John McDonnell's Tax Cut for the Well Off

Tax cuts for the better off, isn't that the kind of thing associated with the Conservatives? Blair-era Labour? Not of the present radical party leadership, surely. What with their desire to nationalise afternoon tea and issue pig iron production edicts. And yet, in 2016's tradition of politics taking unexpected turns, that is exactly what's happened. Has the party been sold down the river?

In his final, catastrophic budget George Osborne announced cuts to disability benefits. These were to pay for more tax cuts for the better off, specifically raising the "middle" range 40% income tax rate threshold from those earning £42,000/year to £50k. A nice, tidy bonus for the better off bedrock of the Tories, but also yet another tax cut for the top rate payers without it immediately looking like one. Readers may recall that raising the basic rate was Osborne's favoured way of cutting taxes for the better off while pretending to care about putting more cash into pockets of modest depth. The unexpected intervention by Iain Duncan Smith put paid to the disability cuts, but the £4bn tax cut commitment remained. Albeit without a means of plugging the hole in the budget.

A few things have happened since then. Theresa May's commitment to rescue the Thatcherite legacy from Dave and Osborne's ineptitude has, at the level of rhetoric at least, involved a sharp turn away from the last six years. And as snoring, boring Philip Hammond undertakes his Autumn statement this coming Wednesday, we'll finally see what this means. A lurch to Keynes-lite, or, if you prefer, reheated Butskellism is on the cards, particularly the reassertion of the state's authority in matters economic. And in this spirit, unfunded promises - like the tax bung - are probably for the chop too.

How is it that John McDonnell has committed Labour to this policy, especially when the party has promised to reverse tax cuts for the rich? First, there is an element of policy continuity. Ed Miliband was fond of talking about the squeezed middle. In this season's wonky fashions, this strata is restyled the 'Just About Managing' (or, horrendously, 'the JAMs'), a category covering almost everybody, whether one is just about putting enough food on the table or has struggled to scrape together funds enough for a weekend in Paris/new tablet/second house. Its assumptions tap into the conceit of what you might call the 'aspirational' middling layers, those who believe themselves uniquely industrious and hard pressed by the idling hordes. Just About Managing decouples want from poverty, airbrushes out relative privilege, and positions them as the deserving deserving.

It's also the strata Labour needs to win over to take the next general election. With critics decrying Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell for pursuing a core vote strategy (and also attacking them for neglecting workers, which in their imagination are just queuing up to support UKIP), here we have a policy bang outside the comfort zone. You know, the territory Labour needs to stake out, according to a former Prime Minister threatening a return to politics. I suspect John's calculation that keeping this tax cut, especially if the Tories abandon it, will help us in the Tory shires and the swing seats. After all, if stuffing the doctors' mouths with gold ensured Aneurin Bevan set up the NHS, can doing something similar pave a path to power through the marginals?

In conventional times, it wouldn't be enough. The odds remain stacked against Jeremy and John, not least because of past associations and the trashing of their reputations over the last year. Yet these are far from normal times. And, agree with the new policy or not, Labour has to find a way of connecting with enough of the Tory-leaning well-off. Income tax cuts are one route. If not this, then what?

Aerial Assault for the Sega Master System

Awful games typically have rubbish graphics and sound, unresponsive/oversensitive controls, too easy/hard enemies, cheap deaths, and illogical level design. And don't get me started on broken games ... But how does one define an average game? For bland isn't necessarily bad, it's just a bit meh. Why is it that one title can grab you and pull you into its compelling universe, while another that is very, very similar and involves the same gameplay elements cannot?

These thoughts occurred while getting stuck into Aerial Assault, a relatively rare-ish 1990 number for the humble Sega Master System. The plot, which is as memorable as the game itself, basically provides an excuse to climb into a super advanced fighter and shoot all-comers: enemy jets, helicopters, air mines, tanks and rocket launchers. You know, all the nonsense you can expect from a military-themed shooter. As per normal, your craft starts off pitifully slow and is armed with but a pea shooter. Killing particular enemies yield power ups, some of which are very helpful. And there are others possessing the efficacy of a rabbit hutch made of carrots. Provided you don't pick up the dodgy weapons and make it through the level, at the end awaits the usual meaty nemesis.

Coming out shortly after UN Squadron made a splash in the arcades, Aerial Assault can be considered an example of me-tooism. That is a game "inspired" by a popular title and seeks to cash-in on its popularity. For instance, the trusty old ZX Spectrum was awash with Pac-Man and Space Invaders clones early in its life. When Street Fighter II was utterly inescapable a quarter of a century ago, it was hotly followed by a legion of one-on-one brawlers. There are similarities between Aerial Assault and UN Squadron, particularly with regard to its environments. Scramble against the enemy navy and end in a tussle with a battleship? Take wing in the upper atmosphere as you glide over a parallax of cloud? Fly into the enemy's secret underground base/factory to sort them out once and for all? Yes to all these things.

The one relatively (then) original feature the game has is denying access to the full game on the lower levels of difficulty. If you ratchet it to the top, unexpectedly you access a "secret" fifth level set in space. It's a touch tougher than your previous adventures (as one might expect), but this time you meet an end-of-game baddy who passes a resemblance to the final bad 'un in Toaplan's Hellfire. More "inspiration".

What makes Aerial Assault bland is, well, its blandness. It doesn't bring much, if anything, new to the table. UN Squadron for its part was packed with original features, including non-linear progression and RPG elements. Other shooters lacking these bells and whistles usually have something to commend them - interesting power ups, imaginative graphics and sound, a gimmick, playability demanding one more go. Alas, here everything is underwhelming. The boss battles are (mostly) quite easy. Enemy patterns aren't tough to learn, once you get over a few cheap shots here and there. It's the gaming equivalent of elevator music, the sort of thing you can breeze through without thinking much about it. Some games are simply forgotten because they are entirely forgettable. And that's Aerial Assault. It goes through the motions, reiterates the base mechanics gamers were already familiar with in 1990, but brings nothing new to the table. Therein perhaps lies quality of the average game.

Blondie - The Tide Is High

For over 30 years, I've wondered how one of the coolest bands ever could have turned out such a .... well, shit video?

Corbynism and the Socialist Party

Picked up by Howie and Coatesy after getting some coverage from the BBC and The Graun, the leadership cadre of my erstwhile comrades have formally applied to rejoin the Labour Party, and launched a campaign to gain admittance. To this end, the Socialist Party has produced the requisite round robin letter and a petition.

Admitting these folks to the Labour Party is an obviously bad idea, so I won't be repeating well rehearsed arguments. Nor is it at all likely their applications are set to get the NEC's nod. For one, they remain a separate organisation who routinely stood candidates against Labour until this year's local elections. And second, they show no intention of winding themselves up. It is then a complete waste of time. I know their campaign isn't going to succeed. The "75" know as well. Then why bother?

Exploiting the little bit of interest the media have shown in the SP since sundry rebels tried dubbing Momentum the new Militant Tendency is something any publicity-hungry organisation filled with its sense of world-historic importance would try and do. That the annual Socialism jamboree took place last weekend and the campaign's launch and attendant publicity probably wasn't entirely serendipitous. There's a bit more going on as well.

The rise of Corbynism caught the SP completely on the hop. That's nothing to be ashamed of as few others saw it coming either. Yet for the SP, events exposed how wrong their political perspectives were. While recognising there were political differences between Labour on the one hand, and the Tories and LibDems on the other, since the early 90s - coincidentally when what was left of Militant abandoned its entry work - Labour has been treated as a bourgeois party with no qualitative difference separating them from the rest. If it isn't a working class party, then it stands to reason the prospect of a new leftwing movement surging through its stagnant structures would never happen. But it happened. To re-orientate themselves and to avoid saying those fatal words, "we were mistaken", the SP have gone through the sort of grimacing contortions that make Ed Balls appear deft and light-footed. And so now they have the weird perspective that Corbynism represents the birth of a new workers party (which the SP have been agitating for for years) within a hitherto bourgeois party, thereby proving that the SP was right all along. Ho hum.

Yet the SP know it has to orient to Corbynism in some way. Hundreds of thousands of people have been politically activated, and they've passed the farsighted vanguard of the working class entirely by. For the SP, which doesn't seem to be going anywhere fast, this mass radicalisation is an opportunity that cannot be ignored. Hence why they've hung around Jeremy Corbyn rallies selling papers and getting newbies to sign their 'kick out the Blairites' petitions, but they are still spectators with no influence at all on events. Taking up the campaign to reinstate expelled socialists is designed to intersect with the justifiable anger against this summer's cackhanded expulsions, and build a periphery of SP-sympathetic folks in Labour. Who knows, perhaps a few of them would (quietly) join up as well?

The second issue the SP have got is that while they try and profit from Corbynism, they have to inoculate the organisation against it. For those comrades who joined the SP because they found Labour before Jeremy repellent, what's the point of sticking to the fringes now socialist ideas are totally mainstream? For activists who were always more interested in building a new workers party than a revolutionary outfit, they've been shown in no uncertain terms it was present all along. Those in the SP because they were the best of a bad bunch, well, there's now another option available. And those who subscribe to the word according to Ted Grant, that Marxists should go where the workers are, well, they're certainly not filling out the SP's ranks - despite their perennially upbeat official optimism. Anecdotally, there has been some leakage from the SP. We're not talking existential crisis here, but a fair few dozen long-term but not-very-well-known (at least in labour movement circles) cadre have made the leap to Labour. Whether they're individuals or "sleepers" on a quiet entry job the SP Exec only knows, but it's probably a mix of the two. For example, looking at the list of "the 75", there are quite a few naughty folks who took out Labour Party membership while remaining leading SP cadre with positions of responsibility, and subsequently got their heave-ho letters. In short, Corbynism is undercutting them. By taking a leaf out of the infant Communist Party's book and trying to wrangle an affiliation to Labour, and when they're rebuffed the eternal General Secretary can say they tried. That might not mean much to you and me, but in the emotional economy of small groups it can help keep the already-invested stay invested.

Unfortunately for the SP, it doesn't appear the campaign is going anywhere. To try and create a sense of momentum, it boasts that some 300 people have signed their petition. These include "Janice Godrich PCS President, John McInally PCS Vice-President, Fran Heathcote, Katrine Williams and Marion Lloyd PCS NEC, John Reid RMT NEC, Suzanne Muna UNITE NEC, Jane Nellist and Simon Murch NUT NEC, Ian Hodson BFAWU President". All of whom are fairly well known SP members whose names regularly show up in issues of The Socialist. Were there any real traction, we definitely would have heard about it. Instead, you are left with the impression that they're talking to no one but themselves.

After Trump, Corbyn?

You know that dark cloud shading into fascist brown accumulating above the White House? It's pretty frightening, so it's entirely normal and expected for some to (desperately?) discern a silver tinge its edges. One of them is superstar economist Yanis Varoufakis, who suggests Trump's election signals a new wave of change. Coming from a similar, but decidedly non-Marxist standpoint, Robert Skidlesky reckons there is some progressive potential in 'Trumpism'. A Keynesian kernel in a racist, bigoted shell, one might say. Another variant of comment looking for a hint of sunnier times to come, leap on the discrediting of the opinion polls and the mess our politics and economics are in. And that is the line of argument suggesting the Labour Party could well sweep to power at the next general election.

You should look to the future with optimism, but always temper it with intellect. Unfortunately, this doesn't always work out. Liam Young, writing for the Indy puts forward quite a simple thesis. Economic dislocation gave us Trump (though, as with most things, it's complex), therefore it could help the left too. Because people are fed up with established politics, an insurgency from the left can be just as successful. Stated baldly like that, yes it can. Though, no doubt due to reasons of space, Liam doesn't offer any deeper analysis. Just an exhortation for us to ride the wave or get swamped by it.

There are a few things worth remembering. The rising tide of populism has two legs. The first, which the left are more familiar with seeing as they're increasingly drawn from it, is the growing mass of networked workers. Long atomised and repelled by an establishment politics of technocratic managerialism, Jeremy Corbyn's rise to the summit of Labour is an outcome of them moving into the party in large numbers. Considering membership was stubbornly stuck and the activist base wasn't getting any younger, the surge of new members and support has already saved the party from PASOK-style oblivion. Not that Jeremy will ever get any thanks for it. As argued previously, our hope lies in continually recruiting from and encouraging the many millions of networked workers to get involved in politics, deepening the alliance between the existent labour movement and the emergent layers. Hence the importance of the Corbynist party/social movement conception that's got a few knickers in a twist.

That, however, isn't all there is. The processes that have created this layer of workers and are lifting them to prominence is the same that has cut a swathe of deindustrialisation through the advanced nations. For every newly integrated and networked worker, there are others that have been discarded and left to fend for themselves - the so-called left-behinds of many a hand-wringing op-ed. Meanwhile, the uncertainty this results disproportionately excites and antagonises middling layers who, by virtue of their class locations, feel keenly the cutting wind of status anxiety as it buffets our economies. UKIP, as the party condensing, displacing, sublimating these fears is the opposite expression of the same dynamics underpinning Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. UKIP definitely is not a working class party, but in many Labour-held constituencies it has become the default choice for the anti-Labour sections of our people. Though that could all change thanks to Theresa May's One Nation turn.

The key to making inroads here, and also into Tory-supporting working class and middling voters elsewhere is the sense of self-security. Despite Tory politics having exactly the opposite effect, Dave well knew this was his best bet of pulling off a governing majority. It was embarrassing, but the ad nauseum repetitions of strong leadership, the long-term economic plan, the Conservatives' five-point plan for sorting out your local council, and talking up Labour/SNP coalition chaos, the abolition of Trident, and so on worked. Contrary to the self-serving diagnoses of the time, it had sod all to do with "aspiration". To win, this is the nut Labour has to crack. Perversely, the messier it gets, the more it may favour the Tories. We failed in 2015 because Labour wasn't interested in occupying this ground, and so looked unconvincing as it danced around it with pledges for more housing and controls on immigration. In one sense, our current leadership understands this where economics are concerned and, reluctantly, they are right that Labour cannot be seen to be thwarting the UK's withdrawal from the EU. Yet the emerging economic programme, which takes a tough line of deficit spending but has something to offer the new working class and the old, and the self-employed, and therefore makes a good fist at offering security-in-work is undercut by the leader's well-known views on pacifism and unilateral nuclear disarmament. If anxiety and ontological insecurity is powering the populism that has so far found expression on the right, this is a problem for the forging of an insurgent coalition from the left.

I don't know how this can be overcome short of a hugely damaging exposure of Tory incompetence over Brexit (not beyond the realms of possibility) or May's entanglement in an unpopular war, or something that destroys the perception of their governing credibility a la the 1992 ERM debacle, constant infighting, and the drip, drip of sleaze. Meanwhile we still have our own problems of disunity, albeit more restrained these days, and we have to repair the damage a summer of whingeing and shenanigans inflicted. Let there then be no illusions, if we want to make sure the next big upset after the election of Donald Trump is victory with an overall majority for Labour under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, a lot of hard work and hard thinking has to be done. Now is not the time for the comfort blankets.

The End of Capitalism?

Endism is on trend. Brexit, Trump, the collapse of the liberal establishment, the eclipse of reason. These aren't the end times, but for some it sure does feel like them. Let's throw another thing that might be coming to an end into the mix: our jolly old friend and companion, capitalism. Yup, it's on its way out (and might already be dead) according to Wolfgang Streeck in the latest issue of Juncture, the journal of the IPPR. This has to be located in the recent spate of end-of-capitalism-isms, usually associated with Paul Mason in this country, and more generally with the line of work coming out of the Hardt/Negri/Boutang stable. Whereas these folks concentrate on the objective growing power and capacity of labour power vis a vis capital and emphasise its potential to grow something new within the womb provided by the increasing dependency on immaterial labour and high technology, Streeck takes a different tack.

His argument is an iteration of the breakdown theories of capitalism, that its contradictions mount and amplify each other to such a degree that it undermines itself, resulting in a wind down of the system and, if we're unlucky, social collapse. Thankfully, that isn't what Streeck has in mind. Instead, he thinks we can look forward to a "prolonged period of social entropy, of radical uncertainty and indeterminacy" (p.69). Given what's going on here and over there, the interregnum might already be with us. And what it looks like is the breakdown of macro regulation and integration of the state, capitalism, and the institutions and industrial sectors that compose the whole political economic ensemble. The state withdraws and the collective responsibility of social risk is offloaded onto individuals. This process, long identified with neoliberal economics and governance leads to the under-institutionalisation of society, a reduced capacity for government to discharge its functions, and manifests symptoms of "ungovernability". This presents a big problem for capital because it too is disciplined and conditioned by regimes of accumulation. Because regulation was worried away by governments, the institutional architecture isn't there any more for sustainable growth. Capital is entering a cycle of unstable boom and bust.

For Streeck, the hole swallowing capitalism is an outcome of the accumulating contradictions associated with the previous implementation of solutions to what looked like conjunctural crises. 1970s inflation was tackled by wage squeezes and throwing people out of work. The 1980s was the decade of big deficit spending, thanks primarily to huge tax cuts for capital to keep the accumulation show on the road. But with saturated markets and stuttering wage growth across the advanced economies, public indebtedness was matched by private indebtedness. Thatcher's boom and bust in the 1980s was a petri dish preview of what was to happen 20 years later: the pyramid of debt fell in and almost dragged the global economy with it. Each solution multiplied contradictions and stored up a crash in the future. The problem is the crisis hasn't flushed the system. Debt, private and public, is up. Deficit spending remains. Cuts and more deregulation have hindered, not aided growth. Unemployment has stabilised, but job growth is not a like-for-like replacement of those destroyed by the crash and austerity-happy governments. Instead underemployment has helped keep the official jobless tallies low, and all the while central banks are printing money, handing it to banks, and fuelling another round of speculation and lending. Madness.

Want more problems? Capitalism has them. For Streeck, for the last 200 years capitalism has depended on a powerful, global order-making state, a great power among great powers with the financial clout and military projection to make the world safe for profit making and profit taking. That hegemon in the 19th century was Britain, and after 1945 it was the United States. Through the Marshall Plan and overweening military dominance, Washington imposed a new order on Europe's exhausted, broken states that integrated them into a new world economic order. It was premised on containing the threat imposed by the Soviet Union and its client states, up to and including "suspect" independence movements in the former colonies. It survived the oil and inflation shocks of the 1970s and the neoliberal turn, but once the USSR went under and China was increasingly integrated into global capitalism, what was left were unstable, frail/failed states, civil wars, and repressive governments. Because the US rolled back its own institutional capacities, it and its allies were largely uninterested in the goings ons at the fringes of capital's domain. That is, until, the violence of these territories were exported back as terrorism. The hegemon cannot impose its will, and that is now open to contest from rising powers and two-bit tyrannies.

Politically, the breakdown has had two political consequences. Displeasure with this chaotic state of affairs first manifested itself as indifference/apathy to politics, but is now working its way through political participation. Usually (but not always) it tilts to the right. It rejects established political elites and grasps hold of the ideological resources to hand. In America and Britain, with weakened and almost politically invisible labour movements, that has meant the nation is the preferred crutch of choice. As internationalism and the market is associated with remote, socially liberal but condescending politicians, the temptation is to write this movement off as irredeemably bigoted. Yet the core political content, hidden beneath layers of irrationality was succinctly expressed in the Leave's 'take back control' slogan. It's a confused and confusing expression of the desire to ground accountability, of exercising direction over the invisible processes that promote social anxiety and empower institutions that can make this happen.

Streeck certainly makes a lot of sense. Politics is volatile to the point that those used to talking about it don't know what they're talking about anymore. Global capitalism's political economy is in a mess, and will get messier if President Trump (let that sink in for a second) pursues a tariff war with China. Theresa May seems to have an inkling about what what needs to be done, but the Tories cannot be trusted to pull British capitalism out of the woods - especially as they're the ones that got it lost there in the first place. That said, I don't think this is a case of too little too late. Leaving aside the export of Putinism to the United States, Eastern Europe and, possibly, France next May there are a number of long range stabilisers due to kick in. As Toby Nangle points out in his piece, Inequality's Inflection Point (in the same volume), 40 years of neoliberalism and all it entailed (chiefly, the breaking of the labour movement's political clout) was made possible by the entry of two billion workers into the global labour market. Now we're reaching the point where their integration is putting pressure on wages. The remaining untapped pools of labour, chiefly in rural India and sub-Saharan Africa can't be so easily wired into capital's circuits. Part of it is infrastructural, and part of it is, from capital's standpoint, a lack of basic formal education and skill. Second, the baby boomer generation in the West will vacate occupations as they move into retirement, allowing the smaller X, Y, and Millennial cohorts more in the way of job opportunities. Therefore, demography favours a balance back to labour in the long run, and gives capital the impetus to invest in more automation to offset wage pressures.

The second issue with Streeck is the writing out of politics. It can and likely will force change on capitalism. Those voting for Trump hoped for a more paternalist economics, but already his tax cuts plans which, shock, benefit the top the most will exacerbate the problems American (and world) capitalism has. Yet necessity has to kick in at some point, and his support are expecting something more than bluster and bullshit. The same is true with the petty Putins looking to make their move all over Europe. They are stoking a hell of their own making if the same old crap carries on under new management. In a way, May (at the level of rhetoric, at least) shows these populist movements and politicians-elect their future - a restored state that intervenes to undo the great disaggregation and promote new markets, even if only for their political survival. The second comes from the politically conscious among the constituency identified by Hardt, Negri, and friends. Appalled by the idiocies of Brexit and Trump, opposed to authoritarianism and the xenophobia, racism, and hate they've stirred up, they too will impact on politics. It's happened and is happening in Britain. Spain, Greece, and America have felt its presence. It's a new international coming into being, and one that capital accumulation is increasingly dependent on. The job of the left is to deepen its politicisation, connect with what remains of the labour movement, and push out into the base of sundry populists, Putinists, and nationalists. The act of doing so can transform capitalism, restore its vigour and, who knows, lay the grounds for its supercession by something better.

Marine Le Pen on Andrew Marr

When it comes to fascists and the far right, giving them air time is a decision that should not be made lightly. If they are to appear, they should be rigorously challenged and forced to defend themselves. Anything less just gives them an opportunity to push their propaganda. When I learned that Andrew Marr was to be interviewing the French National Front leader, Marine Le Pen this Remembrance Sunday, I thought the BBC were having a laugh. It was obvious this encounter was not going to be a grilling. If you want to drag someone over the coals, you send for Jeremy Paxman or Andrew Neil. Marr, never known for his combative interviewing style, treated the French fascist leader as one indulges a pet tamagotchi.

It was a master class in poor interviewing. Not only did her lies go unchallenged, Marr also gave Le Pen free reign to push her views in the gently, gently, tones that have won her party a large following. On multiculturalism, she said that in the English-speaking countries, fundamentalist Islam is advancing. Demonstrably untrue. On the European Union, her Europe of free nations stands opposed to the "totalitarian" EU - more rubbish. Asked about Russia, Le Pen expressed her admiration for Vladimir Putin's model of "reasoned protectionism". You know, the sort of "reason" that allows for the murder of journalists and persecution of LGBT Russians. Not once did Marr step in to challenge these bullshit views as Le Pen looked relaxed and, at times, appeared to be enjoying herself.

Asked about Muslims in France and whether they have anything to fear from a FN presidency, which looks more likely thanks to Trump's victory, she replied "we're not going to welcome any more people. We're full up." A decent journalist might have snapped back that this wasn't the question that was asked. Going on, she said the FN were not bothered about people's religions, as long as they abided by secular French codes and values. This would be the same Le Pen who compared public prayers by Muslims to the Nazi occupation of France, and said that the increasing "Islamisation" of France was putting "civilisation" at risk. Utter drivel.

And then Marr made the misstep of allowing her to emphasise the generational break between her FN, and the more openly authoritarian and classically fascist FN of her father. Along with claiming that her party isn't racist (a claim easy enough to rebut had Marr bothered doing the most cursory homework), she was allowed to burnish her own "anti-fascism" by calling the Holocaust - the historic culmination of Europe's fascist experience - the central feature of the Second World War. Famously, Jean-Marie Le Pen referred to it as a detail.

What then is the point in all this, apart from showing the dismal standard of Marr's journalism? I'm not quite sure the BBC know either, though it does smack of the liberal naivete you can often find in its circles. "That Marine Le Pen is interesting and controversial, let's have her on." The worrying thing, however, is the actual content of the interview. Prattling on to her heart's content, there was very little, if anything, that hasn't already spilled forth from the mouths of UKIP and right wing Tory politicians. Nothing Le Pen said hasn't already found itself expressed - often, more stridently - in editorials and hatchet jobs. Our politics have become so poisoned that her small-minded anti-Islam, anti-foreigner, anti-EU scapegoating idiocies don't seem all that horrifying any more. And thanks to Andrew Marr, he's just helped normalise the reception Le Pen and her hate-fuelled mob can expect in Britain.

Short Notes on Populism

Brexit, Trump. Trump, Brexit. Brexit Brexit. Trump. Trump. What disasters. And it's not over yet, what with actual fascists lining up to take the presidencies of Austria and France. It's as if the 2008 crash was the nuclear explosion, and the collapse of political establishments across the West fold as the slow coming blast wave bursts them apart. Politics is poisoned, and it's difficult to see how it can be bent in a positive direction.

Offering their own solutions come Owen Jones for the left, and Ryan Shorthouse for the right. As you might expect, I'm inclined to concur with the former rather than the latter. Owen recommends that the left ride the populist, anti-establishment wave rather than leave it to the Farages of this world, and re-embed ourselves in our working class communities. This sounds like a very straight forward aim, but for one thing. Hasn't leftist populism already taken over the Labour Party? Jeremy Corbyn might be an unusual populist, when you consider his style is the very antithesis of the tub-thumping charismatic leader. He doesn't talk in simple soundbites like the new US president-elect, preferring instead policy-heavy talking points. And the Labour leader is very well aware the party has to push policies that deliver for our working class support. You see, Corbyn is a populist in as far as he opposes the aspirations and the interests of those locked out (or perceive themselves as such) of the system to a battered policy consensus that puts business and the markets above all else. It hasn't and won't likely fly with the media in the future, but that would be the case if a charismatic leader replaced Jeremy anyway. Trying to make the populism we've got work rather than wishing for a new one might be a good start to the left trying to take it seriously.

As for Ryan, coming from a conservative background he's occupying very different terrain. He opposes the populist wave and calls for a struggle against "anti-establishmentarianism". Almost as catchy as the 'for constitutional fidelity' strap line used by independent US presidential contender, Evan McMullin. Ryan's piece is useful because he offers a defence of the established order. For him, the establishment is a vital component of any functioning democracy, and the people who constitute it - the politicians, the top coppers and civil servants, the business folks and the bankers, etc. - are Very Decent People who've worked jolly hard to get where they are. Besides, if they were no good they wouldn't have made it in the first place. While it would be easy to lampoon Ryan's starry-eyed defence, there are plenty of liberals who, in an honest moment, would agree with him. 

Nevertheless, he does make an important point. Despite the flux in our politics, most people are relatively happy with their circumstances. This can mean one of two things. One, that the populist shift is a passing political phase, at least as far as Britain is concerned. Theresa May need not worry as she haphazardly patches up the Thatcherite settlement. Or the other, more frightening conclusion, is that people are satisfied with their own lives in the sense that they no longer blame shit things happening on themselves. Unemployment, not my fault. House prices, not my fault. Huge debt, not my fault. Insecurity, not my fault. The populist turn differs in its Corbynist and Farageist variants, mobilising as it does different groups of people around opposed political projects, but simultaneously they might well represent a rejection of individuating social problems. Hence the apparent incongruence between rates of self-satisfaction and the anti-political establishment mood. If you're in the business of salvaging a hegemonic project, seeing one of its key pillars in such a state of disrepair is enough to make any conservative ideologue nervous.

Why Did We Call It Wrong?

Some didn't. No doubt they're feeling smug as others flail around in horror. But for the bulk of "us", the commentariat people spanning the academic pundits specialising in voting behaviour, the professional commentators paid for their opinion-forming opinions, and neither forgetting those weirdos who write about politics because they want to, Tuesday represented a unanimity of failure. That so few called it for Trump goes beyond bad analysis: it's a social phenomenon. How then did everyone get it wrong?

Well, for starters, we didn't. We were wrong, and yet we were right too. Not only did Hillary Clinton win the popular vote, she might surpass Trump's tally by some two million once all the ballots are counted. So yes, all the analyses were right that the GOP wouldn't out poll the Democrats - and the size of that margin could give Trump added extra legitimacy problems later on. Yet, despite knowing about the electoral college, too many of us treated the contest as if it was a simple popularity contest. The vagaries of this anti-democratic and archaic stitch-up system were rarely factored in.

The second point was polling. Most people writing about American politics, including Americans writing about politics, are removed from the action on the ground. You have to take what passes as evidence as your guide. And that, traditionally, has been opinion polling. While they were a bit all over the place, they favoured a Clinton outcome as per the final vote tally. Yet they also posted clear leads in the crucial battleground states, including Wisconsin where not a single poll put Trump on top. In Britain, the experience of the 2015 general election and Brexit should, by now, have taught us to treat polling with caution. On each occasion, they've been able to pick up movements in opinion but not the actual figures. Sucks to be them, sucks to be fooled by them.

And then there are the demographics. Asked about it in the lead up, like many others I couldn't see how Trump might win with such a coalition arrayed against him. Surely the bulk vote of America's ethnic and sexual minorities, allied to a sizeable chunk of white people would be enough to bury his chances? As we know, they weren't. The white middle class and well-to-do base of the GOP turned out in the states Trump needed them to turn out in, while the Democrat vote deflated. All the stars aligned for a Clinton win, and without anything else intervening we went with that.

Lastly, there's a strange sort of groupthink. In my bones, I felt we weren't going to win the general election, that Leave would put us on course for exiting the EU, and Trump was set to come out on top. But I ignored it, took Tony Blair's advice and had a heart transplant, substituting emotion for the cool analysis of hard numbers. This, however, was a conceit. The fear of the alternatives engendered a herd wisdom that appeared to have a close relationship to the simulated results of polling and extrapolations of demographics, but this was coincidental. In truth, commentators hostile to Trump right across the spectrum of opinion fooled themselves into think that he couldn't win because, well, he just couldn't. In the same way Britain just wouldn't leave the EU, how Labour wouldn't vote for Jeremy Corbyn (twice), how the Conservatives wouldn't be victorious in 2015. Being wedded to the established way of doing things, whether cheerleader or critic, meant projecting its assumptions onto a wider electorate. They couldn't possibly support ....

How to prevent this from happening again? Going in the opposite direction and forecasting doom and gloom is not an answer. Treating polling data more critically is the easy thing. Keeping a sociological imagination is necessary but not sufficient. One has to be alive to the play of tendencies and counter tendencies, their strength and weaknesses. But most importantly, and more difficult more difficult to accomplish is sustained self-criticism combined with the checking and rechecking of one's underlying assumptions, including acknowledging and allowing for your stakes in a issue and how that might colour your findings. It's not just fresh thinking that's needed now, but critical thinking and intellectual honesty. If that can be managed, then fewer in may be blindsided by so-called freak events in future.

Race, Class, and Donald Trump

How did the unthinkable happen? If only a short blog post hours after the biggest upset in world politics since the Soviet Bloc went under could provide the answers. Hot takes rarely do. Usually we have to wait months - years for perspective to form, and see an event in its singular aspect. Unfortunately, we do not have the time, the people who are going to be at the sharp end of a Trump presidency don't have the time. We need to understand what has happened not because it's a jolly fun thing to do, though there will be plenty who build careers off the back of providing comment and analysis of this kind; we need to get to grips with it to stop it from happening again. Here are some very sketchy thoughts.

The knee jerk nonsense of sundry liberals, which is already trying to carve a space for itself as the received wisdom on matters Trump, is most unhelpful. That the centre could not hold because the majority of white voters, some 62% of the population, voted because racism is the wrong conclusion. Yes, it was white people, but to mangle a phrase from a different context, not all white people. It was the well-off white folks, the middle class (not in the traditional American sense of the term) and the vast legion of small business people who are the constituencies who tipped it. In other words, the beginning of wisdom about Trump's victory begins with taking race and class together, of doing a touch of maligned intersectional analysis.

Just so we're clear, racism is as American as Mom and McDonald's. All through the American Revolution's heroic phase and down to today, the division of labour has always been heavily racialised. All whites, regardless of poverty and destitution, could draw deep from ideological resources that justified and maintained slavery to create an imagined superiority, and one that has blighted generations of white Americans. Of course, the Jim Crow laws in the South institutionalised racist supremacy and though they're long gone, the regular killing of black men by mainly white police forces show it hasn't gone away. Not completely separate from this is racial segregation. Despite being the great melting pot, it's probably fair to say that post-imperial Britain, with all its problems and issues, has proven much more successful in integrating ethnic minorities than the land born entirely from immigration. However, segregation and the racialisation of work, like all over the advanced West, had started to dissolve. More advanced in the socially progressive, metropolitan coastal states, it had a long way to go elsewhere, but nevertheless showed the interior its future. For the majority of white America, evidence of integration's insidious creep was felt through immigration. Year after year, more Hispanics appeared waiting tables in their restaurants, tending their gardens, working in their hotels, their service stations, their supermarkets and malls. They were a visual reminder that white America is a group in relative decline.

This is only part of the story. The race anxiety vote theory doesn't stand up. None of this is new, it was the case in 2008 and 2012 when enough white people voted for Obama. If whites are essentially racist, why the variance over time, and why were plenty prepared to vote for the mixed race fella with the very non Anglo-Saxon name? Economics might have something to do with it too. Neoliberal economics and governance, the subordination of all to the demands of capital and the whims of the market ceaselessly undermine our senses of self-security. The lot of the majority, regardless of ethnicity and race, is to sell our bodies and our brains, and therefore our freedom for a set period every week in return for a wage or a salary. For too many of us, there's even uncertainty whether there will be work enough available to pay the bills. Doubling down on this way of being has been the great transition of the last four decades, where the memories of industrial capital echo around crumbling factories. Manufacturing jobs, Proper Jobs, have either disappeared, got themselves exported, or absorbed into manufacturing machinery. They are now replaced by office jobs, service jobs, caring jobs, of jobs that no longer make things and instead produce the intangible. Across the Western world, but particularly in America and Britain, governments have overseen and connived with the abandonment of millions by capital. These are the left behind, a strata of people with a skill set and a mind for another time, and they have been discarded. That is the unmissable, crucial context for Trump's victory in the rustbelt states.

Yet, as we have seen, while white workers of modest means did vote for Trump, fewer than half of them did. It was the better off. How then to explain this? It doesn't seem to make sense. In studies of voting behaviour concerned with economic voting, summed up by another Clinton in a happier time as "it's the economy, stupid", researchers typically distinguish between two sub-categories. There is 'pocket book voting' (behaviour conditioned by the prospective impacts on one's finances, and/or those of relatives and friends) and 'sociotropic voting', which is where a voter looks at the health of the wider economy over and above personal circumstances. All aspiring governments construct narratives that address the personal and the social, and they are emphasised and de-emphasised when expediency requires. In Trump's case, the pocket book was addressed by cutting taxes, and attacking higher health premiums for the better off to pay for Obamacare. The macro story was about restoring industry to the rustbelt by repatriating it from the Far East and Latin America, and curbing immigration to ensure the right (white) people got the jobs. As a pitch, on paper it seems something you might expect white working class voters to get on board with. And some of them did. But it was the white middle class who were proper beguiled. Why?

Generations of Marxists have talked about the petit bourgeois - small business people - as if caught between the fundamental forces of capitalism. On the one hand, big capital can out compete and always threatens to put the smallholder out of business, throwing them down into the wage-earning mass. On the other, ungrateful employees are always bellyaching about not having enough hours, wanting pay rises, having more time off, wanting more autonomy, and, through incompetence or, heaven forfend, strike action threaten the viability of the business. To occupy the position of the petit bourgeois is to surrender to the icy grip of permanent existential dread, of not having mastery over one's fate (despite the promise of being one's own boss), and feeling hemmed in and under siege in the market place and at work. Second, for privileged layers of white people, the managers and the professionals, they share a certain outlook with their small business counterparts. Their good fortune is a consequence of their talents and graft. The privileges accumulated, the good salaries, nice house, multiple cars, expensive holidays, and the million and one trappings of the good life are theirs By The Sweat Of Their Brows. And they too are anxious it could all get take away, either by economic crisis leading to redundancy and unemployment, or ever-encroaching taxes and health insurance premiums. For both these groups, their sources of status anxiety are bound up with the great intangibles of class dynamics and process, they are therefore very likely to respond sociotropically to economic policy. Trump's pledge to decent, secure, well-paid manly jobs, to get Motor City motoring again perversely had more of an impact on the non-working class segment of white America than the worker. By giving the impression of a return to stability for the worker, so too the more excitable petit bourgeois is swept up in enthusiasm.

There's no real excuse for us commentators and so-called professionals not to have seen a Trump victory coming. His platform is backward and deeply troubling, but his campaign team - and The Donald himself - understood that stability and security, served as it was in racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric might appeal to enough people. And so it proved. One of the reasons why Hillary Clinton's campaign didn't, despite just edging the popular vote, was because it stripped out emotion and values. Technocratic managerialism was the order of the day, just as it was for the failed Remain campaign, just as it was for Labour's failed 2015 election campaign. For the future, assuming a Trump presidency affords us the luxury of having one, there has to be a revolution in the Democrats. It needs a vision of the good life and not rely on how awful Trump's presidency is bound to be. It needs to challenge the nativism and racism, and win enough people back to a positive programme that understands insecurity and is sincere about tackling it. They need to construct their own American story around a credible, non-political establishment candidate. It has to fight shit values with good values, not pander to them. Unfortunately, though it's early days yet, shrieks of liberal despair across today's media aren't good. Some have not only learned nothing about Trump's shock victory, they don't want to learn anything. If the Democrats choose to listen to these people again, come 2020 there's going to be exactly the same outcome.