France dramatically illustrates the political turnaround. When
right-wing president Sarkozy was elected in May 2007 to thoroughly
‘Thatcherise’ the country, the media saw it as a spectacular
defeat for the workers movement and the left. But when on
January 29th 2.5 million demonstrated on the streets during a oneday
general strike, Sarkozy’s cabinet referred to it as ‘Black Thursday,’
well understanding the huge defeat for Sarkozy it represented.
As the global crisis deepens every continent is being engulfed
by unrest, with panic buttons being pushed even by ultra-repressive
governments such as those in China and Russia.
When the global justice movement started at the beginning
of the decade socialists debated how to extend support for its
anti-neoliberal politics in the labour movement in the west and
worldwide. Global economic meltdown has provided the answer.
CAPITALISM’S BIGGEST ECONOMIC CRISIS
In all likelihood this crash is the worst economic crisis in the
history of capitalism and while its duration cannot be predicted
by anyone, a short-term fix is impossible. Because the engine of
neoliberal globalisation was ever-larger amounts of credit, the
current destruction of the mountain of fictitious capital means
the system lacks a mechanism for stabilisation and regrowth. Cutting
interest rates no longer works because they are effectively
already zero; the only option left, particularly in Britain, is socalled
‘quantitative easing’ – printing money, stoking up potentially
dangerous inflation.
Even if the global economy reaches a temporary stabilisation
in two or three year’s time, it cannot be a stabilisation at anything
like the rates of economic growth seen in the last two decades, if
only because of the huge debt mountain. A long wave with an
undertone of recession is certain, and could last for decades, paralleling
the long depression at the end of the 19th century.
Meanwhile millions of people worldwide face life-ruining
catastrophe. According to the New York Times:
“Worldwide job losses from the recession that started in
the United States in December 2007 could hit a staggering
50 million by the end of 2009, according to the International
Labour Organization, a United Nations agency. The
slowdown has already claimed 3.6 million American jobs.
“High unemployment rates, especially among young workers,
have led to protests in countries as varied as Latvia,
Chile, Greece, Bulgaria and Iceland and contributed to
strikes in Britain and France.”
In such a catastrophic economic and social situation political
instability and mass protest is inevitable and unstoppable. The
problem is what these protests will lead to. Who will take the
leadership of them? What will be their demands? What will be
the political outcomes? And how can the left respond?
INDIA AND CHINA CENTRE OF GLOBAL REVOLT
Understanding the way that global revolt is likely to unfold
means looking at the context in which neoliberal globalisation
went into crisis. Behind the nonsense about the ‘nice decades’ is
the reality that economic expansion affected different social
classes differently and that the gap between rich and poor grew
exponentially almost everywhere in the world. Hundreds of millions
of people understand this and anger is at fever pitch in many
countries.
Economic deregulation from the mid-1980s onwards led to
the further enrichment of the super-rich elite whose philistine,
narcissistic, wasteful and environmentally catastrophic hedonism
is on show for all to see. From the new super-rich in China, the
billionaire Punjabi yuppies (Puppies) in India, the drug-financed
ultra-rich in Latin America, mafia-capitalists in Russia and the
Balkans, gold-encrusted sheikhs in Dubai and Saudi, tax evading
bankers in the U.S. to Britain’s own tax-fiddling billionaires, the
gap between rich and poor has never been greater.
Neoliberalism and corruption have gone hand-in-hand. But
beyond corruption, the general workings of neoliberal
globalisation have created a small percentage of winners and a
massive percentage of losers.
In China economic growth has been achieved at the expense
of millions of rural poor whose land has been seized or have
been dragooned into becoming itinerant labourers in the big cit-
ies paid poverty wages. The abuse of power and corruption has
become the norm, leading to violent protests. Three examples
from 2008 show what’s happening:
“ • a huge demonstration and riot in Guzhou province,
southwest China. As many as 30,000 people mobilised in
response to claims that police had covered up the alleged
rape and murder of a teenage girl; cars and government
buildings were set on fire (see Li Datong, “The Weng’an
model: China’s fix-it governance,” 30 July 2008).
• a three-day demonstration by hundreds of migrant workers
in Zhejiang province, eastern China. The protest began
on July 10th after the arrest of one of their number by police.
• an attack on a police station and local administrative offices
on July 17th by more than a hundred people near
Huizhou, Guangdong province. This was sparked by rumours
that a motorcyclist had been beaten to death by the
police. In the confrontation, one person was killed and ten
injured.” (1)
This kind of incident illustrates the elemental, spontaneous
nature of the China protests, targeting the police, party bosses
and the courts, who always line up behind the increasingly
gansterised rich.
In India economic growth has been massive but the beneficiaries
relatively few. Anupam Mukerji points out:
“In the last 12 years, India’s economy has grown at an average
annual rate of about 7 percent, reducing poverty by
10 percent. However, 40 percent of the world’s poor still
live in India, and 28 percent of the country’s population
continues to live below the poverty line. More than one
third live on less than a dollar a day, and 80 percent live on
less than two dollars a day. India’s recent economic growth
has been attributed to the service industry, but 60 percent
of the workforce remains in agriculture.
“The rate of increasing disparity between the ‘haves’ and
the ‘have-nots,’ is hard to miss in tech centres like
Bangalore, Chennai and Delhi. Technology professionals
are returning, having made their millions in the USA. They
are driving expensive cars and living in luxury apartments.
Cities are growing in all directions. Farmlands are being
acquired to build luxury townships, golf courses, five star
hotels, spas and clubs. Poor farmers get paid off, and are
forced to move further away from the city. And while global
leaders and businessmen wax eloquent about India’s
growing status as an IT superpower, everyone turns a blind
eye to the majority of the population untouched by the economic
growth.” (2)
The result of this, massively under-reported in the West, is
armed rebellion.According to Professor Paul Rogers:
“A striking and largely unexpected feature of these years,
however, has been the continued and increasing vigour of
the rebellion by the Naxalite guerrilla movement (see Ajai
Sahni, “India and its Maoists: failure and success,” 20
March 2007).
“The Naxalite rebellion, named after one of the original
villages involved (Naxalbari in West Bengal) originated in
1967. Its political leadership developed its ideology and
strategy from Maoism, though its appeal to its militants
and supporters may often have owed more to its defence
of their rights and interests rather than to its propaganda.
In any event, it was long regarded as being more a persistent
but barely effective irritant rather than a serious threat
– until a few years of surprisingly rapid expansion; to the
extent that India’s prime minister Manmohan Singh described
the Naxalites in April 2006 as ‘the biggest internal
security challenge ever faced by our country’.” (3)
Much of the Naxalite revolt is centred in rural areas outside
the spotlight of urban-banned news agencies. However it is much
more socially significant than, for example, the recent Mumbai
terrorist attacks.
RUSSIAN BILLIONAIRES IN TROUBLE
Former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, who heads
a liberal opposition political party, has predicted mass protests in
Russia this summer as the economic crisis worsens.
He said mass protests will begin “when people in Russia realize
that they are in a deep economic hole...In less than half a
year, when the current leadership has spent all the money, there
will be nothing left in the arsenal to engage with the public except
batons and the use of force.”
Russia’s economic crisis has been deepened by both world
recession and then sharp decline in energy prices which a year
ago were holding crisis at bay. Now, horror of horrors, the number
of Russian billionaires has declined from 101 to 49. The situation
is vividly illustrated by a Sky News investigation in the industrial
town of Chelyabinsk, a city in the Urals built around
the engineering industry, where unemployment is soaring. The
report says:
“Inside the massive Mechel steel factory, one of the biggest
in Russia, they have had to cut production. Some 70%
of the steel it produces is exported around the world to
markets in America, Europe and Africa. But as those economies
sink deeper into recession the orders have been drying
up. The plant’s managing director, Sergey Malashev,
told Sky News everybody is worrying about how bad the
crisis will get.
“In Chelyabinsk, a city in the Urals built around the metals
industry, unemployment is soaring. Inside the massive
Mechel steel factory, one of the biggest in Russia, they
have had to cut production.
“Some 70% of the steel it produces is exported around the
world to markets in America, Europe and Africa.
“But as those economies sink deeper into recession the orders
have been drying up. The plant’s managing director,
Sergey Malashev, told Sky News everybody is worrying
about how bad the crisis will get.
“ ‘We produced 360,000 tonnes of output per month on
average but in the crisis months this came down to 290,000
tonnes – up to a 25% reduction,’ he said. ‘This is not the
worst result other metal plants in Russia saw their output
go down by 50 or 60%.’
“The Mechel plant has not had to make any staff redundant
but other workers in Chelyabinsk have not been so
lucky. Thousands have been laid off in the last few months
and the prospect of finding new jobs is not good.
“A weary Oleg Kuznetsov told us: ‘I am a brick layer, out
of work. My friends who still have work have their working
hours and pay slashed in half, others are on unpaid
leave. Almost everyone I know has been affected.’ ”
These same comments could be repeated for thousands of
towns and cities across Russia. In dozens of Russia’s monotowns
(towns with one central factory or industry, it’s the same story.
The automobile and metal industries have been particularly hard
hit as the crisis has taken hold, and monotowns are particularly
vulnerable. If the factory closes down or experiences trouble, the
future of the entire settlement comes into question.
It’s because of this that protests and demonstrations have cascaded
throughout the centre and east of the country. Although
Western media chose to use photos of demonstrators from the
National Bolshevik Party, a far right caricature of Stalinism, few
of the protesters were from the organised far right, and many
more from Communist and ‘democratic’ groups. But their influence
is so far small. The road to cohering anything like a coherent
political or social opposition will be a protracted one in Russia.
But social desperation is likely to lead to mass protest and,
given the nature of the Putin-Medvedev regime, vicious repression.
According to Der Spiegal:
“The real threat comes from another direction. The Kremlin
fears that members of the middle class, loyal Putin supporters,
will withdraw their support if the prosperity of recent
years vanishes. In December alone, disposable income
sank by 11.6 percent, and 5.8 million people are already
officially unemployed. Arkady Dvorkovich, economic advisor
to President Medvedev, believes that the unofficial
figure is closer to 20 million.”
EUROPE: CONFRONTING NEOLIBERALISM
Three governments in Europe have now fallen because of
the crisis – in Belgium, Latvia and Iceland. In some ways the fall
of the Iceland government at the end of January was the most
emblematic event of the crisis so far.
With a tiny population of 320,000 Iceland is not a ‘normal’
European state – about the size of two London boroughs. But the
bankruptcy of any state is a sensational event. Iceland went bust
because the political leaders bet everything on the financial system,
turning their state into a high interest rate lending bank.
The collapse of the Icelandic banks has been catastrophic for
the Icelandic population. Thousands have had their savings completely
wiped out and unemployment is now soaring. The government
fell because of the outrage of the population and what
was virtually a people’s insurrection. On a small scale it paralleled
the bankruptcy of Argentina in 2000-1 and the consequent
collapse of the government there.
According to the Washington Post:
“Protests have mounted throughout Europe, where the political
backlash to the crisis is growing. In Ireland, Britain,
Spain and other countries where bankruptcies and home
foreclosures are rising, polls show that approval ratings of
leaders are sinking. In Eastern Europe and Greece, where
there is less of a government safety net, protesters have
spilled onto the streets by the thousands. Last month’s collapse
of the Belgian government, which had been wrestling
with long-standing conflicts, was also hastened by
the banking crisis, analysts said.
“Perhaps nowhere has the economic crash been more spectacular
than Iceland, an island with 300,000 residents on
the edge of the Arctic Circle. Last fall, its largest banks
went bust and the value of its currency plummeted. In recent
days, protests intensified as no leader took responsibility
for the crash, prompting police to use tear gas for the
first time in half a century.”
Last year UNESCO ranked Iceland as number one in its international
quality of life index, which seems now like a sick
joke.
A NEW HISTORICAL PERIOD
With the onset of the credit crunch in 2007 the world entered
into a new historical period. Every aspect of economics and politics
will be shaken up, especially as the economic crisis combines
with the ecological crisis to create a major crossroads in
human civilisation.
The political dimension of the anti-neoliberal protest movement
is uneven worldwide, but almost everywhere new spaces for
radical and anti-capitalist politics are opening up. The U.S. and
Britain, centres of neoliberalism, are lagging behind, but given the
depth of the crisis and the numbers of workers and youth likely to
be excluded from the workforce or victims of welfare cutbacks,
some form of new radicalisation will certainly occur over time.
For the left, the key is to develop mass politics that goes in
an anti-capitalist direction. This is a period that shows the bankruptcy
of Keynesianism as well as neoliberalism. Leading British
Keynesian theorist Will Hutton, a strong critic of neoliberalism
and Thatcherism, can think of nothing better than to act as a cheerleader
for Gordon Brown as his government robs billions from
present and future taxpayers to bail out the crooks who run the
banks.
We should remember however the global context in which
the crisis takes place – at end of a 25-year period of neoliberal
offensive in which the workers movement and socialism as an
ideology have taken a fearful battering. This means that in some
places the left is not well placed – in the short term – to fill the
vacuum left by the crisis of mainstream politics.
Bourgeois politics will doubtless swivel toward what Walden
Bellow has called ‘Global Social Democracy’; but mainly this
will probably not be attempts at social concessions, but state intervention
in the economy; Barack Obama’s policies in the U.S.
are a perfect example. After all, even Nicholas Sarkozy says
“laissez-faire capitalism is dead.”
Changing capitalist politics can lead to some odd results. In
China for example the planned increase in the minimum wage
has been postponed, but the government has been handing out
‘red envelopes’ of cash payment to the poor. On many consumer
goods shoppers can now get a 13% discount to encourage them
to buy. But none of this will do anything to help the millions
made unemployed; those forced into casualised hire-by-the-day
jobs where workers are picked out from pens for 10 hours at
pittance wages in scenes reminiscent of the 1930s docks in Britain;
the millions of graduates who will not get jobs, like many of
the 6 million who will graduate this year; or the armies of migrant
workers losing their jobs at a breathtaking rate and forced into homeless desperation.
Global Social Democracy may become an aspiration but social
democracy needs huge resources to create social programmes.
That’s its problem; without social programmes it becomes mere
government economic management without addressing the roots
of the problem. Capitalist politics of any type cannot solve this
crisis; only solutions based on national planning, social solidarity
and ecological conversion banishing wasteful luxury ‘consumerism’
(including its close partner militarism) can face the
crisis.
LEFT VERSUS RIGHT
Among the protests movements and hundreds of millions of
enraged citizens major opportunities will be created for reactionary
as well as progressive social forces. For example, in Hungary
the crisis is impacting worse on the Roma population who are the
victims of repeated pogroms in which more than a dozen people
have been murdered and which is fuelling the growth of the farright
Jobbick party (and its paramilitary wing the Hungarian
Guard).
In Sarajevo ethnic conflict is being stoked up again by the
rise of Islamism backed by millions of Saudi dollars. Anti-Turkish
racism is on the rise again in Bulgaria.
In a swathe of the former Eastern Bloc nationalism and racism
continue as potent threats. In France, by contrast, the crisis
has not benefited the far-right National Front, a party whose economic
programme concentrates on tax-cutting measures to suit
its middle-class base. And in Germany the far right, while having
some appeal among sections of lumpenised youth and reactionary
middle classes, is weak compared with the left and especially
Die Linke.
But the political shape of protest can change rapidly – we are
at the beginning of the movement, not the end of it. As we have
seen with the recent protests against social dumping by bringing
in Italian and Portuguese contract workers to the Total refinery in
Lincolnshire, a progressive movement can throw up reactionary
or nationalistic sentiments along with progressive ones. That is
inevitable in all major struggles in the real world and happens in
many strikes and protest movements unequivocally supported by
the left. For socialists it is important to be able to discern the real
issues involved and contest with the right and reactionaries for
leadership of the movement.
For the left to take the leadership at a national level means
the creation of political parties that can have a state-wide political
impact with a viable programme that favours the workers and
the other popular sectors of the population. In some cases this
means, for the moment, simply a political regroupment dominated
by left social democratic ideas like Die Linke in Germany.
In other places where mass politics are more advanced it is possible
to create anti-capitalist parties with broad support in the
short term, like the New Anti-capitalist Party in France. The best
instrument for this process in England and Wales is Respect,
which, while taking the side of the workers and poor on decisive
questions, is ideologically not yet a consistently anti-capitalist
party with some sectors of its support conforming to a left social
democratic approach, while allowing crucial space for class
struggle and anti-capitalist politics.
ANARCHISM AND THE POLITICS OF RAGE
Almost nowhere however will the fight for political leadership
simply be between the left, the far right and/or religious fundamentalists.
This global movement, prefigured by the movement
in Argentina in 2001-2, will be powered by rage and desperation
as life savings go up in smoke, purchasing power collapses and
hundreds of millions head for the dole queue (or more likely in
many places the soup kitchen).
Desperation and rage on their own create riots and social
confrontation, not necessarily political programmes and parties
capable of inspiring millions over a long period. The explosions
in Greece and Iceland demonstrate the power of spontaneous indignation
and upsurge. The politics of anarchism – explicit or
otherwise – can come to the fore in these situations. This can also
be aided by the natural distrust among the abused and desperate
of all ‘politicians’ and ‘parties,’ without making any distinctions.
In Greece the movement, although supported by the left and
workers movement, had anarchists among its important leadership
groups. But without building a sustained left political party,
anarchist leadership can lead to movements simply dying out after
the latest explosion. Anarchist politics can be explosive, but
modern anarchism, unlike some of its historical predecessors, is
mainly a label given to the anti-authoritarian moods of the youth
and lacks staying power. Upsurges, trashing elite shops and spectacular
riots can be contained if they lead to no permanent political
results.
THERE’S A STORM COMING...
In April 2007 a British military think tank published a report
for the next 30 years predicting growing chaos as the environment
degraded and people became exasperated by the huge gap
between rich and poor. The report predicted the growing influence
of Marxism as the middle classes became revolutionary, the
emergence of ‘flash-mobs’ of criminals, protesters and terrorists
and a growing centrality for the environmental movement.
Some aspects of this report were certainly one-sided and exaggerated.
But like a previous and similar report by the Pentagon,
this report revealed a lot about the thinking of the political
and intelligence elites of Western capitalism. Their self-confidence
for the long term has been shaken by emerging environmental
catastrophe and now growing economic collapse. We are
a world away from the self-confidence and self-satisfied smugness
of the ‘Golden Age’ in the 1950s and ‘60s. Today everything
is being shaken and thrown in the air. “All that is solid
melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.” Capitalism’s crisis is a
huge opportunity for socialist and environmentalist politics, with
dreadful consequences if those politics fail.
Notes
1. www.opendemocracy.net/article/china-and-india-heartlandsof-
global-protest
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.