First thoughts on the elections

04/05/2008 by admin.

The election results on May 1st should be a wake up call for the left. The size of the Tory recovery - and the election of the BNP to the London assembly - signal a shift to the right. Ten years of dog-whistle politics - from both the Tories and New Labour -  found their echo on election day. In this new situation, the importance of the Connvention of the Left should not be under-estimated. We need to look at the state of British society with clear eyes and an honest appraisal of where we are and where we need to go. Below is the initial response of RESPECT to the election results. 

 Clive Searle

 The local and London elections have been bad for the left and for progressive voters everywhere. The backlash against the Brown government, which many now feel has betrayed them on the economic and social fundamentals, has pushed Labour’s share of the vote below the Liberal Democrats nationally.

In London, Johnson is now mayor, although the final margin after second preferences was lower than many predicted. Much worse, the BNP got a first seat on the Assembly. The Liberal Democrats also had a bad day in London, with their vote down substantially and it was a pretty mixed picture for them elsewhere.

For parties to the left of Labour, results were also generally poor with some notable exceptions, particularly but not only in Birmingham. In London the best results were posted by Respect with almost 60,000 list votes, 2.43%, but this was still below the deposit saving level and less than half what was needed to get a seat on the Assembly. The combined left vote, excluding the Greens, was only 3.61% on the list.

On the positive side for Respect, winning another seat on Birmingham council was a sharp ray of light. This now gives us all three councillors in Sparkbrook.

Another good result was both the constituency and list votes in East London, which clearly show we have built on our vote after a long period of internal difficulties. The constituency vote for Hanif Abdulmuhit increased by almost 7,000 from the 2004 result.

The local roots Respect has established in East London checked the forward march of the BNP. Without Respect East London could have begun to look like the 1970s with the BNP pushing into third place. Instead, Respect is one of the two major parties along with Labour in parts of Tower Hamlets and Newham, we beat the BNP on the list vote and pushed the Liberal Democrats into fifth place.

There was clearly a massive turnout in some parts of the Tory suburbs, a vote with some pretty nasty racist overtones following a campaign of vilification against Livingstone and his support for ethnic minority communities in general and the Muslim community in particular.

There is little for the left to be celebrating after these results. Many Labour voters will be rightly gutted at what has happened.

There will be many battles ahead against this big shift to the right. What we need to be doing now is regrouping our forces with a determination that the resistance starts here and starts now. George Galloway, Salma Yaqoob and Respect intend to be at the heart of that resistance pursuing the approach of building a plural left opposition.

Posted in Power and politics | 2 Comments »

Towards The Convention of The Left: Progress so Far.

17/04/2008 by admin.

Towards The Convention of The Left: Progress so Far.  

The following is an entirely personal account of where things have got to with this initiative and, in particular, an appeal for further contributions to the blog discussion.  

I write as one of the dozen or so people who thought it would be a good idea to hold the “convention”. Since that decision was made a few months ago a growing number of people from in and around Manchester have got involved. Probably as many as 50 people have attended at least one meeting, and from a wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives.  

At the last meeting on 31 March comrades from the SWP attended for the first time, as well as comrades from the LRC ( Labour Representation Committee) There were also comrades from Red Pepper,  Respect Renewal, The Green Party (myself !), The Labour Party, Permanent Revolution, The Communist Party of Britain and the AWL (Alliance for Workers Liberty)- sorry if I’ve missed anybody out- as well as a number of comrades who are not members of any political grouping.   

All of us attended as individuals, rather than as delegates from particular groups, and there appeared to be (as there has been throughout) an attempt to focus on what we all agreed upon and shared in common, rather than what divides us.

On Monday the comrades from Socialist Worker appeared anxious to ensure that our plans for Saturday 20 September complimented rather than clashed with the planned Stop The War Coalition demonstration which is likely to be held in Manchester on the same day.   The meeting affirmed this and the conference which we have planned for the Saturday will certainly break in the afternoon to allow participants to join the march.

We also discussed the possibility of moving the conference to the following day or possibly running it over the two days (The Friends Meeting House is not available for most of Sunday 21 September but there is a possibility of a booking at The University Students Union).  In addition to the “main” meeting at the weekend there is also an intention to hold a number of meetings on Monday, Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday (rooms have been booked and initial themes have been agreed)   

The meeting on Monday began to discuss how best to use the space that we have. It was agreed that although much of the focus of our monthly organising meetings would necessarily be on the arrangements for the week itself we also hoped to encourage discussion and debate beyond Manchester in the months between now and September. Ideally such a debate might encourage comrades to attend our conference and possibly get involved in an ongoing project to build something more permanent thereafter.  

Although discussions at our Manchester meeting have been largely positive and encouraging there has been limited contact from comrades beyond the Manchester area. I at least am anxious to find out if anybody else is interested in what we are trying to do.

If you are please let us know.   

Peter Allen

Posted in Planning | 3 Comments »

The missing theme - trade unionsim at home and abroad

17/04/2008 by admin.

A theme on trade unionism and workplace organisation in the UK and internationally

As was pointed out at the ‘big’ meeting, there is a major gap in the themes of the Convention as there is nothing specifically aimed at trade unionists or taking up trade union issues other than privatisation in the UK and internationally. A theme on trade unionism could focus both on drawing together current experiences and on dealing with the major political issues facing trade unionists.

I suggest setting up another sub-group to work out a detailed plan with speakers etc and a meeting to get together those interested specifically in this area.Here are some ideas to kick around for possible sessions. These are only suggestions and obviously open to amendments, additions and deletions but I think they might form the basis for a viable, relevant and interesting stream.

Organising the unorganised:·
Young workers·
Migrant workers

Where now for the unions?:
Should the unions still support Labour?
Rank and file organisation-Shop stewards network/trades councils; union lefts
Current disputes / Public sector pay freeze

International labour:
Solidarity with Iraqi & Iranian trade unionists
Fighting sweatshop labour: union organisation worldwide
Chinese workers and the Olympics IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE INVOLVED, PLEASE CONTACT ME BY EMAIL AT:
BRUCE@BRUCEROB.EU

Comradely,Bruce Robinson

Posted in Power and politics, People not profit, Statements, Planning | 1 Comment »

What they’re saying about the Convention of the Left

07/04/2008 by admin.

The Convention is gaining new sponsors every week. Read what some of them have to say below (all in personal capacity unless otherwise stated).

Joan Abrams, vice-chair Greater Manchester CND, CND National Council, Labour party member

“Political policies will not change towards the left until a socialist left is seen as an important political constituency. Only by giving a voice to a strong and convincing movement towards socialist policies may we turn the tide against the currrent assumed acceptance of a right wing consensus.”

Dr John Lister, author, The NHS After 60: for patients or profits?

“In this 60th Anniversary Year of the NHS it is vital for socialists to recognise what a massive asset we still have to defend in the NHS, a public service that reaches parts the private sector cannot or will not reach – because they do not offer the prospect of profits.”

Ken Loach, film director

“We should all welcome this convention. The fragmentation of the Left benefits the warmongers, privatisers and polluters. This meeting should help to affirm a Socialist alternative and to discuss how we can move forward. There is a mood throughout Europe to develop the anti-capitalist Left - we need to be part of that.”

John Nicholson, former Labour Deputy Leader Manchester Council and Convenor of the Socialist Alliance.

“We need to start defining a new way of working (even to reclaim that word “new”), so that we can come together in practical campaigns, regardless of the organisations we may belong to, so that we can stop the war and nuclear proliferation, the cuts and privatisation, the racism and environmental destruction.”

Councillor Susan Press, Calder Valley CLP, Chair Calderdale NUJ

“The Convention Of The Left is a serious opportunity for those of us who feel disillusioned by New Labour’s neo-liberalism to discuss the way forward . As a member of the LRC, I wish to carry on the fight for socialist values within the Labour Party. supporting left MPs like John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn. But I am also keen to campaign on issues like globalisation, peace and climate change with comrades from across the political spectrum . I look forward to taking part in the Convention.“

Raphie de Santos, Scottish Socialist Voice editorial board member

” I whole heartedly support the convention of the left. We need more developments like this that can bring together all those who are looking to build a left socialist alternative to New Labour’s failed neo-liberalism. Many comrades from the Scottish Socialist Party will coming down to Manchester to support and join in the discussions and share our experiences of left unity in Scotland.”

Clive Searle, on behalf of Greater Manchester Respect Renewal

“For too long we have been told by New Labour, and the Tories before them, that there ‘is no alternative’ to the free market and the wars that support it. This convention gives the Left, in all its variety, the chance to show that there is an alternative, to clarify what it looks like and discuss how we can work together to achieve it.”

Derek Wall, Green Party principal speaker.

“I would be very pleased to have my name lent to this venture.I am been very encouraged both by talking to John McDonnell and with a lot of positive stuff coming out from Morning Star that the left can work in practical non sectarian ways to promote change. Keep up all your good work”

Posted in Statements | 1 Comment »

A Socialist Vision of Health Care in a World Out of Balance

10/03/2008 by admin.

As socialists we continue to defend the NHS but we need to ask “what are we defending?” by Norma Turner

 The NHS

The founding principles of the NHS we support and hold onto. These were: equitable, universal health care free at the point of use, financed on the basis of people’s ability to pay through progressive taxation. Providing health services would neither be an opportunity to make money nor a charity. To provide a comprehensive, universal, equitable service, the organisation and funding needed to be integrated across the country.

Unfortunately, right from the conception of the NHS, compromises meant these principles could never be fully achieved. Financial restraints meant that only hospitals were included, making it a service for sickness rather than health. GP surgeries, dentists, opticians, community pharmacists were left as private concerns linked to but not accountable to the NHS. Ambulance services, community health, prevention, child health and public health were the responsibility of local authorities. Distinction was made between health and social care. Within the NHS the power of the consultants ensured mental health and geriatric services were marginalised. But the worst compromise was that private health care was allowed to run alongside the NHS.

These compromises have provided the private corporations with a way in to public funding; and successive governments have helped this process. This current Labour Government has been by far the worst, and most inexcusable. Their project is one of changing the NHS from a public service with some semblance of democratic accountability into a full health care market.

In my opinion this process is now beyond the point of no return; it will be fully in place within the lifetime of this Government. The general public will not feel the effects for a few years because the private health care industry is not interested in a purely private market. Its interests lie in becoming for-profit providers in a basic health system funded out of taxation while also providing, for additional fees, a higher quality of service for those who can afford it.

As socialists we can remind people of the founding principles. Before the NHS, the system had only served the rich and the rest lived in fear of ill health. Now people have no experience of a time before the NHS and therefore it is harder to convince them of its importance.

But there is an increasingly unwilling public appetite for the privatisation of everything from private armies, prisons, probation, transport, housing, education, health and social services, water, and on it goes to include the air we breathe. We can link the opposition to what is happening to the health service to the anti-capitalist struggle against the rush to privatise to make the rich richer and the poor poorer across the globe.

A Socialist Alternative

To link these struggles we also have to link our vision. A socially responsible programme of community health care cannot be run outside of a socialist context. I think we can find inspiration and ideas by looking to Cuba.

Article 49 of the Socialist Constitution of the Republic of Cuba states:
“Everyone has the right to the care and protection of their health. The state guarantees this right: by offering free hospital and medical services…; by offering free dental treatment; by developing plans for sanitary efforts, health education, periodic medical exams, general vaccination, and other preventive medical means. In these plans and activities the entire population participates through the social and mass organisations.”

This commitment is achieved through a nationally integrated system of public health in which social legislation about its application is unified with the training programmes of the workers. Public health is integrated with social welfare. Family planning is free, abortion is available on demand. There is a nationalised pharmaceutical industry, a high doctor to patient ratio, and no-one is without access to a doctor either geographically or financially.

Every GP lives in the community they serve, they are highly trained and chosen for training not just on academic achievement but more importantly social criteria. The doctors are part of community activities addressing environmental problems, sources of community stress, e.g. bad housing, family dynamics. They also are involved in organising social, sporting and fun events. There are political structures which enable the whole community to participate in making life decisions around what the community needs and wants.

This works because people are educated from nursery school throughout their whole lives, about health issues, including physical, psychological, social and political aspects needed for a healthy person, and because they develop an obligation to their community. Any health service requires people to adhere to principles of co-operation, equality, self-government and individual freedom.

In Britain the biggest providers of health and social care are not health and social service professionals, it is mothers and carers who provide over £87 billion worth of unpaid care a year.

Long term health depends on strengths of social networks, family structures and economic self-sufficiency. We need a system for instilling values in our young people – of caring and sharing, for community aspirations and involvement in civil society. This requires a high level of education and an understanding and commitment against discrimination, because of class, race, sex, sexual orientation, age and disability.

The current provision of health and social care defines people by what they lack or need and has resulted in people losing a sense of what they have to give, thus becoming inhumane to others.

Children in Cuba learn that the person beside them is healthy if they are kind to each other. Here in this country children learn to grab what they can for themselves, resulting in increased mental illness and suicide among young people.

A World Out of Balance

The other vital consideration in creating a vision of health is tackling global warming. We live in a world out of balance. Thanks to climate change and the results of the free market, we will be faced with both new diseases and old diseases re-emerging.

Already because of increased poverty and poor housing there is an increase of tuberculosis and rickets. Climate change causing floods and testing an ageing sewage system will see the return of enteric water-borne diseases. Also insects will thrive due to global warming in places they previously did not live. We have more mosquitoes and in time malaria will be introduced. We have already seen blue tongue disease in animals from midges. Other bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites will appear, causing disease in humans, plants and animals, threatening the eco-system. Any future discussion on health must be set in the context of strategies of environmental activists.

In conclusion a National Health Service can only be realised within a socialist ideology within which structures of organisation are developed to involve the participation of everyone in the needs of their own communities, linking education and health with environmental issues within an international perspective against global capitalism.

Easy – we start with nationalising the pharmaceutical industry.

Posted in People not profit, Statements | 1 Comment »

How Can The Left Develop Agreed Policy and Practice

10/03/2008 by admin.

by John Nicholson

The Left is weak, organisationally. This doesnt mean a lack of campaigning activities - stop the war demonstrations, CND’s Easter rally at Aldermaston, Heathrow camps, solidarity with Gaza, support for trade unionists in Shelter, NHS Mental Health, and education. And maybe weakness means fluidity -  anything could happen?

But we are weak.

So, at this time, would it be good for The Left to seek to develop some agreement on both policies and practices - which could be useful for the future? For example, what should our policy be on migration - “no one is illegal” - no immigration controls, no borders? - and then how should we be organising this in practice - through a broad campaign against deportations and for the right to work? with a distinct current arguing for no-one is illegal position within it? This is a two-fold debate - what we want, and how do we get it.

Or perhaps we could ask questions rather than setting out policy - what should we support in Pakistan/Afghanistan/Iraq/Iran? what is our vision for socialist healthcare? should education be secular? should public services be re-nationalised - and if so how? what is a 21st century socialist response to the consequences of neo-liberal economics? can the planet be saved without socialism?

And how should we organise to achieve our demands?

[Answers on a blog please - www.socialistunity.com, www.conventionoftheleft.org.uk]

Or we could build up a programme for The Left from existing examples (such as Socialist Outlook’s recent four point outline - www.isg-fi.org.uk; or the Communist Party of Britain’s Left Wing Programme - www.communist-party.org.uk) and debate these openly in order to arrive at some broad agreement.

Then we can discuss how we should organise ourselves, to put such policies into practice: - generalising from the example above, for example, perhaps through a broad organisation with a distinct socialist current within it?

Could we debate any or all of this, over the weeks and months ahead? Would it be useful for the Convention of The Left to address further in September?

Posted in Planning | 1 Comment »

Themes of the Convention of The Left

27/02/2008 by admin.

By Bill Jeffries

If Unity is Strength, then the Left is very weak, not only has it suffered from three decades of defeat, but since the late 1990s has systematically failed to take advantage of the many opportunities for it to substantially extend its influence.

Most notably out of the enormous stop the war movement it failed to build a mass alternative to New Labour, rather the opposite, the anti-war movement, in spite of its many awe inspiring achievements, consolidated the Left’s fragmentation, its general retreat from class politics and overall decline. 

Faced with this situation it is a good time to re-think where the Left has gone wrong, what are the lessons and the next concrete steps we can take together to re-build the movement. There are obviously many different answers to these questions, but first among them must be, in a general sense, an appreciation of the situation and the tasks that it posed activists.

Notwithstanding the scale of the anti war movement, and growth of climate change activism, the anti-capitalist movement, ESF/WSF and so on, the overall level of class struggle remains weak. Strike figures are lower than the 1950s. Trade union organisation is down when compared with the 1970s/80s.

The Labour Party left is a shadow of its former self, while the various left regroupment initiatives, the SLP, SSP, Socialist Alliance, CNWP, Solidarity, Respect, Respect Renewal, LRC etc. without wanting to get into the specifics, have failed to unite the whole left within them. 

Faced with this fragmentation, what can the Convention of the Left do? 

Firstly it can provide a forum for the Left of all shades to discuss their differences and what unites them, their assessment of the world, where they think the priorities for struggle are, what are the key issues that face working people today. 

Secondly it can start to co-ordinate activists within these areas to make their struggles more effective. 

And finally in the light of its success with steps one and two it can consider future options.

Posted in Power and politics, Statements, Planning | 6 Comments »

Trade Unionists must be the agents of human survival

27/02/2008 by admin.

By Roy Wilkes 

We now have almost universal agreement that Climate Change is happening and that it is a result of human activity. It was the IPCC’s 4^th Assessment Report, published less than a year ago, which drove the final nail into the coffin of climate skepticism. 

Up until then public opinion was seriously divided on the issue, even among sections of the left, and this was mainly due to the massive PR effort of the fossil fuel and auto industries.   

Of course, the vested interests that promoted climate skepticism for so many years still exist, and they are as rich, powerful and influential as ever. Globally, the top 10 corporations in 2006 by revenue were, in order of size: Exxon Mobil, Wal-Mart Stores, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, General Motors, Chevron, Daimler-Chrysler, Toyota, Ford and Conoco-Phillips, i.e.  4 oil companies, 5 auto manufacturers, and Wal-Mart.[1]

Royal Dutch Shell went on to post profits of £13.9 billion for 2007 (which works out at over £1.5 million per hour) – the biggest profit ever recorded for a UK company.[2]  These are very powerful forces. And although they are no longer taken seriously in promoting climate skepticism, they still exert a huge influence, particularly on US government policy. So instead of denying anthropogenic climate change, as he did until very recently, Bush now insists that, although the problem exists, it is best addressed through voluntary measures undertaken by business, and by the development of techno-fixes.    

But a recent survey of 500 top global corporations showed that climate change ranks only eighth in the concerns of big business, below increasing sales, reducing costs, developing new products and services, competing for talented staff, securing growth in emerging markets, innovation and technology. [3] 

And of course, as the recession bites deeper, climate change will fall even further down the agenda of big business, whose raison d’etre is and always has been to generate profit, and for whom everything else will always remain secondary.    

Even those governments that do claim to take climate change seriously, such as Gordon Brown’s New Labour, still rely on market mechanisms, in particular carbon trading, to ‘solve’ the problem. Unfortunately there are many within the environmental movement who harbour similar illusions in the capacity of the market to resolve this crisis.  Contraction and Convergence, the official policy of the British Green Party, is based on tradable emission rights. [4]   

But emissions trading schemes simply don’t work, as has been amply demonstrated by the EETS, although they do deliver big windfall profits, including to the biggest polluters. [5]   

And they don’t work for a very simple reason: there is a fundamental contradiction between the driving force of capital – which strives for infinite growth and accumulation – and the preservation of a delicately balanced and finite ecosystem.   

Alienation   

So why aren’t we all responding to this enormous danger, which many scientists now regard as the greatest threat ever to the survival of humanity, with a greater sense of urgency?  It seems irrational somehow.  But what this apparent irrationality illustrates very clearly is the depth of our alienation.    

Capitalism starts by alienating us from our own labour power, that is from our capacity to work, which is the most human of all our characteristics.  It therefore alienates us from our own nature, from our ‘species being’ as Marx describes it.  And by forcing us to compete, each of us against everyone else, in every sphere of our lives, it alienates us from each other.    

Of course, it serves the interests of capital for us to exist as atomised individuals.  And it serves the same interests to encourage an atomised response to climate change, one in which we are exhorted to examine our individual ‘carbon footprints’, and made to feel guilty about the way we as individuals live our lives.  This is yet another attempt to make us pay the price for a crisis that is not of our making, to divert our attention from those who are truly responsible. 

Unfortunately many environmentalists fall for this con trick, hook, line and sinker, and thereby inhibit the growth of a real mass movement.  But most workers don’t fall for it, realizing instead that reducing our individual carbon footprints will not make one iota of difference.  A different level of response is required, a collective response, a political response at the level of the state. Climate change is not nor has it ever been an issue of ethics, it is fundamentally an issue of politics, of power.    

As workers we don’t choose our conditions of life: we don’t choose where and how our electricity is generated, we merely flick switches as powerless consumers; we don’t choose to spend hours stuck in traffic jams, with the only alternative a privatized, overpriced and inadequate public transport system; nor would we choose poorly insulated, private housing if we had any real alternative. These conditions are imposed upon us.   It is only by collective action that we will we be able to develop real solutions to a threat as momentous as climate change.

And this collective action begins with collective struggle, mass struggle, and will lead, if we are successful in our struggle, to collective planning, to collective control over the resources of the planet, so that we can allocate those resources not to generating profit for the few but to the satisfaction of real human need, beginning of course with the need to repair the enormous damage done to our habitat by centuries of capitalism.     

But capitalism doesn’t just alienate us from our own labour power and from each other.  By its drive to turn everything into a commodity, including now the very air that we breathe, capitalism alienates us not only from our own nature but from all of nature.  Commodity fetishism casts a veil of mystification over the products of our labour, masking the real social relations behind their production, masking even the nature of production itself as the metabolism of humanity with nature.  An artificial rhythm of daily life is imposed upon us – we sell our labour power, within strictly enforced time frames, we buy commodities (often on credit), we consume them, we worry about debt and fractured relationships, we seek distraction from the bourgeois mass media and its deified celebrities – and all of this gives us the illusion that we are separate and apart from the natural world, that we are insulated from that world.    

But of course, we are not separate from nature at all, we are very much a part of nature, and as such we are utterly reliant on our natural habitat, on our environment.  But our social consciousness is a product of these multi-layered alienations, and this is especially true in the imperial heartlands, in the so-called ‘developed world’. And social consciousness will be transformed into ecological consciousness not through an academic process of pure reason but through a process of struggle.   

And this struggle for a sustainable environment will inevitably become a central aspect of the global class struggle.  As IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachauri observed, “It is the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit.” [6] The poor blacks of New Orleans would certainly concur with that.  And increasingly it will be the poor in Britain, those who cannot afford houses other than in the flood plains, those who cannot afford the ever rising home insurance premiums, who will suffer first and most from the freak weather events that will undoubtedly increase in frequency and intensity over the coming years.   

So ecological consciousness will develop hand in hand with class consciousness, as it becomes increasingly clear that capitalism not only generates war, poverty and insecurity, but that it also threatens our very survival as a species.    

We are starting to see the emergence of a mass movement on this issue, a truly global movement. And although its fiercest battles will initially be in the global South, for example among the indigenous peoples of Latin America, who are fighting to defend the rainforests from the incursions of big agribusiness and the logging companies, nevertheless their repercussions will be felt globally, and will impact on social consciousness even in the imperial heartlands.   

 Eco-socialism 

 Marx and Engels were ecological thinkers who developed a profound understanding of the environmental impact of capitalism and of humanity’s alienation from nature. Of course they weren’t aware of the greenhouse effect, but they wrote extensively on those aspects of environmental science that were known at the time, Engels in The Condition of the Working Class in England, and in Dialectics of Nature, and Marx in his writings on the dislocation of the soil cycle that arose with capitalist urbanisation. 

 Indeed, Marx’s studies of Epicurus and the materialist conception of nature preceded and gave rise to his materialist conception of history.[7]

Some of the most advanced ecological thinking of the twentieth century was developed by early Soviet scientists, such as Vernadsky, who published The Biosphere in 1926, several decades before western environmentalists re-discovered the concept.    

So, why have western Marxists concentrated almost exclusively on social science rather than natural science in their thinking for the past half century or more, to the extent that eco-socialism seems like something new?  This is one of the more unfortunate legacies of Stalinism, which has distorted so many of our traditions.    Stalin purged an entire generation of Soviet conservationists, including Uranovsky and Vavilov. Ecology was condemned as a bourgeois pseudo-science (and how many socialists since then have fallen for this terrible and dangerous distortion, and not just from within the Stalinist traditioin either?)  But why did it happen? 

The theory and practice of socialism in one country required the Soviet state to try and ‘outgrow’ capitalism by using economic planning to generate more output than could be attained by the market economies of the West.  Ecological ideas got in the way of this policy, which is often described as ‘productivism’, and which was of course doomed to fail, with the Soviet Union itself degenerating into ecocidal tyranny.  

 Eco-socialism is about freeing Marxism from the distortions of Stalinism, it is about reclaiming a Marxism that is both humane and ecological, and whose goal is the thoroughgoing disalienation of humanity through the agency of its only truly progressive class, the proletariat.    

One of our first priorities as eco-socialists is to encourage the growth of an ecological class consciousness within the organized labour movement. Historically there has been something of an antagonism between environmental activists on the one hand and trade unionists, or more precisely the trade union bureaucracy, on the other. Trade unionists have tended to regard environmentalism as a threat to jobs, and environmentalists distrust the unions because they defend even the most polluting industries.  Both sides are right about the other but for the wrong reasons.   The trade union bureaucracy allows capital free reign to direct production in whatever way it sees fit, as long as it provides their members with jobs; indeed we often hear trade union leaders proclaiming the need for ‘our’ industries to be ‘competitive’; in other words they explicitly accept the imperative of capitalist accumulation and rarely question what is produced or how it is produced, except from a narrow health and safety perspective (or more recently from the perspective of ‘greening the workplace’.)   

 Many environmentalists, on the other hand, have taken managerial jobs within the big corporations in a vain attempt to reform them from within, while others continue to advocate pro-capitalist solutions to the environmental crisis.  As eco-socialists we have to organize to change this situation.  We want trades unionists to be a leading part of the mass movement on climate.  And we want environmental activists to recognize that to be effective their allegiance has to lie with organized labour, not with capital.    

300 trade unionists from every region of Britain and from a wide range of unions attended the Campaign against Climate Change Trade Union Conference on 9^th February. This was a historic event in that it started the process of resolving the antagonism between the unions and the environmental movement, by drawing trade unionists into the heart of the movement on climate change.    

But of course, we want to go further than this.  And in recognizing that capital can offer no real solution to this crisis, we start to raise the question, well who does have the solutions, and what will those solutions look like?  We want trade unionists to recognize that the solutions lie with themselves, that they need to start developing alternative plans of production, or at least to start thinking along those lines, to start thinking about taking control of production. There is no law of nature that says that trade unions have to be defenders of wages and conditions within the narrow confines of capitalism. 

At certain historic junctures unions can play a more progressive, even a revolutionary role.  And in the context of climate change, we are asking trades unionists to be nothing less than the agents of human survival.    

Roy Wilkes is a member of both the International Socialist Group and Respect Renewal.  He is secretary of the organizing committee of the Campaign against Climate Change Trade Union Conference.   

[1] http://www.endgame.org/corps-ranked.html

[2] Independent 31 Jan 2008 

 [3] Independent on Sunday 27 Jan 2008

[4] http://www.gci.org.uk/

[5] European Emissions Trading Scheme. http://www.sinkswatch.org/pubs/2007%2009%20Lessons%20from%20the%20European%20Emissions%20Trading%20Scheme%20_2_.pdf

[6] http://www.america.gov  6 April 2007

[7] See Marx’s Ecology, John Bellamy Foster, New York, 2000

Posted in Planet | 1 Comment »

What does it mean to democratise power?

25/02/2008 by admin.

Politics, Power and Participation: what does it mean to democratise power? by Hilary Wainwright

The Labour Party’s commitment to the common ownership included the commitment to ‘the best obtainable system of popular administration and control’. Here was a recognition, buried in labour movement history that democracy is something more than parliament: it’s also about popular control over how public resources and institutions are run. When Labour did finally bring parts of the country’s infrastructure and heavy industry into public ownership, the idea of ‘popular control’ was pretty much forgotten. Public control meant state control; socialism became increasingly identified with the state.

Traditions of popular participation and popular power were rediscovered – often in new ways – in the 60’s and the 70’s with the radical workplace trade unionism across Europe and through movements for social liberation: of young people, women, black people, gays and lesbians. A new impetus has been given recently to the idea of popular power by movements and radical political parties in Latin America in particular in the muncipalities of Brazil and the aspirations of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela.

These experiences in the South have inspired citizens in the North who find the possibilities of exercising democratic control over politics diminishing daily. People are demanding the right to share power with elected politicians. We are no longer prepared to trust them to act on our behalf. But as politicians sense the decline in their legitimacy, they too espouse the rhetoric of partcipation: communities and different social groups are being consulted ad nauseum while real power relations – of state and economic domination remain untouched. How do we develop the autonomy and strength of community groups and social and labour movements to challenge power rather than be incorporated by it?

We need to rethink left politics to answer this. Grass roots social movements of recent years – feminism, black movements, the global justice movement, gay and lesbian movements and radical parts of the trade union movement offer some tools for this rethinking. In practice they distinguish between two radically distinct meanings of power: on the one hand, power as the capacity to transform and on the other hand power as domination.

Historically the major parties of the left have tended to be built around a benevolent version of the second understanding of power: around winning the power to govern and using it paternalistically to meet the needs of the people. This has meant a politics focused around legislation and state action.

The social movements’ assertion of power as transformative capacity produced a break with this narrow definition of politics. It led to a far wider understanding of the scope of politics, way beyond the traditional focus on state, government and legislation, and involving the struggle for justice and dignity in all the relationships and institutions of our daily lives.

Posted in Power and politics, Statements | 5 Comments »

Invitation to be part of a Convention of The Left

13/02/2008 by admin.

The Manchester “Convention of The Left”, from the 20th -25th September, will bring together opponents of New Labour’s neo-liberal warmongering to discuss how we can develop unity in action - just a stone’s throwaway New Labour’s party conference. 

We want an entirely different world. One built by the working people for the working people, not based on profit, environmental destruction and oppression, but a socialist society.  We bring together people from different radical traditions - greens, lefts, internationalists and communists, civil liberties campaigners, anti-deportation fighters and trades unions, peace and public service campaigns – but united in our determination to combine our strengths and open a debate about how we can rebuild the left today.    

The Manchester Convention steering group invites anyone who wants to participate in, shape or promote the event to join us in Manchester on Sunday 24th February, at the Friends Meeting House, Mount Street Manchester between 3.00-6.00pm. 

There is obviously no final agenda as yet, but the loose proposal is that through the course of the Labour Party conference week, the Convention will organise a counter conference and actions.

The Convention will start on Saturday with a full day for discussion and debate between activists to see how we can work together better and co-ordinate our struggles, followed on a week of discussion possibly themed around;  

Peace – how we organise our struggle against imperialist wars and support the just struggles of peoples against national oppression  

People not Profits – how we oppose the privatisation of public services – and how we would run the services of the future  

Planet – how we can fight global warming and environmental destruction  

Power and Politics –how the struggle against oppression means fighting for power to change our lives  

If you would like to attend the Convention Organising Group, then feel free to come along, all welcome, individuals and groups or groups of individuals, or if you can’t make it on the day, then get in touch with our e-mail (john at conventionoftheleft.org) and we will be happy to facilitate your involvement in any way we can.  

Over the next weeks and months in the run up to the Convention we will be trying to shape a debate around the issues that face the left today.  

Yours, John Nicholson 

Convenor, Convention Organising Group 

Posted in Planning | 11 Comments »