A Free Market Anti-Capitalist Writes...

Sometimes the gap between rhetoric and reality is unbridgeable ie 1956 Soviet tanks move into Hungary to save the people from themselves...

When the Chinese Communist leader Chou Enlai was asked in the late 1960s what he thought of the impact of the French Revolution, he said “It is too early to say.” Looking at the current economic crisis which has enveloped the capitalist world in recent weeks, most notably the so-called ‘Anglo-Saxon’ ones (although anyone who has actually perused the history of Anglo-Saxon England would surmise that the pre-1066 equivalents of ‘short-sellers’, ‘hedge-funders’ and other speculators would have been strung up from the nearest tree ages ago), no-one can with certainty predict the future. All that can be said with certainty is that something of world-historical proportions has occurred.

With $700bn promised by the Bush Administration, Treasury, Federal Reserve and Congress to prop up the US financial system, it might be surmised that the economic system we have lived under since the 1980s has been saved. However, as no one outside the most far-out Marxist sects expected a crisis of this magnitude to occur, no one really knows if this (to sound Churchillian) is the end of the beginning, or the beginning of the end.

What I would say, putting my head on the proverbial chopping bloc, is that I think the current ‘Anglo- Saxon’ economic world-view has been discredited in the same way that the events of 1956 discredited Communism. Although Soviet tanks were sent eventually into Hungary to crush the ‘national Communist’ regime of Imre Nagy, in the same way all that money has been sent in to bail the US financial system out, no-one can pretend that the current system of finance capital can survive without the backing of the state, whatever economists, politicians and assorted big business apologists may say to try to convince us otherwise. To argue that we now live under a free market system that does not really need state handouts is to employ the same rhetorical devices, and capacity for intellectual self-delusion, as those so-called Marxists after 1956 who claimed that the Eastern Bloc was run for the benefit of the working classes.

As a free-market anti-capitalist, it would be good to think that the current crisis will make enough people realise that Big Business and Big Government are (occasionally unruly) twins who adopt ‘planning’ or ‘the market’ as an ideological ruse for pursuing extra profits and power when they need it. Although I think the use of the phrase ‘Bolshevik’ in this context is hilarious, I am encouraged by the increasing numbers of people in the US (including members of Congress) who realise that the Bush/Paulson bail-out to the banks is a form of ‘socialism’, albeit one for the rich rather than the majority. I would like to think something similar might happen on Airstrip One, but apparently we always lag behind the Americans in economic and political matters…

Couver...interim report

I'm still getting over the jetlag and have been working, so in response to Madam M's comments on my previous post, what follows is an adaptation of something I put up on Facebook (New World Order version)...

What I did on my holidays, by Noel, Age 38

I had a very good time, which is the main thing! I went to the Vancouver Fringe Festival, saw 7 good shows (The Shakespeare Show, Busty Rhymes, Putz, The Lost Sole, Mating Rituals of the Urban Cougar, Die Roten Punkte & Gutenberg! the Musical), and thought the Fringe Bar was very impressive, not least since it was open until 2.30am! For the first time I saw all four Bard on the Beach performances (King Lear, Twelth Night, The Tempest & Titus Andronicus- which has put me off eating meat pies for a fair while) and they were all great- not least due to the superb actors and actresses who appeared in them! Thanks to Fitz for getting me into the shows past the hoi polloi (and teaching me the tricks of the standby ticket queue- get there early!).

I saw my friend Riel strum her stuff at Theatre Sport Improv and stayed to watch the rest of the show, which I did not regret (and Riel plays the guitar better than Madonna!) I saw Jen and her fellow burlesquees at the Biltmore strut their stuff, which was highly entertaining! I made Malaika's leaving do the night before her move to LA (I regret not taking the rubber duck that was up for grabs). I got a classy black fedora from Edie's Hats and met Edie, who allowed me to see her secret HQ! I saw Siobhan and her five week old sprog Phoenix (who now has a new teddy). I gave out lots of food largesse from England, which seems to have been appreciated by the locals (NB Branston Pickle is seen as a liquid by the UK authorities on airline flights, so I had to put this perfect terrorist weapon into my hold luggage!).

I was bowled over by the weather I encountered in Couver when I was over. Every time I go, it seems to happen. I had plans to take the odd trip to the countryside, but I was getting up late nearly everyday and once I saw the sun, blue skies and English Bay beach all such plans went out the proverbial window. Perhaps if it had not been such a bad August in the UK I would not have done so much sun worshipping. I ate and drank well, although there seemed to be a dearth of Granville Island Pale Ale when I was in town (I found adequate substitutes though). As with all holidays, I Could Have Done More, but then it would not have been such a break from it all, which a wannabe idler like me wants for his few weeks a year away from the grind. It must have worked extremely well, as this is the first trip to Vancouver where I haven't felt melancholic on getting back. I think that is because I had time to seriously chill out and reflect over Stuff. Let's say there is a lot I want to get done by the next time I visit the City of Glass.

The next time? It won't be 09, unless I win the proverbial lottery. Next year I want to go to France (quite possibly the Med) and either a grand tour of England or a few days in Sligo on the Irish west coast, where my dad was born. So I am thinking 2010, post-Olympics, sometime in July, August or September (I may be, as Fitz thinks, a good weather talisman for Vancouver/BC, but I'm not a bloody miracle worker!). At the moment, it is far too early to say more , except I'd like to say thanks to everyone who met and/or entertained me while I was over. To those I missed: no problem, you're all busy people, there will be a next time.

Paddling in the Pacific

Vancouver's English Bay at dusk

I'm heading to Vancouver again for my annual Break From Blighty. I'm back in a few weeks. I hope to seriously recharge my batteries there, before coming back to provide a lot of new posts to inspire bouquets and brickbats from fans, friends, enemies and the indifferent alike from October onwards.

Oceania v Eurasia once again?

Tweedledumber and Tweedledee.

For nearly two decades I haven't had to worry about a nuclear war in Europe. Maybe nuclear wars elsewhere (ie the Middle East, India v Pakistan, Korea) and possibly a "dirty bomb" being exploded in a Western city by a terrorist group, but not an all-out nuclear conflict between the West and Russia. However, the events of the last couple of weeks has made me think that the possibility is back.

There are definitely a lot of important and/or loud people in the West (and I should think in Russia too) who would love to see the Cold War back. If Georgia was a member of NATO we would be in a shooting war with the Russians by now. Some idiots think we should have helped Georgia after its attempt to take over South Ossetia by force went awry: how? Send troops in? (Very few of these armchair generals are prepared to go themselves to anywhere more dangerous than their laptops.) Where would that end? Perhaps some people should watch The Day After and Threads and see what a nuclear war with the Russians would be like.

What has really annoyed me in the last couple of weeks has been the characterisation of Georgia as the 'Plucky Little Belgium/Poland' of the Twenty First Century, fighting against the Russian jackboot. The Russian military are not saints, as the war in Chechenya shows, but they did not kick off the current round of fighting in the Caucasus. Furthermore, Messrs Putin and Medvedev do not need lessons in corruption, ballot rigging and intimidating their domestic opponents from Mikheil Saaskashvili. I mean, who wins 94% in a Presidential contest outside of North Korea these days? The best piece I have seen so far on the whole situation comes from Mark Almond who, as someone who practically supported dissidents in the Eastern Bloc during the 1980s, is far from a Russian stooge:

Plucky little Georgia? No, the cold war reading won't wash: It is crudely simplistic to cast Russia as the sole villain in the clashes over South Ossetia. The west would be wise to stay out
Mark Almond, The Guardian, Saturday August 9 2008

For many people the sight of Russian tanks streaming across a border in August has uncanny echoes of Prague 1968. That cold war reflex is natural enough, but after two decades of Russian retreat from those bastions it is misleading. Not every development in the former Soviet Union is a replay of Soviet history.

The clash between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia, which escalated dramatically yesterday, in truth has more in common with the Falklands war of 1982 than it does with a cold war crisis. When the Argentine junta was basking in public approval for its bloodless recovery of Las Malvinas, Henry Kissinger anticipated Britain's widely unexpected military response with the comment: "No great power retreats for ever." Maybe today Russia has stopped the long retreat to Moscow which started under Gorbachev.

Back in the late 1980s, as the USSR waned, the red army withdrew from countries in eastern Europe which plainly resented its presence as the guarantor of unpopular communist regimes. That theme continued throughout the new republics of the deceased Soviet Union, and on into the premiership of Putin, under whom Russian forces were evacuated even from the country's bases in Georgia.

To many Russians this vast geopolitical retreat from places which were part of Russia long before the dawn of communist rule brought no bonus in relations with the west. The more Russia drew in its horns, the more Washington and its allies denounced the Kremlin for its imperial ambitions.

Unlike in eastern Europe, for instance, today in breakaway states such as South Ossetia or Abkhazia, Russian troops are popular. Vladimir Putin's picture is more widely displayed than that of the South Ossetian president, the former Soviet wrestling champion Eduard Kokoity. The Russians are seen as protectors against a repeat of ethnic cleansing by Georgians.

In 1992, the west backed Eduard Shevardnadze's attempts to reassert Georgia's control over these regions. The then Georgian president's war was a disaster for his nation. It left 300,000 or more refugees "cleansed" by the rebel regions, but for Ossetians and Abkhazians the brutal plundering of the Georgian troops is the most indelible memory.

Georgians have nursed their humiliation ever since. Although Mikheil Saakashvili has done little for the refugees since he came to power early in 2004 - apart from move them out of their hostels in central Tbilisi to make way for property development - he has spent 70% of the Georgian budget on his military. At the start of the week he decided to flex his muscles.

Devoted to achieving Nato entry for Georgia, Saakashvili has sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan - and so clearly felt he had American backing. The streets of the Georgian capital are plastered with posters of George W Bush alongside his Georgian protege. George W Bush avenue leads to Tbilisi airport. But he has ignored Kissinger's dictum: "Great powers don't commit suicide for their allies." Perhaps his neoconservative allies in Washington have forgotten it, too. Let's hope not.

Like Galtieri in 1982, Saakashvili faces a domestic economic crisis and public disillusionment. In the years since the so-called Rose revolution, the cronyism and poverty that characterised the Shevardnadze era have not gone away. Allegations of corruption and favouritism towards his mother's clan, together with claims of election fraud, led to mass demonstrations against Saakashvili last November. His ruthless security forces - trained, equipped and subsidised by the west - thrashed the protesters. Lashing out at the Georgians' common enemy in South Ossetia would certainly rally them around the president, at least in the short term.

Last September, President Saakashvili suddenly turned on his closest ally in the Rose revolution, defence minister Irakli Okruashvili. Each man accused his former blood brother of mafia links and profiting from contraband. Whatever the truth, the fact that the men seen by the west as the heroes of a post-Shevardnadze clean-up accused each other of vile crimes should warn us against picking a local hero in Caucasian politics.

Western geopolitical commentators stick to cold war simplicities about Russia bullying plucky little Georgia. However, anyone familiar with the Caucasus knows that the state bleating about its victim status at the hands of a bigger neighbour can be just as nasty to its smaller subjects. Small nationalisms are rarely sweet-natured.

Worse still, western backing for "equip and train" programmes in Russia's backyard don't contribute to peace and stability if bombastic local leaders such as Saakashvili see them as a guarantee of support even in a crisis provoked by his own actions. He seems to have thought that the valuable oil pipeline passing through his territory, together with the Nato advisers intermingled with his troops, would prevent Russia reacting militarily to an incursion into South Ossetia. That calculation has proved disastrously wrong.

The question now is whether the conflict can be contained, or whether the west will be drawn in, raising the stakes to desperate levels. To date the west has operated radically different approaches to secession in the Balkans, where pro-western microstates get embassies, and the Caucasus, where the Caucasian boundaries drawn up by Stalin, are deemed sacrosanct.

In the Balkans, the west promoted the disintegration of multiethnic Yugoslavia, climaxing with their recognition of Kosovo's independence in February. If a mafia-dominated microstate like Montenegro can get western recognition, why shouldn't flawed, pro-Russian, unrecognised states aspire to independence, too?

Given its extraordinary ethnic complexity, Georgia is a post-Soviet Union in miniature. If westerners readily conceded non-Russian republics' right to secede from the USSR in 1991, what is the logic of insisting that non-Georgians must remain inside a microempire which happens to be pro-western?

Other people's nationalisms are like other people's love affairs, or, indeed, like dog fights. These are things wise people don't get involved in. A war in the Caucasus is never a straightforward moral crusade - but then, how many wars are?

Mark Almond is a history lecturer at Oriel College, Oxford mpalmond@aol.com


To be honest, you've got to be a bit certifiable to start a war with Russia (or with the USA and China for that matter). History shows the Russians are not good soldiers when they march into other countries for no good reason, but on their home soil, with the local population behind them, you are not likely to come out on top, as Napoleon and Hitler found to their cost.



One man who certainly gives the impression that he would like to march on Moscow is John McCain. I invest no hopes in Barack Obama changing the world for the better if he becomes US President, but McCain seems intent on making things worse. Even if you do not think McCain is the Anti-Christ, he is definitely someone who gives the impression of being an instinctive warmonger:

If it’s war we want, McCain will deliver:The Republican candidate has been in his element during the past week
Andrew Sullivan, The Sunday Times,August 17, 2008

Last week John McCain came alive. He’s a mercurial fellow – sometimes obviously bored, more often careening around his surroundings like a white, scarred and bowed Tasmanian devil, occasionally bursting with temper, often joking, very occasionally mild and funny. But he really comes to life when a conflict is around and he knows who the enemy is. The enemy can be the president of Russia or fellow Republican senators, but they’ll know it if McCain is on the warpath.

Not many senators, after all, knew who Mikhail Saakashvili was before last weekend. McCain did. He’d spoken to him often, even nominated him for a Nobel peace prize in 2005. Randy Scheunemann, one of McCain’s closest neoconservative advisers, was paid by the Georgian government to lobby for it in Washington. And McCain’s long-standing hatred of the Russian government is common knowledge. He once mocked George W Bush for his eminently mockable statement that he had looked into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and seen a force for good. McCain said he’d looked into Putin’s eyes and seen three letters: K, G and B.

So Putin’s invasion of Georgia brought out the fiery righteousness that has marked the McCain family for generations. He dominated the news, eclipsing the laconic Barack Obama, holidaying in Hawaii, and the hapless American president, still making faces in the crowds at the Olympics. McCain sent a delegation, held press conferences, issued vague threats and championed the plucky Georgians. The prospect of another armed conflict – even better against the old Russian enemy – seemed to lift his mood. And it may lift his ratings.

Nobody who knows McCain was surprised. His ancestors, as Matt Welch pointed out in the best short biography of the man, The Myth of a Maverick, have served in almost every war America has been involved with since the war of independence. McCain’s ideal president is Teddy Roosevelt and if you want to understand McCain’s view of the world, a quick perusal of Roosevelt’s presidency is about as good a primer as you can find.

“For the McCains of the United States navy,” McCain wrote in his 2002 book Worth the Fighting For, “as well as for many of our brother officers, presidents just didn’t get much better than Teddy Roosevelt. He transformed the American navy from a small coastal defence force to an instrument for the global projection of power.” Roosevelt was also a pious scourge of the corrupt, a military adventurer who went on to win the Nobel peace prize and a pioneer of environmental protection. He loved finding enemies and defeating them and saw America’s future partly in world adventurism.

McCain’s core belief – after many years of partying, philandering and generally goofing around – is that Americans are at their best when committed to a higher noble cause. And no cause is more noble than projecting American power everywhere on God’s earth to deter evil, reward good and save the victims of bullies. I am not aware of any war in recent times that he hasn’t at some point supported. Peace-time makes him nervous, listless.

He favoured the first Gulf war and the second Iraq war. He wanted to intervene early in the Balkans in the 1990s, favoured the Afghanistan war and wanted more military pressure against North Korea. He also wants to keep the military option against Iraq prominently on the table. His problem with the Iraq war was that the United States did not send enough troops and his support for the “surge” was, to his credit, a defining moment in his recent career.

So a dramatic, polarising conflict with Russia has come as God’s gift to the Republican nominee as he trails Obama by a frustrating few points and seems unable to get ahead. It’s even better that the cause is all but hopeless and that the notion that the West will escalate conflict with Russia to insist on Georgia’s right to South Ossetia is preposterous. The hopeless-ness of this situation is partly what appeals to him.

Vietnam was his template. It was a losing battle but he fought it honourably. The United States lost the war and McCain lost his soul in that Hanoi Hilton, eventually cracking to make false taped confessions under the exact techniques now deployed by Bush against terror suspects. But he survived and refused to be released early and came back home a tortured war hero.

There’s your formula: tragic, noble victim. Domestically his great cause has been preventing lawmakers from bringing pork-barrel spending to their districts – a practice that is as old as all representative government – and curtailing campaign spending in a country where there is a First Amendment that will never, mercifully, be repealed. Yet McCain is still drawn to battling for the impossible. It somehow gives him meaning and purpose.

He is drawn to the beleaguered Kurds, the victims of genocide in Darfur, the people of Burma, the massacred Bosnians and now the plundered Georgians.

Watch his rigid, impassioned performance last week and you will see the president he would surely be. If he becomes president, there is no knowing what he would do to defend Ukraine or any other country bordering Russia. He will certainly be prepared to go to war to stop Iran going nuclear – and will strongly support Israel if it initiates the conflict.

He will never withdraw all troops from Iraq – because the withdrawal of troops always means surrender to him. He wants a “surge” for Afghanistan. And he has pledged not to raise taxes to pay for any of this. You want a Bush third term? McCain would take us right back to Bush’s first, with bells on.

The question that Americans must decide in November is whether, at this point in history, after the five-year $3 trillion (£1.6 trillion) occupation of Iraq, with a nuclear Iran on the horizon, an oil-fuelled Russia resurgent, with the American economy teetering and the Taliban rebounding in Afghanistan, the right direction for America is more military aggression, more presidential power, more unilateralism and less diplomacy.

What you saw last week is a taste of what may yet be to come. And if it sounds like a doomed strategy, it will only make McCain embrace it even more.

If McCain gets in, it looks like the only thing guaranteed to boom are the guns...

Free Market Anti-Capitalist Notes

Ayn Rand For Beginners:



For your perusal,this one from Chris Dillow:

Public vs private: what's the difference?, July 17th, 2008

For years, we’ve been told by left and right alike that the state is a vehicle for socialism whilst the private sector embodies free enterprise and self-reliance. It looks like this is pure bull.

Exhibit one. Cath Elliott describes the class conflict in the public sector:

It's pretty hard to remain objective when you see your work colleagues being shafted, year-in and year-out, by politicians and chief executives who haven't got the faintest idea of what it's like trying to survive on close to minimum wage incomes.

Exhibit two. Vanni Treves, chairman of Equitable Life, tells us that the fund management industry was nationalized years ago. The Equitable’s management, he says, was only “in part” responsible for the company’s collapse.

It was the job of the regulator to supervise what the [Equitable] management was doing…the government must pay the bills for its own failings.


In other words, fund managers were really just civil servants working under government supervision. And like civil servants, they expect the tax-payer to pick up the bill for their own failings. At least Fannie and Freddie had the honesty to admit they were government-sponsored firms.

So, the state is capitalistic in the sense that bosses and their hangers-on rip off workers, whilst what we all thought was the market sector was really a branch of government.

Confused? You will be if you think left=state=socialism and right=market=self-reliance.

But as I said, the real divide isn’t between “left” and “right” but between those who believe in spontaneous, undirected order and those who believe in top-down management, be it in government or business.

And what these two instances show us is that management (as distinct from administration), in the state or “private” sector, is much the same - an inherently corrupt activity aimed at ripping off workers, customers or tax-payers.

Also this about State Subsidies For the Pointlessly Rich from Our Future:

Wall Street Socialism, By Robert Borosage
July 16th, 2008


This weekend, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, former head of the Goldman Sachs investment house, provided us with a perfect demonstration of Wall Street socialism.

He announced that the Bush administration would seek congressional approval to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government created but privately owned, profit-making housing finance companies that hold or guarantee nearly half of the U.S. mortgage market—some $5 trillion in debt. Paulson seeks and will get an unlimited line of credit to guarantee their debt, as well as authority to purchase their shares to supplement their capital base. The Federal Reserve announced it was ready to provide lending while waiting for Congress to act. Paulson said the new subsidies were designed to sustain the two institutions in "their current form."

Perfect. The two institutions have always been more fowl than fish. Created by the government in the 1930s to help lubricate the U.S. mortgage market by buying mortgages from the banks so they would have the cash to make more mortgages, Fannie and Freddie were able to borrow money at a discount because of a widely shared assumption that the government would stand behind their debts if push came to shove. Their operations were regulated, limited by laws detailing what mortgages they could assume. (They were essentially prohibited from diving directly into the subprime muck.)

But as they grew and profited, their executives pocketed lavish salaries and bonuses—giving them an incentive to grow even more (and as we discovered earlier this decade, to cook the books). Last year, for example, the Chair of Freddie Mac took home a cool $18,289,575. Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd reaped a 7 percent rise in pay to $13.4 million in 2007 while the company lost $2.1 billion and its shares fell 33 percent. Nice work if you can get it.

Now with the bursting of the housing bubble, push surely has come to shove. Foreclosures are soaring, the two institutions have sustained billions in losses, their shares have plummeted, and, according to former St. Louis Federal Reserve President William Poole, one and possibly both would be bankrupt if their assets were marked down to their current market value.

So now the Bush administration proposes to make the federal guarantee explicit and even to offer taxpayer money to help recapitalize the two banks if needed. Everything has been nationalized—except the profits and the pay scales of the bank's executives.

That's right. If the guarantees work, private speculators, having driven the stock down, will clean up on the upside. And the bank's CEOs will continue to pocket the multimillion dollar salaries that are de rigueur on Wall Street. Call it Wall Street socialism. Their losses are socialized; their profits are pocketed. You and I will pay for their failures. And if conservatives have their way, their families will pocket their successes, without even having to pay a tax for the transfer of the estates we've helped to create.

These enterprises are operating on our tab now—completely. Why not just nationalize them, as even that font of economic convention, Sabastian Mallaby suggested yesterday in The Washington Post? Sure, we'd have to add the $5 trillion in debt to the federal balance sheet, but we could add the assets also. And after Paulson's announcement, global investors are already toting up their debts onto the federal balance sheet.

Why pay dividends to shareholders when they are essentially playing with our money? Why pay managers of public enterprises the bloated pay packages of Wall Street speculators? Why allow them to finance lobbyists to shield them from accountability? The fiction of their separate existence has been exploded; let's save the dough and run them efficiently.

The bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is only the most recent and extreme version of Wall Street socialism. The Bush administration has done essentially the same for private providers of college loans. The Federal Reserve has made taxpayers the guarantor not simply of the banks that it regulates, but the shadow banking system of hedge funds and investment houses that it doesn't regulate. After the bailout of Bear Sterns, they basically are gambling with our money. The Federal Reserve has now traded more than $500 billion in federal bonds for the toxic paper of private banks and investment houses, some $200 billion of it in mortgage-backed securities, worth dimes on the dollar. This massive subsidy—justified as necessary to keep the banking system afloat—is not accompanied by limits on what gambles the speculators can make, how much debt they can take on, what rewards they can pocket. They are playing with house money—not exactly an incentive for prudence.

Republicans seem ideologically committed to these kinds of arrangements. In Medicare for example, conservatives have demanded that the government subsidize private insurance companies to compete with public Medicare, even though Medicare provides health care much less expensively. When Bush and the Tom DeLay Congress drove through the prescription drug bill, they included a provision that prohibits Medicare from negotiating cheaper prices for drugs, effectively turning the bill from a benefit to seniors to a multibillion-dollar subsidy to private drug companies (not surprisingly, after Wall Street, the drug companies finance one of the most lavish and powerful lobbies in Washington).

Now it makes sense to me for the government to subsidize housing mortgages and college loans. Encouraging home ownership and higher education are central to sustaining the broad middle class that is America's triumph. But I can't imagine why we need to let bankers and investors pocket the upside, when they are playing with our money and we're covering their losses. Public enterprise may be staid and bureaucratic, but it's a lot cheaper and more efficient than the perils of Wall Street socialism.

2011: "Come Back Gordon, All Is Forgiven"?

Just some thoughts on politics both here and abroad at the moment…



One wonders how long the Labour Party can carry on without an attempt to bring down Gordon Brown. I think the only thing stopping a coup d’etat against him is the knowledge that once a new leader has been elected a General Election will have to be called soon after. Another Labour leader without any electoral legitimacy with the public would make a potential electoral wipeout even worse. If I was a betting person I think GB will stay on until the end of the year. Then he will be ousted (the only thing I can see saving him is a major national crisis in the next few months), followed by a leadership contest. The new leader (almost certainly a NuLab Bugger-All In A Suit) will achieve another “dead cat bounce” in the polls, before a General Election is called for May or June next year (same time as the local elections or the European elections). I imagine the Labour slogan would be something similar to Stanley Baldwin’s Tory slogan for the 1929 General Election: “Safety First”.

Whenever it comes, I think the Conservatives will be the largest party. If GB stays I think it will be a handsome Tory win. If he goes…maybe not. I think that, faced with a Con win, enough erstwhile Labour supporters will come out to stop it being a landslide. However, I think the Labour Party will be out of power a long time. What makes it worse than previous ejections from office is that the grass roots of the party are in a state of terminal decline. Also there is no ideological force that could unite or inspire party members. Since the collapse of the Alternative Economic Strategy and the retreat of the Labour Left in the 1980s, there has been nothing really on offer but managing Thatcherism with a smile. As I’m sure I’ve said before, publications by centre-left pressure groups such as Compass and Catalyst are frankly yawn inducing, which can inspire no one. If, as Harold Wilson said, the Labour Party is a crusade or it is nothing, then I think it will be nothing after the next General Election.




I can see some, if not all, of the Conservative readers of my blog (I have a few!) rubbing their hands at the thought of David Cameron re-establishing their hegemony over British politics after the next General Election. However, I would caution them, particularly if they are EU-critical. As is pretty well known, the Cameroonies have modelled their plan for winning the next General Election on how Tony Blair transformed the Labour Party in the mid-1990s. Due to the massive majority Labour achieved in 1997, one part of the NuLab game plan was not implemented. To quote from The Survivor: Tony Blair in Peace and War (2005, Aurum, p.171) by Francis Beckett & David Hencke:

“The Liberal Democrats were to join the new Labour government- even if it had a majority of up to fifty seats.”

“The most extraordinary decision taken by Blair was to reserve two cabinet seats for the Liberal Democrats in advance of the 1997 election campaign.”


Only at the weekend before the 1997 General Election, when it was clear that Labour would get a majority in excess of fifty, was the plan abandoned (ibid, p.173).

So if the weekend after the next General Election David Cameron announces that Nick Clegg is the new Foreign Secretary, you read it here first…!



I would say the EU is the issue that Cameron needs the Lib Dems onside. He is, after all, the man who complained about people “banging on” about the EU and called UKIP members "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists". The Lib Dems are leading members of the Far Centre’s “My EU right or wrong” brigade, as their opposition to any British referendum on the Lisbon Treaty this year made clear. My own opinion is that Cameron will also reach out to the ultra-Blairite wing of NuLab in a “Government of All The Talents” [sic!]. After all, there are a fair few careerist chancers amongst Labour MPs who have no loyalty to the Labour Party and would, if offered a position (again!) in Government, have no qualms about jumping over to the Conservatives. Not least, if the Government is led by a man who claims to be “The Heir to Blair”. (A billboard poster of DC next to that caption would probably the best way for Labour to prevent a Tory landslide at the next General Election…!)

Returning to the Lib Dems, the way things are going they appear to be returning to the days of the “National Liberals”, whose political existence was dependent on the Conservatives not standing against them for Parliament, and which almost merged with the Tories in the early 1950s. The decision to oppose a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty appeared to have cost them votes in the London Elections, not least in their electoral strongholds. Furthermore, in Camden, where I live, the Greens pushed the Lib Dems into fourth place in 11 of the borough’s 18 wards, although sharing power with the Tories on the council doesn’t seemed to have helped.

In fact, Nick Clegg seems set on committing a form of political hara-kiri, as this article from the Western Daily News suggests:

Fighting Tories not a priority - Clegg
Western Daily News 02-August-2008

LIBERAL Democrat leader Nick Clegg has stunned party members in the Westcountry by announcing that fighting the Tories is no longer a priority.

Amid plummeting poll ratings for Gordon Brown, Mr Clegg said he would focus on unseating Labour MPs at the next General Election.

More money will be spent on the seats where the Lib-Dems are “taking on Labour,” he said.

But the move will come at the expense of battles with the Conservatives who are the Lib-Dems' main rivals across Devon, Cornwall and Somerset.

One Lib-Dem MP said he felt he had been “cut loose” while other senior figures warned that the party faced “wipe-out” at the hands of a resurgent Tory party.

Several said Mr Clegg should be concentrating on “consolidating” the 63 MPs he has at present instead of opening up a new battlefront with Labour. “I wish he had told me first,” said one Lib-Dem MP faced with a close battle against the Conservatives.
Current opinion polls suggest David Cameron's Conservatives could sweep the board in the South West, unseating almost all Lib-Dems without the most substantial majorities. Mr Clegg recently insisted the party was performing well in the region but his move to focus on Labour seats in the South East and the North of England left some activists feeling he had given up on the Westcountry.

The party released a list of 50 target seats it hopes to win – and not one is the Westcountry, traditionally seen as Lib-Dem heartland.

Mr Clegg insists he is directing resources away from fighting the Tories because the turmoil engulfing the Government is a “huge opportunity”. In a summer podcast for the Lib-Dem website, Mr Clegg said Labour was “tearing itself apart”, and he had “never seen anything like it”.

Labour had proved it could not deliver help with spiralling energy bills or run public services effectively, according to Mr Clegg.

“It's over for them,” he insisted. “There is no point voting Labour any more. There are no safe Labour seats. They will lose every by-election they fight in this parliament. And at the next General Election, they will lose in their heartlands to the Liberal Democrats.

“A Labour vote is now a wasted vote. This is a huge opportunity for us. We've got to seize it. So I'm shifting our resources to put more campaigners and more effort into those seats where we're taking on Labour.

Mr Clegg said the Lib-Dems would launch a fundraising drive in the autumn specifically to bring in cash for fighting Labour.

But the move was greeted with dismay in the Westcountry where activists had been hoping Mr Clegg would “take the fight” to the Tories.

It also risks reigniting speculation that in the event of a hung parliament Mr Clegg would be more sympathetic to a pact with the Conservatives.

The prospect of seeing financial help and campaigning muscle diverted from the region – once seen as the home turf for the Lib-Dems under Paddy Ashdown's leadership – provoked fears that Mr Clegg had given up trying to beat the Tories.

Senior Westcountry Lib-Dems in the privately fear they are “facing wipe-out”.
“We are going to be squeezed out again and again,” said one.

“I just think people from North Cornwall to Plymouth will be thinking 'what are we playing at?'”

In short, it appears the Lib Dems are planning to be junior partners to the Cons after the next General Election. However, there is plenty of time to go until the big day yet…

Well, if we are not getting a vote on the Lisbon Treaty, the Irish appear to be having one again, after failing to give the EU the right answer the first time around. Frankly, I think the whole thing stinks- if Ireland had voted “Yes”, an EU-wide putsch would have taken place without any more ado. No wonder less and less people vote any more…



What riles me almost as much is the way that the US Presidential Elections are covered here, compared to the near silence about the lack of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. If I hear one more pundit saying “why we don’t have primaries like the Americans? Isn’t it great how they care about their democratic process?” I will scream! I don’t want to get all Euro-centric about this, but more people this side of the pond vote than they do in our ex-colony. (bit below the belt there, but…) To quote Andrew Stephen, in an excellent piece on NuLab’s infatuation with the USA:

“voter turnout is much higher in Europe than here; in Britain it averaged 76 per cent between 1960 and 1995. In the 2004 US presidential elections voter turnout was 59 per cent, and plunged to 29.7 per cent in the 2006 midterms; maybe as many as a third of all Americans do not even bother to register to vote at all.”

As for Obama, he’s another “Heir of Blair”…

Finally, I’m glad tensions have gone down a little over Iran. However, I fear there are enough war-mongers in Iran, Israel and the US who want a war, and will try by all means possible to start one. Perhaps they should settle it by a Bush v Ahmadinejad drinking contest…

Blinded by 'Political Science'?

Reading lots of books about politics is not rocket science...

This originally was a quick presentation I gave in a class for my Politics M.A. back in late 1992. I then developed it in early 1994 in the first year of my Ph.D studies, when I (and all the other first year Ph.D "social scientists") was lumbered with a "Social Science Research Training Course" which meant coursework and classes when I just wanted to get on starting my thesis. I wrote this around Easter 1994 (I've made minor modifications- mainly putting "-" around "free markets" and "free marketeers"- corporate apologists have as much to do with Adam Smith's ideas about free markets as our remaining Bolshevik day-dreamers have to do with Marx) and I think I should have written it the first week of my first year- then I could have said "I don't believe in the idea of social science- so why do I need training in it?" Instead I had no idea this course would be thrust upon us, so I spent too much time in the Student Union bar...


A polemic against the concept of “Political Science.”


Introduction

I believe that “political science” is a dangerous, nonsensical concept. When I say “political science” I do not mean political analysis that uses theory and strives to be factual or even speculates about the future in an informed manner. I have no quarrel with political analysis, or even with such political analysis that is described by its authors as “political science”, either as a matter of course or as a way of impressing the gullible. What I do oppose is the belief that politics can be studied in a value-free, or to use Max Weber’s term, “wertfrei” manner in a similar way to how the physical world is studied by the so-called natural sciences, such as physics and biology.

In political studies, attempts to apply natural science methods to the understanding of political phenomena came rather later than they did in most other social studies disciplines (Hughes, 1980, p.16). The methodology of the natural sciences can be best described as being of a positivistic-behaviourist character. Positivism postulates that all human ideas come form experience (Hughes, 1980, p.21), while behaviourism attempts to use an observational language that only deals with outward behaviour (Hughes, 1980, p.39). From using such methodology, a number of characteristics arise which can define natural science.

Natural Science

Natural science consists of a number of testable (Ake, 1972, p.8), uniform laws of universal applicability. These laws are also interdependent; laws in one sphere of science, say physics, cannot contradict those in biology and chemistry if they are to be considered scientific (Allison, 1973, p.250).

Natural science is complete. Every event or phenomena in nature must be explained within the context of scientific theory. Otherwise, either than event or the scientific theory it contradicts must be reinterpreted (Allison, 1973, p.250).

Each event, or effect, must have a cause for it to be scientific. Natural scientists, if they cannot prove something occurs in nature, must accept what happens in nature for what it is. The natural sciences have no place for normative theory. Kuhn characterises “normal” science as consisting of “puzzle solving” empirical research, rather than by grand philosophical speculation about the fundamentals of theory and approaches (Hughes, 1980, p.35).

In the natural sciences, the concept of the random event does not exist (Allison, 1973, p.251). Natural science is able to predict future events, such as water at sea level always boiling at 100 degrees Centigrade, with complete confidence (Trig, 1985, p.181).

Natural science is unique, as there is one scientific universe. All events are reducible to a fundamental terminology, consisting of a set of analytical terms with precise definitions. For instance, all natural scientists know what defines water, gravity and heat. Unless events occur which change the terminology of science, such concepts are incontestable (Allison, 1973, p.251).

Why Politics is not a “science”

The methods of positivistic natural science cannot be applied to the study of politics because human beings are not inanimate objects (Trigg, 1985, p.41). Furthermore, humans distinguish themselves from other living creatures by being conscious of themselves and their possession of free will. Humans therefore have the ability to make deliberate choices about what values and motives to have, as well as the interests they want to pursue. It is not possible, then, for human behaviour to be describes as a kind of “brute fact” independent of motives or reasons (Hughes, 1980, p.81). Neither is it possible for positivistic methods to adequately explain the motives of what is “in people’s minds” (Hughes, 1980, p.78). Consequently, there cannot be any system of political analysis that has universal applicability. Political analysts are not ,therefore, constrained in their outlook in the way that natural scientists are by phenomena, such as the existence of gravity.

As there are no scientific laws to shape their theory, political analysts are compelled to construct theories to make sense of the complexity f political discourse and activity. To quote Leys (1989, p.4): “There is an observable reality, but the concepts we employ it hep to determine what, given the reality, the ‘facts; are held to be.” Such theories are inevitably imbued with the values learnt and accepted by the analyst (Trigg, 1986, p.107), and no neutral viewpoint can exist from which an analyst can look at political phenomena “objectively” (Hughes, 1980, p.116). There are, therefore, no totally undisputed ways of examining political phenomena. For instance, the different political values and outlooks that anarchists, elitists, Marxists and pluralists possess would result in all of them theorising about state institutions in different ways. Similarly, there are many different accounts, from many different political viewpoints, about how imperialism as a world system came into being before World War One> in both these examples analysts’ conclusions about the same political phenomena would be almost inevitably different, due to using different criteria based on the different values they hold. Unlike the natural sciences political theories can be incompatible, but, all other things being equal, have equal validity as a starting point for investigating political phenomena (Taylor, 1973, pp.143-4).

Political analysts must also allow for random events occurring which have political effects but no explanations in the political sphere (Allison, 1973, p.252). For instance, the fact that Czar Nicholas II’s son was a haemophiliac must be taken into account when investigating the collapse of Imperial Russia in 1917, but no political theory could explain why the heir to the Russian throw was a haemophiliac. Nor can political theory explain John Smith’s heart attack in May 1994, which allowed the rise of “New Labour”.

Human free will also interferes with any pretensions political analysts have of being able to predict future events in the way that the natural sciences can. This is because links between cause and effect in politics are so weak (MacIntyre, 1964). One cannot say that, in all case, unemployment makes people vote for politically extreme parties, in the same way that natural scientists can say that water at zero degrees centigrade or below freezes. This does not even take into account whether unemployment, instead of a thousand and one other, conscious or unconscious, reasons makes people act like that. How could such an assertion in political analysis be tested to a degree rigorous enough that it could be accepted as valid science? One could say opinion polls, but after getting the result of the 1992 British General Election so wrong, one might think such a “test “ as useless for predicting the future (Butler and Kavanagh, 1992, Chapter 7). Moreover, a person possessing free will might not fulfil the political analysts’ predictions, perhaps just to prove that valid general predictions about human behaviour are not laws in any true scientific sense (Trigg, 1985, p.179; Hughes, 1980, p.55).

Unlike the natural sciences, political analysis has a place for normative theories based on the theorist’s own free will and value system, since no political analysis can avoid basic questions about human nature any more than he or she can avoid making choices between different sets of values (Trigg, 1985, p.117). So-called “political scientists” who claim to be “wertfrei” in their outlook succumb just as inevitably to normative realities as the most politically partisan theorists. For example, the work of theorists such as Seymour Lipset and Harold Lasswell are based on their normative beliefs, since their “neutral” descriptions of “democracy”- and a particular definition of democracy at that- cannot be accepted without the reader failing to agree that “democracy” is a better form of government than any alternatives (Taylor, 1973, pp.150 & 157).

There is also more than one political universe in existence, due to the existence of human free will, values and motivations. Other intellectual disciplines can also examine political events and theories in ways that could not be attempted in the natural sciences. For instance, as well as countless explanations by political theorists in attempting t account for the rise of McCarthyism in the USA after 1945, there are also exist a number of quite valid psychological and sociological explanations of the same phenomena (Taylor, 1973, p.143).

Political analysis lacks a set of tight rigorous analytical terms that are found in the natural sciences. Claude Ake (1972, p.110), in attempting to “clarify the scientific status of political science”, bemoans the fact that so many political terms, such as “political change”, “political stability” and “political democracy” are descriptive rather than analytical terms. That is, they are identified empirically rather than through clear watertight definitions. He does not accept that political discourse inevitably comes up with many “essentially contested concepts”, to use W.B. Gallie’s phrase. Gallie defined essentially contested concepts as those that “the proper use of which inevitably involves endless disputes about their proper uses on the part of their users”: “democracy” was one of Gallie’s examples (Allison, 1984, p.49). One has only got to look at disputes over the precise nature of political phenomena such as “freedom”, “justice”, “socialism” and “terrorism” to see Gallie’s point. Moreover, just because they are disputed, “unscientific” terms surely should not preclude political analysts from studying them?


The dangers of “Political Science”

I hope that I have successfully demonstrated that political analysis cannot be described as a science in any meaningful manner. Many political analysts, however, hold the view that a genuine “political science” will eventually emerge. There is understandably, perhaps, a sense of failure amongst many political analysts that they have not produced analyses of political phenomena as convincing as those of natural phenomena achieved by natural scientists (Hughes, 1980, p.14). These “failures” are often rationalised by either describing politics as an “immature” science, or by arguing that the social world is more complex than the natural one. Consequently, political phenomena are more difficult to measure, and so more errors are likely (Hughes, 1980, p.52). Frankly, hoping that politics will “grow up” to be a “mature science” appears to me to be the intellectual equivalent of searching for the Holy Grail. This forlorn quest should be abandoned, since the whole idea of “political science” is as dangerous as it is futile.

It is an intellectually dangerous concept at two levels. Firstly, many “political scientists” give the impression that “value free” analysis is the only type of analysis worth pursuing if anything new is to be discovered about politics. As well as being a value judgement in itself, it is a strange notion since political thinkers such as Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Burke, Mill and Marx all analysed politics in ways that were in no way “wertfrei” (Cobban, 1953, p.331). Even Max Weber’s work is not “value free”, since his work on leadership, bureaucracy and the class structure (Garth and Mills, 1964, p.38) were developed as part of the debate about the legacy of Bismarck’s Chancellorship and the future of Germany (Garth and Mills, 1964, p.46). Furthermore, Hugh Stretton (1969, pp.155-7) argues that all other things being equal, a strong commitment to some particular goal will make a social researcher more anxious to be right than one who is indifferent to the potential implications of what he or she is studying, as “value-free” analysts insinuate.

Secondly, “political science” is an intellectually dangerous concept since it implies that, through investigation, sooner or later humanity will be able to understand all political phenomena in the same way as the natural sciences understand the natural world. With that aim achieved, there would be nothing left to learn about politics. If it is though that all questions in politics have been answered, surely all we need to do is teach everyone those answers. This, in turn, encourages a belief in scientific morality, for it an analysis is correct it must be morally right as well. Consequently, analytical methods become ideological dogma, and as William Blake once observed, “the man who never alters his opinion is like standing water/and breeds reptiles of the mind” (Thompson, 1985, p.261).

“Political scientists” may argue that this cannot happen, but look at what happened to much Marxist political thought in the Twentieth Century. “Scientific socialism”, whether “Stalinist” or “Trotskyite”, increasingly made a method of political analysis into a dogma, which stemmed from unthinking application of Lenin’s belief that : “The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious and provides men an integral world outlook” (Callaghan, 1987, p.4).

Pretensions of scientific certainty espoused by subsequent generations of “Marxist-Leninists” have led to many Marxists becoming intellectually washed-up or brain-dead. For instance, most Trotskyites have had serious problems analysing the real world since their guru was assassinated in 1940 (Callaghan, 1987, p.175), and have been reduced to Gnostic readings of Trotsky’s work in attempting to understand the present world situation (Callaghan, 1987, p.219).

Furthermore, these scientific pretensions have meant, in practice, that many Marxists have had very strong tendencies- although, of course, there is no law- towards intolerance and the persecution of those who do not see all the answers to political questions as having being correctly answered by their particular brand of “scientific socialism” (Callaghan, 1987, p.4).

Similarly, the lack of doubt amongst those who currently believe that “the market is always right” is another example of “scientific” certitude being used to legitimise particular behaviour in the political sphere. This attitude amongst self-proclaimed supporters of “free market” economics stems from a belief in liberal economics that humans are naturally egoistic, self-interested and selfish [which now I think is as much a distortion of the works of Adam Smith as, say, the average Marxist political programme is a distortion of Karl Marx’s vision of the future]. In making such claims “pro-free market” economists produce universalistic explanations of human behaviour that ignore other views of human nature (Trigg, 1985, p.130). The frequent inability of professed “free market” supporters to see that other people might have other views of human nature, and so different political outlooks, stems directly from a belief in “scientific” certainties and truths. It also pushes “free marketers” towards a tendency to be as intolerant of other viewpoints as the most dogmatic “scientific socialists”.

Evidence of this dogmatism comes from “free marketers” selective application of Karl Popper’s concept of “falsification” to real life, as well as their eagerness to proclaim “scientific laws” for behaviour in the political sphere. Popper laid great store on Marxism being “unscientific”, as it could not be subject to “falsification”. Marxism could not be disproved in the face f Marxists’ faith in their doctrine, although, according to Popper, all of Marx’s predictions had been disproved. “Free marketers”, however, will never accept that their theories are ever fundamentally wrong, in the same way that die-hard Trotskyites will never accept that their “scientific” world-view is wrong. Neither “free marketers” nor Trotskyites will ever accept that their theories could ever be wrong or disproved for similar reasons: both of their theories are value-laden (Trigg, 1985, p.109), and their strongly-held views are used to interpret all facts and events they encounter to further justify and reinforce their original views. There is nothing per se wrong with this, especially if one wants to confirm prejudices. To claim, however, that such a method is “scientific” is complete rubbish.

Popper, while disparaging Marx for wrongly predicting future historical events in a law-like manner- whether Marx did this is yet another matter- was quite prepared to embrace sociological laws and hypotheses that appear similar to those found in the natural sciences which back up his “pro-free market” viewpoint. For example, Popper says that full employment cannot occur without causing inflation, which his “free market” disciple Anthony Flew describes as “most persuasive” (Trigg, 1985, p.180). Flew, however, does not believe that all of Popper’s claims are true, as they conflict with Flew’s value system. For instance, Popper claimed “you cannot introduce a political reform without strengthening the opposing forces to a degree roughly in ratio to the scope of the reform.” Flew says this is “simply not true” (Trigg, 1985, p.182). To claim that “free-market” economics are “neutral”, “value-free” and “scientific”, when its leading intellectual gurus cannot agree on which “laws” make up its underpinning makes this particular analyst wonder why anyone takes the “truths” of “free market” economics seriously. Particularly when its methodology is considered, which is “An ahistorical theory, which sees an economy as the sum of the atomised actions of millions of individuals…preoccupied with supply and demand rather than production, which insists that the roles of capital and labour are equal…” (Milne, 1987, p.27)

Who can claim this to be “scientific” except, perhaps, to justify their material self-interest?

Conclusion.

At best, I would say that “Mostly, what is called political science seems…a device invented…for avoiding politics, without achieving science” (Cobban, 1953, p.335).

At worst, the concept justifies the triumph of unthinking dogma over humanity’s unique gift of being able to pursue intellectual enquiry.


Bibliography

Ake, Claude (1972) ”The Scientific Status of Political Science”, British Journal of Political Science, Volume 2, Part 1, pp.109-15.

Allison, Lincoln (1973) “Politics and the Problem about ‘Science’”, British Journal of Political Science, Volume 3, Part 2, pp.250-2.

Allison, Lincoln (1984) Right Principles (Oxford: Blackwell).

Callaghan, John (1987) The Far Left in British Politics (Oxford: Blackwell).

Cobban, Alfred (1953) “The Decline of Political Theory”, Political Science Quarterly, Volume LXVIII, No.3, pp.321-37.

Gerth, H.H and Mills, C.Wright, eds., (1964) From Max Weber (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul).

Hughes, John (1980) The Philosophy of Social Research (London: Longman).

Leys, Colin (1989) Politics in Britain (London: Verso).

MacIntyre, Alasdair (1964) “A Mistake about Causality in Social Science” in Peter Laslett and W.G. Runciman, eds., Philosophy, Politics and Society Second Series (Oxford: Basil Blackwell), pp.48-70.

Milne, Seamus (1987) “The prophets who lost their touch”, The Guardian, January 14th, p.27.

Stretton, Hugh (1969) The Political Sciences: General principles of selection in social science and history (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul).

Taylor, Charles (1973) “Neutrality in Political Science” in Alan Ryan, ed., The Philosophy of Social Explanation (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp.139-70.

Thompson, E.P. (1985) The Heavy Dancers (London: Merlin).

Trigg, Roger (1985) Understanding Social Science: A Philosophical Introduction to the Social Sciences (Oxford: Blackwell).


PS Another problem with pretending that politics is a "science" is that political writers attempt to replicate the language used in natural science publications. That is, the prose produced is often dry as the proverbial bone. To quote John Gray ("How to dish the Whigs", New Statesman, 27/6/97, pp.45-6):

"Anyone who talks of the literature of political science risks being suspected of irony. Few political scientists write books that give their readers pleasure. Fewer yet have written anything that is likely to endure...Since the second world war the academic study of politics has been dominated by an effort to replicate the methods and success of the natural sciences. The chief result has been a new genre of unreadable books."