Where now for the anti-cuts movement?
- Thread starter love detective
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Streathamite
ideological dogmatist
so the person who stood hugely to gain from DSK's arrest was and remains sarko, yet the arrest was a completely american affair, and there's no love lost between those in power in Washington, and sarko.
Also, DSK was for two decades the man who wielded the neolib scalpel. There's no contradiction between that and keynesian pump-priming; the markets still remain supreme, and unfettered. he'd hardly recanted - just called for some fine tuning
Streathamite
ideological dogmatist
Streathamite
ideological dogmatist
yes, it was, because that was the actual point I took issue with. you may not have noticed, but that's how most people generally do use the quotes function.
And the idea that DSK had become, or was perceived by the global political financial elate, as a traitor to the neolib project really is bizarre.
I'd also point out that - given that the New Deal was the first stab at keynesianism (followed, arguably, by Hitler's reflation of the German economy) that Keynes 'won the argument' rather earlier than the 1940s.
(in answer to your statement;
love detective
there's no love too small
does anyone actually have anything to say about the current state of anti-cuts political organisation 1 year in?
Streathamite
ideological dogmatist
will come back to this soon.....
actually no, now. I think one fear we share, is that we are doing the same old same old things that led to impotence over Iraq, and (much further back) all the 80s protest, bar the poll tax: petitions, marching from A to B, stalls on high streets which people ignore, the same old left groups (SWP/SP/PR), all busy talking to each other. demoes outside council offices are great, but if the councillors ignore you - then what? One brilliant idea we had in haringey was erxtensive liaison with every local community group, charity, voluntary group, association - old, disabled, parents', and get them to tell us how the cuts affected them.
because the one thing I am certain of is this; these cuts are so huge they adversely affect everyone, and the big mistake we are possibly making - or which I can see being made - is that we are not tapping into that. yet that is the big latent strength - and tapping that made the poll tax campaign work.
EVERY PTA, f'rinstance, every place where the elderly, or disabled, or new mums congregate, should be zeroed in on, becuase the dialogue can immediately be turned from one of abstract issues to concrete interests. Otherwise, it's just the same old marginalised lefty anoraks.
and we should be doing this especially in condem constituencies. When haringey people picketed Lynne Featherstone's surgery, she looked utterly traumatised.
BTW, did you see my question as to whether your disillusionment might be down to dissatisfaction with your own local campaign?
The fact is, though, that the vast majority of people do see the status quo as an option. When you don't associate with political activists, you come to realise that even among those people who do have an inkling that things are not right, and haven't been right for the last three or four years, few are actually interested in trying to gain an understanding of it, let alone do anything about it. Or at least that's my experience. People generally feel powerless (and they are right to feel it), and there's always something good on the telly or the next Champion's League games to look forward to-or whatever-in this age of mass distraction, and I'm no different to the next person in this respect.
Some people may be looking for solutions, but there's nothing new there. Ever since Soviet-style communism came to be rejected by the radical left and militant workers, people have been looking for new solutions. I'm not saying that there's no point protesting and 'making demands', but in reality what are the Spanish or Greek protestors, for instance, going to be able to do (apart from, if they're lucky, win some small, temporary victories-or force a change of government, which would be merely another swapping of one section for another of the very political class they apparently reject?) Who is ever going to implement their demands? They are demands shouted into a void.
The only reason I mentioned the far left and left parties is to emphasise the scale of the impasse in which we find ourselves. We've been in it for more than twenty years. There's nothing new about non-activists getting involved in protests when there's something to protest about, but suddenly it's being presented as some sort of prelude to the overthrow of capitalism, when ideas of how to do this have never been as vague and when capital has never been so untouchable and entrenched. And all this when the shadow of the end of mass consumer capitalism-the only thing that really keeps societies stable and stops we the mug punters from turning on each other (look at those societies where it doesn't really exist)-grows ever longer.
Dangerous, dangerous times lie ahead.
grit
an ugly force for good
Yup, its business as usual for a huge amount of people (myself included).
Brainaddict
slight system overdrive
I know I'm from the same part of London as you so I also don't have a rosy picture of current activist activity. The student activism also seems to have run out of momentum.
I honestly think people lack ideas. Ideas on what to aim for, ideas on how to act, ideas on how to talk about the political sitution. We're stuck, and it's going to take something more radical than what generally passes for 'radicalism' to get around it.
Having said that, people can and do act unexpectedly, without the help of self-declared activists and without writing to the Guardian to let them know first. I guess what optimism I have is mostly based on unknown unknowns.
In the meantime, if the only thing such a small number of politically active people can do is annoy those in power, then let's annoy the shit out of them
Indeed they do, but unless they actually become activists of some kind it ends to be a one-off.
In the meantime, if the only thing such a small number of politically active people can do is annoy those in power, then let's annoy the shit out of them
I doubt if those who hold the real power are all that annoyed when they know that all that can really happen is another shuffling of the deckchairs among the political personnel they've already bought.
audiotech
wav, aiff, mp3, ogg, flac
It will get worse. I would like to think not, as Chomsky reminds us, speaking at a 'Left Forum' meeting, organised in New York, May 2010, when quoting the distinguished German history scholar, Fritz Stern, who has the future of the US in mind when he reviews a historic process in which "resentment against a disenchanted, secular world found deliverance in the ecstatic escape of unreason". One possible outcome of a collapse of the centre, when 'radical imagination' falls short. Chomsky does point out that the world's too complex for history to repeat, but nevertheless, there are lessons to keep in mind.
The fate of humanity is an 'externality', ignored in 'free market' terms, so 'radical imaginations', Chomsky concludes, 'need to be re-kindled, to take us out of this desert' and be engaged in, as the late Howard Zinn gave praise to, "the countless small actions, of unknown people, that lie at the roots of the great moments of history", leading a way to a better future. Either that, or sit at home and mope.
fiannanahalba
Feel the Love
Its all over.
There may be countless small actions lying at the roots of the great moments of history, but most of the time they do not lead to desirable outcomes. We have little reason to assume they will do so in the years ahead.
TruXta
tired
Where now for the anti-cuts movement? Nowhere, until someone finds a way to hold power accountable in ways that stick. All the elections, strikes and marches in the world are gonna make fuck all difference until the people and institutions responsible for the horrible mess we're in can be sanctioned. Look at Iceland, they're indicting their former PM for gross neglect (at a minimum) - he's staring at two years in the clink. Who else has been jailed? Madoff?
Hoilding power accountable won't make any difference to the economic programmes of governnments either, though. Even if certain governments were to fall as a result of it, they'd only be replaced by another with essentially the same objectives-which are objectives not set by governments but by powers even less accountable.
And what does it mean anyway? As we see with the Iraq war enquiry, this obsession with making people accountable for disasters already gone by captures the imaginations only of professional activists and the liberal elites. Most people aren't interested.
dennisr
the acceptable face
Thats right - my kids still get sent down the mines, i live in a rachman slum and earn 1d a week working 14 hours a day, the lord of the manor pops around once a week to fuck the wife (as is his right) and gays get hanged on the soho scaffold for their deviations. I did try and organise a union but got sent to the australian colony.
We have every reason to assume the world changes constantly because people act back on it - regardless of the confused form this may take.
dennisr
the acceptable face
at least he cares enough to tell you so (repeatedly...) (que: "they always put down my lucid and insightful monothought - reinforcing my disollusion in their delusional leftism" *deep world weary sigh*)
Streathamite
ideological dogmatist
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
My own experience of the local anti-cuts movements development is that there's been an unplanned unconscious division of activity - people going away and concentrating on their own area of activity without the feedback into the wider movement that was understood as essential at the start of this stuff. Whether that's because of the failings of the larger movement to provide substantial solidarity to the various campaigns - and if it is, is this simply because of weakness or because of tactical errors or sectarianism etc- is probably the key question right now, at least in terms of re-integrating all the various activities into a connected whole. There've been other issues that have tended to take up peoples activities down here recently as well.
I think behind part of the turning away from the larger movement has pretty clearly been intra-group squabbling - parties fighting for influence, unions bureaucrats trying to keep out the influence of those more radical then them by all sorts of underhand methods and so on. Now, these people see this as politics, it's how they think things should take place, manouvering, battles lines and so on - the effect is to drive out the uncommitted or make those who desperately want to do something walk away and do it on their own, weakening us all.
Looking at if from the other way, from the top-down, the way the cuts have been introduced have helped this fragmentation too. In the past cuts tended to be introduced salami style, cut off a small piece here, a small piece there and eventually you've got half the sausage gone and because the successive cuts have been so small the hope is that they don't effect enough people at once to provoke a generalised reaction - although it often had the effect of allowing those opposed to cuts to concentrate all sorts of other people not immediately effected into the campaigns.
This time they've pretty much gone for the lot at once, which did initially provoke a wider reaction, but one that helped by/creating/pressuring the above divisions have partially managed to turn the pre-existing class/societal economic divisions to their advantage - and so we get people arguing that they can't see why people on the dole should support public sector pensions and so on. I don't know whether that was an intended result of the all-or-nothing approach, but it's ceratinly one i've seen amongst those who should know better. What's needed to get beyond that is pretty obviously some sort of across the board victory that highlights the inter-connected nature of these things, but the govt is managing its various retreats very well for now though.
So the immediate tactical questions are how to keep things together, and what's driven them apart - important to remember that this isn't the battle, this is just preparing the 'army'.
I hope this doesn't sound too pessimistic, because i'm not, on the contrary, i'm very optimistic, but also, i hope. realistic. I recognise that this is a long struggle and it's a process, it will have ebbs and flows, high points and low points. The key is not mistake one for the other but to get the general direction right. I don't believe the previously politically inactive (in formal terms) people on my street who were drawing up plans for local street committees and poring over local maps marking over the various workplaces and drawing up a network of whose mates/family worked where and so on with me only 3 months ago have decided to embrace the cuts since then - that the links they made (in all sorts of terms) have been broken. It's not time to panic.
I think behind part of the turning away from the larger movement has pretty clearly been intra-group squabbling - parties fighting for influence, unions bureaucrats trying to keep out the influence of those more radical then them by all sorts of underhand methods and so on. Now, these people see this as politics, it's how they think things should take place, manouvering, battles lines and so on - the effect is to drive out the uncommitted or make those who desperately want to do something walk away and do it on their own, weakening us all.
Looking at if from the other way, from the top-down, the way the cuts have been introduced have helped this fragmentation too. In the past cuts tended to be introduced salami style, cut off a small piece here, a small piece there and eventually you've got half the sausage gone and because the successive cuts have been so small the hope is that they don't effect enough people at once to provoke a generalised reaction - although it often had the effect of allowing those opposed to cuts to concentrate all sorts of other people not immediately effected into the campaigns.
This time they've pretty much gone for the lot at once, which did initially provoke a wider reaction, but one that helped by/creating/pressuring the above divisions have partially managed to turn the pre-existing class/societal economic divisions to their advantage - and so we get people arguing that they can't see why people on the dole should support public sector pensions and so on. I don't know whether that was an intended result of the all-or-nothing approach, but it's ceratinly one i've seen amongst those who should know better. What's needed to get beyond that is pretty obviously some sort of across the board victory that highlights the inter-connected nature of these things, but the govt is managing its various retreats very well for now though.
So the immediate tactical questions are how to keep things together, and what's driven them apart - important to remember that this isn't the battle, this is just preparing the 'army'.
I hope this doesn't sound too pessimistic, because i'm not, on the contrary, i'm very optimistic, but also, i hope. realistic. I recognise that this is a long struggle and it's a process, it will have ebbs and flows, high points and low points. The key is not mistake one for the other but to get the general direction right. I don't believe the previously politically inactive (in formal terms) people on my street who were drawing up plans for local street committees and poring over local maps marking over the various workplaces and drawing up a network of whose mates/family worked where and so on with me only 3 months ago have decided to embrace the cuts since then - that the links they made (in all sorts of terms) have been broken. It's not time to panic.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
I think there is most definitely is still a we, but it's a we that may be driving others away and hardening into defence of sectional interests rather than making clear other more important things....
dennisr
the acceptable face
this bit in particular - absolutely - spot on as ever BA
Why is this the default response to any highlighting of the (obvious) pitfalls of certain political proposals?
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
because it's your default response to any political proposal.
Don't be so patronising. I never said that progress doesn't happen. These days I'm simply all too aware of how fragile and temporary what we take for granted really is; and how all the signs point to their probable disappearance. That's all.
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