The Struggle for Use-Value – Thoughts About the Ecosocialist Transition

I have recently been reading ‘The Emergence of Ecosocialism,’ a collection of essays written by the now sadly departed Joel Kovel. Edited by Quincy Saul, and published in 2018, the book is reviewed more fully here, here and here on this blog.

In Kovel’s essay which goes by almost the same title as this post, (I've added Ecosocialist for clarity) first published at Capitalism Nature Socialism in 2000, he argues that the expansion of the notion of ‘use-value’ is a prerequisite for establishing an ecosocialist economic and social system to replace capitalism. The task becomes more urgent every day, as the evidence mounts of the acceleration of devastating climate change, wrought by our current, unsustainable, political economy.

In the introduction to the essay Kovel writes:

The chief selling point of capitalism is its phenomenal success at creating wealth in the commodity form. But the same success creates poverty and gathering ecocatastrophe. An ecologically rational society, by contrast, will have to turn away from the entire complex by means of which we have become enslaved by commodities. To do this, ecosocialism, - the name for such a society – will have to redefine the nature of wealth, and the way people under capitalism have come to define self-worth by the accumulation of commodities.

Capitalism sees nature, and humanity, as a field for exploitation to create commodities, which through ‘exchange-value’ is converted into capital, which increases the capacity for further exploitation and further capital extraction, and so on, indefinitely. The capitalist system ensures the efficient regulation of this process, whilst the capitalist state regulates access to the conditions of production, nature (land), humanity (labour) and infrastructure (the built environment).

Within this process, exchange value, which has no value in itself, needs to conjugate, to use Kovel’s term, with use-value to give it value. No one will be interested in things with no use-value, of course, but exchange-value sits like a parasite upon use-value. 

For example, a field can be used to produce food when human labour plants the seeds, water and tend to the crops. The food produced has a clear use-value, we need to eat food to survive, and any farm animals also need to be fed, to produce further food and perhaps animal labour. At which point the produce of the farm attains an exchange-value. People will buy the food, which then produces capital for the land owner as profit, or to use the Marxist term, surplus value.

The use-value of food is obvious, and the capitalist system will seek to produce more of this surplus value, because it needs to grow to survive, which leads to what is referred to as 'efficiencies', the use of machinery for example, reducing labour costs to get even more surplus value from the same patch of land. Fertilisers and pesticides will need to be used also to increase the yield, which in turn degrades the land and the wider environment. Which means more will need to be used, and so on.

With some commodities, like the various gadgets that are continually produced have a less clear ‘use-value,’ but the capitalist system manipulates people’s wants through the fashion and marketing / advertising industries. We all too often have a desire for novelty as a species, and the system exploits this, when often these goods in themselves have very limited use-vale, but become the latest must have thing.

Kovel writes:

For capital, the ideal world would be one in which everything useful – the air, the water we drink, the songs we whistle to ourselves – would in fact be the occasion of a commodity. Air is still largely free, though there is a brisk trade in purification devices and elements of it like oxygen; while water, as we know, has become increasingly commodified and in certain locales costs more than gasoline.at the supermarket. The ecological crisis has created new ground for commodity formation, which is just fine so far as ruling interests are concerned.

What would a prefigurative ecosocialism look like then? To take our example of a field used to grow food. If the farming was of an organic nature, not dispensing fertilisers and pesticides, it would be moving towards ecosocialism. And what if it was run as a cooperative, with equal shares for all in the cooperative and therefore with no surplus value being appropriated? This again would move this type of ensemble towards ecosocialism.

This is far from supplanting exchange-value with use-value but is an example of how things could be run differently, and make the idea less utopian, that it might otherwise be seen, making it more attainable. Kovel says these ways of production can be seen as stepping stones to ecosocialism. These two examples also bridge the issues of land and labour, which can be seen as bringing them together, eco and socialism.

Kovel again:

The restoration of use-values is first of all, no simple atavism, that is, we do not seek to recapture some original goodness of use-value in things before capital subordinated them to exchange value. Use-value is a kind of relationship; it signifies appropriation between humanity and nature, and within humanity as part of nature, and cannot be reduced to any crude or absolute measure of worth.

Kovel adds that this type of working can address what Marx called the alienation of labour, resulting from capitalist productive processes and the extraction of surplus value from the workers. Thus the restoration of the use-value of human labor points toward the emancipation of the worker from capital.

Kovel then turns his attention to the concept of usufruct, quoting by Marx’s now well known amongst ecosocialists words on the matter from Capital Volume 3:

From the standpoint of a higher economic form of society, private ownership of the globe by single individuals will appear quite as absurd as private ownership of one man by another. Even a whole society, a nation, or even all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the globe. They are only its possessors, its usufructuries, and, like bona patres familias, they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition.

Usufruct means the right to use and enjoy. Kovel informs us that the term appeared in the English language in the early seventeenth century but has applied in many historical cultures going back to the Code of Hammurabi. In England, it referred to rights to use common land in the transition toward enclosure of this land. It allowed the common right to use the ‘property’ of someone else for income as well as leisure, while not damaging it in anyway. Could this concept be employed in a reverse transition away from private propety and towards ecosocialism?

I will leave the last word to Kovel:

If ecosocialism can offer a usufructory of the earth, it will be one of employment, the aesthetic dimension and improvement.

Limits of the Green New Deal

Written by John McCollum and first published at Marxist sociology blog

The Green New Deal is an exciting social program generating a great deal of interest on the left.  Like its predecessor, the New Deal of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the GND holds out the promise of preventing the worst effects of anthropogenic climate change, and guaranteeing a better standard of living for its participants.  Presumably, it would be large enough to put upward pressure on wages in the private sector or be a guarantee of employment and includes increased federal spending on renewable energy, social democratic guarantees of a living wage, and other forms of environmental cleanup.

For the Marxist left, the GND is an object of considerable interest, both politically and academically.  Many of the popular left-leaning and socialist publications in the US, including Jacobin and Current Affairs, have published extensive analyses of the GND for a wider audience.  As more Americans realize the need for a decisive break with capitalism, the GND offers an opportunity for the US public to challenge political and economic orthodoxy, to say nothing of the potential to avert climate catastrophe and raise the living standards of the working class. 

It also offers a positive social imaginary to counter the prevailing “doom and gloom” of catastrophic climate change predictions.  The GND also promises to close racial, ethnic, and gender inequalities.  Indigenous activists have also drafted their own plan, the Red Deal, to address the environmental and economic struggles of indigenous peoples in the United States.  A recent addition to the GND through the Sanders’ presidential campaign and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s office includes decarbonized, affordable housing.

To the credit of the GND’s supporters and their efforts to promote it, a wide swathe of the US population is interested in the program, according to recent polling.  A broad segment of the working class, including many self-declared Republicans, finds the idea of environmental sustainability and a decent living standard enticing.  The GND holds out hope of challenging neoliberal doctrines and bringing a large portion of the economy under democratic control.  Eliminating the “reserve army of labor” through a jobs guarantee would massively increase labor’s bargaining power.  Similarly, such a bill could lead to a “just transition”, nationalizing fossil fuels en route to complete decarbonization of energy.

Despite this good news, there are some reasons for hesitation.  There are some issues surrounding the Green New Deal that the left needs to broadly consider coming out of the eco-Marxist left, especially the scholarship and writing of John Bellamy Foster and the “treadmill of production” theorists, including Allan Schnaiberg, David Pellow, and Kenneth Gould.  Second, we must consider the likelihood of the state becoming the main engine of this movement, rather than private capital, replacing our prevailing system of production with a “state-sponsored” green capitalism.

I consider the GND’s limits in the most optimistic and open spirit, and I hope that this piece will help to write a more effective program.  The political opportunities opened by such a plan are something to celebrate, but if the GND ultimately worsens the climate crisis, the Deal will hardly have been worth the political capital spent in passing it into law.  For this reason, I hope leftists of all orientations will take a moment to consider these critiques.

The dangers of expanded production and consumption

One of the most prominent theories in environmental sociology is the “treadmill of production” theory pioneered by Allan Schnaiberg in his 1980 The Environment:  From Surplus to Scarcity, and expanded upon with his frequent collaborators Kenneth Gould and David Pellow.  This theory holds that demands by both capital and labor to expand economic production create new and greater forms of waste.  Similarly, this pressure promotes more efficient use of resources.  However, this efficiency incentivizes further net consumption. 

This “Jevon’s Paradox” was first demonstrated in 1865 by William Stanley Jevons in Britain’s improvements in steam engines resulting in faster consumption of the country’s coal supplies.  A similar phenomenon prevails with small cars in the US today.  Take, for instance, the gain in “miles per gallon” efficiencies in personal automobiles.  Although the fuel efficiencies of most vehicles have risen dramatically since the 1970s, the addition of millions more automobiles and the increased distances Americans commute mean that Americans are consuming more gasoline than ever before.

The treadmill of production idea becomes relevant in the context of the GND because of the gains in energy production efficiency, as well as the program’s proposed investments in the expansion of public transportation and “clean” manufacturing methods.  The efficiency gains of a nation-wide energy efficiency program can be undone by a total increase in material inputs.

Examining renewables in greater detail, wind turbines and solar panels produce a host of environmental externalities.  Both technologies rely on the availability of rare earth metals.  Their manufacturing and disposal generate other forms of toxic pollutants.  Also, converting land from either “natural” usage to land for renewables will also have a variety of environmental externalities, exemplified by solar farms in California’s deserts, which have displaced native species like the desert tortoise.

Another issue resulting from this practice will be a widening of the “metabolic rift” between global regions and between the natural metabolism of the earth and humanity’s production and consumption of natural resources.  John Bellamy Foster’s work on the “metabolic rift” derives from Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 and Marx’s attendant interest in the widening gap between “town and country.” 

Marx studied the developments in agricultural science and soil chemistry during his era and noted the tendency of capitalism’s material demands to outstrip nature’s restorative capacities.  As the natural fertility of soil declined, agricultural producers came to rely on distant sources of nitrogen-based fertilizers.  This shift led to a “metabolic rift” in the spatial distribution of soil nutrients and a temporal rupture in the earth’s natural cycles of soil fertility.

The GND threatens to reproduce this gap.  To use a single example, though the US has some deposits, the rare earth metals used in solar panels and wind turbines will come from Global South states where mining and processing these minerals poses great risks to human health and the environment.  The benefits of using these materials in renewable technologies will not be seen by the citizens of those countries where extraction occurs. 

The GND’s agricultural methods hold some promise of making major gains in de-carbonizing the US’s agricultural system, but the movement of soil fertility around the US as agricultural goods made in one region move to another still would widen the spatial and temporal elements of the metabolic rift.

At present, it does not appear that the GND is dealing with the contradictions of the treadmill of production and a widening metabolic rift.  The “treadmill of production” poses yet another problem though:  the contradiction of continually expanding production to meet the systemic demands of capital to accumulate and workers’ attendant dependence on this cycle for wages.  Production of “green” things may need to expand continually to generate employment and welfare benefits for workers. 

Workers in a new state sector could find themselves dependent on this expansion, just as they would have under private capital.  Although “green”, this expanded production will recreate the environmental problems the GND is meant to end.  Getting off this treadmill is going to require more than just vigorous investment by the state in green infrastructure.  Next, I turn to the GND’s potential to create a state-sponsored green capitalism.

The creation of a green fraction of capital

The GND is consciously modelled on the New Deal of the 1930s.  The New Deal saw an expansion of social programs benefiting wide swathes of the working class.  Social Security was lifted wholesale from socialist programs.  Farm aid encouraged both recovery from environmental problems like the Dust Bowl and debt relief for poor farmers.  Infrastructural development raised wages and boosted further growth.  In terms of arts and culture, working people were mobilized into new forms of cultural production celebrating working-class identity.  The general agitation during this period by the broad left pushed these programs forward despite the opposition of powerful factions of the capitalist class in the United States.

Despite this legacy, the New Deal preserved capitalism during one of its most dire crises to date; the GND may perform a similar regulatory function.  One of the boosts the GND is likely to give to capital is through state investment through private partnerships.  The GND does not propose the creation of state ownership of utilities, much less agriculture, housing, or medical care.  Similarly, the bill has provisions for energy upgrades through refurbishing existing buildings, environmental cleanup, and an unusual provision to “ensure businesspersons are free from unfair competition.” 

Without further establishing state ownership over these sectors, many of these provisions are going to add value to existing private property or rely on contractors to do the work, paid for by large sums of public money.  Although the GND provides decent employment and these emission reduction programs are desperately needed, much of this activity will generate further wealth in private hands if not performed by the state.  The present electoral left may not be capable of enacting or want to deliver on this revolutionary goal.

The Green New Deal could end up following a similar course of initial interest, growth, and collapse.  However, a “Green” New Deal has other social and environmental goals which need to be considered.  As environmental degradation continues, compromise measures that do not lead to drastic cuts in greenhouse gases, mining and processing of non-renewable energy sources, and losses of biodiversity will not suffice.  However, such activities might provide some degree of environmental stability that will enable capital to continue its dominance.

John McCollum is an assistant professor of sociology at Minot State University.

Coronavirus – Bored and Locked Down in London

I work in the public services and have been working from home since last Tuesday, which I can do, but have not done for any kind of extended length of time, before. I have been designated as a key worker, category business critical. I am needed to make sure local government gets its funding, which is crucial at this time, as local authorities are to shoulder much of the response to the pandemic. I have been told I will be working from home for 12 weeks, at least.

I live in north London, and the local Tesco has very little in it, a tiny amount of food with no rice or pasta, no toilet rolls or kitchen paper, but if I’m lucky I might get some fresh chicken, or pork, and fruit and vegetables, but precious little else. I have to shop around for what we need, in the small local shops, and have by and large managed to get the items that I can’t get from Tesco. 

I only venture out once a day to get provisions, so I have been following the governments instructions, announced Monday night, already. I'm trying to get hold of an effective face mask, and think we have two coming, but don’t know when.

I live with my partner and we went for a walk on Saturday in a local large park, and it was packed with people. It was difficult to social distance because there were so many other people there, and the grass was muddy, so you really had to stick to the paths. Most people attempted to social distance, but I as I say, it wasn’t easy. It looks as though a total lock-down may be in force soon, but they will need to get the on line shopping sites up and running, we need to eat.

Reports from friends around the country suggests that London and other urban areas have been worst hit in terms of food/provisions shortages and London has the quickest rising cases of people contracting the virus. The worst may be a few weeks away, as the rate of infection in the UK is rising faster than other countries, like Italy, which has been the most badly hit by the pandemic.

Mutual help groups have formed in my area, and have done in some other areas of London that I have heard from. This is a good sign as we will need to help each other if we are get through this in any kind good shape. 

The government at last seems to be getting its act together after delaying measures for too long, probably weeks, and they have announced some sensible things now, so belated credit where it is due. More needs to be done though, especially for those workers not on PAYE and for those on Statutory Sick Pay, benefits and the homeless.

There is a bit of a dystopian feel about things. My local London Underground station is closed and shuttered up. The local pub, which stayed open until Friday, now has all the windows and doors boarded up, there are only the grocery shops open. People seem to be as good humoured as the situation allows, but there is a strange feeling in the air.

The worse thing for those of us feeling fine, is that there is just nothing do after work, except watch TV, listen to the radio or music, and look at things on the web. My partner who is a ferocious reader of novels is beginning to run out of books (even e-books) to read, and this is after only one week. Total boredom is likely quite shortly, but what can you do?

There has never been a time quite like this, but it is similar to the restrictions during World War II, but even then the pubs and entertainments stayed mostly open in Britain. These are unprecedented times that we live in.

I’ll leave you with Buzzcocks ‘Boredom’ from 1976 – it rather sums up my mood at the moment, other than being scared.

A “Green New Deal”?: The Eco-syndicalist Alternative

Written by Tom Wetzel and first published at Ideas & Action

Capitalist dynamics are at the very heart of the current crisis that humanity faces over global warming.

When we talk of “global warming,” we’re talking about the rapid — and on-going — rise in the average world-wide surface and ocean temperature. Thus far a rise of 0.8 degrees Celsius (1.4 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1880. According to an ongoing temperature analysis conducted by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, two-thirds of this temperature increase has occurred since 1975. A one-degree rise in temperature might seem like no big deal. As the NASA scientists point out, however, “A one-degree global change is significant because it takes a vast amount of heat to warm all the oceans, atmosphere, and land by that much.”

We know that carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels is at the heart of the problem. For many centuries the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere ranged between 200 and 300 parts per million. By the 1950s the growth of industrial capitalism since the 1800s had pushed this to the top of this range — 310 parts per million. Since then the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen very rapidly — to more than 410 parts per million by 2018. This is the result of the vast rise in the burning of fossil fuels in the era since World War 2 — coal, petroleum, natural gas.

The problem is rooted in the very structure of capitalism itself. Cost-shifting is an essential feature of the capitalist mode of production. An electric power company burns coal to generate electricity because the price per kilowatt hour from coal-fired electricity has long been cheaper than alternatives. But the emissions from burning coal travel downwind and cause damage to the respiratory systems of thousands of people — including preventable deaths to people with respiratory ailments. This is in addition to the powerful contribution to global warming from the carbon dioxide emissions. 

But the power firm doesn’t have to pay money for these human costs. If the firm had to pay fees that would be equivalent to the human cost in death, respiratory damage and contribution to global warming and its effects, burning coal would not be profitable for the power company.

Firms also externalize costs onto workers, such as the health effects of stress or chemical exposures. The “free market” pundit or hack economist might deny that companies externalize costs onto workers. They might say that wages and benefits paid to workers for each hour of work measure the cost of labor. But the human cost of work can be increased without an increase in the compensation paid to workers. If a company speeds up the pace of work, if people are working harder, if they are more tightly controlled by supervisors, paced by machines or software, this increases the cost in human terms.

Toxic chemicals used in manufacturing, in agriculture and other industries pose a threat to both the workers and to people who live in nearby areas. Usually working class people live in neighborhoods near polluting industries, and often these are communities of color. This is another form of capitalist cost-shifting.

State regulation of pesticides or air pollution often ends up acting as a “cover” for the profit-making firms. Despite the existence of pollutants generated by leaky oil refineries and pollutants emitted by other industries in industrial areas in California — such as the “cancer alley” of oil refineries in the Contra Costa County area or the similar refinery zone in Wilmington — the government agencies set up to deal with air pollution in the Bay Area and Los Angeles County protected polluters for years by focusing almost exclusively on pollution generated  by vehicle exhaust. In this way the South Coast Air Quality Management District and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District have been an example of “regulatory capture” by corporate capital.

Power firms that generate vast amounts of carbon dioxide emissions — and firms that make profits from building fossil-fuel burning cars and trucks or from the sale of gasoline and diesel and jet fuel — have not had to pay any fees or penalties for the growing build-up of the carbon dioxide layer in the atmosphere. The global warming crisis thus has its explanation in cost shifting and the search for short-term profits and ever growing markets — features that are at the heart of the capitalist system.

If global capitalism continues with “business as usual”, the warming will have major impacts — killer heat waves, more ocean heat pumping energy into hurricanes and cyclones, rising ocean levels from melting of ice in the polar regions and melting of glaciers, destruction of corals in the oceans, and a greater danger to the survival of many species of living things.

Previous attempts to get global agreement to cut back burning of fossil fuels have been ineffective. The Paris accords merely proposed voluntary targets. NASA scientist James Hansen described it as a “fraud”: “There is no action, just promises.” According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the dire situation calls for “rapid and far-reaching transitions…unprecedented in terms of scale.” The IPCC warns that there needs to be a 45 percent world-wide reduction in the production of heat-trapping gases (mainly carbon dioxide) by 2030 if humanity is to avoid dangerous levels of global warming.

Clearly a global change is needed. But how to bring this about?

The concept of a Green New Deal has been proposed by Green Party activists, climate justice groups and various radicals for some time. The slogan is based on a comparison with the statist planning used by President Roosevelt to respond to the economic crisis of the 1930s as well as the vast and rapid transition of American industry to war production at the beginning of World War 2. The idea is that the crisis of global warming should be treated with equal urgency as the mass unemployment of 1933 or the fascist military threat of the early 1940s.

After the election to Congress of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — a member of Democratic Socialists of America — the Green New Deal resolution was introduced into the US Congress by Ocasio-Cortez  and Senator Ed Markey. This lays out a set of ambitious goals, such as 100 percent electric power generation in the USA from “clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources.”

Other goals include “removing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing…as much as is technologically feasible” and “overhauling” the transport sector “to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions” from transport “through investment in zero-emission vehicles, accessible public  transportation and high speed rail.” Along with this resolution, a letter was sent to the US Congress from 626 environmental organizations backing the Green New Deal proposal. These environmental groups made it quite clear they oppose any market-based tinkering — reforms that we know won’t work — such as “cap and trade” (trading in pollution “rights”).

Many have proposed “public-private partnerships” and public subsidies to private corporations. Robert Pollin, writing in New Left Review, talks about “preferential tax treatment for clean-energy investments” and “market arrangements through government procurement contracts.” All part of a so-called “green industrial policy.” A green capitalism, in other words.

But workers are often skeptical of these promises. Companies will simply lay people off, under-pay them, or engage in speed-up and dangerous work practices — if they can profit by doing so. For example, low pay, work intensification and injuries have been a problem at the Tesla electric car factory which has received 5 billion dollars in government subsidies. Tesla recently laid off 7 percent of its workforce (over three thousand workers) in pursuit of profitability.

An alternative approach that looks to statist central planning has been proposed by Richard Smith — an eco-socialist who is also a member of Democratic Socialists of America. Smith characterizes the proposal by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez this way:

Ocasio-Cortez…is a bold,  feminist, anti-racist and socialist-inspired successor to FDR…She’s taking the global warming discussion to a new level…She’s not calling for cap and trade or carbon taxes or divestment or other “market” solutions. She’s issuing a full-throated call for de-carbonization — in effect throwing the gauntlet down to capitalism and challenging the system…[1]

Smith believes the goals of the Green New Deal can’t be realized through things like “incentives” — and he’s right about that. He points out that the Green New Deal resolution “lacks specifics” about how the goals will be reached. To realize the goal of “de-carbonizing” the economy, he proposes a three-part program:

Declare a state of emergency to suppress fossil fuel use. Ban all new extraction. Nationalize the fossil fuel industry to phase it out.

Create a federal program in the style of the 1930s Works Progress Administration to shift the workforce of the shut-down industries to “useful but low emissions” areas of the economy “at equivalent pay and benefits.”

Launch a “state-directed” crash program to phase in renewable electric power production, electric transport vehicles and other methods of transport not based on burning fossil fuels. 

Develop programs to shift from petro-chemical intensive industrial agriculture to organic farming.

Even though “AOC explicitly makes a powerful case for state planning,” Smith says, a weakness of the Green New Deal resolution, from his perspective, is the failure to “call for a National Planning Board to reorganize, reprioritize and restructure the economy.” When he talks about nationalization, he notes “We do not call for expropriation.” He’s talking about buying out the shareholders at “fair market value.” This is essentially a proposal for a largely state-directed form of capitalist economy — a form of state capitalism.

Smith’s proposal is wildly unrealistic. Are we to believe that the corporate-media influenced American electoral scheme can be used to elect politicians — through the business-controlled Democratic Party — to enact a multi-trillion dollar program of seizures of the fossil fuel industry, auto manufacturers, and chemical firms and set up a planning board to direct the economy?

The American working class did make important gains in the Thirties — such as the Fair Labor Standards Act (minimum wage, unemployment insurance) and Aid to Families with Dependent Children. These concessions were only won due to an uprising of the American working class in a context of vast struggles around the world — a working class revolution in Spain, plant occupations in France, a communist insurgency in China, the Communists holding on in Russia. In that moment capitalism faced a threat to its very existence.

The USA saw a huge working class rebellion between 1933 and 1937 — millions of workers on strike, hundreds of thousands of workers creating new unions from scratch,  rising influence for revolutionary organizations, a thousand workplace seizures (sit-down strikes), challenges to Jim Crow in the south. And in 1936 this angry and militant mood also pushed very close to the formation of a national Farmer-Labor Party that would have been a major threat to the Democrats. Many formerly intransigent corporations were forced to negotiate agreements with unions. The Democrats chose to “move left” in that moment.

It’s also a mistake to romanticize the New Deal. People talk of the 1930s WPA as the model for “job guarantees” — that is, government as employer of last resort. But there was still 17 percent unemployment in USA as late as 1940. Workers in the WPA often had beefs such as low pay. Communists, socialists and syndicalists organized unions and strikes among WPA workers. The gains that working class people were able to win in the Thirties did not simply come about through electoral politics. 

Nor were the conservative, bureaucratic “international unions” of the American Federal of Labor the vehicle either. They were more of a road block — exactly why several hundred thousand workers had created new grassroots unions from scratch by late 1934.

Smith is not alone in pushing statist central planning as a solution. This concept is being talked up lately by various state socialists, including people associated with Jacobin magazine and DSA. These advocates often assume the state is simply a class-neutral institution that could be taken hold of by the working class and wielded for its purposes.

In reality the state is not class-neutral but has class oppression built into its very structure. For example, public sector workers are subordinate to managerialist bureaucracies just as workers are in the private corporations. The day-to-day workings of state institutions are controlled by the cadres of the bureaucratic control class — state managers, high end professionals employed as experts, prosecutors and judges, military and police brass. This is in addition to the “professionals of representation” — the politicians — who are typically drawn from either the business or bureaucratic control classes, that is, classes to which working class people are subordinate.

As a top-down approach to planning, statist central planning has no way to gain accurate information about either public preferences for public goods and services or individual consumer preferences. Statist central planning is also inherently authoritarian. This is because it is based on a denial of self-management to people who would be primarily affected by its decisions — consumers and residents of communities, on the one hand, and workers in the various industries who would continue to be subject to managerialist autocracy.

Self-management means that people who are affected by decisions have control over those decisions to the extent they are affected. There are many decisions in the running of workplaces where the group who are primarily affected are the workers whose activity makes up the production process. Taking self-management seriously would require a form of distributed control in planning, where groups who are primarily affected over certain decisions — such as residents of local communities or workers in industries— have an independent sphere of decision-making control. This is the basis of the syndicalist alternative of distributed planning, discussed below.

State socialists will sometimes make noises about “worker control” as an element of central planning, but real collective power of workers over the production process is inconsistent with the concept of central planning. If planning is to be the activity of an elite group at a center, they will want to have their own managers on site in workplaces to make sure their plans are carried out.  Any talk of “worker control” always loses out to this logic.

Statist central planning can’t overcome either the exploitative or cost-shifting logic of capitalism, which lies at the heart of the ecological crisis. Various populations are directly impacted by pollution in various forms — such as the impact of pesticide pollution on farm workers and rural communities or the impact on air and water in local communities. The only way to overcome the cost-shifting logic is for the affected populations — workers and communities — to gain direct power to prevent being polluted on. For global warming, this means the population in general needs a direct form of popular power that would enable the people to directly control the allowable emissions into the atmosphere.

As difficult as it may be, we need a transition to a self-managed, worker-controlled socialist political economy if we’re going to have a solution to the ecological crisis of the present era. But this transition can only really come out of the building up of a powerful, participatory movement of the oppressed majority in the course of struggles against the present regime.

The Syndicalist Alternative for an Eco-socialist Future

The problem is not that people struggle for immediate changes that are within our power to currently push for. Rather, the issue is how we pursue change. Changes can be fought for in different ways.

The basic problem with the electoral socialist (“democratic socialist”) strategy is its reliance on methods that ask working class people to look to “professionals of representation” to do things for us. This approach tends to build up — and crucially rely upon — bureaucratic layers that are apart from — and not effectively controllable by — rank-and-file working class people. These are approaches that build up layers of professional politicians in office, paid political party machines, lobbyists, or negotiations on our behalf by the paid apparatus of the unions — paid officials and staff, or the paid staff in the big non-profits.

Syndicalists refer to these as reformist methods (for lack of a better term). Not because we’re opposed to the fight for reforms. Any fight for a less-than-total change (such as more money for schools or more nurse staffing) is a “reform.” The methods favored by the electoral socialists are “reformist” because they undermine the building of a movement for more far-reaching change. The history of the past century shows that these bureaucratic layers end up as a barrier to building the struggle for a transition to a worker-controlled socialist mode of production.

We can say that an approach to action and organization for change is non-reformist to the extent that it builds rank-and-file controlled mass organizations, relies on and builds participation in militant collective actions such as strikes, and builds self-confidence, self-reliance, organizing skills, wider active participation, and wider solidarity between different groups among the oppressed and exploited majority.

Syndicalism is a strategy for change based on non-reformist forms of action and organization. Non-reformist forms of organization of struggle are based on control by the members through participatory democracy and elected delegates, such as elected shop delegates and elected negotiating committees in workplaces. And the use of similar grassroots democracy in other organizations that working class people can build such as tenant unions. Non-reformist forms of action are disruptive of “business as usual” and are built on collective participation, such as strikes, occupations, and militant marches.

A key way the electoral socialist and syndicalist approaches differ is their effect on the process that Marxists sometimes call class formation. This is the more or less protracted process through which the working class overcomes fatalism and internal divisions (as on lines of race or gender), acquires knowledge about the system, and builds the confidence, organizational capacity and the aspiration for social change. Through this process the working class “forms” itself into a force that can effectively challenge the dominating classes for control of society.

If people see effective collective action spreading in the society around them, this may change the way people see their situation. Once they perceive that this kind of collective power is available to them as a real solution for their own issues, this can change their perception of the kinds of change that is possible. The actual experience of collective power can suggest a much deeper possibility of change.

When rank-and-file working class people participate directly in building worker unions, participating in carrying out a strike with co-workers, or in building a tenant union and organizing direct struggle against rent hikes or poor building conditions, rank-and-file people are directly engaged — and this helps people to learn how to organize, builds more of a sense that “We can make change,” and people also learn directly about the system. 

More people are likely to come to the conclusion “We have the power to change the society” if they see actual power of people like themselves being used effectively in strikes, building takeovers, and other kinds of mass actions. In other words, a movement of direct participation and grassroots democracy builds in more people this sense of the possibility of change from below.

On the other hand, concentrating the decision-making power in the fight for social change into bureaucratic layers of professional politicians and an entrenched union bureaucracy tends to undermine this process because it doesn’t build confidence and organizing skills among working class people. It fails to build the sense that “We have the power in our hands to change things.” Thus a basic problem with electoral socialism (“democratic socialism”) is that it undermines the process of class formation.

The electoral venue is also not favorable terrain for the working class struggle for changes because the voting population tends to be skewed to the more affluent part of the population. A large part of the working class do not see why they should vote. They don’t see the politicians as looking out for their interests. The non-voting population tends to be poorer — more working class — than the voting population. This means the working class can’t bring the full force of its numbers to bear.

A strategy for change focused on elections and political parties tends to lead to a focus on electing leaders to gain power in the state, to make changes for us. This type of focus leads us away from a more independent form of working class politics that is rooted in forms of collective action that ordinary people can build directly and directly participate in — such as strikes, building direct solidarity between different working class groups in the population, mass protest campaigns around issues that we select, and the like.

To be clear, I’m not here arguing that people shouldn’t vote, or that it makes no difference to us who is elected. Often in fact it does, and independent worker and community organizations can also direct their pressure on what politicians do. But here I’m talking about our strategy for change. I’m arguing against a strategy for change that relies upon — focuses on — the role of elected officials, a political party, or the full-time paid union apparatus.

An electoralist strategy leads to the development of political machines in which mass organizations look to professional politicians and party operatives. This type of practice tends to create a bureaucratic layer of professional politicians, media, think-tanks and party operatives that develops its own interests.

When the strategy is focused on electing people to office in the state, college-educated professionals and people with “executive experience” will tend to be favored as candidates to “look good” in the media.  And this means people of the professional and administrative layers will tend to gain leadership positions in an electorally oriented party. This will tend to diminish the ability of rank and file working class people to control the party’s direction. 

This is part of the process of the development of the party as a separate bureaucratic layer with its own interests. Because they are concerned with winning elections and keeping their hold on positions in the state, this can lead them to oppose disruptive direct action by workers such as strikes or workplace takeovers. There is a long history of electoral socialist leaders taking this kind of stance.

To the extent electoral socialist politics comes to dominate in the labor movement — as it did in Europe  after World War 2 — declining militancy and struggle also undermined the commitment to socialism. The electoral socialist parties in Europe competed in elections through the advocacy of various immediate reforms. This became the focus of the parties. Sometimes they won elections. 

At the head of a national government they found that they had to “manage” capitalism — keep the capitalist regime running. If they moved in too radical a direction they found they would lose middle class votes — or the investor elite might panic and start moving their capital to safe havens abroad. In some cases elements of the “deep state” — such as the military and police forces — moved to overthrow them. Most of these parties eventually changed their concept of what their purpose was. They gave up on the goal of replacing capitalism with socialism.

Eco-syndicalism

Eco-syndicalism is based on the recognition that workers — and direct worker and community alliances — can be a force against the environmentally destructive actions of capitalist firms. Toxic substances are transported by workers, ground-water-destroying solvents are used in electronics assembly and damage the health of workers, and pesticides poison farm workers. Industrial poisons affect workers on the job first and pollute nearby working class neighborhoods. Nurses have to deal with the effects of pollution on people’s bodies. Various explosive derailments have shown how oil trains can be a danger to both railroad workers and communities. The struggle of railroad workers for adequate staffing on trains is part of the struggle against this danger.

Workers are a potential force for resistance to decisions of employers that pollute or contribute to global warming. Workers can also be a force for support of alternatives on global warming, such as expanded public transit. An example of working class resistance to environmental pollution were the various “green bans” enacted by the Australian Building Laborer’s Federation back in the ‘70s — such as a ban on transport or handling of uranium.

A recognition of this relationship led to the development of an environmentalist tendency among syndicalists in the ‘80s and ‘90s — eco-syndicalism (also called “green syndicalism”). An example in the ‘80s was the organizing work of Judi Bari — a member of the IWW and Earth First!. Working in the forested region of northwest California, she attempted to develop an alliance of workers in the wood products industry (and their unions) with environmentalists who were trying to protect old growth forests against clear-cutting.

Worker and community organizations can be a direct force against fossil fuel capitalism in a variety of ways — such as the various actions against coal or oil terminals on the Pacific Coast, or labor and community support for struggles of indigenous people and other rural communities against polluting fossil fuel projects, such as happened with the Standing Rock blockade in the Dakotas. Unions can also be organized in workplaces of the “green” capitalist firms to fight against low pay and other conditions I described earlier.

The different strategies of syndicalists and electoral socialists tends to lead to different conceptions of what “socialism” and “democracy” mean. Because politicians tend to compete on the basis of what policies they will pursue through the state, this encourages a state socialist view that socialism is a set of reforms enacted top down through the managerialist bureaucracies of the state. Certainly state socialists are an influential element in Democratic Socialists of America.

I think a top down form of power, controlled by the bureaucratic control class in state management, is not going to work as a solution for the ecological challenges of the present. The history of the “communist camp” countries of the mid-20th century showed that they were also quite capable of pollution and ecological destruction rooted in cost-shifting behavior.

On the other hand, the syndicalist vision of self-managed socialism provides a plausible basis for a solution for the environmental crisis because a federative, distributed form of democratic planning places power in local communities and workers in industries, and thus they have power to prevent ecologically destructive decisions. 

For syndicalists, socialism is about human liberation — and a central part is the liberation of the working class from subordination and exploitation in a regime where there are dominating classes on top. Thus for syndicalism the transition to socialism means workers taking over and collectively managing all the industries — including the public services. This is socialism created from  below — created by the working class itself.

Syndicalist movements historically advocated a planned economy based on a distributed model of democratic planning, rooted in assemblies in neighborhoods and workplaces. With both residents of communities and worker production organizations each having the power to make decisions in developing plans for its own area, a distributed, federative system of grassroots planning uses delegate congresses or councils and systems of negotiation to “adjust” the proposals and aims of the various groups to each other. 

Examples of libertarian socialist distributed planning models include the negotiated coordination proposals of the World War 1 era guild socialists, the 1930s Spanish anarcho-syndicalist program of neighborhood assemblies (“free municipalities”) and worker congresses, and the more recent participatory planning model of Robin Hahnel and Michael Albert.

A 21st century form of self-managed socialism would be a horizontally federated system of production that can implement planning and coordination throughout industries and over a wide region. This would enable workers to:

Gain control over technological development,

Re-organize jobs and education to eliminate the bureaucratic concentration of power in the hands of managers and high-end professionals, develop worker skills, and work to integrate decision-making and conceptualization with the doing of the physical work,

Reduce the working week and share work responsibilities among all who can work, and

Create a new logic of development for technology that is friendly to workers and the environment.

A purely localistic focus and purely fragmented control of separate workplaces (such as worker cooperatives in a market economy) is not enough. Overall coordination is needed to move social production away from subordination to market pressures and the “grow or die” imperative of capitalism and build solidarity between regions. There also needs to be direct, communal accountability for what is produced and for effects on the community and environment.

The protection of the ecological commons requires a directly communal form of social governance and control over the aims of production. This means direct empowerment of the masses who would be directly polluted on or directly affected by environmental degradation. This is necessary to end the ecologically destructive cost-shifting behavior that is a structural feature of both capitalism and bureaucratic statism. Direct communal democracy and direct worker management of industry provide the two essential elements for a libertarian eco-socialist program.

1. “An Ecosocialist Path to Limiting Global Temperature Rise to 1.5°C” https://systemchangenotclimatechange.org/article/ecosocialist-path-limiting-global-temperature-rise-

Do We Need to Tax Wealth Properly in the UK?

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) Commission on Economic Justice have produced an evaluation of the taxation of wealth in the UK. The report, ‘A Wealth of Difference’ concludes that wealth inequality is damaging the UK’s society and economy, whilst the current tax system is failing to tackle and in some cases is even exacerbating inequality. The authors propose a number of reforms to the system including replacing council tax with an annual property tax and replacing business rates with a land value tax.

Wealth Inequality in the UK

Household net wealth in Great Britain is valued at £12.8 trillion, of which 44 per cent is owned by the wealthiest 10 per cent and only 9 per cent is owned by the bottom 50 per cent of people. Wealth is twice as unevenly distributed as income in the UK, with a Gini coefficient of 0.62 for wealth compared to 0.32 for income.

Wealth refers to assets including property, financial wealth, pension wealth and physical wealth such as vehicles. Wealth inequality in the UK fell after the World Wars but has been increasing since the 1980s due to neo-liberal policies. This has been driven by increasing returns to capital compared to labour which means those who earn income from assets have seen their incomes grow more than those who work for a wage. Underlying causes include house price inflation and falling homeownership, financial asset price inflation, automation, low pay and weak labour bargaining power.

Increases in inequality have clear social implications. Beyond this, it is also limiting for economic growth. Those with greater incomes have a lower marginal propensity to consume, meaning they are more likely to hoard their wealth rather than spend it in the economy. The current system of taxation incentivises ‘rent seeking’ behaviour which means that people invest in existing assets such as housing which pushes up the price of that asset without generating any new economic output or activity.

The Current Tax System

One of the most powerful tools to combat wealth inequality is taxation to fund progressive spending. Currently, income from labour is taxed more heavily than income from wealth. Wealth in the UK is primarily taxed through capital gains tax (CGT), inheritance tax (IHT), dividend income taxation and stamp duties which bring in only 4 per cent of total tax revenues. In contrast, income and consumption taxes bring in 60 per cent of tax revenue.

The report identifies several key problems with the current system of wealth taxation: there are significant opportunities for avoidance, the system fails to raise large amounts of revenue, it creates economic distortions (for example, exemptions to CGT for first homes, encourages investment in property over other assets, differences in taxation of dividends vs income encourages senior pay to be dividend based).

The under-taxing of income from wealth compared to income from labour is regressive since wealthier individuals are likely to have greater income from assets than labour income and finally it will be fiscally unsustainable in the long run to raise sufficient revenue if income from labour continues to decline relative to income from capital.

Report Recommendations:

Tax all income from wealth under the income tax schedule

Treating income from capital as the same as income from labour from a taxation perspective would make the system considerably more progressive. In addition, it would increase incentives for labour market participation by the wealthy, raise more revenue and reduce opportunities for avoidance by simplifying the system (removing exemptions). Finally, shifting the balance of taxation towards capital rather than labour means the government will continue to be able to raise revenues in the face of increasing automation and technological change.

Abolish inheritance tax and introduce a lifetime donee-based gift tax

Wealth transfers give an unearned advantage to the recipient and work against social mobility, creating a strong social and economic justification for taxation. Inheritance tax currently has many exemptions and opportunities for avoidance that could be improved upon by a gift tax.

The report proposes taxing any gifts above a lifetime allowance of £125,000 under income tax. However without improvements to HMRC’s digital infrastructure it would have to rely on self-reporting and would require valuations of non-monetary gifts. The resolution foundation estimated such a tax could raise £15bn in 2020/21 (£9.2bn more than the current IHT).

Abolish non-domiciled status and reform the transparency of trusts

Improvements to transparency could reduce opportunities for avoidance as well as reducing the complexity of administering the system.

Introduce an annual property tax to replace council tax and eventually stamp duty.

The report recommends replacing council tax entirely with a new property tax. This wold be proportional to the present day value of homes and is different to a land value tax since it also taxes the value of the property itself. This would be levied on owners rather than occupiers (however owners are likely to pass this on in the form of higher rents).

A deferral mechanism would be needed to protect those who are asset-rich but cash-poor. Since the tax is linked to property values it would help to recapture some of the value generated by public investments in infrastructure such as new train stations. A charge of 0.5 per cent of property values is estimated to generate at least as much revenue as the current system. This could also replace stamp duty land tax in the future.  It would be possible to introduce progressive rates, exempting properties of low value and allowing for regional variation.

Introduce a land value tax to replace business rates

Land value tax has always been popular among economists. It taxes the value of the land (not the property on it) based on its most valuable use under existing planning permissions. This would penalise those who own land and do not develop it, incentivising more efficient use of land, without penalising those who make improvements to their properties. This would require considerable effort to value land regularly and establish a register of land ownership however it has been achieved in some European countries and elsewhere across the world.

Such a tax would support productive investment (unlike business rates), capture unearned rents from ownership of land and reduce incentives for speculation on land. It may also make parts of the country with less valuable land more attractive to businesses. An exemption to the first £20,000 per hectare would exclude most agricultural land. A rate of 4 per cent would generate the same value as the current business rates system.

These are all good ideas. We need to tax the wealth held in the UK more fairly if we want decent public services for all.

Tory Brexiteers Finally Come Up With Alt-Brexit Plan

It is more than two years now since the referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union (EU), where of course we voted to leave. It has been a feature, during the referendum campaign itself and in the period since, that those who advocated Brexit haven’t come up with any sort of plan for life outside of the union. What kind of relationship with the EU do they want, if any at all?

Lofty talk of global trade deals and vague sloganising like ‘take back control’ have been the order of the day, but no specifics have been put forward by the loudest cheerleaders for Brexit in the Tory party. At long last, the penny seems to have dropped with these people, that it might be a good idea to have one. However, this plan looks to be purely cosmetic.

I suspect that this has been forced on the Brexiteers for two main reasons. Firstly, they don’t like the prime minister’s Chequers plan, as they see it as not really leaving the EU. Secondly, public opinion in Britain seems to be shifting to favour either a ‘soft’ Brexit or another referendum on the final agreement between the UK and EU, which could well result in a vote to remain in the EU.

Whatever the motivation, the Sun reports that the European Research Group (ERG) of Tory MPs are to ‘ambush’ Theresa May with a plan for a ‘clean Brexit’ just days before the Tory conference in September. A source told the paper: "This is about delivering the clean Brexit that people voted for. No concessions."

The plan is for the UK to have a Canada-style free trade agreement with the EU. But get this, only if the EU drops its objections to having a border on the island of Ireland. If the EU will not agree to this there will be no deal at tall, and the UK will trade on World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms, with the bloc.

Canada and the EU have signed the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), which is essentially a free trade agreement, removing most tariffs on trade in goods between the two trading partners and some more limited access for services. Border controls are still in place for people and goods, so if the UK were to adopt such an agreement, it would not solve the problems of delays with imports at UK and exports at EU ports or the situation with the border in Ireland.

I think the plan is hypothetical anyway, because I can’t see any way that the EU will back down on the Irish border issue. We could have a CETA type deal otherwise, but the ERG have ruled this out for some reason. So, we are basically back to a no deal Brexit, and falling back on WTO trade rules. Hardly much of a plan?

I don’t think any country in the world trades on WTO rules only, but of course in the longer run trade deals can be negotiated, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership which the government has explored joining or bi-lateral trade arrangements with other nations. All of which takes time and skilled trade deal negotiators though, neither of which we have much of.

Under WTO rules, each member must grant the same ‘most favoured nation’ market access, to all other WTO members. This means that exports to the EU would be subject to the same customs checks, tariffs and regulatory barriers that the UK and EU currently charge on trade with countries such as the US. The UK’s exports to the EU and other WTO members would also be subject to the importing countries’ most favoured nation tariffs. But tariffs all the same.

EU tariffs on WTO goods range from zero to 45%, with the average tariff being 4.8%, making British goods under such arrangements, less competitive in the EU marketplace. Of course, costs could be reduced by UK exporters, to cover the difference, but this will almost certainly mean cutting the wages of British workers. Alternately, businesses may relocate to the EU, where it is feasible and advantageous, taking British jobs with them.

The Alt-Brexit plan turns out to be really no plan at all, with even a Canada style deal out of the question if there is no agreement on keeping the Irish border open. It is just a long winded way of crashing out of the EU with no deal whatsoever, with all of the problems that will bring for the UK. And more time wasted on pointless negotiations.

David Cameron and the Rewards of Failure

It is nearly two years since David Cameron resigned as prime minister after losing the referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union (EU). This is the man that sowed the seeds of the chaos the country finds itself in today. Cameron resigned, despite calls for him to stay from Remain and Leave supporting ministers in his Cabinet, saying reportedly, “why should I do all the shit work?” The new prime minister, Theresa May has been shovelling it ever since.

Cameron was well known to be lazy, probably the laziest prime minister of modern times, and he appears to have carried this habit through to his post politics career. We still await his memoirs, although without bated breath, for which he bought a garden shed specifically to use as a writing room. It is said that the book will be published later this year, if he gets around to finishing writing it. Reports say he will be paid £1.5 million for his efforts, although other reports say the amount is closer to £800,000.

Cameron also has several other lucrative consultancies and lobbying positions, which amount to very little real work but are rewarded handsomely. According to the BBC he has taken the following roles:

Consultant and chairman of Illumina's international board (announced in February 2018)

Vice-chairman, UK-China Fund (December 2017)

Board member, ONE, a development organisation (December 2017)

Consultant and brand ambassador, First Data Corporation (October 2017)

Member of Global Board of Advisers of the Council in Foreign Relations (May 2017)

Chairman, International Growth Centre's Commission on Growth in Fragile States (March 2017)

President, Alzheimer's Research UK (January 2017)

Chairman, National Citizen Service Patrons (October 2016)

Public speaker, Washington Speakers Bureau (December 2016)

He will be paid £50,000 per hour to make after dinner speeches and is entitled to a £115,000 per year “Public Duties Cost Allowance” to run his private office, from public funds.

Cameron became leader of the Tory party in 2005 and prime minister in 2010, in coalition with the Lib Dems. To impress the Euro-sceptics in the Tory party he promised that Tory MEP’s would leave the European People's Party grouping in the European Parliament. The ploy worked and Cameron won the leadership. He then concluded an agreement to form the Movement for European Reform grouping with Euro-sceptic parties, mainly from eastern Europe.

Short of an overall majority in Parliament in 2010 he formed a coalition government with the Lib Dems and set about introducing austerity policies which cut public spending deeply, with the resultant misery for many of the country’s most vulnerable people. In an effort to keep the Tory party united over the issue of Europe, he promised a referendum on EU membership, which he thought he would never have to hold, because of opposition from coalition partners, the Lib Dems. But Cameron won a surprise majority for the Tories at the 2015 general election, and had to hold the plebiscite in 2016.

This was not a good time to hold such a vote, six years on from the financial crisis and with his austerity policies biting and wages falling or stagnating for most people. Cameron negotiated some minor concessions from the EU, which was meant to be the basis for the UK remaining in the bloc, but were hardly even mentioned during the referendum campaign. The British public voted to leave, and here we are today, in the shit.

Cameron was a complete chancer. Asked about why he had wanted to be prime minister, Cameron replied “because I thought I’d be rather good at it.” Well, he wasn’t, but this reply reveals much about Cameron. He had a sense of entitlement and arrogance commensurate with his upper middle class background. No vision for the country in general, just a public relations exercise of re-branding the Tories, into looking a more modern party.

After screwing the least wealthy, and leaving the country in Brexit chaos, Cameron has scarpered, and is being well rewarded for incompetence when in office. What mugs we are.