Why do capitalist economies have to grow?

I’m delighted to have an essay published by Green House, the think tank founded by some of the UK’s leading thinkers on environmental politics and economics.

The essay is entitled “Why do capitalist economies need to grow?”. In it I attempt to demonstrate the factors which make the continuous pursuit of economic growth essential to capitalism.

The context for this is the disagreement among environmentalists as to whether an end to growth would necessarily also have to mean an end to capitalism. In my essay I refer to those who say that growth must be halted, but who are agnostic about whether this means capitalism must be halted with it, as the “steady staters”. The others, those who agree we need to cease growth but argue that capitalism must be abolished along with it since it depends on growth, I refer to as the “ecosocialists”.

There are perhaps three main novel features to this piece:

• I’m attempting to do what is seldom attempted: to set out a systematic demonstration of why growth is essential to capitalism. This is a question which is surprisingly underexamined. Steady staters tend to duck it; while ecosocialists tend to assert its truth rather than trying to demonstrate it logically. That’s what I’m attempting here.
• In doing so, I’m taking advantage of a new understanding of the arguments made by Rosa Luxemburg a century ago. Supplemented by newer theories of money and debt, Luxemburg’s arguments can be extended to show how capitalism intrinsically depends on the provision of credit. This in turn requires unending economic expansion in order to be repaid. Without this continual stoking in the form of credit, and without such credit leading to an unending expansion of goods and services in the real economy, the entire system would collapse.
• I conclude by flipping this analysis on its head, and using it to sketch out the factors which a no-growth economy would have to avoid. The results are striking, hinting at the epic dimensions of the radicalism in the no growth message.

Now, my overall conclusion is that the ecosocialists are right and the steady staters wrong, but I feel this needs a couple of words of explanation. Notwithstanding the couple of pokes I make at the steady staters, I’m in full agreement with their environmental analysis, and a great admirer of many of them individually, not least that godfather of steady state economics, Herman Daly. Equally, while I agree with the ecosocialists, I do have my issues with them; or at least with those who underestimate the scale of the upheaval—economically, socially, and philosophically—their conclusion would suggest.  All of which is to say: temperamentally, I’m probably with the steady staters, while intellectually I’m an ecosocialist.

For the full thing, click through to the Green House website.

Following the referendum

In which my main animus is in replying to those among the English liberal-left who put their shoulders to the wheel of the Yes campaign, just when it looked like it might succeed.

Did I say I saw the near-success of a Yes vote coming some two and a bit years ago? That I’d worried that “the general spirit of anti-politics and catch-all protest will motivate people to vote for independence as a general two-fingers vote, two fingers to Cameron, the Tories, posh English people and the City of London”?

Well, a few more thoughts on this whole business. The Scottish independence referendum has opened up the question of constitutional reform for the UK as a whole. That, and it’s laid a challenge for established politics to respond to the widespread dislike of neoliberalism, to the feeling that capitalism doesn’t work for the majority of people anymore. There’s a lot more to fight for, a lot more fighting to be done.

But first, some more reflecting.

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There was plenty reported in the end on the damage that would have been done to the Scottish economy, but the damage to the rest of the UK would have been extreme, too. It’s not just that there would have been severe economic dislocation (which would surely have halted the recovery in its tracks), and a long paralysis of the public sector, as the civil service negotiated over the terms of the divorce of the Scottish state.

It’s more the social and emotional damage it would have done. It would pretty much have spelt the end of the whole United Kingdom. We would no longer have been able to refer to such a thing as Great Britain. The Union Jack ought really to have lost the blue in it.

I was mulling over the consequences of Scottish secession in a park in Cheltenham in the summer. I was fresh from a trip up to Glasgow for the Commonwealth Games, and the evidence I had noted there of the fuck-you stridency of the Yes campaign. I took my kids along to a Punch and Judy show in this park, and I stood there staring at the Union Jack bunting which decorated it. There was something quintessentially British about the scene; not just English, but British. It was these kinds of deep cultural roots that risked being ripped up by the break up of the United Kingdom. You could have had exactly the same scene in exactly the same place after Scotland seceded but it wouldn’t have felt quite the same. It would have reminded everyone of what they’d lost. Just as watching The Great British Bake Off post a British break up would have stuck in people’s throats. These are banal things, but their very low-key, quirky, inconsequentiality is one of the essential elements of Britishness.

I’d love to try this argument out on Irvine Welsh, by the way.

But to resume on a more political level, that sense of loss would have fuelled a hideous surge of nationalism within England, and for the first time since, what, cross-border raids in the sixteenth century?, there would have been genuine anti-Scottish feeling among the English.

In Northern Ireland it would surely have at least destabilised the peace settlement. And it would have been doubly bad for Wales. First, it would have led to a strong movement to cut the subsidy going from London, as a kind of belated and impotent revenge on what would have been painted as the ingratitude of the Scots. Second, it would have left Welsh nationality feeling awkward and uncertain. There would have been a sense that the United Kingdom was just a temporary state of affairs, that the natural thing would be for the remaining three nations to go their own separate ways. And so it would have strengthened Welsh nationalism; but at the same time, there would have been much less genuine appetite for independence than in Scotland, and an independent Wales would have been a much less viable prospect. The Welsh would probably have wanted to stay united with England, and yet they wouldn’t have been able to feel so positive about it, as Scottish No voters did, in choosing to preserve their union within the historic UK.

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In the latter stages of the campaign, I did some phone canvassing for Better Together. One of the memorable things about those phone calls was the note of concern from some of the confirmed Nos. Not alarm, but concern. “What’s it looking like?” “How are the numbers holding up?”

I was concerned, too, about the social division across Scotland in the event of a Yes vote. This would have been far worse than what we’re seeing now, with this 45 stuff. A Yes vote would have meant radical changes, many of which wouldn’t even have commanded support from among those who’d voted Yes—such was the mix of contradictory and unrealisable hopes in that movement. Setting up a new state requires an immense sense of common purpose. But in this case all the people with a head on their shoulders would have been opposed to it from day one. How would it have got off the ground? The eighteen months of divorce proceedings from the UK would have been one long escalating crisis. And as the Yes coalition began to unwind, and the economy starting going south, the Nats would have been full of the language of betrayal, national saboteurs, and all that. It would have got extremely ugly.

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With a couple of weeks to go to referendum day I started thinking about the Plan B which the Westminster party leaderships needed to turn to.  I thought it needed a combination of really speaking to the mood of disenchantment and disenfranchisement, and of acknowledging the situation to be a national emergency. I thought it needed the promising of reforms throughout the UK, and some kind of new economic deal, animated by a commitment that no community should be left behind. It needed a breaking out of the politics of neoliberalism, while underlining to everyone the full implications of Scottish independence to the UK as a whole.

In the event, it didn’t need that after all. The Plan B which the party leaderships tried was more or less simply giving a shit. And that combined with the passionate eloquence of Gordon Brown, and the rational threats of big business, was enough.

Though this is to do down the No campaign at its grassroots. This seems to me to be an entirely unreported phenomenon. By the time London-based journalists had cottoned on to the Yes campaign and begun enthusing over it, it was the No campaign which was exploding on social media. It was the momentum the Yes campaign was enjoying which finally gave No voters their voice. It gave them a positive cause, something to defend, something to be proud of. Which was essentially: honouring the history of their country, protecting the current population of Scotland from economic chaos, and exemplifying the sense of solidarity in pulling together to help save their country.

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I disagreed with the Yes campaign, but I could understand where it was coming from. Even where I felt Yes supporters were being irrational in their hopes for what it would achieve and blind to the hurt it would cause, I could still see where they were coming from. The ones I didn’t understand were the English lefties and liberal-lefties who were cheering it on. People like George Monbiot and Billy Bragg; people whom I respected and admired on other matters.

A new mini-genre of political column-filling sprang up suddenly a few weeks ago. Its theme was kicking Britain while it was down. With the most astonishing lack of self-awareness such would-be assassins of the British state painted a picture of Britain-the United Kingdom-England-the City of London-and the Bullingdon Club (the lot were interchangeable and synonymous with each other) as Gog and Magog, irredeemably corrupt, uniquely wicked, deserving only of contempt. Why would Scotland (which was entirely separate from such wickedness, and merely suffering on the point of England’s sword) want to stay in such a hellhole?

The more charitable versions of this genre had it that losing Scotland would exert such a blow to the British establishment that its grip on power would be loosened, and the people of England might claim the power to reform their country. In other words it would be much like the experience that might follow a serious military defeat; and one would just have to hope it would have a positive outcome once all the dust had settled.

The less charitable versions didn’t even bother with this. England/Britain was beyond salvation. The only thing to do was exult at the pain which break up of the United Kingdom would cause posh people.

In all this, these usually comfortably off radicals showed how out of touch they were with the majority of ordinary people. I had a rather spiky exchange with Billy Bragg in which he brushed aside the upset which the break up of the UK would have caused English people, even as he said he was advocating Scottish independence for the good it would work for the English. “Vote yes, and set us English free”, he wrote—free from themselves, it would seem.

I was struck over and again by the lack of political understanding, social empathy, common sense of so many on the left about the likely practical consequences of a Yes vote.  I was surprised by the reading of the situation given by another English left-winger whom I respect and admire.  He was agnostic about Scottish independence, he said.  Build a good society here or there, he said, that was the important thing, whether Scotland leaves or not.  I said I couldn’t see anybody would be building a good society here or there after a Yes vote; economic chaos and inflamed nationalism aren’t really the best conditions for any other than a pretty shitty society, at least for the years it would take to settle down.  He replied that structures weren’t that important to him.  Structures?  This was the United Kingdom we were talking about.  It’s not nothing that, the United Kingdom.

Possibly my favourite of all the English pro-Yes pieces was written by Olly Huitson, for the website Our Kingdom. I shan’t go into the details of his arguments here. I’ll just pick out his contention that “Britain is a dying project”, because I’ve read that kind of line over and over these past weeks, and not just from the cheerleaders for a Yes vote.

To such talk, I want to reply: Britain is not a project. It’s a country. Have a look at a map. There’s plenty of them. It’s a country and it’s a society and it’s a home to millions of us. It’s not perfect. It’s got plenty of faults. It has its own unique variation of faults. But so does every other country. What is this sudden obsession with wanting to break up Britain as a magic solution for all its ills? If it’s good enough for Britain, it’s surely good enough for France. France has got an equally checkered imperial past. The French state was pretty beastly in Algeria. Their secret service blew up the Rainbow Warrior. It never signed up to the ban on atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, and continued to do so well after the UK had given that up. It’s got terrible youth unemployment. Black and Arab communities are subject to a load of prejudice and economic exclusion. It’s got a wretched class of political and business elites. And the National Front might just form a government before too long. Well, that’s an irresistible case right there, isn’t it? Break the country apart, abolish the Tricolour, and cease using the word France. Nothing to lose and all to gain. Eh?

A last word on the likes of Olly Huitsal, George Monbiot, and all. And where my line about the lack of self-awareness comes in. It is, of course, quintessentially British not to celebrate ourselves. That’s not the done thing. It doesn’t feel right. Hence the stuttering nature of the whole No campaign. You could really see it in the embarrassed nature of that rally in Trafalgar Square on the Monday before the referendum. It was ever so self-effacing, for an event designed to help save the nation by celebrating all that’s special about it. Though that made it all the more British.

So this is it: the cheerleaders for the abolition of Britain were taking advantage of one of its very greatest qualities, the relative weakness of British nationalism. The general reluctance to be whipped up. The way we don’t, relative to many other countries, make a secular religion of our own state. All valuable things which the dalliance first with Scottish then with English nationalism threatens to disrupt.

My very final reply to such types, who see nothing but wickedness in Britain. When Karl Marx got kicked out of Prussia, and then when he got kicked out of Brussels, where did he end up? Which country gave him a home? Which country let him get on with what he was interested in doing? Right in the centre and at the height of empire. Just as it is letting all kinds of its own people call for its abolition.

So let’s not abolish it, eh? Let’s take our time and work out a new constitutional settlement for the whole country, but do so with less talk about how one false move and that’s it, the union will be dissolved.

How to respond to the Scottish Yes movement

What the Yes campaign actually is

To understand how to deal with the Yes campaign, we must first understand what it actually is.

There are three things we need to understand:

• This is not ‘traditional’ nationalism, and there is no moral case for secession.
• The Yes campaign is a quasi-religious protest movement against neoliberal economics and mainstream politics.
• It is a modern example of a millennial popular uprising.

Not ‘traditional’ nationalism

One of the things which continues to wrong-foot Westminster-based politicians and Whitehall civil servants about the Yes campaign is the assumption that it is a reflection of ‘traditional’ nationalism, as might be recognised elsewhere—e.g. a movement founded on a deep-lying sense that ethnic, cultural, and linguistic differences provide a moral case for secession. This has led politicians to simultaneously underestimate its potential strength, and treat it with more respect than it deserves. There has been a certain well-meaning fatalism on show from the British Government; a sense of, if Scotland feels genuinely oppressed, then the UK must be in the wrong, and the only decent thing to do in that case would be to let it go.

But as the historian Ben Jackson has shown in the journal Renewal (http://www.renewal.org.uk/articles/the-left-and-scottish-nationalism/), for example, modern Scottish nationalism is not based on any sense of cultural repression, physical persecution, or rediscovery of ancient folklore. It is a relatively recent phenomenon, stretching back no further than the 1960s, and entirely based around a political self-identity as being to the left of England and governments at Westminster.

In itself, this means Scottish nationalism is weak as a concept. Its claims for Scottish secession are hardly greater would be the case for any regions of the UK—such as many parts of the north of England or South Wales—which share a similar political outlook. In form Scottish nationalism is, though more developed, little different to the Countryside Alliance from around a decade ago. The Countryside Alliance represented a kind of nationalism of rural England; its main complaint was that Labour governments and ‘metropolitan elites’ did not govern for them. For Scottish nationalism, it is Conservative governments and Westminster politicians. In neither case is there a moral case for carving up the country. To do so would effectively be gerrymandering on an epic scale.

Quasi-religious protest movement

The Yes campaign draws support from far beyond the SNP: it is a phenomenon separate to regular politics. It is fuelled by popular opposition to neoliberal economics, as well as disenchantment with mainstream politics. There is a large element of delayed revenge against Margaret Thatcher—and indeed Tony Blair and the Iraq war—about it.

The sentiments behind the movement are well illustrated by a recent comment by the author Irvine Welsh: “The swing to yes is happening because people are fed up with being ripped-off, patronized and treated like shit by a self-serving elite.” Another insightful illustration is provided by the radical English writers who have endorsed the Yes campaign, such as George Monbiot. His recent article for the Guardian portrayed the UK, under the influence of a hateful English economic and political establishment, as being irredeemably corrupt, undemocratic, and unequal. Another English left-wing Guardian columnist, Suzanne Moore, has celebrated the prospect of a Yes vote as a means of punishing the English capitalist elites.

The support which the Scottish independence campaign is drawing from left-wing writers in England illustrates how this movement is not primarily about Scottish nationalism; it is a popular revolt, drawing on currents throughout the UK, which is seeking expression in this referendum and the chance to inflict a grievous injury on the British establishment.

In addition to the content of these ideas, it is also vital to understand the form in which support for the Yes campaign has expressed itself. The Yes movement has all been about a sense of political agency, a self-affirmation that one matters as an individual. It’s about asserting confidence and optimism in oneself and the potential of one’s nation—in contrast to the experiences many people have grown up with, of a sense of powerlessness and economic decline. It has nothing to do with making a rational choice about the practical details or likely consequences of secession.

The Scottish people have been offered a great power by the political establishment and in effect dared not to use it. This has been presented by the agitators for a Yes vote as a trial of faith—mostly to ask: “Do you have faith in yourself?” With the additional challenge, whether spelt out or not: “Or are you too timid, are you going to just do what they told you to do?” Hence the kind of zealotry and triumphalism accompanying many of those that proclaim themselves as Yes voters—there’s a quasi-religious aspect to it, a sense of rebirth through faith. Hence also the sectarian contempt of many Yes supporters for those who will vote No.

Millennial popular uprising

The Yes movement ought to be seen as one in a long series of popular uprisings with millennial overtones. Norman Cohn’s description of the roots of millennial uprisings fits the Yes campaign very well: “A boundless, millennial promise made with boundless, prophet-like conviction to a number of rootless and desperate men in the midst of a society where traditional norms and relationships are disintegrating…” Contemporary Scotland, like any Western state, is suffering from the aftermath of industrial decline, a sense that capitalism is no longer working for the majority of the people, a feeling that democracy is no longer capable of changing anything. People have lost touch with their past and faith in their future. The Yes movement speaks to all of this.

Cohn writes: “It is characteristic of this kind of movement that its aims and premises are boundless. A social struggle is seen not as a struggle for specific, limited objectives, but as an event of unique importance, different in kind from all other struggles known to history, a cataclysm from which the world is to emerge totally transformed and redeemed.”

Many British progressives, Scottish or otherwise, have seen just this swelling sense of excitement among Yes supporters and thought that something wonderful was happening. But while great ideals have been expressed within this campaign, and while it is wonderful to see people discover a sense of political agency, this is an essentially superficial revolutionary movement, and, in its divorce from reality, an evil.

What could Britain’s political leaders learn from the way in which monarchs and governments have successfully handled popular uprisings in the past (focusing solely on the enlightened aspects of such responses)? The key principle is to restore one’s legitimacy and authority by lowering oneself to the level of the people; while at the same time retaining faith in one’s ability to lead, recognising that what most people fear most of all is anarchy. Which is to say one needs to listen to and understand their complaints, grant them whatever concessions are needed to get through the crisis period, and then to provide security and stability for everyone again.

In the present case, I think British political leaders need to listen to the Yes movement’s wider complaints about inequality and alienation from mainstream politics, and respond in all the concrete ways they can for the UK as a whole, while facing down the utopian fantasy elements of it.

Thoughts on Scottish independence from a British perspective

A couple of years ago I wrote something here about the then possibility of an independence referendum in Scotland. At the time I underestimated the intensity of the debate that would result, and consequently the seriousness of a ‘Yes’ vote should that be delivered. But at the same time, my concerns about this possibility, in terms of what it would mean for Britain, seem to have been largely ignored in this debate. So here are a few thoughts on the referendum from a British (and left-wing) perspective—and one opposed to independence, or more precisely to the dissolution of the United Kingdom. I also conclude with some thoughts on how to really build on what’s been good about the Yes campaign, and give it life throughout the UK.

There’s been something terribly solipsistic about this debate—it’s all been what it would mean for people in Scotland right now. Whether Scotland could get more in the next handful of years out of independence. Mostly this is in simply material terms; but even where Yes campaigners are talking about the gains in political terms (essentially that Scotland would have a more left-wing political range to its government), it’s still a short-term view. The independence debate, mirroring the society it’s taking place in, is thoroughly individualistic, and stuck in what’s been called the permanent present, with little sense of historical continuity.

There’s only been a cursory thought about what it would mean for the UK. But just on the most essential level, it would mean changing the name of the UK and changing its flag. You could no longer refer to Great Britain or Britain, except in a simply geographical sense. You could no longer refer to the government as the British government, or to the Prime Minister as the British Prime Minister, or the Army as the British Army, since Britain by definition includes Scotland. What adjective could you give to any aspects of the state? You couldn’t call it English. There isn’t an adjective you could come up with; there is no unifying description of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland on their own.

And then there’s the flag. From where I work I can see the Union flag, flying from the Victoria Tower of the Houses of Parliament. If Scotland secedes then this flag is going to have to come down for good, and a new one is going to have to replace it, one without the blue in it. Now, your average Yes voter might dismiss this as an irrelevancy—it’s just a bit of material, or it’s a symbol of imperialist aggression, or go ahead, keep the St Andrew’s Cross in there if you like. But the UK couldn’t really keep the saltire in the Union flag. It would make a complete mockery of it. The flag symbolises more than anything else the union of England and Scotland. The only way the UK state could retain it would essentially be by asserting that it doesn’t really accept the result of a Yes vote and still wants Scotland back in the union.

Now there’s an awful lot of history to go up in smoke all of a sudden, especially as a more or less unintended consequence of a vote for Scottish independence—unintended I mean since there’s been so little consideration of it north of the border, and almost none in the rest of the UK.

Just recently we’ve commemorated the seventieth anniversary of D-Day. A moment when the British armed forces performed acts of great heroism, in conjunction with other nations, to help liberate Europe from Nazism. Not long after, a Welsh MP led the creation of the National Health Service, for the benefit of everyone throughout the UK. These are great moments in the history of the British state, it’s Britain in its best self. They provide historical examples that help to form a part of British people’s sense of identity, something to draw inspiration from.

Now, again, a Yes campaigner might say—sure, and the history of the British state is also the history of the Bengal famine, torturing the Mau Mau, and Bloody Sunday. Which is all true. But I think one takes national pride from the examples one can be proud of. Keeping one’s national history in mind helps to remind you that your country has a past and a future; it’s not just you and the people you can see around you right now.

I’ve written the odd letter to the odd person about the implications of Scottish secession. One of the people I wrote to was the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir George Zambellas KCB DSC ADC (partly, of course, so I could address a letter to the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir George Zambellas KCB DSC ADC). I asked what would happen to the design of the White Ensign should Scotland secede. It’s something of enormous symbolic importance—it was flying from HMS Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar; flying on all the destroyers throughout the Battle of the Atlantic. The reply I got from the Admiralty said: “The issues you raise are not being given formal consideration as the United Kingdom Government is clear that Scotland benefits from being part of the United Kingdom and the United Kingdom benefits from having Scotland within it. The Government is confident that people in Scotland will continue to support Scotland remaining within the United Kingdom in the referendum next year, and is not making plans for independence.” It’s essentially the same answer I got from No 10, via the Scotland Office. Basically the British state has gone into this without a clue about the risks to itself. And the British people as a whole are entirely unprepared for what might result.

There’s something peculiarly and rather wonderfully British in the fact this referendum’s even taking place. Can you think of another country on earth that would be doing this, offering a nation or region the option of seceding and breaking up the country in the process—with such little thought about the consequences, and more or less out of a sense that it was simply obliged to do so, given a nationalist party had won an election in that territory? Which is also to say it’s not as if everyone who has voted SNP recently has done so because they were passionate believers in independence; for many it was more they were responding to a party that was self-confident about portraying itself as being at least mainly on the left. Usually you have to fight a war to get a chance like this. Or at least the campaign for independence is based on a reaction to sustained and genuine oppression. That’s just not the case for modern Scotland, which enjoys huge amounts of autonomy, its own parliament, and lots of state support for its culture. The oppression I read about in arguments from the Yes camp is real enough, but it’s not national oppression; it’s oppression by the forces of neoliberalism.

Now, I do have a lot of sympathy for such arguments—those which object to the inequality in British society, to the way in which employers are making people work harder for less, the way in which big business and the super-rich have such influence over the state, the way in which there is no alternative to neoliberalism being given an airing within mainstream politics, the way Labour is still too timid in sticking up for its historic principles. And there’s a lot to be inspired by in the Yes campaign, and to seek to expand, beyond this referendum and beyond Scotland.

What you’re really seeing in the snowballing Yes campaign is the excitement of people’s self-discovery as political actors, as people who have been handed the opportunity to change something radically, and in a way which the economic and political establishment haven’t taken seriously and would be horrified by. And Robin McAlpine’s fired-up granny and all of them, they’re thrilled by this discovery of political agency. Which is in itself something brilliant, and we need more of it, we all need more of it, and we need it to be something sustained and far-reaching. Albeit it’s also expressing itself in people’s rather strident proclamation of themselves as Yes voters, a kind of zealotry that accompanies being converts to a cause. They’ve achieved it, they’ve passed beyond; they’ve learnt to conquer fear, and already distantly feel the sense of liberation to be had if the referendum goes their way, and they acquire the power to shape their own destiny.

I should add at this stage that it’s my personal belief that capitalism has entered what is essentially its long terminal phase, with its successful functioning curtailed by natural limits to demand and physical limits to growth. In such circumstances, whatever the short-term effects of independence on Scotland’s economy, I expect a very bumpy ride in the years ahead. That would still be the case if Scotland remained in the UK; but my point is I wouldn’t expect independence to lead to a long-term upswing in wealth.

But listening to all the things that are going to happen after a Yes vote, it all sounds like a chapter out of Norman Cohn’s The Pursuit of the Millennium. In fact, Scottish independence has become the Grand National of hobbyhorses – anyone who’s been banging on for years about something, whether it’s political reform, or monetary reform, or climate change, or industrial policy, or disability rights, has seized the opportunity to argue for Scottish independence in the hope that this will miraculously fulfil all their hopes.

One of the features of this campaign is the way in which some of the Yes voters sound as though they’re campaigning for an ideal left-wing party in a non-existent general election. The platform sounds great, but the internal contradictions and social contradictions are never exposed as this isn’t actually an election to form a government. Independence is going to mean that Scotland is richer and more equal, exploiting the oil and gas fields and increasing exports – but of course, it will be greener, leading the fight against climate change, so it’ll also leave the oil and gas in the seabed. It’ll increase public spending and be more socialistic, but it’ll also cut business taxes in an attempt to play beggar its neighbours in the rest of the UK. It’ll cut spending on the military and never go to war, but still take the Royal Navy’s money, thank you. Scotland’s going to keep the pound, but it’s also going to have the world’s most advanced set of alternative currencies, and a debt-free money system (I’m no friend of the banking sector, but those currency reformers don’t tend to point out this would ensure Edinburgh’s financial sector wouldn’t make any money for the country).

Given Scottish society is a precious few degrees to the left of England as a whole, and given it wouldn’t have the City of London looming over its politics, it’s likely that some of the best bits of this might come true. (Though I also can’t help but have a sneaking suspicion the Tories might miraculously come back from the dead in an independent Scotland; if they were shorn of their English counterparts, and were suitably wet and more socially concerned, a little more like the Christian Democrats, they might suddenly acquire a sizeable share of support from those who didn’t vote for independence and wouldn’t care for some of the Jacobinism it would unleash.)

But in any case, the malign influence of neoliberalism is not unique to the United Kingdom, and secession from it would offer no automatic cures. Nor would it help those oppressed by neoliberalism, and feeling powerless and alienated from mainstream politics, in the rest of the UK. That’s not what the Yes campaign say, of course; they say it would serve as an inspiration and shake up people’s sense of the possible. But since its main teaching would be one of liberation through secession rather than some substantial form of actual political reform, of escaping from a state rather than changing it; and since its experience would be one essentially of grasping an opportunity which fell into its lap rather than being won through transformative campaigning (though to be sure there’s been plenty of that since the referendum was called), then I’m not sure exactly what it would offer to their political blood brothers in London, say, or the Northeast of England, or South Wales.

Then there’s the direct consequences of removing Scottish MPs, and the influence of Scottish politics, from Westminster. The Yes campaign say that this wouldn’t change anything for the people of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland; they say that Scottish voters have only tilted the balance in favour of Labour at the odd election in the past. But that’s to ignore the fact that it’s only relatively recently that the Tory vote in Scotland has collapsed. In other words, the very thing which makes Yes voters think they ought to secede now is what makes Scotland more important to Labour’s chances at Westminster than in the past.

And also, let’s not forget, secessionism is never the lesson that nationalist movements actually want to teach anyone, lest it be used against themselves: all nationalists are hypocrites. Alex Salmond is another of the odd people I’ve written to; I’ve asked him, should he win the referendum, when will he be offering the people of the Highlands & Islands their own referendum, since they might not care for ‘the Holyrood way’; and can they keep what’s left of the oil and gas, while they’re at it? I’ve not yet got a reply. Though he must be busy at the moment.

But more, much more than this, I think the inspirational influence of an independent Scotland would be swamped by a bitter sense of grievance—the aftermath to be expected, after all, from a blindsiding divorce. The British political establishment took the Scots for granted in, not just agreeing to but goading the SNP into calling this referendum, mainly thinking it would put the SNP permanently back in its box; just look at how careless they were in the framing of the debate, allowing the nationalists to adopt “Yes” as their battle cry. But the Yes camp appear to be doing the same with regard to the English in particular.

The Yes campaign likes to say that nothing would really change in the ties Scotland has with the rest of the UK, whether economic or emotional. Scotland would most probably keep the pound, the argument goes, because that would be the rational thing for the UK to do; anything else would cost business too much money. But they are underestimating, more than anything else, the importance which Scotland plays in England’s self-identity. Which is to say, as a state England hasn’t really existed since the Act of Union; for over 300 years its statehood has been fused entirely with that of the United Kingdom. This is why all attempts to rediscover a sense of English identity have such an ersatz, hobbyist character to them, at one extreme being the outflowings of recent currents of racism, a displacement of the experience of class oppression into an imagined story of a national past before the fall. One just needs to think of St George’s Day, and how limply some have sought in recent years to celebrate it; where they do, they inevitably come up with something pastoral—Morris dancers and the like—precisely because this is imagery which predates the modern age, during which time England has always been British.

Billy Bragg’s defence of Scottish independence is a case in point. His argument is that once the UK has been broken up that will so fuck things up in England that it’ll magically revive the spirit of the Levellers and the Diggers. The problem that he and others such as George Monbiot have got is that in order to justify breaking up the UK, they have to character-assassinate England as being uniquely wicked, and then turn round and say that after the union’s dissolved it’ll be the land of milk and honey. Leaving aside the utter wish-fulfilment there, Billy Bragg has to go back that far to reconstruct his sense of an independent England because England has been British ever since. And he has nothing to say about Northern Ireland or Wales; in the latter case because back when England was just England, it had simply subsumed Wales. Wales and Northern Ireland only make sense within the United Kingdom.

In sum, then: the English depend on the British state for their sense of self, and the British state necessarily depends on Scotland belonging to it in order to be British. Scotland is essential to modern England. If it leaves and breaks up the British state, it will cause an incalculable amount of hurt to the English. Under such conditions I very much doubt the UK will necessarily act in its own rational self-interest following Scottish secession. I rather expect there to be a popular mood of resentment, and a powerful movement for cutting Scotland out of the pound and anything else which would allow the Scots to enjoy any comforting vestiges of the British state.

What is to be done? What are the positive things from the Yes campaign, to keep alive, and build on, and spread throughout Great Britain? Some thoughts:

1. Introduce PR in Westminster. For a long time I wasn’t a supporter of PR, mainly because I felt politics was already too much in the grip of central party machines, and if you lost the direct link to the electorate you have now, that would get even worse. But I’ve come round to it now (and so far as I can tell, the Irish version of PR seems to preserve as much of a link to a constituency as possible). Introducing PR would make it less likely there were ever a very strong Conservative government able in effect to impose a hard right agenda on Scotland. It would ensure that everyone’s vote counted in an election, no matter where they lived. And it would give people the genuine chance to get behind other parties if unhappy with the established ones (dissatisfaction with the ‘parties of Westminster’, after all, being the single biggest factor behind the Yes campaign).
2. Devolve more powers to Scotland, and new ones to Wales and Northern Ireland; as well as to local authorities and regions throughout England. Politics is suffering from a sense of democratic deficit; this can be improved by increasing the sense in which decisions are taken closer to them, and their interests can be more visibly taken into account.
3. The Labour leadership needs to let go, and in particular Scottish Labour needs to assert its own platform. The no 1 reason for the rise of the SNP, and for the energy within the Yes campaign, is disaffection with Labour. This is because of the way Labour is centralised and disciplined, in the wake of the Thatcher years, so that the entire party has to be on message, and that message is geared to winning swing seats in the south of England. Labour has never caught up with its own policy of devolution. This required Scottish Labour to acquire an autonomous character of its own, and to stand up to the national party on some issues. It ought to be seen as a powerful political base within the Labour Party. And this would help with another problem—i.e. attracting more talented Labour politicians to work within devolved politics. (Not for me to say, but the Tories should clearly do the same, given their near total disintegration north of the border.)
4. Democratic renewal. Labour should advocate a coherent approach to having more public inquiries and royal commissions, more power to and reform of Parliament, more local accountability of public services; and with the lot underpinned by a bill of rights. Oh, and the voting age should be lowered to 16; that’s been a clear success.
5. On the theme of referenda… How about Labour aim to get into law something which says that in the event of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, this will trigger independence referenda in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and England, to ensure each had the opportunity to express a national will to stay in the EU on an independent basis? It would address one of the concerns from the Scottish Yes campaign, that actually staying in the UK could mean it were more likely in the long run that the Scottish people left the EU. And it would mean UKIP would have to campaign for the near certain break up of the UK.

Rosa Luxemburg on trade unions

Been reading Luxemburg’s “Reform or Revolution” again recently.  Damn she was good.  Still so underrated.

Take her brilliant analysis of the future of the trade union movement.

First, an amazingly prescient analysis of the role of unions within the postwar settlement of monopoly capitalism (which also contains a prediction of, in part, how that settlement collapsed under the impact of competition from low cost exporters, which triggered a revenge for consumers against the workers):

What does the active participation of trade unions in fixing the scale and cost of production amount to?  It amounts to a cartel of the workers and entrepreneurs in a common stand against the consumer and especially rival entrepreneurs.  In no way is the effect of this any different from that of ordinary employers’ associations.  Basically we no longer have here a struggle between labor and capital, but the solidarity of capital and labor against the total consumers.  Considered for its social worth, it is to be seen as a reactionary move that cannot be a stage in the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat because it connotes the very opposite of the class struggle.  Considered from the angle of practical application, it is to be found to be a utopia, which, as shown by a rapid examination, cannot be extended to the large branches of industry producing for the world market.

And secondly, an even more brilliant, prescient analysis of the state of trade unions after that postwar settlement collapsed, to be replaced by the neoliberal revanchisme of the bosses:

Once industrial development has attained its highest possible point and capitalism has entered its descending phase on the world market, the trade-union struggle will become doubly difficult.  In the first place, the objective conjuncture of the market will be less favorable to the sellers of labor power, because the demand for labor power will increase at a slower rate and labor supply more rapidly than is the case at present.  In the second place, the capitalists themselves, in order to make up for losses suffered on the world market, will make even greater efforts than at present to reduce the part of the total product going to the workers (in the form of wages).  The reduction of wages is, as pointed out by Marx, one of the principal means of retarding the fall of profit.  […]  Trade-union action is reduced of necessity to the simple defense of already realized gains, and even that is becoming more and more difficult.  Such is the general trend of things in our society.  The counterpart of this tendency should be the development of the political side of the class struggle.

One of them ‘but that sounds like a dystopian science fiction novel!’ moments

From the BBC:

The Chinese authorities have set up 25 “baby hatches” across the country to allow parents to safely abandon their unwanted infants. […]

A number have opened in the last few months. One, in Guangzhou, received 79 babies in its first 15 days.

Parents simply place a child in the hatch, press an alarm button and then leave, remaining anonymous. Someone then comes to retrieve the baby five to 10 minutes later.

What the fuck!

Ralph Miliband on the Tory press

Belatedly this week, I got round to reading an essay in the Monthly Review summer special on communications under monopoly capitalism by Ralph Miliband.  It was a reprint of a chapter from his The State in Capitalist Society.

Given the row caused by the Daily Mail’s preposterous attempts to brand Milibands Ralph and Ed as supporters of Stalinist mass murder, I was surprised I hadn’t read quotes from this essay all over the place in the last couple of weeks.

How about:

But whatever their endless differences of every kind, most newspapers in the capitalist world have one crucial characteristic in common, namely their strong, often their passionate hostility to anything further to the left than the milder forms of social democracy, and quite commonly to these milder forms as well.

Or:

In the same vein, most newspapers in the capitalist world have always had the “extreme” left, and notably communists, on the brain, and have only varied in their attitude to that part of the political spectrum in the degree of virulence and hostility which they have displayed towards it. It is also the case that for such newspapers the history of the world since 1945 has largely been a Manichean struggle imposed upon the forces of goodness, led by the United States, against the forces of evil, represented by aggressive communism, whether Soviet or Chinese.

And as for this –

Many “popular” newspapers with a mass circulation are extremely concerned to convey the opposite impression and to suggest a radical impatience with every kind of “establishment,” however exalted, and a restless urge for change, reform, progress. In actual fact, most of this angry radicalism represents little more than an affectation of style; behind the iconoclastic irreverence and the demagogic populism there is singular vacuity both in diagnosis and prescription. The noise is considerable but the battle is bogus.

– it fits the Daily Mail to a tee.

Geoffrey Goodman

I have great memories of him; he was a great man.

He’ll be greatly missed.  But will remain an inspiration.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/geoffrey-goodman-obituary-daily-mirror-2256332

 

Clive James on Dick Crossman

I found a review of RHS Crossman’s diaries by Clive James a little while ago; for the New York Review of Books, from 1977.  I like them both, Crossman and James.

But I shan’t write about either, not now.  I just want to mention an observation James made in passing.  He wrote:

If the Conservative Party were ever to disintegrate (and there is a school of thought which believes it already has), the Social Democrats of the Labour Party, taking the Liberal Party with them, could easily hive off and fill the gap.  Such a realignment of forces would merely reflect what is already going on in people’s minds.

What I find fascinating about this is what it says about politics before the neoliberal counter-revolution of 1979/80, and its stranglehold on political thought ever since.  As in – first, what he says about a school of thought believing the Tories had already disintegrated – I’m guessing this means a lot of people thought the Tories had lost touch with reality and committed political suicide by choosing that gauche woman, Margaret Thatcher, as leader.

And second, the idea that the ‘Social Democrats’ of the Labour Party could go off and form another party with the Liberals.  It’s not of course that that didn’t happen.  It’s that here was someone seriously suggesting that they would effectively replace the Tories as the most right-wing opposition around to Labour.  How many degrees to the left does this imagine British politics to have been then!

The growth frontline

I came across the front cover of a magazine, the Local Government Chronicle, recently, which had the big headline ‘The growth frontline’ splashed across a picture of green meadows and rolling hills, and not a soul in sight.

The article in question was arguing that ‘shire England drives economic success’, and that rural counties should have extra resources to invest in increasing their, and thus the nation’s, economic growth.

I thought, this is great – the image they go to, to evoke rural counties, is green and pleasant countryside – and the argument they’re making is we need to build on it!

We can’t have it all ways …

… But we knew that already, right?