left flank

With ‘friends’ like Western governments, the Arab Spring doesn’t need enemies

2012-02-01T07:00:00.000+11:00

Protesters in Tahrir unfurl the flag of the Syrian rebellion

This article first appeared on the ABC Drum website yesterday.

One of the abiding images of the Arab Spring has been anaerial view of Tahrir Square in Cairo, brimming with thousands and perhaps hundredsof thousands of protesters. This image has returned most spectacularly on thefirst anniversary of the 25 January uprising, with Tahrir not just full butoverflowing onto dozens of streets, boulevards and bridges, the biggestmobilisation yet. It is in such displays that the term “people power” takes onreal meaning, when the great mass of humanity takes an active role in makinghistory.

The Arab Spring has not just been a set of domesticstruggles for freedom, it has also profoundly reshaped regional and globalgeopolitics. The pictures from Tahrir bring to mind the formulation employed bythe New York Times, at the moment ofthe great demonstrations against the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, that protestershad become the second superpower of world politics.

If the wave of uprisings across the Middle East and NorthAfrica (MENA) region is about “the forcible entrance of the masses into therealm of their own destiny”, it has also provoked a reaction from those whoseinterests had been served by systems of control and repression in the region. Inthis, the governments of Western liberal democracies have played a particularlyinsidious role in encouraging, funding and arming the most brutal regimes onthe expectation that they could provide “stability” and “security” for Westerninterests, especially interests linked to the geopolitics of oil.

Despite this, much mainstream commentary has been dominatedby a naïve belief that Western governments will now “do the right thing” andsupport the Arab Awakening. In addition, a series of figures on the Left, like LebaneseMarxist GilbertAchcar, long-time critic of US foreign policy JuanCole, and my On Utøya collaborator GuyRundle, argued that the Left had a duty to support NATO intervention inLibya (or in Achcar’s case at least not oppose it). In this they ran aleft-wing version of the argument that Gaddafi was about unleash a massacre andthat calls for NATO involvement should be uncritically supported as an act ofsolidarity with the revolution. Even the usually anti-war Australian Greens werealmost as belligerent in their calls for military action in Libya asForeign Minister Kevin Rudd.

I want to argue that for all those inspired by Arab Spring,the last people we should look to help those movements are our home grownleaders who have spent so long supporting tyrannical regimes “over there”. Nomatter what cuddly phrases about “democracy” and “freedom” they insert in theirspeeches, when they increase their meddling in the Middle East it is inevitablyto limit, restrain and repress the legitimate aspirations of the region’s ordinarypeople.

The Arab uprisings have destabilised a region in which Westernpowers had nurtured relations with a host of “friendly dictators”. In responseto these setbacks, they have rushed to recalibrate strategies and tactics totry to regain the advantage, to reimpose networks of control. This, and nottheir woolly liberal democratic language, is the consistent thread that runsthrough their actions since February 2011.

To reassert their power “our” governments have turned to anumber of strategies with varying degrees of success, five of which I explorehere.

(1) Undermine or cooptopposition movements

When Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Rudd initiallyrefused to come out in clear support of Egyptian protesters’ demands, inparticular defending Hosni Mubarak’s continued rule, it was not simply a matterof being caught on the hop but because they had for so long relied on thedictator. As Tony Blair opinedat the time, to them Mubarak had “been immensely courageous and a force forgood”. Clinton madethe relationship crystal clear in 2009 when she said, “I really considerPresident and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family. So I hope to see himoften here in Egypt and in the United States.” Vice-President Joe Biden even hadthe temerity to claim — even as teargascanisters made in the USA were being used against Egyptian protesters— that Mubarak was“not a dictator” and shouldn’t step down.

Such a strategy soon became untenable as Mubarak lookedcertain to go, but Western leaders and their mouthpieces in the media havecontinued to send thinly veiled messages that opposition movements represent athreat to stability and the development of Western-style market liberalism.Thus, after February we were plied with the line that continued military rulewas still needed in Egypt because of the Islamist “threat”. Then, whenelections produced landslide wins for Islamist parties, and anti-militaryprotests grew larger and bolder, the focus shifted onto various liberal forcesand even dealingwith the Muslim Brotherhood as potential stabilisers against more radicalelements, especially once Islamist leaders showedtheir willingness to continue neoliberal policies favoured by Westerninterests.

(2) Green lightrepression

For all the talk of how the United States was supportingmovements for change by intervening in Libya, in nearby Bahrain where it basespart of the Fifth Fleet it was doing quite the opposite. Obama gave SaudiArabia the green light to invade Bahrain to help the latter regime crush thepro-democracy movement. Senior US sources later revealedthis had been in exchange for the Saudis engineering Arab League support for a“no-fly zone” in Libya. Bahrain remains a firm Western ally, with USarms sales continuing despite “concerns” about the regime’s actions. The USalso moretacitly backed the Yemeni regime as it carried out repression, and then continuedto work with dictator Saleh to stall democratisation.

(3) Talk “reform”while defending dictatorships

Western governments have ramped up verbal encouragement of“reform” and “moves to democratisation” in the region. Yet except for Libya,and now perhaps Syria, that has meant refusing to call for regimes to go untilno other result is possible. The case of Saudi Arabia is most egregious — anincredibly repressive monarchy based on untold oil riches but denying the mostbasic of democratic rights to its native population, let alone the temporaryworkers it super-exploits. Despite the emergence of protests against the Saudiregime, the main Western intervention in its affairs in the last year has beenBritish PM David Cameron’s recent trip to sell itmore arms (asdoes the United States), some of which are used to quell internal unrestand assist in military operations against civilian populations in other states.Cameron waxed lyrical about the dictatorship during his trip:

Saudi Arabia is our largesttrading partner in the Middle East... but it also has unique influence in theregion and in the Islamic world. … People who think we shouldn't be friends with — or our primeminister shouldn't be visiting — a country that is such an important ally andsuch an important force in the world would be advocating a head-in-the-sandpolicy, and that is not in our national interest.

Indeed this is part of a general strategy to bolster thestrength of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which is made up of six oil-richdictatorships (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, UAE and Qatar) and whichhas become thehub of oil-centred capitalist development across the region. It is theGCC’s ties to the West and weight within the Arab League that has helpedWestern leaders to get the League to fall into line, especially as allies likeEgypt become less reliable. There are also more direct economic advantages thatrich nations are trying to secure. In Tunisia, Egypt and Libya — but also othercountries across the region — organisations like the IMF,World Bank and European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (which droveneoliberal shock therapy in Eastern Europe) are demanding harsher marketreforms in exchange for loans, aid and investment.

Obama, Sarkozy & Cameron — hijacking the struggle for liberation

(4) Hijack rebellions

As mentioned above, the Arab League was vital to providing afig leaf of legitimacy to the NATO intervention in Libya. Despite its rapprochementwith the West in the 2000s, the Gaddafi regime’s crisis provided anopportunity for Western military action not afforded by other Arab Spring events.Gaddafi could still be portrayed as a recent enemy of Western interests — a “maddog” who supported terrorism — at the same time as a relatively immature and weakrevolutionary movement could be convinced to accept Western help when itcouldn’t immediately defeat the dictator. Utilising the rhetoric of“humanitarian intervention” and “responsibility to protect”, NATO ignored theletter of UN Resolution 1973 in order to drive regime change.

As historian and former International Crisis Group directorHugh Roberts pointed out in his detailedaccount of the machinations behind the war, NATO powers repeatedly refusedGaddafi’s offers for immediate ceasefire by imposing impossible conditions onhim. This not only made war inevitable, it also prolonged the conflict so thatperhaps 30,000 were killed and another 50,000 injured in order to avert an allegedly impending massacre thatGaddafi had no serious chance of carrying out. For all the admonitions from theWhite House that Arab protesters must remain non-violent and show restraint,the bloody mess in Libya and the celebrationof Gaddafi’s death simply revealed how selective the West is about whenviolence and chaos are acceptable — that is, when they fit within its ownstrategic plans. NATO involvement also tipped the balance of forces within therevolution towards former Gaddafi stalwarts and other reactionaries. The newruling clique has shown its eagerness to wooWestern big business but has fallen foul of its erstwhile supportersbecause of its lackof transparency, moves to limit democratic rights, and its ties to Gaddafi’sold regime, not to mention its continuingtorture of prisoners.

The Syrian democracy movement, meanwhile, has beenincredibly tenacious despite horrific repression by Bashar Al-Assad’s securityforces, which has left an estimated 5,500 people dead. But there are signs thatits inability to topple the dictator are leading some factions — inparticular the Syrian National Council — to seek foreign intervention. TheSNC clearly intends to woo the West with promises of a quick regime changewhile keeping the murderous state machine intact. As one of itsspokepeople argues, “We want to distinguish between the regime and thestate in Syria. There will not be chaos like in Libya. We still have powerfulmilitary institutions that we want to preserve.”

(5) Ramp up thethreat of war

Meanwhile Israel has championed the cause of militarystrikes against Al-Assad’s allies in Tehran, allegedly to wipe out a nascent Iraniannuclear weapons program. It has become apparent that Israeli forces aremurdering Iranian nuclear scientists in what should properly be calledacts of terrorism. In a quaint bit of double-speak, the Israeli DefenceMinister said that militarystrikes on Iran were “very far off” but wouldn’t say whether this meantweeks or months!

Yet there is nothing quite like the threat of a full-blownmilitary crisis to help reassert control in the region. The US has stepped updiplomatic and military manoeuvres against Iran, despite Israeli and Westernintelligence assessments indicating the country is nowherenear even starting a nuclear weapons program. Most commentators seemoblivious to the irony that the campaign to stop such a program is being run bya series of countries armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons: The US, Israel,the UK and France among them. Further, AsiaTimes reports:

[T]he US has now dropped itsdemand that countries such as Jordan and the United Arab Emirates agree not toenrich uranium as part of their growing nuclear relations with the US.Simultaneously, the US and Europe continue to insist that Iran should divestitself of this right, thus giving a new edge to double standards.

Behind talk of helping protesters in Syria and stopping an“irrational” regime in Tehran, the real reason for this bellicosity is that theWest and its Israeli and GCC allies see Iran as standing in the way of their strategicdominance over the whole region. It is the same logic that means Obama’s wordsabout decreasing US involvement in Afghanistan maskan open-ended and escalating war.

What sort ofsolidarity?

To understand the actions of Western powers in response tothe Arab revolutions it is necessary to penetrate beneath the rhetoric ofpoliticians and mainstream pundits. A better indication comes from the recentlyreleased Pentagon rethinking of US power, which sees as an aim the creation ofan unfettered right to act against any strategic incursion by rivals. Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership:Priorities for 21st Century Defense singles out China and Iran, andominously recalls Bush-era notions of “full spectrum dominance” when it arguesthat the “United States must maintain its ability to project power in areas inwhich our access and freedom to operate are challenged”.

After a year of revolts two complex processes are unwindingin competition with each other. On the one hand, in several countriesopposition movements have either won tremendous gains or held their ground in theface of brutal repression that has been covertly or openly supported by “our”governments. This process is most highly developed in Egypt where demands forpolitical freedom have been radicalised by the intransigence of the militaryregime, and have also started to connect with socioeconomic demands made by an increasingly organised and militantindependent workers’ movement. The latter development has been in largepart driven by worseningeconomic conditions, for which the military rulers have no solution.

On the other hand, local rulers and their backers in Westernpower structures have regained some of the advantage through a mixture ofcarrot and stick, with the emphasis firmly on the latter. Part of that approachhas been the promulgation of the idea that the West is part of the solution,when in fact their actions have been to head off more fundamental social andpolitical change. The instability has led to a stepping up of repression inseveral countries and growing talk of further military adventures.

In these circumstance calls by progressives here for furtherWestern intervention are disastrous for the building of real solidarity. AsLibya demonstrated, such intervention will only come on terms set by richnations seeking to shore up their interests. One mistake that some on the Lefthave made is to assume that because US power has been weakened by the Arabrevolts, it is more easily used to advance worthwhile ends. This not onlyvastly overstates US weakness, it creates the impression that the secondsuperpower on the streets of the Arab world cannot rely on its own power todrive social change; that it needs to mortgage its fortunes to powerful patronswhose designs are anything but beneficent.

This is not to say that anyone should feel the slightestsympathy for dictators like Gaddafi and Al-Assad. Nor should the presence ofpro-Western elements in opposition movements lead to doubts about thegenuineness of popular struggles when the regimes happen to also be inWestern crosshairs.

Surely the best support wecan give people fighting tyrannies is the promise that we will act here to tryto stop our rulers from twisting events to their own advantage. The diabolicalproblem of Middle East politics has never been a shortage of Westernintervention — Western governments have been constantly interfering forwell over a century. But that intervention has always been primarily in theirinterests, and never on the side of genuine freedom and justice. That’s thekind of intervention we should be demanding ends, once and for all, so thatArab people can decide their own destinie

From Global Justice to Occupy Everywhere

2012-01-30T21:40:00.002+11:00

Overland Journal has produced a special online edition, discussing the Occupy movement. Elizabeth has an article on the antecedents to Occupy in the Global Justice Movement andthe Zapatista uprising.

Invasion Day

2012-01-26T12:06:00.000+11:00

A number of myths have shaped Australia’s national identityin profound ways. The possibility of a vast inland sea saw many early settlers searchthe interior of the country unfruitfully, often meeting an untimely death. The kernelof this myth was a 1798 report to the Colonial Office by First Fleet botanistJoseph Banks:

It is impossible to conceive that such a largebody of land, as large as all Europe, does not produce vast rivers,capable of being navigated into the heart of the interior, or, if properlyinvestigated, that such a country, situate in a most fruitful climate, thatshould not produce some native raw material, of importance to a manufacturingcountry as England is.

Subsequent searches lasted until the mid 1800s, and informedthe modern myth of a nation of noble explorers attempting to cross the BlueMountains. Yet as Banks makes clear, it was the economic benefit of newmaterials for an emergent industrial Britain that was primary in his thoughts.

The myth of terranullius is the weightiest of all the myths. Australia was not a vacant land,but a homeland of others requiring invasion and conquest. This lie continuestoday despite the 1992 High Court judgement that an unbroken line of ‘ownership’, which predated 1788, has been proven.

Australia, we are still told, ‘was born peacefully, without revolution or civil war’ (Australian War Memorial website). Yet as the courseof Australia’s economic development shows, the subjugation of the indigenouspopulation was a necessary pre-requisite to the introduction of widespread woolproduction and farming.

Today is a day to recall the profound and deleterious impact of invasion on the many Aboriginal communities that were here first. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.

For the love of women's liberation

2012-01-25T13:04:00.000+11:00

Here is a link to my article on feminism, published yesterday at the ABC's The Drum website.

Chris Berg’s libertarian dreaming. Or, when ‘liberty’ for the few means tyranny for the many

2012-01-16T23:28:00.001+11:00

General Augusto Pinochet — champion of liberty

Do you remember 1989? That was the year that a series ofEast European Communist regimes fell in the context of a wave of popularprotest. It was a tremendously inspiring time, a real indication that ordinarypeople could be the subjects, rather than objects, of history.

But the collapse of Communism also presaged a new era ofcapitalist triumphalism, perhaps infamously summarised in Francis Fukuyama’sassertion that we were witnessing “the end of history” — the victory ofliberal democratic capitalism as the highest possible achievement of humansocial organisation. The rapid shift of the Eastern bloc to various kinds ofdemocratic political systems combined with harsh neoliberal restructuring (or,as it was called at the time, “shock therapy”) seemed to provide materialevidence that the outcome of struggles against tyranny and dictatorship couldonly end in market democracy at best. Even countries like China, despiteofficially going under the name “socialist” have rapidly moved towards marketcapitalism.

Yet something strange has been happening lately, exemplifiedby ChrisBerg’s latest op-ed — on North Korea — in the Fairfax papers on Sunday: Thecapitalist triumphalists have become very concerned that people, especiallythose on the Left, might think there is something good about Communism. Youknow, that thing that died in 1989-91. Berg writes, in opposition to what hesees as a trend to downplaying the North Korean regime’s crimes, that, “Theromanticisation of communism survives.” He argues:

Sure, no 20th-centurydictatorship has been without its defenders. Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, PolPot’s Cambodia, Castro’s Cuba, Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam: they've all been praisedby Western socialists looking for a model of the good society.

Recently he wrote what may be considered a companion pieceto the North Korea article, a barely coherent accountof the “socialist calculation debate” for The Drum, which also concludedwith a denunciation of Stalinism.

Berg is from a right-wing libertarian think-tank, theInstitute of Public Affairs. His libertarian “anti-statism” even leads him to some positions withwhich the Left can agree (free movement of people across borders, opposition tocensorship, etc).

Distracting from capitalism’shorrors

So if capitalism won, why is Berg worried about the“romanticisation of communism”? It is not because there has been a suddenupsurge of pro North Korean sentiment in the wider community. We have not seenthousands weeping on the streets over the death of Kim Jong-Il. Neither hasthere been a revival of Stalinist organising on the radical Left. The Occupymovement, for example, has been mercifully free of nostalgia for the Communistbloc. Yes, there have been a few fringe Western Stalinist tendencies trying todefend the North Korean dictatorship, but they have hardly managed to gain massappeal for their views (see herefor an excellent takedown from the US)*.

The real problem, that one that Berg and like-mindedideologues scuttle to avoid at every turn, is that most of the richestcapitalist countries have fallen into the system’s biggest crisis since theGreat Depression. More than three years on from the GFC, there is not only nosign of a resolution, the Eurozone appears to be on the brink of a deeprecession and possible break-up. Many millions of people have lost their jobsand poverty has skyrocketed, including in the country that has been the centreof the free market project, the United States. Inequality has grown worse And,despite the bleatings of defenders of capitalism that ordinary people were“living beyond their means” thanks to bloated welfare states, the main reasonfor the sudden emergence of sovereign debt crises has been a combination ofgovernment bailouts of private companies (most notoriously banks) and decreasedtaxation receipts because of private sector recession.

What Berg and co are really warning is that, no matter howbad the crisis is, even the thought of collective alternatives would be much,much worse. This is the “tyranny” he is really railing against, not some imaginarythreat of popular pressure for the introduction of Stalinist dictatorship.Unlike Margaret Thatcher, who confidently asserted that “there is noalternative” to the neoliberal revolution she led, Berg more defensivelyimplies that there is an alternative but we dare not go down that road or we’llall end up enslaved.

There are many things to say about right-wing pro-marketlibertarians denouncing “tyranny”. But the one I want to focus on here is theirnotion of tyranny as a phenomenon tied up with states that stands opposed tothe free flow of market exchange that provides true liberty. Asliz_beths has previously pointed out at Left Flank, the “freedom” implied bycapitalism is one that rests on property rights that conveniently ignore thedeep injustices that underlie apparently fair exchange in the marketplace. Thesecret birthplace of inequality under capitalism doesn’t lie in unequalexchange but in the extraction of unpaid labour from workers at the point ofproduction; what Marx called “exploitation”.

State and capital

But the issue I want to concentrate on is the relationshipbetween markets and states. For Berg, the greatest problem with states is thatthey stand in the way of relatively unfettered individual rights, here seenthrough the lens of private individuals being able to engage unhindered inexchange of commodities. Libertarians seem to fall into two camps about suchindividual rights; either they believe that such exchange relations representthe fulfilment of humanity’s essential nature or, like Hayek, they see them asthe highest possible form of society even if they believe they are not naturaland so must be won or imposed.

Such views utterly mystify how markets — the matrices ofsocial relationships in which such generalised exchange relations are possible— are created, recreated and enforced. As Canadian historian Henry Hellerpowerfully argues in his recent book, The Birth ofCapitalism, the “spontaneous” development of capitalist socialrelations within the pre-capitalist feudal mode of production could onlyproceed so far without finding itself butting up against the entrenched,state-directed structures of feudalism (or its late “absolutist” variation). Ittook bourgeois revolutions in countries like Holland, England and France totake state power and restructure society to maximise the potential forcapitalist development based on exploitation of workers and competitiveaccumulation. Whereas under feudalism and earlier class societies exchange wasrelatively peripheral to economic activity (agricultural production was mainlyfor peasant subsistence and the tribute demanded by the feudal lords and/or the state machine), under capitalism few things are made without the explicit aimof being exchanged in the marketplace. So, for example, car workers haveto buy cars with wages rather than simply take them home from the factory wherethey built them. Those who do the work are alienated from the right to directlybenefit from the fruits of their labour.

Enforcement of capitalist relations is not only not“spontaneous”, it has also rarely been benign. Marx famously described (Capital Volume One, Part VIII) the brutalperiod of “primitive accumulation” of capital in England as involving the forcible,state-driven expulsion of people from the land on which they lived andsubsisted, thus providing not just newly acquired land for privatecapitalist use but a workforce free from means of production with which tosubsist and therefore dependent on employment to survive. This is the nuts andbolts of how a capitalist labour market is created, by coercing the majority ofpeople to lose their means of subsistence and have their productive capacitiessubordinated to the needs of capital. Such a process has been repeated in Chinain recent decades through astate policy of immiserating the rural workforce to help “encourage” themto enter horrific sweatshop conditions in the booming industrial zones.

The dictatorship ofthe bourgeoisie

Direct state violence is not just a thing of the distant past,either. It has happened repeatedly in order to enforce the individual rights ofthose who control capital — the type of property that matters most incementing wealth, power and influence. Milton Friedman took theline that Pinochet’s bloody coup against the Allende government in Chile in 1973,and subsequent repressive rule, did wonders for economic freedom in thatcountry. This is how heendorsed it in 2000:

It was important on the politicalside, not so much on the economic side. Here was the first case in which youhad a movement toward communism that was replaced by a movement toward freemarkets. See, the really extraordinary thing about the Chilean case was that amilitary government followed the opposite of military policies. The military isdistinguished from the ordinary economy by the fact that it’s a top-downorganization. The general tells the colonel, the colonel tells the captain, andso on down, whereas a market is a bottom-up organization. The customer goesinto the store and tells the retailer what he wants; the retailer sends it backup the line to the manufacturer and so on. So the basic organizationalprinciples in the military are almost the opposite of the basic organizationalprinciples of a free market and a free society. And the really remarkable thingabout Chile is that the military adopted the free-market arrangements insteadof the military arrangements.

It is true that Friedman didon occasion criticise Pinochet’s regime, but it is hard to see his argumentas being anything other than a justification of centralised political tyrannyin the service of “decentralised” market liberty.

Austrian market libertarian Friedrich von Hayek was evenclearer about the need for state coercion to create his preferred kind ofliberty:

Well, I would say that, aslong-term institutions, I am totally against dictatorships. But a dictatorshipmay be a necessary system for a transitional period. At times it is necessaryfor a country to have, for a time, some form or other of dictatorial power. Asyou will understand, it is possible for a dictator to govern in a liberal way.And it is also possible for a democracy to govern with a total lack ofliberalism. Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic governmentlacking liberalism. My personal impression — and this is valid for SouthAmerica — is that in Chile, for example, we will witness a transition from adictatorial government to a liberal government. And during this transition itmay be necessary to maintain certain dictatorial powers, not as somethingpermanent, but as a temporary arrangement.

Then there’s Egypt, which Berg discussed after the uprisingthat overthrew Mubarak last year. While criticising Mubarak’s restriction ofpolitical freedoms, he praised the regime for its neoliberal restructuringefforts, which by his account created economic opportunities that then led toincreasing aspirations for democracy. Yet Berg’s economic case was paper-thin, restingon a drop in unemployment from 2003 to 2011 while ignoring the overall rise inunemployment since 1990 when neoliberal reforms really got under way, as wellas the spiralling inflation, growing inequality, poverty and extremeconcentration of wealth at the top of society that developedunder Mubarak. In the same article he points to even greater “economic freedoms”in Bahrain, where a democracy movement was soon to be brutally crushed by thestate with the help of Saudi Arabia and with the tacit approval of the United States. Strangely I have been unable to find Berg’s critique of this particularform of market-supporting tyranny. But hewas quick to warn that the Arab Spring must stick to the “liberal” path orrisk squandering economic opportunities.

Similarly, he has little to say about the plethora of dictatorshipsin Africa that have studiouslypursued neoliberal policies under the eye of the World Bank and IMF only todeliver economic stagnation and greater suffering for their people (whileenriching a tiny elite).

Berg — like most right-wing libertarians — implies that the stateis some kind of parasitic or obstructive force in relation to the pure world ofmarket relations he fantasises about. Yet capitalist markets have alwaysrequired extra-economic coercion to work, precisely because they systematically benefit a tinyminority — capitalists. If there were no states then individual capitalistswould need to rely on other (private) forms of repressive machinery to maintaintheir advantageous social position, wealth and power — their right toexploit and accumulate capital. But nation states provide a number ofadvantages to the capitalist class, not least of which is their apparent autonomy from class relations.The state appears to stand for the “general interest” of society when in factit operates in the interests of the dominant class in that society. Andtherefore it is essential to creating and perpetuating the social relationsfrom which that class gains its riches and power.

It is little wonder that Berg’s employers are fundedby rapacious capitalists — like those in the mining industry— who have shown little compunction in running to the state for subsidies orto squash mild increases in taxation. We should not be fooled that thesecompanies’ support for ideologues who decry state interference in their rightsare really about a general opposition to the meddling of governments in privateactivities. Rather, they are big fans of state action, just as long as it is ontheir behalf.

The secret core of the libertarian argument is that debatesover the scope and nature of state action are always predicated on there beinga coercive state apparatus systematically operating for that very capitalist“liberty” more appropriately called the “freedom to exploit the many by thevery few”. By any means necessary.

* This is not the place to discuss the nature of the Stalinistcountries as bureaucraticstate capitalisms in detail. For those who are interested, the applicationof this view to North Korean state capitalism is well covered by South KoreanMarxists here, here and here. For an analysis of theimplications of Kim Il-Sung’s death from the same perspective see this.

NOTE: This post has been edited to omit a brief reference to Berg’s theoretical influences, which it appears I may have misremembered from a Twitter exchange last July. My apologies for that oversight.

New revolutionary rehearsals. Part two: From democratic to social revolution

2012-01-10T18:18:00.002+11:00

Bolivia's water wars

SPECIALGUEST POST BY COLIN BARKER

In thelast post we published the first half of Colin Barker’s new introduction tothe South Korean edition of RevolutionaryRehearsals, looking at the trend towards ‘velvet revolutions’ or‘negotiated transitions’ in the neoliberal era. In the second half he looks athow the contradictions of the neoliberal era have not only spawned newresistance but opened up the possibility of fundamental social transformation.

The past 24 years have thus provided manymore materials on ‘revolutionary rehearsals’. And the coming years will surelyprovide many more. The world is still reeling from the largest global crisissince the Second World War, whose after-shocks are being felt in both theheartlands and the peripheries of world imperialism. Everywhere, national andtrans-national governmental institutions are demanding that working people mustpay for the banking crisis with cuts in real wages, welfare services andpensions — while those responsible for the crisis are walking away with largersalaries and bonuses. Transnational bodies like the IMF, the World Bank and theWTO, which lock national governments into their neo-liberal policy embrace, donot even pretend to be responsive to popular movements and demands.

There is thus every reason to suppose thatmass popular movements will again — and in much less than the nextquarter-century! — pose directly the possibilityof a socialist transformation of society. Possibility is not, however,inevitability. Reflection on previous experience suggests some of theconditions of success.

What marks the beginnings of arevolutionary era is the entry of large masses of the oppressed and exploitedinto active engagement with political life. The opening of mass struggles ‘frombelow’ signals the breakdown of political ‘normality’, a condition nicelydescribed by American historian, Lawrence Goodwyn as one where 'A relativelysmall number of citizens possessing high sanction move about in anauthoritative manner and a much larger number of people without such sanctionmove about more softly.' [1] Normality is commonly preserved by a mixture offear and disbelief in the possibility of significant change. Its breakdown ismarked by a release of popular energy and imagination.

The question is then, what form does thistake? How are popular aspirations formulated and expressed? Is the olddistinction between ‘political’ and ‘economic’ demands maintained, or do theybegin to dissolve — as famously analyzed in Rosa Luxemburg’s account of massstrikes? [2] Capitalism’s supporters always hope to maintain this separation:recently the Financial Times, theleading British capitalist newspaper, summarized its concerns about the ongoingrevolutionary situation in Egypt by saying, ‘The economy itself must bedepoliticized’. [3] That ‘depoliticization’ of economic life was what the capitalistclass loved about the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe. Socialists take theopposing view, asking whether popular practical hopes are invested only in achange of government, or alsoencompass demands to do with, for example, wages and prices, workingconditions, democracy in trade unions, and managerial power in workplaces. Iseconomic as well as political corruption challenged from below? Are thereprocesses of ‘saneamento’ (the Portuguese term from 1974), of ‘cleaning out’those whose power depended on their connections with the old regime? Theexpansion of struggles focused on ‘economic’ questions is a vital part of everypopular upsurge with the potential to change the very bases of social life.

What’s involved is not just a matter ofweakening and undermining old patterns, but of beginning to create and spreadnew kinds of relationships and institutions, in all areas of social life. Whatkind of new regime is possible? If no new regime is more democratic than themovement that creates it, we need to ask whether those engaged in revolutionaryupsurge are building new kinds of democratic organizations, not just in theobviously ‘political’ sphere but in neighbourhoods and workplaces, in theorganization of ‘public order’ and justice, and in the institutions of thepopular movement themselves, in unions and parties, in people’s assemblies andworkers’ and peasants’ councils. Is the generaldemand for democracy and mass participation in every sphere of social lifeemerging, and being theorized and broadcast across the insurgent movement?

A mass movement from below can generate theconditions for this to occur, as nothing else can. For in such a movement,popular learning and development speed up enormously, once the old barriers offatalism and fear begin to dissolve and those who ‘moved about more softly’start to feel their accumulating strength — and to mock and pull down theformerly powerful. The idea that the whole of society can indeed be remade onnew foundations takes on a suddenly realistic hue. Issues that once were thedebating topics of tiny minorities can become practical questions for millions:what kind of economy do we actually want, are working people capable of runningsociety themselves?

It is in relation to just such matters thatwe can measure the deepening of popular revolutions. A merely ‘political’revolution that overthrows an old government can be accomplished by adetermined minority. One estimate is that around twenty per cent of thepopulation of Egypt was actively involved in the overthrow of Mubarak — abrilliant popular achievement, but still by a minority. A socialist revolutionary process, however, will necessarily involvea far larger proportion, for it must reach far deeper into all the forms andaspects of everyday life. To the degree that working people do begin to managetheir own productive and organized life activities under their own steam,developing democratic means of decision-making, to that degree also theirconfidence in their own cooperative powers can develop. Their own individualand social transformative growth becomes both a means and an end. Theimportance of such ‘cultural’ and ‘psychological’ development can hardly beover-estimated.

Successive approximations

Revolutionary movements make it possible toset aside old assumptions and prejudices, whether about religious, ethnic andnational antagonisms, or gender superiority and difference. However, there isnothing automatic about such advances: they have to be fought for openly, andthe proponents of old divisive ways pushed back in favour of new, enlargedideas of solidarity. Popular movements do not only contest power with the oldrulers, they involve deep and contentious debate about their own forms, theirown procedures, their own meaning and purpose. They develop, for good or forill, through processes of mass learning, by debating, testing and absorbing thelessons of different engagements with the old forces and forms of authority,through defeats and advances, dramatic turning points and reversals. LeonTrotsky described this experimental method of discovery and learning as oneinvolving ‘successive approximations’ by mass movements, a method involvinggreat leaps of understanding and imagination as well as collapses of mutualtrust and fierce internal arguments.

To the extent that, in their development ofnew forms of organization, and their challenges to old forms of authority,movements burrow away at the institutional and cultural supports of capitalistpower, a revolutionary period is marked by a peculiar form of contestedgovernment, sometimes termed ‘dual power’ or ‘multiple sovereignty’. The formerruling classes, and their very principles of power, are severely weakened, butthey have not yet been decisively replaced. The rising power of the movement ofworking people has not yet gained full power and confidence in itself. It is asituation of huge instability, but also one, in Trotsky’s phrase, of greatpolitical ‘flabbiness’. The question of the moment becomes ever more stark:will the popular mass movement march forward to take power for itself, throughits own new democratic institutions, or will sections of the old ruling classexploit its uncertainties, divert its energies, and find ways to demobilize themovement and recover its old power in some new form?

In this volume’s chapters on Chile andPoland, that ruling class recovery took form as military dictatorship, a particularly brutal form of capitalistrule. Barely less brutal was the Islamist dictatorship in Iran, erected on thedefeat of left and secularist forces in the 1979 revolution. But the chapter onPortugal shows that ruling classes have other possibilities, not least arecourse to the politics of socialdemocracy. In place of the direct contest of mass movements with capitaland the state, let’s have an election!In just this way, the five years of revolutionary contestation in Bolivia fromthe great victory of the Cochabamba ‘water wars’ of 2000 ended with theelection of the left government of Evo Morales in 2005. Popular energies weredisplaced onto the electoral path. In one sense, the Morales electionregistered a huge victory for the people of Bolivia — but also a failure toresolve the crisis of Bolivian society. The capitalist class’s property andpower remained intact, poverty for the mass of Bolivians continued. [4]

In conditions of ‘dual power’, the role ofrevolutionary Marxist parties takes on its maximum significance. Suchconditions produce opportunities, not only for socialist advance, but also forreformist politicians to seek to ride to office on the wave of populardiscontent and mobilization. For theirproject to succeed, it is vital that the popular movement de-mobilize itsforces and lower its aspirations, to focus instead on the parliamentary arena.In such circumstances, revolutionary socialists’ active involvement in themovement becomes vital, for they can develop an alternative pole of argumentand agitation, stressing the need to maintain and further develop themovement’s independent activity and organizations — for it is in these, and notin parliament, that the possibility of a real social transformation resides.

In a world locked in crisis, where theflames of revolt are once more rising, these matters will again be posed aspractical questions. The re-publication of this volume seems timely.

TheEnglish language version of RevolutionaryRehearsals is currently in print via Haymarket Books here. The South Korean version is at the publisher’s website here. The original was published by Bookmarks in the UK. A website of Colin’s writing can be found here.

[1]Lawrence Goodwyn, Breakingthe Barrier. The Rise of Solidarity in Poland, New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1991, p xxi

[2] Rosa Luxemburg, The MassStrike, The Political Party and the Trade Union, London: Bookmarks, 1986

[3] ‘The economics of the Arab spring’, Financial Times, 24 April 2011

[4] JefferyWebber has chronicled the Bolivian experience in a three-part article in Historical Materialism (vol 16.2-4,2008) and in his book From Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia: ClassStruggle, Indigenous Liberation, and the Politics of Evo Morales (Chicago: Haymarket, 2011)

New revolutionary rehearsals. Part one: The limits of neoliberal ‘democratisation’

2012-01-07T12:57:00.000+11:00

Vaclav Havel — faceof the ‘velvet revolutions’

SPECIALGUEST POST BY COLIN BARKER

Forthose of us drawn to Marxist politics in the aftermath of the fall of theBerlin Wall, the collection of essays edited by Colin Barker called Revolutionary Rehearsals was a brilliantriposte to ideas that history had ended with the victory of liberal capitalismand that “there is no alternative”. Here was a book that showed thepossibilities and limitations of a series of revolutionary moments in theperiod from May 68 in France to the crushing of the Solidarność movement in Poland in 1981. In May last year Colinwrote a new introduction to the South Korean edition, bringing the book’sarguments up the present. We are reproducing it here in two parts with hispermission.

TheEnglish language version of RevolutionaryRehearsals is currently in print via Haymarket Books here. TheSouth Korean version should be for sale here when it isreleased. The original was published in the UK by Bookmarks.A website of Colin’s writing can be found here.

PART TWO CAN BE READ HERE.

It is almost a quarter of a century since Revolutionary Rehearsals was firstpublished in 1987. The book focused on a number of important cases, over theprevious twenty years, in which a very particular possibility seemed to openup: namely, that mass workers’ movements might challenge for state power. Theexploration of that possibility guided the selection of chapters.

The period since 1987 has been, in onesense, extraordinary in the sheer number of revolutions that have occurred. Ifone thing seems certain, it is that revolution is alive and well across theglobe, and is indeed a very ‘normal’ part of the political process in themodern capitalist world.

There has been a whole series of vitallyimportant and dramatic transformations in political regimes. A wave of ‘democratization’has swept away a variety of political dictatorships. If the wave perhaps beganin Greece, Portugal and Spain in the 1970s, in the 1980s it brought downdictatorships across Latin America, in the Philippines and South Korea,followed by the ‘communist’ (actually state-capitalist) regimes of EasternEurope. The 1990s witnessed the end of the Apartheid regime of South Africa andthe fall of Suharto’s dictatorship in Indonesia, along with moves towardsdemocracy in numbers of countries in sub-Saharan Africa, a trend that continuedinto the new millennium. At the time of writing, in the spring of 2011, a newwave of revolutionary struggles is challenging many autocratic regimes acrossNorth Africa and the Middle East.

There is a paradox, however, On the onehand, ‘liberal democracy’ has extended its sway across the world, and itsexpansion has been aided by extensive popular protests, including strike wavesand mass demonstrations, on a previously unimagined scale. Yet, at the sametime, social inequality has been growing in rich and poor countries alike, as ‘neo-liberalism’has strengthened its grip on national and international economic policy-making.Neo-liberalism is a policy whose intentions and effects are to shift thebalance of power and wealth away from working people and towards the capitalistclass. Indeed, the past few decades have seen the rich massively increasingtheir share of income and wealth, and not only in good times.

When the capitalist banking system ran intocrisis, the major capitalist states raised trillionsof dollars to save the banks — and went on to insist that the bill for thesubsequent deficits must be paid by working people, and that public servicesshould continue to be privatized, i.e. converted into new sources of profit forthe capitalist class.

All of this is now widely understood acrosslarge parts of the working classes of the world. But it has taken time andbitter experience for that to be learned, and the learning has shaped the formof revolutions.

After the Polish military smashed theworkers’ movement, Solidarity, in December 1981, the continuing undergroundopposition to the regime shifted its ideological ground. In the autumn of 1981,Solidarity’s first Congress had called for a ‘self-governing republic’ thatwould extend democracy into the workplace and the economy. But now, after theirdefeat, the movement’s leaders and advisers began to look to ‘the market’ asthe solution to the ills of their economy and society. Illusions in westerncapitalism spread. Instead of looking to the organized power of working peopleto re-make society, they came to identify freedom with the free market. Butthey were not the only ones to be so convinced: the increasing paralysis of thestate-capitalist economy also persuaded wide layers among the Polish rulingclass that there was no alternative to the market and private property. Thefruits of this parallel development were harvested in the spring of 1989, whenSolidarity’s leaders sat down at a ‘Round Table’ with representatives of theregime and came to an agreement for a ‘negotiated transition’ in Poland: toparliamentary democracy, and the re-installation of private capitalism. [1] Asin neighbouring Hungary, the transition from one regime to another wasaccomplished with little by way of strikes and demonstrations. Elsewhere inEastern Europe — notably in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania — it tookpopular uprisings and mass demonstrations to dislodge the old regimes. Largenumbers of workers participated, but there was little sign of the developmentof new popular institutions from below, and only sporadic challenges tomanagerial power in workplaces. After 1989, the privatization of profitableresources proceeded apace, and unemployment and inequality grew.

In South Africa, mass strikes and townshipprotests finally compelled the Apartheid regime to the negotiating table. Theoutcome was the profoundly popular election of an ANC government in 1994.However, within two years, the ANC leadership followed advice from the IMF andthe World Bank, abandoning its previous economic policies in favour of aneo-liberal strategy. Working people lost out in a big way. South Africaremains near the top of the list of the world’s most unequal societies, withthe Black share of national income actually falling. Although the level ofeveryday popular protest in post-Apartheid South Africa is also among the world’shighest, successive ANC governments have worked to contain and deflect popularresistance.

‘Velvetrevolutions’

Thus the years following the firstappearance of our book did not prove favourable to the perspectives wediscussed. Rather, revolutionary challenges were contained and deflected bywhat some political commentators called ‘negotiated transitions’ — or whatCzechoslovak wits called ‘velvet revolutions’ — a form perhaps first seen inSpain in 1976, but then followed in Latin America, Eastern Europe and SouthAfrica.

These kinds of political transformationseem to have some preconditions. On the ruling-class side, sections of the ‘oldregime’ must see the writing on the wall, and be prepared to abandon theirprevious power-monopoly. More important, on the side of the opposition, ‘moderate’leaders must be found who will work to contain the activity of their ownsupporters within ‘safe limits’ and to guarantee the safety, and often thecontinued wealth and security, of at least most of the old regime’s cadres. Inthis way, the ‘risks’ of popular revolution may be reduced, and openings can becreated for at least the more far-seeing of the old regime to achievesatisfactory ‘safe landings’ when regime change occurs. The machinery by which ‘negotiatedtransitions’ are achieved may include ‘Pacts’, ‘Round Tables’, ‘Amnesties’, ‘Truthand Reconciliation Commissions’ and the like. The crimes of former murderers,torturers and thieves may be forgiven. A ‘negotiated transition’ requires botha ‘reforming’ wing within the ruling class and a dominant ‘reformist wing’within the opposition. The reformist opposition leaders must work to contain popular demands andorganizations, by a mixture of cooptation and demagogy, and by excludingdissenting voices. There is also a more general condition: politics andeconomics must be treated as separate and distinct spheres, so thatcontradictions between political equality in the ballot box and rapidlywidening economic inequalities are not too obvious. Such an ideologicalseparation underlay the East European ‘dream of the market’, that everyonewould be free — and equal.

The ongoing march of neo-liberalism,however, has reduced its ideological appeals. Its social and economic effectshave become more prominently apparent, as political and economic power havebecome more concentrated and more closely interwoven. Across continents, therehas been a widespread growth of popular suspicion and hostility towards theprivatization of public services and of ‘the commons’, towards the granting ofprivate property rights to wealthy corporations at the expense of the poor,towards the increasing dependence of the poor on food and fuel whose prices aregoverned by commodity speculators. Increasingly neo-liberalism smells, not of ‘freedom’but of the corruption of publicoffices by the lure of wealth. Major environmental, economic and social criseshave offered speculators and those with privileged access to decision-makersnew opportunities — to profit at the direct expense of their shatteredneighbours’ lives.

Many of neo-liberalism’sadvances rested on major working-class defeats. Too often, commentators haveread these defeats as meaning the end of the working class as a focus ofresistance. What they missed was that defeats were, as in past history, oftenthe occasion for new beginnings, and for the re-making of workers’ movements.Older industries and occupations might crumble, but new sectors were beingdriven into the proletariat, and bringing impulses to revived insurgency. ‘White-collar’workers have come to play a far more central role in popular resistance, fromMexican teachers in Oaxaca to militant Egyptian tax-workers in Cairo. The gaphas continued to narrow between workers and students, who played anunexpectedly prominent role in the May 1968 movement in France, now that ‘highereducation’ has become a mass industry run on bureaucratic and capitalist lines.Millions of former peasants have been driven into the hugely expanded cities ofthe ‘Third World’, where they have developed new capacities for organizationand struggle. Some movement transformations have been dramatic and rapid: thecore of Bolivia’s labour movement, the organized miners, suffered appallingdefeats in the mid-1980s, yet a decade and a half later a recomposed popularmovement proved able to achieve an astonishing victory against waterprivatization in Cochabamba, initiating a five-year period of revolutionaryupheaval.

Thus, if it took a while for the realitiesof neo-liberalism to din themselves into the brains of those subjected to itsprocesses, by the end of the old millennium the evidence of that popularrecognition was widespread. The period when popular revolution could besmoothly substituted by ‘negotiated transitions’ as a mechanism of politicalchange was ending. Issues of ‘economic justice’, interweaving economic andpolitical struggles, were again becoming more prominent in insurgent agendas.The poetic cries of the rebellion of Chiapas in 1994, which coincided with theofficial beginning of the North American Free Trade Agreement (a keydevelopment in neo-liberalism’s programme), would be picked up and amplified bya host of different voices and movements over the subsequent period. In thevery last month of the 20^th century, an international demonstrationat the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle provided slogans thatresonated with movements over the next decade and more: ‘Our world is not forsale’ and ‘Another world is possible’.

The idea of freedom was no longer attachedto the concept of the market. On the contrary, a new generation now identifiedthe market as a principal cause of injustice and exploitation. The crises andinjustices associated with the real workings of capitalist world economyprovoked major waves of popular insurgency as the 21^st centurybegan. Uprisings in Ecuador in 2000 and in Argentina in 2001, both of them associatedwith economic crisis, brought down their governments. In Cochabamba, Bolivia,the new century began with a successful mass movement against the privatizationof water. In 2002, in Venezuela, a right-wing coup backed by big business wasdefeated by a huge popular movement that restored Hugo Chavez to the Presidencyto which he had been elected four years earlier. In 2003, in Bolivia, popularuprisings drove out successive Presidents who failed to respond to theirdemands. In 2006, a mass movement overthrew the government of Nepal. Thesestruggles were increasingly interwoven with mass strike movements and popularinsurgencies that focused directly on economic and social demands. So, too, ithas been with the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011.

[1] There were tragic paradoxes. Thefirst Minister of Labour in the new government was Jacek Kuron, co-author withKarol Modzelewski of the 1964 Open Letterto the Party. In 1964 Kuron had called openly for a workers’ revolution; in1990 he was giving fireside chats on television to explain the necessity ofrising unemployment….

Inpart two: From democratic to social revolution

12 months

2011-12-31T14:42:00.002+11:00

Happy New Year to all our readers. Thank you for you thoughts and comments on Left Flank, in what was a year of revolutions and a return to politics from below in many corners of the world.

Of course we're not all politics here, just mostly, so here are other parts of our last 12 months in photos taken by us both.

January, Sydney Festival

February, Woolloomooloo

March

April, Rome

May

June, coffee (necessary).

July

August, Surry Hills library

September, Williamstown wetlands

October, Occupy Sydney

November, Mitte - Berlin

December, Katoomba

Interface Journal: New issue on 'Feminism, women's movements and women in movement'

2011-12-21T16:59:00.001+11:00

Photo of Cairo street art by Hossam el-Hamalawy.

A new issue of the journal Interface was released last week, announcement below.

Volume 3/2 (November 2011): Feminism, women'smovements and women in movement
Issue editors: Sara Motta, Cristina Flesher Fominaya, Catherine Eschle,Laurence Cox

Volume three, issue two of Interface, a peer-reviewede-journal produced and refereed by social movement practitioners andengaged movement researchers, is now out, on the special theme"Feminism, women's movements and women in movement".Interface is open-access (free), global and multilingual. Ouroverall aim is to "learn from each other's struggles": todevelop a dialogue between practitioners and researchers, but alsobetween different social movements, intellectual traditions and nationalor regional contexts.

This issue of Interface includes 27 pieces in Englishand Spanish, by authors writing from / about Australia, Canada, Denmark,Guatemala, India, Ireland, Mexico, Nicaragua, the Netherlands, Poland,South Africa, Spain, the UK and the US.

Articles include:

Sara Motta, Cristina Flesher Fominaya, Catherine Eschle and LaurenceCox, Feminism, women's movements and women in movement

Theme-related articles:

Janet Conway, Feminist knowledges on the anti-globalizationterrain: transnational feminisms at the World Social Forum
Lyndi Hewitt, Framing across differences, building solidarities:lessons from women's rights activism in transnational spaces
Eurig Scandrett, Suroopa Mukherjee and the Bhopal Research Team,"We are flames not flowers": a gendered reading of thesocial movement for justice in Bhopal
Akwugo Emejulu, Can "the people" be feminists? Analysingthe fate of feminist justice claims in populist grassroots movements inthe United States
Finn Mackay, A movement of their own: voices of young feministactivists in the London Feminist Network
Melody L Hoffmann, Bike Babes in Boyland: women cyclists'pedagogical strategies in urban bicycle culture
Nina Nissen, Challenging perspectives: women, complementary andalternative medicine, and social change

Special section: feminist strategies for change:

Sisters of Resistance, Why we need a feminist movement now
Nina Nijsten, Some things we need for a feminist revolution
Rosario González Arias, Viejas tensiones, nuevos desafíos yfuturos territorios feministas
Tiny aka Lisa Gray-Garcia, Independence vs interdependence
Roberta Villalón, Feminist activist research and strategies fromwithin the battered immigrants' movement
Elena Jeffreys, Audry Autonomy, Jane Green, Christian Vega (ScarletAlliance Australian Sex Workers Association), Listen to sex workers:support decriminalisation and anti-discrimination protections
Jean Bridgeman, Wise women in community: building on everydayradical feminism for social change
Jennifer Verson, Performing unseen identities: a feminist strategyfor radical communication
Jed Picksley, Jamie Heckert and Sara Motta, Feminist love,feminist rage; or, Learning to listen
Anarchist Feminists Nottingham, Statement on intimate partnerviolence within activist communities

Other articles:

Kenneth Good, The capacities of the people versus a predominant,militarist, ethno-nationalist elite: democratisation in South Africa c.1973 - 97
Michael Neocosmos, Transition, human rights and violence:rethinking a liberal political relationship in the Africanneo-colony
Roy Krøvel, Alternative journalism and the relationship betweenguerrillas and indigenous peoples in Latin America
Tomás Mac Sheoin, Greenpeace: a (partly) annotated bibliography ofEnglish-language publications
Anna Feigenbaum with Kheya Bag, Ken Barlow, Jakob Horstmann, DavidShulman and Kika Sroka-Miller, "Everything we do is niche":a roundtable on contemporary progressive publishing

This issue’s reviews include the followingtitles:

Jennifer Earl and Katrina Kimport, Digitally enabled socialchange: activism in the Internet age
SV Ojas, Madhuresh Kumar, MJ Vijayan and Joe Athialy, Pluralnarratives from Narmada Valley
Eurig Scandrett et al, Bhopal survivors speak: emergent voicesfrom a people's movement
Hilary Wainwright, Reclaim the state: experiments in populardemocracy

A call for papers for volume 4 issue 2 ofInterface is now open, on the theme of "The globalemancipation of labour: new movements and struggles around work, workersand precarity" (submissions deadline May 1 2012). We can review andpublish articles in Afrikaans, Arabic, Catalan, Croatian, Danish, Dutch,English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Maltese, Norwegian,Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish andZulu.

The next issue of Interface (May 2012) will be on "The seasonof revolutions: the Arab Spring", with a special section on the newwave of European mobilizations.

Interface is always open to new collaborators. More details can befound on our website.

When freedom is a dirty word

2011-12-17T19:24:00.001+11:00

Whatever criticism one may have of the Occupy Everywhere movement, its central idea that ‘We Are the 99%’ speaks to the many people who sense a deep injustice in the current socio-economic system. People do not feel they have it ‘better than ever’, even in Australia, and many point to the diminished freedom they feel — economically and politically — as a key source of their grievances. The movement has been raising concerns about both the economic situation of the majority compared to the very wealthy in society, but also about the decreasing ‘buy-in’ they have to mainstream politics. Despite the promise of freedom in the neoliberal era people feel more and more curtailed and personally diminished.

This article looks to assess what lies behind the term ‘freedom’ when it is deployed by the neoliberal ideologues. When the concept is raised in Australian political circles, it leads many to think almost exclusively of economic libertarians and hard Right think tanks who enjoy an almost hegemonic usage of the term at the moment. Traditionally it was the Left, and not the Right, that was concerned with free will and justice, at the forefront of the fights against exploitation and subjugation. Politics for the Left was supposed to represent a festival of the oppressed.

Such a project of the progressive side has been sidelined in recent decades, replaced by Francis Fukuyama’s famous phrase that we are at ‘the end of history’. He argued that the old ideologies were dead and capitalist ‘liberal democracy’ was the final stage of socio-cultural evolution. In response, I would argue, The Left has failed to adequately mount a case for its project in more recent times, and even as protests break out across the developed and developing worlds many are at sea and without a critique of contemporary capitalism. While Occupy Everywhere is a movement for these times, it is one that (as Žižek warns) cannot afford to fall in love with itself.

The neoliberal false promise

Under the names economic rationalism and neoliberalism, many of the key policy prescriptions of neoclassical economics have been implemented. Free trade, abolishing investment barriers, privatisation, corporatisation, decreasing the social wage, decreasing the welfare net and contracting out — these are the public policy initiatives embodied by the neoliberal project. While such initiatives are touted as necessary, and necessarily good, they are little more than dogma for many politicians and members of the media. TINA is the name Margaret Thatcher gave to it: ‘There Is No Alternative’. Even for many economists, the reliability and social benefit of economic rationalism is accepted at face value.

Proponents of neoclassical-neoliberal economics across the political spectrum have argued the state needs to cede ground to the market in order to have an internationally competitive economy. It was argued by its proponents from the late 1970s onwards that three important things would result from this policy shift: (1) That minimal involvement in the market would avoid economic crisis (such as the one in the 1970s) as there is no natural tendency to crisis in capitalism; (2) That it would raise global living standards; and (3) that as government removed itself from the economic field there would be liberty as the market (made up of the choices of individuals) would reign unhindered.

On the first promise it is clear the neoclassical-neoliberal policies did not just fail to avoid such a predicament, but that this era was the harbinger of the deepest crisis since the Great Depression. While politicians crow about Australia escaping the economic recessions elsewhere, the fact the global economy is yet to emerge from its widespread collapse, and things look increasingly shaky in China, should give anyone pause for concern. The current crisis was preceded by neoliberalism’s failure to restore global growth rates to pre-1970s levels, even if some countries (like Australia) have maintained relatively higher rates of accumulation.

GDP growth per capita: No recovery with neoliberalism

On the second promise, there has been growing distance between the richest percentile and poorest percentile globally and within almost all countries in the neoliberal era. Not only has the wealth gap grown, millions remain in poverty in both the majority and developed worlds.

In relation to the third promise, that neoliberalism would bestow an economic system based on freedom and liberty, the current era has in fact seen the very denial of that freedom. Contemporary capitalism is not simply a system captured by unsavoury greedy individuals (as some critics argue) but one that operates at its core in the interests of the wealthy and powerful.

Individuals versus societies

Since the end of the Keynesian consensus and the post-WWII boom, neoliberals have forcefully and successfully argued that a particular conception of human freedom, found in various guises in neoclassical economic theory, must be the methodological focus of the modern economic project. Their project has been one based in notions of rational, utility maximising individual agents and the minimal intervention of the state in the economy. The neoclassical tradition sees freedom as inexorably linked to ‘the individual’, rather than a wider social or class project.

Methodological individualism sits at the heart of neoclassical and neoliberal economics, and has its origins in the work of classical liberal theorists such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Ludwig von Mises (an Austrian economist, philosopher, and classical liberal) makes this connection clear saying methodological individualism is the ‘principle…involv[ing] the recognition that all actions are performed by individuals’ and ‘a social collective has no existence and reality outside of the individual members’ actions’. Put another way, social explanations are in the end reduced to individual-level reasons. This is the theoretical underpinning of neoclassical economics. From here, we can understand why neoclassical theorists are primarily concerned with the impact of individuals and their choices on the economy. It is not that individualism denies the existence or influence of institutions or organisations, but that these are the creation of the actions of an individual or sum of individuals and can be altered by them.

The emphasis is therefore on mathematical models and equations, which predict the marginal behaviours of individuals as a way to understand the overall functioning of the economy. Heterodox and Marxist theorists, however, see such models to be of limited use and their emphasis falls on social situations and historical circumstances. For them, often adherents of methodological holism, it is a different approach ‘that holds that meaningful social science knowledge is best or more appropriately derived through the study of group organisations, forces, processes and/or problems’ (Warren J Samuels). For heterodox theorists, conceptualising the economy begins with the whole — in Marx’s idiom, the world exists as a ‘differentiated unity’ rather than a collection of distinct and disconnected observable facts. They argue that for those who do not begin with ‘totality’, there is a potential trap of reifying individual actions (seeing them for something in and of themselves and not connected to a wider economic, social or cultural phenomena). It is not that this approach fails to recognise a two-way relationship between individuals and society, but that without a methodological holism you can only see individual actions for their isolated meaning and not for their more inherent nature as part of a social whole.

It is with this nexus in mind that we can best appreciate some of the central tenets of the neoclassical theory, which focuses on the actions of individuals within markets. The economy is understood as consisting of markets that naturally arise through what Adam Smith says is a ‘certain propensity in human nature…to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another’. Wealth is not extracted by one class from another, but rather ‘the distribution of income to society is controlled by a natural law, and that this law, if it worked without friction, would give to every agent of production the amount of wealth which that agent creates’ (John Bates Clarke). The market, which is connected directly to the agency of individual subjects, therefore distributes goods and wealth in a manner that is natural, just and efficient. The price mechanism will guide the market towards an equilibrium point where the market ‘clears’, because ‘if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place until both believe they will benefit from it’ (Friedman and Friedman). Utility maximisation by individuals (who have finite income), and the necessity of a firm’s efficiency (given it must ensure profit), leads to goods having a price (and only one price) at which a market clears.

This explains why neoclassical theorists argue the economy manages itself without extensive intervention, by way of setting prices and the self-interest of economic actors. Yet, as Michael Krätke notes:

Free-market liberalism is based on a ‘theoretical error’, on the belief that ‘economic activity belongs to civil society and the State must not intervene to regulate it’. In liberal thought, a methodological and analytical differentiation, between ‘politics’ and ‘economics’, is reified and raised to a political norm. In order to avoid this conclusion, it is necessary to understand that the free market and the liberal market-economy is ‘a “regulation” of a statal nature, introduced and maintained by means of law and compulsion’.

Thus, as David Harvey argues, capitalism does not in fact deliver freedom but its debasement through the establishment of capitalist relations of production:

This neoliberal debasement of the concept of freedom ‘into a mere advocacy of free enterprise’ can only mean, as Karl Polanyi points out, ‘the fullness of freedom for those whose income, leisure and security need no enhancing, and a mere pittance of liberty for the people, who may in vain attempt to make use of their democratic rights to gain shelter from the power of the owners of property’.

This alludes to Marx’s analysis of the commodity form in Capital, where he observed (with bitter irony) that a ‘double freedom’ was the necessary condition for labour-power to become commodified in order that profits could be extracted: A person is required to be free to sell their labour-power (in that they are no longer bonded to another as under feudalism), but they must also be free from the ability to subsist (lacking control of the means of production). In this way, Marx analyses the rise of capitalism as a political act requiring coercion, and not something that spontaneously arose through the unfolding of market logic.

Freedom beyond the market

In neoclassical theory there is also integration of the economic and political — of a type — through the weight given to individual choices as a direct expression of a free society. While some argue the neoclassical project is an attempt to demonstrate scientifically and mathematically the ‘laws’ of markets, it is instead distinctly political with an embedded contradiction between the universal claim of personal and economic freedom and the exploitation of the majority in the interests of a minority.

Nowhere are the political implications of the focus on individuals in the neoliberal era clearer than in the increased discipline of the labour force in the neoliberal period. Naomi Klein’s book No Logo (2000) reflects on the paradox of promotion of consumer ‘choice’ at the same time as those commodities are produced in sweatshops, where freedom is in short supply for the workers involved. Terry Eagleton suggests that the contemporary individual is shaped by such contradictions:

Capitalism needs a human being who has never existed, one who is prudently restrained in the office and wildly anarchic in the shopping mall.

This scenario mirrors, at the level of ideology, Marx’s argument in Capital that ‘in the society where the capitalist mode of production prevails, anarchy in the social division of labour and despotism in the manufacturing division of labour mutually condition other’. Neoclassical theory articulates an ideal of freedom through atomised exchange, based in individual self-interest, while dashing that ideal against the cold, hard rocks of collective exploitation where: ‘the silent compulsion of economic relations sets the seal on the domination of the capitalist over the worker’. Neoclassical economics thus maintains a lacuna around the fact that capitalist production is irreducibly social and collective but also organised as ‘many capitals’ which — because of the operation of the law of value — must each deny individual freedom to their workers.

In contemporary debates this remains clear in the assumption that there should be freedom for capital from state intervention or collective workers’ organisation. Yet ‘labour market deregulation’ actually means greater state intervention to regulate labour, which became obvious in the debate over WorkChoices legislation. The legislation saw the intensification of orthodox neoclassical principles in the arena of industrial relations, sold on the basis of its necessity for international competitiveness and economic strength. Yet the ‘logic suggests that the government’s purposes in redesigning the industrial relations legislation can be interpreted as an ideologically driven attempt to force down wages, remove workers’ conditions and emasculate the power of trade unions’ (Hartman and Darab). One example of the ideological nature of the policy was its intervention into the labour market in higher education to mandate and ‘encourage’ change through potential benefits and losses to income, as well as to limit (as it did for all workers) dismissal protection, ‘no disadvantage’ tests for new enterprise agreements and the choice to take industrial action.

Because of the inequalities of power between capitalists and their workers, increasing freedom for the latter can only come from greater collective rights in the workplace. Neoclassical economists and their neoliberal counterparts in public policy making remain wedded to the idea that the denial of collective rights is the precondition of individual freedom — but limited to a freedom to act in self-interested ways in the marketplace.

Marx counterposes to this the idea of a struggle for the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, whereby the (majority) working class collectively imposes a radically different type of freedom, but one based in eliminating the atomism implicit in capitalist social relations, thereby freeing individual creativity and potential through an irreducibly holistic social act. He thus sees collective working class struggles to subvert the power of market relations as creating the ground for the emergence of real individual freedoms for the vast majority.

Freedom, or the denial of it, is more than a sociological, philosophical or juridical concern — it is a subject of and for political economy. The debasement of freedom in neoclassical theory and contemporary neoliberal ideology is embedded within the capitalist mode of production. By looking at processes arising in class relations rather than individual choice, we can point the way to a broader and deeper conception of human freedom — a conception more satisfactory than the neoclassical economics’ focus on freedom to engage in atomised market exchanges, which necessarily favour the few. This doesn’t just describe the limits on freedom created by class society but points to a collective alternative: a movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. Something raised by Marx and Engels many years ago but echoed in the new emerging Occupy Everywhere movement. It seems important though for progressive voices to move beyond the idea of ‘We are the 99%’ and to talk of how we came to this point: the point where freedom is debased because of capitalism. It is time for alternatives.

Breivik update: Politics, terrorism and psychiatry

2011-12-08T17:45:00.001+11:00

Candle-lit vigil in Oslo, soon after the 22 July massacre

Since my last piece for The Drum, the IPA’s Chris Berg has produced an attackon our book, On Utøya: Anders Breivik, Right Terror, Racism andEurope. We haven’t formallyresponded, but many of the comments below his article deal with his frankly desperate and unconvincingattempt to exonerate the Islamophobic and anti-multicultural Right from creatingthe context in which far Right violence is more likely.

In the meantime I was asked to write ashort piece about the Breivik diagnosis for weekly medical industry paper Psychiatry Update. I’m reposting here asit includes newly available detail about the psychiatric report, and because Psychiatry Update is only available to registeredhealthcare practitioners (you can follow its tweet stream here: @PsychUpdate).

Diagnosing Breivik with psychosis is medically questionable and acts toseparate the terrorist's actions from their underlying political causes, writesguest blogger Dr Tad Tietze.

Psychiatric diagnosis has been the subject of public debate aftertwo court-appointed psychiatrists found that confessed Norwegian right-wing terroristAnders Breivik – whomurdered 77 people on 22 July – suffers from “Paranoid Schizophrenia”, and istherefore criminally insane and unfit to stand trial.

The finding sits uncomfortably with copiouspublicly-available information about Breivik’s actions and stated motivations,in particular his1500-page Manifesto 2083 and hisconnections with a growingEuropean far Right.

While obviously one can’t rule out psychosis, there is ajarring lack of diagnostic precision and cultural contextualisation evident in thosesections of the report that are publicly available that serve to make itsfindings highly questionable.

Examplesinclude the use of “bizarre delusions” to describe Breivik’s appalling butcompletely possible plans fornational purification, the characterisation of common words from the far Rightand online gaming communities as “neologisms”, and descriptions of his understandablefears of being monitored by police as “paranoid delusions”. Multiple referencesto “grandiose delusions” naïvely ignore thegrandiose character of far Right ideology.

Most embarrassingly itrates his functional GAF score at 23, properly definedas “inability to function in almost all areas (e.g., stays in bed all day; nojob, home, or friends)”. This, in someone who singlehandedly executed a complexterrorist plot!

The case also suggests limits to court and psychiatric processes in dealingwith political crimes. After 22 July,the media in Norway rapidlyshifted the focus from Breivik’s politics to errors in policing andexamination of his personal and psychological history. Such depoliticisation mirroredwhat hard Right thinkers were doing to distance themselves froma massacre inspired by their ideas.

The two psychiatrists have, intentionally or not, followedsuit. They concede they have no experience with “ideological terrorism” or the farRight. It also seems they didn’t integrate into their assessment Breivik’s(sickening but coherent) Manifesto, norwidely-available conservative and Islamophobic literature he drew on.

The reason for all this is probably very prosaic – with ourprofessional focus on individualpsychopathology, psychiatrists sometimes medicalise social and politicalphenomena that fall outside our own belief systems. In this case it may providea perverse legitimacy to ideologues whose calls to “civilisational war” inspiredBreivik.

Even in the unlikely event Breivik was truly “insane”, hisactions cannot simply be divorced from the years he spent in far Rightsubcultures that constantly talk about doing what he actually did. If removedfrom this context, such a diagnosis putsfascist ideology in a straitjacket, and thereby allows its politicalsignificance – and any serious political response to it – to be evaded.

The Breivik diagnosis: Fascist ideology wrapped in a straitjacket, political implications denied

2011-12-03T09:58:00.001+11:00

Comments now closed on this article at The Drum, so reposting here for your commenting pleasure!

Two court-appointed psychiatrists have found confessedNorwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik legally insane and unfit to stand trial.The full text of their 243 page report is yet to be released, but if publicstatements are representative of its contents, there is good reason to suspecttheir assessment may tell us more about the socially embedded nature ofpsychiatric diagnosis and the prevailing political climate in Norway than anyclaim it was the result of some kind of cold, hard, value-free science.

Because Breivik placed so much information about hisactivities and belief system on the internet, and because so much is publiclyknown about his crimes and their preparation, as well as his politicalconnections, any assessment of Breivik’s mental state has to be placed in thecontext of these facts in order to make sense of his actions. Yet the detailsreleased so far is that they suggest the psychiatrists have either mistaken hisfascist ideology for a mental illness on the basis that they cannot comprehendhow someone could come to such extreme views, or — less likely — they havedecided his political beliefs are irrelevant to his crimes by focusing on someother (as yet unrevealed) aspect of his psyche.

Depoliticisationcomplete?

For Aslak Sira Myhre, writingin The Guardian, thetransformation of Breivik’s “political madness” — one defying usualnotions of mental illness and shared by large numbers of extremists around theworld — into a “personal madness” follows the pattern established by theNorwegian media since 22 July, increasingly focused on Breivik’s lifestyle,childhood, and psyche. Such a focus serves to distract from the fact thatBreivik’s hatreds — of Muslims and Leftists — don’t come from anillness but from a well-established political milieu.

It was a such a process of attempts to depoliticise thesignificance of a mass political assassination by reducing it to thederanged actions of a “lone wolf” — which prompted Elizabeth Humphrys,Guy Rundle and myself to bring together authors from Europe and Australia toproduce a political response. The result was an e-book, On Utøya:Anders Breivik, Right Terror, Racism and Europe, published in lateOctober. We were in part driven by a desire to rescue the dead and survivors ofthe massacre from being reduced to victims of ameaningless act when all evidence pointed to a clear social and politicalcontext for the atrocity.

One of the key depoliticisation strategies employed bycommentators was the definition of Breivik as disturbed. Hard Right bloggerslike Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, both active in the US “counter Jihad”movement, sought to evade the close similarities between their views and Breivik’sby suggesting that he was insane precisely because he had acted on their warnings of civilisational war. But even mainstreamcommentators like Peter Hartcher wantedto draw an improbable psychological dividing line between the rise of farRight parties in Europe and the actions of the Norwegian mass killer, as ifmental illness could so selectively turn one of many supporters of a violentnationalist ideology into someone actually willing to act on their beliefs.

Within days mainstream commentary around the world, as inNorway, was dominated by presumptions that Breivik was insane. A good exampleis a recent report in the German Der Spiegel,which claimed that during interrogations Breivik “revealed all but [his]motive”. While unable to find a coherent psychological clue in his childhood forsuch an appalling act, the article is full of Breivik’s explicitultra-nationalist motivations. Truly a case of not seeing the wood for thetrees.

And a new Melbourne play has been subjected to lurid attackson Channel 10 and inthe Herald-Sun because it daresto suggest the killings were rationally planned, ideologically motivated andinspired by mainstream conservative figures like John Howard and Peter Costello(bothpraised by Breivik).

Those keen to erase connections between far Right politics andthe 22 July massacre will be relieved by the psychiatrists’ conclusions. OverheatedIslamophobic rhetoric will be able to continue without the spectre that itmight actually have a predictable effect in the real world. The rise of“respectable” racism — of dog-whistlepolitics designed to distract from the failures of politicians to deliverimprovements in the lives of ordinary citizens — will be able to continuewithout the stain of bloodshed. For more extreme elements it will free them ofassociation with an unspeakable crime (one they may have a lot of sympathy for)and allow them to continue to prepare for thevery struggles that Breivik took to a logical endpoint. This will give thembreathing space as once again we can rest assured that the “real” terroristthreat is that of radical Islamism.

Convincing evidenceyet to emerge

What, then, of the psychiatric report? As it is not yet inthe public domain it may well turn out to describe classic signs of psychoticillness in Breivik. Yet it is curious that in such a high-profile case, whereinitial expert opinions suggested that psychosis was highly unlikely, the onlydetails released by prosecutors Bejer Engh and Svein Holden are more suggestiveof an incomprehension of fascist ideology on the part of the doctors thananything like clear confirmation of mental illness.

For example, in coming to a diagnosis of “ParanoidSchizophrenia” the psychiatrists apparently state that Breivik displayed manykinds of “bizarre delusions”, a technical term that usually refers to falsebeliefs based completely outside of normal experience (e.g. magical powers,alien invasions, etc.). Yet to date they have only spoken publicly of manifestlynon-bizarre beliefs that ape common tropes among more extreme sections ofneo-fascist subcultures:

“They especially describe whatthey call Breivik's delusions where he sees himself as chosen to decide whoshall live and who shall die, and that he is chosen to save what he calls hispeople,” said Holden.

“Breivik has stated that hecommitted the murders, or executions as he calls them, because of his love forhis people.”

Such ultra-patriotic ideas, along with Breivik’s inflatedviews of his own ability to become a future ruler of Norway throughradicalising an anti-Islamic, anti-Marxist “Knights Templar” resistancemovement, may be extreme yet they fit with the kind of grandiosity exhibited bycurrent and past fascist ideologues. The leading contemporary biographer of Hitler,Ian Kershaw, has suggestedthat the Nazi leader probably had what would today be called NarcissisticPersonality Disorder. But he points out that this fails to explain how Hitler builta mass movement that took state power, launched wars and implemented theindustrially organised slaughter of millions. In 1928 the Nazi vote was under 3percent and Hitler was considered a nutty fringe annoyance, yet by 1933 he hadbeen invited into power by a Weimar political class in crisis.

Similarly, thenotion that Breivik lives in his “own delusional universe where all histhoughts and acts are guided by his delusions” only implies illness if one is firstconvinced that his ideas don’t represent a variant of far Right ideology, evenif a particularly extreme one. It is a recognised problem in psychiatricdiagnosis that, because it is mostly unable to rely on physical signs orlaboratory investigations for confirmatory evidence, even when a person’s ideasmay be incomprehensible to a doctor they can still fit with minority beliefsystems shared by people with non-mainstream but nevertheless non-insane ideas. Such ambiguities have onoccasion seen psychiatry serve repressive social policies, such as with theforcible treatment of dissidents in Stalinist Russia as “schizophrenic”.

Similarly, no evidence has been released that Breiviksuffers from characteristic hallucinations and thought disorganisation usuallypresent in Paranoid Schizophrenia. His Manifesto 2083 displays an overallpolitical and strategic coherence even with its optimistic projection of atimeline of civilisational war and national purification, again unlike thetypically illogical writings of psychotic individuals. And while patients withParanoid Schizophrenia usually believe they are being persecuted individually, Breivikmakes clear his is a belief about socialthreats.

Finally, despite recent statements that Breivik “actedalone”, it is clear that his links with the European far Right went well beyondthe odd internet chat. Hisconnections with the English Defence League are well known. He travelled toLondon to meet EDL activists as recently as March 2010, when his elaborateterror plot was already well under way. EDL leader Tommy Robinson later warnedthat current UK policies would lead to an eruption of English Breiviks. Breivikclaims he is just one of several like-minded “cells” in Europe, but has refusedto release details of his accomplices unless authorities bowto a series of ultimatums. None of these are behaviours typical of peoplesuffering from psychotic illnesses, who usually remain isolative and poorlyorganised.

One also has to wonder how useful were 36 hours ofpsychiatric examination of a neo-fascist outside the context of his usualpolitical milieu, and how much the necessity of secretive preparation for amajor terrorist attack would have led him to appear more socially disconnectedthan usual.

Repoliticising massmurder

Many inNorway are already questioning the psychiatrists’ opinion. As ErlingJohannes Husabø, Professor in Criminal Law at the University of Bergen,commented, “It must have been a special type of psychosis they concluded uponconsidering Breivik was able to act as methodically as he did. An insanitydecision is usually used for people whohave more of a disturbed perception of reality …” Others arepreparing legal challenges, and the report still has to be reviewed by the country’sforensic commission.

But, apart from the possibility that some new revelationwill emerge from the full report, why would psychiatrists reach such a decisionapparently on the basis of quite unconvincing evidence? Some have suggestedvarious subterranean motivations. Perhaps an insanity finding will ensure thereare legal means to keep Breivik detained for life in a country where themaximum criminal penalty is 21 years jail? This seems unlikely, as Norway alsohas provisions for dangerous criminals to be kept detained past that time. Maybeit will deny Breivik credibility? Yet this mistakes the audience he istargeting: His plan is to cohere the far Right and not to win over the broaderpopulation. Potential admirers will dismiss assertions of madness when hisideas match their own. Or perhaps the diagnosis is intended to deny him aplatform? But it seems unlikely that psychiatric detention will leave him withsubstantially fewer rights to speak out than a normal trial. Finally, some maysee this as a move to ease the suffering of the survivors, but already manyare upset at the findings.

The reality is almost certainly more prosaic, related to theway that social and political problems have become increasinglypsychologised and medicalised in modern society. It is telling that Breivik’sdefence lawyer, a member of Norway’s Labour Party, argued that “the whole case”indicated his client’s insanity despite admitting that Breivikremained calm, was capable of executing an elaborate plot over many years, andthat he thought he would be killed because of his actions — all featuresindicating considerable grounding in reality, even if wrapped in extreme ideas.

Similarly, the details of the psychiatric analysis releasedto date suggest incomprehension at how the far Right thinks and operates. It istrue that such ideas can seem unreal to most people, but they are also based inwell-worn subcultural discourses animated by hatred for all those underminingan idealised national unity. Brevik’s Manifesto includes long sectionssurveying various manifestations of right-wing ideology in order to pick outthose he thinks are most suited to progressing the radical nationalist cause.His approach is of a piece with the general character of fascism as a“scavenger ideology”, reducing the value of various slogans and beliefs totheir utility in building a movement to wage war and take state power in thefuture. As Anindya Bhattacharyya argues in OnUtøya, it is for this reason that fascist ideology is “wildly contradictoryand unstable, held together in the last instance by mysticism rather thanrationality.”

Even today’s neo-Nazi thugs, likethe German cell recently revealed to have carried out a series of murdersof immigrants over the last decade, require various belief systems to sustaintheir actions. As onewho broke with them has explained there was both ideological indoctrinationand a grandiose sense of purpose involved in their violent activities.

There is a further issue, rooted in the social role playedby the psychiatric profession. As psychotherapist and author Gary Greenberg wroteof the diagnosis of Paranoid Schizophrenia given to Ted Kaczynski, theUnabomber — once again on the basis of very thin evidence — theproblem was that once mental health professionals got involved politics andmorality became subordinated to notions of mental illness: “Not because mycolleagues and I are scoundrels … but because the mental health industry willreduce the political to the personal every time. It is our business to do so.”(In the Kingdom of the Unabomber, p.46) It’s not that psychiatrists intentionally find mental disorder where thereis none, but that they are always looking to the possibility of providing atreatment for an illness as a humane and rational option. They will thus have anatural bias towards diagnosing in order to treat; that is, to do somethingrather than nothing.

Such a trend has probably been exacerbated in an era wherepolitics itself has been downgraded in favour of the notion of people asself-interested individual actors in a free market. The very idea of ideology has becomeunfashionable and so a Breivik becomes harder to comprehend, and therefore ismore easily packaged as being mentally ill.

Even if Breivik did show signs that he had slipped into astate that could sensibly be considered “psychotic”, his actions cannot bedivorced from the social context and political networks from which he emerged.His ideology, strategic pronouncements and motivations cannot be reduced to theravings of a lunatic when they simply reflect a variation on widely held viewswithin the far Right. It is a far Right that has gained increasingprominence as mainstream politicians step up rhetoric againstmulticulturalism or Muslim immigration. If removed from these very realcontexts, the notion that Anders Breivik is “insane” can only serve to put anideology in a straitjacket, and thereby allow its political significance to beevaded and ignored.

Thanks to Jorge Sotirosfor inspiration. More information about OnUtøya: Anders Breivik, Right Terror, Racism and Europe is available here.

Rewind: Depoliticising Utoya — Anders Breivik as ‘madman’

2011-11-30T16:50:00.001+11:00

It was not entirelyunexpected that two prosecution-appointed psychiatrists would find Norwegian fascistmass murderer Anders Breivik insane and unfit to stand trial, diagnosing him withParanoid Schizophrenia. The diagnosis — so far only backed by a few, unconvincingdetails from their as-yet unreleased report — runs counter to thevoluminous information, available in the public domain, about Breivik and hisbelief system, including his notorious Manifesto2083.

I am writing aninitial response for ABC’s The Drum, which will probably be online tomorrow. Inthe meantime, here is an essay abridged from the e-book On Utoya: Anders Breivik, right terror, racism and Europe,which originallyappeared on The Drum last month. The e-book was edited by ElizabethHumphrys, Guy Rundle and myself, published in late October, and is availablefor download from Amazon here.

Three months ago, when far-Right activist Anders Breivikkilled more than 70 people in Norway, the world was treated to a bizarre seriesof turnabouts and reversals as the media struggled to interpret and frame theevents.

Famously, before Breivik’s identity was known, numerousright-wing commentators leapt to the conclusion that it was a violent Islamistattack. For almost exactly 10 years, the response to such events conformed to awell-trodden path — of making a hard political case against Islamism, andusually Islam more generally. Even when the actions of terrorists wereclassified as ‘mad’ or understandable only with reference to the twistedindividual psychologies of the perpetrators, this mental disturbance was theresult of hate-filled, anti-Enlightenment doctrines learned in Madrassas, where contempt for Westernvalues and rabid fundamentalist explications of the Koran whipped them into afrenzied, murderous state.

Then it became clear that Breivik was Norwegian, white, andhad perpetrated the atrocity as a way of “waking” Europe from its sleepwalkinto thorough Islamisation by “cultural Marxists”. There was a brief momentwhen Anders Breivik could be understood as a product of the rise of theIslamophobic Right in Europe. Yet almost as quickly the optic shifted to one ofBreivik as a lone madman, because a deranged, self-obsessed and isolatedindividual was, of course, the only kind of person capable of such cruel andbarbaric acts. Unless he had been an Islamist, that is. The media line wasbolstered when Breivik’s lawyer declared that to have acted the way he had thekiller must be insane, and told reporters hehad demanded that Breivik undergo psychological testing. Explaining hisreasoning, the social democratic lawyer said that the terrorist had “a view onreality that is very, very difficult to explain”.

Much of this shift in emphasis was the product of the sameright-wing commentators who’d been eager to cry “jihad” the moment the eventshad hit the news wires. Yet they would not have been able to succeed in turningthe discussion if there was not a great deal of general confusion about thewhole notion of madness, and a cultural tendency to use it as a grab bag toexplain any form of extreme or violent behaviour — particularly in an era whenpolitical movements and violence other than Islamism have become close toinvisible. Discussion of Breivik and his crimes demonstrated how confused thepublic sphere was about the nature of politics, sanity and evil — and the usesto which such confusion could be put.

Thus pundits and commentators from a wide range of politicalviewpoints came to bury Breivik’s act in the realm of psychopathology, to seeonly the monstrous form and deny rationality (however unpalatable) to itscontent. In the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Hartcher, sought to dismiss conflation of“the incident with the rise of far-right parties in Europe”.

Andrew Bolt, after initially blaming the attack onIslamists, then protested at alleged “gloating attempts to blame the horrificmurder of 93 Norwegians [on] any interest group or cause that murderer AndersBehring Breivik touched,” including his Christianity. Instead he blamed Breivik’srelationship with his father.

Nor was it merely journalists and pundits who rushed in to declareBreivik’s psychopathology. With the victims’ bodies still being recovered,self-proclaimed psychological experts were analysing the killer’s motivationswith barely a shred of substantiation to work from.

Lumping Breivik in with previous “spree” killers, CambridgeUniversity psychologist and researcher Kevin Dutton told readers of his blog at Psychology Today thatUtoya:

Wasn’t really about ideology orreligion at all. That’s just the window dressing. It was all about him. Breivic[sic]. And his deep-seated feelings of inadequacy in relation to the oppositesex.

Others drew on the controversialargument put by Harvard psychiatrist AlvinPoussaint that extreme racism was a form of psychosis known as DelusionalDisorder. Forensic psychologist Dr Michael Nuccitelli preferredNarcissistic Personality Disorder because he “planned and premeditated hisexpected infamy” — a tenuous link to a complex and frequently disputeddiagnosis. Even London Mayor Boris Johnsonweighed in, calling Breivik “patently mad” and predicting that “wecan expect exhaustive psychoanalysis of this dreary and supercilious 32-year-oldsicko”, even as he performed such.

The evidence for it was practically non-existent, butalready the psychological-psychiatric narrative was taking shape. This wasespecially so because the Norwegian mass killings created a serious problem forthe Right in both its mainstream and less acceptable forms. Here was asituation where its more or less open incitements to civilisational clasheswere being turned into deeds in a cold, clinical, premeditated manner by anenthusiastic supporter. Desperate to hang on to their ideological positions, tobe able to draw an improbable dividing line between ideas and actions, theyresorted to a psychological rather than political argument.

The fact that Breivik praised and quoted verbatim the workof leading figures of the conservative Right in the United States led many ofthem to develop an “insanity defence” of their own. Pamela Geller, whose blogAtlas Shrugs is mentioned in the Manifesto, and which has been a focal point ofopposition to the proposed Islamic centre in lower Manhattan, quickly denied culpability: “This guy was nuts… He co-opted the work, he stole the narrative, to substantiate his insane,violent plans”.

Author Robert Spencer, creator of Jihad Watch and co-founderof the group Stop The Islamization [sic] of America, repudiated any responsibility forBreivik’s actions in part by arguing, “This kind of thing is going to happen.You can’t account for psychopaths, and so I’m not going to be deterred.”

And the UK Daily Mail’snotorious Melanie Phillips was incandescent thatanyone would associate the massacre with “decent people who are boiling withrage at being disenfranchised by an entire political class”. Breivik was simply“ in the grip of a psychosis”.

Psychosis, narcissismand the murderous mind

The notion that Breivik’s actions “did not bear examination”was a use, and usually a far-from-consistent one, of the two ideas of mentaldisturbance most frequently employed in the law — psychosis and personalitydisorder. Thus some people suffering psychosis can make the defence that theywere so disconnected from reality that even though they understand the act iswrong and hurtful they believe other factors make it unavoidable (e.g. a motherwith a psychotic depression drowns her children because she believes they aresuffering because of her inability to parent them, and that the only way torelieve their torment is by going to heaven).

The discovery that Breivik’s Manifesto 2083 was easily downloadable from the internet shiftedthe focus away from the crudest generalisations, chiefly because of the document’sgenerally coherent structure and arguments. Much of it was lifted directly fromright-wing websites and articles, many of them well known. Unlike Jared LeeLoughner, who shot an Arizona Democratic congresswoman in January 2011 whileobsessed with government conspiracies as part of a psychotic illness, Breivik’s“madness” could not be parcelled off in the same way. Simply put, seriouspsychosis makes the kind of compiling and editing that Breivik did verydifficult in the absence of effective treatment.

This brings us to the second kind of mental disorder thatcan be invoked to explain aberrant acts of violence: The category of “personalitydisorders”. These are a historically much more recent psychiatric construct,rising to prominence with the 1980 third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III), widely recognised as the “bible”of modern psychiatric diagnosis. Yet, as the DSM’s authors are at pains topoint out, there is no coherent theoretical framework behind these diagnosticcategories, based as they are on clusters of maladaptive and sociallyunacceptable behaviours (rather than causative mechanisms). Research into thesediagnoses has been plagued with questions over the arbitrary criteria thatdetermine whether certain personality styles and problems of living get to becalled “disorders”, as well as evidence that there is massive overlap betweenthe categories that robs them of specificity.

Diagnoses like Narcissistic, Antisocial, Paranoid andSchizoid Personality Disorder also bear the marks of their social construction.One person’s successful, driven, confident political leader is another’smisanthropic, self-obsessed, destructive narcissist. One only needs think ofhow Australian political journalists lauded Kevin Rudd’s ruthless andsingle-minded capture of the Parliamentary Labor Party for his own agenda, butthen retailed stories about his unsuitable personality when his primeministership started to come under pressure politically. Yet no serious commentatorwould suggest that Rudd’s trajectory can only be understood in total separationfrom the Labor Party’s. Such an idea comes mainly from apologists for the partywho want to lay the blame for the failure of its collective project on awayward individual.

Significantly, personality disorders do not represent acomplete break from reality. They do not normally represent a defence in thesense of “not guilty, mentally ill”. They are not, in our society, consideredto excuse people of their culpability in criminal acts. Moreover, people whomeet the criteria for such disorders hold widely divergent social and politicalviews: From the banal mainstream to the extremes of Left and Right. There is nostraight line from personality disorder to violent political mass murderer, anymore than there is from personality disorder to ruthless entrepreneur.

But, of course, when an apparently singular and unthinkablehorror occurs, that won’t stop attempts to reduce it to such categories,however crudely. The psychologisation of Breivik’s atrocities serves a functionin settling fears, in isolating “extremists” as “lone gunmen” divorced fromwider political developments, to paint a picture of a healthy political currentwhose only internal threats are aberrations. In this way it is a clear case ofdepoliticisation.

But it is also the reinstatement and intensification of theRight’s preferred political strategy for keeping the nation united byidentifying the causes of social polarisation and instability in external threats;threats to nation, to culture, to resources, to cohesion. In such aconfiguration a mass political assassination can occur, yet within days the oldthreats from outside are re-emphasised because our internal problems are mereaberrations and outliers, of no greater meaning. Even if they shy fromaccepting Breivik’s most extreme conclusions, by calling him insane they seekto continue the same project by other means. It demonstrates above all that weneed to get away from notions that any event which strikes us as brutal,sadistic or inexplicable should be dismissed as “mad” — and above all that wehave to go beyond individual psychology if we are to understand the events thathave most impact on us.

The Greens & Palestine: confronting inconvenient truths of the party’s right of return policy

2011-11-27T02:52:00.001+11:00

Guest post by TONY HARRIS— cross-posted from his blog, Watermelon.

In March last year, 35 prominent Jewish Australians signeda petition renouncingtheir automatic right of return to Israel, labelling such a right a “racistprivilege” while Palestinians, ethnically cleansed from Israel in 1948, aredenied their rights of return under international law.

This goes to the heart of theproblem of finding a solution to the Israel-Palestineconflict. Palestinians are the largest refugee group in the world, andconstitute the most protracted and long-term refugee problem — around sevenmillion of the 11 million Palestinians are refugees, five million living inrefugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere,under the supervision of the UN agency set up in 1951 specifically to deal withthis population: the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).

The Australian Greens pride themselves on determined andprincipled defence of the rights of refugees. Greens politicians and activistscan rightly take credit for focusing attention on the inconvenient truths ofthe rights of asylum seekers under international law, and in the process,helping to shift Australian public opinion over the appalling abuse of rightsunder current Federal Government asylum seeker policies. The Greens’ national website gives prominence tothe fact that asylum seekers are not illegal, citing the Universal Declarationof Human Rights. Palestinian refugees, who in May marchedon the border with Israel during the annual Nakbacommemoration, were not illegal either. Yet 14 paid for this right with theirlives, shot by Israeli troops, in an extreme version of a Tony Abbott, “turnback the boats” exercise.

The right of return is the other side of the coin of seekingasylum. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights expressesthis in a single sentence: “Everyone has the right to leave any country,including his own, and return to his country”. This is reinforced under theInternational Covenant on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discriminationand the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Alongside this isthe even more explicit Palestinian “right of return” under United NationsGeneral Assembly resolution 194of 1948, which was accepted by the new Israeli state as acondition of its entry into the UN. This resolution states that Palestinian “refugeeswishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours shouldbe permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensationshould be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss ordamage to property.”

The Australian Greensposition

There is an emerging strategy by the Greens’ nationalparliamentary leadership, following on from the national furore over support inthe Greens for the BDS campaign against Israel, to try and present a “smalltarget” over the Israel-Palestine conflict. This has involved a limited “cherry-picking”from Greens nationalpolicy, focusing solely on the question of the “two-statesolution” and by extension, support for the Palestinian Authority’s UN bid forrecognition of a Palestinian state. But the Greens also have a policy on the “rightof return” and the national leadership is bound to assert it. It calls for: “ajust and practical negotiated settlement of the claims of the Palestinianrefugees that provides compensation for those who are unable to return to theircountry of origin, Israel or Palestine”.

The insertion of the term “practical negotiated settlement”,is an example of the usual caveat that finds its way into a political partyplatform but does not absolve the Australian Greens from interpreting thisprovision in line with international law. As has been pointed out above, thisis less equivocal. Any “negotiated practical” outcomes cannot bargain away theright of return, and the alternative of compensation has to be offered as anoption. In terms of who is defined as a refugee under international law, aguide is provided by the UNRWA definition: persons living in Palestine from the1 June 1946 to 15 may 1948 together with “descendants of fathers fulfillingthis definition”.

In this context there also needs to be a refutation of anynotion of “trade-off” between Palestinian refugees and those Jews who moved toIsrael from the Middle East and North Africa after 1948. While of these Jewswere drawn to the new Israeli state, and others encouraged to do so by Zionistactivists, there is no doubt that many were forced to flee from Arab states inthe aftermath of the foundation of the state of Israel. The forced transfer ofpopulations, whether Palestinians or Middle Eastern Jews, would today rightlybe described as crimes against humanity under the Fourth GenevaConvention. One crime cannot be traded against another andthe right of return of Palestinians is not diminished by the unwillingness orinability of Israeli Mizrahis toreturn to their countries of origin. Their right to do this, and be offered theoption of compensation, is valid in its own right. It needs to be put onto theArab states, especially in the context of the human-rights based Arab revolution,that they have responsibilities in this regard no less than Israeli responsibilitiestowards Palestinian refugees. Similarly, the willingness or otherwise of Arabstates to grant proper settlement and citizenship rights to post-1948Palestinian asylum seekers does not negate the Palestinian right of return.

In confronting this issue, then, the Australian Greens wouldbe well advised to take up Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign reminderthat it was “the economy, stupid”. For the Australian Greens approach tothe resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict “it’s the right of return, stupid”. Thishas consequences for the other part of the Greens’ Israel-Palestine policy: thetwo-state solution.

The right of returnand the two-state solution

A right of return by Palestinians confined to just the 22percent of historic Palestine, with nothing more than a token right of returnto Israel, will not be acceptable to them or comply substantially withinternational law. This means that Israel will potentially have to absorb aconsiderable Palestinian population, substantially altering its demographics.On the other side of the fence any Palestinian state is likely to contain asizeable number of Israeli Jews. The need to resolve the illegality, andland-grabbing, of the West Bank Jewish settlements aside, there are likely tobe a considerable number of Israeli Jews remaining, perhaps being offeredPalestinian citizenship. Indeed there is a strong argument that the settlementshave effectively killed off a two-state solution, guaranteeing a bi-nationalstate as the only effective resolution to the conflict.

Further, a Palestinian state on 22 percent of Palestine willnot be economically viable and combined with a degree of Israeli dependence onthe Palestinians, as a labour source, is likely to see the two stateseconomically integrated. This of course would bring to the fore cross-borderclass tensions between a dominant Israeli, and subordinate Palestinian,capitalism on the one hand and potentially common class interests ofPalestinian and Israeli workers and economically marginalised on the other.

All this begs the question why not just cut to the chase andhave a bi-national state (which this writer supports), which is increasinglylikely to end up as the default position. Nonetheless, a two-state solution maygive a much sought-after national identity to both Israeli and Palestinianpeoples in resolving the conflict, but will inevitably encompass a bi-ethnic,cross-border, political, economic and social reality.

The Greens’ politicalproblem

Many in the Australian Greens have been focusing on thesearch for a “static”, electorally acceptable policy, which will keep thepro-Israel foreign policy and political establishments off their backs, andkeep at bay their bête noire and staunchest critic, Federal MPMichael “Yankee Doodle” Danby (as Wikileaks reveals, he has communicated regularly withthe US Embassy). The unfolding of the Arab revolution and the associatedPalestinian resistance will at best render this strategy irrelevant. A goodexample of this was the debate over the BDS in the Senate in July wherethe Greens’ sole response, assertion of a two-state solution, ignored the thenunfolding drama of the blocking of the Gaza peace flotilla. In this context theGreens need to engage with the unfolding dynamics on the ground.

The right of return as a core Palestinian demand has beenrestored with the recent developments within the Palestinian resistance, whichlay emphasis on a human rights-based approach (see extensive discussion ofthese developments by various commentators on Al Jazeera,at The Electronic Intifada, andelsewhere). This is typified by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign,which has shifted focus from the final geopolitical outcome of theIsrael-Palestine conflict to the immediate reality of Israel’s violation ofinternational law and human rights norms as regards the occupation, the rightof return, and discrimination against Arab-Israelis. This is in the context ofa shift in the nature of Palestinian resistance from armed struggle to widercivil resistance, with non-violent actions such as the BDS and protests againstthe separation wall. These civil resistance techniques are not new toPalestinians; this kind of action has been brutally suppressed down the yearsunder both Israeli and British colonial administrations. But they are being re-energisedthrough the rights-based resistance and the wider Arab revolution, as well asthrough growing international support in such activities as the BDS and Gaza peaceflotillas.

This rights-based civil resistance represents a “bottom up”approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict, emphasising that Israel hashere-and-now obligations under international law, which do not wait upon afinal political settlement. This is an alternative to the bankrupt “top down”approach taken by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in recent years,under pressure from the Western powers, which has been exposed by thepublication of the Palestine Papers. Itis also an alternative to the static and authoritarian policies of Hamas inGaza and come from frustration at the inability of Hamas and Fatah to resolvedifferences and give democratic and accountable political leadership to thePalestinian resistance. The Fatah-led bid at the UN for the recognition ofa Palestinian state (problematic though it is for many Palestinians) is inlarge measure a response to this groundswell and to the wider Arab revolutionto which it is linked. There is also great potential for links to growingIsraeli opposition to the policies of the right-wing Netanyahu government,through the universalities of a rights-based agenda, notwithstandingdifficulties in such areas as debates over the BDS and issues like thePalestinian right of return.

The political outcome of the Israel-Palestine conflict willneed to involve two peoples sharing the one land. And there is also a widerhistorical symmetry between the Jewish and Arabic peoples as the common victimsof Western imperialism and racism, an important narrative that is largelyabsent from the debate. There is a lay-line of human suffering that runsthrough the death camps of the Holocaust and the demolished Arab villages ofthe Nakba; a timeline of Western imperialism and racism that extends from WorldWar One, and its aftermath in both Europe and the Middle East, to the West’sbacking of the “solution” of the Israeli colonial project. But since 1948 ithas been the Palestinian people who have been expected to pay the price of thisimperialism and racism. Palestinians, including refugees, have shown theirdetermination not to pay this price.

Many in the Australian Greens have become frustrated withthis situation, and the perceived excessive dominance of the issue in recentparty debate. But it is history that has placed the Israel-Palestine conflict,and the Middle East generally, at the centre of world politics. The Greens mustdecide whether to be relevant in this issue, and engage dynamically with thePalestinians in their struggle, the wider Arab revolution of which it is part,and with the developing opposition within Israel. This struggle will intensify inthe medium term as Israel, the US and their allies reject the UN Palestinianbid. Following through with support of the bid and its rejection willconfront the Greens with the need to engage further with these dynamics on theground. This would inevitably bring the Greens into further conflict withthe pro-Israelistance of Australia’s foreign policy establishment. The Greens mustavoid the temptation to adopt a static, small-target approach for reasons ofelectoral safety, and follow through, showing the same determination as in theasylum seeker debate, and confronting the inconvenient truths of the conflict,such as the Palestinian right of return.

End times for democracy? How the 1% staged a coup & why worse is yet to come

2011-11-19T10:06:00.001+11:00

'Don't forget who runs your economy now.'

For the 1 percent who rule society, democracy seems morethan ever a hindrance to ensuring that the most calamitous economic crisissince the 1930s is paid for by the 99 percent below them. The most obviousexpression of this is the installation of unelected technocrats as primeminister in Greece and Italy, in order to keep the countries’ governmentsfirmly on the path of ever-deeper austerity programs designed to keep those ubiquitous“markets” happy.

It is here that we can see Lenin’s statement that “politicsis a concentrated expression of economics” playing itself out concretely as acrisis of production and debt has mutated into a crisis of the political class,the state, and national sovereignty.

Democracy: Going,going, gone?

Behind all the platitudes being mouthed about the potentialfor economic mandarins to seriously address these interlocked emergencies,there remains the stubborn fact that in each country the problem was apolitical elite unable to maintain a social consensus for the brutality beinginflicted to keep the Eurozone together. Inneither country was there an election and nor in each case did the leader evenlose a vote of confidence on the floor of Parliament. Indeed, in Greece GeorgePapandreou won such a vote only to immediately step down in favour of a “governmentof national unity” headed by a little-known neoliberal bureaucrat.

The only legitimacy accessed by Papademos and Monti has beena negative one, based in the deepunpopularity and lack of authority of all sections of the political classacross Europe. It is a situation where thefactions of the Greek far Left together hold better poll results than either ofthe two main parties, and where Berlusconi was so deeply discredited thathis premiership may have collapsed even without the pressure coming from Berlin,Paris and bond holders.

Left Flank has arguedbefore that 2011 has been a year of global resistance from below on a scalenot seen since 1968, but one key feature of any such conjuncture will bemanoeuvres by ruling elites to head off and break rebellion through a mixtureof coercion and consent.

The imposition of technocratic rule is just one of themechanisms available in a period of sharp crisis, and it is neither new nor asign that the ruling class can necessarily impose its will. As Marx argued in 1853in relation to a period of “technical” rule in Britain, “The best thing perhapsthat can be said in favour of the Coalition [technical] Ministry is that itrepresents impotency in [political] power at a moment of transition.” However,the experience of Weimar Germany suggests that such subversion of liberaldemocracy can also lead to the imposition of ever more authoritarian forms ofgovernment, ever further from the niceties of popular consent. We are not thereyet, and it would be wrong to overplay rumours that the Greek generals arethinking of staging a military coup, for which there is little evidence atpresent. It’s not that such moves may not be attempted if things get worse, butto raise excessive fears about their prospect can easily feed an argument thatthe Left should accede to a very real technocratic coup so as to try to dodgeauthoritarianism down the track.

These events have occurred concurrently with new attacks onthe Occupy movement across the United States, where it has emerged that Mayorsinvolved in the coordinated crackdown colluded not just with each other butthe US Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.

Conservative forces have also played their hand in relationto the Arab Spring. Western Powers gained new legitimacy thanks to the NATOintervention in Libya, with sections of the Syrian democracy movement lookingto a similar deal with the devil. Yet while direct Western interventionlooks less likely, the key players in the region — brought together in theGulf Cooperation Council, throwing its weight around via influence within theArab League — are seeking to divert movements from below and to drive awedge against a key opponent, Iran. Nobody should shed a tear if Basharal-Assad falls, but to see foreign meddling in his downfall as innocent of suchdynamics would be naïve.

Imperialism is not just something that happens in thedeveloping world. You can see it in the imposition of ECB/IMF rule on Greeceand Italy and in other machinations at the top of the Eurozone hierarchy. AngelaMerkel told her CDU party’s conference that the monetary union needed new rulesto impose even tougher fiscal discipline on member states, underthe banner of “closer integration”. And Finland’s Europe Minister hascalled for the six Triple-A rated economies in the Eurozone tobe given extra powers to dictate what happens in the 11 non-core economiesand new entrants, over the heads of locally elected governments.

{Source: FT.com}

The far Right on anew terrain

The current crisis is so serious that such manoeuvres maywell come to nothing. There is a real prospect of Greece (and/or some othercountry) defaulting on its debt and exiting the Euro. If the existing elitestructures cannot provide a clear path out of the crisis, there are darkerforces hoping to win support for more authoritarian solutions. For example,Dutch hard Right populist Geert Wilders has startedto publicly talk about taking his country out of the Euro, and Frenchpresidential candidate Marine LePen — of the fascist National Front — hasbeen gainingmainstream traction through her party’s objection to the single currency.In Greece the far Right LAOS party has joined the government of national unity.

Meanwhile, Germany has been partly distracted from theEurozone crisis by revelationsthat a Nazi terrorist group operated for a decade underthe nose of state security agencies, while carrying out a series of brutalanti-immigrant murders. And Norwegian fascist Anders Breivik has appeared inopen court and been granted media access while he awaits his trial. Despite attimes ludicrous media attempts to situate his act of mass murder in crudepsychological terms, hecontinues to state he is a “resistance fighter” against Islam’s destructionof Europe via the encouragement of multiculturalism by the “cultural Marxists”of the centre-Left.

It was issues like these that Guy Rundle and I discussedwith Phillip Adams on ABC Radio National’s LateNight Live the other night (the interview can be podcasted here),in line with the argument developed in our e-book, On Utøya: Anders Breivik, Right Terror, Racism and Europe(available here).One key point I raised was the fact that in extreme socioeconomic crises, whenlarge sections of the middle class are — in Trotsky’s term — drivento despair by the destruction of their aspirations and livelihoods, fascistideas can gain a mass hearing and apparently isolated individuals like Breivikcan act as a beacon to growing networks of extremists as they prosecute theargument that only an extreme nationalist solution will resolve the crisis.

The point is not to see the accession of the far Right topower as imminent (it is not) but to understand that it is not inevitable that liberaldemocracy can reassert control in a situation where the social basis for it hasbeen so dramatically undermined. There is no guarantee that existing politicalclasses and state elites can restore stability in such a precarious situation,and certainly not without resort to extreme measures that open the way for moresinister actors to play a role.

Resistance andpolitics

The coming period raises decisive questions not just aboutthe ability of ordinary people to resist the effects of the crisis but aboutwhat sort of politics are needed to give them the best chance of pointing a wayout. Any such approach must start from a position of refusal to surrender to “thedictatorship of the markets”, to stand with every social struggle against theausterity measures being demanded and to argue that the 99 percent have theright to reject any practical culpability for the crisis.

Already there have been massanti-government protests in Greece, on the anniversary of the 1973 student uprisingagainst military rule, as well as inItaly, against a “bankers’ government”. Occupy London has to date defiedan eviction notice and even expandedthe protest into a nearby empty building owned by financial giant UBS. Anythought that the SCAF had strangled the key movement of the Arab Spring wasalso upset as oneof the biggest protests since February filled Cairo’s Tahrir Square andother Egyptian cities. This doesn’t come out of nowhere, as workers’strikes have spread and grown dramatically in recent months, underliningthe growing social dynamic to the revolution.

But beyond this there is no formula for how this plays outpolitically. Lenin also famously said that Marxists should engage in “concreteanalysis of the concrete situation”, and that “politics must take precedenceover economics”. The Left is very weak internationally despite there-energising influence of the last 12 months. For example, notwithstanding thebrilliant Indignados movement inSpain, the Left remains relatively marginal when it comes to the forthcomingelections, in which the conservative pro-austerity PP is expectedto win a massive majority. In part this reflects the way that electoralpolitics tend to lag social movement activity, but it is also a legacy of thefragmentation of opposition to austerity, with the trade unions havingsurrendered to PSOE’s attacks and the 15M movement (understandably butmistakenly) reacting to this with an outright rejection of political partiesand unions, thereby partly abandoning the field to existing political actors.

Yet Greece shows that something different is possible. Notonly has the radical Left grown in influence, the argument of a section of thatLeft for debt default, exit from the single currency and a radical program ofnationalisation, capital controls and other progressive measures has beenwidely discussed. In this way, there has been a serious Left response to themost unavoidable concrete fact of the crisis: The fragile position of the keyEuropean neoliberal project of the last two decades — monetary union. Itis around this axis that all other questions pivot as ruling classes around theEurozone scramble to save the project, at the cost of social devastation.

As Costas Lapavitsas and his team at SOAS have cogentlyargued in their latestreport on the Eurozone crisis (and as Lapavitsas argued in a major debateat the Historical Materialism conference in London last week), such an actionprogram would not be a solution in and of itself, but could act as a bridge torebuilding a confident and politically-focused struggle for socialism basedinside the working class. The idea remainscontroversial, particularly because forsome on the Left it is mistakenly seen as caving in to nationalism, but it targetsthe glaring weak point of European capitalism and its austerity-focusedpoliticians and technocrats.

This is exactly the kind of revitalised, concrete, strategicLeft politics that needs to be fused with mass resistance already emerging inresponse to the current crisis. Otherwise we risk being dragged ever closer tothe social hell our rulers seem to have no clear alternative to demanding ofus. This is the challenge we face.

A Left Flank dispatch from Europe: The ‘descent into chaos’ begins

2011-11-10T21:56:00.001+11:00

If the last week’s bizarre political contortions in Greece —first a referendum, then not, then a government of national unity, now moreuncertainty — were not enough, the spread of contagion to Italy threatens evengreater turmoil. As we arrived in London we were greeted by the Financial Times informing us that SilvioBerlusconi had (finally) agreed to resign as PM, but apparently in part so hecould maintain a hope of running for the top job yet again in early elections.

The relief among European financial elites that once againthey had imposed political change over the heads of any kind of sovereigndemocratic decision-making by the people of individual European nations (let’srecall that both Greece and now Italy have accepted IMF and European CentralBank mandarins to “monitor” and oversee their domestic finances), rapidlycrumbled and the Evening Standardheadline by late afternoon laid bare the seriousness of the situation. As oneFacebook friend said, it’s EurapocalypseNow.

Perhaps in Australia, where we’ve weathered the worst of theglobal crisis, the faltering authority of our political class can appear (onlyappear) to be a function of contingent, extra-economic factors, but in Europethere is no mistaking that it is a crisis of political economy, astop UBS economist George Magnus was at pains to point out in August,invoking a famous quote from Karl Marx’s Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy:

At a certain stage ofdevelopment, the material productive forces of society come into conflict withthe existing relations of production or — this merely expresses the same thingin legal terms — with the property relations within this framework ofwhich they have operated hitherto

For pretty much the best account of how the global economiccrisis, the post-2007 unravelling of the debt-driven era of financialisedcapitalism that we’ve lived through (and which in Australia has been held instasis thanks to a mixture of stimulus and resources export markets in China)as it applies to Europe, you can do no better than read the three reports bythe SOAS London based Research on Money and Finance group released over thelast couple of years. The third has just come out and they are downloadable here.

To briefly sum up, the problems in the Eurozone are primarilycaused by the way that the construction of a new international reserve currencyto compete with the US dollar has exacerbated inequalities between “core” and“peripheral” Eurozone nations. This has seen the German ruling class’ cuts toits workers’ real wages give it a massive competitive advantage over poorercapitalisms such as Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal (and now even Italy).That process led to Germany effectively becoming the chief creditor to theincreasingly indebted periphery, and when the GFC broke these disparities cameto a head, especially as private debts rapidly became sovereign debt throughmassive taxpayer-funded bailouts of the banks and financial system.

Thus, claims that the ordinary people of Greece and otherperipheral countries have been “living beyond their means” are pure eliteideology, designed to get ordinary people to accept endless austerity in orderto save a monetary project that has always been about shoring up the interestsof European capital and not European workers. The current crisis also exposeshow the most powerful European capitalisms (Germany and France in particular)have gained the most from the arrangement, leaving the peripheral nationstrapped in an impossible debt spiral. But peripheral ruling elites feel evermore tied to the Euro the worse things get, fearing that being outside the tentwill leave them more exposed to both their competitiveness problem and theanger of their own populations. At the same time, the post-2007 crisis nowthreatens to disrupt and possibly destroy that hierarchy, as Greece approachesdefault and possible Eurozone exit.

The great thing about the RMF reports, and especially thelatest one, is that they are not primarily concerned about the fortunes ofGreek capitalism in such a situation, but how the pressing social questionscreated by the crisis can be addressed. And so they should, as arecent report in the leading international medical journal The Lancet ha shown that the crisis hasbeen a disaster for the health of ordinary Greeks, concluding, “It reminds usthat, in an effort to finance debts, ordinary people are paying the ultimateprice: losing access to care and preventive services, facing higher risks ofHIV and sexually transmitted diseases, and in the worst cases losing theirlives.” Anotherreport in the same journal has shown a sharp rise in suicidality.

Costas Lapavitsas and his RMF co-authors argue that defaultand exit from the Eurozone is the best option for ordinary Greeks, but for itto truly address issues of social justice there would have to be immediate nationalisationof banks and a shift in power from capital to organised labour. They spell outthe beginnings of a serious transitional program: A response to the crisis frombelow around which ordinary people can be mobilised.

In the UK things are not quite as dire, but within hours ofarriving we caught part of a 10,000-strong studentprotest against Con-Demattacks on the education system. This is the first major studentmobilisation of the new academic year and follows the wave of radical protestsand occupations of late 2010. Since then there have also been mass unionprotests (including strikes) against the government’s harsh austerity programand 30 November is set to be the largest national work stoppage since theGeneral Strike of 1926. It will involve significant strikes by health workersagainst cuts and privatisations within the NHS. Occupy London continues at twosites near the heart of the City of London.

The ideological ferment is considerable. A talk by Canadianpolitical scientist David McNally — on the topic of his new book, Monsters of the Market: Zombies, Vampiresand Global Capitalism — packed out a lecture room at Kings Collegelast night. David’s arrival in the UK seems to have coincided with the gatheringof clouds over the Eurozone. As someone once wrote, “It was a dark and stormynight…”

Left Flank in London

2011-11-07T18:49:00.000+11:00

Tad and Elizabeth are bothpresenting conference papers at this year’s Historical Materialism conference,held in Central London later this week. UK readers can register for the conference here.

This is the abstract for Tad’spaper Beyond critical psychiatry: Towards a materialist account of mentalillness:

Afterdecades of dominance, biological psychiatry faces a crisis of legitimacy andthe emergence of new critical perspectives within and outside the profession.Some have even questioned basic philosophical assumptions of psychiatricresearch and practice. This growing critique is particularly evident in debatesover the diagnosis of depression, a condition whose prevalence and treatmenthas risen dramatically in the neoliberal era, and whose validity isincreasingly under challenge. Yet, despite at times offering radical insights,such critiques fail to provide a thoroughgoing rethinking of the mainstreampsychiatric project. A Marxist approach, drawing especially on the work ofValentin Voloshinov and Peter Sedgwick, must start by integrating four keyinsights to move beyond the limits of critical psychiatry’s current scope: (1)The critique of medical individualism as the basic organising principle ofclinical practice, (2) the conceptualisation of emotion and cognition asemerging at the boundary between the (biological) subject and society, (3) thenature of health and illness, “mental” and “physical”, as social constructions,and (4) the indissoluble link between identification of illness and the socialpractice of treatment. The integration of these concepts within a materialistaccount of the rise of depression locates it in a dynamic, contested space atthe intersection of powerful corporate and state interests, the reductivebiological horizons of capitalist medicine, and the growing social distressproduced by three decades of neoliberalisation — as well as growing subalternopposition to their effects. Such an account can act as a framework for furtherinvestigations into mental health and illness in the context of projects forsocial transformation, as well as contributing to alternative heuristics inpsychiatric research.

This is the abstract forElizabeth’s paper Understood in their ‘originality anduniqueness’: Locating Gramsci’s organic intellectuals in the Australian GlobalJustice movement:

AntonioGramsci articulated the category of ‘organic intellectuals’ to describeindividuals whose role is ‘as constructor, organiser, “permanent persuader”,’providing leadership within hegemonic projects to forge a ‘popular collectivewill’. Gramsci linked this construct to that of ‘The Modern Prince’, astrategic centre (or party) within subaltern hegemonic movements, bringingtogether organic intellectuals within a common project. While these generalconceptions have been much discussed, they have less commonly been utilised inthe concrete study of modern social movements. The emergence of the GlobalJustice Movement (GJM) in the late 1990s seems to provide a fertile context inwhich to examine the relevance of Gramsci’s theoretical approach, especially asthe movement possessed clear anti-systemic characteristics and rapidly drewtogether diverse social forces around common concerns and aims (both within andacross national boundaries). In the weeks after the Seattle protests of late1999 it led Stephen Gill to proclaim the emergence of a ‘Post-Modern Prince’which sought ‘to develop a global and universal politics of radical(re)construction’. Contra Gill, Matthew D Stephen pointed to the limitations ofthe GJM’s model of ‘unity in diversity’ vis-à-vis Gramsci’s problematic, notingespecially Gill’s silence on the role of organic intellectuals in cohering themovement’s direction. Drawing on analysis of interviews with leading activistsfrom the Australian GJM, this paper demonstrates the utility of Gramsci’scategories. It highlights the crystallisation of a layer of movement ‘networkers’— akin to organic intellectuals — from within the various sectors of themovement but whose orientation was to build a wider movement transcending thosesectoral divisions. It also points to the limitations of their development whenthe GJM fell into decline, their inability to collectively respond to the challengesfaced by the movement, and ultimately the inability of the movement to producea self-conscious ‘Modern Prince’ to take it forward. It confirms Stephen’sassessment of Gill’s premature celebration of the GJM, but also — followingGramsci — suggests the potential for a deeper development of anti-systemicmovements through a conscious focus on uniting movement networkers as a centralaim of building an effective strategic centre.

Australia’s #occupy protests: When ‘politics’ is no longer just a game played by elites

2011-11-04T09:35:00.001+11:00

Occupy Sydney: photo by Kate Ausburn

This week ABC’s The Drum published an article by Tad on the Occupy Movement and the demand from many that it list its 'demands'. Below is the article in full. Tad was also interviewed on ABC Brisbane about this question.

It's been remarkable to see the sheer number of public lectures and admonishments - delivered by assorted politicians, pundits, bloggers and Tweeters - that Australia's #occupy activists have had to endure since they started their protests on October 15.
Indeed, there is a glaring contradiction in the fact that so much attention has been paid to a movement by detractors who also claim it is irrelevant to local conditions and therefore has no chance of attracting wider recognition.

You'd think the protesters had launched an armed insurrection to overthrow modern civilisation from the hysterical tone of some conservative critics, who have also lavished praise on aggressive police operations to evict camps in Melbourne and Sydney. Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle, for example, justified the crackdown not just with invective against protesters ("a self-righteous, narcissistic, self-indulgent rabble" and "a hard core of serial and professional protesters, hell-bent on trouble") but also (twice in one article) made the bizarrely inflated claim that the protesters were holding the entire city "to ransom".

Others soon joined the fray, spraying ridicule and anger at those daring to find systemic problems of inequality and lack of democracy in our society. Gerard Henderson complained that the protests were merely a reflection of left-wing "narcissism", not noting the irony of devoting an entire SMH op-ed to draw attention to this fact. Perhaps most disturbingly, the Daily Telegraph's Tim Blair went as far as advocating water cannon, torture techniques and even Wicker Man style witch-burning to deal with protesters in an apparently "satirical" attack on the movement. Even many, like Treasurer Wayne Swan, who acknowledged that the movement was pointing to real social problems, felt the need to criticise it for descending into "violence" (here defined as doing something other than disbanding your protest the moment the authorities tell you to).

Yet relatively small and not especially militant protests captured much attention. The key to understanding why is, as I have argued elsewhere, in the fact that:
The protesters occupying public space may still only have the passive support of large sections of the Australian population, but they have done something very important - given a voice and shape, however inchoate, to a new culture of resistance and rebellion. By doing so they have also exposed a crisis of authority from which our rulers are no longer immune.
To grasp why this is, it is important to dispense with one of the most erroneous claims made against the movement, retailed by its conservative haters as well as some progressive voices keen to point out its deficiencies. Put simply, these critics claim that the movement lacks politics, by which they mean easily defined demands or policy prescriptions.

Why demanding demands is a road to nowhere

At first sight, the #occupy movement has been frustratingly short of what is these days commonly understood as a political program, instead mostly producing consensus statements about what is wrong without articulating a clear agenda for what should be done about it. Yet, rather than being an immediate liability, this actually reflects a strength in the current circumstances, and in fact points to how the movement's politics are actually more significant than the bread and circuses we get from Canberra and the commentariat.

Firstly, this is a brand new movement, united by the belief that there are deep systemic issues that lie behind rising poverty and inequality, and that social and political institutions have been subordinated to corporate interests, thereby rendering them unrepresentative of the vast majority. This is the politics summed up in the slogan, "we are the 99 per cent". It is therefore inane to argue that it must also immediately have a simple, digestible set of policies to deal with problems on such a scale. The very open nature of the protests, their invitation for people to join working groups and assemblies to debate alternatives, is a statement about the need for a genuine democracy. By stipulating that the movement have a ready-made program, critics also reflect their view of "democracy" as work done by minorities in opaque back rooms, with a complete lack of public involvement.

Secondly, there is often an exhortation that the movement should repackage its anti-systemic critique into piecemeal reform proposals that can easily be inserted into the machinations of mainstream parties. This was the kind of line taken by some progressive critics of the protests. Yet such an approach would automatically defeat the purpose of the movement, which has been to call attention to the fact that more radical change is needed. Such a line of argument reflects the way that politics, government and economics have been reduced to a kind of "technocratic managerialism" in the neoliberal era, where markets must be allowed to operate on their own steam and policy is about making small, (allegedly) ideology-free tweaks to get better outcomes.

As Slavoj Zizek warns, the protests should be wary of false friends who argue that the movement should come out and support progressive agendas being run from above, as Bill Clinton has in both praising the protests and saying they should get behind the Obama jobs plan. Zizek argues:
What one should resist at this stage is precisely such a quick translation of the energy of the protest into a set of concrete pragmatic demands. Yes, the protests did create a vacuum - a vacuum in the field of hegemonic ideology, and time is needed to fill this vacuum in a proper way, as it is a pregnant vacuum, an opening for the truly new.
Thirdly, the protests are not a break with politics-in-general, but with a specific kind of politics: That of the official political system. Such a phenomenon can be seen most clearly in the Spanish indignados movement, where fury with political parties and trade unions led to a ban on all organised and visible involvement by such organisations in the occupations. But in all cases around the world there is a clear sense that really existing structures of liberal democracy have failed; that popular sovereignty has no expression through the "usual channels". In Spain the slogans "Real Democracy Now!" and "No-one represents us!" captured this sentiment adroitly. Thus, a refusal to "come to the party" and play the game like the politicians do is a powerful rejection of official politics, which at the same time opens the space for a politics from below, where ordinary people debate and decide their own futures rather than leaving it in the hands of a political class that serves the rich and powerful.

Finally, the movement's anti-systemic critique, however embryonic, is tied up with the notion that an alternative is both necessary and possible. Thus, accusations of utopianism are really beside the point because in this context they really mean demanding that alternatives must not be entertained. Liberal shadow minister Christopher Pyne got closer to this than many of those hostile to #occupy when he argued on ABC's Q&A that opposing capitalism was wrong because the only possible alternative was 20th Century Communism - i.e. Stalinism. But, as Zizek points out:
The only sense in which the protesters are communists is that they care for the commons - the commons of nature, of knowledge - which are threatened by the [capitalist] system.
In the context of a deep and mutating crisis of the global economy that has robbed even the ruling elites of confidence that they can repair the situation in their own interests, the refusal of demands and the positing of alternatives have been able to demand the attention of millions of people. The absurdity of the critics who "demand demands" is that they have been forced to recognise and respond to the movement so hysterically, thereby disproving their own contention that it is irrelevant until it plays the games they prefer. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a more relevant movement in Australian society than this one - right here, right now.

Where the real challenges lie

There is, however, an important sense in which a strategic debate over demands will be inevitable within the movement as it develops - but one that must build on the movement's fundamental social critique rather than negate it (as mainstream critics would prefer). It is essential, then, to read the recent debate and subsequent comments on Overland Journal's blog, where activists thoughtfully discuss exactly these problems from an insider perspective. While I completely disagree with Mike Stuchbery's view that the movement should orient on giving itself the "best possible shot at winning some concessions from government and corporations", reducing it to an NGO-like pressure group, he also raises something that supporters of the movement have often not addressed - the role of demands in mobilising active supporters.

This is especially vital because for the movement to grow in strength it needs to draw in much wider layers of the 99 per cent. The evictions in Melbourne and Sydney, and now the scenes of police terror in Oakland, show that, unless the movement gets bigger and better rooted, governments will try to break it through the use of force against small groups of protesters. One reason the Wall Street camp has been so successful is that has rapidly managed to inspire and draw in significant sections of organised labour. It is here that the question of "demands" takes on a new meaning - in terms of finding ways to articulate the movement's anti-systemic critique with the concrete situation ordinary people - the 99 per cent - find themselves in.

Even in Manhattan this has been an underdeveloped feature of the movement, as was explored in a fascinating debate on Left strategy and #OWS held two weeks ago. The formation of a Demands Working Group has attracted controversy within the movement but reflects an attempt to address these strategic needs.

UK writer and activist Anindya Bhattacharyya (recently arrested while reporting on the Wall Street protests) has argued that effective demands:
Should be addressed diagonally, ie to both the ruling elite and the popular movement simultaneously, or more precisely, they should formally pose a demand addressed to the elite, but actually raise a slogan that engages and resonates with the movement - mobilising it and thereby subjectivating it from within.
Reversing the old Situationist concept that one should "be realistic and demand the impossible", Bhattacharyya calls for slogans that are technically feasible but considered completely unrealistic within official political discourse. Rather than simply accept what "concessions" elites are prepared to give, this kind of "demand forces its own possibility and reconfigures the frame of what is considered 'realistic'."

There is no formula for such demands - they come from the concrete situations in which people find themselves. But one could imagine the Australian #occupy movement demanding, for example, a complete end to mandatory detention of asylum seekers, or a big rise in taxes on corporations and the rich, or guaranteed paid employment for all adult citizens, or the replacement of the failed superannuation system with properly funded government pensions, or massive government investment in renewable energy and public transport - shutting down carbon-emitting industries as these come on line.

Yes, these are "demands", and ones the #occupy movement may choose to consider in order to spread its reach and strengthen itself. But while they are all within the realm of what's "possible" and "necessary", they are certainly not what critics will see as being politically "realistic". The importance of such demands is that they start with the idea that we cannot trust the 1 per cent to be nicer to us if we simply ask. Rather, such demands - and the movement itself - start by declaring that the 99 per cent must take matters into their own hands.

Qantas lock-out: The 1% declares all-out war on the 99%, and Gillard lends it a hand

2011-10-31T07:32:00.000+11:00

If there was ever any proof needed that the central concernsof the #occupy movement, about rising social inequality and injustice, and theabsence of democratic institutions willing to protect the interests of the vastmajority, surely we got it in the behaviour of Qantas management over the lastfew days — and the Gillard government’s response, which took the bait andcame down dramatically on the side of the bullying employer.

The lock-out — pre-planned but started with only amoment’s public notice just a day after a stormy AGM where big shareholdersoverwhelmingly backed CEO Alan Joyce’s 71 percent pay rise and the board’sstrategic direction — also demonstrates how Australia is not immune fromgrowing economic and political instability internationally. Within thiscontext, there is the likelihood of this dispute accelerating popular anger atthe corporate elite and exacerbating the crisis of authority of the politicalclass and the state. And, given the high-stakes game that Joyce is playing, theresult will play an important role in shaping future resistance to the effectsof the crisis from below.

Qantas: A high-stakespre-emptive strike

By acting in such a belligerent manner towards the threegroups of unionised workers (pilots, engineers and ground staff) currentlypursuing bargaining, Joyce is enacting a long-run strategy to increase Qantasprofitability by devolving a large chunk of its operations into low-costsubsidiaries, some located offshore, to take advantage of lower wages andoperating costs. But it is also about screwing more out of its existing Australianworkforce through restructuring and raising the rate of exploitation. AsCrikey’s airlines analyst BenSandilands puts it, this is about the “shutting down of what the currentmanagement sees as unaffordable excellence in its full service operations”.This is what lies behind management bluster that the unions are being“unreasonable” — for workers to be “reasonable” here would mean acceptingwholesale cuts to jobs, wage and conditions and, perhaps more alarmingly, safetystandards.

The hysteria over industrial action generated by Qantasspokespeople, the media (including the ABC) and certain politicians iscompletely at odds with what has actually happened in workers’ struggle for amodest wage rise and some guarantees about job security. Qantas has takenads and briefed a pliant news media about “chaos” after unions have given thelegally-mandatory three day warning of protected action, while simultaneouslyusing social media to ensure its passengers come a little earlier or later tothe airport to make a flight, thuscausing minimal inconvenience. This explains the spectacle of reporterstalking of “union-caused disruptions” in front of perfectly calm terminalactivity — something that cannot be said of the current lock-out.

At least Joyce was being honest on Inside Business when headmitted this was not about Qantas facing an imminent financial crisis dueto union action or competition, but about preparing for the future. He claims majorlosses from the carrier’s international arm in the context of increased globalcompetition as a key factor in seeking a restructure with major concessionsfrom the workforce. However, thanks to opaque accounting practices, managementclaims that within a $552 million profit last financial year there was a $200million loss from Qantas’ international operations are impossible to substantiate.Given combined domestic, regional and international operations supplied $228million of the total profits, thisseems to be a highly unlikely figure. Attemptsto drill through extant figures suggest there may be more than a littlefancy accounting at play.

More importantly, there is clear evidence that it ismanagement strategy more than anything that has — intentionally,inadvertently or through bad luck — led to the rapid shrinkage of Qantas’international market to just 18 percent of people coming and going to and fromAustralia. By focusing its European business through London, forcing lengthyand frustrating transfers onto BA flights, Qantas has seen its customers desertit in favour of airlines that fly one-stop to multiple European cities.Recently Qantas also traded routes with BA to cutthe number of QF flights to Heathrow to just two a day.

Qantas is engaged in a race to the bottom on wages,conditions and safety because of increased domestic and internationalcompetition driven by the emergence of low-cost “no-frills” airlines,competitive state-backed carriers in Asia in the Middle East, and the pressurefrom other traditional airlines having to cut costs in response themselves. An MITanalysis from four years ago noted that the first half of the 2000s wasmarked by massive losses across the global airline industry. This led tomassive restructuring and a return to profitability by 2006, but manytraditional carriers were now facing even tougher competition with low-cost airlinesthat had higher labour productivity based on more “flexible” workingconditions, direct to customer internet sales structures, and higher rates ofseat utilisation. This situation has accelerated in the context of the globaleconomic crisis, with majorcuts to jobs and conditions marking the immediate post-GFC period. Asformer Qantas chief economist Tony Webber haspointed out, the privatisation of Qantas has also left it more exposed tocompetitive pressures in the international market than state-owned traditionalcarriers, which form just one part of a wider state capitalist project. Webberhas subsequently arguedfor nationalisation of Qantas’ international business.

Thus for Qantas workers, Joyce’s admonition to accept histerms to make the airline profitable and so help protect jobs in the future isthe classic big lie. Accepting the logic of a race to the bottom now will openthe way for more attacks on workers in the future, and if Qantas succeeds thatwill only spur its competitors to try on the same approach thereby driving anincreasingly hostile competitive environment. There is no win-win for both bossesand workers possible here.

The racist and/or nationalist attacks on Joyce for beingIrish (he’s an Australian citizen) or for forcing “Asianisation” on the airlineare a dangerous distraction. Defending wages, working conditions and safety isa class and not a national issue, especially as a major source of downwardpressure on Qantas workers’ wages is its domestic subsidiary, Jetstar. Similarly,concerns over the Qantas “brand” accept corporate imperatives over the rightsof the airline’s employees; it’s simply not a favourable terrain for theworkers to fight on. The problem here is an Australian company’s privateprofits being backed by the Australian state.

Crisis at the top, flickersof resistance from below

That Qantas was willing to risk so much says something aboutthe situation the Australian capitalist class finds itself in more generally,and the political weakness of the government. Dependent on indefinite Chinese pump-primingof its economy to fuel a resources boom that has left the rest of the economybehind, the business elite has become increasingly nervous about the paralysisof the Gillard government in driving serious economic reform in its interests.It is not that most Australian businesses are about to face US or Europeanstyle economic conditions, but that in an increasingly interconnected worldthey cannot fully escape the effects of crisis elsewhere.

The fact that a combination of luck, stimulus and resources exportssaved Australia from technical recession in 2008-9 has, however, led to somegroups of workers finally deciding to take on their increasingly super-richbosses, often around simple bread and butter issues. In a situation where costof living pressures run ahead of official inflation figures, workers arehoping not to get left behind. While strike numbers arestill historically very low, there have been enough disputes and a higherlevel of confidence to fight in some key industries, to worry some businesspeopleand commentators. What is especially important is how a general popular moodagainst the corporations and the government gives even relatively smallstruggles a political edge that they didn’t have before the GFC. While there isno direct connection, the emergence of mass struggle overseas — in Egyptand more recently against austerity in Europe and now the US — is clearlyframing how many ordinary people view growing talk of austerity and limits onunion rights being peddled by state and federal governments here.

As Left Flank has noted before, public opinion aroundsocioeconomic issues has generally shifted to the Left since the early 1990s,even as elite opinion has continued to shift to more emphasis on markets andthe absolute rights of private business. A recent poll has shown that largenumbers of people thinkthat the government should re-nationalise Qantas (43 percent to 34 percentagainst), as well as the Commonwealth Bank and Telstra.

More important in the short term has been Qantas’ inabilityto win the public debate. The same poll last week showed that morepeople mostly blamed management (36 percent) than workers (13 percent) forthe dispute, although 37 percent blamed both equally. This shows a significantreservoir of support for the workers’ actions that can be built on now thatJoyce has engaged in such an open act of class war. Interestingly, only24 percent thought the government should intervene, roughly the same acrossall parties’ voters. Yet this is what some state premiers called for and thatJoyce has precipitated with the lock-out: A ruling from Fair Work Australia toterminate all industrial action and force the issue to arbitration. Thisdemonstrates how even in this “deregulated” era the ruling class depends onstate institutions to enforce its interests, even if that means forcing thehand of an ineffectual minority government. This is also about limiting whatthe dispute is over, as it seems likely that some of the issues around jobsecurity and restructuring may fall outside what can legally be arbitrated.

The Fair Work Act ties unions to complex procedures aboutwhen they can take action legally. In the case of this dispute, we can see how unionsmust give employers three days notice of action while in response bossescan lock-out at a moment’s notice and with less need to inform various parties.In addition, termination includes denying workers’ one bargaining chip— their ability to withdraw their labour — and this is what Joyce managedto engineer here.

Gillard dances to the Qantas tune

Despite weasel words about “not taking sides”, the Gillardgovernment applied for exactly the thing that Joyce wants and his lawyers saythey will accept as a minimum— termination of action. This is what “acting in the national interest”really means. Even in the case of a (temporary) “suspension” of industrialaction, Joyce could have continued to ground planes for operational “safety”reasons even without officially calling it a lock-out (and his lawyersthreatened to do so, this making the judges worry that a suspension rulingwould only prove the FWA’s impotence before a major company hell-bent ondefeating its workforce). But there was a risk in such a scenario for Joycebecause the unions could have portrayed themselves as victims of Qantasbastardry.

But the fate of Qantas workers cannot rely on publicgoodwill alone. To date the unions’ strategy has been to threaten strikes butdeliver only limited action. The pilots have engaged in purely symbolicprotests. While union leaders seem to have been prepared that Joyce might trysomething like this on, it is not clear how much they are willing to challengethe legal restrictions on them. Their ties to the ALP, and defensiveness about theLabor government’s rolling crisis, as well as their historic subservience toarbitral processes, don’t bode well. On the other hand, while I am not privy tohow Qantas workers feel more generally, it seems unlikely that after years ofpassivity their union leaders have actually led something of a fight without therehaving been a shift in the mood among the rank-and-file. Given the high stakes,they may want to take action that a year or two ago would’ve been unthinkable,even if their leaders are not happy with the prospect.

It’s important to locate this in the context of the crisisof authority being suffered by the ALP. It is not the case, asLaura Tingle suggests, that this is a straightforward chance for Gillard torecover. Labor remains committed to an industrial relations system thatmassively disadvantages workers through legal restrictions on their collectiverights. ALP ministers were angry not because Joyce was attacking workers, but becausehe didn’t come to the government first.

Gillardmade crystal clear that acting “in the national interest” meant resolvingthe dispute through “termination”, thus putting Joyce in a stronger position todictate the outcome. It is this that Greens MP and former union lawyer AdamBandt slated home in hisattack on the Fair Work Act as a piece of anti-union legislation yesterday.How this can strengthen Gillard’s political position — except perhaps fora brief blip by appearing “decisive” — is beyond me. It is preciselyLabor’s open abandonment of its traditional base to the interests of bigbusiness that explains its decline. Whether it can politically control unionofficials in pushing this through, or whether the officials themselves canbottle anger at such a result (which appears to be their intent by initiallygoing along with the FWA ruling) is also not clear.

But the crisis means that it is much more likely that anti-systemicideas of the sort that have fuelled the #occupy protests — however embryonic atthis stage — will shape people’s responses to Qantas and governmentactions. Even mainstream commentators have been noting how the Qantas boardhave exposed themselves as part of the 1 percent that #occupy protests aretargeting. Now it is clearer than ever that we have government for the 1percent also.

But in another sense this is just the beginning, and notjust because if Joyce gets most of what he wants in arbitration he will proceedwith a nasty restructuring which can end up provoking further industrialconflict. The pressures that have led to this dispute can only acceleratewithout a resolution to the global economic crisis. Those pressures have notjust made aggressive employer actions to maintain competitiveness more likely,but they undermine the authority of a political class which has spent the last30 years repeating the mantra that submitting Australia to neoliberalrestructuring would bring prosperity and certainty for all. Instead they havecreated a society where inequality, injustice, and insecurity rule, and thelegal structure of the state is stacked against the 99 percent.

Collingwood supporters and other 'bogans'

2011-10-28T10:55:00.003+11:00

St Kilda player Stephen Milne provoking the Collingwood cheer squad, as reported by a Federal Court Judge part of the squad that day.

ABC’s The Drum recently published an article by me on Collingwood Supporters and class hatred, related to some of the issues I've previously discussed here at Left Flank. Below is the article in full.

Given hype from the AFL Grand Final has dissipated (and yes, congratulations Geelong supporters), perhaps we can talk about Collingwood a little. In particular, the way we refer to Collingwood supporters.

I'm a Carlton member of many years and a third generation supporter. The Collingwood-Carlton rivalry runs deep. I received a single SMS from my brother after the Grand Final, where he said: "There is only one thing better than the Blues winning, and that is Collingwood losing". I let you know this as context for what follows.

There is a joke I used to tell about Collingwood. It goes like this:
Question: What is the difference between an Essendon and a Collingwood supporter?
Answer: Essendon supporters can read and write.

I always thought the joke was very funny, and on one level I still do. The retorts from Collingwood supporters - often about soft-skinned, blond-headed Carlton players and silver spoon-fed CEOs - always came thick and fast. As many readers would know, it is not like Collingwood supporters to be caught without an effective comeback.

But while the isolated jokes might be in jest and part of a proud tradition of the Blues' and Pies' rivalry, in the last few years they increasingly seem to come with a dose of abhorrence for working class people.

My joke is only one of dozens of similar gags I have heard over the years, but the last two grand finals have seen jokes include a rush of working class hatred to boot. They draw on common tropes levelled at the black and white army: that they are illiterate, uncouth, foul-mouthed, publicly housed, drunk, criminal and racist.

For example, Catherine Deveny tweeted before the 2010 Grand Final:
"If Collingwood wins in 9mths time there will be an epidemic of babies born with mullets, lovebites and neck tatts called Jaidyn."
And on Facebook there is a group called "What has 100 legs & 4 teeth? The front row of the Collingwood cheer squad".

Another common way of describing Collingwood supporters is that they are "bogans". On the Things Bogans Like website contributors write comments such as:

"Collingwood = Things toothless bogans like" and "The Collingwood Football Club should be spared from this site, and would be better utilised on 'Things prisoners like'".

And on Twitter during the Grand Final we had "Bogan is the best Australian word and the word usually in front of that is Collingwood fans!!!"

Collingwood Supporter is even a "term" defined on the Urban Dictionary website:
An illiterate Bogan who has little or no general knowledge on any topic to that isn't to do with Australian Rules Football. They are incappable [sic] of dealing with a loss of a game, and claim it is always the umpire's fault even though they kissed dale thomas' ass the whole way through the game. Typical ways to pass the time including getting dressed up into your favourite flannie and ugg boots, combing the mullet and going down to "norflanz" to have a drink with fellow supporters near the bus stops. While at the game, it is tradition for a supporter to have at least 12 VBs before half time. It is also important to try and pick a fight with anybody supporting an apposing team: Normal Person 'Hey what footy team do you go for?'. Collingwood Supporter 'I goes fa collingwood the best f'in team in thaa AFL, if ya doesnt like them i'll kick ya arrrrsee in!'.
The irony of the author calling Collingwood supporters illiterate and then misspelling 'incapable' (among other things) aside, the definition sums up the sort of class hatred directed at Collingwood supporters from all flanks. And it is of course only a stereotype.

It is worth noting that historically many of the inner-Melbourne AFL clubs had a good proportion of their supporter base in the working class communities of those areas.

Carlton, for example, found many followers in the newly-arrived Italian and Jewish communities. And my grandfather was a Carlton supporter who grew up in the working-class Catholic areas of Brunswick. A generation later, when my mother was a kid, and despite the grinding poverty her family lived in, each Saturday he would take her and my uncle to the Carlton game. When you have very little, football at Princes Park was an enormous treat you'd wait all week for.

Old class snobbery in new bottles

BOGAN (Wikipedia): The term bogan is Australian slang, usually pejorative or self-deprecating, for an individual who is recognised to be from a lower class background or someone whose limited education, speech, clothing, attitude and behaviour exemplifies such a background.
As I've written about before, the demonisation of the working class through the loathing of bogans in Australia (and of "chavs" in the UK) is accelerating.

Earlier this year Twitter was awash with the #boganmovies meme, which saw "jokes" like "TarGet Shorty", "The Re-producers", "XXXXorcist" and "Dude where's my baby bonus". These examples are generally representative of the ridicule-as-humour nature of the meme.

The #boganmovies tweet about Target clothes in particular, was an echo of the joke that begins Owen Jones' book Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class about Britain:
It's sad that Woolworth's is closing. Where will all the chavs buy their Christmas presents?".
As Lynsey Hanley notes in her review in The Guardian, the dinner party at which the joke was made was:
Attended by the author in 'a gentrified part of east London', at which liberal views are taken as a given and, though everyone present has a professional job, not everyone is white, male or straight.
As the promo for the book says:
The working class has gone from 'salt of the earth' to 'scum of the earth'.
And local book The Bogan Delusion, about the stereotyping of the working class, insightfully points out that:
There's nothing subtle or delightful about the various meanings of the label 'bogan': it's always a crass put down, and even the 'bogan and proud' brigade know they are wrangling a slur.

Being poor

Mostly when heaping crap on Collingwood supporters it is because they are poor, and for some reason this makes people socially objectionable. For me the only reason being poor should be unacceptable is that we live in a country of enormous wealth, with a growing gap between the wealthy and the less well-off. The bagging of Collingwood is the kind of thesis that promotes a lie that we live in a meritocracy, where the spivs from Geelong somehow deserve their victory and material lifestyle along the newly redeveloped waterfront (which is of course also an unfair stereotype), whereas the bogans from Collingwood deserve their public housing and poor dentistry.

Not only does this obscure the fact that most of us (whether we like it or not) will never be sufficiently wealthy to live as comfortably as the corporate heads who run AFL clubs, including the John Elliots and Richard Pratts of Carlton, it also makes out that some people deserve poverty. That it is something natural to the order of things, rather than a system that leaves some people out in the cold.

As the US website 'We are the 99 percent' shows, their poor are numerous and their suffering is real and extreme. Medical bills are a leading cause of bankruptcy, and defaults on home mortgages grow by the day. As is plainly obvious on the 99 per cent website, student loans are impossible for many to repay with many graduates unable find work. Although I accept things are more polarised between the haves and the have-nots in the US, things are getting worse here and the wealth gap is far greater than many of us estimate.

It is true the suffering of Eddie Maguire in the final quarter of the grand Final brought me a great deal Schadenfreude, perhaps only equalled by Jeff Kennett's face after Hawthorn's loss in the qualifying final. But that is because, mostly, they both represent the corporatisation of the AFL and the rejection of its ordinary beginnings in the communities of Melbourne. Well that and my feelings about Eddie Maguire's narcissistic misogyny over the 'boning' of Jessica Rowe, and Kennett's blatant and repeated homophobia. (As an aside, when the hell will BeyondBlue sack him for his hateful and damaging comments?)

It is not that I am saying we shouldn't joke about class, nor that these things should be out of bounds of humour, but there is a difference between humour and hatred - and in regards to working-class people it seems, of late, it is much more about the latter. Jokes about Collingwood supporters, after all, need not entail demonisation of the working class and poor. They have their own history of collywobbles to contend with, and in that alone there is plenty of funny.

But moreover, even for a Carlton supporter, not everything about Collingwood is repellent. Far from it. They are a team that that has a loyal supporter base that should, and does, make most other teams jealous. They have also won a few flags I hear. But even more wonderful is you can read Harry O'Brien standing up for global human rights, it makes me wish for just a few more players like him at Carlton. As he says, "I have had various experiences which have profoundly shaped my world view and taught me the relevance of three things - suffering, empowerment, and unity".

For me that unity is in those who want to see an end to poverty, and in those of us who see no shame at all in being working class or poor.

NOW ON SALE — 'On Utøya: Anders Breivik, right terror, racism and Europe'

2011-10-23T23:25:00.001+11:00

On Utøya: Anders Breivik, right terror, racism and Europe is now available at Amazon. An overview of the essays, and details on how to buy it, are also on our website. You don't need a Kindle or an iPad to read it — you just download a free app to your PC, Mac or android smartphone.

And for Sydney people, please join us and Senator Lee Rhiannon & Antony Loewenstein at the launch THIS WEDNESDAY:

6.30pm - Wednesday 26 October 2011 - Upstairs at the Norfolk Hotel
305 Cleveland Street. Cnr of Cleveland and Walker Streets.
See a map of the location here .

An overview of On Utøya from the publishing details...

The teenagers who gathered at Utøya that day could not imagine that they would be enrolled in the ranks of those murdered by the Right.

In a challenging new book, a collection of Australian and British writers respond to the terrorist attack by Anders Breivik, and attempts by the Right to depoliticise it.

On July 22, 2011, Anders Breivik, a right-wing writer and activist, killed more than sixty young members of the Norwegian Labour Party on Utøya island. Captured alive, Breivik was more than willing to explain his actions as a ‘necessary atrocity’ designed to ‘wake up’ Europe to its betrayal by the left, and its impending destruction through immigration.

Breivik’s beliefs – expressed at length in a manifesto, ‘2083’ – were part of a huge volume of right-wing alarmism and xenophobia that had arisen in the last decade. Yet Breivik, we were told by the Right, was simply a madman – so mad, in fact, that he had actually believed what the Right said: that Europe was in imminent danger of destruction, and extreme action was required.

On Utøya: Anders Breivik, right terror, racism and Europe is a response to this attempt to deny responsibility, and any connection of Breivik’s act to a rising cult of violence, racism, and apocalyptic language. The editors and authors shine a light on Breivik’s actions, and argue that they cannot be understood abstracted from the far Right racist and Islamophobic social and political conditions in which it emerged.

Organised, written and produced within three months of the killings, On Utøya is a challenge to anyone who would seek to portray this event as anything other than it is – a violent mass assassination, directed against the left, to terrorise people into silence and submission to a far-right agenda. It concludes with an examination of the manufacture of hate and fear in Australia, and considers what is needed in a Left strategy to deal with the growing threat of far Right organising.

Edited by Elizabeth Humphrys, Guy Rundle and Tad Tietze, with essays by Anindya Bhattacharyya, Antony Loewenstein, Lizzie O'Shea, Richard Seymour, Jeff Sparrow and the editors.

#OccupyOz captures the mood, but its critics are too busy demanding the possible to be realistic

2011-10-21T19:22:00.000+11:00

There are times when living in Australia is a bit likeliving in a bubble, sequestered from the massive economic and politicalconvulsions that have marked 2011. It is the kind of situation that allowsprominent progressive bloggers, like Greg Jericho (Grog’s Gamut) and ScottSteel (Possum Comitatus), to spew venom and ridicule at the modest run of#occupy protests that have hit capital cities in the last week. Sure, theyargue, things may be really bad in the United States where Occupy Wall Streethas become the epicentre of a rapidly growing and multifaceted social movement,but there’s no excuse for the kind of nutty, far Left indulgence of theAustralian iteration.

Don’t these protesters realise how lucky we are, how goodeconomic management by the government and RBA (with help from sound financialsector regulation), has prevented the kind of policy failures that have led toeconomic catastrophe and a 1 percent — 99 percent scenario in the US? Jerichohas also made fun ofoccupiers needing multiple working groups to organise themselves, andcompares them to Tea Party style “nutters”. Meanwhile, Possum (see his Twitter feed) has been livid thatthe protesters haven’t come up with concrete policy demands or blueprints—fulminating about their protest being “ideologically” (rather than“empirically”) driven and detracting from the hard policy slog of reformistpoliticians and bureaucrats. Their views are not so far removed from that ofthe Wall Street elite, whichhas privately rubbished the movement as “unsophisticated”.

That such vitriol is being delivered by ostensiblyprogressive writers means the Right’s job is that much easier. Of course, ithasn’t stopped The Australian takingthe argument to another level, not only reminding its readers how greatliberal capitalism is but seemingly taking inspiration from Bertolt Brecht’sline, “Would it not be easier for the government to dissolve the people andelect another?” when writing off the protesters’ grievances:

When protesters suggest 1 percent of us run the other 99 per cent, demand “human need instead of corporategreed” or claim we don't have a “real democracy”, we ought to listen. Notbecause they are right but because we should be concerned that people feel sodisengaged from the systems that support them.

Quite what this disengagement represents remainsunexplained, and it is to this that I want to turn, because in theirreactionary way The Australian’s leader writer is closer tothe mark than some of #occupy’s left-leaning critics.

The problem with the Jericho-Possum type of analysis is thatit seeks to find the cause of the US protests pretty much solely in the level of hardship being visited on thatcountry’s population by the Great Recession. Therefore, while protests areunderstandable (even if misguided) there, in Australia they are meaningless.Yet while hardship has been a major factor driving the rapid growth and spreadof the American movement, drawing in large contingents of ordinary workingpeople of different ethnic backgrounds, it cannot be understood as simply or mainlya response to some absolute level of immiseration. It is a movement thatspecifically argues these problems are the result not of bad policy choices orparticular political parties; rather, the problem is a whole system of eliterule, which has subordinated politics and government to a tiny minority’sinterests. The idea of the “1 percent” draws on specific statistics aboutpatterns of US wealth distribution over the past few decades, but it is alsoclearly meant as a descriptor of what Marxists would call a “ruling class”.

Thus it is a nonsequitur to quote statistics showing how much better off Australians arethan Americans in terms of inequality or poverty — precisely because the#occupy movement is opposed to a set of power relations that systematically create inequality andpoverty. Then again it is worrying that progressive critics are trying to makesuch a positive case about inequality and poverty here while thetop 20 percent own 60 times the wealth of the bottom 20 percent, and whenthere has been alot of worrying data released as part of Anti-Poverty Week. What exactly isit they are defending?

Occupy Sydney general assembly

Having participated in Occupy Sydney on four occasions for afew hours at a time, I am yet to meet a single activist who thinks thatAustralian conditions are identical to those in the US, but almost everyonesees these as part of systemic global processes that are stacked againstordinary people. Of course the depth of the crisis and its local consequenceshave played a role in shaping the size, social breadth and politics ofdifferent “take the square” movements internationally — for example, the highrates of unemployment among tertiary graduates in the US and Spain, or themilitancy of the unions in Greece. But the logic is the same, a reaction toglobalised neoliberal capitalism in crisis.

The social basis of aglobal movement

US foreign policy realist Stephen Walt, hardly a fringeradical, describeswell the factors that have led to the rapid spread of occupations despitethe differing conditions in various countries. He lists: (1) Economicglobalisation causing growing inequality between and within countries, (2) new technologiesallowing much more rapid spread of information, and (3) the “incompetenceand/or corruption of governing elites … and the tendency of governments to dotoo much to protect wealthy and powerful interests and not enough to helpordinary people”. Paraphrasing a colleague, he adds that, “the presentcombination of economic inequality and political gridlock is fatal to theproper functioning of democratic orders”.

Similarly, the economist Nouriel Roubini hasreflected on the wave of revolt sweeping the globe in 2011 as resultingfrom growing inequality:

Any economic model that does notproperly address inequality will eventually face a crisis of legitimacy. Unlessthe relative economic roles of the market and the state are rebalanced, theprotests of 2011 will become more severe, with social and political instabilityeventually harming long-term economic growth and welfare.

Such problems are clearly not amenable to steady-as-she-goespolicy wonkery, not even the well-meaning variety. The pattern among allWestern governments, Australia’s included, is not gradualist amelioration ofpoverty and inequality, but its intensification. Sure we are not suffering aprogram of attacks on ordinary people of the sortbeing rammed through by the Greek government at the behest of Eurozonebankers and financiers, but theGillard government’s agenda has been one of cuddling up to miningbillionaires, deferring to big polluters, and seeking to inflict punitivemeasures on welfare recipients and Indigenous people. A funny kind of reformistsocial democracy, this one.

To understand what is really happening it’s more apt to turnto the words of Antonio Gramsci, which Left Flank has quoted before to describethe current conjuncture:

In every country the process isdifferent, although the content is the same. And the content is the crisis ofthe ruling class’s hegemony, which occurs either because the ruling class hasfailed in some major political undertaking, for which it has requested, orforcibly extracted, the consent of broad masses … or because huge masses ...have passed suddenly from a state of political passivity to a certain activity,and put forward demands which taken together, albeit not organicallyformulated, add up to a revolution. A “crisis of authority” is spoken of: thisis precisely the crisis of hegemony, or general crisis of the state. (Selections from the Prison Notebooks, p.210)

In such a crisis, the description of politics as “the art ofthe possible” loses its meaning, precisely because the institutions limitingthe horizon of what is possible (parties, governments, bureaucracies) areincapable of playing this role, incapable of channelling discontent into safeand passive cul-de-sacs. Those whoseek the reasonable middle ground — who chastise radicals for being dangerousdreamers instead of hard-headed pragmatists, who pine for a return to serious elitepolicy-making, who shake their heads at governance by crisis and panic — arevictims of a situation where thecentre cannot hold.

The protesters occupying public space may still only havethe passive support of large sections of the Australian population, but theyhave done something very important — given a voice and shape, however inchoate,to a new culture of resistance and rebellion. By doing so they have alsoexposed a crisis of authority from which our rulers are no longer immune. Today’s heavy-handed response by the police in Melbourneshould not be mistaken as a sign that the state is happily reasserting control. Similarattacks on occupations in Madrid, Barcelona, Athens and New York have onlystrengthened the resolve of protesters to build their movement, and broadenedtheir support. In each case sections of the commentariat opined that this was it for the movement, but in each case they were proven wrong because the social reasons for the protests ran deep.

Comparingthe revolutions that swept Europe in 1848 with today, The Independent’s Andreas Whittam Smith argues: “There are twocharacteristics of a pre-revolutionary situation — a valuable insight widely shared[the intolerable gap that has developed between rich and poor] and theendurance of those who hold it,” before adding, “We have the first, but it isnot yet clear whether we have the second.”

The coming days, weeks and months will answer that question, both overseas and in Australia.

#occupysydney is a go

2011-10-15T18:17:00.000+11:00

Occupy Everywhere: Against capitalism and its paid prizefighters

2011-10-13T14:57:00.002+11:00

During protests in Egypt to overthrow Mubarak, aprotester displayed a handmadesign that said ‘Egypt Supports Wisconsin Workers – One World, One Pain’.

The sign broke all the rules: it was terribly written, hardto read even up close, had a confusing graphic of a wrench and cog within thewriting, and the text went in two directions. Yet it, more than anyother, flooded my Facebook and Twitter feeds.

In recent weeks as the Occupy Wall Street protests havegrown, comparisonsbetween them and the Arab Spring have been made, withsome noting ‘though the two movements have many differences, they share thesame fundamental drivers: a deep sense of injustice and invisibility’.

Yet how quick are conservatives — such as Chris Bergfrom the Institute of Public Affairs — totry and paint those who make such comparisons as ‘trite’ and ‘facile’. ‘Rebelswithout a cause indulge in delusions of revolution’, the headline to hisarticle bleats. He tells us that those protesters in the Middle East were complaining about real problems, like corruptgovernments and despotism, whereas the New Yorkers and other ring-ins on WallStreet are whingers and self absorbed. They don’t even know what a badsituation looks like.

The problem for Berg, and the many committed to neoclassicaleconomics and the neoliberal project, is that Occupy Wall Street makes clear somethingvery simple and which many have known for some time: neoliberalism and freemarket policies are deeply, deeply unpopular. Moreover, they are now biting theworking class hard and many do not want to accept the austerity measures thathave come with the recent global economic crisis, not for nothing being called‘The Great Recession’.

The free market is, after all, not so very free for the 99 percent.As David Harvey points out in A Brief History of Neoliberalism,quoting the famous political economist Karl Polanyi, ‘this neoliberal debasement of the concept of freedom “into a mereadvocacy of free enterprise” can only mean … “the fullness of freedom for thosewhose income, leisure and security need no enhancing”’. So much for thelibertarian and freedom-defending and Berg his IPAemployers.

But what are Berg, and others like him (see here,hereand here, for example),really trying to do?

They want to argue that the protests in the Middle East are legitimatebecause they concern themselves with shady and repressive dictators, but thereis nothing wrong with the economic system of capitalism that underlies it. Inthis way, Occupy Wall Street must be painted as illegitimate. Chris Berg calls the Wall Street protesters trite,small, against consumer capitalism, simply ‘annoyed’ with corporations andwanting to diminish those good Arab Spring protesters who are fighting murderand torture. And in a sleight-of-hand he also tries to elide them with theparticipants in the London Riots, saying ‘we all know’ those Brits were immoralas three quarters had criminal records.

It is telling, then, to reflect on Berg’s immediate reactionto the Egyptian Revolution. Writing at The Drum on 15 February, he claimed that Mubarak’sneoliberal reforms led to the uprising not because they had caused rapidlyrising inequality, poverty and hardship but because political reform had notfollowed great economic strides caused by trade liberalisation andprivatisations. Yet he can only cherry-pick a single statistic to make hiseconomic case, a fall in the unemployment rate from 12 to 9 percent between2003 and 2011. This hides the increases in poverty since neoliberal reformsbegan in the 1990s, it treats as an aberration the appalling concentration of wealthamong the neoliberal reformers themselves, and it ignores the devastating effects of the GFC:

… unemployment in Egypt rose andthe prices of food and fuel rocketed. For the first time since the 1970s therewere acute shortages of flour and tragic scenes in which people fighting foraccess to bread died in conflicts at street bakeries.

What events like Occupy Wall Street show is that even in theface of the extreme economic hardship in the US (see Jim Forbes piece in TheDrum going over the USmalaise), right-wing commentators like Berg have little interest in justicefor the many and will defend the right of the few to continue the extremeexploitation at the heart of US capitalism. This should not come as a surprise.The market model Berg and the gaggle at the IPA worship has made the US one of the most unequal and unhappy societieson the planet, ironically enough considerablymore unequal than Egypt. Like all good paid prize-fighters for thecapitalist class, Berg wants freedoms limited to those that won’t challenge the1 percent’s wealth and power.

Over the next few weeks Left Flank will carry more posts onOccupy Wall Street, its offshoots in other US states and other countries.

If you are reading this in Australia then you can be part ofthings at the start – here are the details for the major occupy events comingup this weekend:

e-Book launch 26 October 2011 - 'On Utøya: Anders Breivik, right terror, Islamophobia and Europe'

2011-10-05T08:32:00.005+11:00

Come and help celebrate the launch of our e-Book!
www.onutoya.com

On Utøya: Anders Breivik, right terror, racism and Europe.

6.30pm - Wednesday 26 October 2011 - Upstairs at the Norfolk Hotel
305 Cleveland Street. Cnr of Cleveland and Walker Streets.
See a map of the location here.

We are appreciative that the book will be launched by:

Lee Rhiannon, Greens Senator, Australian Parliament
Antony Loewenstein, Independent freelance journalist and author of My Israel Question

Edited by:

Elizabeth Humphrys (Left Flank blog and Sydney based writer)
Guy Rundle (columnist for Crikey and regular contributor to the Sunday Age)
Tad Tietze (Left Flank blog and writer on ABC's The Drum)

Contributors to the e-Book:

Antony Loewenstein (Independent freelance journalist and author of My Israel Question)
Anindya Bhattacharyya (London based writer and activist)
Jeff Sparrow (Editor of 'Overland Journal' and author of Killing: Misadventures in Violence)
Lizzie O'Shea (public interest litigator)
Richard Seymour (author of The Liberal Defence of Murder and creator of the blog Lenin's Tomb)
Elizabeth Humphrys
Guy Rundle
Tad Tietze

About On Utøya

Anders Behring Breivik’s murderous rampage on Utøya Island cannot be understood abstracted from the social and political conjuncture in which it emerged. The rise in far Right, racist and Islamophobic commentary, websites and organisations provide an essential context in which Brevik’s ideas developed and his actions were planned. On Utøya: Anders Breivik, right terror, racsim and Europe looks at this social context, the reaction to the event by far Right commentators, and what is needed in a Left strategy to deal with the growing threat of far Right organising.

Premature celebration? The Bolt verdict & the Left’s missing critique of the state

2011-10-01T08:14:00.000+10:00

So racist even the Federal Court found against him

In this blog post I want to argue that the Bolt verdict is aproblematic “victory” against the right-wing pundit and the Right moregenerally. Without wanting to diminish abhorrent and manifestly racistcharacter of Bolt’s attack on “fair-skinned” Aboriginal people, I think thatany celebration of the result by the Left is premature and reflects a largelyuncritical view of the state and legal system. In that respect, we can say thatthe one bright aspect to the decision is that we can say that Bolt was sodishonest, misleading and crudely racist that even the Federal Court foundagainst him. But it is hard to say more.

Not only will the result provoke an avalanche of unjustifiedright-wing hysteria about “rights” and “freedoms” in which the Left andanti-racists will be implicated as censorious and repressive, the legalstrategy (as pursued) effectively reflects the political disarming of the Leftin the face of really existing social power structures. It strengthens passivereliance on elite institutions of domination and oppression to act on behalf ofthe oppressed, even though its intention was to strike a blow against suchinstitutional power.

Caveats first

This is the kind of blog post where if you don’t state a fewthings up front you get accused of all manner of crimes, so let me get somestuff out of the way first.

Firstly, I think the Indigenous activists who were witnessesagainst Bolt took the case up for entirely just and proper reasons. I know twoof them and they are not members of some kind of out-of-touch bureaucraticelite, but tireless advocates and activists with an overriding commitment toprofound social justice outcomes and self-determination for their people. Intaking their action they have had the support of wider layers of activists andcommunity members rightly appalled by Bolt’s slurs, which were not just anoffence to Indigenous people but form an ideological support for materialoppression.

I also think Andrew Bolt is probably the most dangerous right-wingideologue currently operating in the mainstream media, and that it would bebetter if his ability to access multiple outlets to proselytise his views wereseriously circumscribed (or, better yet, obliterated). The Federal Court’sfinding that he seriously misrepresented facts in the service of his racist ideologicalargument is a significant recognition of what many have argued is central tohis modus operandi.

I understand the verdict combines two aspects: (1) That Boltfell short of a basic standard of verifiable fact regarding the racialidentification of the Indigenous people he criticised. This is bestexpressed in paragraph 388 of the judgement as, “The public deserve to beprotected against irresponsible journalism.” (2) That there is “the [racist]manner in which that subject manner was dealt with” by Bolt. On the latterpoint the judge made clear that the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA), especiallysince the addition of Part IIA in 1995, such racism doesn’t have to meet thenarrow test of whether it was directed at promoting “racial hatred”:

Part IIA has a broader field ofoperation. Infused by the values of human dignity and equality, the objectivesof Part IIA extend to promoting racial tolerance and protecting against thedissemination of racial prejudice. [From paragraph 13 of the Summary]

Finally, I am uninterested in notions of absolute rights offree speech or journalistic prerogative. Unlike some who seek to retail theircrude and debased rewritings of key Enlightenment thinkers (the miserable crewat Spiked spring to mind), I recognise that rights do not exist in the ether tobe bestowed upon humans but are instead enabled and limited by concrete socialpractices. The mainstream discourse of individual rights in the neoliberal erais not just mostly observed in the breach, it has masked a sharpening of socialantagonisms. Bolt’s “rights” have always been and remain greater than those ofhis targets because of his position of power, a fact that talk of “free speech”is designed to mask.

The antinomies of thelegal strategy

There are four things that disturb me about the Bolt verdict,leaving me much less sanguine about its eventual effects than left-wing commentatorslike DavidMarr or MarkBahnisch have been.

Firstly, on the question of journalistic standards and“truth” there is a worrying enthusiasm for having the state settle suchquestions. Margaret Simons wascorrect to point out that the idea the “public deserve to be protected againstirresponsible journalism” by the courts is a very dangerous one, although sheinvited a torrent of dissent from Crikey readers in the comments andthe next day. But it is one thing to recognise the rotten state of the newsmedia, quite another to believe that the necessary response is regulation bythe courts. It is also quite easy to imagine courts having a quite differentinterpretation of what is verifiable fact or responsible journalism in othercases (e.g. if the plaintiffs were less prominent or Bolt less obvious in hismendacity) or in a different historical conjuncture where meting out a certainkind of “justice” means relaxing the usual evidentiary and procedural rules(e.g. the behaviour of courts after the UK riots).

Secondly, the RDA’s definitions of racism and offence are verybroad and open to being used against the Left and oppressed people themselves.One of the things that the law doesn’t theorise explicitly is historicaloppression. Rather, it sets up universal and eternal principles of “humandignity and equality” in terms of race, divorced of the political and socialspecificity of racist practices and power structures. Given the recentaccusations of “anti-semitism” against supporters of the BDS campaign, it seemslikely that the RDA is one avenue the Right could use to underminepro-Palestinian writing and activism. Lest people think this is fanciful, one lookat what has been happening in Canada regarding official government policy onracial vilification should give pause for thought.

Thirdly, there’s the question of Left strategy in terms ofagency. There is a difference between demanding recognition andjustice from the state through self-activity, and relying on thestate to deliver it from above. While there is understandable and widespreadsupport for the complainants, there is also little evidence that thecourt-centred strategy has been linked to building a serious activist campaignoutside the courts. Once again, this is not to rob the complainants of thejustice and legality of their claims against Bolt, but it speaks to theweakness of the broader Left in the current conjuncture. And it is not to arguethat a win in the courts can have no positive impact on struggles on theground, but that in this case such positive effects come laced with ideologicaldeference to state structures as enablers of recognition and justice.

Finally, it is odd when people on the Left write of this asif it were something other than a rareand unusual state decision in our favour. It will not (and cannot) portenda shift from the state’s general pattern of finding for the oppressors againstthe oppressed. In some senses the relief and euphoria that has greeted thedecision is a marker of how isolated it is. It is also ironic that while a sickeningcampaign of oppression against Aboriginal people is being carried out by theAustralian state in the Northern Territory, this verdict is seen as something otherthan a sop thrown to suggest things aren’t so bad after all. Any clear view ofthe situation tells us that even a thousand Bolt verdicts would not salve therivers of pain being inflicted on Indigenous people by the ruling elite. Today.

The state: New friendor old enemy?

Mark Bahnisch calls Australian racism a “truthlessdiscourse”. In actualityracism is deeply grounded in material facts, just not the essentialist onesfavoured by the bigots. Rather, its truth lies in the complex of racist socialpractices. And the most powerful social institution capable of making racialdivision, discrimination and oppression a reality is the state. AsJacques Ranciere has argued, it is not that the state has failed in itsduty to protect oppressed minorities from oppression, but that it is the force providingrationality to that oppression.

To create an alternative, anti-racist “truth” it is notenough to win a battle of ideas in the abstract or in a courtroom, but tostruggle to change the social set-up, at least in part challenging the lawitself. In this sense, the RDA is the residuum of a past era of massanti-racist struggle, a legalistic shadow of living social practices that challengedcenturies of oppression, distorted by the baleful influence of identitypolitics. But it is not the same thing as those practices, and certainly notpart of the social practices of the oppressed.

This is not to say that the Left must somehow simply vacatethe field of politics in relation to the state. Such a manoeuvre is possibleonly in theory. But the mainstream Left has found itself sufficiently weak anddefensive that it too often mistakes the question of wringing concessions fromthe state with that of the desire to strengthen the state to act on its behalf.This can be seen with the growing calls for tough state regulation of themainstream media, exemplified by BobBrown’s campaign against News Limited. To imagine that such regulationwould be used consistently against the right-wing campaigns run by The Australian is naïve at best. Itmistakenly treats politics as divorced from real social interests, as a factionalpower play within the political elite rather than the expression of deeperantagonisms.

Andrew Bolt is just one reason there is solittle trust in the mainstream media in Australia today. But the media is butone of a series of social institutions that has come under increasedquestioning in recent times. The political class has suffered just asseriously, constantly searching for ways to regain authority lost as its socialbase has deserted it. The collapse has been most spectacular for the officialLeft, but such problems bubble beneath the surface for the Right also.

This verdict unfortunately creates a space for the Right to(falsely) claim it is against the unwarranted incursion of state power intopeople’s lives while simultaneously backing much more destructive state actionagainst Indigenous people. As the global crisis deepens, states will becomeincreasingly assertive in their use of coercive measures to enforce theinterests of the ruling elites. When they come after their opponents they willuse all the powers they have at their disposal, including those that carry a“progressive” gloss.

Rather than focusing on legislation and judicial recourse,the Left needs to start thinking about how we create facts on the ground thatwill delegitimize and sideline the likes of Bolt. How can we change theeditorial policies of the major media outlets from below, to force socialchange and accompanying shifts in theterms of debate? Such pressure must come not just from outside the media, butbe part of the struggle of media workers against their employers. For too long,too many dedicated, honest journalists — those who want to speak truth to power— have been hamstrung by their bosses’ editorial and business prerogatives.Change can only be won through self-activity, by forcing governments and mediaorganisations to cede their control — astruggle most vividly seen in Egypt today.

These are policies that must be enacted by peoplethemselves, as real democracy demands ordinary people putting their minds andbodies on the line. We should not kid ourselves that laws that gives the courtspower to suppress journalism, arbitrate as to what acceptable “facts” are, anduse abstract legal notions of racism to silence dissent won’t be potentialfacets of the elite backlash to such struggles.

For those wanting to read more, I would unreservedly recommend GuyRundle’s response to the verdict in Crikey (here,unfortunately paywalled, but now also reposted here by Overland Journal).

The McGorry-Hickie reform controversy: Why has mental health become so political?

2011-09-24T12:35:00.000+10:00

Yesterday one of Australia’s most prominent psychiatrists,Professor Ian Hickie, wrote anop-ed piece in the SMH titled,“Ignore the critics, public need to back fresh start in mental healthcare”. Itis part of a growing controversy around the Gillard government’s apparent bigboost to mental health funding in this year’s Budget, in particular around theadoption of the Headspace model of youth early intervention and the downsizingof the Better Access psychology scheme.

In response I wrote this letter to the editor (second one here):

I’m a public hospitalpsychiatrist who greatly admires Ian Hickie for his tireless efforts in mentalhealth research and advocacy. However, I thought his intemperate spray atopponents of his preferred set of policy and treatment prescriptions — inparticular the controversial early intervention model he and Pat McGorry havechampioned — demeaned his position and the serious debates in question.

I recently attended aninternational conference where McGorry and other advocates of earlyintervention spoke, and what came through was how little evidence there was forthe “Headspace” model that our government has adopted so enthusiastically.There is also very little evidence for the use of medications in patientsthought to be at risk of psychosis.

Professor Hickie uses an olddebating trick, rolling a disparate group of critics into one list withoutseriously addressing any of their concerns. By mentioning Scientologistsalongside professional detractors, in one of his four main points, he seems towant to deflect public attention from debates within psychiatry rather thanilluminating them.

Professor Hickie is dead rightthat psychiatrists should devote their time to debatingpublic policy and arguing for social change. But that also meansengaging in explanation rather than bombast when criticised. The public (andhis colleagues) will thank him for the former and not the latter.

The crisis inpsychiatry

The tone of Hickie’s article and the controversy from whichit emerges can only be understood in terms of a wider crisis of psychiatry,both in Australia and internationally.

Anyone following the debates over the American PsychiatricAssociation’s planned fifth edition of its diagnostic handbook, the DSM-5, will know that the process hasbeen thrown into turmoil by attacks on the secrecy surrounding its development,its attempts to introduce contested new diagnostic categories, the debacle overits new personality disorder model (opposed by almost every leading personalitydisorder researcher in the US), and the fact that the psychiatrists who led thecreation of DSM-III (RobertSpitzer) and DSM-IV (Allen Frances) — hardlyfringe radicals — have both publicly attackedthe next iteration.

This comes in the wake of even more generalised problems forthe profession. In the US there have been controversies related tooverdiagnosis and overprescribing of medications. Even George W Bush felt hehad to attack the epidemic of ADHD diagnosis and stimulant prescribing inchildren, and now there is deep concern that the diagnosis of bipolar disorderacross all ages is leading to the dangerous overuse of “second generation”antipsychotics. Globally, there have been scandals over the close financialties between academic psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical industry, with humiliationof thought leaders in the field.

Perhaps most devastating of all has been growing evidencethat some of the most prescribed medications of all time, the modernantidepressants, mayhave little more effect than placebo in the treatment of “major depression”,a finding that has not only undermined the cache of drug therapy of mentaldisorders, but thrown into question the validity of the diagnosis itself. It isin this context that we can understand why data about the growing prevalence ofmental disorder diagnoses — often used by advocates like Hickie and McGorry asa reason for boosting funding and services — is being challenged both withinand outside psychiatry. Is it really true that more than half the populationwill have an episode of an “illness” called “major depression” in theirlifetimes, or is this an artefact of how such an illness is constructed,measured and contextualised? And does this mean that everyone who meetscriteria must pop a tablet or go to 12 sessions of cognitive behaviouraltherapy?

Public questioning of psychiatry probably hasn’treached the fever pitch of the 1960s and 70s, when powerful anti-psychiatry andmental health reform movements exacerbated the discipline’s own internalcontradictions. That crisis was resolved in the 1970s and 80s with the victoryof a particular biomedical model of mental disorder that put reliability ofdiagnosis ahead of pretty much all other considerations. Apparently turning tomodels found in the rest of medicine, the approach codified in DSM-III was meant to re-establish thescientificity of psychiatry against accusations it was either meaningless orsimply a tool of social repression.

Today’s problems represent the spasmodic unravelling of thatmodel, its inability to deliver “scientific” (read: biological reductionist)answers to the questions posed by disturbances of thought and emotion. This isnot a problem found in psychiatry alone — the genomic revolution andbloated drug company bottom lines have failed to deliver the kinds of advancesthey promised also — but it is naturally concentrated in the specialitywhere social determinants of health and illness operate most obviously.

The last decade has seen not only growing critiques of thisimpasse but attempts to forge new ways of thinking about mental health. Most,however, seek radical changes to the existing framework and not its outrightrejection. So, for example, Sydney University philosopher DominicMurphy argues that psychiatry needs to find its scientificbasis in modern cognitive neuroscience. Psychiatrists and historians EdwardShorter and David Healylook back to earlier periods of scientific advance to make a powerful case thatolderantidepressants and shocktherapy were more effective than more recent (and more profitable) drugs.Psychologist RichardBentall rejects the biomedical and diagnostic focuses of psychiatry infavour of a symptom-based and psychotherapeutic approach.

To his credit, Pat McGorry also bases his advocacy of anearly intervention or “staging” model on the reasonable belief that the toolsbequeathed by the diagnostic psychiatrists of DSM-III have proven inadequate. Indeed, McGorry very much sees hisefforts as part of an attempt to lead a “scientific revolution” inthe Kuhnian sense — to replace a failed old paradigm with a new, betterone. As it says in McGorryand Hickie’s statement of their new paradigm,

Diagnosis in psychiatryincreasingly struggles to fulfil its key purposes, namely, to guide treatmentand to predict outcome. The clinical staging model, widely used in clinicalmedicine yet virtually ignored in psychiatry, is proposed as a more refinedform of diagnosis which could restore the utility of diagnosis, promote earlyintervention and also make more sense of the confusing array of biologicalresearch findings in psychiatry by organizing data into a coherentclinicopathological framework.

It is my contention that this simply deepens thecontradictions found in the existing model of diagnostic psychiatry rather thanovercoming them. Yet the problem is one faced by all of medicine, which seeksto define health and illness without recognising that such definitions are socially constructed. Medicine followswhat may be called a positivist research programme, where value judgements abouthealth and illness are naturalised and eternised, rather than being recognisedin their social and historical specificity. Drawing on the pioneering work of Peter Sedgwick, I havewritten about these issues elsewhere — ina review of Bentall’s last book and ananalysis of the limits of antipsychiatry.

The problems withearly intervention

It is worth looking at some of the more fine-grain problemswith McGorry’s importation of “clinical staging” into psychosis (and otherconditions — he has also been part of developing such a model in bipolardisorder, and supports efforts around depression and borderline personality).* Simplyput, it may both be an inappropriate analogy to draw for psychiatric disordersbut it may also suffer from the limits of staging for most physical illnesses.

Staging depends on being able to find markers of the veryearly phases of an illness process and, through targeted intervention, preventprogression to later, less treatable phases. A classic example is bowel cancer,where screening for and treatment of early cancer (or pre-cancerous cellchanges) with colonoscopies in high-risk individuals (e.g. those with a strongfamily history) may prevent the devastating metastatic form of the illness.

But in psychiatry we don't have any specific biological (orother) markers to target, and so it’s the “ultra high risk” (UHR) syndrome itselfthat is being targeted. This actually parallels the rest of medicine where claimsmade for biomarkers have proven to be overhyped.

There is also no evidence that there are specific symptomsor parts of the UHR syndrome that, if treated, will prevent onset of psychosis.This is reflected in the fact that only 31 percent of UHR patients “convert” tosome kind of actual psychotic syndrome by the two-year mark. And it is notclear whether this is a homogenous group — they probably include a mix ofdiagnoses and not just schizophrenia. Of the remaining 69 percent, a very highproportion continue to function poorly despite not becoming psychotic,suggesting this syndrome is “UHR for poor function” more than specifically “UHRfor psychosis”. Importantly, UHR subjects are pretty much all areself-referrals (perhaps with nudging from families) and so they are unliketypical schizophrenic patients in that they display higher levels of insightand engagement.

The population benefit claims being made by McGorry &Hickie are undermined by the fact that Headspace centres are not populationinterventions but places that self-selected patients seek help around relativelynon-specific problems. Hence why there is virtually no evidence base forHeadspace — nobody has really defined what it is meant to help and who it isgoing to be accessed by in any previous trials. Thus there is a real possibilitythat the initiative will prevent little of the serious mental illness (or even “neurotic”disorders) that are being treated today because it targets a differentpopulation — this issue has simply not been clarified. Don’t get me wrong,Headspace may prove to be very beneficial to the young people it treats, but tosay it is evidence-based would not be correct.

Even for individuals, there is little clear evidence thattargeted interventions for UHR subjects will work to do anything more thandelay onset of psychosis, and then not past two years. Ironically, there is evidencethat once you have been UHR for two years, there is minimal chance you willconvert to frank psychosis anyhow. Certainly the recent Cochrane review haseffectively stopped research into the use of antipsychotics in the UHR group,and fish oil needs further testing. Talk of antidepressants being effective isbased on retrospective clinical audits, a relatively weak and unreliable formof evidence (and the idea that a non-antipsychotic drugs are effective inpreventing psychosis further undermines the claimed specificity of the UHR concept).

McGorry persisted with hopes around medication-basedinterventions until the recent controversy over ethics approval blew up. Whywould he do so? In this he was only following the pattern of mainstreampsychiatry, which maintains a narrow focus on intervention equalling some kindof individualised treatment, whether biological or psychological. There’s areason medicine (the profession) is called medicine (after medications). Thatfocus is shaped by a complex of forces, in particular the growing influence ofBig Pharma over the last 30 years.

Finally, even psychosocial interventions for individuals maynot be much chop. If medical epidemiology teaches us anything it's that tochange the population incidence and prevalence of many conditions youneed population measures. Clean running water and sewage systemsprevent many more deaths from illness than all the high-tech medical advancesput together. Maybe to decrease the incidence of psychosis we need to look atsocial and environmental measures.

Politics andpsychiatry inseparably linked

None of the above critique is particularly original, nor isit based on anything but the arguments and evidence marshalled by enthusiastsof early intervention (including McGorry himself). So how did McGorry andHickie gain so much sway over government policy in the first place? Clearlythey are tireless and strategic campaigners for their particular solution forthe problems they see in mental health service delivery. They have alsocorrectly identified that the current mainstream psychiatric framework is weakand in need of challenge. But there is something about their model that alsofits well with current neoliberal governance models, including Gillard’spreferred preventative health and social inclusion agendas.

In essence, early intervention in psychiatry matches thekinds of preventative health models that dominate in Australian public policy: Thatwhile there are social determinants of health and illness, governments can onlyintervene at the individual level, targeting those who are (through their ownbehaviour) “at risk”. Social policy thus becomes targeted at individuals orfamilies rather than entire populations. The justification is that this is morecost-effective (an unproven assumption, but one fitting well withneoliberalism’s ideological aversion to universal social provision) and that ifbehaviour change is not then produced governments can more easily blameindividuals for their own failings than turn the spotlight on socialstructures.

I’m not arguing that this is how McGorry and Hickie see it,but why their model may have become so favoured. It is interesting that Hickiehas in the past advocated for moremarket discipline in health care, and that both Hickie and McGorry seem tohave argued for dropping the expansion of Medicare-funded psychologicalservices (Better Access) on the basis that its (flawed) universalism wascreating a type of middle-class welfare. It is their reflex acceptance of thesocial status quo that is the problem, perhaps intensified by having to adaptto the health bureaucracies they have been lobbying so intensely.

One of Hickie’s targets yesterday seems to have been arecent piece by the right-wing psychiatrist Tanveer Ahmed that argued forpsychiatrists to stop being so noisy about public policy (bizarre given theauthor’s frequent ideological rants about psychiatric concepts). It is herethat I am with Hickie and McGorry in recognising the fundamentally politicalnature of debates about not only mental health policy, but the very nature ofmental health and illness. How human beings individually experience our societycannot be separated from collective projects for social change and (perish thethought) human liberation. Unfortunately, I fear that despite theirpassionate beliefs, good intentions and political savvy, McGorry and Hickie havedelivered a model that mostly serves to suit the public policy needs of a historically transient phase ofcapitalist development we call neoliberalism.

* It is important to distinguish McGorry’s work on firstepisode psychosis, which has a firmer evidence base and doesn’t depend on thestaging heuristic, from his approach to early intervention strategies (or “indicatedprevention” as it is known in preventative health jargon).

Dr_Tad is a public hospital psychiatrist. The views expressed here areentirely his own.

Limits of liberal critique: Murdoch, the media & the Manne Quarterly Essay

2011-09-20T13:08:00.003+10:00

Not so omnipotent anymore

Cross-posted from Overland Journal's blog and ABC's The Drum.

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.

— Karl Marx, The German Ideology (1845)

Robert Manne has done everyone who hates the right-wing, hysterically partisan and mendacious editorial approach of The Australian a considerable service. In the latest Quarterly Essay he has compiled a dossier of some of the Murdoch paper’s most egregious crimes. It is a testament to his scrupulous attention to detail, wide-ranging knowledge of the issues involved and commitment to concretely uncovering systematic (rather than incidental) biases that the paper’s collection of responses by its editorialists and opinion writers limps along using isolated anecdotes and non sequiturs against mountains of evidence marshalled by Manne.

The jury is in, and The Australian is indeed a thoroughly one-eyed beast. It is happy to create the news rather than report it; prepared to sully the names of academics and bloggers and to bring down Prime Ministers; keen to prosecute ideological wars in the service of military adventures as well as to whitewash historical oppression. And it is a newspaper eager to undermine the case for climate action by promoting irrational, anti-scientific denialism. It has not only run highly partisan campaigns against the ALP but also committed its resources to having the Greens “destroyed at the ballot box”.

Having been a former subscriber and still frequent reader of the paper, many of the stories Manne tells in Bad News: Murdoch’s Australian and the Shaping of the Nation were not “news” to me. Indeed, I can say that I’ve twice had the honour of having my writing subjected to the paper’s ridicule in the Cut and Paste column, which Manne calls its “daily compendium of spleen and schadenfreude”.

I was, however, left feeling sick to my stomach by his detailed exposition of the vicious campaign run against Indigenous academic and activist Larissa Behrendt after her inopportune tweet was held up as Exhibit A in a character assassination of almost incredible proportions. I had heard the outlines of the story at the time, but not realised the depths to which reporters (especially former Leftist Patricia Karvelas) had sunk to smear Behrendt both professionally and personally.

The liberal view of media in crisis

Yet, and there has to be a “yet”, the power of Manne’s factual deconstruction of The Australian’s trajectory is not matched by his explanation of why it is the way it is. So when he comes to the conclusion that it needs a new owner and editor-in-chief he does so because he has abstracted the paper’s behaviour from any wider analysis of how the news media works. Of course Manne is a Professor of Politics, and not a lecturer in Media Studies, but his account is remarkably atheoretical not just in terms of analysing media behaviour but the also social circumstances that have provided the backdrop for the paper’s aggressive interventions. More correctly it is not “atheoretical”, but lacking a theoretical toolbox sufficient to navigating what has been happening.

In one of the best reviews of Manne’s essay I’ve read, Tim Dunlop suggests that a series of weaknesses — the oddly limited “solution”, the softness of any critique of other mainstream media, and the paucity of analysis of the “political class” that Manne identifies as disproportionately reading The Australian — are related to Manne’s position as a member of that class. Maybe the problem with the media is not specifically about The Oz, but the nature of wider relations of influence and power in Australian society.

Manne decided to write the essay a year ago. He could not have foreseen the massive crisis into which Murdoch’s empire was to plunge more recently, although he does cover it in some detail. What is telling is how the phone hacking scandal has had quite different impacts in the UK and Australia.

Here the response from the Left — the charge led by Bob Brown — has been to raise questions about issues of “privacy and ownership and bias” within calls for a thoroughgoing parliamentary inquiry. But in the UK, while these three issues have been important, what has been more important is the exposure of the cosy, practically incestuous, ties between the tabloid press, the corporate elite, politicians and the police. This has caused serious damage to the legitimacy and stability of those institutions.

The crisis has enveloped Murdoch and his cabal, but also cast a pall over the Cameron government and directly contributed to the leadership vacuum in the Metropolitan Police during a major outbreak of rioting. For politicians more generally, with their image already sullied by a parliamentary expenses scandal, their willingness to submit to a constant quest for approval from Murdoch as the only sure pathway to electability exposed just how impotent they considered themselves in the face of corporate power.

There is little sense of such links being drawn by Manne, and indeed little sense of why The Australian under Chris Mitchell’s editorship would so dramatically break from the “usual” function of a newspaper in a liberal democracy. But herein lies the rub, because Manne is operating firmly within the limits of his implicit theoretical framework, a type of political liberalism. To use Dunlop’s words, a newspaper is normally understood as “a vehicle for the objective dissemination of news and information”. But there is good reason to believe that not only is this no more than superficially true in general, but that in a prolonged and worsening organic crisis it is more likely that the media will increasingly shed such a veneer and openly take sides.

Their bias and ours

Any serious study of the mainstream media in Australia soon comes across the question of how much it lives up to liberal ideals of objectivity and news-gathering. Indeed, not only were most newspapers fiercely partisan for most of the last century, they were mostly hostile to the Labor side of politics. That may have shifted somewhat from the late 1960s, but it never changed the fact that, whether privately owned or state run, the mainstream media has always tended to present a view of society that overwhelmingly favours the interests the ruling elite, or at least important sections of it.

This is not to say that the ruling class has produced a crude reflection of its interests through the media. Nothing could be further from the truth. For the media to have any ideological purchase in relation to the lived experience of a variety of social groups, it has to in part reflect that experience in order to then cement the status quo.

Take an example from the liberal Fairfax organisation yesterday, an article on the Qantas pay dispute, “Qantas strike to hit more than 6000 passengers tomorrow”. There is no partisan political bias here and the tone of the article is not antagonistically arrayed against the unions. But notice the themes that immediately emerge. It is the union that is “refusing to call off” a strike that is “set to cause major disruption for air passengers”, not the company refusing to back down on its lousy pay offer that will disrupt the livelihoods of thousands of its employees. Similarly, there is a presumption that “last minute talks” would best end in a “resolution” without considering that perhaps industrial action may be a good thing by putting workers in a stronger position. This frames some unremarkable quotes and paraphrases from company and union representatives, setting out both sides of the dispute, but then in case we missed the point about how terribly disruptive this will all be, the story helpfully lists the airports affected.

I point to this article because it is a banal example of how most instances of industrial action are portrayed by the liberal media. Such a passive articulation of the elite view is practically ubiquitous, as if it represented some kind of neutrality. It remains completely unquestioned by Manne, who lets Fairfax and the ABC almost completely off the hook — as if their only error was not to take on Murdoch more openly.

One attempt to come to terms with the roots of such systematic biases has been Chomsky and Herman’s “Propaganda Model” of the private media. Rather than starting with the liberal ideal, they start from the material reality of most mass media in liberal democracies as large private businesses, and then identify five “filters” that ensure these media remain deeply tied to powerful interests. Chomsky and Herman understand that making a buck is not just about advertising and sales (funding), but the maintenance of a social order where making a profit in the media is the preserve of a tiny, unaccountable corporate elite (ownership). Information gathering tends to rely on powerful sources such as corporate PR departments, cashed-up think tanks and government and/or state bureaucracies because of a confluence of economic necessity and reciprocity of interests (sourcing). If a media organisation strays too far from acceptable views there are plenty of ways in which they can be put under pressure through public or more surreptitious campaigning (flak). Finally, media outlets tend to initiate or perpetuate campaigns against perceived enemies, external or internal, to bind ordinary media consumers to elite interests (fear).

The Propaganda Model remains probably the most serious modern theory of the operations of the mass media in capitalist democracies. Its central features have yet to be seriously empirically challenged. However, one recent review has pointed to areas where the model could be strengthened to account for finer nuances. In particular it suggests incorporating elements accounting for: How economic competition creates divergent interests within the corporate elite (e.g. between polluters and others in the carbon tax debate); how the functioning of democracy means that there can be serious strategic differences over how the national state should be run (e.g. splits over the invasion of Iraq); how economic considerations mean that media outlets may have to find specific segments of the population to which to appeal (e.g. the Telegraph/SMH or Herald-Sun/Age demographic divisions); how the existence of strong state broadcasters ostensibly committed to “independence” can shift the balance (e.g. the role of the ABC); how there can be conflicts of data provided by different sources (e.g. between different NGOs, corporations and think-tanks on environmental issues); and how the social position of journalists means they can fight back against the editorial line of their bosses (e.g. the newly asserted independence of Egyptian journalists).

Such refinements help us understand how the media can be an instrument of elite rule and at the same time reflect tensions and contradictions that emerge, although still contained within a certain framework. They also help us understand that while we can take advantage of the splits within the mass media, unless we tear it from elite control it can never be “on our side” or even “neutral” in its functioning.

The veneer loses its sheen

It is here that we can more clearly see how Manne’s implicit liberal ideal cannot be obtained through either deftly crafted exposés like Bad News, nor through changes of editorial personnel or ownership. Murdoch’s media represents one wing of a wider network of institutional power, one that uses varying approaches to both sell its product and maintain those power relations. Because Manne cannot see the thoroughly material basis for the politics of these outlets, he resorts to an frankly unconvincing critique of ideas and people.

Thus, when he lambasts The Australian for its promotion of climate denialists, he argues that it has “broken with the values lying at the very centre of the Enlightenment, namely Science and the authority of Reason”. Or when he describes the paper as “catalyst” in the ousting of Kevin Rudd, he puts it down in part to a personal enmity between Mitchell and Rudd, and in part to the PM’s refusal to conform to “the neoconservative and neoliberal Murdoch house philosophy”. All these points are true, but they are merely surface phenomena of something else — Murdoch’s long-term project to use certain key outlets to influence the political class in favour of his interests. Manne correctly identifies that political class as the key target of The Australian yet, as Dunlop observes, fails to draw the conclusion that Murdoch may have pitched his product correctly to gain their ear and influence them so powerfully (if only to make them feel impotent to resist him). Perhaps The Oz is the paper this social layer wants and deserves.

It is the growing disconnection of the political elite from any social base that has allowed Murdoch to play such a disproportionate role in influencing its ideas. Yet at the same time social trust in the media is at a very low ebb. Far from the media being “all powerful”, it is the perception that democratically elected governments are more answerable to corporate power than the popular will that reinforces Murdoch’s apparent power. The UK phone hacking scandal shows that when institutions are undermined by economic and political crisis, the most powerful can suddenly appear weak, divided and ineffectual.

While one can agree with many (but not all) of Manne’s political positions throughout Bad News, his fundamental approach is of arguing for a more civil and constrained debate within elite circles, in contrast to the wars being waged by The Australian with hyperbole, invective and falsehoods. Yet as I have previously argued at Left Flank the incursion of extremist partisan rhetoric in the mainstream debate is the product of two inseparable developments: an almost complete convergence of policy within the political class, and at the same time growing economic and social polarisation, both key features of the neoliberal period. As austerity bites and greater resistance to the crisis emerges, we can expect such rhetoric and combativeness to increase rather than resolve. It’s war, after all.

Murdoch and Mitchell’s strategy with The Australian has been to break from the niceties of liberalism and wage a hard Right campaign for what they want. In this they have both reflected and encouraged similar trends within the political class, perhaps most concentrated in the Coalition but hardly absent from Labor’s ranks. The veneer of “civility” has been discarded as politicians and the media have gradually lost their institutional legitimacy. The great strength of Manne’s essay is how clearly he lays out the evidence of this process.

Manne seems to believe that we’d have a better country if The Australian was somehow reined in, but this gets things the wrong way around. It is because things have gotten worse, and because elite hegemony has been unravelling, that we have been blessed with The Australian we have today. Better to stop obsessing about Murdoch’s apparent omnipotence and figure out how our side can more effectively prepare for the battles ahead.

I want to acknowledge the influence that my Left Flank co-blogger Liz Humphrys and The Piping Shrike had on my thinking while writing this review. Naturally the responsibility for the formulations above lies with me alone.

Australia’s ‘Left’ in government. Part 2: Greens trapped in a prison of their own making

2011-09-15T13:39:00.000+10:00

Since when did building a climate movement mean cheerleading neoliberal government policies?

In thelast post I argued that the deep crisis of the Gillard government is also acrisis of the Greens and the Left more generally. By effectively entering a“Left” government the Greens have replicated the disastrous strategy of Italy’smain party of the Left, Rifondazione Comunista, in joining a centre-Left coalitionin the late 2000s.

In 2010 I wrote thefollowing:

To understand the role of theGreens, one must consider how the party has both inspired and frustrated theLeft in the last decade. But it is also important to understand what itsdisappearance or rapid shift to the Right would mean in today’scircumstances. For all their weaknesses, the Greens have served as ageneralised political focus on the Left. In the absence of a serious, moreradical alternative, that remains preferable than either a return to the majorparties or a fragmentation of progressive aspirations among many smallerformations or individuals. Nevertheless, it is also true that simply waitingfor something external to push the Greens to the Left gives too much ground tothe conservative limitations of the Greens project.

This has been proven correct.

The Greens have shifteddramatically since when Bob Brown came down to reinspire picket lines that hadbeen attacked by police at the S11 protests in 2000, or when Kerry Nettle’s Senateoffice was the virtual nerve centre of massive anti-war protests in 2002-3.

Not in government butresponsible for it

The Greens have not only pledged to support the ALP onsupply and confidence, they have striven to be seen as part of the government. The agreement between the partiescommits the Greens to very little politically; it is not until the sixth ofseven sections that policy matters (rather than issues of process) are raised— mainly around the creation of the carbon price committee, with lesserdemands over dental care, a parliamentary debate over the war in Afghanistanand a study into high-speed rail.

Yet there is a widespread view, not just on the hystericalRight but among many Greens voters, activists and MPs, that the party actually is in government and responsible for itsfuture, even when this is not technically the case. In particular the maincampaign the party has mobilised its activist base around in recent months hasbeen promotion of the government’s most unpopular policy — the carbon tax.

That otherwise sensible left-wing politicians like John Kayehave felt the need to publiclybutt heads with the Liberals over competing sets of economic modelling about the impact of the taxsuggests a major disconnect from reality. As if such modelling— invariably done by the same people who once assured us the GFC couldnever happen — has ever been worth the paper it’s written on.

The Greens have also tempered their attacks on the ALP inother areas. Left Flank has previously pointed out the Greens MPs have effectivelyacceded to the arguments for an age of austerity, budget surpluses and publicsector cutbacks. It doesn’t matter that the Greens propose worthwhilealternatives (e.g. a higher mining tax, cuts to corporate welfare). Bob Brownhas made clear that he will only push new spending within the constraints ofthe government’s fiscal approach; that it would be irresponsible to demand“unfunded” policies be implemented. In his Budgetreply speech he argued:

This is not a Greens budget; itis a Labor budget. The Greens will deal responsibly with all budget legislationon its merits. We will not block the budget or supply, but we will look toimprove it where we can in a fiscally responsible manner. However, in order toensure stability in government, the Greens will not be supporting anyopposition move which aims to wreck the budget.

On the issue of Australia’s continued involvement in warsagainst Muslim nations, the Greens have mutedcriticisms of the US-Australia Alliance, been largely uncritical of Obama’sforeign policy, and most disturbingly been enthusiastsfor the NATO intervention in Libya.

And even though they have been critical of Gillard’s obsceneMalaysian Solution, they’ve modified their language in terms of trying to politelyprovide workable progressive alternatives. The longer the alliance haspersisted the less outraged has been the tone employed by Sarah Hanson-Young,despite her proven record in moral shrillness. Such niceties finallycrumbled last week as Bob Brown complained “I’ve bitten my tongue for quitea while on this.” He added in frustration, “But here we have Julia Gillardmoving herself to the right of Philip Ruddock and John Howard in a repressiveattitude towards the rights of asylum seekers to be processed on-shore inAustralia.”

But why has it taken so long for Brown to talk tough? Why havethe Greens acted in this way? Their strategy was summed up by Hanson-Young in arecent Fairfax column:

With this new position in thepolitical landscape and our new seats on the Senate benches comes even greaterresponsibility to deliver achievements for the community and stability for theParliament. We will work hard to improve legislation and to keep presentinginnovative ideas to be adopted by government and opposition. But, just asimportantly, we must make sure we deliver more constructive than destructivesolutions to the topics that land on our desks. Working to secure our nation'sfuture prosperity requires more leadership than just saying “No”.

Yet this is a government in deep crisis, unable to deliveron “stability” precisely because it is trying to implement a legislative agendait believes will “constructively” deliver for the needs of Australia’s elite,while abandoning any commitment to progressive reform. The central planks ofGillard’s approach have been an intensification of austerity measures,capitulation to the mining billionaires, the further marketisation ofAustralia’s public health system, a punitive agenda for Australia’s unemployedand disabled, continuation of the NT intervention, possibly the mostreactionary asylum seeker policy of any rich country, continued militaryintervention in Afghanistan, and of course a neoliberalclimate policy that is likely to be not just regressive butmake little impact on emissions.

In the above-quotedpress conference last week, Brown explained the constraints the Greens havedecided to operate within:

I get asked on this immigrationquestion, as with others, well, why aren’t we bringing this government down?Because you get Tony Abbott. And I am not going to take the Andrew Wilkiecourse of threatening instability in government because we’re not getting ourown way. … We are committed to stability in government and three-year termelections. So responsibility requires that you have some probity and someforbearance and you keep working until you get what you think are good policiesthrough. Threatening to bring down the government on any issue where you getstuck is not something the Greens will be doing.

This is self-imposed political impotence, because on asylumseekers Brown’s strategy is to “fight this right the way through theparliamentary process,” yet he is unwilling to use the only serious parliamentaryleverage he has — threatening the government’s “stability”.

This also helps explain why the Greens have been unable towin over left-leaning Labor voters disenchanted with the government. On Labor’sleft flank there is simply no reason to break to the Greens when they have beenunwilling to use their numbers to actually challenge government policy. In theone area, climate change, where the Greens have won some of their agenda, thepolicy reeks of economic rationalism that is widely reviled in the electorate.It is the commitment to such reforms, and their lack of a clear break with theneoliberal economic agenda more generally, that has meant the Greens areunattractive to working class voters as an alternative to the ALP.*

What about themovements?

The other parallel with the Italian experience is theGreens’ claim to be the expression of social movements within the parliamentaryarena. In an interview soon after hewas elected, Melbourne MP Adam Bandt said, “One of the things that [theGreens] place a priority on is giving a voice to social movements and to thatundercurrent of progressive public opinion that is not being represented.” In hermaiden speech as a Senator, Lee Rhiannon, argued that, “Historydemonstrates that while parliaments make the laws, people are the driving forcefor social change.”

Yet Rhiannon added, “I believe one of the great strengths ofthe Greens is our constructive parliamentary work, combined with our commitmentto amplify in this place the voice of progressive people's movements.” Here shewas implying that struggles from below stand in relation to parliament in anuncontradictory “both/and” kind of way. While this may be a useful counterpointto those on the radical Left who reject any participation in official politicson principle, the relationship between the narrow politics allowed in Canberraand the politics of mass struggle is not simply one of synergy. Rather, theycan pull sharply against each other.

Over the last few years the Greens have played more of arole in amplifying the conservative logic of official politics within the“progressive people’s movements” than they have in bringing the logic of thosemovements to Canberra. With their greater commitment to parliamentary processsince gaining official party status in 2007, they have increasingly shapedtheir policies and program around what is possible within the narrowconstraints set by the vicissitudes of parliamentary politics.

I raise one significant example for now. After rejecting theCPRS in late 2009, the Greens waged an argument inside the climate movement toget it to adopt their plan for an interim carbon price. They won this argumentat the 2010 Climate Action Summit, which voted to accept their proposal as theway forward in an election year. Christine Milne won the ear of leading radicalclimate campaigners to convince the disparate movement to focus on getting whatwas at best a very limited measure.

It is worthwhile examining the public trajectory of DamienLawson, a key Melbourne-based climate campaigner, a leading figure in theanti-capitalist, refugee and anti-war movements of the early 2000s and a formerstaffer with Kerry Nettle. In 2009 he wrote a strategic perspectives documentfor grassroots climate campaigners that, quite reasonably, argued,

[W]ewill need a public mobilisation that dwarfs any that Australia or the world hasseen. This means far more than a change in government.

Yet the strategy of most environment NGOs in 2006–08 seemed to be oneof mobilising the community to elect a Labor government, and then talkingsoftly to the new government behind closed doors, rather than continue themobilisation.

He added that campaigners must remember that “we areactivists not policy advisers”. Yet by the 2010 Summit hehad shifted to arguing that activists must not have “an aversion toelections” and that the movement needed “common goals”. But this was not aboutopening out the debate, rather:

The carbon tax debate kicked offby The Greens is an opportunity to develop a strand of that common agenda. Weshould use this opportunity to form a common goal across the whole climatemovement of supporting a good carbon tax plan

By the 2011 Summit he was a policy adviser to Bandt, who washimself prosecutingthe case for the tax, making the unlikely argument that activists shouldget “tens of thousands of people marching down the street” to demand a high carbonprice of $70 a ton.

Whatever independence and vitality the grassroots climate movementonce had, it is now effectively moribund, reduced to attending GetUp! ralliescheering the carbon tax. As Guy Pearse has made clear in hisscathing assessment of the mainstream environmental NGOs, the movement andthe Greens have largely collapsed into ensuring “thatthe only carbon price Australia will adopt is one that largely defeats thepurpose of a carbon price.” Those activists and organisations still holding outagainst this pragmatic “incrementalism” — for example Friends of the Earth— have been marginalised. GetUp! organisers even felt confident enough to tryto get climate activists opposed to market measures to take down their placardsat various rallies earlier this year. Such crushing unanimity is exactly whatLawson warned against in 2009, but of which he is a part in 2011.

Some senior Greens, like Milneand her long-time staffer Tim Hollo, have argued that it was the weakness ofthe environment NGOs and climate movement that left the party with little roomto win more ambitious gains. Such an argument is disingenuous because theGreens’ strategy was to win more radical and independent climate campaigners tothe party’s narrow carbon price policy; one designed for pragmatic negotiationsin Canberra and not the building of a mass movement to pressure government fromwithout. But it is also an abrogation of political responsibility because it pretendsthat the conveyor belt of political ideas and action runs only in one direction— from movements to parliamentarians, as if the latter cannot argue for greaterambition for the purpose of building movements. Yet the Greens did lead withinthe grassroots climate movement: They led it to conservatise and narrow itspriorities, to “unite” around a parliamentary logic rather than its own needs(let alone the needs of the planet).

Where to for the Leftnow?

This all brings to mind thewords of Polish Marxist Rosa Luxemburg on the participation of socialistswithin capitalist governments:

The government of the modernstate is essentially an organization of class domination, the regularfunctioning of which is one of the conditions of existence of the class state.With the entry of a socialist into the government, and class dominationcontinuing to exist, the bourgeois government doesn’t transform itself into asocialist government, but a socialist transforms himself into a bourgeoisminister.

The Greens have not formally entered government and soretain somewhat more political independence than if they had. This is incontrast to their rottenrole in the Tasmanian ministry. But the cost of the Greens’ strategy hasnevertheless been great, and its full effects haven’t yet played out. This isespecially worrisome because Liberalhardheads and sections of big business are eyeing their opportunity to pushthrough a radical right-wing agenda on the basis of Labor’s unpopularity.

Bob Brown may want to save us from Abbott, but the longer hepolitically defends a Laborgovernment carrying out a right-wing agenda little different from that of theLiberals, the bigger the mandate Abbott will be able to claim — much as Berlusconi did in Italy.

The disarray of the political Left, however, is not the sameas the death of all resistance to the Right. Last week’s magnificent strike and35,000-strong rally against O’Farrell’s attacks on NSW public sector workersdemonstrated that growing anger against austerity cannot be kept in checkindefinitely, despite the weakness of the traditional institutional structuresof the working class and the Left. But the question of official politics is notone that can be ignored by such movements forever (even if union leaders dodgedALP sectarianism towards the Greens by not allowing any politicians to speak from the stage on Thursday). The Leftneeds an alternative, positive approach to political questions — but onethat starts from rejecting the notion that participation in “constructive”parliamentarism of the sort the Greens have championed is the way forward.

There will be a great temptation for activists to simplyargue that we should build the movements and not worry about politics. Thekernel of truth in this is that one strike of the sort we saw last week isworth much more than any election in politicising and coheringpolitics-from-below. But the other kind of politics will inevitably reassertitself in debates activists face. How to address it without repeating thecurrent mess should be at the forefront of our minds.

* Some recent polls (onefederal and onein Queensland) show that around two-thirds of voters believe that the partyhas too much influence over thegovernment.

Australia’s ‘Left’ in government. Part 1: The graveyard of progressive politics?

2011-09-13T07:36:00.000+10:00

The alliance partners in happier days. Er, two months ago, that is

The stench of death surrounds the Gillard Government.

It is impossible to exaggerate the historic depths to whichthe ALP has fallen in the polls, with lastweek’s 27 percent in Newspoll confirming that there would be no “bounce”once the carbon tax announcement was digested by the electorate. Even thetemporary revival of sleaze allegations against Craig Thomson was more aboutthe government’s crisis than the substance or seriousness of the “affair of thecredit card”. The current race to the bottom on asylum seeker policy, with theHigh Court and even Tony Abbott managing to hold positions clearly to the Leftof the ALP, will undoubtedly create even greater electoral problems for theparty’s standing.

Lest anyone believe that a 27 percent vote is unlikely at areal election, they should recall similar wishful thinking prior to the humiliationof NSW Labor at this year’s state election. These are numbers not seen sincethe Lang split during the Great Depression. Despite an unpopular leader inAbbott and without even a semi-coherent set of policies, the Coalition looksset for a landslide victory of historic proportions — if the governmentsurvives to an election, that is. This is not to say that the Liberals (orAbbott in particular) don’t suffer from a lack of authority themselves, butthey currently have that other type of “advantage of incumbency” — not being in government.

But this is not just a crisis for the ALP. The Greens haveto date failed to capitalise on their newfound centrality to the workings offederal government, with theirpolling flatlining, even fading somewhat, since 2010.

A glaring omission from most discussion among progressivecommentators has been the question of what the crisis and eventual fall of thegovernment will mean for the future of prospects of the Australian Left more generally.In this post and the next I want to argue that the Greens’ decision toeffectively enter into government with the ALP has been a disastrous mistakefor the Left, one which needs to be addressed right now, not after thegovernment finally expires, if any useful lessons are to be salvaged.

The current mess is a clear representation of what happenswhen the Left enters government in a period of crisis. The government’s woes,therefore, represent not just a political crisis for the ALP, but a troublingimpasse for the Greens and the wider Left.

Such an analysis of the Greens’ strategy is important notjust for the party’s prospects but for the future orientation of anyindependent Left that can be built in the wake of the current mess. This debatecannot simply occur in abstraction from the real links the Greens have withprogressive activists and political organisations around the country. As Iwrote in myanalysis of the Greens and the Left in Overlandlast year,

For the Left outside the Greens,the space remains limited, simply because without a resurgence in mass struggle,politics has a tendency of being refracted through existing institutions.Nevertheless, the inability of these institutions to provide more thantemporary solutions to the ecological and economic crises (or even theappearance of them) means that schisms are likely to emerge. But the dominanceof the Greens means that they cannot simply be bypassed on the Left when breaksoccur. The internal discussions in the Greens are also likely to be both apartial reflection of debates in wider society and, in turn, to impact ondevelopments inside social movements and the working class.

It is not enough to merely stand by the tracks watching thisslow-motion trainwreck, smugly announcing that we were right and the Greenswere wrong. There is a grave risk that without clarity there will be deep damageto the confidence and consciousness of the very wide layer of people who mustbe central to any resistance to Abbott and the capitalist and state elites whostand behind him.

This will be a different scenario to that in NSW, where theGreens have been able to play a role in developing resistance to O’Farrell.Federally the Greens will find it much harder because they will have (quitecorrectly) been seen as part of the Gillard government’s failure rather than anindependent force to its Left.

Italian lessons: Howthe ‘Left of the Left’ let itself be eaten

There is a recent historical analogy for this crisis, fromItaly in the last decade. To be sure there were different forces arrayed there,and the process was much more concentrated, but the central strategic questionof the independent Left’s position with respect to official politics wasremarkably similar.

Like Australia in the early 2000s, there was a widespreadrevival of political activism on the Left. This came against a backdrop ofdisenchantment with the mainstream Democratic Left (PDS) — formerEurocommunists turned Third Way social liberals — and then the latestiteration of Berlusconismo, whichalso provoked significant industrial action (a series of set piece nationalstrikes and protests mostly called by bureaucratic union leaders).

Into this situation came Rifondazione Comunista (PRC), asection of the old Communist Party that had broken with the PDS after anunhappy coalition in 1996-8. This was of key significance, as the party builtthe massive protests against the G8 in Genoa in July 2001, the anti-warmovement and the highly successful European Social Forum in Florence. The PRCleadership went further thanjust this activity in declaring that, “The central objective is the growthof the movement, i.e. its capacity for persistence, development andeffectiveness that goes beyond one-off dates set by its opponents.”Furthermore, as the same account explains:

At the end of this cycle ofstruggles Rifondazione found itself part of a head-on clash with neo-liberalismand of the challenge to the hegemony of the moderate left, despite a certaincountertendency to support the centre-left city, provincial and regionalgovernments. Its actions in the movement enhanced its reputation in the eyes ofthe many thousands of people, not only in Italy but all over Europe, for whomhope had revived that another world is possible. The construction of analternative left to that of the market was at a more advanced stage than inother countries of Europe.

While there were many independent strands of activisminvolved in these movements — from autonomists and radical trade unionists toanti-corruption campaigns and local Social Forums — Rifondazione was able topresent a political focus that wasclearly seen as on the “Left of the Left”; outside the cautious parliamentarysocialist (social democratic) limits that had dominated since World War Two.

But, as they say, something happened on the way to the Forum.

The accumulation of discontents against Berlusconieventually led to the real possibility that he would lose the next nationalelection. Yet in Italy’s electoral system no single progressive party could dothis alone; the PDS would have to rule with other forces to its Right and Left.It is at this point that party leader Fausto Bertinotti launched a campaign(through the mass media) for a sharp change in PRC strategy. They claimed theparty had a duty to not just help get rid of Berlusconi but to deliver a Leftgovernment that would be able to take the aspirations of the movements into parliament.This would be different to past coalitions, which had disappointed theirsupporters and allowed the Right to revive electorally.

By being within a Left coalition, Rifondazione could shapeits politics and win outcomes that would fall by the wayside if they merelycontinued their orientation on movement building. It was an argument the partywon among wide layers of activists, in part because it was the only seriousLeft agenda for engagement with the popular desire to beat the Rightelectorally, but nonetheless there was a demobilisation of movement activity asall focus came on the parliamentary arena.

Yet, far from delivering such promises, the coalition that came to power in 2006was a catastrophe for the Left in Italy. Despite its obvious significanceto the coalition — with Bertinotti being elected Speaker — the PRCimmediately pledged itself to the survival of the government ahead of thesurvival of its progressive program. It supported an intensification of theneoliberal economic and social agenda inherited from Berlusconi, and even votedfor the continued financing of Italy’s military presence in Afghanistan. Itused a thin electoral majority and the fear of Berlusconi’s comeback to argueagainst any break from this trajectory.

By 2008 it was bundled out of office in a landslide to theRight and Berlusconi’s return to power in coalition with far Right extremistslike the Northern League. The PRC’s own vote was halved and it lost all of its parliamentary representation(41 seats in the lower house and 27 seats in the Senate).

The impact was not just demoralisation at the electoralresult. The demobilisation of movement activists in the hope that agovernmental solution would deliver meant that when Berlusconi allowed localauthorities to unleash anti-immigrant pogroms and attacks on civil liberties there was political despondenceand confusion. Splits over strategy emerged within Rifondazione, but withfears that the party might fall apart a full accounting of the strategy has notyet happened. Union leaders failed to seriously mobilise for many monthsagainst Berlusconi whereas in the early part of the decade they had broughtmillions onto the streets against him.

In just a few short years the most powerful Left in Europe —built around serious nationwide political networks — was reduced to being aweak, splintered mess, one which has onlyrecently started to show signs of revival despite the scandal-riddenand unstable nature of the Berlusconi regime.

Similarities anddifferences

Australian parallels with Italy should be obvious — asignificant revival of social movement activity in the early 2000s, the abilityof a party clearly to the Left of traditional social democracy to provide anational political focus for those movements’ aspirations, and that party’sdecision to commit to being inside government as a projection of the movements’aims into the arena of official politics. There are important differences. Theanti-capitalist movement here went into a deep crisis in the wake of 9/11, andthe while massive the subsequent anti-war movement was much less radical incharacter than Italy’s. The Greens have not articulated as radical ananti-capitalist politics as Rifondazione did. And in 2005-7 the ALP couldchannel anti-Howard sentiment without the need to rely on the Greens beyondpreferences. This allowed the Greens to play a much more independent rolepolitically, especially when the government unravelled spectacularly in2009-10.

Yet when Gillard failed to win an outright majority lastyear, the Greens were all too keen to play a similar role to that ofRifondazione. It is to the impact of this that I turn in the next post.