dal sito di sd
Georgia e dintorni
Sul conflitto scoppiato all'inizio di agosto nel Caucaso si affollano molti attori mondiali e regionali: la Georgia, contro le pretese indipendentiste di Ossezia e Abkhazia; la Russia a difesa di queste; gli Usa e la Nato a difesa della Georgia; la UE che cerca di mediare sia al proprio interno sia fra i soggetti in conflitto. Sullo scenario si giocano rilevanti e divergenti interessi geopolitici, strategici, energetici (tra questi la dipendenza dell'Europa dal gas Russo), una storia intrecciata e complessa delle ex repubbliche sovietiche, la sorte futura delle relazioni internazionali e del diritto che dovrebbe determinarle.
I fatti sono noti ma vale la pena metterli in fila per capirne cause e conseguenze: l'8 agosto la Georgia -4.4 milioni di abitanti- bombarda ed invade l'Ossezia del sud -70.000 abitanti-, formalmente contro le sue pretese indipendentiste, in realtà per salvaguardare l'oleodotto che passa nel suo territorio. La Russia reagisce bombardando ed invadendo consistenti territori della Georgia, formalmente a difesa dell'Ossezia del sud, in realtà per rispondere all'ampliamento della Nato nei confronto dei paesi suoi confinati.
Gli Usa, dalla caduta del muro di Berlino in poi, hanno operato, in modo più o meno strisciante, per la creazione di "un altro muro" che accerchia la Russia, finanziando attraverso dubbie Fondazioni i vari movimenti nazionalisti ostili a Mosca e favorendo le elezioni di esponenti di questi. Soprattutto hanno spinto la Nato -di cui gli Usa sono azionisti di maggioranza- ad ampliarsi verso le ex repubbliche del patto di Varsavia, costituendo una "cortina di ferro al contrario”che circonda la Russia. Nel '99 hanno aderito alla Nato Polonia, Ungheria, Repubblica Ceca; nel 2004 Estonia, Lettonia, Lituania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovacchia e Slovenia; una delle prossime adesioni riguarderà ,oltre all'Ucraina ed alla Macedonia, proprio la Georgia.
Non solo: la Russia è da due anni sotto schiaffo per il coinvolgimento della Polonia e della repubblica Ceca al programma Usa dello scudo antimissilistico,concordato bilateralmente senza nemmeno passare per la Nato,cosa che ha fattto infuriare Angela Merkel.Già dal 2001 Washington si era ritirata unilateralmente dal trattato Abm che vietava gli antimissili balistici come deterrenza alle atomiche offensive.La somma di queste azioni ha costituito una concreta minaccia agli equilibri strategici in atto con la Russia e come tale è stata recepita da Putin.Le ritorsioni non si sono fatte aspettare: nell’aprile del 2007 Putin ha denunciato la moratoria del trattato CFE(trattato per la riduzione e il controllo degli armamenti convenzionali in Europa); di lì a poco la Russia testa nuovi missili superpotenti(missili multitesta e cruise).Ricomincia un escalation militare densa di minacce: “se componenti strategiche dell’arsenale USA faranno la loro apparizione in Europa,vicino alle nostre frontiere,saremo costretti a sopprimere le minacce potenziali che provengono da questi dispiegamenti”.Non è un caso che proprio in questi giorni in cui il negoziato con la Polonia per lo scudo è in dirittura d’arrivo, la Russia ha testato il missile antiscudo Topol RS 12-m. Prova provata -se ce ne fosse ancora bisogno- che la corsa agli armamenti determina e sostiene i conflitti sostituendo alla diplomazia la logica mortale delle armi. Anche nella guerra in Georgia a provocazioni seguono reazioni,un effetto-catena muscolare.La Russia giustifica il proprio intervento, legittimato -come sostiene Putin- "da una Georgia in cerca d'avventure sanguinarie" e colpevole di genocidio nei confronti degli Osseti. Usa e Nato definiscono l'attacco Russo sproporzionato: affermazione certamente condivisibile se non fosse inficiata dal "pulpito" che la sostiene (la Nato nel '99 bombardò Belgrado, con analoghe motivazioni, per 78 gg e gli Usa hanno reagito nel 2001 alle torri gemelle con il bombardamento e l'occupazione militare di tutto l'Afghanistan, che dura da 7 anni, massacrando anche civili).A “fare la pace “tra i contendenti ci provano Sarkozy,come presidente di turno della Ue, che il 14 agosto propone 6 punti d’accordo sia,in seguito, Condoleeza Rice . Il presidente russo Medvedev teoricamente accetta ,tranne che mantiene l’esercito in territorio georgiano. Prove di forza e minacce:quella di sospensione del Consiglio Russia-Nato, da parte della Nato, e la successiva contro minaccia della Russia di interrompere a sua volta la cooperazione con la Nato (col timore della sospensione del transito di carburanti e viveri verso l’ Afghanistan attraverso i corridori russi e ancor di più con la possibilità del rifornimento russo di tecnologie per l'arricchimento nucleare all'Iran): minacce ,pare,rientrate.Ma l'avvicinarsi alle coste Georgiane di navi da guerra Nato e della 6° flotta Usa (in teoria per approvvigionamenti umanitari) ha costituito un pretesto per lo slittamento della data del ritiro russo.I prospettati ritiri sono sempre ballerini: anche gli israeliani durante l'occupazione del sud del Libano, nell'agosto del '06, risposero alle Nazioni Unite che ne chiedevano il ritiro che "dovevano finire il lavoro" per rendere più sicuri i propri confini. "finire il lavoro" è diventato anche lo slogan degli Usa per rimandare la data del loro ritiro definitivo dall'Iraq.
In questi giorni,il primo settembre,il ritiro è stato riproposto con determinazione da un Consiglio europeo straordinario che ha dovuto comporre differenze – in parte scontate- tra Vecchia Europa,sensibile ai rifornimenti energetici russi,e paesi della Nuova Europa(oltre alla Gran Bretagna) fedeli al richiamo di Washington ,che invocavano sanzioni contro la Russia. Le sanzioni non sono passate ma il documento unitario della UE ha condannato l’avvenuto riconoscimento russo dell’indipendenza ,proclamata unilateralmente dall’ Ossezia del sud e dall’ Abkhazia ( do you remember Kossovo ?..due pesi ,due misure..) invocando l’inviolabilità dei confini nazionali; ha annunciato la sospensione dei negoziati per un parternariato tra UE e Russia che riprenderanno solo se Mosca rinuncerà all’uso della forza consentendo l’accesso agli aiuti umanitari e ritirerà le proprie truppe dalla Georgia. Il documento prevede ancora che dovrà aprirsi un dibattito internazionale sul futuro status di Ossezia del Sud e di Abkhazia e che verrà inviata in quei territori una missione OSCE di “osservazione diretta”.Il presidente Medvedev ha definito il documento equilibrato assicurando che il ritiro avverrà presto, nei tempi “tecnici” necessari.Tutto risolto quindi ?Apparentemente Ue e Russi sono concordi su questa “risoluzione”,cosa non indifferente né scontata che spunta le unghie a Usa e Nato,delinea una rara autonomia e unitarietà europea, non isola la Russia. Che il quadro tenga ,è altra questione. Il Caucaso ribolle ( si pensi a Inguscezia e Daghestan) , la Crimea ,con popolazione a maggioranza russa, mira a secedere dall’Ucraina e le cento etnie che si mescolano nelle repubbliche caucasiche spingono a risposte frantumate, nazionaliste e arretrate. Non solo: oggi le crisi,anche regionali, finiscono per coinvolgere “padrini”importanti,che aspirano anche in queste occasioni a mantenere o diventare grandi potenze.Occorre una chiave globale che concili le autonomie locali.Il multilateralismo puo’ aiutare( ma un multilateralismo vero e non come la Nato che si è trasformata in un altro “braccio armato”a difesa degli interessi Usa),ma è solo la certezza e l’efficacia del diritto internazionale in mondo piu’ giusto , con piu’ libertà,meno dissipatorio e dipendente dal petrolio(che tenga conto dei tanti nuovi paesi che si affacciano sulla scena internazionale) che si possono costruire le possibilità di una pacifica convivenza. A questo occorre lavorare e in fretta.
*della Direzione di Sd
venerdì 5 settembre 2008
Politics without ideas
Dalla London Review of books
LRB
11 September 2008
Ross McKibbin
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What Works Doesn’t Work
Ross McKibbin
In 1964, Harold Wilson described the record of the (outgoing) Conservative government as ‘13 wasted years’. If the present Parliament lasts its full term – as seems likely – the electorate will be asked to pass judgment on 13 years of Labour rule. Voters today seem to have the same view of Labour as Wilson had of the Tories all those years ago. Many who once wished Labour well are now wondering whether they can vote Labour at all, or whether they should stop voting tactically. This is an important decision: the Labour majorities in the last three elections have been much enlarged by people choosing to vote for the candidate thought most likely to defeat the Tory – a spontaneous alternative vote. Since the country’s politicians have refused to reform the country’s medieval system of voting, the electorate has reformed it for itself. But it is a reform without any statutory basis: people can choose to practise it or not. Labour thus faces a double threat. Not merely that people will no longer vote Labour, but that they will vote as they really want to – Lib Dem, for example – whatever the consequences. And they will do so because they no longer believe keeping the Tories out is the main object of politics. Labour’s position, though not irrecoverable, is therefore serious, approaching desperate.
There is no simple reason why this has happened. It can’t just be the state of the economy. However bad that is or might become, it’s unlikely to be as bad as the recessions of the early 1980s or early 1990s, neither of which were fatal for the Conservatives. One possible explanation is that the electorate has finally recognised how fraudulent New Labour always was. An attractive idea, but probably wrong. However fraudulent it has become, it didn’t seem fraudulent at the beginning. There were good reasons in the early 1990s for Labour to reorient itself and to do so publicly: the party had to adjust to the kind of society Britain had become and be seen to do so. It wasn’t merely that Old Labour had been keen on nationalisation and high taxation; it was also deeply conservative in its attitude to the country’s political institutions and to bodies like the EU. But by the 1997 election it was already obvious that any properly considered policy of ‘reform’ was to be sacrificed by the party’s leadership to the construction and then extirpation of a caricature of Old Labour. As an electoral strategy the two things – the construction of a stereotype and its triumphant stamping out – went together. It seemed a brilliant idea at the time, but it has landed the government in its present mess. Why was it adopted?
Partly it was a consequence of the loss of four elections in a row and an entirely reasonable feeling that there must be more to political life than perpetual defeat. Neil Kinnock and John Smith felt this as strongly as their successors, but their successors went a lot further. In a famous essay published nearly ninety years ago, Max Weber suggested that politics was becoming the territory of the professional: politics was the politician’s whole life, his ‘vocation’, and the modern political party was his home. Others, like the Italian sociologist Robert Michels, argued further that for the modern politician the political party was a form of social mobility, so that eventually the protection of the party’s bureaucratic structures – the machine – became more important than the interests of the people the parties were supposed to represent.
Professionalisation has always been a necessary characteristic of modern British parties, but in the last twenty years or so extreme professionalisation has become the dominant characteristic. The typical politician today, whether minister, shadow minister or ‘adviser’, proceeds from student politics (often with a politics degree), to political consultancy or a think-tank, to ‘research’ or the staff of an active politician. He or she is ‘good at politics’ – which means being good at the mechanics of politics, not necessarily at its ideas. The consequence is that the mechanics drives out the ideas, and the immediate expels the long-term. Politics is what the Daily Mail says today; the long-term is what the Daily Mail might say tomorrow. The crucial relationship now is between the politician, the journalist and the ‘adviser’.
Meanwhile, opinion is continually tested, but not in ways likely to supply anything other than the desired answer: what the opinion-testing seeks is ways to achieve the answer that’s wanted. So today’s politician falls into the hands of the focus group. But the focus group, and the question on which it is asked to focus, is manipulated by the political consultant every bit as much as the focus group manipulates him. Each deceives the other. The result is that the political experience of the modern politician, the person good at the mechanics of politics, is exceptionally narrow: the political elite is now probably more divorced from society, and from any wider organising principles or ideology, than at any other time in the last 150 years.
The culture of the focus group does not, however, lead to an apolitical politics. On the contrary, it reinforces the political status quo and encourages a hard-nosed, ‘realistic’ view of the electorate that denies the voter any political loyalty, except to ‘what works’. ‘What works’, though, is anything but an objective criterion: these days it is what the right-wing press says ‘works’. The war on drugs doesn’t work; nor does building more prisons; nor, one suspects, will many of the anti-terror laws. But that doesn’t stop ministers from pursuing all of them vigorously. New Labour in practice is much more wedded to what-works politics than the Conservatives were under Thatcher, who was openly and self-consciously ideological.
Much of the present malaise in British politics flows from this. Among other things, what-works gives the wrong answers. The classic example is the 42-day detention legislation. The only rational explanation for the government’s return to this matter, for the extreme pressure put on Labour MPs by the whips and for the MPs’ willingness to live with the ensuing moral obloquy, is that the government believes the legislation will enable them to trump the Tories on the issue of security. The electorate wants to lock up terrorists, the Conservatives are opposed to 42-day detention; therefore, the government wins the allegiance of the electorate. But of course that hasn’t happened: the 42-day legislation has had no discernible effect on the electorate’s view of the government.
This is a persistent error of modern politics. Blair spent much of his premiership devising ways in which the Tories could be made to look ‘soft’ on crime, terror and all the rest on the understanding that this was an election-winner for Labour. But there is no historical evidence that any British election has ever been won on issues of ‘crime’ or ‘security’. Or that Labour, in so far as crime and security do matter, could ever trump the Tories. Blair didn’t win because of Tory softness, though he was told by the political professionals – as presumably was Brown – that this is how elections are won.
The effect has also been to neuter the cabinet. The present cabinet has become the most lightweight in living memory. Some of its members are so lightweight they shouldn’t be in the cabinet at all; a few shouldn’t even be in the Labour Party. Were Labour to think it necessary to remove Brown there is no plausible successor, no one guaranteed to be more popular. All have been damaged by New Labour’s political mechanics. Most are regarded by the electorate with a degree of distrust unusual in British politics.
Almost all the main premises of Thatcherism were adopted as policy by New Labour without it ever being formally avowed, and without anyone worrying much about whether Thatcherism ‘worked’, because the political professionals told ministers that they had to accept the lessons of the 1980s – despite the fact that in the 1980s Blair and Brown had a very clear idea of what Thatcherism was up to. Evidence that suggested most people had no real sympathy for what Thatcherism had become was discounted in favour of focus-group truths: taxation (too high), crime (too much), choice (not enough), asylum seekers (too many), the public sphere (too big). The elimination of these blemishes became the desideratum of politics.
These truths were accompanied by focus-group fairy tales about the economy, the focus group in this case being the Treasury and most of the press. Thus the disappearance of much of manufacturing (and its continuing decline under Blair and Brown) is OK because manufacturing was only ‘metal-bashing’ (Treasury-speak of the 1980s), and in any case we weren’t very good at it. What we were good at was services. Indeed, we were so good at services that what was happening here today would inevitably happen everywhere tomorrow – and not least in Germany, with its inflexible labour markets and hopeless addiction to metal-bashing. Nothing has been more embarrassing than the insistence – and Labour was still at it a couple of months ago – that Germany could be really successful only when it adopted the British model. That Britain has experienced real gains in the standard of living in the last fifteen years is undeniable; and no one regrets that. It’s what underlies those gains that is alarming: very largely, now as in the late 1980s, the inflation of asset prices, usually housing, and the huge expansion of credit dependent on those inflated prices. One might have thought that Brown, being a prudent man, would have preferred the German model, where the inflation of house prices is regarded as a bad thing, to the British one, where it is regarded as good – and not just good, but absolutely necessary.
The evidence is there for everyone to see, yet the rackety structure is kept in place. Now it turns out that the value of service exports has never equalled the value of manufacturing exports and that we weren’t in any case all that good at services – which is one reason so many of the City’s financial institutions are now foreign-owned. The other reason is that we have had to sell them to cover the country’s immense current-account deficit, which is of a size that would once have brought a government down. One typical New Labour wheeze that bears all the hallmarks of the ‘professional’ politician was Brown’s decision to let the Bank of England determine interest rates via its Monetary Policy Committee, and his stipulation that its primary purpose must be to keep inflation at low levels.
The reasons for doing this were, first, the belief that inflation was the principal blight on the economy and that controlling it would guarantee perpetual trouble-free growth; and, second, that trouble-free growth could best be achieved by handing over the setting of interest rates to an ‘objective’ authority like the Bank – and if it wasn’t achieved the Bank would get the blame. Surely someone must have known that this was unlikely to ‘work’ except in the most benign circumstances. Historically, inflation is only one of the blights on the British economy and often not the worst. The Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank is now faced both with moderate inflation, almost all imported and barely susceptible to internal correction (though higher interest rates are nonetheless demanded), and declining economic growth, a decline that higher interest rates would accelerate. How in these circumstances can it possibly guarantee inflation-free growth? Of course it can’t, and the government predictably has got the blame.
Then there are the party-political wheezes: inviting Thatcher to tea, for example, an occasion presumably intended by the prime minister’s staff to finish off the Conservative Party, but so sickeningly transparent it marked the beginning of Brown’s disasters. Since New Labour’s view of the electorate is as contemptuous as that of the popular press, the casual instrumentalism of its policies has induced real moral decay in the government. The shocking increase in the prison population and the treatment of asylum seekers or ‘illegal’ immigrants – not to speak of Iraq – are among the most shameful policies in the history of the Labour Party, but probably few of those responsible now lose much sleep over such matters.
At the same time, ministers are trapped inside a vocabulary from which anything that smacks of Old Labour, or rather the stereotype of Old Labour – fairer taxes, for instance – has been excluded because it would send out the ‘wrong signals’: particularly to that artefact of modern politics, the ‘aspirational classes’. These were the grounds on which the possibility of increasing taxes on those earning more than £100,000 a year was recently ‘dismissed’. Who the aspirational classes are, and why the signal would be wrong, wasn’t disclosed.
These rhetorical constraints have undermined the government’s actual achievements, especially in education and the NHS. New Labour gets scarcely any credit for the great improvements in the NHS because Blair spent all his time saying that yet more reforms were necessary in order to provide ‘choice’, presumably for the aspirational classes. Recently, Brown asked rhetorically whether the Tories would continue with the present programme of school building and improvement: a big programme and long overdue, but I doubt the electorate knows that. All they know about is ‘failing schools’ because failing schools is all ministers ever talk about.
This, however, is not the whole story of New Labour. Were it all merely about privatisation, the aspirational classes and crime it would be much easier: James Purnell could continue to privatise everything and Jack Straw to build dozens of gigantic prisons. That at least has coherence. But the Labour Party has a history and an institutional memory, even to those who seem most oblivious of it. The fact is that Labour’s social-democratic past won’t go away, and this has produced major tensions within the party which, while they give cause for hope, have also made things more complicated. Thus Brown, who has so far been a dud prime minister and in many ways was a dud chancellor, is also the man who has done more than anyone to save Labour’s reputation. He spent money and wanted to spend it. Britain is a better country than it was in 1997 and that is largely thanks to him. Furthermore, he is probably the only minister who has put the Tories on the defensive. Few Tory front-benchers now publicly defend the non-spending of the 1980s.
The tension manifests itself in other ways. There has always been a tug-of-war between Labour’s secular and religious traditions. Labour, we have been told, ‘doesn’t do God’. Historically, however, it has often done God – and was certainly doing God when Blair was prime minister. Faith schools, legislation against the promotion of religious hatred, the encouragement of religious charities and associations, the well-advertised religious beliefs of many ministers, were all very much in evidence. At the same time the party’s secular tradition continually reasserts itself – particularly when the whips are removed. The House of Commons, by surprisingly large majorities, approved very liberal boundaries for stem-cell research. One of the few occasions (so far as we know) when the cabinet overruled Blair was over proposals to exempt Catholic adoption agencies from new anti-discriminatory rules. Faith schools were always much more popular with ministers than with the party at large – and are now not even very popular with ministers.
Tension between the religious and the secular has been further complicated by a redefinition within the party of moral worth and the moral sphere. Apart from those who earn more than £100,000 a year, the gay community, for example, has probably done as well under New Labour as anyone else. Thatcherism didn’t entirely exclude the gay community from the moral sphere but certainly didn’t embrace it (see Section 28). Under Labour, however, gays – to the extent that there is a collective gay will – have gained most of what they wanted politically. That is long overdue; but it has been accompanied by the moral exclusion of those who were once thought part of Labour’s natural constituency – the social underdogs. Young working-class males are more likely to go to jail under Labour; they are more likely to be excluded from school; their parents are more likely to be judged incompetent; their style of life is more likely to be thought socially dysfunctional; and the government prefers to decant them from the sphere of moral worth rather than admit that deprivation plays an important part in any of it.
This is a result of deep unease in the Labour Party about what constitutes modern democracy. In its social manners Britain has rapidly become a very democratic society. Old forms of respect and the deference due to traditional hierarchies have not altogether disappeared, but they have been profoundly weakened. In the daily exchanges of life Britain is now very like North America or Australia: ubiquity of the Christian name, casualness of dress, universal ignorance of social forms once thought essential; opposition leaders who wander around in shorts and T-shirts and pretend they never went to Eton. Tony Blair is the political personification of a democracy of manner – it was part of his popularity. Differing lifestyles have become not social threats but part of the acceptable plurality of democratic life. Democracy of everyday life is certainly not incompatible with social democracy – social democratic parties have traditionally been sympathetic to it – but under Labour the two are in danger of becoming alternatives. Britain is now a very much more unequal and less socially mobile society than it was thirty years ago, and while Labour isn’t responsible for that it has done little to correct it.
Much of this is also true of the New Conservatives. As the election approaches we might expect them to show their real colours. But so far they haven’t. They will obviously be under pressure to do Thatcherite things: the economy, we will be told by the popular and financial press, is a ruin and public spending must be cut and cut. At the moment, however, Cameron is clearly doubtful about the wisdom of these particular fairy stories. The Tories have been put on the back foot over public spending and have discernibly edged away from Thatcher and her traditions. It is possible that in two years it will be tax cuts all round; but that will require some shifting of ground.
The Tories would love to escape any blame for Iraq, and William Hague does seem to have learned some lessons. Iain Duncan Smith has emerged as an unexpected champion of social solidarity: a major advance in that wing of the Conservative Party. And for whatever reason, whether principle or political expediency, the Tories have recently shown a more tender regard for civil liberties than Labour. They now appear sceptical of the test-ridden, league-table-ridden regime which is slowly wrecking the schools, and might even relax it. Cameron has recognised that he too must adjust to the demands of the democratic lifestyle. On the other hand, the Tories are in favour of ‘choice’ in health and education, locking people up, silly, even dangerous, policies towards the EU, punitive policies towards immigrants and asylum seekers, welfare ‘reform’ on the American model. And Cameron wishes to transform the economy as Thatcher did – and he doesn’t mean that ironically.
In fact, the Conservatives are subject to the same tensions as Labour, the same conflict between ends and means. George Osborne recognises that 11 years of New Labour have not procured social justice, but like New Labour he wishes to mobilise the free market to repair the deficiency. Like James Purnell, he wants to place large chunks of social policy into the hands of the charitable and voluntary sector – a version of the Private Finance Initiative. However, the free market can do many things but guaranteeing fairness is not one of them. Equally, the voluntary sector can do many things but it can’t provide serious solutions to national welfare problems.
What happens to the privatised welfare services is well known (though not to the modern politician); as with the PFI, the private sector does the easy bits and the public sector picks up the pieces. Like Labour, the Conservatives want to provide ‘choice’ and ‘competition’ within the educational system, but want it to be socially inclusive too. Unfortunately, you can’t have both; and it is social inclusion that will disappear. The Tories are aware that there is a problem which the 1980s in some ways made worse, yet, like Labour, they wish to solve it with confused and often self-defeating policies. And, like Labour, the Tories are increasingly unsure how far the ethnic communities can be contained within the remit of lifestyle democracy, how viable multiculturalism now is.
The voter is thus faced with difficulties the British party structure is very ill-equipped to resolve. That structure has a fundamental fault: the different parties no longer stand for differing opinions. It is possible to imagine another, more representative structure. There would be a party of the moderate left, undoubtedly led by Vince Cable, which would include some Labour backbenchers (but no member of the present government), some Lib Dems (but probably not their leader), and perhaps Tories like Kenneth Clarke and Ed Vaizey. There would be a centreish party which would include Brown, some members of the cabinet, most Lib Dems, a large part of the Parliamentary Labour Party, probably William Hague, Theresa May, Alan Duncan and a few other Tories; Cameron and Osborne might be honorary or temporary members. The party of the right would include everyone else (including many members of the government). This would offer a more accurate representation of opinion than will be presented to the voter at the next election. The only problem is that there is no system at the moment by which the voter can choose between these ‘parties’. And, given that most politicians are told what the voter wants by people who are poor judges of that, there is no certainty that being able to have such a choice would make any difference.
In these circumstances it may not matter much what party anyone votes for; though it could certainly matter which individual you vote for. But the election is probably two years away: time enough for Labour to make voting for them a rational option. At present Labour is not doing that. Brown and his colleagues are so conditioned to a particular political response – choice, voluntary sector, the market, competition etc – that they are more or less sleepwalking. What, they would do well to ask, is most likely to put the Conservatives on the defensive? In other words, what is most likely to make the electorate frightened of a Tory victory? More privatisation, more prisons, ‘tough’ welfare, the world’s most guarded borders, the free market, more adventures abroad with the Americans: none of these will frighten the Conservatives – but they might frighten the electorate.
Labour has so narrowed its chances that it has only one shot left: increased public spending on social infrastructure. And that means reminding the electorate exactly what the 1980s were like – however much that goes against the grain. The Conservatives know that the electorate is sceptical of their change of heart; and Conservative spending policies at present bear little detailed scrutiny. Labour’s record is itself very mixed – a quick glance at the railways confirms that – but popular memory of the falling down hospitals and decaying schools of the 1980s is now all it has got. Yet Brown says little and even that is mostly a mumble – when he should be saying much, loudly. But no doubt if he did that, someone would tell him he was sending out the wrong signals.
There is one more possibility: reform of the voting system. Labour’s failure to do this over the last 11 years has been unforgivable. Done now it would have only one obvious justification: saving Labour’s electoral bacon. But so what? Labour has done so many cynical things in the last decade that its reputation for cynicism could hardly get worse. This wouldn’t be the most cynical – and there is still time to do it. Merely to suggest it, however, makes one realise that it won’t happen.
Ross McKibbin is a fellow of St John’s College, Oxford, and the author of Classes and Cultures: England 1918-51. His edition of Marie Stopes’s Married Love is published by Oxford.
LRB
11 September 2008
Ross McKibbin
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tell a friend
What Works Doesn’t Work
Ross McKibbin
In 1964, Harold Wilson described the record of the (outgoing) Conservative government as ‘13 wasted years’. If the present Parliament lasts its full term – as seems likely – the electorate will be asked to pass judgment on 13 years of Labour rule. Voters today seem to have the same view of Labour as Wilson had of the Tories all those years ago. Many who once wished Labour well are now wondering whether they can vote Labour at all, or whether they should stop voting tactically. This is an important decision: the Labour majorities in the last three elections have been much enlarged by people choosing to vote for the candidate thought most likely to defeat the Tory – a spontaneous alternative vote. Since the country’s politicians have refused to reform the country’s medieval system of voting, the electorate has reformed it for itself. But it is a reform without any statutory basis: people can choose to practise it or not. Labour thus faces a double threat. Not merely that people will no longer vote Labour, but that they will vote as they really want to – Lib Dem, for example – whatever the consequences. And they will do so because they no longer believe keeping the Tories out is the main object of politics. Labour’s position, though not irrecoverable, is therefore serious, approaching desperate.
There is no simple reason why this has happened. It can’t just be the state of the economy. However bad that is or might become, it’s unlikely to be as bad as the recessions of the early 1980s or early 1990s, neither of which were fatal for the Conservatives. One possible explanation is that the electorate has finally recognised how fraudulent New Labour always was. An attractive idea, but probably wrong. However fraudulent it has become, it didn’t seem fraudulent at the beginning. There were good reasons in the early 1990s for Labour to reorient itself and to do so publicly: the party had to adjust to the kind of society Britain had become and be seen to do so. It wasn’t merely that Old Labour had been keen on nationalisation and high taxation; it was also deeply conservative in its attitude to the country’s political institutions and to bodies like the EU. But by the 1997 election it was already obvious that any properly considered policy of ‘reform’ was to be sacrificed by the party’s leadership to the construction and then extirpation of a caricature of Old Labour. As an electoral strategy the two things – the construction of a stereotype and its triumphant stamping out – went together. It seemed a brilliant idea at the time, but it has landed the government in its present mess. Why was it adopted?
Partly it was a consequence of the loss of four elections in a row and an entirely reasonable feeling that there must be more to political life than perpetual defeat. Neil Kinnock and John Smith felt this as strongly as their successors, but their successors went a lot further. In a famous essay published nearly ninety years ago, Max Weber suggested that politics was becoming the territory of the professional: politics was the politician’s whole life, his ‘vocation’, and the modern political party was his home. Others, like the Italian sociologist Robert Michels, argued further that for the modern politician the political party was a form of social mobility, so that eventually the protection of the party’s bureaucratic structures – the machine – became more important than the interests of the people the parties were supposed to represent.
Professionalisation has always been a necessary characteristic of modern British parties, but in the last twenty years or so extreme professionalisation has become the dominant characteristic. The typical politician today, whether minister, shadow minister or ‘adviser’, proceeds from student politics (often with a politics degree), to political consultancy or a think-tank, to ‘research’ or the staff of an active politician. He or she is ‘good at politics’ – which means being good at the mechanics of politics, not necessarily at its ideas. The consequence is that the mechanics drives out the ideas, and the immediate expels the long-term. Politics is what the Daily Mail says today; the long-term is what the Daily Mail might say tomorrow. The crucial relationship now is between the politician, the journalist and the ‘adviser’.
Meanwhile, opinion is continually tested, but not in ways likely to supply anything other than the desired answer: what the opinion-testing seeks is ways to achieve the answer that’s wanted. So today’s politician falls into the hands of the focus group. But the focus group, and the question on which it is asked to focus, is manipulated by the political consultant every bit as much as the focus group manipulates him. Each deceives the other. The result is that the political experience of the modern politician, the person good at the mechanics of politics, is exceptionally narrow: the political elite is now probably more divorced from society, and from any wider organising principles or ideology, than at any other time in the last 150 years.
The culture of the focus group does not, however, lead to an apolitical politics. On the contrary, it reinforces the political status quo and encourages a hard-nosed, ‘realistic’ view of the electorate that denies the voter any political loyalty, except to ‘what works’. ‘What works’, though, is anything but an objective criterion: these days it is what the right-wing press says ‘works’. The war on drugs doesn’t work; nor does building more prisons; nor, one suspects, will many of the anti-terror laws. But that doesn’t stop ministers from pursuing all of them vigorously. New Labour in practice is much more wedded to what-works politics than the Conservatives were under Thatcher, who was openly and self-consciously ideological.
Much of the present malaise in British politics flows from this. Among other things, what-works gives the wrong answers. The classic example is the 42-day detention legislation. The only rational explanation for the government’s return to this matter, for the extreme pressure put on Labour MPs by the whips and for the MPs’ willingness to live with the ensuing moral obloquy, is that the government believes the legislation will enable them to trump the Tories on the issue of security. The electorate wants to lock up terrorists, the Conservatives are opposed to 42-day detention; therefore, the government wins the allegiance of the electorate. But of course that hasn’t happened: the 42-day legislation has had no discernible effect on the electorate’s view of the government.
This is a persistent error of modern politics. Blair spent much of his premiership devising ways in which the Tories could be made to look ‘soft’ on crime, terror and all the rest on the understanding that this was an election-winner for Labour. But there is no historical evidence that any British election has ever been won on issues of ‘crime’ or ‘security’. Or that Labour, in so far as crime and security do matter, could ever trump the Tories. Blair didn’t win because of Tory softness, though he was told by the political professionals – as presumably was Brown – that this is how elections are won.
The effect has also been to neuter the cabinet. The present cabinet has become the most lightweight in living memory. Some of its members are so lightweight they shouldn’t be in the cabinet at all; a few shouldn’t even be in the Labour Party. Were Labour to think it necessary to remove Brown there is no plausible successor, no one guaranteed to be more popular. All have been damaged by New Labour’s political mechanics. Most are regarded by the electorate with a degree of distrust unusual in British politics.
Almost all the main premises of Thatcherism were adopted as policy by New Labour without it ever being formally avowed, and without anyone worrying much about whether Thatcherism ‘worked’, because the political professionals told ministers that they had to accept the lessons of the 1980s – despite the fact that in the 1980s Blair and Brown had a very clear idea of what Thatcherism was up to. Evidence that suggested most people had no real sympathy for what Thatcherism had become was discounted in favour of focus-group truths: taxation (too high), crime (too much), choice (not enough), asylum seekers (too many), the public sphere (too big). The elimination of these blemishes became the desideratum of politics.
These truths were accompanied by focus-group fairy tales about the economy, the focus group in this case being the Treasury and most of the press. Thus the disappearance of much of manufacturing (and its continuing decline under Blair and Brown) is OK because manufacturing was only ‘metal-bashing’ (Treasury-speak of the 1980s), and in any case we weren’t very good at it. What we were good at was services. Indeed, we were so good at services that what was happening here today would inevitably happen everywhere tomorrow – and not least in Germany, with its inflexible labour markets and hopeless addiction to metal-bashing. Nothing has been more embarrassing than the insistence – and Labour was still at it a couple of months ago – that Germany could be really successful only when it adopted the British model. That Britain has experienced real gains in the standard of living in the last fifteen years is undeniable; and no one regrets that. It’s what underlies those gains that is alarming: very largely, now as in the late 1980s, the inflation of asset prices, usually housing, and the huge expansion of credit dependent on those inflated prices. One might have thought that Brown, being a prudent man, would have preferred the German model, where the inflation of house prices is regarded as a bad thing, to the British one, where it is regarded as good – and not just good, but absolutely necessary.
The evidence is there for everyone to see, yet the rackety structure is kept in place. Now it turns out that the value of service exports has never equalled the value of manufacturing exports and that we weren’t in any case all that good at services – which is one reason so many of the City’s financial institutions are now foreign-owned. The other reason is that we have had to sell them to cover the country’s immense current-account deficit, which is of a size that would once have brought a government down. One typical New Labour wheeze that bears all the hallmarks of the ‘professional’ politician was Brown’s decision to let the Bank of England determine interest rates via its Monetary Policy Committee, and his stipulation that its primary purpose must be to keep inflation at low levels.
The reasons for doing this were, first, the belief that inflation was the principal blight on the economy and that controlling it would guarantee perpetual trouble-free growth; and, second, that trouble-free growth could best be achieved by handing over the setting of interest rates to an ‘objective’ authority like the Bank – and if it wasn’t achieved the Bank would get the blame. Surely someone must have known that this was unlikely to ‘work’ except in the most benign circumstances. Historically, inflation is only one of the blights on the British economy and often not the worst. The Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank is now faced both with moderate inflation, almost all imported and barely susceptible to internal correction (though higher interest rates are nonetheless demanded), and declining economic growth, a decline that higher interest rates would accelerate. How in these circumstances can it possibly guarantee inflation-free growth? Of course it can’t, and the government predictably has got the blame.
Then there are the party-political wheezes: inviting Thatcher to tea, for example, an occasion presumably intended by the prime minister’s staff to finish off the Conservative Party, but so sickeningly transparent it marked the beginning of Brown’s disasters. Since New Labour’s view of the electorate is as contemptuous as that of the popular press, the casual instrumentalism of its policies has induced real moral decay in the government. The shocking increase in the prison population and the treatment of asylum seekers or ‘illegal’ immigrants – not to speak of Iraq – are among the most shameful policies in the history of the Labour Party, but probably few of those responsible now lose much sleep over such matters.
At the same time, ministers are trapped inside a vocabulary from which anything that smacks of Old Labour, or rather the stereotype of Old Labour – fairer taxes, for instance – has been excluded because it would send out the ‘wrong signals’: particularly to that artefact of modern politics, the ‘aspirational classes’. These were the grounds on which the possibility of increasing taxes on those earning more than £100,000 a year was recently ‘dismissed’. Who the aspirational classes are, and why the signal would be wrong, wasn’t disclosed.
These rhetorical constraints have undermined the government’s actual achievements, especially in education and the NHS. New Labour gets scarcely any credit for the great improvements in the NHS because Blair spent all his time saying that yet more reforms were necessary in order to provide ‘choice’, presumably for the aspirational classes. Recently, Brown asked rhetorically whether the Tories would continue with the present programme of school building and improvement: a big programme and long overdue, but I doubt the electorate knows that. All they know about is ‘failing schools’ because failing schools is all ministers ever talk about.
This, however, is not the whole story of New Labour. Were it all merely about privatisation, the aspirational classes and crime it would be much easier: James Purnell could continue to privatise everything and Jack Straw to build dozens of gigantic prisons. That at least has coherence. But the Labour Party has a history and an institutional memory, even to those who seem most oblivious of it. The fact is that Labour’s social-democratic past won’t go away, and this has produced major tensions within the party which, while they give cause for hope, have also made things more complicated. Thus Brown, who has so far been a dud prime minister and in many ways was a dud chancellor, is also the man who has done more than anyone to save Labour’s reputation. He spent money and wanted to spend it. Britain is a better country than it was in 1997 and that is largely thanks to him. Furthermore, he is probably the only minister who has put the Tories on the defensive. Few Tory front-benchers now publicly defend the non-spending of the 1980s.
The tension manifests itself in other ways. There has always been a tug-of-war between Labour’s secular and religious traditions. Labour, we have been told, ‘doesn’t do God’. Historically, however, it has often done God – and was certainly doing God when Blair was prime minister. Faith schools, legislation against the promotion of religious hatred, the encouragement of religious charities and associations, the well-advertised religious beliefs of many ministers, were all very much in evidence. At the same time the party’s secular tradition continually reasserts itself – particularly when the whips are removed. The House of Commons, by surprisingly large majorities, approved very liberal boundaries for stem-cell research. One of the few occasions (so far as we know) when the cabinet overruled Blair was over proposals to exempt Catholic adoption agencies from new anti-discriminatory rules. Faith schools were always much more popular with ministers than with the party at large – and are now not even very popular with ministers.
Tension between the religious and the secular has been further complicated by a redefinition within the party of moral worth and the moral sphere. Apart from those who earn more than £100,000 a year, the gay community, for example, has probably done as well under New Labour as anyone else. Thatcherism didn’t entirely exclude the gay community from the moral sphere but certainly didn’t embrace it (see Section 28). Under Labour, however, gays – to the extent that there is a collective gay will – have gained most of what they wanted politically. That is long overdue; but it has been accompanied by the moral exclusion of those who were once thought part of Labour’s natural constituency – the social underdogs. Young working-class males are more likely to go to jail under Labour; they are more likely to be excluded from school; their parents are more likely to be judged incompetent; their style of life is more likely to be thought socially dysfunctional; and the government prefers to decant them from the sphere of moral worth rather than admit that deprivation plays an important part in any of it.
This is a result of deep unease in the Labour Party about what constitutes modern democracy. In its social manners Britain has rapidly become a very democratic society. Old forms of respect and the deference due to traditional hierarchies have not altogether disappeared, but they have been profoundly weakened. In the daily exchanges of life Britain is now very like North America or Australia: ubiquity of the Christian name, casualness of dress, universal ignorance of social forms once thought essential; opposition leaders who wander around in shorts and T-shirts and pretend they never went to Eton. Tony Blair is the political personification of a democracy of manner – it was part of his popularity. Differing lifestyles have become not social threats but part of the acceptable plurality of democratic life. Democracy of everyday life is certainly not incompatible with social democracy – social democratic parties have traditionally been sympathetic to it – but under Labour the two are in danger of becoming alternatives. Britain is now a very much more unequal and less socially mobile society than it was thirty years ago, and while Labour isn’t responsible for that it has done little to correct it.
Much of this is also true of the New Conservatives. As the election approaches we might expect them to show their real colours. But so far they haven’t. They will obviously be under pressure to do Thatcherite things: the economy, we will be told by the popular and financial press, is a ruin and public spending must be cut and cut. At the moment, however, Cameron is clearly doubtful about the wisdom of these particular fairy stories. The Tories have been put on the back foot over public spending and have discernibly edged away from Thatcher and her traditions. It is possible that in two years it will be tax cuts all round; but that will require some shifting of ground.
The Tories would love to escape any blame for Iraq, and William Hague does seem to have learned some lessons. Iain Duncan Smith has emerged as an unexpected champion of social solidarity: a major advance in that wing of the Conservative Party. And for whatever reason, whether principle or political expediency, the Tories have recently shown a more tender regard for civil liberties than Labour. They now appear sceptical of the test-ridden, league-table-ridden regime which is slowly wrecking the schools, and might even relax it. Cameron has recognised that he too must adjust to the demands of the democratic lifestyle. On the other hand, the Tories are in favour of ‘choice’ in health and education, locking people up, silly, even dangerous, policies towards the EU, punitive policies towards immigrants and asylum seekers, welfare ‘reform’ on the American model. And Cameron wishes to transform the economy as Thatcher did – and he doesn’t mean that ironically.
In fact, the Conservatives are subject to the same tensions as Labour, the same conflict between ends and means. George Osborne recognises that 11 years of New Labour have not procured social justice, but like New Labour he wishes to mobilise the free market to repair the deficiency. Like James Purnell, he wants to place large chunks of social policy into the hands of the charitable and voluntary sector – a version of the Private Finance Initiative. However, the free market can do many things but guaranteeing fairness is not one of them. Equally, the voluntary sector can do many things but it can’t provide serious solutions to national welfare problems.
What happens to the privatised welfare services is well known (though not to the modern politician); as with the PFI, the private sector does the easy bits and the public sector picks up the pieces. Like Labour, the Conservatives want to provide ‘choice’ and ‘competition’ within the educational system, but want it to be socially inclusive too. Unfortunately, you can’t have both; and it is social inclusion that will disappear. The Tories are aware that there is a problem which the 1980s in some ways made worse, yet, like Labour, they wish to solve it with confused and often self-defeating policies. And, like Labour, the Tories are increasingly unsure how far the ethnic communities can be contained within the remit of lifestyle democracy, how viable multiculturalism now is.
The voter is thus faced with difficulties the British party structure is very ill-equipped to resolve. That structure has a fundamental fault: the different parties no longer stand for differing opinions. It is possible to imagine another, more representative structure. There would be a party of the moderate left, undoubtedly led by Vince Cable, which would include some Labour backbenchers (but no member of the present government), some Lib Dems (but probably not their leader), and perhaps Tories like Kenneth Clarke and Ed Vaizey. There would be a centreish party which would include Brown, some members of the cabinet, most Lib Dems, a large part of the Parliamentary Labour Party, probably William Hague, Theresa May, Alan Duncan and a few other Tories; Cameron and Osborne might be honorary or temporary members. The party of the right would include everyone else (including many members of the government). This would offer a more accurate representation of opinion than will be presented to the voter at the next election. The only problem is that there is no system at the moment by which the voter can choose between these ‘parties’. And, given that most politicians are told what the voter wants by people who are poor judges of that, there is no certainty that being able to have such a choice would make any difference.
In these circumstances it may not matter much what party anyone votes for; though it could certainly matter which individual you vote for. But the election is probably two years away: time enough for Labour to make voting for them a rational option. At present Labour is not doing that. Brown and his colleagues are so conditioned to a particular political response – choice, voluntary sector, the market, competition etc – that they are more or less sleepwalking. What, they would do well to ask, is most likely to put the Conservatives on the defensive? In other words, what is most likely to make the electorate frightened of a Tory victory? More privatisation, more prisons, ‘tough’ welfare, the world’s most guarded borders, the free market, more adventures abroad with the Americans: none of these will frighten the Conservatives – but they might frighten the electorate.
Labour has so narrowed its chances that it has only one shot left: increased public spending on social infrastructure. And that means reminding the electorate exactly what the 1980s were like – however much that goes against the grain. The Conservatives know that the electorate is sceptical of their change of heart; and Conservative spending policies at present bear little detailed scrutiny. Labour’s record is itself very mixed – a quick glance at the railways confirms that – but popular memory of the falling down hospitals and decaying schools of the 1980s is now all it has got. Yet Brown says little and even that is mostly a mumble – when he should be saying much, loudly. But no doubt if he did that, someone would tell him he was sending out the wrong signals.
There is one more possibility: reform of the voting system. Labour’s failure to do this over the last 11 years has been unforgivable. Done now it would have only one obvious justification: saving Labour’s electoral bacon. But so what? Labour has done so many cynical things in the last decade that its reputation for cynicism could hardly get worse. This wouldn’t be the most cynical – and there is still time to do it. Merely to suggest it, however, makes one realise that it won’t happen.
Ross McKibbin is a fellow of St John’s College, Oxford, and the author of Classes and Cultures: England 1918-51. His edition of Marie Stopes’s Married Love is published by Oxford.
mercoledì 3 settembre 2008
segnalazione giovedì 18 settembre
giovedì 18 settembre 2008 - ore 18.30
Incontro pubblico presso
Associazione Culturale Punto Rosso
Via Guglielmo Pepe (angolo Via Carmagnola – MM2 Garibaldi)
Con la presentazione del libro di Antonio Benci e Maurizio Lampronti
Spoon River 1968. Antologia corale di voci dai giornali di base
Massari Editore, Bolsena (VT), 2008
Saranno presenti gli autori.
Moderatore Attilio Mangano
Interverranno Luigi Vinci, Emilio Molinari e altri protagonisti della stagione
dei
movimenti
A due generazioni di distanza, il '68 è ancora un tema di cui si dibatte
soprattutto su media e giornali, continuando a sollevare polemiche,
incomprensioni, tensioni. Tuttavia più che sui fatti si preferisce indugiare su
aspetti che non hanno un legame diretto con gli avvenimenti di quest'anno
che racchiude in realtà una stagione. Con un'espressione sintetica si
potrebbe dire che da quarant'anni si parla (e straparla) più del sessantottismo
che non del Sessantotto.
Uno studio rigoroso e serio dovrebbe perciò partire dalle "fonti". In questo
senso va il libro di cui si parlerà questa sera che riporta "a galla" una serie
di
voci dimenticate per l'appunto. Si tratta di giornali di base, opuscoli e
soprattutto numeri unici in attesa di autorizzazione. Sono voci quasi tutte del
1968 che offrono uno squarcio d'insieme sull'informazione militante, sulle
nuove forme di confronto politico, sui nuclei studenteschi ed operai in
formazione, sugli sforzi di collegamento tra le lotte operaie. Un'intera o quasi
generazione in quegli anni si è avvicinata alla "scrittura" tramite ciclostili,
opuscoli, fogli d'agitazione, volantini. Questo per dimostrare la propria
presenza e "volontà d'agire".
Dei percorsi di questi attivisti e militanti, della funzione di palestra
professionale esercitata da parte di questa stampa minore, degli scambi tra
società civile e "media" alternativi, si parlerà con gli autori del libro Spoon
River 1968 e con Attilio Mangano, il principale studioso italiano delle riviste
della nuova sinistra degli anni '60 e `70.
Incontro pubblico presso
Associazione Culturale Punto Rosso
Via Guglielmo Pepe (angolo Via Carmagnola – MM2 Garibaldi)
Con la presentazione del libro di Antonio Benci e Maurizio Lampronti
Spoon River 1968. Antologia corale di voci dai giornali di base
Massari Editore, Bolsena (VT), 2008
Saranno presenti gli autori.
Moderatore Attilio Mangano
Interverranno Luigi Vinci, Emilio Molinari e altri protagonisti della stagione
dei
movimenti
A due generazioni di distanza, il '68 è ancora un tema di cui si dibatte
soprattutto su media e giornali, continuando a sollevare polemiche,
incomprensioni, tensioni. Tuttavia più che sui fatti si preferisce indugiare su
aspetti che non hanno un legame diretto con gli avvenimenti di quest'anno
che racchiude in realtà una stagione. Con un'espressione sintetica si
potrebbe dire che da quarant'anni si parla (e straparla) più del sessantottismo
che non del Sessantotto.
Uno studio rigoroso e serio dovrebbe perciò partire dalle "fonti". In questo
senso va il libro di cui si parlerà questa sera che riporta "a galla" una serie
di
voci dimenticate per l'appunto. Si tratta di giornali di base, opuscoli e
soprattutto numeri unici in attesa di autorizzazione. Sono voci quasi tutte del
1968 che offrono uno squarcio d'insieme sull'informazione militante, sulle
nuove forme di confronto politico, sui nuclei studenteschi ed operai in
formazione, sugli sforzi di collegamento tra le lotte operaie. Un'intera o quasi
generazione in quegli anni si è avvicinata alla "scrittura" tramite ciclostili,
opuscoli, fogli d'agitazione, volantini. Questo per dimostrare la propria
presenza e "volontà d'agire".
Dei percorsi di questi attivisti e militanti, della funzione di palestra
professionale esercitata da parte di questa stampa minore, degli scambi tra
società civile e "media" alternativi, si parlerà con gli autori del libro Spoon
River 1968 e con Attilio Mangano, il principale studioso italiano delle riviste
della nuova sinistra degli anni '60 e `70.
compagno
compagno vuol dire mangiare insieme lo stesso pane perché ci si vuole bene
Luisito Bianchi, La messa dell'uomo disarmato
Luisito Bianchi, La messa dell'uomo disarmato
martedì 2 settembre 2008
istruzione pubblica
dal sito di sd
Uccidere l’istruzione pubblica
di Chiara Acciarini*
Si saturino pure le pagine dei giornali con le discussioni sul grembiule e sul voto di condotta. Si discetti ovunque sull’opportunità di reintrodurre i voti al posto dei giudizi nella scuola elementare e media. Si discuta diligentemente della “novità” costituita dall’ora settimanale dedicata alla materia “Cittadinanza e costituzione”(con particolare riferimento all’educazione stradale). Il governo non può che rallegrarsene.
Uccidere l’istruzione pubblica
di Chiara Acciarini*
Si saturino pure le pagine dei giornali con le discussioni sul grembiule e sul voto di condotta. Si discetti ovunque sull’opportunità di reintrodurre i voti al posto dei giudizi nella scuola elementare e media. Si discuta diligentemente della “novità” costituita dall’ora settimanale dedicata alla materia “Cittadinanza e costituzione”(con particolare riferimento all’educazione stradale). Il governo non può che rallegrarsene.
lunedì 1 settembre 2008
samir amin e le nuove plutocrazie
Marianne2.fr le site de l'hebdomadaire Marianne
Oggi 1 settembre 2008, 18.41.54
La nouvelle ploutocratie née de la mondialisation
Oggi 1 settembre 2008, 4 ore fa Samir Amin
Par Samir Amin. Le capitalisme d’aujourd’hui n’est plus celui que nous connaissions il y a une trentaine d’années. Nous sommes parvenus à un stade de centralisation du capital sans commune mesure avec celui qui a caractérisé le capitalisme historique durant les cinq siècles de son déploiement.
Certes les monopoles ont toujours existé, dès l'origine à l'époque mercantiliste (les Compagnies à Charte), au XIXe siècle dominé par l'industrialisation disséminée (dans les finances – les «200 familles» en France), à partir de la fin de ce siècle avec l'émergence des «monopoles» (Hobson, Hilferding, Lénine). Mais quel qu'ait été l'importance décisive de leur intervention dans le champ économique pour l'évolution globale du système – et elle l'a toujours été – le capitalisme dans son ensemble, organisé dans la forme de millions de moyennes entreprises industrielles et commerciales et de paysans – agriculteurs riches, était régulé par une multitude de marchés (qui sans être «purs et parfaits» n'en étaient pas moins des marchés concurrentiels réels) qui échappaient largement aux interventions des monopoles, lesquels opéraient dans des domaines réservés (le grand commerce mercantiliste, le financement de l'Etat, le commerce international des produits de base, les prêts internationaux, plus tardivement quelques grandes branches de la production industrielle de masse et du nouveau grand commerce, la banque et les assurances). Ces domaine réservés étaient largement nationaux, en dépit de leurs prolongements hors des frontières. Cette situation donnait aux politiques d'Etat une efficacité réelle dans la gestion de l'ensemble économique.
Une poignée de groupes pour dominer le système Le capitalisme aujourd'hui est tout autre chose. Une poignée d'oligopoles occupent seuls toutes les hauteurs dominantes de la gestion économique nationale et mondiale. Il ne s'agit pas d'oligopoles strictement financiers mais de «groupes» au sein desquels les activités de production de l'industrie, de l'agro-business, du commerce, des services et évidemment les activités financières (dominantes au sens que le système est dans son ensemble «financiarisé», c'est à dire dominé par les logiques financières) sont étroitement associées. Il s'agit d'une «poignée» de groupes : une trentaine gigantesques, un millier d'autres, guère plus. Dans ce sens on peut parler de «ploutocratie», même si ce terme peut inquiéter ceux qui se souviennent de son usage abusif par les démagogues du fascisme. Cette ploutocratie de groupes domine la mondialisation en place, qu'elle a d'ailleurs elle même véritablement façonnée (pour ne pas dire «fabriquée») en fonction de ses seuls stricts intérêts. Elle a substitué à l'ancienne «division internationale (inégale) du travail», fondée sur les prétendus «avantages comparatifs» (objet des réflexions théoriques à la Ricardo) – en fait, dans mon analyse, produite par le contraste centres/périphéries – une «géographie économique», c'est à dire une intégration des «territoires» dans leur stratégies propres (pour reprendre l'expression convaincante de Charles Michalet). Cette géographie, qui est le produit de ces stratégies des groupes en question et non une «donnée» extérieure à celle-ci, façonne à son tour ce qui apparaît comme «commerce international» mais devient en réalité et dans des proportions grandissantes des transferts internes aux groupes considérés. Les délocalisations, dans leurs formes diverses analysées à la perfection par C. A. Michalet (La mondialisation, la grande rupture, La Découverte 2007), constituent le moyen de ce façonnement du monde.
Cette même ploutocratie commande seule les marchés financiers mondialisés, détermine le taux de l'intérêt qui lui permet d'opérer à son profit un prélèvement massif sur la plus value produite par le travail social, comme – largement – les taux de change qui lui conviennent (référence à F. Morin dont se sont inspirés les développement précédents). Les entreprises «moyennes» contraintes de s'ajuster Dans ce cadre, les millions d'entreprises privées dites «moyennes» (et même beaucoup de «grandes») et d'agriculteurs capitalistes ne bénéficient plus d'autonomie réelle dans leurs décisions. Ils sont simplement contraints de s'ajuster en permanence aux stratégies déployées par la ploutocratie. Cette situation est nouvelle, qualitativement différente de celle qui a caractérisé le capitalisme historique dans les phases antérieures de son développement. Le marché invoqué par les économistes conventionnels, n'existe plus. Il est une farce véritable. Cette analyse n'est pas seulement la mienne, elle est largement partagée par tous les analystes critiques qui refusent de s'aligner sur le discours de l'économie conventionnelle, dominante. La question qui à mon avis mérite d'être placée au centre de notre discussion est de savoir si cette transformation est «définitive» ou au contraire «non viable». La réponse à cette question nous départage certainement.
Certains – beaucoup ? – considèrent que la transformation est définitive, même si elle ne «plaît pas». On ne peut alors que s'y ajuster, au mieux en infléchir le mouvement pour donner leur place à quelques considérations sociales, mais guère plus. Il faut accepter la dominance des stratégies des groupes concernés, le dépérissement des États. C'est l'option – en gros – des sociaux démocrates devenus sociaux libéraux. Quelques uns même y voient une transformation «positive» qui, par elle même, prépare un avenir meilleur. Qu'on dise alors que le capitalisme constitue un horizon indépassable (conception qui sous tend l'option sociale libérale) ou qu'il se dépassera par son propre mouvement (on reconnaîtra ici Negri) revient au même : il n'y a pas lieu d'agir contre la transformation en question. Adieu socialisme, une utopie du XIXe siècle dépassée. Adieu marxisme. Mon analyse se sépare de celles-ci. La transformation en cours témoigne du caractère obsolète («sénile») auquel le capitalisme est parvenu. Non pas seulement parce qu'il est devenu l'ennemi de l'humanité entière (et doit donc être dépassé par l'action politique consciente, si l'on veut éviter le pire), mais aussi parce que cette transformation n'est pas viable. Elle ne l'est pas, dans ce sens particulier que les régulations imposées par la ploutocratie des groupes ne réduisent pas le «risque» d'effondrement financier, mais au contraire l'aggravent. Elle ne l'est pas dans le sens plus général et politique que cette régulation est insupportable, socialement pour les classes travailleuses de toutes les régions du monde, politiquement pour les peuples, nations et États de la périphérie (en particulier des pays dits «émergents»). Le retour de l'Etat et l'affirmation de son rôle ne doivent pas être exclus.
Le capitalisme, ennemi de la démocratie Le paradoxe majeur, pour moi, est que des opinions qui se pensent sincèrement démocratiques ne voient pas la contradiction flagrante entre la gestion du monde par la ploutocratie en place et les principes fondamentaux de la démocratie. En fait le nouveau capitalisme ploutocratique des oligopoles financiarisés est l'ennemi de la démocratie, fut-elle bourgeoise, qu'elle vide de tout contenu. Cette déconstruction de la démocratie bourgeoise, en cours, est poursuivie d'une manière tout à fait systématique par la classe politique dirigeante. En particulier en Europe dont le «projet» a été pensé à cette fin par ses fondateurs, Monnet en premier. Le discours sur «l'individu devenu sujet de l'histoire» n'est là que pour jeter de la poudre aux yeux et légitimer la pratique anti démocratique. Par ailleurs il devrait paraître évident que les structures gérées par les groupes appropriés par la ploutocratie constituent des «biens collectifs», c'est à dire qu'ils devraient être «la propriété de la nation», gérés par elle. En lieu et place nos démocrates se rallient à leur gestion privée. Respect de la sacro sainte propriété ? Illusion que la gestion de ces structures pourrait être assumée par le collectif des petits actionnaires ? Conviction de l'efficacité supérieure de la gestion privée et du destin fatalement bureaucratique de celle de l'Etat ? La réalité devrait ouvrir les yeux de ces démocrates naïfs. L'éloge des grands innovateurs (Rockfeller hier, Bill Gates aujourd'hui) peut-il faire oublier que la majorité des ploutocrates sont des héritiers, dont on voit mal pour quelles raisons ils devraient disposer de pouvoirs aussi puissants, qu'il existe une «bureaucratie privée» qui n'est pas nécessairement moins sclérosée que celle de l'Etat, que l'Etat a eu également ses grands innovateurs (Colbert hier, les ingénieurs qui ont placé la SNCF publique à l'avant garde des chemins de fer dans le monde entier).
Les démocrates devraient donc finir par comprendre que le degré de centralisation du capital des temps contemporains appelle sa socialisation. Que les formules de celles-ci, associant les travailleurs à la collectivité nationale dans cette gestion, restent à inventer, soit. Que cette socialisation «hors marché» (par la démocratie) n'exclut pas (pour encore longtemps) l'initiative et la propriété pour des millions de petits et moyennes entreprises soit encore. Au demeurant la socialisation des hauteurs dominantes créerait les conditions d'un marché véritable pour ces PME en question. De surcroît les formules de leur gestion devraient être imaginées diverses : la propriété privée, mais aussi les coopératives de travailleurs ( Lip en France en avait démontré l'efficacité, et son «échec» a été l'assassinat voulu et planifié par l'Etat de ce modèle «dangereux»), amorçant ainsi l'émergence d'éléments de socialisation au delà du marché. L'obstacle à cet avenir possible et nécessaire est tout entier situé dans la culture politique dominante, en voie d'américanisation en Europe. Les analyses critiques de cette dérive de l'idéologie et de la politique ne manquent pas, qui ont placé l'accent sur les facettes nombreuses de cette dégradation, laquelle, à son tour, prépare un «autre monde», plus mauvais encore que celui que nous connaissons. Negri ignore ces analyses. Son «optimisme» de commande pour justifier l'inaction l'exige.
Parce que dans la multiplicité des conflits que la poursuite de la dictature du capital financier en place ceux qui opposent les peuples et les États du Sud à la logique de la gestion ploutocratique mondialisée sont appelées s'aggraver à une allure rapide – dans le futur visible – sans doute plus que celles qui opposent les peuples des centres de la triade impérialiste à leurs gouvernants, j'imagine que les ruptures premières s'amorceront à partir du Sud. Dans des formes diverses, comme on le voit déjà percer en Amérique latine d'une part, en Asie de l'Est d'autre part. Cette dernière observation n'est pas celle d'un «tiers mondiste», mais d'un internationaliste qui appelle à la solidarité de tous les travailleurs de la Planète. Plus celle-ci pourra aller de l'avant, meilleures seront les chances offertes à des avancées révolutionnaires dans le Sud et dans le Nord. Lire les articles précédents de cette suite intitulée «Économie de marché ou capitalisme des oligopoles ?»
Oggi 1 settembre 2008, 18.41.54
La nouvelle ploutocratie née de la mondialisation
Oggi 1 settembre 2008, 4 ore fa Samir Amin
Par Samir Amin. Le capitalisme d’aujourd’hui n’est plus celui que nous connaissions il y a une trentaine d’années. Nous sommes parvenus à un stade de centralisation du capital sans commune mesure avec celui qui a caractérisé le capitalisme historique durant les cinq siècles de son déploiement.
Certes les monopoles ont toujours existé, dès l'origine à l'époque mercantiliste (les Compagnies à Charte), au XIXe siècle dominé par l'industrialisation disséminée (dans les finances – les «200 familles» en France), à partir de la fin de ce siècle avec l'émergence des «monopoles» (Hobson, Hilferding, Lénine). Mais quel qu'ait été l'importance décisive de leur intervention dans le champ économique pour l'évolution globale du système – et elle l'a toujours été – le capitalisme dans son ensemble, organisé dans la forme de millions de moyennes entreprises industrielles et commerciales et de paysans – agriculteurs riches, était régulé par une multitude de marchés (qui sans être «purs et parfaits» n'en étaient pas moins des marchés concurrentiels réels) qui échappaient largement aux interventions des monopoles, lesquels opéraient dans des domaines réservés (le grand commerce mercantiliste, le financement de l'Etat, le commerce international des produits de base, les prêts internationaux, plus tardivement quelques grandes branches de la production industrielle de masse et du nouveau grand commerce, la banque et les assurances). Ces domaine réservés étaient largement nationaux, en dépit de leurs prolongements hors des frontières. Cette situation donnait aux politiques d'Etat une efficacité réelle dans la gestion de l'ensemble économique.
Une poignée de groupes pour dominer le système Le capitalisme aujourd'hui est tout autre chose. Une poignée d'oligopoles occupent seuls toutes les hauteurs dominantes de la gestion économique nationale et mondiale. Il ne s'agit pas d'oligopoles strictement financiers mais de «groupes» au sein desquels les activités de production de l'industrie, de l'agro-business, du commerce, des services et évidemment les activités financières (dominantes au sens que le système est dans son ensemble «financiarisé», c'est à dire dominé par les logiques financières) sont étroitement associées. Il s'agit d'une «poignée» de groupes : une trentaine gigantesques, un millier d'autres, guère plus. Dans ce sens on peut parler de «ploutocratie», même si ce terme peut inquiéter ceux qui se souviennent de son usage abusif par les démagogues du fascisme. Cette ploutocratie de groupes domine la mondialisation en place, qu'elle a d'ailleurs elle même véritablement façonnée (pour ne pas dire «fabriquée») en fonction de ses seuls stricts intérêts. Elle a substitué à l'ancienne «division internationale (inégale) du travail», fondée sur les prétendus «avantages comparatifs» (objet des réflexions théoriques à la Ricardo) – en fait, dans mon analyse, produite par le contraste centres/périphéries – une «géographie économique», c'est à dire une intégration des «territoires» dans leur stratégies propres (pour reprendre l'expression convaincante de Charles Michalet). Cette géographie, qui est le produit de ces stratégies des groupes en question et non une «donnée» extérieure à celle-ci, façonne à son tour ce qui apparaît comme «commerce international» mais devient en réalité et dans des proportions grandissantes des transferts internes aux groupes considérés. Les délocalisations, dans leurs formes diverses analysées à la perfection par C. A. Michalet (La mondialisation, la grande rupture, La Découverte 2007), constituent le moyen de ce façonnement du monde.
Cette même ploutocratie commande seule les marchés financiers mondialisés, détermine le taux de l'intérêt qui lui permet d'opérer à son profit un prélèvement massif sur la plus value produite par le travail social, comme – largement – les taux de change qui lui conviennent (référence à F. Morin dont se sont inspirés les développement précédents). Les entreprises «moyennes» contraintes de s'ajuster Dans ce cadre, les millions d'entreprises privées dites «moyennes» (et même beaucoup de «grandes») et d'agriculteurs capitalistes ne bénéficient plus d'autonomie réelle dans leurs décisions. Ils sont simplement contraints de s'ajuster en permanence aux stratégies déployées par la ploutocratie. Cette situation est nouvelle, qualitativement différente de celle qui a caractérisé le capitalisme historique dans les phases antérieures de son développement. Le marché invoqué par les économistes conventionnels, n'existe plus. Il est une farce véritable. Cette analyse n'est pas seulement la mienne, elle est largement partagée par tous les analystes critiques qui refusent de s'aligner sur le discours de l'économie conventionnelle, dominante. La question qui à mon avis mérite d'être placée au centre de notre discussion est de savoir si cette transformation est «définitive» ou au contraire «non viable». La réponse à cette question nous départage certainement.
Certains – beaucoup ? – considèrent que la transformation est définitive, même si elle ne «plaît pas». On ne peut alors que s'y ajuster, au mieux en infléchir le mouvement pour donner leur place à quelques considérations sociales, mais guère plus. Il faut accepter la dominance des stratégies des groupes concernés, le dépérissement des États. C'est l'option – en gros – des sociaux démocrates devenus sociaux libéraux. Quelques uns même y voient une transformation «positive» qui, par elle même, prépare un avenir meilleur. Qu'on dise alors que le capitalisme constitue un horizon indépassable (conception qui sous tend l'option sociale libérale) ou qu'il se dépassera par son propre mouvement (on reconnaîtra ici Negri) revient au même : il n'y a pas lieu d'agir contre la transformation en question. Adieu socialisme, une utopie du XIXe siècle dépassée. Adieu marxisme. Mon analyse se sépare de celles-ci. La transformation en cours témoigne du caractère obsolète («sénile») auquel le capitalisme est parvenu. Non pas seulement parce qu'il est devenu l'ennemi de l'humanité entière (et doit donc être dépassé par l'action politique consciente, si l'on veut éviter le pire), mais aussi parce que cette transformation n'est pas viable. Elle ne l'est pas, dans ce sens particulier que les régulations imposées par la ploutocratie des groupes ne réduisent pas le «risque» d'effondrement financier, mais au contraire l'aggravent. Elle ne l'est pas dans le sens plus général et politique que cette régulation est insupportable, socialement pour les classes travailleuses de toutes les régions du monde, politiquement pour les peuples, nations et États de la périphérie (en particulier des pays dits «émergents»). Le retour de l'Etat et l'affirmation de son rôle ne doivent pas être exclus.
Le capitalisme, ennemi de la démocratie Le paradoxe majeur, pour moi, est que des opinions qui se pensent sincèrement démocratiques ne voient pas la contradiction flagrante entre la gestion du monde par la ploutocratie en place et les principes fondamentaux de la démocratie. En fait le nouveau capitalisme ploutocratique des oligopoles financiarisés est l'ennemi de la démocratie, fut-elle bourgeoise, qu'elle vide de tout contenu. Cette déconstruction de la démocratie bourgeoise, en cours, est poursuivie d'une manière tout à fait systématique par la classe politique dirigeante. En particulier en Europe dont le «projet» a été pensé à cette fin par ses fondateurs, Monnet en premier. Le discours sur «l'individu devenu sujet de l'histoire» n'est là que pour jeter de la poudre aux yeux et légitimer la pratique anti démocratique. Par ailleurs il devrait paraître évident que les structures gérées par les groupes appropriés par la ploutocratie constituent des «biens collectifs», c'est à dire qu'ils devraient être «la propriété de la nation», gérés par elle. En lieu et place nos démocrates se rallient à leur gestion privée. Respect de la sacro sainte propriété ? Illusion que la gestion de ces structures pourrait être assumée par le collectif des petits actionnaires ? Conviction de l'efficacité supérieure de la gestion privée et du destin fatalement bureaucratique de celle de l'Etat ? La réalité devrait ouvrir les yeux de ces démocrates naïfs. L'éloge des grands innovateurs (Rockfeller hier, Bill Gates aujourd'hui) peut-il faire oublier que la majorité des ploutocrates sont des héritiers, dont on voit mal pour quelles raisons ils devraient disposer de pouvoirs aussi puissants, qu'il existe une «bureaucratie privée» qui n'est pas nécessairement moins sclérosée que celle de l'Etat, que l'Etat a eu également ses grands innovateurs (Colbert hier, les ingénieurs qui ont placé la SNCF publique à l'avant garde des chemins de fer dans le monde entier).
Les démocrates devraient donc finir par comprendre que le degré de centralisation du capital des temps contemporains appelle sa socialisation. Que les formules de celles-ci, associant les travailleurs à la collectivité nationale dans cette gestion, restent à inventer, soit. Que cette socialisation «hors marché» (par la démocratie) n'exclut pas (pour encore longtemps) l'initiative et la propriété pour des millions de petits et moyennes entreprises soit encore. Au demeurant la socialisation des hauteurs dominantes créerait les conditions d'un marché véritable pour ces PME en question. De surcroît les formules de leur gestion devraient être imaginées diverses : la propriété privée, mais aussi les coopératives de travailleurs ( Lip en France en avait démontré l'efficacité, et son «échec» a été l'assassinat voulu et planifié par l'Etat de ce modèle «dangereux»), amorçant ainsi l'émergence d'éléments de socialisation au delà du marché. L'obstacle à cet avenir possible et nécessaire est tout entier situé dans la culture politique dominante, en voie d'américanisation en Europe. Les analyses critiques de cette dérive de l'idéologie et de la politique ne manquent pas, qui ont placé l'accent sur les facettes nombreuses de cette dégradation, laquelle, à son tour, prépare un «autre monde», plus mauvais encore que celui que nous connaissons. Negri ignore ces analyses. Son «optimisme» de commande pour justifier l'inaction l'exige.
Parce que dans la multiplicité des conflits que la poursuite de la dictature du capital financier en place ceux qui opposent les peuples et les États du Sud à la logique de la gestion ploutocratique mondialisée sont appelées s'aggraver à une allure rapide – dans le futur visible – sans doute plus que celles qui opposent les peuples des centres de la triade impérialiste à leurs gouvernants, j'imagine que les ruptures premières s'amorceront à partir du Sud. Dans des formes diverses, comme on le voit déjà percer en Amérique latine d'une part, en Asie de l'Est d'autre part. Cette dernière observation n'est pas celle d'un «tiers mondiste», mais d'un internationaliste qui appelle à la solidarité de tous les travailleurs de la Planète. Plus celle-ci pourra aller de l'avant, meilleures seront les chances offertes à des avancées révolutionnaires dans le Sud et dans le Nord. Lire les articles précédents de cette suite intitulée «Économie de marché ou capitalisme des oligopoles ?»
domenica 31 agosto 2008
attali: liberalizzazioni
Attali: attenti all’“ideologia delle liberalizzazioni”
Ieri 30 agosto 2008, 12.30.00 Jacques Attali
Dal Meeting di Rimini l’economista Jacques Attali interviene a tutto campo si economia internazionale, energia, multiculturalismo, riforme. E auspica una ripresa del ruolo dello Stato: c’è una “ideologia delle liberalizzazioni”, attenti al “frazionamento dei poteri”(Pubblicato il 30/08/2008)Leggi il resoconto dell'incontroAscolta la conferenza stampa di Attali e Conti
Ieri 30 agosto 2008, 12.30.00 Jacques Attali
Dal Meeting di Rimini l’economista Jacques Attali interviene a tutto campo si economia internazionale, energia, multiculturalismo, riforme. E auspica una ripresa del ruolo dello Stato: c’è una “ideologia delle liberalizzazioni”, attenti al “frazionamento dei poteri”(Pubblicato il 30/08/2008)Leggi il resoconto dell'incontroAscolta la conferenza stampa di Attali e Conti
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