CHARTIST blog

Trevor Fisher argues that the new elite is only interested in politics run by professionals.

In a recent edition of Chartist, Duncan Bowie commented on the influence within the Fabian society of a group of Think Tank officers with certain characteristics. He remarked that they “all know each other and seem to live in a closed world… they are all relatively young and seem to have little experience outside the Westminster village”. The grouping alas is even bigger than think tanks, including NGOs, pressure groups, public relations and the media and increasingly the two main political parties. The evolution of a new, centralized clique justifies the Russian term Nomenklatura – those whose careers and fortunes are in professional politics.<p>

The idea of elites within politics is of course not new, as C Wright Mills classic study of US politics in the 1950s The Power Elite demonstrated. But this is a new power elite, linked by age, experience, education and ideological preference – not merely for a free market politics of the American model, but also by a belief that politics has to be run by professionals trained in the arts of spin doctoring. Party labels are secondary to this development.

In these respects they differ from the old political elites who were often openly restrictive in their recruitment practices but who responded to the growing electorate of the nineteenth century by incorporating firstly bourgeois businessmen like Peel and John Bright, then professionals like Asquith and Lloyd George, then women, trade unionists and the respectable working class. The evolution of parliament for over two centuries was from the domination of the landed classes, principally aristocratic, analysed classically by Louis Namier, to the current urban and professional elites. In the process politics moved from Old Corruption to a relatively corruption free state – but is now moving back toward a politics of self interest as the expenses scandal indicated.

The gap between the political class and society as a whole is widening. For Labour, as Ken Livingstone has commented, politics is becoming an all graduate affair, with himself and Alan Johnson the last non graduates in the front line. Labour politicians no longer earn their spurs in local government or the unions. Within the Tory Party there has been an equally marked decline of the provincial businessman of the Chamberlain and Baldwin era. The scandal which briefly emerged over a female think tanker who had been involved in a very public affair with a Tory MP indicated that this was not a bar to her becoming a candidate. Sexual preference, gender, age, experience, are no longer issues. But you have to sleep with someone already in the Westminster Village, and you have to work for a Think Tank.

There are many problems associated with the growth of the Nomenklatura, and the identi-kit politicians who have now emerged. It poses a threat to parliament in terms of its representative and democratic credentials – Cameron threatens to cut cabinet salaries, but not that of his director of communications: an Alistair Campbell is more valuable than a minister – and it widens the gap between voters and politicians. Primaries are a joke. Only those favoured by the machines would ever get on the ballot paper, while the selection of homogeneous candidates by the machine favours safe hands over independence. The Glasgow North by election saw the lowest turn out ever in a Scottish by election, while currently only 53% of the electorate are likely to vote. The evolution of a Nomenklatura could well allow a populist party to rise up. Or just a host of independents trading on the sense of alienation now endemic among the voters. Analysing this trend is going to be a key task in making sense of contemporary politics.

James Coe writes:

A brief discussion on the crucial action required, bringing an end to the paradox in which we dwell.
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“Understanding socialism changes your entire perception of the world; all of a sudden the fish dominate the sky and you can swim with the birds.”

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Meaning not to take the auspicious sentiment from Martin Luther King Jr’ but I had a dream. I conversed with a man, a capitalist’s John Doe. Soon after meeting we began to discuss life’s purpose and the profiteering system in which we exist. This is what was said.

I asked if he was happy, he looked questionably, halted for a second and mirrored my question. “Don’t repeat what I said”, I said. This time he said nothing and agreed using his head - he nodded; I believed this to be a yes. I noted and proceeded to query his pause, asking him if he really preferred to be seen as a cog within an economic machine – used to further wealth for a select few off his labour. I explained ‘surplus value’ and preached against the obvious exploitation of the masses. Here the many live comfortably but still don’t receive their fair share, elsewhere the many starve. More disastrous still, individuals come to prefer to damage and exploit others for personal profit. Community, as we would like to know it ceases. He proclaimed the standard trained response - “We design ourselves, we can all become wealthy”. I replied to the former, “I agree” or so I said. To the latter – his, like my, ‘one of a kind self’ – ‘designed and built by our self”- was trapped within an ‘invisible cage’. Forces outside of our control better our abilities; the unparalleled number become nothing more than cogs. We cease to exist; we lose aspirations and focus on producing more profit for another. He said that everything I had said had been said before, “I’ve failed to convince you”, I said, “Keep doing your thing” after that, I said no more.

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The idea of predestined coding of man is nothing short of a fallacy. Man, much like a mound of clay is born to be sculpted. Man is neither intrinsically good, nor intrinsically bad. Man - just is. From ground zero we build how society is to act, we exist within the environment and play the part we are thrown. We cannot cite Rousseau for man being corrupted from his ‘golden stage’ and likewise, Thomas Hobbes’ ‘state of war’ is nothing short of a scare mongering theoretical point in order to justify individual despotism. Society’s responsibility resounds within ourselves; it is forever the now and the future, built from the ashes of the past. We have the capabilities and desires to do both good and bad, to commit mutual aid or mutual exploitation. The system in which we exist is our choice and currently we are choosing to do harm by the pursuit of our own selfish gain stipulated by the system which we are gripped by.

Capitalism as a system not only allows but also perpetuates the pursuit of our own ‘selfish gene’ known to political theorists as ‘self-preservation’. This is accomplished through capitalist promotion of material gain and want. This system transforms moral vices into pseudo ‘virtues’; it has made selfishness, exploitation and individualism a fraudulent battle cry for adults and children alike. We no longer aspire to achieve greatness; we no longer push to discover something great, unless it can bring us great wealth. Our own primitive desire to accumulate far beyond what we need, or even really want, is now our primarily incentive. Company owners push to further profit, Marx discusses through ‘Das Kapital’ the glaring exploits in which are committed. These obvious exploits committed by the owners of the means of production are more than apparent and thus needn’t be detailed much greater. The vibrant difference between the labourer’s wage and labourer’s productive value is not the only cause for concern. Too long have socialists avoided tackling another real blockade to the righteous ideals. As Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara found while attempting to boldly spark a continental revolution in the heart of Latin America, Bolivia, the people must also be convinced. Cuba’s success was found through proletariat support, where Castro had support, in Bolivia, ‘Che’ had little to none.

The genius of Capitalism is not only that it manages to trap individuals into the system, but it also convinces the people that they desire capitalism and thus, the exploited, they, become petty exploiters and fail to see their own cause. Too often we look to others to blame. I do not deny that devils in suits rule the world, some of them know this while some joined the system with good intentions and found themselves encaged within, powerless to realise their original aspirations. Though, one must realise that if we are to search for those to blame, we needn’t travel further than to the closest mirror. The capitalist trap renders each individual stuck in a system where by they pursue material wealth - by capitalist means. These capitalist means leave said individuals as instruments of profit making, henceforth, the individuals unknowingly commit themselves to become means of producing a large profit for another owed to their own selfish desire to accumulate far beyond they want, or need. One might argue this is acceptable, as Adam Smith asserted both are ‘gaining’ and thus the contract is to mutual benefit. Though one must ask, why the incredible monetary difference between those at the top and those at the bottom? Why must many struggle for another live to excess? One can only deduce the obvious but generally avoided fact that for each one who lives on top of the world many must justify his position by living at the bottom of the ocean. Is this what we call humanity? The idea of helping those at the bottom will not truly motivate most of you, so instead think of yourself. How much money do you produce for another to enjoy? How many of you worry about money while others live to excess off of your back? How often have you seen, been involved in or worked under the threat of redundancies? It isn’t greed to demand what the selfish have stolen from you. You’re closer to the bottom of the ocean than you think.

The shameful collapse of New Labour into a mire of sleaze and incompetence ends any lingering hope it would win a majority at the next general election, argues Trevor Fisher.

Gordon Brown has to be removed to prevent total electoral collapse. Alas the rot goes deeper than the leadership and is rooted in the New Labour Project itself. Tony Blair once said “I have removed from my party everything it once believed in. What holds it together is success and power”. The pursuit of power without principle inevitably lead to disaster.

The thrust of the New Labour Project was to achieve a party run by a professional elite, utterly contemptuous of its own supporters and hostile to any democratic control over its operation. The inevitable result of this was to reduce the party’s practice to appeasing the rich and those in the media in London and Edinburgh who shared its values and attract to its inner core people who were essentially interested in power for what it could deliver to themselves.

New Labour is institutionally corrupt. While some Labour MPs are perfectly honourable people who have done no wrong, the dominant tendency and its culture is a Faustian bargain where power was traded for any sense of purpose. The success of the Blair years now has gone. Power will follow. While removing Brown is essential to sustaining any significant political presence after the next election, it will not be sufficient to save the Labour Party from a generation in the wilderness. Only if it can regain a core of social justice and democratic practice can it save itself from total disaster.

The future of the Labour Party matters for those of us who are on the outside, whether we left, like myself, from the sense that the Party had been taken over by a new and more powerful militant tendency, or for those who have never belonged. There are no forces to the left which can pose a serious alternative, and the chances of electoral reform to produce the space for a democratic socialist alternative rely on having a hung parliament. In the immediate future a real attempt to explore the means to remove Brown and produce a revival of Labour sufficient to produce a hung parliament is the urgent need. If this cannot be achieved, then the alternative is to explore ways to save what can be saved from the wreckage as new Labour sinks for ever. Anyone for Operation Lifeboat?

 trevor.fisher2@gmail.com

Kevin Meagher asks why Labour MPs don’t seem to understand the significance of the past week and the magnitude of response required.

Anyone who has ever grappled with how to tot-up their business miles or had to query whether their M&S sandwich is tax exempt will have little sympathy for our Members of Parliament as the first gory details of their exotic personal expenses slither into the public domain, (courtesy of the Daily Telegraph’s leak) ahead of July’s scheduled publication.

The first thing to say is that set against the backdrop of a painful recession with millions out of work, the squalid, shameful self-aggrandisement of our MPs is all the more appalling.

The second thing is that the simple response from voters to this welter of lurid revelations about what our MPs get reimbursed for will be: ‘why on earth would anyone struggling to get by in Britain vote Labour again?’

How can a Labour minister ever pledge to crack down on tax loopholes when half the Cabinet seems to routinely abuse them themselves? When ministers’ lavish predilection for interior design at the taxpayer’s expense makes Lord Irvine’s infamous £600 a roll wallpaper seem frugal by comparison.

As Labour ministers use their positions to stack up multi-million pound property portfolios, many of their constituents have sleepless nights fretting about mortgage payments, with tens of thousands having already lost their homes. With our already bulging waiting lists for social housing, what kind of message do they think they are sending?

So much for Harold Wilson’s much quoted aphorism that the Labour Party ‘is a moral crusade or it is nothing.’ Too many MPs have been revealed for what they have become: money-grubbing freeloaders who have clearly given up crusading for social and economic justice, content merely to feather their own nest - or, indeed, portfolio of nests.

The sole crumb of comfort for Gordon Brown is that this tsunami of public hostility is due to a collective failing. The blame - and indeed shame – falls evenly across the parliamentary Labour party, from greedy backbenchers renovating holiday homes at public expense, to cabinet ministers who seem so under-employed they have enough time to manage wholesale renovations to their properties.

But then to learn of their sniveling entreaties for the House of Commons fees office to rubber stamp their bloated demands heaps insult onto injury. The quibbles, the tantrums and even the pleas to avoid marital breakdown simply demeans the office they hold.

Of course the Tories and other parties come out of this no better. Indeed, as expected, they are even worse. In a system where MPs effectively regulate their own affairs can we ever expect anything else?

But the point is that Labour MPs should behave differently. They should have a basic moral grounding that recognises they are not sent to Westminster from some of the poorest communities in the land to line their own pockets. They should be equipped with a self-denying ordinance – ‘a moral compass’ - that sees them eschew the estate agent morality of the Tory party and concentrate on the job – the vocation – of being a Labour MP.

The fact that so many have plainly lost sight of that is a telling commentary about what has happened to Labour. Not different enough from the greedy arrogant Tories any longer. No longer the party instinctively in touch with ordinary people’s concerns.  A self-styled “People’s Party” now slyly contemptuous of real peoples’ sense of right and wrong.

Why cannot Labour MPs understand that the anger people feel about their extravagant greed is palpable, visceral and real? They will not forgive Labour Cabinet Ministers “flipping” the designation of their second home in order to claim thousands for home improvements. Nor will they forget the low farce of John Prescott’s two toilet seats and Hazel Blears’ bills for chunky kit-kats.

The public will remember the disgust it feels today and we will be left to look back from under the rubble of next May’s general election result and say this is the week the election was truly lost.

kevin@kevinmeagher.co.uk

Dave Toke, writing in Chartist, Mar/Apr 2009, says that WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme) has found that the death of recycling has been misreported.

Demand for recycled material is returning after only a slight dip and orders are increasing from across the world, including India and China as well as Europe. The weaker pound is helping British exports, even if they are rubbish! Prices for recycled products are rising once again.

Rubbish recycling rates are now over a third compared to only ten per cent just a few years ago. We are still behind some other European countries. However, the petulant moans of Brits who cannot understand why they should go to the terrible inconvenience of putting rubbish in different boxes for recycling are growing quieter. The need for burning waste is also receding as effective means of recycling hitherto problematic (from a recycling point of view) plastic materials have been developed.

Also the message is beginning to arrive in the UK that turning food waste and other organic waste into biogas is a major potential energy resource. Anaerobic digestion can be used to turn the organic material into a gas which largely consists of methane.  The Germans are already generating over one per cent of their electricity from biogas, and this figure is rapidly increasing. However they are now hoping to send a purified form of the biogas into the natural gas grid. The British National Grid has estimated that biogas from food and organic waste could substitute for over 10 per cent of our national consumption of natural gas. A lot more energy could be derived from biogas if crops were grown specially to provide a feedstock for anaerobic digestion.

Have your say

Have reports on recycling problems affected the way you behave?  Do you believe that the recycling industry is back on its feet?