First, more bad news. David Graeber has died at the far too young age of 59. This came as a shock to everyone, myself included. I always enjoyed his many writings (although I admit I still have a few to read: he was a very prolific writer) and would recommend them if you have not had the pleasure of reading any.
First, more bad news. David Graeber has died at the far too young age of 59. This came as a shock to everyone, myself included. I always enjoyed his many writings (although I admit I still have a few to read: he was a very prolific writer) and would recommend them if you have not had the pleasure of reading any. I particularly enjoyed his destruction of the propertarians on money – a truly majestic reply. Needless to say, like anything else which refutes the holy texts – such as the Cambridge Capital Controversy – it will be quietly forgotten.
Second, onto current events – and apologies any typos as I’m not in a position to check them just now.
It is difficult to keep up with events just now, given the nature of the horror show on both sides of the Atlantic. Every day a stream of incompetencies, lies, laziness, terrible policies and comments, makes commenting harder to do – by the time you get one blog near complete, events have moved on. I’ve said it before, but this all reminds me of the Bush II years – but worse. In America, it is the same idolisation by the Republicans of someone whose talents hardly warrant it – although Trump has not started a war (although he nearly did with North Korea – and he even suggested avoiding one precipitated by his own twittering meant he should get the Nobel Pease Prize! – and Iran). Yet.
I will be focusing on Britain and its lazy, incompetent Prime Minister whose love of photo-opportunities in hi-vis and hard hats has inspired this blog’s title – no so much “Bob the Builder” than “Blob the Bull-shitter”. Can he do anything? No, he can’t.
It is hard to keep track never mind comment as there are so many incompetencies, corruption, etc. every day. Sometimes I think that is deliberate, so critics get exhausted but that would imply a level of competency which seems lacking.
Perhaps unsurprisingly enough, faced with the terrible death rate, massive economic slump, constant incompetency, inaptitude and U-turns (usually after days of stressing that no U-turn will take place), the right-wing media focused on… a spurious attack on “our heritage”. Johnson wittered on about not expressing a “cringing national embarrassment about our history” (which suggests he does not know that much about British history, or that of its Empire, as both are pretty terrible and we can be sure to disagree about what the good and bad bits are) while many people got red because of headlines about the British Museum “removing” the statue of its founder. The latter is of note because, in fact, it was moved from a pedestal and placed in an exhibit along with how he made his money from the slave trade (funny how wealth and slavery goes together…) and even this was denounced – as I suggested in a previous blog, remembering history is the last thing these people are interested in as they want to glorify it (and not mention the horrors the British ruling class inflicted home and aboard). And “God save the Queen” is a terrible, servile song and people should be embarrassed to sing it – unless it’s the Sex Pistols version.
(Which reminds me. There was an article in the Metro years ago about blockades in France over pension “reform”. It ended by mentioning that the protesters “sang the National Anthem” – which is completely true, but the French national anthem is a revolutionary song, written by a member of a citizen’s army going to fight the armies of the various monarchies seeking to re-establish tyranny in France. Accordingly, it was sung by socialists – including anarchists – at their events all through the 19th century. It is the exact opposite of the servile dirge which is the British song. Which means that while factually correct, the Metro article gave a radically false image of what was going on. The joys of context – something I have become increasingly aware of since working on my various anthologies and translations, that and the danger of sarcasm when faced with bad-faith commentators. So thank goodness for footnotes… which I believe are more likely to be read than end notes or the works they reference.)
Johnson must be happy that Trump exists as he makes his mess look somewhat better – but we should not forget that England has the worse excess deaths total in Europe. Indeed, it was worse than the UK as a whole – which is “world-beating” in the usual Johnsonian sense of the expression (i.e., pretty crap). Johnson has no shame, claiming it to be a “massive success”!
And yet, with tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths caused by the government dithering and incompetence as well as the worse economic slump, they are still ahead in the polls! Moreover: “Just 46% thought it had done well, compared with 88% in Germany” (The Guardian). The highest death rate as well as the worse economic slump counts as “done well”? Compared to what? To who? Trump? Then it is a low bar indeed.
Partly, this is due to the right-wing media – we can imagine the coverage if Labour were in office and had presided over this mess (likewise with the current explosion in government debt – now far exceeding the levels which, the Tories then claimed, required austerity back in 2010). All of which shows that austerity was an ideological choice and that there is a “magic money tree” after all (well, it was discovered when it was May’s job which was in danger back in 2017). I’ve lost track of the number of news items which note that after 2010 numerous aspects of life started to decline – what happened then, I wonder?
I’ve seen some comments along the line of “Boris cannot be blamed as this was a new virus and no one could see it coming”. Except, of course, we could see it coming – the news reports from China started to appear around the New Year and it was spreading to mainland Europe soon after (the sorry story is summarised well here and worth watching). Johnson decided to go on holiday and skip five Cobra meetings – not to mention downplaying the threat of the virus and promising in February that Britain would remain open come what may. Little wonder action was delayed and, of course, the confused and confusing communication (Johnson simply cannot speak) as well as systemic and systematic lying before, during and after – even going so far as to suggest lock-down occurred a week earlier than it had when it came out that the scientists had urged lockdown a week before the government acted (similar bare-faced and easily disproved lies were raised over not knowing about asymptotic infection). And, finally, the UK was around three weeks before Italy and Spain in terms of the virus – we could see what was happening elsewhere and the UK government did not act but rather spewed mixed messages. Ireland, for example, locked down before St. Patrick’s day and has done far better.
So late to lockdown and early to ease the lockdown. Significantly, when Johnson was easing lockdown, he made it very clear that he was no longer following “the science” as he had claimed before – making it clear that the “unpleasant” decisions were not his (bloody experts!) but the pleasant ones are all his (fun Boris, your pal!). Unsurprisingly, like most of his decisions, it has now blown-up in his face as his rush to reopen has resulted in the predictable (and predicted) upsurge in virus cases. And best not ponder the belated calls for masks to be used – long after the government had decreed we should all go back to work and that it was our patriotic duty to go to the pub and get plastered… Now the government is trying to encourage, with dire warnings of the threat of the sack, to get people back to work in the office – cases are steadily increasing (from 1,000, to 1,500, to around 2,000 on the 10th of September and 3,500 the following day – and it will be sure to increase) and they want to get more people crammed in buses, trains and underground as well as in offices, workplaces and shops – so we workers must sacrifice ourselves for the good of the economy.
The Tories are increasingly Trumpian and clearly prioritise the interests of the rentier section of the capitalist class over the rest as seen by Alan Sugar who is urging us to get back to work – while lamenting that his London property investments are “suffering” because office workers are working from home. We are so selfish – not risking getting a fatal disease so the 1% can monopolise more wealth. So, folks, continue to work from home if you can – the likes of Sugar can feel the pinch for a change. Ultimately, though, who could have predicted that ignoring the science and reopening the economy would not turn out well? Yes, plenty of us. “Fingers crossed” is not a good strategy!
The different responses based on the various head-starts countries has shown that the notion that Johnson cannot be blamed for the state the UK finds itself in it untenable. Yes, Covid-19 is a new development but the UK government had weeks of pre-warning – and Johnson was on holiday and skipped the meetings, and so on. Even within the UK it is clear that his role has been significant in terms of outcome. Sure, Scotland was third in the rankings (fourth, if we include the UK) but it is not an independent nation State and so was beholden to the UK government and its dithering and delayed decisions. Once it started to seriously diverge from Johnson’s decisions (or non-decisions!) in the areas it could, it has done better – the same with Wales and Northern Ireland.
Then there is the decision to abolish a department (PHE) helping to handle a pandemic during a pandemic, all to lay the blame for the clear failings of the minister in question elsewhere (the only logical reason, sadly). I am sure that the department needs to be looked at but placing its staff in more stress due to fear of losing their jobs makes no sense. The parallels with Trump are clear, as he sought to defund the WHO earlier in the year to draw blame away from his pathetic performance. Similarly, Trump dismantled the agency Obama had created to handle precisely such a pandemic as this (as part of a general desire to destroy everything Obama did), in the UK the Tories simply ignored the findings of Exercise Cygnus. Combine that with a decade of austerity which has gutted local authorities and undermined the NHS, then we started in a bad place – but Johnson helped make this even worse (and the attempts of the Tories to proclaim themselves a “new” government and so not responsible for previous Tory decisions is risible).
Much the same can be said of the exams fiasco. Again, they knew there was going to be an issue in early July (if not before). They saw the Scottish government try and defeat this class injustice and make a U-Turn weeks before… and then did the exact same thing. Worse, they waited until after clearing to make the U-Turn everyone was expecting so causing the students and the universities even more trouble and stress. And then Johnson comes out – after defending it by saying “Let’s be in no doubt about it, the exam results that we’ve got today are robust, they’re good, they’re dependable for employers”— with this drivel:
“I’m afraid your grades were almost derailed by a mutant algorithm and I know how stressful that must’ve been for pupils up and down the country”.
We can now add programming to the long list Johnson knows nothing about and has no shame in showing it publicly. Programmes mutate no more or less than neutrinos do. The code (algorithm) was written exactly to do what it was designed for based on what the government wanted, the minister told the Department of Education and that told Ofqual who in turn told the programmers. This command reflected the Tory prejudices and assumptions and so minimising “grade inflation” was consider paramount, to the exclusion of other considerations. Which is what the algorithm did – if anyone is a “mutant” it is the numpties who provided the requirements, namely the Tory government.
Every time Johnson is seen at a school or a workplace with his little hard hat and yellow vest (notice he only visits places were people will be penalised if they say what is on their minds…), or go on holiday, it is tempting to shout “do some work!” but then remember he is incompetent and doing some work will probably make things worse. That was the case when he was London Mayor – he found time to pursue various personal projects (like writing a book) and so had correspondingly less time to damage the city (we know that because all his pet projects, the things he took an interest in, were terrible and ended up costing taxpayers millions – usually after Johnson initially proclaiming it would not cost any public funds). When I lived in London, every year I read an article on how pollution levels had broken the legal limits in January and every year I read a letter from the Mayor’s Office complaining that the article had not mentioned all the things the Mayor was planning to do to address the issue – every year the same lack of action. These days, I read about an on-going crisis and then I read a headline how Johnson (or “Boris”“ depending on the paper) was now “taking control” of a specific thing (and the list is now pretty long) – in spite of him being the Prime Minister and so in theory “in control” of everything already!
The same can be said of Trump who, after attacking Obama for his golfing and proclaiming he would be “too busy” to golf if elected President, has spent far more time than Obama at golf. Combine that with his TV watching and twittering, he is surely the laziest President ever. However, given his stupidity and incompetence, surely being lazy is a good thing? If he took a more active role the damage he could do is increased accordingly. Likewise with the promise of “great” things in the future – for example, his long-promised health care plan to replace Obamacare (it’s been over four years!). Which, I must stress, they are still trying to destroy Obamacare even in the middle of a pandemic – so kicking people off health care is considered more important than tackling a health crisis.
It is a difficult one – should you demand an incompetent do their job? Would you want an incompetent doctor to be forced to treat you? Do you want a useless, lying, lazy, opportunistic, self-serving charlatan to make decisions like these? But a hierarchical machine is dependent on orders from above and nothing can get done without the person above proclaiming it okay to do so (the inefficiency of such a set-up is obvious, for time and resources are wasted awaiting permission to do something – indeed, waiting for permission can take much, much longer than actually just doing it). Same with Trump – asking him not to golf or twitter and actually do the job may just make it worse.
We really do deserve better than that dilemma!
So to all those who voted Tory to “get Brexit done”, well, you have then carte blanche for four to five years and so far they have helped kill over sixty thousand before their time (and unlike austerity-related deaths, these are well-reported). Sadly, it does not seem to be an issue for many of them – at best, they accept spurious arguments to absolve the incompetents or, at worse, do not care. Still, as I said at the time, voting Tory would not “get Brexit done” and so it has reappeared.
Talking of Brexit, a few words on the announcement that the Johnson government will be breaking international law and the prospect of ripping up the Withdrawal Agreement.
First it should be noted that Johnson did the same kind of thing last year, raising the possibility of “no deal” before… capitulating to the EU and placing a border down the Irish Sea. He denied it, of course, and the right-wing press praised his toughness but that is what happened. Which means this latest round of bluster is just the prelude to another capitulation. And I can never keep track of what “no deal” is meant to be – is it was “we” voted for in 2016 and will be fantastic or is the threat of the damage it will cause a tool to use in negotiations with the EU? It cannot be both: but it is depending on the needs of the propagandist at any given moment. Still, the damage is done – what other State would seek an agreement with one which happily says it will rip it up when it suits them?
Second, this shows the lack of real democracy in bourgeois systems. Remember, a big thing was made of this “oven-ready” deal – down to every single Conservative candidate pledging to vote for the deal, which they did although apparently did so without bothering to read it (Iain Duncan Smith being the only one stupid enough to publicly admit it). So they had a very clear mandate from the electorate (well, 43% of those who voted) for this deal, which Johnson proclaimed as being excellent (in spite of being 95% the same as the one May negotiated, which he resigned over, then voted against twice and then for when it suited his aim to be PM). This “new” deal included an initial EU proposal of a border down the Irish sea, which Johnson said no British PM could agree to – before agreeing to it and proclaiming it a “fantastic” deal, “a great deal for our country” and evidence used during the election of how he could be trusted to negotiate with the EU.
Lest we forget, he also prorogued Parliament to stop MPs looking over his deal, which then passed its first reading in Parliament before Johnson proclaimed the need for an election as Parliament was… blocking Brexit. Lest we forget, Farage said it was not a good deal… before standing down Brexit Party candidates in Tory seats in the general election to ensure that it got passed. Johnson then railroaded it through Parliament after the election saying it did not need scrutiny.
Now it is a case that “never made sense”. At best you could say that perhaps he finally read the agreement… at worse, well, he has a long track record of lying (after all, many were pointing out the issues are regards Northern Ireland when Johnson proclaimed its wonderfulness last year).
In short, every Conservative MP will be ordered to vote against a deal that they promised to vote for at the last General Election – after voting for it. And we must recall that we were asked to vote Tory to “get Brexit done” in order to show that democracy was meaningful. It is hard to think of a more cynical position than to rip-up an agreement which was the basis of producing a “stonking” majority (in Parliament, Johnson only increased the Tory vote by around 1% to 43% of votes cast) – as far as you can have a mandate in these kinds of elections, the Withdrawal Agreement has it.
The now Tory MP’s who sold Johnson’s “oven ready” deal to their prospective constituents, what can they say? That this deal they were praising is actually terrible? That they did not read it? That they did not understand it? That they lied then? That they are lying now? That breaking international law is no big deal? If they had any honour, they would resign – sadly, there is no recall mechanism for the electorate for politicians lying to them or being incompetent, so we are dependent on well-paid “representatives” doing the right thing… and so it is proven, yet again, that Proudhon was right in 1848:
“Besides universal suffrage and as a consequence of universal suffrage, we want implementation of the imperative mandate [mandat impératif]. Politicians balk at it! Which means that in their eyes, the people, in electing representatives, do not appoint mandatories but rather abjure their sovereignty!… That is assuredly not socialism: it is not even democracy.”
Brexit is another mess produced by a government that really does not know what it is doing nor the complexities of the real world. Faced with covid-19 and the lockdowns it caused, Johnson refused to extend the transition period. He refused to extend the transition period in spite of the awkward fact that the new bureaucracy Brexit needs will not be ready in time. So the UK will “take back control”… by not having any border controls come the end of the transition period (these will be introduced slowly, apparently). Meanwhile, the EU-side seems to be ready for 2021 – which made the threat of a “no-deal” Brexit to get “a better deal” even more laughable than it obviously was (threatening to do something which will harm you more is not a good negotiating position). I must have forgotten the slogan in 2016 which said we send millions to the EU, let us spend it on new British red-tape instead…
As it stands, none of the promises of the Leave campaign from 2016 will happen in 2021 (which helps explain, in part, why the Brexiters did not want to ask the sovereign people if this was the Brexit they wanted, for asking people to vote is undemocratic). Then we could get the same if not better access to the single marker, now trading on WTO terms is considered to be what everyone voted for (those who voted to remain are, by definition, not part of “the people”, they are “an elite” which now appears to number the majority rather than just under half of the population). That only a few nations are on WTO terms is ignored – as is the reason, it is terrible and sensible nations seek to create or join trading blocks to improve upon them (in short, WTO terms is something economies escape from rather than embrace). Undoubtedly, Johnson will seek to use the Covid-19 crisis as a means of hiding the damage his decisions will create in 2021 and onwards.
So much about restoring “trust” in Parliament or politics. The Tories, now they have their majority, feel they can do what they like – and happily show their contempt for their voters. Not only in terms of the election campaign and gaining a “mandate” but also because they apparently pass laws without bothering to read them, understanding them or even care about either of these. Any sensible system would have seen everyone involved in these messes recalled and replaced long ago.
We now have a government which thinks it can do whatever it likes – it even attacks “activist lawyers” who, it must be stressed, are lawyers seeking to ensure the government follows the law with regards to immigrants. Not a good sign – so much for the part of “law and order”.
And it is accumulating ever more powers – thanks to Brexit (and enabled by nodding-dog Parliamentarians). Rather than an increase in “democracy”, we have had a centralisation of yet more power in the executive of the most centralised State in Europe – Tory MPs recently voted down an amendment seeking to ensure that Parliament can ratify trade deals! Johnson is also seeking to make it harder for citizens to take the government to court (as a result of his unlawful prorogation of Parliament last year). We also saw Johnson increase the size of the House of Lords in a particularly corrupt honours with quite a few Brexiters. So now we have a group of people who denounced “unelected bureaucrats” in the EU now happy to join the unelected House of Lords. The hypocrisy is clear – and completely unsurprising. So much for democracy, liberty and other platitudes used to sell Brexit. One used to be in the RCP, a Trotskyist sect which ended up becoming a propertarians – aka, “libertarians” as some outside the right call them – which is quite a career-path (although not a too surprising one as propertarianism and Marxism is often closer than you would think).
Accountability is pretty meaningless under bourgeois “democracy” – in four years you can vote them out, perhaps, but in the meantime a lot of damage (and a lot of corruption) can happen. In short, we have an elected dictatorship – a minority elected by a minority of voters, remember. The executive has a lot of power and Parliament is mostly for show – as shown when Iain Duncan Smith admitted recently to have nodded through one of the most important pieces of legislation of recent years, namely on Brexit. Yes, the other pillars of the State – such as the judiciary – can sometimes be used to hinder a government (as shown by the prorogation of Parliament farce last year in the supreme court) but this can be got around (Johnson is currently starting the process of weakening that check). Meanwhile, Parliament has voted to empower the executive to push through trade and other Brexit related deals and laws – so effectively disempowering itself in the face of the government.
Those in Belarus taking on the dictatorship are to be applauded and supported but looking elsewhere in terms of the “democracy” being demanded, is a system of a clique of politicians doing what they want for four years after a fair election really the best possible? One in which “fair” elections means a few wealth people can provide vast sums to their chosen party? One that does not even address the dictatorships within the economy (bosses)? The limits of bourgeois “democracy” does not mean such movements should be ignored or dismissed, rather anarchists need to take part in such movements and argue for pushing them beyond their initial demands and towards libertarian social and economic ideas – as anarchists did, say, during the 1905 Russian Revolution (see Kropotkin’s articles on this in Direct Action Against Capital).
Needless to say, the Tories are continuing their policy of making effective action illegal (Extinction Rebellion is now in their sights). The arguments used to justify this is that we live in a democracy and so direct action is “undemocratic” – which, in a sense is true, as social change has always been championed by resolute minorities who win over the majority. But we should never forget that these arguments are not made in good faith for their “logic” is as follows: If you did not vote, then you have no right to protest as you did not take part; if you voted and your party did not win, then you have no right to protest as you took part and lost; if you voted and your party won, then what are you complaining about and, anyway, you can vote for a different party next time. This is what is meant by these appeals to democracy, popular sovereignty and freedom – you can see why the ruling elite like to use them (an elite who will not think twice about overthrowing any democratically elected socialist government if needed to protect its power, property, privileges and profits).
And on this, I should note that a Marxist suggested that the NBA players took real political action over Jacob Blake. Will others follow? – except, they didn’t. They took direct action rather than the “political action” (electioneering) Marx sought to foster onto the First International. If they had embraced “political action” they would have simply urged people to vote in November and get on with their jobs.
As well as lack of accountability – and, worse, any protest movement seeking to change things will be dismissed as “anti-democratic” – there is the inertia. A hierarchical structure trains people not to make decisions, to await for orders – if those orders are not forthcoming (because the glorious leader is on the toilet tweeting, golfing, on holiday or doing something he considers more important) then the machine stalls. We have seen a lot of that recently in the UK and USA. There is an interaction between structures and individuals – we can expect centralised, hierarchical, unitarian social organisations to have their problems which, perhaps, better than average leaders may be able to counteract or worse than average ones to make much worse. But we should not be in a situation that we are dependent on individuals at the top of a hierarchy not being crap! However, that is what hierarchical structures do – limit initiative and decision making into the hands of a few. Imagine how much worse things would have been without federalism in the USA and devolution in the UK.
Given the differing responses and the contrast between Johnson and Sturgeon, the Tories have called the Scottish parliament’s Covid-19 briefings SNP propaganda – true, only to the extent that they completely show how useless Boris Johnson is. Needless to say, with a Tory in charge of the BBC, BBC Scotland has decided to stop broadcasting them. I even saw a Tory member of the Welsh Parliament proclaim on twitter that the differing messages were confusing and so devolution had to be ended and linked to an article which reported most Welsh people viewed the Welsh government’s response as better than the UK government’s. In other words, he gave evidence that refuted his own assertion. Elsewhere, local government teams have stepped into the gaps left by the centralised, privatised and failing track-and-trace system (remember that in England the not-fit-for-purpose test and trace service is only branded NHS and it is delivered by private companies) and did better, in part due to the local knowledge and direct interest of those involved. However, a decentralised, federalist system would not allow the Tories to give £15 billion to their pals without tender for PPE (PPE which often didn’t work) nor allow them to spend the £100bn of taxpayers’ money for “Operation Moonshot” after wasting nearly £12 billion on a centralised trace-and-trace app which did not work – the Irish one cost £773,000. And in terms of “Operation Moonshot”, surely this is Johnson lying again as it assumes non-existent technology?
What of anarchism? Well, the divergent outcomes in the UK shows the pressing need for federalism. Waiting for the top of the hierarchy to make decisions – particularly to make well-informed decisions – will get you killed. Likewise, the assumption is that those at the top of the hierarchy are capable and sensible people – that is hard to accept these days and we should not create a system which is so dependent on a single person to work well. It could be argued that Trump and Johnson are the exceptions, that a “normal” democracy sees the best get into office, but that again is hardly an argument in its favour – a social system needs to be robust enough to handle the worse-case situation. And it is clear that representative democracy is basically an elected dictatorship and the head of state an autocrat for four years (who can lie to Parliament and suffer no consequences). A system which hopes that this person is competent and in the meantime we just await for the next election is seriously flawed. As the Tory governments from 2010 onwards show, such regimes can do a lot of damage even if they are not headed by a serial liar, lazy, incompetent narcissist who had a proven track-record of being rubbish at their jobs (when they could be bothered to try and do them).
The need for socialism to be based on decentralisation and federation is clear. A long, long time ago – when I was at secondary school – I took a computer-based political quiz. I was surprised to discover that I wasn’t as left-wing as I assumed I was. The reason? Because I believed in decentralisation and the programme had assumed this was a “right-wing” position. As if. Yes, the rhetoric of the right is all about decentralisation (even federalism at times) but its practice as always been centralising – as shown by the Thatcherism running rampant at the time (the 1980s). More recent examples include fracking and the current proposal to rip-up the planning process (which generally pass projects anyway). This should come as no surprise as anarchists have argued for a long time that centralised systems are associated with minority class rule for a reason – no ruling elite could survive real popular participation and that is why the State is structured as it is.
I would recommend reading the chapter on “Representative Government” in Kropotkin’s Words of a Rebel and compare his analysis to the shenanigans sketched above – it will be very familiar. All in all, as I suggested in two articles I posted a while back – Anarchy and Covid-19 and “Anti-government ideologues” and Coronavirus – the current crisis shows the validity of anarchism and the pressing need for a decentralised, decentred, federalist socio-economic system.
More could be written, but that is enough for the time being!
Until I blog again, be seeing you…