Techno Fantasies and Eco Realities

Written and first published by Plan C

What role does technology play in our ecologically sustainable future, and how do we get there?

As part of Not the Anarchist Bookfair in London, Corporate Watch along with Uneven Earth and Plan C London organised a discussion on technology, ecology and future worlds. The event, named Techno Fantasies and Eco Realities, was attended by about 20 people and included some wide ranging and at times lively discussion around the role of technology and ecology in future worlds.

In particular, it focused on how we can free our imaginations from the grip of capitalist realism (the idea that capitalism is the only option for organising society), picturing possible future worlds and the role that technology will play in them, while keeping our imagined worlds grounded in social and ecological realities. For example, not forgetting that we are living on a planet with limited natural resources or that we have to consider how to make these imagined futures real.

Participants were invited to read three short pieces ahead of the discussion: “Fully Automated Green Communism” by Aaron Bastani, “Accelerationism.. and Degrowth? The Left’s Strange Bedfellows” by Aaron Vansintjan and “Pulling the Magic Lever”, by Rut Elliot Blomqvist.

Although initially a tongue in cheek provocation, Fully Automated Luxury Communism (FALC) has morphed into a serious proposition of how technology and automation could be used to provide for everyone’s needs and free people from the drudgery of wage labour. Bastani’s piece attempts to counter some of the ecological critiques of the idea, arguing that FALC can be green.

Instead of trying to halt the progress of technological development, and reduce energy consumption, Aaron argues that we should ride the technological horse to move beyond scarcity, proposing a kind of accelerationism where technology is rapidly advanced in order to bring about radical social change.

In “Accelerationism.. and Degrowth? The Left’s Strange Bedfellows”, Aaron Vansintjan looks at accelerationist ideas like FALC and compares them to ‘degrowth’, evaluating the similarities and differences between the two frameworks. Degrowth is a movement that has emerged from environmentalism and alternative economics and is focused on theorising and creating non-growth based economies and societies.

Although accelerationism and degrowth are apparently opposed, Vansinjtan finds some shared ideas, including their recognition of the need for deep, systemic change, their calls for democratisation of technology and their rejection of ‘work’ (or at least the idea that work is inherently good).

The key differences centre around accelerationism’s focus on reappropriating technology to achieve a resource-unlimited society, versus degrowth’s aim of limiting the development of certain forms of technology and staying within resource constraints. Degrowth also seeks to slow the metabolism of society, whereas accelerationism aims to increase the pace of social change. Ultimately, while supportive of accelerationism’s inspiring vision, Vansinjtan finds it seriously lacking in dealing with ecological critiques.

Rut Elliot Blomqvist examines three different visions of possible future worlds and the role that technology plays in them. ‘Pulling the Magic Lever’ is a reference to how technology is used to answer social or ecological problems without explaining how it will do so: you simply ‘pull the magic lever’ of technology and hey presto, it’s all solved.

It’s a running theme in all three of the imagined futures Blomqvist chooses to analyse. The first is in The World We Made, a novel by environmentalist Jonathon Porrit, then The Venus Project, a technology based political proposition, and finally Fully Automated Luxury Communism. In their analysis, Blomqvist uses a World Systems Theory approach to evaluate the ideas, critiquing the story of modernisation by framing it around colonialism.

The World We Made is based on Design Fiction, where fiction inspires possibilities of new designs. It sees the human species in general as the villain responsible for destroying the environment. In the novel’s fantasy scenario, however, humans manage to turn things around and start to use technology and various existing world institutions for the common good.

As Elliot points out, this book flags up an important discussion around the idea of the ‘anthropocene’ (a proposed name for a new human-affected geological epoch), which may support the view that the human species in general is the problem, rather than certain humans or, say, a capitalist growth-based economy. They also describe the book’s tendency towards technological optimism: it presents technology as providing the answers, without explaining how, and ignores the socio-cultural-political reasons for current ecological destruction.

The Venus Project is found to be even further along the techno-optimist spectrum and again ignores how its proposed technological utopia might be brought into existence. As well as highlighting its fetishisation of the scientific process, Elliot explains how The Venus Project often engenders conspiracy theories, a number of which are dangerously close to anti-Semitism.

Continuing the trend, FALC is found to involve similar techno-utopianism, where the working classes seize the means of production and use automation to create a world of plenty. Elliot points to a blind spot, as FALC doesn’t consider the limits of post-industrialism beyond the western world. Elliot describes how all three rely heavily on ‘pulling the magic lever’. While they show imagination, they are limited by the fossil-fuelled mentality they seek to criticise.

In our discussion at Not the Anarchist Bookfair, we asked participants to discuss two questions:

What role does technology play in our ecologically sustainable future, and how do we get there?

and

How can we move beyond the techno-optimist versus primitivist dichotomy? (I.e. beyond  viewing technology as either the solution to or source of all our problems).

The questions were discussed in pairs, in small groups and then with everyone participating, and led to a broad discussion of the various themes raised. Some key points that came out included:

The importance of considering the social power necessary to make futures, and how human agency is often missing in visions of techno utopias.

The need to change who makes technology, how it is produced and the inherent politics of technologies.

The need to highlight and develop technology’s potential within the ecological movement, including within degrowth discussions.

The need to positively promote ecological future visions, and how to counter environmentalism’s ‘hair shirt’ image.

Considering whether we should assume that technologies will inevitably be developed, and so ride the tech bandwagon, or try to intervene and prevent or hinder certain developments.

Thinking about if/how we can change the basis on which automation takes places and is implemented. E.g. is non-capitalist automation possible, and if so, how could it be made non-capitalist?

Thinking about ways of bringing ecological and technologically based visions of the future back together.

A number of participants were keen to continue discussions and we are considering further forums to hold related future discussions. Corporate Watch is currently working on a technology project, if you are interested in knowing more or collaborating on future work, please email contact@corporatewatch.org.

To get involved with discussions as part of the Plan C Climate cluster contact london@weareplanc.org.

Equality at Last – Civil Partnerships for Opposite Sex Couples, but Why the Delay?

Charles Keidan and Rebecca Steinfeld with the Green party’s (and Green Left’s) Peter Tatchell outside the Supreme Court after their successful case against the government

Theresa May, the prime minister, announced on Tuesday at the Tory party conference in Birmingham, that the government will legislate to allow opposite sex civil partnerships, in England and Wales. It comes in the wake of the Supreme Court judgement in June that ruled that the current prohibition breaks the Human Rights Act. No timescale has been specified as yet for the change to come into place.

The Scottish government launched a consultation last week on the possibility of extending civil partnerships to heterosexual couples, in Scotland. The option of scrapping civil partnerships altogether will apparently be considered. 

Same sex couples have been allowed to enter into civil partnerships since 2005, so this has been a glaring issue of inequality for some time. At that time, the defence of that state of affairs ran along the lines of straight people could get married, something unavailable to gay people. I never bought this argument, because it just highlighted that gay people should also be allowed to marry. The argument evaporated completely though when this situation changed in 2014, and gay marriage was legalised, (except in Northern Ireland).

There are plenty of opposite sex couples who happily live together for years, but do not wish to get married. I have to declare an interest here, as myself and my partner are of this opinion, because of the patriarchal associations surrounding marriage. But we don’t see why we should be denied the same perks in tax breaks, as married people or those in civil partnerships get.

Advantages of civil partnerships include a higher level of earnings that is non-taxable and no inheritance tax is payable in the event of one partner’s death. Even a shared home currently attracts inheritance tax for non married, co-habitees. It makes wills easier too because your legally recognised ‘next of kin’, becomes your partner. Not very romantic perhaps, but why should opposite sex couples be denied what is available to same sex couples?

This does open up a number of questions around what kind of partnership will qualify? The implication is that only people who are having sex together should qualify, but that is difficult to establish. Any two people, perhaps brother and sister should be able to have a civil partnership, if they want to. What you would do about multiple partnerships ,three siblings for example, I’m not sure, but I don’t think you can try to tie it to sexual relationships only.

It seems as though the government wants to have some kind of consultation period in England and Wales, and this may be why no timescale has yet been put on the changes coming into force. I really don’t see why though. It is largely an uncontroversial issue in Parliament and the country as a whole, so I can’t see what there is to consult about?

It could be that some Tory MPs and members will object, saying that it will discourage opposite sex couples from getting married, but even the Marriage Foundation supports extending civil partnerships to heterosexual couples, saying they are “infinitely preferable to unthinking and risky co-habitation”.

Theresa May’s announcement was definitive though, so it seems as though any consultation will be a mainly cosmetic affair, so you do have wonder what the delay is for, why can this not be introduced more or less immediately? There are pressures on the Parliamentary timetable, due to the on-going furore over Brexit, but such an uncontentious matter of basic equality, should pass into law unhindered.

France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece and Estonia all allow heterosexual civil partnerships, whilst in the US the issue is devolved to state or city level with New York and San Francisco for example permitting these unions. Some European countries, like Germany and Ireland ended the practice once gay marriages were legalised.

It looks like in England and Wales scrapping civil unions for same sex couples will not be considered, which I think is right. Why should married people get extra privileges, just because they are married? This unfair situation is not justifiable, and the government should get on with putting it right.  

Catalonia: Mass resistance greets Spanish state coup

Written by Dick Nicholls and first published at (Australian) Green Left Weekly

Forty-one Spanish Civil Guard raids on Catalan government-related buildings and private homes on September 20 led to the arrest of 13 high-level Catalan government officials and harvested a lot of “suspect material” for the prosecutors charged with stopping Catalonia’s October 1 independence referendum. However, the raids have provoked a mass revolt in response.

The haul included 10 million ballot papers stored in a printery warehouse in the central Catalan town of Bigues i Riells.

The proposed referendum, which the Spanish government considers illegal, is part of the long and growing struggle by the “autonomous community” of Catalonia, in the north of the Spanish state, to self-determination.

The suppression of Catalan national rights and culture was a big feature of the 1939-75 fascist Franco dictatorship, and the struggle for national rights against a heavily centralised Spanish state has escalated in recent years. For instance, 1 million people marched on Catalonia’s national day on September 11, the sixth year in a row the day was the scene of huge demonstrations in favour of self-determination.

The raid and the revolt

The raids are intended to stop the referendum, but also landed the central Spanish government of People’s Party (PP) Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy with a mass revolt by tens of thousands of outraged Catalans. Only too conscious of this reminder of Civil Guard operations during the Franco dictatorship, they protested outside the buildings being raided and occupied the centre of Barcelona and other Catalan cities and towns.

People were responding to the call of the Catalan government and the Catalan mass organisations — the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) and Catalan language and culture association Omnium Cultural — to maintain peaceful mass protests up until October 1. The aim is to make the Spanish government pay the highest possible price for its “de facto coup” (phrase of Catalan Premier Carles Puigdemont).

Their call was also backed by political forces and institutions that do not necessarily support Catalan independence, but defend Catalan sovereignty. For example, Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau publicly backed the street protests and warned Rajoy that he would find “the Catalan people more united than ever”.

In Madrid, radical anti-austerity force Unidos Podemos condemned the raids. Its MPs in the Spanish parliament staged a protest outside the building and later joined a rally in support of Catalonia’s right to decide. The Madrid rally, held in the central Puerta del Sol, was one of at least 40 that took place across the Spanish state on the evening of the raids.

Twenty major institutions of Catalan civil society representing 3000 Catalan social organisations — including the two main trade union confederations, Barcelona Football Club, and cultural organisations groups such as the Barcelona Atheneum to the Third Sector — condemned the raids. They called for the release of the detainees and reaffirmed their support for Catalonia’s institutions.

The Civil Guard raids, which came after the Spanish finance ministry took full control of Catalan spending, were aimed at dismantling the infrastructure of the October 1 referendum. Those arrested were 13 senior Catalan government officials in charge of computer technology, communications and finance.

The most senior were the secretary of the Catalan treasury Lluis Salvardo, the secretary-general of the department of deputy-premier Josep Maria Jove and treasurer Oriol Junqueras. Jove and Salvardo have been the two officials presumed responsible for referendum preparations.

Also arrested were the owners of the warehouse holding the printed material related to the referendum.

The charges laid are not yet fully known, but presumably are disobeying a lawful instruction, obstructing the course of justice and misuse of public funds. This last charge carries a prison term, as does the most serious charge that may used — that of sedition.

The huge public response to the raids started when the news spread through social networks and people began to gather outside the buildings being targeted, most importantly the economy ministry in central Barcelona.

The protests soon became thousands strong. After the Catalan mass organisations called on everyone to gather outside the economy ministry, more than 40,000 (council police figure) turned up to protest the raids and reaffirm their determination to vote.

“We shall vote!”, “They shall not pass!”, “Out with the forces of occupation!”, “Where is Europe?” were some of the chants that echoed across Barcelona until midnight, accompanied by singing of the anti-Francoist resistance hymn L'Estaca (“The Stake”) and the Catalan national anthem Els Segadors (“The Reapers”).

As protesters gathered outside the raided buildings, waving banners and posters produced on home printers (the Civil Guard had confiscated most of the official referendum posters) the workers inside draped banners and thank you messages out of the windows.

The protests cut major Barcelona thoroughfares such as Via Laietana, where the workers from the Workers Commissions trade union building came out to lead the picket outside the Catalan foreign affairs ministry across the street.

One reason the protests swelled so rapidly was because students from Catalonia’s main universities abandoned classes to join them. Behind banners with messages such as “Empty the lecture theatres, fill the streets”, students from the out-of-town Autonomous University of Barcelona poured onto the trains into central Barcelona.

At 10pm, with central Barcelona still full of protestors, a loud banging of pots and pans (cassolada) began, as people in all suburbs came out onto their balconies to show what they thought about the Civil Guard operation.

Catalonia-wide protest

Protest rallies were also held in cities and towns across Catalonia on the evening of September 20. In the provincial capital of Girona, 13,000 people took part according to the municipal police — 13% of the total population.

Moreover, many people from provincial Catalonia left work early to join the Barcelona rallies.

The mood of the protests was one of determination to see the fight against the Spanish state intervention through to the end — Catalan rights re-won in the struggles against the Franco dictatorship had to be defended at any cost.

One typical comment from young people was that “our grandparents didn’t suffer under Francoism so that we would let it reappear”.

The rallies were peaceful and disciplined, a reflection of the shared understanding that the street clashes that have nearly always been standard fare in Barcelona demonstrations would only provide the Rajoy government with an excuse to ramp up repression.

The approach of organised passive resistance scored an important win when armed Spanish National Police, supported by a helicopter, failed to enter the headquarters of the left-nationalist, anti-capitalist People’s Unity List (CUP).

The CUP headquarters were defended by a human barrier of up to 2000 supporters and sympathisers, led by present and former CUP MPs in the Catalan parliament.

A comic aspect of the defence, which ended after seven hours of siege, was the instruction that no-one was allowed to smoke a joint on the picket line: if they wished to, they had to go inside the building. According to one participant, the atmosphere inside the CUP headquarters was unbreathable.

That, however, was a small price to pay for getting every last piece of CUP referendum propaganda out of its headquarters and distributed.

Will the referendum happen? All the signs now point to rising conflict between the central Spanish government and the Catalan mass movement and government.

In his early afternoon address on behalf of the Catalan government, Puigdemont said: “From now until October 1 an attitude both of firmness and serenity will be needed, of alertness and of readiness to complain about the abuses and illegalities into which the Spanish state is falling. But on October 1 we’ll be leaving home with a voting paper and we’ll be making use of it.”

‘Illegal’

Rajoy replied with his own “institutional message”: “You know that this referendum cannot now be celebrated. It was never legal nor legitimate, now it is nothing more than a chimera or, what is worse, the excuse that some seem to be seeking to further deepen the rift they have caused in Catalan society…

“I insist, do not continue, you have no legitimacy. Return to law and democracy, let the people put these fateful days behind them.”

In case that appeal didn’t work, the Spanish PM cited his “determination to have legality enforced without renouncing any of the instruments of our rule of law.”

There can be no doubt about the determination of the central government to stop a referendum that would, if the latest polls are correct, see a 60% turnout and an easy win for the independence option.

If, despite the latest setbacks, the Catalan government still manages to equip polling stations with ballot boxes and papers, voters will in all likelihood find Spanish national police blocking the entrance.

Puigdemont has announced there will be 2700 polling stations. The plan of the Rajoy government seems to be to mobilise the 5000 available Spanish National Police to block voters. The police are to be housed on three ferries that have been berthed in the ports of Barcelona and Tarragona. Waterside workers in both ports have already voted not to service the vessels.

The Spanish authorities may first try to do the job of repression by placing the 17,000-strong Catalan police force under their control. However, the signs are that they do not trust the Catalan police to discipline angry crowds of fellow Catalans demanding entrance to polling stations.

That impression will only have been strengthened by a September 21 circular by Catalan police chief Josep Lluis Trapero, in which he stated that force should only be used in the very last instance, when public order was under threat.

Showdown

In the intensifying battle for hearts and minds, the Rajoy government’s message of the need to defend “the law” is now being repeated ad nauseam by the mainstream Spanish media.

“Opinion formers” get apoplectic about the “lawless secessionist threat”, but the Catalan case doesn’t even get a look-in — with the possible exception of the program El Intermedio on the Sixth channel.

The Spanish public is thus being prepared to feel that Catalonia “had it coming” if the Rajoy government decides to use more of the “instruments of the rule of law” at its disposal — such as fully suspending the Catalan government, arresting its leaders or closing down Catalan public media. It also prepares the public for any disturbing footage that might emerge of ordinary people being bashed for insisting on their right to vote.

The level of protest and resistance provoked in Catalonia by the PP government’s legal aggression already has the potential to lead to a major political crisis in the Spanish state.

In the short run, the minority Rajoy government enjoys majority parliamentary support for its crackdown against Catalonia. This support is enthusiastic on the part of new right hipster party Citizens, and obedient but sometimes shamefaced on the part of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), the traditional social democratic party.

However, given the prospect of an intensifying spiral of Catalan protest and Spanish police repression, the PSOE could increasingly pay for its complicity with the PP’s iron fist. Stress levels in its Catalan sister organisation — the Party of Socialists of Catalonia (PSC) — are rising, as more PSC mayors and members demand an end to the repression.

If that continues — as seems certain — Unidos Podemos would then be placed to win the struggle with the PSOE for leadership of the left. The greater the mass resistance in Catalonia, the more possible that outcome will be.

At the time of writing (September 21), the unity between the Catalan mass organisations, the government and the bulk of citizens supporting a Catalan right to decide (between 70% and 80%) is clear. The signs are that the mass of supporters of Catalan sovereignty are taking to heart the call of Catalan vice-president Oriol Junqueras: “We [the government] have done what we can, but only the people can save the people.”

Ongoing mobilisation

On September 21, an all-day demonstration outside the courthouse hearing the charges against the arrested officials swelled to tens of thousands; students staged sit-downs on one of Barcelona’s main thoroughfares; a debate among pro-independence leaders before a crowd of a thousand at the Autonomous University has confronted the issue of when, where and how to carry out a general strike in support of the referendum; “illegal” mass paste-ups have attracted so much support that the police and Civil Guard have had to leave them alone; and, at 10pm, the night’s cassolada was as noisy as the one 24 hours before.

Late in the day, Puigdemont reassured Catalonia that the referendum would go ahead, announcing a new website where voters could find out where they should vote. He concluded by saying that every vote — for or against independence — would be a blow against the authoritarian and arrogant PP government.

Given the atmosphere in Catalonia, those words were an invitation for ever-greater mobilisations to make sure that October 1 happens.

[Dick Nichols is Green Left Weekly’s European correspondent, based in Barcelona. An extended and updated version of this article will soon appear at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal.]

Tory Manifesto Reveals Plan to Control Internet and Disenfranchise Voters

Written by Nadia Prupis and first published at Common Dreams

In contrast to the U.K. Labour Party's progressive blueprint, Prime Minister Theresa May unveiled the Conservative Party's election manifesto on Thursday, sparking a wave of backlash over a pledge to create a new internet that would let the government control what gets posted online.

"Some people say that it is not for government to regulate when it comes to technology and internet," the manifesto states. "We disagree."

It continues that it wants the U.K. to become "the global leader in the regulation of the use of personal data and the internet."

Senior Tories confirmed to Buzzfeed News that means the party wants to impose strict rules on what people can write or share on the internet and social media, and require internet companies to go along with the government's so-called counter-terrorism programs or face repercussions.

In particular, the Tories said, Conservatives would seek to rein in the growing power of Facebook and Google, which have historically resisted calls to share information with the government—something May's party found out when it attempted to get WhatsApp to decrypt data after an attack on the U.K. Parliament in March, Buzzfeed noted.

Indeed, the pledge comes just months after May approved the Investigatory Powers Bill, introducing what transparency advocates called the most extreme surveillance law ever passed by a democracy. The legislation requires internet companies to keep diligent records of customers' browsing histories and forces apps to give the government a backdoor to their encrypted messaging services.

The new rules would also give the government unprecedented power in deciding what kind of content can be accessed online and would require internet companies to pay fees—like those currently imposed on gambling firms—that would fund advertisements warning users about the dangers of the internet. The pledge also states that May would "take steps to protect the reliability and objectivity of information that is essential to our democracy" and crack down on companies to make sure that news outlets get enough advertising money.

If the companies resist, the manifesto promises to punish them.

"We will introduce a sanctions regime to ensure compliance, giving regulators the ability to fine or prosecute those companies that fail in their legal duties, and to order the removal of content where it clearly breaches U.K. law," it reads.

Jim Killock, who runs the U.K.-based privacy advocacy organization Open Rights Group, told Buzzfeed that the rules would impose strict penalties on social media platforms for little benefit, considering that companies like Facebook are already more restrictive than the law.

"It's hard to see what really is going to be added by this except enormous costs for little benefit," Killock said.

Facebook "won't get it right—they'll behave in a risk-averse fashion," he said. "They'll censor more than they need to. I do not want Mark Zuckerberg to think of himself as judge and jury of what people can say in Britain."

The rest of the manifesto did not bode much better, with vows to reduce immigration numbers, introduce a "meritocracy" into British society, deliver a swift Brexit, and force voters to present identification in order to cast a ballot—a controversial provision that has been slapped down throughout the U.S. as unconstitutional and racist. The ID rule could prevent an estimated 3.5 million people from voting, the Electoral Commission said.

Elsewhere, the manifesto proposes taxing home care for the elderly by counting it as part of their assets. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn—whose party's manifesto was well-received last week—slammed the proposal as a "tax on dementia."

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There is Something Rather Menacing about Theresa May

Just what is it that the Prime Minister’s handlers are afraid of? In the opening couple of weeks of the UK general election campaign we have witnessed the Prime Minister being whisked around the country, to speak to closed audiences of Tory party loyalists, while real people, and the media, have been largely excluded from these events.

We do know that, in a similar way to the then Prime Minister, David Cameron’s, general election campaign in 2015, the plan is to be risk averse. With whopping leads in the opinion polls for the Tories, and their leader personally, then the rational tactic is to avoid anything that might dent this advantage in the few weeks of the campaign proper.

Cameron also managed to get the televised party leader’s debate watered down so that his appearances were only fleeting and avoided a direct debate with the then Labour party leader Ed Miliband. May has gone even further in dodging the debates and will not appear at all apart from being interviewed separately on the same programme, as Jeremy Corbyn the Labour party leader.

It is clear that May is not very good at thinking on her feet, and looks awkward when being interviewed on TV, and she falls back on a robotic chanting of slogans like ‘strong and stable leadership’ and the alternative of a ‘coalition of chaos’ if Labour wins. She isn’t really a natural for today’s media requirements from politicians.

Corbyn, on the other hand looks to be thoroughly enjoying the campaign, and speaking at rallies is definitely more his type of thing than the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions in Parliament. Although, May isn’t too good at this either. The Labour leader certainly has more of a common touch than the Prime Minister, and whatever you think of his policies, you would need to be blind not see the warmth of his personality, especially compared to May.

The Labour campaign team know this, and are trying to play to this Corbyn strength, but the value of it is limited by the refusal of May to debate directly with Corbyn, or to risk exposing herself to awkward questions from the public.

I think there is more to this than just presentational style though. I must admit that after the referendum, when Cameron quit, looking at the contenders to take over as Prime Minister, I was quite relieved that May won, especially when the run off looked to be between May and right wing loon, Andrea Leadsome. May has turned out to be just about as bad as I thought Leadsome would be.

May of course, as Home Secretary, was the one that sent ‘immigrants go home’ poster vans around multi-ethnic areas, and forced through the ‘snooper’s charter,’ electronic surveillance of UK citizens, but I thought she was at least reasonably sensible - but I was wrong.

Watching May since she became Prime Minister, has left me with the impression of her being a ruthless individual. She sacked the Chancellor, George Osborne, and the Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, with some relish it seemed to me, like someone settling old scores, not someone to bring her party, let alone the country, together.

Then there was her speech to the Autumn Tory party conference last year. In particular two key phrases contained within the rhetoric stood out. Ominously, she set about attacking anyone she suspected of not agreeing with her 100% on Brexit, and much else. “If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere,” she said, and “Those who still believe Britain has made a mistake in leaving the EU are just patronising members of a liberal metropolitan elite.” A direct assault on ‘cosmopolitan’ attitudes.

It was uncomfortably close to German anti-Semitic discourse, adopted by the Nazis in the 1930s, of the ‘rootless Jew.’ It also bears a striking similarity to the term “rootless cosmopolitans”, deployed by Stalin to justify his late 1940s purge of Jewish intellectuals.

May fought tooth and nail through the courts to stop Parliament having a meaningful say on Brexit, and when the courts disagreed with the her, May stayed silent on the right wing media’s accusations of treason, with the infamous ‘enemies of the people’ headline about the appeal court judges, who correctly interpreted the British constitution.

May now rails against the European Union (EU), for ‘interfering’ in the UK general election, when leaks revealed that Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU commission president, after dining with the Prime Minister, described her attitude on Brexit as being ‘from another galaxy.’ May’s response was to vow not to be bullied by the EU. All questioning of the wisdom of the great leader, must be quashed.

By calling the general election, after months of saying there would be no election, the reason May gave was to strengthen her position in the upcoming Brexit negotiations, but it is a dubious assumption to think it will alter the EU’s stance one jot, whatever the size of May’s majority in the election will be. Cast your mind back to the negotiations between the EU and the Greek government over the country’s debt, armed with a supportive referendum mandate.

The other reason, apart from political opportunism while Labour is in disarray, and I think the main reason May had a change of heart on the election, was to strengthen her position in the UK Parliament, where she wants to crush any dissent completely. Kind of along the lines of the US military in Vietnam’s ‘we had to bomb the village to save it,’ May wants to destroy Parliamentary democracy, and impose her will on the nation.

It is a common tactic for dictators, using nationalism, racism and xenophobia to consolidate their power. If May wins big on 8 June, be afraid, very afraid for the future of this country.    

          

Russian Revolutionary Art 1917 to 1932 - From Socialism to Authoritarianism

I visited the Royal Academy of the Arts exhibition 'Revolution: Russian Art 1917–1932' in London yesterday, just before it closes tomorrow. It is inspired by the exhibition shown in Russia in 1932, just before Stalin's clampdown on artistic free expression.

The exhibition covers paintings, films, sculpture, textiles and ceramics from the early days of the Russia revolution in 1917, and follows changes through the 1920s and into the 1930s under the influence of the Bolshevik leadership, particularly after the death of Lenin and the rise to power of Stalin.

In the early years of the revolution there was a great explosion of the arts, which built on the trend towards the avant garde that had already begun in Russian (and more widely) before the revolution. There was much excitement in artistic circles about the new dawn opening up in Russia, brought about by revolutionary thinking. Two examples are below.

(Ivan Kliun 1923)

(Lyubov Popova 1921)

The Bolshevik's were only a fairly small force with something like 350,000 supporters in a country with a population of 140 million at the time of the revolution. It was decided that propaganda was necessary to spread revolutionary thinking to the masses.

(I predict a riot: Bolshevik (1920) by Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev)    

By the late 1920s the Soviet authorities condemned the avant garde style and promoted what became known as Socialist Realism, a style that was easy for the masses to understand. For a few years these different approaches co-existed, but in 1932 Stalin decreed that Socialist Realism was the only acceptable style for the Soviet Union, ending a era of dazzling creativity in the arts.

(Poster shows the workers triump over the capitalists 1920)

 (The power of the workers 1931)

(Andrey Golubev, Red Spinner, 1930) 

Stalin's principle goal was to turn the Soviet Union into a world power by expanding its industrial production. In 1928 he introduced the first of his five year plans, which set targets for each factory. A new breed of superhero workers known as 'shock workers' symbolised this synthesis of man and machine. Artists were encouraged to depict this in their work.

Workers were seen as the liberated proletariat who no longer had to sell their life and labour for the profit of others. Together they collectively owned the means of production interpreting what Marx called the 'dictatorship of the proletariat,' in this new worker led productivist system.

This conveniently ignored Marx's concept of 'freely associated' producers, in favour of what Lenin first called 'state capitalism,' which was ruthlessly and brutally driven forward by Stalin. The reality was that many workers were effectively slaves, and strikers and slow workers were imprsioned or even shot. Thousands died in accidents, of starvation or from freezing temperatures.

After the revolution, the peasants were promoted as equal partners with industrial workers, symbolised by the by Soviet emblem the hammer and sickle.

(The poster above is actually from the 1960s, but captures this partnership of industrial and agricultural workers)

(1930s poster depicting agricultural workers)

Stalin's plan involved the industrialisation of agriculture which included the collectivisation of farms into large operations, but took little notice of local conditions and practises. Famine was the result where millions died of starvation, through crop failures.

Stalin also promoted sports in Russia, with the competition with the US in events such as the Olmypics eventually. By the 1970s it was seen as a demonstration of the strength of the Soviet system over the capitalist USA. In the same way, Russia beat the US into putting a man into space, only 40 years after the revolution, which had started from a low point of a virtual feudal economy.

  (The Shot-putter, by Alexander Samokhvalov, 1933)

The 1932 exhibition was the last call of freedom for the arts, afterwards avant garde art was suppressed. Within a year it had vanished from public view, locked in storerooms. From this moment onwards the Union of Soviet Artists was the sole arbiter of Soviet art. Socialist Realism became the only approved style in the USSR.

I knew from political history much of what this exhibition portrays, but it was still interesting to view it through the prism of art. The euphoria and promise of the early years of the revolution, with its upsurge in creative arts, gradually ground down into simplistic propaganda, in the cause of authoritarianism and suppression. A vivid dream turned into a nightmare. The exhibition details neatly the bastardisation of socialism in the USSR, and left me feeling sad, an opportunity missed.   

  

William Morris - The First Green Socialist?

This is an extract from a longer piece by Jane Susanna Ennis

I want to suggest that many of the ideas and practices which we advocate today in the Green movement owe their origins to Morris - perhaps indirectly.

He seems to have been one of the first Victorians to address himself consciously to the question of our relationship with nature, the natural world - i.e. rather than just write about it, or paint it, he suggested concrete steps that might be taken to preserve and enhance the beauty of the natural world and of the countryside. Some of his major interests are those which are still very much central concerns of the Green movement today - for instance his concern with the Nature of Work. His discussion of the Nature of Work develops from ideas first discussed by Carlyle and Ruskin.

We will first of all consider the final paragraph of A Dream of John Ball:

But as I turned away shivering and downhearted, on a sudden came the frightful noise of the "hooters," one after the other, that call the workmen to the factories, this one the after- breakfast one, more by token. So I grinned surlily, and dressed and got ready for my day's "work" as I call it, but which many a man besides John Ruskin (though not many in his position) would call "play."

This is a point that Morris develops at greater length in News From Nowhere. Because Morris enjoyed his work and was self-employed - indeed, was an employer - many people would have thought of his work as play, because it was enjoyable. It seems as though the section on Workers' Rights in the England and Wales Green Party's Manifesto for a Sustainable Society reflects this:

WR101 We define work in the full sense, not the traditional limited definition as employment in the formal economy. Green thinking recognises the latter as one part of the whole - a large part, but not the only one. Work exists in a variety of forms, each related to and often affecting others, like species in an ecosystem. Work covers all the activities people undertake to support themselves, their families and communities.

I referred to Carlyle because he perhaps stimulated Morris's examination of the Nature of Work. Carlyle himself never really tries to define what work IS, and he certainly has no truck with the idea of Pleasure in Work - in fact he more or less dismisses the idea of happiness as an irrelevance; he almost seems to advocate 'useless toil' as being at least preferable to 'idleness' - however you define idleness. Certainly Carlyle, writing in 1843, was in a position to observe the Industrial Revolution at first hand, and to see the degradation of the worker from an 'artisan' to a 'hand', the appendage to a machine. But the remedies he proposed were vastly different from those proposed by Morris - not only is Carlyle vague about the definition of work, but he sees restoration of feudal authority as the only true remedy for the evils of laissez-faire capitalism. In fact both Carlyle and Ruskin seem to hold the view that if everyone remained content in their stations, and the workers worked and their 'natural superiors' recognised and lived by the principle of noblesse oblige everything would be fine and there would be no need for revolution.

Perhaps Morris's concept of The Nature of Work should be seen as a reaction against the Protestant ethic expressed in Ruskin's writings, and the dour Calvinism of Carlyle. I think the problem with Carlyle and Ruskin was that they never quite came to terms with the fact that work basically consists of the production of commodities, or more properly the production and exchange of commodities; Morris had grasped this even before he read Marx, and he discusses:

(a) what commodities should be produced.

(b) how they should be produced.

(c) by whom they should be produced.

(d) for whom they should be produced.

(e) how they should be distributed.

A related theme is the question of how Morris's expression of his love of nature, of landscape, of the English countryside, (a) is expressed in his poetry and later prose works; how it changed and developed as he travelled the road to Socialism.

Thus we could say that Morris's vision of the Middle Ages as a time of artistic excellence (he regarded the Renaissance as the beginning of degeneracy and decay in the arts) functioned as a blueprint for what the world might be like after the Socialist revolution. He did not idealise the medieval period in the way Ruskin did, or the way the Pre-Raphaelites did in their paintings, but he was aware that the art/craft of the medieval period was an expression of some creative spark that (he felt) the Victorian period had lost. Thus in some ways Morris could hardly be said to have idealised the medieval period at all. He admired the art of the period, which is not quite the same thing.

I did say that his expression of his vision changed - but the vision itself did not change all that much. He saw Socialism as the means to achieve his vision of an integrated, whole society, in which the landscape was not damaged, and in which the stark division between town and country was abolished - expressed most elaborately in News From Nowhere, of course. The idea of the abolition of the division between town and country (i.e. the abolition of large manufacturing districts such as, in the 19th. century, Leeds, Manchester, etc) was a common feature of Utopian writing. And Marx had stated that one of the tasks of Socialism would be to end this division. Again, this is something that most environmentalists regard as a priority, even if they may not have heard of Morris and don't approach the question from a Marxist perspective. Note, for instance, these extracts from the England and Wales Green Party's Manifesto for a Sustainable Society:

CY201 We believe that is a fundamental human right and obligation for people to live in a style that ensures they can hand on to their descendants an environment that is at least as rich in wildlife and attractive landscapes as when they inherited it.

CY202 Rural and urban communities meet the many different needs of people in a healthy society. They are not separate from each other and one should not dominate the other. In a green society, towns will not grow beyond the ability of the countryside around them to provide fresh and healthy water and food, recreation, timber and wildlife habitats. There will be a constant flow of environmental, social and cultural information between them. Towns will return compostable materials to the countryside. These urban communities will integrate into all their decisions the impact on a vital, thriving rural community.

The vision of society in News From Nowhere is one that is close to the vision of a possible future society expressed in many green/environmental manifestos and blueprints. For instance, the Thames is so clean - due to a lack of industrial pollution - that there are again salmon in the river near Hammersmith. The society has no money, it is a barter economy, people produce (a) what they need (b) what they LIKE. Piccadilly is a market, but one 'ignorant of the arts of buying and selling' - beautiful hand-made craft goods are exchanged and donated. The whole of London has reverted to being villages and parks. All the houses have gardens and (of course, this being Morris's dream!) all the buildings are well-built and attractively ornamented, but NOT VULGAR.

Morris repeated over and over again his hatred of the ugliness caused by rapid industrialisation; poisoning of the atmosphere by sulphurous emissions from factories, pollution of rivers, cutting down of trees - in short, the wholesale destruction of what we should now call the environment.

It is as well to recall here that the terminology we now use was not used by Morris and his contemporaries, although I am suggesting that he gave the impetus to many of our own environmental concerns. At certain points Morris still used vocabulary such as "conquering Nature", "our struggle with Nature" and so on, which indicates that, though he did his best, he could not entirely free himself from the mind-set that saw Nature as a hostile force to be conquered and subdued, or the Conquest of Nature as something desirable … although his awareness of humanity as a part of Nature is usually to the fore. It is possible that he used this terminology as an initial point of contact with his audiences.

For most of the 19th century, "environment" was a neutral term meaning "the surroundings", "where we live" - it didn’t have the emotive weight it carries today. Similar, the word "ecology" (first recorded in English in 1893 according to “Ecology for Beginners”, but used by Thoreau in 1856, according to the OED) was not used with any positive or negative connotations - the general public were less aware of what an ecosystem was and how it could be damaged.

Morris, like Engels, (and even Ruskin and Carlyle, as we have seen), was perfectly well aware of the dehumanisation of work and of the degrading, cramped and unsanitary conditions in which the working class lived. And he did set out to campaign against all this. He did visit industrial towns and saw how ugly and dirty they were, and was indignant at the conditions in which the workers lived. My point throughout has been that Morris's ideas on the environment have had a great influence on the environmental movement, and Morris never denied that he was a member of the bourgeoisie - what is true is that has taken a century or more for some of these ideas to be taken up by large numbers of people. 

Unfortunately, it has to be conceded that the Green movement is still perceived in some quarters as something of a middle-class hobby, at least in the UK and the USA.

So perhaps I could sum up by saying that Morris has influenced the Green movement in ways which he could not have anticipated, but would surely have been happy to know about. I think, though, that it was his perspective as a Socialist activist that enabled him to develop ideas and theories that could have practical application; as a young man, his poetry celebrated the beauty of nature, but it is in his prose writings and lectures that we see a development towards an active 'Green Socialist' perspective.

Jane Susanna Ennis is a member of Camden Green Party and a Green Left supporter.

You can download the the full piece here: 

 https://www.academia.edu/652719/William_Morris_the_first_Green_Socialist

London Terror Attack - Westminster in Lockdown

Photo credit The Independent

The terrorist attack in and around Parliament today, where four people died, including the attacker and an unarmed police officer, with forty injured, some seriously, has brought a strange mood to the city.

I work in Westminster, and our building, along with many others was in lockdown this afternoon. We were finally allowed to leave the building at 4.45 pm, but told to 'disperse' quickly. The area was much quieter than normal at rush hour as I made my way home, with large sections of Whitehall and around Parliament Square roped off by the police, and police and security vehicles sirens continually blaring as a backdrop. The mood reminded me of the 2005 tube bombing in London, which carried on for weeks.

The attack came exactly one year to the day after the Brussels underground attack, and is being treated by police as a terrorist incident, which seems to be the case. I've been thinking, with all of these terror attacks in Europe, in France and Germany mainly, there was sure to be an attack on London at some stage. Today it happened.

It bore similarities with the vehicle attack in Nice in France, and the knife wielding ones in Germany, in fact it was a combination of the two. These 'lone wolf' type of attacks are very difficult to prevent. How you know what is going on in one person's mind? You can't, you can only prepare a response, and the security services do look to have responded quickly and efficiently to it.

With these type of events, if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time you are unlucky, it is unfortunately a fact of modern life, but it isn't so easy to be philosophical about that. I've been inside Parliament myself, and the police look like Robo Cops, very heavily armed, but somehow it does not make you feel safer, it kind of makes you nervous. It is though necessary, unfortunately, as today's events demonstrate, though 'softer' targets are impossible to protect. Parliament and its surrounds is the most protected area in the country, and it happened there.

Life carries on, I suppose, but the city has taken a big knock today. Thoughts with those affected and their friends and family, a dreadful day in London.

The Dismal Cartography of the US Pre-Fascist State - Winter in America

Points of Departure

Listening to Donald Trump’s inaugural speech on January 20th led me to muse about what it might mean to live in a pre-fascist state. After reflecting on key passages and conversations with friends, I came to the view that all the elements were in place, although set before us with the imprecision of a demagogue.

Yet I do not doubt that there are many ideologues waiting in the wings, perhaps now comfortably situated in the West Wing, ready to cover the conceptual rough spots, and supply an ideological overlay, and add the semblance of coherence.

Considering the daily outrages emanating from the White House since the inaugural jolt, the coming years will be rough riding for all of us, with many cruelties being readied for those most vulnerable.

Of course, the Woman’s March on January 21st was temporarily redemptive, and if such energy can be sustained potentially transformative. It is odd to contemplate, but there just may be tacit and effective cooperation between the national security deep state and a progressive populism converging around their divergent reasons for being deeply opposed to the shock and awe of the Trump presidency. Trump may invent ‘alternative facts’ to restore his narcissistic self-esteem, but when it comes to program he has sadly so far been true to his word! This alone should encourage a unified, energetic, and determined opposition. If the Tea Party could do it, why can’t we?

The Pre-Fascist Moment

First, it is necessary to set forth the case for viewing Trump’s Inaugural Address as a pre-fascist plea:

1. Locating power and legitimacy in the people, but only those whose support was instrumental in the election of the new president; the popular majority that were opposed are presumed irrelevant, or worse;
2. Denigrating the political class of both political parties as corrupt and responsible for the decline of the country and the hardships inflicted on his followers;
3. Presuming mass and unconditional trust in the great leader who promises a rupture with the past, and who alone will be able overcome the old established order, and produce needed changes at home and overseas;
4. Making the vision of change credible by the appointment of mainly white men, most with alt-right credentials, billionaires either blissfully ignorant about their assigned roles or a past record of opposition to the bureaucratic mission they are pledged to carry out (whether environment, energy, education, economy);
5. An endorsement of exclusionary nationalism that elevates ‘America First’ to the status of First Principle, erects a wall against its Latino neighbour, adopts a cruel and punitive stance toward Muslims and undocumented immigrants, hostility to womens’ rights, gay marriage, trans dignity, as well as posing threats to non-white minorities, inner city residents, and independent voices in the media and elsewhere;
6. Lauds the military and police as the backbone of national character, loosens protection from civilian or military abuse, which helps explain the selection of a series of generals to serve in sensitive civilian roles, as well as the revitalization of Guantanamo and the weakening of anti-torture policies.
7. The disturbing absence of a sufficiently mobilized anti-fascist opposition movement, leadership, and program. The Democratic Party has not seized the moment vigorously and creatively; progressive populist leadership has yet to emerge inspiring trust and hope; so far there are sparks but no fire.

Fortunately, there are some more encouraging tendencies that could mount anti-fascist challenges from within and below:

1. Trump lost the popular vote, casting a cloud over his claimed mandate to be the vehicle of ‘the people.’ Furthermore, his approval rating keeps falling, and is now below 40% according to reliable polls.
2. The signs of intense dissatisfaction are giving rise to protest activities that are massive and seem deeply rooted in beliefs and commitments of ordinary citizens, especially women and young people;
3. American society is not in crisis, and right-wing extremist appeals are forced to rely on a greatly exaggerated and misleading portrayal of distress in the American economy, the evils of economic globalization and unfair trade relations that are widely understood to be largely ‘fake’;
4. There are fissures within the Republican Party and governmental/think tank establishments, especially on international economic and security policy, that could produce escalating tensions within and challenges to the Trump leadership;
5. There is growing dissatisfaction within the bipartisan intelligence and national security bureaucracies as whether Trump and Trumpism can be tamed before it wrecks the post-1945 international order that rests on America’s global military presence, a global network of alliances, and a disposition toward a second cold war focused on hostility to Russia; if untamed, impeachment scenarios will soon surface, based not on the real concerns, but constructed around economic conflicts of interests, emoluments, and unlawful transactions.

Certainly in my lifetime, with the possible exception of the Great Depression, America has not been tested as it is now. Maybe not since the American Civil War has so much been at stake, and put at risk.

Traditional reliance on political parties and elections will not be helpful until the political climate is radically altered by forces from below and without or above and within. It is strange, but the two main forces of resistance to the pre-fascist reality menacing the country’s and the world’s future are progressive populism as evident in the widespread grassroots protest movement taking shape in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s ascension to the presidency, and the deep state as exhibited by the anti-Trump defection of intelligence and national security specialists from both Republican and Democratic ranks during and after the recent presidential campaign.

Finally, the depiction of the present political reality as ‘pre-fascist’ rather than ‘fascist’ is crucial to this effort to depict accurately the historical moment associated with Donald Trump’s formal induction as the 45th president of the United States.

To speak as if the United States is a fascist state is to falsify the nature of fascism, and to discredit critical discourse by making it seem hysterical. There is no doubt that the pieces are in place that might facilitate a horrifying transition from pre-fascism to fascism, and it could happen with lightning speed. It is also sadly true that the election of Donald Trump makes fascism a sword of Damocles hanging by a frayed thread over the American body politic.

Yet we should not overlook the quite different realities that pertain to pre-fascism.
It remains possible in the United States to organize, protest, and oppose without serious fears of reprisals or detentions. The media can expose, ridicule, and criticize without closures or punitive actions, facing only angered and insulting Trump tweets, although such a backlash should not be minimized as it could have a dangerous intimidating impact on how the news is reported.

We are in a situation where the essential political challenge is to muster the energy and creativity to construct a firewall around constitutional democracy as it now exists in the United States, and hope that a saner, more humane political mood leads quickly and decisively to repudiate those policies and attitudes that flow from this pre-fascist set of circumstances.

Richard Falk is an American professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University. He just completed a six-year term as United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.

This article originally appeared on Transnational.org.

I will leave you with Gil Scott Heron singing Winter in America, from 1975.