets up and makes an impassioned speech about the need for dramatic carbon-reduction targets. This has to be done now, and all members have to sign up and stick to the agreements for it to work. If members stick, then climate change can be halted.
Now imagine the thought processes that goes through leaders’ heads. They all know that meeting carbon reduction has the potential to play very badly with home electorates (so here thinking mostly about democracies, which except for China covers all the big polluters anyway so that works well in my little sketch, as you shall see). Opposition parties will crucify governments that retard domestic industry by forcing reductions, and self-interested voters are likely to resent the taxes and inconveniencies of genuinely meaningful carbon reductions. So signing-up to effective climate deals is a very difficult thing for democratic governments to do in particular.
And it gets worse. What is the point of signing up to hard-hitting targets, if you’re the only one that bothers? Here we meet a phenomenon familiar to economists: the problem of non-compliance by other parties. For example, imagine Britain pledges to make big carbon cuts, sticks to those cuts – but then every other nation doesn’t. Britain’s cuts will have been effectively pointless, we are stuck in a sorites problem. Britain’s carbon emissions alone won’t make the difference to global climate catastrophe: if Britain were the only country to go carbon-zero, climate catastrophe would still happen. But now flip it around. If Britain were the only country not to go carbon-zero, then climate catastrophe would not happen, because Britain’s contribution alone would be insufficient to send the world over the brink.
All countries in the world (with one possible exception, which we’ll get to in a moment) are stuck in the sorites paradox. Be the one country to make the necessary cuts, and all that happens is your nation suffers economically, your party becomes unpopular and is kicked out, and climate catastrophe happens anyway. Be the only country not to make the necessary cuts, and climate disaster is regardless and your nation gets to stay productive with your party remaining in power. The world’s leaders all know these things. They also know every other nation has the same huge incentives to deviate from big pledges (due to domestic pressures) as they do, but also because each nation knows that individually they don’t make the crucial difference (with one possible big exception).
And the leaders all know something else: that it’s very embarrassing to sign up to a big treaty, and then totally miss the set targets. Result? Watered-down proposals with meaninglessly low targets that even if they were met (which they probably won’t be, because after all why bother?) wouldn’t be enough anyway. This way the world’s leaders have their “deal”, so they save face and are not plunged into the sorites paradox of cut-don’tcut
You may at this point be thinking: “But there is a potential game changer: the USA. If America meaningfully reduces its carbon output, then that makes a sufficiently significant difference to stop global climate catastrophe.”
Perhaps. If so, then it’s all down to Barack. Yet who thinks he’s really got what it takes to put America behind its industrial rivals, at a time of tentative economic recovery, when his poll ratings are down and climate denialism in the USA is on the up? Not me. (Further reading on the Disapointment President).
And anyway, how can we be sure that the USA alone is big enough to be a game-changer? Let’s assume that it’s not: that if every other country in the world keeps polluting, then even if America went carbon-zero climate catastrophe would still happen. Back to sorites. If all nations act together, climate catastrophe is averted. But if only individual nations do, then all that happens is that they lose, and the planet burns anyway. Given the domestic pressures for leaders to deviate, as well as knowledge of other nations’ likelihood of deviating, and the knowledge that their specific country’s emissions don’t make the difference either way – what possible mechanism is there for achieving meaningful carbon reductions?
The only answer I can think of is world dictatorship, extracting compliance from each economy.
Ouch.
It’s the devil and the deep blue sea. Cooked alive or under a world-sized jackboot. Either way, I’m not paying attention to Copenhagen. I’m stocking tinned food for the ark that’ll take me to whichever godforsaken corner of the earth is still inhabitable when it all goes tits-up.
And I’ll be taking a shotgun. See you there. But stay away from my tins.
September 24, 2009
What is Brown up to with Trident?
It is very hard to think of good arguments for retaining the Trident nuclear deterrent, let alone replacing it at a cost into the upper-tens of billions. To spend that sort of money on weapons required for wars that will now never be fought, when essential public services are being lined-up for the chop, is ludicrous.
So what to make of Gordon Brown’s pledge to order only 3 (instead of 4) replacement submarines, cutting Trident spending by £3 billion?
Clearly, it’s not a move designed to lessen the need for public sector cuts. £3 billion is peanuts compared to the size of the slashing which we’re being told is going to be inflicted.
And it’s hardly a commitment to nuclear non-proliferation, either. Britain will still have an independent nuclear deterrent, just with one fewer submarine. So this isn’t a move from Brown to spread peace and harmony.
Nor is it designed to fight “the wars of the 21st Century”. Maybe the £3billion savings from scrapping one submarine will be channelled into providing proper armour and equipment for troops in Afghanistan, currently so woefully under-supplied with combat basics. Maybe. But even if that happens, what’s the point of nuclear weapons in a world where the hated, dangerous, perennially violent and merciless enemy (which we are constantly told is out there, and which our society uses as an existential reference point) is no longer the “evil empire” or Soviet Russia with its own batch of nukes, but disparate bands of religious fanatics against whom the use of nuclear weapons is a blatant impossibility? Why have any nuclear weapons in this world, either as a strategic imperative, or to fulfil the needs of a society in huge measure defined by reference to external enemies (be they real, imagined or exaggerated)?
Even more baffling, it’s not like there’s broad popular support for keeping Trident. According to the Left Foot Forward YouGov poll, only 27% of people want to replace Trident with an equally powerful deterrent, 40% say Britain should retain a minimum nuclear system, but it should be less powerful and cost less than replacing Trident, and 23% favour giving up nuclear weapons altogether. If Brown was politicking on this matter and trying to play to the crowds, it would seem highly ineffectual: the 27% who want to maintain trident won’t be pleased, and nor will the 23% who want to see nuclear weapons go altogether. As for the 40% who want a scaled-downd deterrent, well reducing the procurement by just one submarine and at tiny overall cost reduction isn’t likely to please them either.
So what are Brown and the Labour leadership playing at? It could just be incompetence, of course. It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve failed disastrously to read the public mood. But I have another theory, of which the bare bones are as follows.
Brown is walking a tightrope between deference to the Americans and attempting to retain Britain’s status as a “first tier power”. The unilateral declaration that Britain will offer a reduction in its nuclear deterrent is clearly in line with Obama’s efforts to reduce the American deterrent. But as The Guardian points out: “Critics of Brown will argue his move to reduce the deterrent is the minimum possible, given the international disarmament momentum.”
And those critics are right – but it’s because Brown is walking a tightrope. If Britain gives up too much of its independent nuclear deterrent, then one thing in particular will be threatened: it’s already ludicrous possession of a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.
The Council, which reflects now defunct power-balances from the immediate post-War era, affords Britain an international status that its military, economic, political and diplomatic stature can no longer justify. If Britain gives up her nukes, it will be beyond question that her permanent seat on the Security Council is untenable.
Now, those of us who happen to believe that this would be no bad thing – that not only is Britain a second-tier power (at best), but that we would all do better if that was acknowledged – might jump in to cry: so what excuse has Brown got then!? But there’s more to it than that.
Although a simple story can be told about Brown and the Labour leadership being egregious megalomaniacs, hell-bent on maintaining the illusion of Britain’s manifestly non-existent great power status as a boost to their own egos, such a story is inadequate. I do suspect a little something like that is going on (we’re talking about politicians, after all). But then again, Brown et al will have been on the receiving end of enough American, Chinese, Russian and German snubs by now to know that Britania’s star waned long ago.
More plausible is the following. Labour do not want to be remembered as the party that officially ushered-in Britain’s era as a second-rate power. For as long as we retain a permanent Security Council seat, and for that matter an independent nuclear deterrent, the illusion of greatness continues. That it’s a mere illusion is besides the point: the party that shatters that illusion will be vilified as the party that destroyed Britain’s greatness.
For while a combined majority of people may want Trident scrapped or scaled-down somewhat, this is a long way from a majority of people believing Britain is or should be a second rate power, or that if it is, this is no bad thing. In many ways, Britain has never come to terms with its post-Imperial decline. Part of the reason Thatcher’s rhetoric about “the Sick Man of Europe” was so effective was that it reminded people just how far “Great” Britain had fallen.
The Conservatives have long been adept at portraying Labour as the party which bankrupts and ruins Britain. If Brown ushered in an era in which our second-tier power status was officially confirmed – e.g. by ending the nuclear deterrent and losing the permanent seat – it would mark Labour forever. Just think of how it would be portrayed for decades to come by the right and its supplicant media, exploiting the angst of post-greatness and international marginalisation.
Over at Liberal Conspiracy, Dave Osler writes that “It is high time Labour got its head around the idea that Britain is no longer a superpower.” Maybe. But to what extent can it both do that, and then put the consequences into practice, in the context of a nation which has yet to accept this post-superpower status, and an opposition which would use it as a beating-stick for decades to come?
July 24, 2009
China: Neither Fish nor Fowl
I recently took part in “UK-China 400”, a programme organised by the British Council and the All China Youth Federation, a wing of the Chinese Communist Party. Whilst in China, the UK contingent was the subject of an extremely slick propaganda operation: the Party spared no expense in showing us the China they wanted us to see. Perhaps the most striking example was an official visit to the city development centre in the Haidian district of Beijing.
With the Chinese capital sprawling ever outwards, the authorities are permanently engaged in urban planning. In Haidian, a vast development project of residential, commercial and industrial zones is being masterminded. To be completed in just 5 years’ time and covering an area of several hundred square miles, what is being planned as a mere annex for Beijing would count as a fully-fledged city anywhere else in the world.
Our party was enthusiastically shown a huge scale-model of what the completed new district will look like. Science and industry parks were illuminated, alongside residential districts and a network of roads, highways and canals. But what caught my eye was the “affordable social housing”, to be offered on a “voluntary” basis to displaced farmers and migrant workers. Looking closely, I couldn’t help noticing that this affordable social housing consisted exclusively of enormous, concrete, multi-storey tower blocks of the sort the UK constructed in the 1960s, with disastrous results.
I asked the Chinese officials what measures were being taken to avoid the problems of crime, social deprivation and entrenched poverty the UK experiences with high-density social housing. As far as I could tell the question was translated accurately, as was the answer: “the people in the social housing will be able to use the same schools and leisure facilities as the other people, so the problems you had in the UK won’t be repeated here”.
The inadequacy of the reply was only exacerbated by what came next. The Chinese drove us to a semi-completed residential zone to see model apartments of what would soon be on sale. Our contingent gasped as we wandered around 4-bedroom luxury apartments, complete with marble bath-tubs and enormous American-style fridge freezers. These were flats being built “for the elite”, as the Chinese put it.
And they weren’t joking. With a price tag of RMB 3.8 million (£380,000), such apartments will be out of the reach of even top civil servants, who we were earlier told can hope to make RMB 10,000 (£1,000) a month at the peak of their careers. The Chinese were proudly showing us accommodation that only the very wealthiest business and political elites could afford – within minutes of declaring their intention to house their poorest in the kinds of social housing which have created endemic problems elsewhere.
Provision of social housing is of course a controversial issue in all countries. But this episode was instructive regarding China specifically. For given that we were being shown what the Communist Party wanted us to see, there seemed one obvious conclusion to draw: if China is communist, it is now so only in name.
China remains a one-party dictatorship, controlling the media and crushing dissent in established communist manner. And it has retained the communist mind-set towards development: vast projects are to be completed virtually over-night, regardless of the human or environmental costs (for example, 1000 year old Yancheng has been demolished so that it can be re-built in 5 years as a Chicago-style metropolis). Yet this is combined with a happy acceptance of vast social inequality; of luxury apartments built for minority elites, by workers without rights or representation, offered zero welfare protection and housed in giant concrete monstrosities. The proud and public display of such inequalities – and the urban planning which builds them into the very fabric of society – is simply incompatible with even a superficial commitment to communism.
In drawing such conclusions one must, of course, be careful. The exclusively state-controlled media pumps out incessant rhetoric about “harmony”, alongside boring Pravda-style statistics of national manufacturing output. Pictures of Chairman Mao are common (albeit many of them appearing on t-shirts bought by westerners). Yet this is merely an appearance of communism, as our official visit to the homes of the elite indicated.
Yet China isn’t truly capitalist either. The State’s finger in so many business pies – its retention of the control of the means of production, if you like a Marxist analysis – rules that out. (The best illustration of this was being told that despite a 25% fall in exports in Jiangsu province, manufacturing production would not decrease and jobs would not be shed. Why? Because Chinese industry will continue the state-directed over-production tried and tested in the 90’s and 00’s – regardless of global recession).
Ultimately, what is emerging in China is something altogether new. It is neither fish nor fowl – but it may nonetheless be the worst of both.
