The interesting thing about JRS is that he’s actually critiquing globalisation from a fairly orthodox economics perspective – he’s no raving Marxist and he’s not a neo-con. His take (my interpretation of) is that JRS thinks globalisation is a managerial aberration, not an organic expression of what he might regard (my words) as *pure* capitalism.

He basically blames the G7 (or G8) and the Davos group for most of the sh!t that’s gone down. But what I want to highlight in this post is a couple of pages where he talks about globalisation and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the west. His case example is recent European history, but IMHO his ideas are pertinent to Australia today.

I pick up JRS’ argument on page 95 where he’s critiquing the managerial obsession with technological progress [emphasis is mine]:

Today’s version of the old technological determinism take place within a much broader assertion – that of global determinism. This is presented as relentless modernity – uncontrollable technology driving mere humans…this version of modernity is little more than a prolongation of the original Industrial Revolution idea of technology as an argument for exclusion.

He then goes on to discuss how this exclusionist policy came to be part of the political consensus in Europe from the mid-1970s. When Europe’s “technocratic leaders suddenly realised that their national working classes had disappeared,” (p.96) the response was not a sensible (from the POV of capital) “rethink and reorganisation of that part of the economy dependent on a traditional working class,” but a policy of importing labour from the fringes of the world economy.

“The technocracy decided simply to create a new working class by bringing in hundreds of thousands of guest workers, from the Mediterranean basin. Most of them were Islamic.” (p.96)

Because this imported labour army was destined only to be employed in the least attractive and lowest paying jobs that the local proletarians had deserted, the rich cultural traditions of the guest workers could be ignored – for example training and qualifications were not recognised, language and culture were marginalised and disrespected:

That those brought in came from the poorest, least-educated part of the population allowed the managers to pretend that these rich origins did not need to be taken into account. The technocrat’s model was old-fashioned utilitarianism mixed with abstract management theory. it was a radical reworking of late-nineteenth century Taylorism, with its consicous confusing of men and machines. (p.96)

I would argue that this brief historical account provides a fairly good (though perhaps partial) explanation for the situation across Europe today – rioting across the working class districts of Paris and other French cities, outrage in Scandinavian countries over a series of shallow and badly-drawn cartoons, the murder of a Dutch film-maker, the phenomenon of “home grown” terrorists in Spain, Britaiin and possibly other places too.

Thirty-five years later, 17 million Muslims, including guest workers, many now retired, their children, grandchildren and newer workers, are caught up with 450 million other Europeans in the ethical, human contradictions that this global managerial approach has created. Many of them can now become citizens. Many now are. But the whole process toward inclusion has been based on a utilitarian maze of exclusion. The result tends therefore not to be the joy and pride of belonging, but tmuch more complex feelings on all sides. Many differences have become unscalable mountains instead of rich opportunities…If nationalism of a negative sort is reappearing in Europe among both old Europeans and new, it stems in good part from this managerial approach to the reality of human lives.

At the heart of the problem lies the Globalist idea of viewing society through an economic prism. (p.97)

JRS writes that today there are more than 120 million migrant workers and their families across the globe, with about 20 milion in Europe. He compares this to the level of familial and human displacement that occurs during “wartime or [an] immediate post-war situation”. Rather than denoting a period of relative stability and growth it resembles “other eras of extreme economic change, which in general have led to periods of greater social instability and violence.” (p.97)

The technocratic managerial class, says JRS, are “so unfamiliar with history that they are unconscious of the effects of their utilitarian methods”. (p.98) This is a reversal of “classic free trade economics” in which the import of cheap labour replaces the import of cheap goods. JRS’ explanation of this might be controversial and I think my spin on it might be too (warning bampots, Marxism ahead!)

“The early Globalist managers altered [classical free trade] theory by importing not cheap goods but cheap workers. Why? To maintain their old model of buy-sell balance. How? By compensating for rising social justice [and wages/consumption] within their own borders. How? By creating a new working class, one that could not rise socially. Why? Because like the working class of the nineteenth century, it was bereft of citizen’s rights. Behind a modern technocratic discourse, the aim was to preserve a nineteenth-century idea of how markets must work, an idea dependent on the existence of a working class – better still, a disenfranchised working class…this highly original abstraction of human lives would become the foundation for a revival of Western racism, something we thought we had defeated in 1945.” (p.98)

JRS is one of those unique bourgeois thinkers – an organic intellectual of the ruling class – who is able to see beyond the ideological mist and offer a rational critique of what’s going on. I disagree with him about globalisation being an abberation. In my view it’s the logical extenstion and modern/post-modern manifestation of the continuous drive of imperialism – the need for capital to remake the entire world in its image.

However, I absolutely think he’s right to highlight a dimension of class in this analysis. The economic position of many migrant communities (and their indigene offspring) within the heartland nations of capitalism is most often at the bottom of the pile, well below the “ladder of opportunity”. When this is linked to the cultural isolation engendered by negative nationalism (the *values* debate for example) it will inevitably produce anger and frustration. Thus, there is going to be a striking out against that oppression – whether this takes the form of collective action (rioting in France) or individual revenge attacks (suicide bombers in Spain and London) is a key question.

The riots in France are much more politically engaged and can actually lead to the development of organisations beyond the mosque and beyond the control of ageing, out-of-touch Imams. In this environment the burqa and the Qu’ran become less central to the lives of those involved. At least that’s the potential – a move towards class organisation and an ability to build links of solidarity with secular non-Islamic workers organisations – such as unions and left parties.

This is a theme explored by Chris Harman in his pamphlet,The Prophet and the proletariat, which I recommend for those interested in exploring these ideas further. This is Harman’s take on where Islamic youth are at today:

The Islamist youth are usually intelligent and articulate products of modern society. They read books and newspapers and watch televisions, and so know all the divisions and clashes within their own movements. However much they may close ranks when faced with “secularists�, whether from the left or from the bourgeoisie, they will argue furiously with each other – just as the pro-Russian and pro-Chinese wings of the apparently monolithic world Stalinist movement did 30 years ago. And these arguments will begin to create secret doubts in the minds of at least some of them.

On some issues we will find ourselves on the same side as the Islamists against imperialism and the state. This was true, for instance, in many countries during the second Gulf War. It should be true in countries like France or Britain when it comes to combating racism. Where the Islamists are in opposition, our rule should be, “with the Islamists sometimes, with the state never�.

But even then we continue to disagree with the Islamists on basic issues. We are for the right to criticise religion as well as the right to practise it. We are for the right not to wear the veil as well as the right of young women in racist countries like France to wear it if they so wish. We are against discrimination against Arab speakers by big business in countries like Algeria – but we are also against discrimination against the Berber speakers and those sections of workers and the lower middle class who have grown up speaking French. Above all, we are against any action which sets one section of the exploited and oppressed against another section on the grounds of religion or ethnic origin. And that means that as well as defending Islamists against the state we will also be involved in defending women, gays, Berbers or Copts against some Islamists.

When we do find ourselves on the same side as the Islamists, part of our job is to argue strongly with them, to challenge them – and not just on their organisations’ attitude to women and minorities, but also on the fundamental question of whether what is needed is charity from the rich or an overthrow of existing class relations.

The left has made two mistakes in relation to the Islamists in the past. The first has been to write them off as fascists, with whom we have nothing in common. The second has been to see them as “progressives� who must not be criticised. These mistakes have jointly played a part in helping the Islamists to grow at the expense of the left in much of the Middle East. The need is for a different approach that sees Islamism as the product of a deep social crisis which it can do nothing to resolve, and which fights to win some of the young people who support it to a very different, independent, revolutionary socialist perspective.

One final observation. The current furore over Hilali strikes me as an opportunity for this dialogue to be opened up. The nuanced course suggested by Harman is important if we are to prevent the hardening of fundamentalist thought among Muslim youth in Australia. Any opening that allows for a discussion with disaffected Islamic youth who are appalled by Hilali’s comments will be lost of the numnukasauruses of the right, such as the Bolts and Sheehans, are allowed to poison the well with their racist diatribe that *all Muslim males* are somehow tainted with the opinions of Hilali.

The last thing we should be doing is pushing any secularist Muslim youth towards the hardliners, we need to be encouraging political engagement with progressive forces, not a retreat into individual terror tactics.

We’ve recently been discussing class in another thread, this is an interesting take on *underclass*. It’s also interesting how, when comparing male and female anatomica, the researchers think the equivalent of a big *member*, is pert breasts. Fantasy or wankwurthy?

Another interesting twist, the headline refers to “Brave new world” [Aldous Huxley] and the copy refers to HG Wells. What the?

At the bottom of the piece it notes that the research was commissioned by a men’s *satellite TV channel*. No surprises there then, but perhaps we can expect more of this uplifting content when Ms Coonan’s new diversity rules come into play.

 

Will you ask Saddam’s biggest bagman to return to the

question?

The SPEAKER—The member for Griffith has already

been warned. That was not a point of order. He

will excuse himself under standing order 94(a).

The member for Griffith then left the chamber.

This may have been the highlight of yesterday’s question time during which the ALP peppered the government with questions about Iraq. Kevin Rudd pushed one too many buttons. The question is: Does the Labor Party (and Beazley in particular) have the guts to stay the course and pull-out Australian troops if they win the next election? It’s less than a year away and I wonder if the terror war will become an election issue.

I think it’s time we started doing the same thing with the current global ‘50 year’ conflict. I am, from now on, going to refer to the “war of terrorism”, or simply the terror war, rather than the “war on terrorism”. I’m sure this will get me in to trouble with the “no moral equivalence” brigade and it might stir the bampots to indignant explosion. But it has to be argued.

There is in fact some moral equivalence. There is a sense in which both sides are culpable, but there’s also a sense in which one side is more culpable than the other. I’m not talking about a “He started it!”, “No, you did!” argument. Nor is it simply a matter of body counts. Though from what’s been argued recently, the “Coalition of the Willing” is way ahead of the “terrorists”.

There are several reasons why I think this little semantic change is necessary and overdue.

First, the fighting in Iraq. All combatants are using tactics and strategies that fall within the definition of terrorism. There are many ways to defiine terrorism, but no matter how you cut it, this one stands out as simple and sane.

Terrorist activities are illegal and involve the use of coercion including the use of force, intended to intimidate or coerce, and committed in support of political or social objectives.

This is a definition provided in a glossary compiled by the Internal Audit Office at the Austin Community College in Austin, Texas. Does it apply to both sides in the war of terror? IMHO, yes.

Dealing with the easy ones first. Of course, nobody with any capacity for rational thought would deny that suicide bombs are terrorist activities. Kidnapping and executing civilians, whether local or foreign, in Iraq, is an act of terrorism; the arming and mission-tasking of death squads is an act of terrorism. Blowing up the World Trade Center was an act of terrorism.

Now, can we apply the same test to the “allies”, to “our” side? I think we can.

The occupation of Iraq, like the invasion of 2003, is certainly problematic under international law. The actions of American forces at Abu Ghraib were illegal under the rules of engagement. The rendition of prisoners and the use of stress-inducing techniques to elicit confessions are also legally dubious. Guantanamo Bay exists in legal limbo. The tactics of house-to-house searches; the hooding of detainees; sanctioned assassinations; cluster bombs; DU munitions; turning a bind eye to death squads: all of these meet some, if not all of the conditions to be called “terrorist activities”.

And now I’m going to upset the Zionists. Israel is also a terror state. Like I said, I don’t support rocket attacks on civilians, or suicide bombing and the history of Zionism is complex, caught up as it is with what Robert Fisk describes as the “war for civilisation” that has plagued the Middle East for the past 100 or so years. However, the state of Israel was imposed on the region, in the same manner in which Stalinism was imposed on Eastern Europe. it was a convenient card to play in the imperialist division of the spoils after the allied victory.

In the carve up that followed World War II, the British needed a proxy to defend their interests in Arab lands, particularly given the rise of pan-Arab nationalism and anti-British feeling in the post-war period. Israel fit the bill. How does this justify the military and intelligence operations that Israel have launched into Lebanaon? Not just those of recent months, but over a period of 50 years. Some of Israel’s founding fathers were members of terrorist organisations.

I suppose I should say something about culpability too. History will eventually allow us to understand all the complex causes of the terror war, but I am prepared to argue that the capitalist West is in fact more responsible than Iraq, Iran, North Korea, the Taliban and al Qai’da. Imperialism is the problem, not Islamic fundamentalism.

Fundamentalism in the Middle East, Indonesia and other Islamic nations is not the root cause. It is a response (albeit a confused and poltically useless one) to the renewed onslaught of imperialism and globalisation. Suicide bombs are a response to the frustration, anger and impotence felt by a generation of dispossessed. It is impossible to understand what’s really happening if we attempt to shove all of this history and politics behind the word “terrorist”. However, for the moment this is an aside. I won’t shy away from these comments and I’m certainly prepared to take them up later. My argument for a semantic switch from “on” to “of” is part of the program to shift the debate onto this ground and away from the terrorists just hate us line.

The third reason that my suggested linguistic shift is important is because, once we start using it, the tendency to a knee-jerk support for “our” troops and “our” President/Prime Minister is able to be undercut.

If it’s a war “on” terror, it is a war against terrorism and the terrorists. In this construction and with this syntax there is an inbuilt ideological position. A war against terrorism is justified because the unstated ideological assumption is one of “right” versus “wrong”. Or, to use the parlance of the annointed, “Good” versus “Evil”.

Such assumptions make it easier and more “logical” therefore to talk about bringing the terrorists “to justice” and to argue that “freedom-loving peoples” should support such actions.

On the other hand, if it’s a war “of” terror, or simply a “terror war”, the implication is that neither side can claim the moral high ground. The motives of Bush-Blair-Howard are open to question.

Which brings us to the thorny “moral equivalence” argument. It sometimes goes like this: “You might not like the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, but the terrorists are worse.” That’s a simplification, but even the most sophisticated pro-war argument boils down to this eventually. It has to, because otherwise the pro-war lobby would have to defend atrocities that even they can’t stomach. Sometimes it seems that GWB even buys into this when he says that “God” is on his side in this war.

Bush invokes the Holy Spirit in every speech he makes about the war, usually to a sympathetic audience of men and women in uniform, or in this instance, the veterans of previous wars at the American Legion’s national convention in late August this year:

We believe that freedom is a gift from an almighty God, beyond any power on Earth to take away. (Applause.) …

May God bless our veterans. May God bless our troops. And may God continue to bless the United States of America. (Applause.)

How is this so different from the apocalyptic pronouncements of the Islamic fundamentalists? Personally I prefer Bob Dylan’s ironic rendition of this dubious blessing:

So now as I’m leavin’
I’m weary as Hell
The confusion I’m feelin’
Ain’t no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
If God’s on our side
He’ll stop the next war.

There are many other examples of weasel words and many citations that reinforce Orwell’s arguments about euphemism, double-think and newspeak. “Good” versus “evil” is one that springs to mind. So too is the trippingly awful phrase that GWB uses constantly-rallying the world to confront the ideology of hate-that is dutifully echoed in choral harmonies from London and Canberra.

At the end of the day I’m not entirely happy with “war of terror”, or “terror war”. I’ve been mulling over things like “Bush the younger’s crusade”, but that’s not quite right either. How about “Daddy’s unfinished business”?

It’s not really about tactics or strategy, which is what using the word “terror” in any combination really draws attention to. I’d like to think of something that captures the war aims. These often get lost in the rhetoric about freedom, God, Allah and so on. In some senses it is a war about territory – the occupation of Iraq (and Afghanistan) and attempts by the other side to get the occupiers out. Current military and political thinking is that this conflict has got at least another decade to run. If so we’re going to have a long time to think about this, to count the cost and consider the fall-out.

In 2003 when the conflict began in Iraq it was seen by many to be a war about controlling the oil reserves of the Middle East and access to lucrative pipelines. This has been successfully pushed off the front-page and out of public consciousness by the focus on terrorism. But this has not made the war any more popular according to most opinion polling in the USA, the UK and Australia. In the sense that all wars have an economic cause, it probably is still a war to conquer territory and control oil.

From the Islamic “side” there’s no doubt some sentiment that this is a war to establish a Sharia-ruled cosmos. This is no different from claims by the western powers that they’re bringing “democracy” to the Middle East. There’s no evidence that either side is morally right on that score. On both sides there is propaganda aimed at building and maintaining public enthusiasm for the fight.

It’s also a conflict about extending US global hegemony and strike power through forward bases and rapid deployment. Maybe we should just settle on “War of the world”.

Orwell was curmudgeonly and pedantic in many things, but he was right about politics and language.

When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. [Politics and the English Language, 1946]

When I read this I also see George Bush or Dick Cheney on the platform in front of sympathetic military audiences proclaiming a God-given right to obliterate and maim in the name of some ill-defined and cynically manipulated belief. The call to holy war in the name of a Christian God fills me with as much horror as any video of Osama bin Laden preaching jihad, or ritual beheading in the name of Allah.

Credible threat? Feds question teen over Web page
By LAUREL ROSENHALL and RYAN LILLIS – The Sacramento Bee – 10/14/06
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The latest Sacramento resident to be questioned by federal agents for threatening President Bush is a 14-year-old girl with a heart on her backpack and braces on her teeth, a freckle-nosed adolescent who is passionate about liberal politics and cute movie stars.

…Her name is Julia Wilson, and she learned a vivid civics lesson Wednesday when two Secret Service agents pulled her out of biology class to ask about comments and images she posted on MySpace.

Beneath the words ‘‘Kill Bush, ’’ Wilson posted a cartoonish photo-collage of a knife stabbing the hand of the President. It was one of a few images Wilson said she used to decorate an anti-Bush Web page she moderated on MySpace, the social networking Web site that is hugely popular among teenagers.

It was a 15- to 20-minute interview, Julia said. Agents asked her about her father’s job, her e-mail address, and her social security number. They asked about the MySpace page she had created last year as an eighth-grader at Sutter Middle School.

‘‘I told them I just really don’t agree with Bush’s politics, ’’ Julia said Thursday. ‘‘I don’t have any plans of harming Bush in any way. I’m very peaceful, I just don’t like Bush.’’

The MySpace page under question was a group page, similar to an online club.

I think it might be worth seeing if there’s a similar “Prime Minister Howard…” group on MySpace.au

Do we have to be paranoid, or is it just a survival technique?

In a column titled “Marxism in the unlikliest places”, Dennis argues, with some light-hearted qualifiers, that the true home of Marxism today is the Liberal Party. His argument, which is true as far as it goes, is that the conservatives are now the “true heirs of the power-obsessed psychology that once belonged to the Left”.

The evidence begins with the unstartling fact that many of the current crop of neo-con darlings are former supporters of the left in some form or another. I didn’t know that PP McGuiness once worked for the Soviet money-launderer the Moscow-Narodny Bank, but Peter Coleman and Keith Windschuttle both have form.

I don’t have any issue at all with Glover’s thesis that the Liberals and their fellow-travellers in all the right think tanks have set about trashing some of Australia’s democratic institutions (weak as they are), that they have a blatant disregard for human rights, or that they are indeed “market zealots”. However, where Dennis goes off the rails in my view is that he makes the same ideological mistake as the neo-cons when he equates Marxism with the legacy of Stalinism.

He is totally wrong when he asserts that “Marxists regard such [human] rights as a second order issue,” and that “Marxists were set on destroying the soft’ social institutions that stood between the party and the individual.”

If you actually go back to the work of the classical Marxists (and I include Lenin and Trotsky in this group), it becomes clear that human rights are at the core of the socialist project. What else does it mean at the conclusion of the Communist Manifesto when Marx and Engels proclaim “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”

When it comes to the family, Marx and Engels are very clear: “The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.” Thus it is clear that Howard’s attempt to dissolve any social bonds that encourage collective resistance to the new industrial relations regime, is exactly in line with what capitalism has been doing for two centuries.

Dennis describes this as the government trying to create “a capitalist version of ‘Soviet man’”, the model-worker of the Stakhanovite period of Soviet state capitalism. Such a figure has nothing to do with the revolutionary project of socialism and everything to do with the Soviet Union’s drive for economic and military parity with the west in the Cold War years.

He’s also wrong to equate a “belief in centralised power” with Marxism and to then assume this is the same as Howard’s anti-states agenda. It’s true that the current government, like the Keating government before it, is spouting the ideology of decentralisation and smaller government, but the facts speak for themselve. They don’t really believe it. Capitalism is a system built on the inherent instability of market forces. Capitalism can only survive through the continuing intervention the State in both the economy and in civil life. The State is the capitalist system is the central committee for the bourgeoisie and it is in place to keep the ruling class in that spot for as long as possible and by any means necessary.

Capitalism is also a global system and as Trotsky pointed out before his murder in 1940 by Stalinist agents, it is impossible to build socialism in one country. That Stalin and his successors, until the time of Gorbachev, ignored this simple rule is not a condemnation of Marxism, but rather an indication that the old Soviet Union was not a socialist country. Why do so many otherwise intelligent people take the propaganda of Stalinist states to be true? Perhaps it’s because they are also in a state of denial, or at least false consciousness when it comes to the west today.

Do you really believe that the United States is a real democracy? Or Australia? Both are nations founded on the violent dispossession of a viable indigenous culture and economy; both have a sad history of systemic racism and fear of the “other”; both are imperialist powers (Australia only within its small sphere of influence) and both have moribund parliamentary systems dominated by the interests of big business and captured by ideologues bent on empire-building and wage-cutting.

In the capitalist word (and that’s the entire planet today) there are no real democracies. The west, despite the rhetoric of the free market is, like the old Soviet Union and the new Russia today, essentially a state capitalist social formation. The state and capital have all but fused, if not in terms of property relations, certainly in terms of interests.

The theory of state capitalism has been around now for about 50 years and it’s worth getting your head around. You can read the main socialist current that takes this view at the Marxists.org website.

There is one point on which I agree entirely with Dennis Glover. Both the cultural warriors of the Right and real Marxists (of which there are literally only a handful in Australia by the way) believe in class warfare. What strikes me as odd is that Dennis finds this “really surprising”.

Again I refer you to the classics. Here is what Marx and Engels had to say about this issue in the Communist Manifesto:

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles…in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

The real shame about the political climate today in most western nations is the sad state of the revolutionary left. I can give you chapter and verse about why this is the case. Perhaps next time. Suffice to say that now is not a good time to be a revolutionary!

The last point that I want to make is that readers and supporters of Larvatus Prodeo must take some time to study history; go back to the classics and understand what the revolutionary tradition of Marxism is all about.

We cannot afford to fall into the trap of taking the slanders of the neo-con chattering classes as truth. We certainly don’t want to be in a position of having to repair the collateral damage of friendly fire, when people like Dennis are invited into the bile-dripping pages of The Australian’s opinion pages.

For anyone who’s interested in beginning their “re-education” (yes, even revolutionary Marxists have a sense of humour), I’ve posted a link here to the online library where the works of the great socialist thinkers can be found.