Absolute equality and the pedantic left

There are some, that I call "the pedantic left" who seem to prefer the idea of a permanent neoliberal crony capitalist dystopia (where the cultural hegemony dictates the definition of "socialism" is akin to something like "pure evil") to the idea that they might have to compromise with other leftists that have slightly different interpretations of what "socialism" might actually mean, so that together they can build solidarity and fight back against the ever accelerating inequality imposed by the crony capitalist establishment.

In my view this abandonment of solidarity in order to engage in pedantic left-wing infighting is one of the big reasons that the right-wing crony capitalist establishment has managed to increase inequality so dramatically and to build and reinforce such a strong cultural hegemony in the first place.

Absolute equality

Distribution of resources

The subject of this article has been on my mind for some time, but an argument with a couple of socialists over the definition of the word "socialism" has pushed it to the front of my queue of articles to write.

The argument is this: I came across an American video on wealth distribution which defined "socialism" as absolute equality, where the poorest person in society gets absolutely the same as the richest person in society (see images). The rest of the video was quite interesting so I posted it on the Another Angry Voice Facebook page with a disclaimer about the absolutist equality stance being a complete straw-man misrepresentation of what "socialism" actually means. 



In my view socialism means that people should have equal access to fundamental resources like education, health care, welfare, energy, finance and sufficient staple resources like food and water. This means that such fundamentals mustn't be monopolised or commodified by rent seekers. To put this into very simple terms; my view of "socialism" is that society should provide people with equal access to opportunities and equal access to fundamental resources, not ruthlessly enforce absolute equality in everything (no matter how much or little the individual is prepared or able to contribute to society).

Several angry socialists came along to condemn my view of socialism as "facile" in defence of the absolutist equality position I was criticising. The problem of course is that the absolutist equality stance is obviously a lot more "facile" than a system that provides equal access to fundamental resources (health care, staple resources, energy, welfare) and opportunities (such as education and finance), but allows economic freedom to pursue non-fundamental commodities (consumer products, arts, literature, modern technology, entertainments, luxury goods, Pigovian products ...).

One of the very easy to grasp criticisms of the absolutist equality position is that some people want commodities that others don't. Some people want 64" flatscreen televisions and others don't (because like me, perhaps they barely watch TV or play computer games). I don't want a massive flatscreen TV, but I have absolutely no problem with others aspiring to ownership of commodities that I don't want. If they want to work a bit harder, or for a few hours longer to acquire the luxury item I don't want, then that's absolutely fine by me, just as the guy with the TV is probably quite happy that I work a bit harder or longer to acquire the science fiction books that he might have absolutely no interest in owning.

Under the absolutist equality definition of socialism either 64" screens (and my science fiction books) would have to be provided to everyone (even those that don't want them - a waste of resources) or they'd have to be banned (totalitarianism). The only other option would be to devise a system which determines how much relative utility is provided by each non-essential commodity, which would rely on the same kind of aggregation problems as neoclassical economics does, and would result in the creation of a vast and inefficient redistributive bureaucracy (is it even possible to determine how many science fiction books create the same level of utility as a big telly? Would a state administered system that expends resources on making such arbitrary determinations result in the most efficient use of resources?).

If you think equal access to basic resources, but freedom to pursue non-essentials is more "facile" than absolutist mandatory equality in absolutely everything, you either haven't thought about it very much or you've misunderstood the meaning of the word "facile".

The value of labour

The next problem with the absolutist equality stance is that it does something that no true socialist would accept; it reduces the value of labour to zero.

One of the most obvious problems with the idea of absolute equality is the fact that all labour would have to be given the same value. The workaholic manager would earn the same as the laid back shop assistant; the highly trained engineer would earn the same as the unskilled labourer; the educated expert would earn the same as the anti-intellectual that refuses to learn new skills; the worker in a dangerous or highly stressful job would earn the same as the worker in a safe or extremely relaxing job. To the vast majority of people, such a system would be transparently unfair. If your system contradicts the common-sense view that the hardworking deserve more than the lazy, the educated deserve more than the uneducated and that jobs in which the individuals risk their health or their lives deserve some form of danger compensation, then you will never be able to enforce such a system without resorting to totalitarianism.

The idea that all labour is equal is a huge problem, but there is a bigger problem still. If everyone is to get exactly the same whether they choose to work or not, then the value of labour is reduced to zero (in financial terms) because it classifies labour as having exactly the same value as no-labour. If the person that chooses not to contribute gets exactly the same as those that choose to work (in a difficult and dangerous jobs to fun and easy ones), then the value of labour is reduced to zero, meaning that there is no financial incentive to work at all. Why would anyone get up in the morning to go and do a dangerous or unpleasant job if they were entitled to exactly the same share of resources if they just stayed at home and did nothing?

The only way an absolutist equality system could possibly work is if labour was made mandatory (for those that are able), because without labour, society would cease to function. But how would it even be possible to force people to work in a system which explicitly prohibits financial coercion?

Absolute equality is the same kind of nonsensical and unworkable absolutist gibberish as the extreme-right view that deregulated markets are perfectly efficient, which is the reason that I choose to believe in a form of socialism that provides for people's fundamental needs, eradicates poverty and removes barriers to opportunities through education and access to finance, but which takes into account the value of the social contribution of the individuals and provides the individual with the liberty to acquire non-essential resources, which therefore creates the incentives to work and to contribute to society.

I believe that the absolute equality position is an absurd caricature of what socialism means. It is such an absurdly unrealistic stance that you're actually undermining the meaning of socialism if you believe in such nonsense and proclaim yourself a socialist. You're not a socialist, you're not even a Marxist (Karl Marx believed that incentives and class hierarchies would still exist within the socialist society) you're an absolutist egalitarian.

Absolutism vs compromise

Returning to the subject of "the pedantic left", it's fair to say that the market socialist (who has a somewhat similar definition of socialism to my own) and the absolutist egalitarian have something in common. They are both strongly opposed to the crony capitalist cultural hegemony and the discredited neoliberal pseudo-scientific economic models that are used to to justify the rent-seeking behavior and outright corruption of the wealthy establishment.

Surely it makes sense for the opponents of crony capitalism to put their differences aside and agree that the most important thing in the immediacy is to come together in solidarity to oppose the cultural hegemony of the establishment?

If you believe in the absolute equality definition of socialism, surely it is better to compromise with market socialists (and other left-wing factions), because a market socialism system is far, far closer to your absolute equality ideal than the vast and rapidly growing inequalities of the current neoliberal socio-economic paradigm.

The problem is that many on the left fail to see it this way, and refuse to co-operate with anyone else on the left who has strayed from their interpretation of "true socialism". One of the most visible examples of this is that way that several members of the new left wing group Left Unity have expended their energies attacking and undermining the Green Party, rather than concentrating on the development of a coherent set of left-wing policies and a powerful social justice narrative to promote their own party.

Instead as attacking the Green Party as "not left-wing enough", it would surely make more sense for Left Unity to examine what the Green Party have done right in order to break into the closed shop of orthodox neoliberal establishment politics that is Westminster, and to identify areas of agreement in which the two parties can co-operate.

If the left spends it's time and energy bickering and infighting, they simply allow the crony capitalist establishment to continue strengthening and reinforcing their cultural hegemony.

Leftist solidarity

There are many examples of diverse leftist groups coming together in solidarity to form powerful political organisations, I'll give a couple of brief examples.

Labour
The Labour party in the UK was born of co-operation between numerous trade unions and leftist political groups. Although Labour was never perfect, and has now been usurped by adherents of orthodox neoliberalism, it did achieve a number of important things that the vast majority of left-wing people can appreciate, including the establishment of the National Health Service, the massive improvements to the social safety net, legal aid, the post-war improvements in housing, and the establishment of the economic conditions that led to the unprecedented general prosperity and social mobility of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, which have subsequently been eroded away by over three decades of neoliberal pseudo-economics.

Syriza
The Greek political party Syriza (the coalition of the radical left) was formed as a coalition of various leftist groups in 2004. The groups that make it up include Social Democrats, Marxists, Trotskyites and the Green Left. In the wake of the Greek economic crisis and the economically destructive bailout conditions imposed by the IMF, the European Central Bank and the EU, they have risen to become the second most popular party in Greece and the main opposition in the Greek parliament. Since the last election in 2012 their popularity has improved again, meaning that if (when) the current coalition government fails, they will almost certainly form the next Greek government. Although they are extremely unlikely to impose a full-blownTrotskyite revolution, the Trotskyite faction must recognise that being part of a broad left-wing coalition is preferable to being a tiny minority party with no elected representatives at all.

The problem with co-operation is that when the views of several leftist organisations are aggregated, the result is not entirely pleasing to all of the participants. However, the result is usually a great deal better than a divided left bickering amongst themselves and allowing the right to maintain absolute control over society and the economy.

Conclusion

The self-defeating divisiveness of the left is deeply problematic but it is also amusing. The idea of representatives of a group called Left Unity expending their time and effort in attacking and undermining other left-wing groups is a laughable display of unintentional irony. Probably the most amusing parody of the factionalisation of the left is the famous Monty Pythons' Judaen People's Front scene from the Life of Brian, where they openly admit that the only people they hate more than their Roman oppressors are the various other anti-imperialist factions.

The only way that the left is ever going to be able to effectively fight back against the cultural hegemony of the neoliberal right, and begin reversing the trend towards ever greater inequality, is if we put our own differences aside and show some solidarity against the greater enemy.

Essentially, what I'm saying is that if you are unwilling to tolerate any left-wing views that are not almost identical to your own, then you're part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Another Angry Voice  is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only source of revenue for  Another Angry Voice  is the  PayPal  donations box (which can be found in the right hand column, fairly near the top of the page). If you could afford to make a donation to help keep this site going, it would be massively appreciated.

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The Delusional Liberal Democrats

What on earth goes on in the minds of (the remaining) Liberal Democrats?

Some of the stuff that has come out in the buildup to the 2013 Lib-Dem conference is indicative of some seriously misguided and delusional thinking.

On the first weekend of September the Lib-Dem MP and former coalition minister Sarah Teather announced her decision to quit the Liberal Democrats at the 2015 election because of their abandonment of their liberal values. Whilst I'm inclined to give her a bit of credit for showing some principles, her stance raises a number of questions.

If she is truly opposed to the illiberal tendencies of the coalition government, why doesn't she resign immediately, rather than hanging on as a Lib-Dem MP until 2015? If she doesn't want to quit parliament before her time is up, why doesn't she quit the Liberal Democrat party, cross the floor and serve out her time as an independent, or join a genuinely left-liberal party like the Green Party (if they would even have her after her decision to oppose equal rights for gay people)?

Another question is why now? I mean, it was absolutely obvious that the Lib-Dems had abandoned any pretence at being a liberal party when they backed the fascistic Justice and Security "secret courts" Bill earlier this year. Sarah knew all about this betrayal of the liberal values that the Lib-Dems misleadingly continue to advertise in their name. In fact, she was one of the few Lib-Dem MPs with the requisite liberal values to vote against her party backing of this Kafkaesque legislation back in March 2013. Why has she waited until the week before the Lib-Dem conference to announce her resignation, when March 2013 was clearly a better moment.

The anti-Teather bile emanating from the Lib Dem ranks suggests that Teather's belated resignation has really struck a nerve. It's all very well people like me questioning her motives for quitting in this particular week, but the Lib-Dems that have chosen to stay loyal to a leadership hellbent on betraying their proclaimed liberal values should surely have more important things to do than slinging mud at Sarah Teather. They should perhaps be asking themselves why they continue to support a party leadership that has open contempt for the proclaimed core values of the party, and in just a few short years has driven away vast swathes of Lib-Dem support that took decades of extremely hard work to build up.

Not content with the embarrassing spectacle of a public spat between Sarah Teather and the Coalition loyalists, Nick Clegg decided to to give everyone something else to ridicule with press briefings that the Lib-Dems were about to withdraw support for Secret Courts just six months after his party voted them into existence!

Just as a little reminder of the grotesquely illiberal stuff Clegg and co helped the Tories to enact: If you are unfortunate enough to find yourself charged with a crime by a secret court, you will be excluded from the hearings where your fate is decided; you will not be allowed to know what the case against you is; you will not be allowed to enter the courtroom; you will not be allowed to know or challenge the details of the case; and you will not be allowed representation from your own lawyer (who will also be barred from knowing what the case against you is), but will instead be represented (in your absence) by a state appointed "special advocate". What is more, thanks to Lib-Dem votes shooting down some last minute Labour amendments, the court will not even have to demonstrate that it is in the public interest to hold your case in secret.

Remember, the only reason that these Kafkaesque secret courts found their way onto the statute books was by Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats repeatedly voting in favour of them, their helping the Tories to carefully unpick all of the House of Lords amendments and their deliberate voting down of opposition amendments designed to mitigate some of the most totalitarian elements.

The decision to begin campaigning against legislation that you yourself voted into law just six months previously has to be one of the most ridiculous political U-turns in history.

Not content with the embarrassment of the Sarah Teather resignation and the shambolic secret courts debacle, the Lib-Dem President Tim Farron decided to elicit more public ridicule with his delusional assertion that the Liberal Democrats should "stay on the centre-left" of British politics. The only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that Farron is either politically illiterate, or he's been fast asleep for the last three years.

The Liberal-Democrats are not a centre-left party. They are quite clearly occupiers of the same tiny patch of right-wing authoritarianism as the other two establishment parties. They are a corporate backed, orthodox neoliberal, pro-privatisation, anti-welfare and extremely illiberal party. Just because they occupy ground slightly to the left of the Tories and UKIP doesn't make them left-wing or liberal, in the same way that just because a carving knife isn't as fearsome as a Samurai sword, doesn't mean that it's safe to be stabbed in the neck with one.

Are any of these things to be expected from a centre-left party?

• Further commodification of university education through the introduction of £9,000 a year fees (the highest public university fees in the World).
• Privatisation of huge swathes of the NHS (much of it into the hands of Tory party and Liberal Democrat donors).
• The introduction of ridiculous immigration rules that openly discriminate against British citizens and their families on purely economic grounds.
• Retroactive amendment of Workfare legislation in order to rob thousands of people of the compensation they deserved for having been unlawfully stripped of their benefits (legislation designed only to save Iain Duncan Smith from having to resign in disgrace).
• The introduction of Kafkaesque secret courts.
• The destruction of Legal Aid. 
• The introduction of numerous house price inflation Ponzi schemes to funnel even more taxpayers' cash into the private sector.
• Giving Britain's 13,000 Millionaires an average £100,000 a year tax cut in the very same week that some 800,000 of Britain's most vulnerable families were first hit with "Bedroom Tax".
• The introduction of numerous bits of pro-corporate, anti-worker legislation.
• Support for moves to retroactively amend the terms of existing student loans to hike the interest rates so that the Student Loans Book can be flogged off to the banks (at an enormous long-term loss to the taxpayer).
• Governing during the longest period of deliberate wage repression in recorded history.
• The introduction of gagging legislation to silence criticism of the government by charities, trade unions, protest groups, religious organisations and community groups, whilst allowing the right-wing press to continue openly propagandising for the Tory party.
• Privatisation of the Post Office, despite widespread public opposition.

Farron must be absolutely delusional if he thinks that the millions of betrayed Lib-Dem voters are going to flood back before the 2015 election simply because they draw up a list of left-liberal manifesto "pledges" to be abandoned at will in the unlikely circumstance that they find themselves in power again. Their appalling track record of betraying their liberal minded supporters and cravenly supporting a Tory government even more fanatically right-wing and totalitarian than the Thatcher regime will surely be albatross around Lib-Dem necks for generations to come.

 Another Angry Voice  is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only source of revenue for  Another Angry Voice  is the  PayPal  donations box (which can be found in the right hand column, fairly near the top of the page). If you could afford to make a donation to help keep this site going, it would be massively appreciated.

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The JP Morgan vision for Europe

In May 2013 the US financial giant JP Morgan released a progress report outlining their take on what they call the "Eurozone Adjustment".

The standout passage of this document can be found on page 12, where they explain what they think is wrong with Europe (quoted below). Note there is absolutely no mention of financial instability caused by countless recklessly over-leveraged financial institutions gambling on crap like Spanish property, Irish bank bonds and Greek sovereign debt, and absolutely no talk of financial sector reform either. The JP Morgan narrative adheres very closely to the Great Neoliberal Lie technique, where the real causes of the financial crisis are played down or ignored completely in favour of the misleading narrative that social welfare spending caused the crisis. Here's the section in question:

"The political systems in the periphery [of the Eurozone] were established in the aftermath of dictatorship, and were defined by that experience. Constitutions tend to show a strong socialist influence, reflecting the political strength that left wing parties gained after the defeat of fascism. Political systems around the periphery typically display several of the following features: weak executives; weak central states relative to regions; constitutional protection of labor rights; consensus building systems which foster political clientalism; and the right to protest if unwelcome changes are made to the political status quo. The shortcomings of this political legacy have been revealed by the crisis. Countries around the periphery have only been partially successful in producing fiscal and economic reform agendas, with governments constrained by constitutions (Portugal), powerful regions (Spain), and the rise of populist parties (Italy and Greece)."

So, the problems that JP Morgan have identified in Europe are strong legislatures (or "weak executives" as they put it) strong regional representation, protected labour rights, strong constitutions and political systems that rely in part upon consensus building instead of dictatorship. They also identify the rise of democratic populist parties and the public right to political protest as major impediments to their "Eurozone Adjustment" objectives.

JP Morgan make it absolutely clear that they would like to see European states remodeled with much more powerful, dictatorial and centralised executives, they want to see the destruction of labour rights and they are certainly not keen to allow populist anti-austerity parties or public protest to get in the way of this agenda.

Essentially what this document demonstrates is that JP Morgan see the decline of European fascism since the 1940s and its replacement with mixed-economy social democracies as a great disappointment, that they are determined to steer Europe back towards fascism and that they are intent on using the financial sector meltdown as an excuse to use the utterly false Great Neoliberal Lie narrative to justify this pro-fascist agenda.

The motivation for a major financial organisation like JP Morgan to promote the fascistic remodeling of Europe should be absolutely obvious. States administered by powerful centralised and dictatorial executives are far more easily influenced by corporate interests than governments constrained by strong legislatures, fair judicial systems, strong regional representation, robust organised labour and popular freedom of protest, all enshrined by a durable constitution.

To put it more simply, a state with a centralised and dictatorial government is far more malleable than a state in which the government must balance the interests of corporate interests with those of organised labour, regional interests and the public at large. If labour rights are eroded, local government weakened and the right to popular protest is curtailed, the enforcement of corporate interests becomes much easier. All the corporations need do is financially coerce (or economically straitjacket) the cetralised executive branch of government in order to gain almost complete power over whole national economies.

Returning to the quoted section of the JP Morgan report, we can clearly see that they do not like consensus building governments that abide by their constitutions and protect civil liberties, in fact they disparage this kind of co-operative approach as "clientalism" [sic] (err I believe they meant clientelism).

In reality, the general concept of clientelism isn't the problem to JP Morgan at all. The problem is that under the social democratic model, government "clientelism" towards corporate interests is curtailed. The corporate lobby don't want the states of Europe to function as the clients of the general public through strong local democratic government (and the checks and balances offered by a robust legislature), through strong labour organisation, or through the liberty to protest. JP Morgan seem to want the states of Europe to act as exclusive clients of the corporatist agenda.

Perhaps Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebells
would be proud to know that his big lie technique
is still being used to defend fascism to this day.

In effect, the JP Morgan complaint isn't about clientelism at all, it is a complaint of "wrong-clientelism". It is a complaint that in their view, the states of Europe must not be allowed to act as the client of the public by allowing citizens involvement in economic policy making (through democratic processes, strong labour representation or liberty to protest) because this kind of public interference acts as an impediment to their beloved corporate agenda. JP Morgan would prefer to see the states of Europe act exclusively in the interests of the corporate lobby, and imposing illiberal, anti-democratic or even fascistic socio-economic reforms is an agenda they seem to fully endorse.

It is absolutely obvious why corporate interests like JP Morgan would dearly love to see the rights to to protest and organise labour severely curtailed. By pushing for the the dismantlement of the means of resistance, they can minimalise and marginalise social opposition to the corporatist agenda they wish to see enforced by these corporate client states, no matter how socially or economically harmful or unpopular the corporatist agenda may be to the state in question.

Just in case you think it sounds utterly far fetched that an American financial institution may be attempting to undermine democracy and liberty in Europe in order to impose fascistic regimes more favourable to their commercial interests, just consider the history of JP Morgan themselves. Not only did JP Morgan actively invest in Nazi industry (through the automotive company Opel and other subsidiaries) well into the Second World War, they were also compensated for their losses by the American taxpayer when they were forced to divest (several other American corporations such as Standard Oil maintained their investments in Nazi Germany for several years after the US joined the war against Germany!). Chase Bank (which merged with JP Morgan in 2000) were one of Wall Street's most enthusiastic investors in the Nazi economy, even providing direct assistance to Hitler's Nazi regime in the late 1930s. Chase and JP Morgan were the only two American banks which stayed open in France during the Nazi occupation there.

JP Morgan has a proven history of collaboration with fascist regimes in Europe. If JP Morgan supported and profited from the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, and suffered no adverse financial consequences for it (even getting a US taxpayer funded tax rebate to cover their losses when they were forced to divest their Nazi assets and first dibs to reacquire their Nazi assets after the war was over), is it any surprise that they favour the imposition of an illiberal and fascistic political agenda on the states of Europe once again?

Since I've strayed onto the topic of the Second World War, I'll finish with a quote often attributed to one of the fascist dictators that JP Morgan seem to be getting nostalgic about; Benito Mussolini.

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."

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OR

Charlie Chaplin Great Dictator Speech

It is over 70 years since Charlie Chaplin made The Great Dictator, the final speech is as relevant today as it was when he made the film in the midst of the Second World War.

No anarchy in the UK, police advise people to grass up anarchists

The Westminster Counter Terrorism Police advise you
to inform on your friends and neighbours if you suspect
that they are guilty of having dissident political thoughts.

On 29 July 2011the City of Westminster Counter Terror Focus Desk released a newsletter which contained the statement:

"Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy. Any information relating to anarchists should be reported to your local police." (source)

This police call for people to grass up anarchists comes in the wake of a bizarre right-wing social networking campaign to downplay the atrocities committed by the far right terrorist Anders Breivik in Norway with misleading and unsourced statistics which claimed that anarchist/leftist terrorists have been responsible for more deaths atrocities than Islamic fundamentalists, separatist nationalists and far right organisations combined.

The first part of the police statement is ostensibly correct, however it is clear that whoever wrote it just stole their definition of anarchism from the first line of the Wikipedia article on the subject (without complying with Wikipedia's terms of use policy, which specify that to reuse Wikipedia content you must provide credit to the authors). Had the Westminster anti-terrorist police read further than the first sentence of the Wikipedia article they would have found that by the fourth sentence the Wikipedia article stated that "there is no single defining position that all anarchists hold, and those considered anarchists at best share a certain family resemblance" and that the remainder of the article offers detailed descriptions of the vast diversity of different anarchist philosophies.

For the police to lump all anarchists together as a threat to society is a classic use of gross over-simplification, over-generalisation and stereotyping. It is as stupid as seeing all Muslims as terrorists or all Irish as IRA plotters and it doesn't say much for the competence of anti-terror police, that they see fit to publish such simplistic and uninformed views.

The police have been trained to fear anarchism because its inherent anti-state philosophy conflicts with the principle duties of modern day police forces; to defend the interests of the establishment and to protect the private property of the wealthy. The fact that the policeman that wrote this "advice" had to look anarchism up on Wikipedia to find his definition and then just plagiarised the opening sentence without apparently bothering to read any further is illustrative of the police mentality that there is no need to fully understand dissident political thought, simply a necessity to prevent it.

On the same page of the Westminster counter terrorism leaflet there is a picture of a flag with some Arabic text and a similar request for the public to grass up Islamist terrorists with the statement "[This flag is] often seen used by al-Qaida in Iraq. Any sightings of these images should be reported to your local police." The fact that the second warning contains similar advice and features below the anarchist warning shows that in the minds of Westminster counter terrorist police, gathering intelligence on domestic anarchist groups is considered as a higher or at best an equivalent in priority to combating UK based al-Qaida terrorists.

It is easy to understand police fear of anarchist tactics like black bloc,
however their decision to lump them together with other anarchist philosophies
such as anarcho-syndicalists and existential anarchists highlights their ignorance.

It is easy to understand the reasons that the police fear anarchism, the anarchists they most often encounter in the line of duty are people like direct activists, squatters and protesters using the black bloc strategy. It is pretty clear that most coppers don't really have any real understanding of the philosophical term "anarchist" and just use it as a kind of pejorative to describe people that wont accept the status quo, similar to "troublemaker" or "radical". However it is difficult to imagine what benefit the police would get from informants passing on their knowledge of anarchist philosophies such as existentialist anarchism, participatory politics or somatherapy.

Anarchism and the study of anarchist philosophy is not illegal and human rights legislation disallows discrimination against people because of their political beliefs. The very idea of the police instructing people to report individuals who hold or study dissident philosophical ideas is frighteningly close to George Orwell's concept of thoughtcrime and brings to mind the fact that in the early days of the Nazi Germany dissident political thinkers such as anarchists, socialists and communists were rounded up and imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp.

In the late 19th Century William Melville of Scotland Yard
was the first of many police officers to use
underhand tactics to frame dissident political groups.

It is clear that the British establishment have feared anarchist philosophy for over a century. The Home Office and Metropolitan police spent 80 years hiding the fact that a police agent provocateur called Auguste Coulon working for MI5 founder William Melville planted bomb making materials in order to secure the conviction of a small group of anarchists in Walsall in 1891. The Anarchist newspaper "Commonweal" reported that "Inspector Melville the premier liar of Scotland Yard has been boasting openly that he has succeeded even beyond his hopes in splitting up the Anarchists into factions and has set them fighting each other instead of carrying on their work".

The British police have continued with the use of agent provocateurs to infiltrate anti-establishment groups in order to secure the imprisonment of their members. The most recent example being the case of undercover police officer Mark Kennedy who was found guilty of unlawfully spying on an environmental group and playing a key role in the plan to break into the Ratcliffe on Soare power station in 2009 for which 20 people were found guilty. When it emerged that Kennedy had been a police informer and that the Crown Prosecution Service had deliberately withheld vital evidence from the defence, the convictions were overturned by three senior judges who stated that Kennedy had played a "significant role in assisting, advising and supporting ... the very activity for which the appellants were prosecuted".

Not only have the British police authorities tried to bring down anarchist and other non-conformist political movements through the use of agent provocateurs, they have also benefited from reams of anti-dissent legislation designed to combat political protest. The Police have been allowed to brutalise people that choose to express their right to peaceful political protest with impunity for decades, from the murder of Blair Peach in 1979, through the brutal oppression of the miner's strike to the modern day kettling and baton charges familiar to virtually anyone who has attended an anti-establishment protest in recent years.

The Mark Kennedy case is another example
of how UK police use underhand and illegal tactics
to frame anti-establishment political groups.

The police tactic of kettling is one of the clearest examples of how the police view non-conformism as latent criminality. The tactic of mass detention is a clear partisan strategy to inflict discomfort and suffering on people that choose to protest against the actions of the establishment in order to dissuade them from ever doing it again. As part of the establishment machine the press will almost certainly concentrate on the actions of a tiny violent minority who are while the detention and intimidation of the peaceful majority is almost universally ignored.

Returning to the Westminster document and their broad definition of anarchism, (Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful), several commentators have pointed out that David Cameron's so-called "big society" seems to fit this description of anarchism. Since the election in 2010 the Tories have set about vigorously destroying the welfare state, selling off state infrastructure and sacking tens of thousands of government employees, making claims that the shortfalls in state provision should be made up by individuals and small community groups as part of the nebulous "big society" initiative.

Most anarchists would be appalled to see such ruthless ideologically driven destruction described as "anarchism", however the Tory slash and burn neo-conservative policies are more consistent with the over-simplistic definition of anarchism favoured by the police (reckless and wanton ideologically driven destruction) than the activities of most of Britain's disparate anarchist groups. Even though the Tory party look set to reduce the police force by 34,000 and have set about attacking police pay and pensions, the subservient police mentality prevents them from recognising that the real destructive force that should be countered is the neo-conservative ideology of the establishment, rather than the radical ideas of a few disparate and largely powerless anarchist groups.

The police mentality towards philosophical anarchists and anti-establishment groups brings to mind Pastor Martin Niemöller's famous statement about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

If you know anything about anarchism (or are capable of looking up some anarchist philosophy on Wikipedia) I recommend that you comply with police instructions and ensure that any information relating to anarchists is reported the local police. You should email as much anarchist literature as you can to  projectgriffin@met.pnn.police.uk or post it to Belgravia Police Station, 202-206 Buckingham Palace Road, London, SW1W 9SX.

If they are inundated with emails and letters explaining the basic fundamentals of the many diverse anarchist philosophies, perhaps they will think more carefully about publishing inflammatory material that attempts to build prejudice against and criminalise political thought by equating it with terrorism.

 If you enjoyed this post, maybe you could buy me a beer? £1 would get me a can of cheap lager whilst £3 would get me a lovely pint of real ale.
 

Legal Aid cuts, a Tory commodification of justice

"Justice" minister Ken Clarke plans to price poor people out of
legal recourse via his commodification of justice reforms.

The Tories are well known as the political party that serve the interests of the rich. Their latest plan to slash Legal Aid, restrict no-win no-fee agreements and downsize the Citizens Advice Bureau ostensibly to save £350 million pounds, however the plans as laid out by Justice minister Ken Clarke have been criticised from across the board as ill conceived and reckless with far reaching consequences.

The Legal Aid budget is there to provide legal representation to people that are financially incapable of paying for their own legal representation. Legal Aid lawyers earn far less than they could in virtually any other legal specialisation (such as libel, tax law, contracts, conveyancing and intellectual property). Behind all of the disingenuous waffle about "saving money" and "preventing spurious legal claims" the Tory motivation for these measures are obvious. It is a step towards the commodification of justice in order to further tilt the scales in favour of the rich by preventing poor people from obtaining legal representation. There will be many serious legal ramifications if these Tory reforms are voted through and I am going to outline a few of them.

Under the Tory proposals it will be much harder to bring
compensation cases against companies like Trafigura in the UK courts

The first criticism comes from United Nations legal expert Professor John Ruggie who stated that the proposed Tory reforms would "constitute a significant barrier to legitimate claims being brought before UK courts in situations where alternative sources of remedy are unavailable". He also explained that since legal aid is no longer available for many cases against multinational companies with most such cases currently funded through conditional fee agreements, the Tory plans would make cases against such organisations too costly and that "in complex human rights claims against businesses, the success fee could equal or even exceed the compensation awarded, given the financial risks for law firms of bringing such claims". He did not mention any specific cases but the Trafigura toxic waste dumping case that resulted in the poisoning of around 30,000 Ivorians is an example of a case that was contested on a "no-win no-fee" basis which would be rendered unaffordably risky after the reforms. It is quite easy to see that the intended beneficiaries of these Tory reforms would be corporations that would be able to avoid justice by virtue of their victims being priced out of the courts.

Tory plans to cut Citizens Advice Bureau funding
are a classic example of false economy.

Several different organisations have tried to estimate the potential impact of the proposed cuts and the majority predict that the reforms will result in the denial of justice in between 500,000 and 750,000 cases per year. Whatever the scale of the damage it is impossible to deny that the measures will have a devestating impact on individuals and families that are denied the right to pursue cases of medical negligence, refused the chance to bring cases of domestic violence or to seek legal advice from places like the Citizen's Advice Bureau.

According to the Commission of Inquiry into Legal Aid the proposed legal aid cuts will be a false economy because for every pound of legal aid spent on benefits advice, the state saves up to £8.80, and for every pound of legal aid spent on employment advice, the state saves up to £7.13. When coupled with the human cost to the vulnerable and socially excluded of reducing legal aid, the commission found the increased economic costs of these measures to be unacceptable.

The Legal Aid minister under the Labour government; Lord Bach, agreed that under the proposals the most vulnerable will suffer and it will lead to exactly the opposite of what the Tories claim, with more problems being brought to court in the long run. He also expressed strong opposotion the the plan to cut civil fees by 10%, which will hit social welfare lawyers who work for little reward. It is good to see the opposition voicing their concerns about these measures, however it should be noted that it was New Labour spin doctors that invented the false caricature of the "legal aid fat-cat lawyer" in order to justify their last round of legal aid cuts.

The number of people who represent themselves in the civil courts is set to rise dramatically because people who cannot afford a lawyer and fall outside the limits that are set for legal aid funding will be forced to either drop their pursuit of justice or to represent themselves in court. Several judges and legal experts such as the the Judges' Council have warned that a large increase in self representing clients will cost a lot more in the long run as many more cases that could be easily be resolved by legal experts will find their way into the courts with one or both parties representing themselves and that the increase in "litigants in person" triggered by legal aid cuts would clog up the courts, imposing greater strains and costs than the current system.

From the evidence of widespread opposition and the demonstrable false economy of the proposals it is quite clear that the Tories are pursuing these cuts as part of an ideological agenda. Rather than trying to save money and prevent spurious cases from reaching the courts as they claim, they are simply trying to commodify justice and herd the poor out of the courts in order to protect the interests of big business and the rich.
 

What is happening in Spain?

Translation: "We are not merchandise
in the hands of the politicians & bankers"

Over the last week the Puerta del Sol square in Madrid and city squares across the rest of Spain have been occupied by protesters in what the local media have begun referring to as the second Spanish revolution. With local elections looming the Spanish electoral commission declared the protests illegal late on the Thursday and placed a ban on the protests over the weekend. However the demonstrations that began on May 15 continued to grow in popularity and spread across Spain (from the Balaeric islands to Barcelona) and the rest of the world with small protests cropping up across the European Union as well as in the United States and Latin America.

The protests were originally organised by Democracia Real Ya (real democracy now) but grew in appeal to a broad spectrum of people across Spanish society who began to refer to themselves as "los indignados" (the indignant). Social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook played their roles. The Twitter account @Acampadasol gathered over 40,000 followers in a week and many of the local protests had their own dedicated Facebook pages.

Even after a week of protests across Spain the 15M movement had yet to set out any demands, claiming only to oppose the corrupt and unfair political system that allows over 100 politicians accused of corruption to stand in the upcoming elections, has allowed unemployment in Spain to rise to 21.2%  (44.6% amongst the under 25s) while working hard to protect the interests of the bankers, businessemen and the economic elite. The 15M protesters are particularly unhappy that the current electoral system is rigged to offer the choice between only two parties; the nominally left-wing PSOE and the right-wing PP. As in Britain both parties have dropped many of their traditional policies in favour of pan-European neo-liberalism and the Spanish electorate recognise that a vote for either of the main parties represents a vote for the continuation of exactly the same corrupt, banker friendly, neo-liberal agenda.

Opinions in Spain are clearly divided, with the majority of progressives stating that this movement is long overdue, expressing relief that the youth have finally awoken from their apathetic slumber, claiming that the 15M protest unites people from across the political spectrum and hoping that these will become truly historic events. Reactionaries like Emilio Benítez claim that "most of the protesters are obviously left-wing extremists and anarchists, who wish to destabilise the democracy that took so much effort and time to achieve". Other right-wing groups have made outlandish claims that the protests are funded and organised by the paramilitary terrorist organisation ETA.

Many media commentators have drawn comparisons with the popular uprisings across the middle east making outlandish claims like "the Arab spring has arrived in the west" however many protesters are keen to draw a distinction between the bravery of the protesters in the middle east who have risked their lives in order to protest and the largely peaceful demonstrations across Spain.

"We are not against the system, the system is against us"  - 15M demonstrator

Translation: "No house, no job, no future. No fear"

The ruling PSOE are referred to in the Spanish media as "the socialist party" although their policy of massive job cuts, austerity measures and protection of the banking sector following the credit crunch and the collapse of the Spanish property market in 2008 are far removed from any definition of socialism I am familiar with. Their policies actually seem to be driven by fear of the global banking elite (European Central Bank, IMF, World bank & the credit ratings agencies) who between them have been capable of bringing entire countries like Greece, Ireland and neighbours Portugal to their knees. The policy seems to be to smash the poor with job cuts and destruction of services and infrastructure before the austerity measures are imposed from above by the European Central bank or the IMF. The cuts proved hugely unpopular, especially given that Spain has the highest unemployment levels in the western world as a consequence and as a result the right-wing and even more banker friendly PP made massive gains in the mayoral, local and regional elections.

Of the many issues that have been raised in these protests the most important seems to be anger at unfairness in both the Spanish electoral system and across the rest of Spanish society. The electoral system offers only the choice between two neo-liberal parties who have little real control over the Spanish economy having ceded most of their powers to the undemocratic shambles of the European Union and the European Central Bank and favour the interests of the rich above the needs of the young and the poor.

José Luis Sampedro's view of the situation.

Click CC at the bottom for English subtitles

Coverage of the demonstrations across Spain is dominating television news.

As a Brit witnessing all of this it is quite a clear demonstration that the UK population is quite clearly much more conservative and reactionary than the Spanish given that the UK referendum to introduce a slightly fairer voting system was defeated earlier this month as the people voted overwhelmingly to support the interests of the forces of political conservatism, while in Spain the people have taken to occupying their town and city squares in order to call for a fairer and more representative political system.

It is not that the British are entirely unaware of the issues after the credit crunch and the Parliametary expenses scandal bankers and politicians are pretty much universally despised in the UK, however people are so naive and politically conservative that they will vote against reform despite the fact the the biggest beneficiaries are the politicians and bankers that they despise. The biggest winners from the AV no-vote were the Tory party that take more than 50% of their donations from bankers in the city and have imposed harsh austerity measures on the young, the poor, the sick, the elederly, the diabled, the unemployed and anyone that uses public services whilst doing virtually nothing to reform the banking system that caused the economic crisis in the first place.

The media reaction to the protests is also very different to what would happen in the UK, with coverage of the demonstrations taking up the majority of the news on all channels, whether in the form of blanket condemnation and misinformation from the right-wing media to the less partisan coverage offered elsewhere the media are actrually talking about it unlike in Britain where huge demonstrations over the last decade have been talked down or written out of the news agenda entirely.

Another big difference is the relaxed attitude of the police in response to these now illegal demonstrations, who have not resorted to the kettling, containment, oppression and violence of the British police when faced with perfectly legal ones, allegedly preferring the underhand tactics of undercover police removing demonstrators under the cover of night. Perhaps the legacy of Franco's brutal oppression of dissent is working as a constraint as there would be fewer more politically harmful images than the Spanish police violently oppressing peaceful protests in clear daylight being broadcast across the country.

It is pretty much impossible to see a resolution to the crisis that will satisfy the demonstraters, given that any wavering from the government on their austerity drive would result in economic punishment from the global banking elite in the form of lowered credit ratings and externally imposed austerity measures. Spain could not escape the wrath of the bankers were they to decide to nationalise their banks, invest in "new deal" style employment and infrastructure schemes and reform their political system to allow alternative parties fairer representation. The problem is not just a Spanish one, the global banking elite have created themselves a vice-like grip on the global economy and it will take more than just a few reforms in a medium sized European country to prevent them from holding entire nations to ransom.