Corbyn Makes His Move

You have to feel a bit sorry for Paul Mason: an intelligent, thoughtful & imaginative chap, basically honest, a bit didactic & earnest, much taken with some of Karl Marx's insights, groping around for a 21st C application for them, would like to be consistent ... but the Real World somehow doesn't fall as neatly into his categories as he'd eagerly wish.

So now Corbyn's made his move - well, a move, he had to do something now or be condemned to utter, contemptible irrelevance - and Paul would like to think this immediately confirms everything he's analysed and was hoping for.  "Corbyn has taken a brave step. Now he must rule out any ‘Labour Brexit’".   Hmm.  Let's see how much Little Paul's enjoying it a fortnight from now.

So what to make of Corbyn's roll of the die?  It's clearly reactive, and no great stroke, that's for sure: comfortably within anything Cummings will have considered.  Team Boris is still drawing everyone else onto the battlefield of its own choosing.  (Which, incidentally, makes all the sillier Mason's opening contention that "Corbyn just got inside everyone else’s decision cycles" - a reference to the thinking of the great John Boyd that will be familiar to many readers.)

I think we may assume Team Corbyn, rattled by initiatives coming from elsewhere (Lucas, Kinnock, Hammond etc) felt the urgent need to slap something on the table.  With a couple of blatant attempts to shield their SNP flank as a preparatory step (but weakening their own Scottish legion in the process), their own effort looks very much like an attempt at a low-risk, win-win, no-regrets type of affair.  If it works, and Jezza is wafted into No.10 by this strange backdoor method, well, he's in!  No telling what he might do with executive authority whilst pretending to be arranging a GE and an A50 extension. 

If it fails, well, Boris gets to crash out (as the Leninist / Stalinist faction always wanted) with only his fingerprints on the deed; revolutionary purity is retained; and maybe it brings down Swinson in the process as an added bonus.  Indeed, you'd have to say on balance they are hoping for and expecting the latter, because by insisting on Corbyn being PM, they've actually blown it from the start, as well they know.

Now Swinson: there's an interesting thing.  The Corbyn outriders are busily saying this'll be the end of her, what with rejecting the saintly Jezza overtures out of hand like that.  Now I have no particular insight into the LibDems (does anyone here?): but I'd say her immediate reactions were spot-on, and that she'll be infinitely less discomfitted by this - maybe indeed, not bovvered at all - than Lucas was by her mighty BAME faux pas.  Why would Swinson wish to submerge her position as leader of the largest unequivocally Remain group of MPs in Parliament for a bit-part in a complex Milne-plot?  (The SNP - a group that really can see some win-win possibilities - are clearly banking on No Deal followed by IndyRef2.)  It'll be Lucas, Fish-woman and Grieve who'll be squirming at being told what to do by Labour.

Meanwhile, Team Boris will be barely distracted.  Nobody shows any sign of getting ahead of them, or turning their flanks - still less "getting inside their decision cycle".  The fact that Corbyn has given up his distant reverse-slope position for a brief foray in the open, well, it's no great stroke.  Let him spend a few weeks in the woke version of a smoke-filled room with Lucas et al, and see how clever he feels at the end of that.

CU said yesterday that Sept and Oct could be fun.  August still has some life in it yet!

ND

Fracking Across The Globe

Been a bit busy of late but a couple of Grauniad headlines still caught the attention over the weekend, starting with the latest update from the increasingly active northern shale gas drilling scene:

Shale gas firm Cuadrilla brands anti-fracking activists 'irresponsible'  -  CEO Francis Egan complains about protesters ‘harassing’ contractors supplying Preston New Road site in Lancashire

Yes, after a very long hiatus the North of England Shale Show is back on the road!  Or being hindered by a roadblock, as it would seem, because there's plenty of pesky opposition - the usual combination of genuinely local nimbys, misinformed 'ordinary people' with too much time on their hands, and itinerant swampies now trading as Reclaim The Power.  (You'd imagine the hyperventilating hoards of Momentum wouldn't be far behind, except that they are fully occupied with fratricide just now.  And I'm guessing t'unions may have told Corbyn to keep out of it, based on how they made him support nuclear in Copeland.)   An enjoyable line in outdoor relief for all concerned (plus overtime for Old Bill) - except for the local contractors.

But shale in the UK never looked to be a near-term phenomenon (we've discussed this all before).  Even if the reserves are as big as Cuadrilla believe, in broad-spectrum practical terms they just ain't particularly accessible.  A far cry from the USA, where the recent OPEC-driven rise in oil price is, though rather modest by the standards of 2010-2014 prices, more than enough to re-ignite the mighty shale-drilling activity there, oil and gas.  This comes as a big shock to legions of idiots who consoled themselves with the thought that shale needed a price of $100 - or was it $80? - or $60? - to be viable.  Sorry, but technology doesn't work like that: it gets better and better, cheaper and cheaper, and always surprises idiots.  If in doubt, go short - because there's always more stuff out there than anyone thinks. 

This leads to another mighty quandry for all the antis who thought they could put moral / financial pressure on big companies and pension funds etc, to effect some kind of investment boycott of the fossil fuel industries, and force the authorities to mark down oil company oil reserves as stranded and worthless.  Why, the Grauniad itself even tried to run a campaign along these lines. Which brings us to the second headline:

Environmentalists urge French bank not to finance Texas fracking project Activist points to ‘hypocrisy’ in BNP Paribas’s involvement in south Texas export terminal, given bank’s claimed commitment to the environment

Well, sorry guys but shale in the USA is 100% mainstream now and you won't actually find a major bank or indeed any other financial institution that isn't already 'in'.  Because, as we know, shale is going to make the USA self-sufficient in energy as far forward as anyone can see, with momentous geo-political implications.  And that's before Venezuela lets rip, because they have more accessible shale oil reserves than Saudi has 'conventional' oil.  And (when they need the extra reserves) Russia has more gas than the world will ever need.

And the IEA - which is seriously schizophrenic on this issue, BTW - thinks we need much, much more oil ... (well, that's what it thinks this month).

Anyhow, Swampy and Cuadrilla will no doubt continue to slug it out in Lancashire.  But they are a sideshow of such small proportions, it'll make Paul Mason's head explode one day.

ND

Hoping to Swivel in 2017?

So while we're all busy predicting for the year ahead, hark! - from stage left, the carefully orchestrated sound of New Year's whistling in the dark.  In Saturday's Grauniad we find a total of 22 reasons for lefties to be cheerful in 2017.**  Twenty two! - in the main newspaper section alone (the magazine had twelve pages of determinedly optimistic reckoning the previous week).  We get the message: you'd very much like to think 2016 can be put behind you without too much wailing & gnashing of teeth.  Haven't they seen BQ's video?

They could of course, and much against their better judgements, be normalising again: but it doesn't quite read like that.  Ostensible 'reasons' they seem to cling to:

• lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place
• chickens will start coming home to roost
• it was all a big mistake
• everyone's better natures will shine through
• the checks and balances are about to come swinging into play
• Germany / France / Netherlands do voting-type things so much better, and the show will soon be back on the road
• folks like us at C@W can have our moment with BQ's 2016 video, but it'll soon be a fading memory

Now of course lefties tend to believe history is fundamentally on their side anyway.  This doesn't play well for them, in two ways.  (1) They ought to recall - it's been mentioned to them a lot quite recently - that it's a large part of why ordinary punters find them so insufferable;  (2) it makes the bulk of them strategically complacent (even while a hyperactive few dash around trying to stir things up).

So we should let 'em carry on in that vein; but it's hard not to point out that the last time they got two big electoral results they didn't fancy (Thatcher '79 + Reagan '80), there was no speedy resumption of normal service for them.  I'm old enough to remember very clearly how the British left comforted itself in the early eighties: it'll all be fine - just as soon as the miners come out ...

This time around, people of all political colours have been earnestly examining straws in the wind since 2008-9.  But as Paul Mason endlessly finds, a convincing new narrative has proved hard to conjure up - and not for want of trying

Perhaps 2017 will yield more clues for all of us first-draft-of-history merchants.  Meanwhile, real history is made by the do-ers; so back to some more immediately profitable demands on my time.

ND

________________
** That's five opinion pieces under the heading "Here's why there are reasons to be hopeful";  a full-page spread entitled "Reasons to be cheerful" (there are eight, apparently); the Letters page has a section called "Reasons to be cheerful about the world in 2016";  Hugh Muir opines that "History shows we're better than this"; and one Emine Saner - crazy name! - offers "Plenty to look forward to" - a further six themes, including "A new golden age of protest".  (It seems that on 20 February we can look forward to "the One Day Without Us boycott ... immigrants in the UK and their supporters taking the day off work in lieu of formal strike (sic) to show how vital their labour is".  It may, of course, lead people to reach quite another conclusion, but we shall see.)

The Sacrifices of Paul Mason and Michael Sheen

This gave us a winter's evening laugh at Schloss Drew:

Michael Sheen to swap acting for activism against 'populist right'

‘It will be a big change for how people relate to me,’ says the actor who was galvanised by his hometown’s vote for Brexit ... “Once I’m in, I’m fully in, and this is big.  It will be a big change for how people relate to me” ... He has been based in Los Angeles for the past 14 years ... Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election put “massive urgency” into a decision to go home ... Port Talbot, which voted overwhelmingly for Brexit in the June referendum – a result that initially left the actor “sad and frustrated” but then determined to fight back.  “How can I be most effective?” Sheen said.  “What am I going to do?” as he jabbed himself in the chest.

Sheen said he was not signed up for any future acting projects. 

Cause or effect, Michael?  Don't worry, people will know exactly how to *relate* to you.

In other news: having just joined Momentum, Paul Mason is threatening to leave!  [I am not making any of this up.]  Make yer bloody mind up, man!

ND

UPDATE:   h/t commenter Andrew Z - it may turn out the Sheen story is bollocks!  That's the Graun for you.  I look forward to Mason updating us on his part in the Momentum saga 

Momentum Lost: An Attack of the Trots

Oh dear.  Momentum seemed to hold so much idealistic promise - a spontaneous mass movement tapping directly and constructively into the angst of hundreds of thousands of social-media-savvy young people.

"Momentum has been imbued with meaning and significance above and beyond that of any other left-wing group or campaign. We haven’t only invested time and energy in Momentum, we’ve invested hopes, dreams and visions for the future in it. Most important for many of us was the expectation of “a new kind of politics”, a term which now receives mockery and laughter from both the right and the left. We wanted “straight-talking, honest politics” which put an end to the jargon-laden, focus-group-speak that Tony Blair propagated so well. But we also wanted “a kinder, gentler politics” — Momentum was to be a group built on conciliatory, positive, outward-looking debate, which would be reflected in the way we treated each other, and our opponents... At a local level, many Momentum groups have flourished — delivering political education workshops, running foodbanks, organising rallies, street-stalls and phone-banks during the leadership campaign and getting left-wing people elected to key positions in their local Constituency Labour Parties."

Not only was it going to be, well, wonderful, it was going to be (a) Corbyn's praetorian guard ("we delivered a resounding 61.8% mandate for Jeremy in the Labour leadership election"); and (b) in the longer run, McDonnell's vehicle for an extra-parliamentary Marxist rising.

And then the Trots turned up.   Bastards!   They've wrecked it, ensuring it is run by ruthless warring cliques instead of via 'MxV', a clever web-based OMOV system the Momentum tecchies have hatched.  And now it all comes down to a straight fight over who gets control of the database of members and supporters.

Funnily enough, this is probably meat and drink to Corbyn himself, who has been swimming happily in foetid, Trot-infested waters for decades.  But whatever will Paul Mason, their ultra-high-profile recent recruit, make of it?  Actually, since 2009 he's seen it so many times before in various countries around the world, I can't imagine he's at all surprised.

Ah well, back to playing World of Warcraft in the bedsit.

ND

MasonWatch

I haven't suddenly developed a paranoia about the denizens of Great Queen Street.

Nor a fixation with Paul of that ilk.  But I do find him a very interesting character with a lot of fascinating stuff to offer, re-hashed marxism and all.  He's clearly wrestling mightily and imaginatively with the 21st century in all its turbulent novelty: and he's also (like George Monbiot / unlike Polly Toynbee) the sort of leftie who cannot dodge the need to admit when some thesis he's adopted has clashed with the Facts and is plain wrong.

And now he's joined Momentum! (another phenomenon that interests me a lot).  This may be a mixed blessing for them, because he's already telling them exactly what to do, at some length.

Well, that's their problem, I am sure they will enjoy the dialectic process.  However, for anyone disagreeing with the above assessment of the man, have a read of Postcapitalism and the city.  Or Find each other and act! 12 principles for a neo-Bevanite left.**  When you get a minute.  Or two.

ND 
_____________
**he does rather enjoy telling people what to do ...

UPDATE:  someone else is interested in Mason, too 

Precariat

Following on from CU's post of yesterday: it all loops back into the Paul Mason theme we've discussed before, of whether the current dynamics of capitalism are leading to his much longed-for revolution.

I have been a gig economy player 100% for nearly 15 years (and Mrs D likewise), with the important qualification that we had some (earned) capital behind us at the point I ceased being an employee, so - even though there were still some years of mortgage / school / university fees to be covered - we couldn't be classed as 'precariat', which is the other new coinage often used in this context.

The inherent uncertainties of 'gig' are unnerving for anyone who likes a bit of stability or opportunity to plan ahead more than 3 months; and - let's be honest - I really don't know how comfortable we would have felt in that mode 10 years earlier with a young family and no capital cushion.  However, I started my commercial career when 'everyone' went into job-for-life, final-salary style of employment, which can seriously dull the entrepreneurial / self-reliance instincts. (Being in the army before that was *even worse* - you don't even need to consider where the next meal is coming from, you just place your arse on a chair in front of a table.)

The big change seemed to come in the early '90s.  I well recall the 20-something kids I was managing then, who had grown up in families where the (middle class) breadwinner suddenly lost their job during the various waves of Thatcher-era disruption.  These youngsters were much more tolerant of uncertainty than I would have been at their age; their personal career-planning and forward-looking ambition was non-existent as I would have understood it, & psychologically they seemed always prepared for some axe to fall randomly on whatever they were doing at the time.  A different approach to life, which seems to work out broadly OK for many.  But gigging precariously may not be quite so easy when body and mind start to slow up in late middle age.  And we haven't yet seen what happens when these generations reach retirement with bugger-all pension provision.

The debate takes one of two turns at this point, both taking their cue from one or other of the great 19th century German thinkers.  On the hand, Marx (or rather, latter-day marxists like Mason who try to adapt Marx's proletariat-based thinking) would be inclined to see this trend as (a) an inevitable outworking of late-stage capitalism and (b) creating the 'alienation' and despair that trigger the revolution.  We see plenty of leftwing hopes pinned on this, even though (as Mason is periodically forced to admit) every apparent new dawn of the past decade has rapidly clouded over for them.

On the other, Nietzsche relished the idea of more bracing times ahead, where constant turmoil and strife would bring out the best in the toughest and most flexible individuals.  (His academic background was of course in Homer.)   In less dramatic terms, the far less certain employment conditions in the US economy have for a very long time bred a different attitude to life in many sectors of American society, from that of the stability-craving post-war European model.

I'll end by quoting a passage that captures this approach very neatly - and its flipside:

The advocates of the neo-liberalism suggest that is how it should be. Their vision is of a world of restless freelancers living off their wits project-to-project. The post-modern career is self-assembled. Skills and jobs don't last long and so unlike their grandparents, Gen Y can't rely on solid Fordist guarantees. Instead they must dance on hot coals, reinventing themselves towards emerging labour markets, prostituting their ambitions. To fulfil the new economy fantasy they must become the entrepreneurial, "frictionless" workers, mobile and free from the ballast of personal ties. This might suit the youthful graphic designer or the hipster running a digital start-up, but ...

But, continues the writer, this rarely suits a certain category of people for whom regular employment "provides an exoskeleton protecting them from the ravages of the market".  This could, I suggest, be quite a large percentage of our fellow citizens.  (Of course, the dole plays a similar 'protective' role.)

Marx or Nietzsche?  They both offered pretty apocalyptic visions that are equally out of fashion in polite society.  The 20th century didn't quite bear either of them out, though from time to time both camps could claim to see the developments in society they were expecting.  And the 21st ... who knows?    Wars, and rumours of wars ...

ND

Jeremy, Karl and their Little Friends

Some more musings over just how potentially revolutionary is the situation that may be brewing in the triumphant Corbyn / McDonnell / Momentum camp, as clearly lots of their fan-base believe it is.

Let's start with little Paul Mason, tipped to be a major force in the renewed Corbyn leadership team.  An unabashed marxist, Mason has spent much of the post-2008 period eagerly spotting revolutionary straws in the wind all over the northern hemisphere - but at the same time, as a good journo with at least some regard for the facts, he's been fairly honest in reporting just how disappointing it often turns out to be.  In his more sober moments he even thinks modern youth movements don't actually have what it takes - stamina, attention, focus, discipline, commitment etc - which must indeed be pretty disappointing (particuarly for an old stalinist like McDonnell).   Still, hope springs eternal and Mason's hoping.

So.  Let's rehearse what Marx actually said.  Drawing a kindly veil over his labour theory of value, we should recall he gave a cracking account of the superiority of capitalism over all that went before and, in socio-political terms, warned of the potential dangers of gross and accelerating inequalities in society: inequalities which, he reckoned, were an inevitable long-term outworking of capitalism.  There are plenty today, including many who are not remotely marxist in outlook, who'd agree with him on the dangers, if not the inevitability.

Marx then went on to blow his credibility for most people by concluding that the conditions he asserted were necessary and sufficient for the Revolution to happen, were already present in the 19th century.  That, coupled with the history of the century that followed (when the only instances of 'communist revolution' occurred in agrarian societies! - not at all what Marx envisaged) pretty much scuppered him in polite society long before the 21st century came around.

His conditions for revolution?  That the working class becomes so impoverished - not just relative to the "1%" but in absolute, subsistence-level, on-the-breadline terms - and, at the same time, capitalism becomes so dramatically productive and generates so much surplus wealth, that the workers grasp intuitively that any change in political power whatsoever would leave them better off.  Oh, and that this will happen at the global, not national level.

There are one or two compelling reasons why we ain't there just yet - not while the workshop of capitalism is managed by the Chinese 'Communist' Party! - whatever the average Momentum supporter hopes or believes.  Their own theory, for those that have any political theory, condemns them as bourgeois dilletantes.  Coincidentally, many less theoretically-inclined observers have reached the same conclusion: idle middle-class w*nk*rs.

Which brings us to little Owen Jones who, to do him credit, is also showing signs of Monbiot-Mason syndrome, i.e. on a good day he feels obliged to notice the truth.  He wants to believe: oh, how he wants to believe!  From the Graun:

After his victory last year, Corbyn’s acceptance speech was criticised for having little to say about reaching out to the country as a whole. Not this time. He was passionate in his calls for unity: “We’re part of the same Labour family,” as he put it. No retribution, no bitterness. He made it clear that Labour was in it to win, would take it to the Tories and focus on developing a compelling alternative. He looked like a leader.

But 

The Labour movement now brims with anger, mutual distrust and looming internecine warfare ... if this fury is unchecked, then Labour will implode as a political force. 

  What can be done to keep the show on the road? 

Hope for the future lies with critical friends of the Labour leadership. They will be attacked by all sides. The uncompromising anti-Corbyn wing will see them as naive accomplices of electoral oblivion. The most ardent leadership loyalists will see them as naive capitulators to saboteurs who will never accept a left-led Labour party. In such a polarised atmosphere, nuance is regarded as flip-flopping, fence-sitting, standing in the middle of the road and being hit by traffic in both directions, to paraphrase Nye Bevan. But whatever derision they face, critical friends are pivotal to both the survival and success of the left in general, and Labour in particular ... Critical friends are critical not because they want the left to fail. They are desperate for it to succeed. Ignoring challenges and problems, and pretending when things go wrong that it is always the media and the parliamentary party to blame, will lead to terrible defeat.

I think we may safely guess who's volunteering to be the critical-friend-in-chief.  Well, the way you put it, it sounds like a really tough gig Owen - but someone has to do it, eh?  But that does rather imply he's no longer to be counted among the ranks of the faithful.  And it's only been going a year.  Maybe not the revolution, after all.

ND

Paul Mason can't wait for the end of Capitalism

Marxist economist Paul Mason is the economics correspondent for BBC Newsnight. Now it is not a shock to find that BBC thinks a marxist economist is an appropriate balance for a mainstream news show. Even when h is publishing a new book egging on a global marxist revolution against capitalism.

However is ranty blog yesterday reaches new depths -'A Turning Point In British History.'

In it he claims that the Tories plan A is dead and that expansionary contraction won't work. He comes pretty close to glee at this point and then revels in saying nothing else is going to work either, really. Labour and Tories are toast. We live in extreme times, but for the supposedly intellectual BBC newsnight site this is a new low. Allowing a reporter to get on their own hobbyhorse of marxist revolution.

Not only that but much of his analysis is wrong anyway. We will never know if the Tory Plan A would have worked because the Euro Crisis has utterly de-railed their plans and in May 2010 we did not know that Germans were planning a new offensive to conquer Europe via economic warfare. Lo it has come to pass and times change.

Also Mr Mason has his own view on what we should do - hardly impartial having berated the Government for the whole post:

"The alternatives to this? Raise your economic potential through investment: in machines, research and better skilled people; re-orientate to different export markets; and disincentivise the importation of low-skilled operations. I.e. become a high-skill, high productivity economy oriented to the world, not Europe."

Note his lovely phrase of low skilled operations instead of importing low-skilled workers (which would mean the same thing but would of course be racist and right wing). Also his lovely view is that if we just invest more then everything will be OK - rather missing the point that the time to do this was in 1998 not in 2011 when we are already bust. So, in the end, he wants magic fairy money to come and save everyone just like every other socialist.


I used to really like newsnight but can't abide it in difficult economic times when instead of sober debate they decide to have a running commentary by a marxist willing the markets on to collapse and the end of the Western world, its pathetic. He makes Robert Peston look like a Genius by comparison.