SOCIALIST UNITY

This is an unfinished article, because the demands of working for a one day strike by Carillion staff at the Great Western Hospital in Swindon today left me insufficient time to complete it. I will publish the second half in the next few days.

Enthusiasm for François Hollande’s new government in France is understandable, as it provides a popular mandate for an economic alternative to austerity, and a programme for economic growth. As Trevor Martin exhorts in his recent Tribune article “Let us follow where Hollande leads”

Michael Meacher sketches an outline of what Hollande’s policies would mean translated into British terms:

it requires a National Infrastructure Bank to launch a big increase in capital investment including for house-building, a revival of the role of the State in reversing the vicious spiral of economic decline, and a major rebalancing of the economy from an over-cossetted banking system to a lean and hungry manufacturing industry.

However, it is important to understand that Hollande’s project is also to restructure the French economy. Jeremy Cliffe explains:

international commentators have largely overlooked his longer-term vision for the French economy.

Thus it may surprise many to learn that the Socialist programme pledges to both decentralise and shrink state spending year-on-year, cut corporate taxation for companies that reinvest profits, establish both a national investment bank and an industrial savings bank devoted to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), establish a ‘pact of trust’ binding employers, unions, banks and local authorities in a consensus-based system of co-production, lower VAT and introduce full proportional representation in time for the 2017 election.

What is more, Hollande was as good as endorsed by the national association of SMEs (CGPME), which praised his commitment to enterprise, explicitly noting the contrast to 1981. Unlike the 2007 Socialist candidate, Ségolène Royal, he met repeatedly with the national employers association (AFEP). He promises to put employees (or their representatives) on the boards of directors and supervisory boards of all companies with over 1,000 workers, and to write into the constitution an obligation to consult all relevant social partners before a given government or private bill goes through the legislature.

To understand this programme we need to understand the specifically French context, and how social-democracy in France has experienced a distinctively different history from British labourism.

While it is appropriate and necessary for the Labour Party to develop a credible anti-austerity policy for jobs and growth, this must reflect our own British conditions, and we should not be distracted by particularities of Hollande’s government that do not apply to us.

The state plays, and has played a much greater role in the French economy than in Britain. Charles de Gaulle’s 1945 government, which included the socialist and communist parties, not only nationalized the banks, coal mines, insurance companies, electrical and gas companies, Air France, and Renault Auto but they also instituted a regime of government planning.

Jean Monnet drew up a set of goals in 1945 of what the French economy should accomplish by 1950. In addition to achieving target outputs Monnet called for the modernization of French industry. Monnet noted that the French Government did not have the resources to reconstruct all of the French economy so he called for the public investment in key economic sectors. These key sectors included the transportation system, coal, electricity, steel and agricultural mechanization. Later fuel and fertilizers were added to the list. Monnet’s formulation, extended to 1952, became known at the Monnet Plan.
In each key sector under the Plan the details of the planning were left to the modernization committees made up of representatives of the Planning Commission, the major firms in the sectors, public enterprises and unions, and technical experts.

These committees did not have the power to enforce their decisions, compliance was voluntary. This process came to be known as indicative planning.

A series of five plans were implemented successfully through to 1970. In his 1975 book, the Socialist Challenge, Stuart Holland described the necessary conditions which allowed the French planning system to succeed.

Significantly, it emerged from a long standing French tradition of state involvement in the economy; but also the immediate post-war period the economy was constrained by supply side problems, not demand; which gave enormous confidence to investors anticipating growth. Government departments also had real powers of disposal of capital and technological resources, which made the private sector very responsive to government priorities. Reconstruction also meant that planning could occur based upon highly incomplete data, as various industrial sectors intuitively restored their pre-war capacity.

In addition, the purge of Vichy collaborators opened up the civil service for a wave of new blood, the most talented of whom were cherry picked for the elite Ecole Normal d’Administration, where the ideology and methods of planning were taught. These young men achieved high civil service office very early in their careers, and a high proportion were then recruited by industry. This meant that there was a horizontal layer of networked civil servants and senior managers in industry committed to shared objectives. Furthermore, the rivalry between government departments was minimised through centralisation, in British terms this would be equivalent of the Department of Business Innovation and Skills being part of the Treasury.

(A descriptive account of analogous processes of indicative planning in South Korea and Taiwan is included in Nigel Harris’s “The End of the Third World”)

In contrast, the brief flirtation with indicative planning by the British Labour Party inspired by the economist Thomas Balogh, special advisor to Harold Wilson, was abandoned after 1964 when it became clear that the economic preconditions for success were absent. Indicative planning can succeed in conditions of economic confidence, which of course it can help to sustain, but it cannot reverse an unwillingness of the private sector to invest.

Generally the French post-war experience created a specific state-capitalist mode of capitalist development, distinct from the Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic models.

Vivien Schmidt describes the three models as follows:

Government policies differed widely among European countries in the post-war period.

Market capitalist Britain’s liberal or ‘spectator’ state generally had arm’s length relations with business (Grant 1995). It sought to limit its role to arbitrating among economic actors while leaving the administration of the rules to self-governing bodies, although this did not stop it from providing aid to industry on an ad hoc basis and intermittently intervening through planning experiments, nationalized industries or government sanctioned, privately regulated cartels (Shonfield 1965).

Managed capitalist Germany’s ‘enabling’ state was instead focused on facilitating business activities through more targeted aid to industry by way of regionally provided subsidies and loans, support for research and development, as well as education, apprenticeship and training programmes, while often leaving the rules to be jointly administered by economic actors (Katzenstein 1989).

State capitalist France’s dirigiste or interventionist state, by contrast, sought to direct economic activities through planning, industrial policy and state-owned enterprises, in addition to all the ways the other states promoted business, while it administered the rules itself, as often as not through the derogation of the rules in favour of business (Hayward 1973; Hall 1986; Schmidt 1996).

Furthermore, state intervention in the economy has generally been a much less politically polarised issue in France, enjoying support not only from the left, but also parts of the traditional Gaullist right, and indeed from the far-right.

So Hollande’s government is dealing with a distinct national context of capitalist development, but to understand his programme it is also necessary to understand the specifically French experience of social democracy.

The second part of this article will deal with the experience and legacy of the MItterand government, and the different strategic tasks facing French and British social-democracy, which provide the limits to which the Labour Party can emulate Hollande’s programme.

“it must be clear that there is no room in the country for both peoples . . . If the Arabs leave it, the country will become wide and spacious for us . . . There is no room here for compromises . . . There is no way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, to transfer all of them…”

Yosef Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency’s Colonization Department (1940)

Ed Miliband MP, Leader of the Labour Party, speaking to Progress annual conference 2012 in London this weekend, said:

It’s great to be here at Progress.

You have always been at the heart of challenging old orthodoxies and championing change.

You have given the Labour party space to think, you have challenged the party, and you have changed it.

I also want to thank many of the people here who were out campaigning for the Labour Party in the local elections we’ve just had.

Across the country, Labour party members came out to knock on doors, hand out leaflets, make the case to their friends and their neighbours.

The success we enjoyed was largely down to the efforts of people like you.

I am proud that we are the only major party gaining members and supporters.

I am proud that Labour is growing again.

But as well as praising your work, let me also challenge you.

The sun is shining.

The shops are open.

And the pubs are too.

And you chose to come here.

And how about those people watching this on 24 hour news channels?

Yes, you.

Let me tell you what’s on the other channels.

On BBC1 there are the qualifiers for the Spanish Grand Prix.

Over on ITV the 1962 classic, Carry on Cruising, is just starting.

And if you have Dave TV, you can – as always- watch a re-run of Top Gear.

But instead, you’re watching me.

Now why am I insulting my audience?

Because it’s what I want to talk about today:

About how politics is an increasingly minority activity.

An increasingly minority activity.

When you knock on doors, you will all have heard it:

“You’re all the same.”

“It won’t make any difference to me.’

“I don’t vote….Ever”

Last week did see good election results for Labour.

The Conservative-led government should learn lessons from the people who didn’t vote for them.

But I think we need to learn lessons too.

Most of all, from the two thirds of people who didn’t vote for us or anybody else.

The lowest turnout for more than a decade.

It sometimes suits politicians to explain low turnout in terms of apathy. As if the voters are to blame.

But I think people are telling us something we need to hear. (more…)

SAMIDOUN – Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network

A letter from Thaer Halahleh, on day 75 of hunger strike against his detention without charge, to his two-year-old daughter Lamar, who he has never seen.

Translated by Jalal Najjar.

“My Beloved Lamar, forgive me because the occupation took me away from you, and took away from me the pleasure of witnessing my first born child that I have always prayed to God to see, to kiss, to be happy with. It is not your fault, this is our destiny as Palestinian people to have our lives and the lives of our children taken away from us, to be apart from each other and to have a miserable life, nothing is complete in our lives because of this unjust occupation that is lurking on every corner of our lives turning it into eeriness, a continuous pursuit and torture. Despite that I was deprived from holding you and hearing your voice, from watching you grow up and move around in the house and in your be, and that I was deprived of my rule as a human and a father with my daughter your existence has given me all the power and hope, and when I saw your picture with your mother in the sit-in tent, you were so calm staring in wonder at people, as if you were looking for your father, looking at my pictures that are hung inside the tent asking in silence why is my father not coming back, I felt that you are with me, in my sentiment and inside my mind, as if you are a part of my heartbeats, steadfast and the blood that flows in my veins, opening all doors for me spreading clear skies around me, and unleashing your free childish voice after this long silence”.

“Lamar my love: I know that you are not to be blamed and that you don’t yet understand why your father is going through this battle of the hunger strike for the 75th day, but when you grow up you will understand that the battle of freedom is the battle of going back to you, so that I can never be taken away from you again or to be deprived of your smile or seeing you, so that the occupier will never kidnap me again from you”.

“When you grow up you will understand how injustice was brought upon your father and upon thousands of Palestinians whom the occupation has put in prisons and jail cells, shattering their lives and future for no guilt but their pursuit of freedom, dignity and independence, you will know that your father did not tolerate injustice and submission, that he will never accept insult and compromise, and that he is going through a hunger strike to protest against the Jewish state that wants to turn us into humiliated slaves without any rights or patriotic dignity”.

“My beloved Lamar keep your head up always and be proud of your father, and thank everyone who supported me, who supported the prisoners in their struggle, and don’t be afraid god is with us always, and god never lets people who have faith and patience, we are righteous, and right will always prevail against injustice and wrong doers”.

“Lamar my love: that day will come, and I will make it up to you for everything, and tell you the whole story, and your days that will follow will be more beautiful, so let your days pass now and wear your prettiest clothes, run and then run again in the gardens of your long life, go forward and forward nothing is behind you but the past, and this is your voice I hear all the time as a melody of freedom”.

Europe’s pro-austerity ruling governments and political parties continue to be placed on the back foot. Angela Merkel’s own German Christian Democrats in North-Rhine state elections at the weekend were comprehensively defeated by their pro-growth Social Democrat rivals – 38 against 25 percent. With the Greens coming third behind Merkel’s CDU with 12 percent, it is now likely that the Social Democrats and the Greens will enter coalition to form an absolute majority.

The significance of this result is clear. State elections in North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany’s most populous region, are considered a reliable gauge of national voting trends, and with Germany’s federal elections looming next year, Merkel’s position as chancellor now seems far less secure than it has since she was first elected in 2005. The fact it was the conservative CDU’s worst ever electoral defeat in the state since 1949 merely adds weight to the message it delivers.

Even more significantly, the result arrives just two days before the German chancellor’s first meeting with new French president Francois Hollande in Berlin to discuss the eurozone crisis, and at the same time as the largest anti-austerity party in Greece, Syriza, announces it has decided to pull out of talks with New Democracy and Pasok over the formation of a national government post the recent Greek elections. This means it is almost certain that new elections in Greece will take place, probably in June, with Syriza in a strong position to defeat its pro-bailout rivals according to recent opinion polls.

Overall, the case for a pro-growth alternative to austerity is gaining traction at an evermore rapid pace throughout Europe, increasingly isolating the likes of Angela Merkel’s CDU and its Tory-led coalition equivalent in Britain.

This is a guest post from Andrew Burgin and Kate Hudson

In the run up to the recent elections in Greece, a number of facts became increasingly clear: the people of Greece can suffer no more austerity – they are at breaking point; Greece is being used as a gigantic social experiment and if it succeeds other countries in Europe will suffer the same fate; the working people of Greece are increasingly supportive of anti-austerity parties and there is a need – and strong desire – for unity of these forces on the left.

The elections showed a stunning result for Syriza, the main recipient of the anti-austerity vote, pushing its support to 16.7% and outstripping the former governing party PASOK whose vote fell from 44% to 13%.

The KKE vote also increased, but only marginally, to 8.5%. The other party experiencing rapid growth was the neo-nazi Golden Dawn, whose vote rose from 0.23% to 6.9%. Further polls taken since the election show Syriza’s support is now at 27%. Its popularity has been enhanced by the five demands proposed by its leader Alexis Tsipras.

They are:

• Cancelling the bailout terms, notably laws that further cut wages and pensions
• Scrapping laws that abolish workers’ rights, particularly a law abolishing collective labour agreements due to come into effect on 15 May
• Demanding proportional representation and the end to the 50 seat bonus to the first party
• Investigating Greece’s banking system which received almost 200bn euros of public money and posing the need for some kind of state control over the banks
• Setting up an international committee to find out the causes of Greece’s public deficit and putting on hold all debt servicing.

That Syriza must form a government on this basis is now the central political demand and one which reflects the political reality facing the country. It seems likely that a new election will be called for June and Syriza will emerge as the strongest party. The working class are looking to the left to resolve the problems they face in their daily lives and many middle class voters are also turning to Syriza as the mainstream parties have plunged them further and further into an economic nightmare. There is an increasing recognition from across the board that the policy prescriptions of finance capital hold no future for the country.

However, whilst support from ordinary people is increasing, the response from the left outside of Syriza has not been good. The KKE leader Aleka Papariga has refused to meet with Tsipras and the KKE have released a statement which includes this: ‘Syriza is lying that it will cancel the memorandum and the loan agreement and that it will free the people from the debt.’

The KKE calls not for a government in which Syriza can be worked with, tested out and held to its five demands, but for a strengthening of the KKE. It is likely that this isolationist policy has been shaped by its negative experience in the late 1980s when it helped form and briefly belonged to Synaspismos – the main element of Syriza – and participated in government coalitions with both New Democracy and PASOK. As a result of this experience, in 1991 the KKE began the process of reconsolidating itself as an explicitly communist party. But these experiences should not prevent the KKE from fighting for working class unity today. Syriza is not PASOK or New Democracy – it stands on a clear anti-austerity programme.

Now, more than ever, it is essential that left organisations put the interests of the class first – a principle which should be applied in Britain or any other country as much as Greece.

Any cooperation between Syriza and the bourgeois parties should be opposed but it is not currently on the agenda, and has been explicitly rejected by Tsipras. But nevertheless the KKE believes that a government led by Syriza would “meet the needs and interests of capital, the choices of the EU and the IMF.” However, this is not what the majority of the working class believes and the election results show it has made a different assessment. Syriza triumphed strongly in working class areas where it was the first party and amongst unemployed youth where it was also the first party. The second party for the young unemployed was the fascist Golden Dawn.

The KKE should now use its political weight, built largely on its undoubted courage during the second world war, civil war and military junta, to demand that Tsipras takes office in order to defend the working class. The role of communists in such a government would be to ensure practical steps forward for socialism.

What is necessary in Greece is a united front of all workers’ parties. The situation is so grave that historical and programmatic differences must be set aside in the interests of the working class. Parties can maintain their own organisational independence and slogans whilst the government centres on concrete political and economic issues for the benefit of working people.

The current position of the KKE is a tragedy both for itself and the people of Greece. At the next election its vote is expected to fall and many KKE supporters will switch to Syriza – but even then it is unlikely that Syriza will be able to form a government without the support of the KKE.

The same support for a united front should come from all sections of the left in Greece. Whilst it does not have the same political weight as the KKE, the far left anti-capitalist coalition Antarsya should also back a Syriza-led government. But as a leader of the British Socialist Workers’ Party – its British sister organisation – tweeted ‘Anti-capitalist left Antarsya will not prop up SYRIZA govt but is calling for joint-action to beat austerity in strikes, occupations’.

Antarsya is not in a position to prop up any government – they got 1.2% of the vote and polled 75,000 which is down on their result in the 2010 local elections when they polled 97,000. However, Antarsya contains many good activists and they have been at the forefront of anti-fascist activity and the call that they make for united action on the streets is important. On some demonstrations in Greece this is beginning to happen in practice, notably in February when cadre from the KKE opened their lines to protect Syriza supporters from the riot police in Syntagma Square.

But the lessons from Germany in the early thirties show that united action on the streets has to be supplemented with clear agreements between working class parties in defence of the class as a whole. We cannot repeat the errors of the left at that time, when calls for a united front from below isolated social democratic workers from communists and split the movement, allowing Hitler to take power. Of course there is not an exact parallel between then and now, and as yet neither a military coup nor a fascist take-over are in prospect. But it cannot be denied that the consequences of unbridled neo-liberalism and the effective dictatorship of finance capital are already creating the most devastating consequences for the people of Greece and must be understood as a most savage onslaught whose consequences will ultimately equal those that would be experienced under political or military dictatorship and may in fact lead to either of these being established. Those would be the consequences if the left fails. At the moment what is in prospect politically is the ascendancy of the working class. How can the left contemplate anything other than a united front to take that possibility forward and reject any possible resurgence of the right?

By the same token, the left across Europe should express the strongest possible solidarity with the working people of Greece in whatever practical and political ways can be established. Seventy-five years ago, the left from across Europe gave unstintingly and often with great personal sacrifice to support the Spanish republic against fascism. How can it now do less, in ways appropriate to the situation today, in support of the Greek people and to advance the prospect of a working class government?

At the moment the working class in Greece is undefeated and the opportunity to take the movement forward must not be rejected.