Eurosocialism

Is the idea of a social(list) Europe dead?

This question has been knocking around in my head recently, and coming up a lot both in work and outside of it. The latest in a long line of provocations was the victory in the Italian elections of the 5 star movement – which, despite it’s reassurances that it is not an anti-EU party, clearly represents a break from the social democratic tradition of relationships with the EU. But it’s not the victory of 5 star itself that is concerning, but the massive defeat of the Italian socialists, following similar ‘worst result ever’ moments for the French, Dutch, Spanish and German socialists.

What these movements have all represented, in their relationship with the EU at least, is a social democratic tradition of gradual reform of the EU’s laws and institutions from within. The 5 star and the other parties of the radical left (including a significant part of the UK Labour party) don’t ascribe to this view, for various reasons, but generally because of an idea that the EU – with it’s treaty based system of rules, and de-centralised power in 28 Member governments, a commission and independent minded European Parliament – is unreformable, or fixed on a certain set of capitalist imperatives, because it would require a near unanimous desire from so many competing interests to change the rules.

This idea was summed up by Max Shanley on one of the Novara Media podcasts the other week where he set out that the EU, since it’s founding as the coal and steel community, has always been an organisation dedicated to capitalist goals (free movement of capital, goods; liberal markets, globalisation and open trade etc) and that the idea of a ‘social Europe’ had been sold to eurosceptic labour and workers’ movements suffering under the yoke of Thatcherism/deregulation in the 80s as a kind of limited alternative to achieve some basic worker protections without ever having to seriously challenge the system.

So now, following the treatment that was doled out to the Greek people after the financial crisis we’ve seen how the EU really works against the interests of workers. Or have we? (spoiler: the answer is no)

One thing is clear: in some of it’s rules and systems, the EU does work against the general interest of the worker (the clearest one being the euro). EU sceptics on the left have this right – the euro effectively acts as a block on potential socialist policies of member governments. Other parts of their analysis are wrong though. Take nationalisation rules – it’s just not true that EU rules block governments from nationalising things like the railways. EU rules do mean that governments are less free to nationalise without justification – they basically have to explain why it is important to nationalise a paricular service or industry (the service of key national importance system) and show that they’re not supporting the exports of the industry/service to other countries in the EU that would mean they have an unfair advantage. This last factor makes it more difficult to carry out nationalisations but – and this part is crucial – all it takes in most cases to nationalise is for political support from the member government.

This political support is what has been lacking over the last 30 years of EU membership. Successive Tory and Labour governments haven’t supported a more socialist-friendly interpretation of EU rules. In other countries socialist and even right wing governments have supported the state playing a far greater role in serice provision and even in industrial production and, lo and behold, it’s been possible for the French and Germans to run a nationalised and heavily state subsidised railway system and for the French to nationalise failing ports and steel factories to protect jobs.

So, the key principle, is that the EU rules are basically supported or ignored or interpeted in certain ways based on political will – where there’s the will there’s a way.

So is the idea of a social(ist) Europe dead? No, all it would take is a major Member State to advocate it and the barriers to a more social Europe would come tumbing down. The more member states pushing for this, obviously the better, but the main spark would come from just one of the big three (UK, France, Germany). The annoying thing, one of the annoying things, about the Euroscepticism in Labour’s top team, is that a Labur government in a UK that was staying in the EU could have led Europe on this, as the Brits have led on so many things in the last 30 years.

And it’s a shame that this is not happening, because even a half functioning social EU would be the ideal format to allow a socialist UK government to implement it’s domestic policies whilst allowing a maximum amount of protections against the forces of globalisation that would inevitibly try to undermine the project. It would be the ideal format because it could provide a bulwark against runs on our currency and against capital flight. It would ensure that a socialist Britain couldn’t be isolated globally and would provide the diplomatic clout to protect against retaliations against the UK by US (for example). It would, in short, be the best defence we have against the Mitterand-isation of the UK.

So the fact that left-wing parties across Europe are 1) not winning too many elections and 2) where they are winning, they’re railing against the EU rather than looking to use their power to shape the EU towards socialist ends; is a problem for Europe and for socialism, but it’s clear that the tools are there for a more socialist Europe to be a reality and as the European left, we need to be agitating for our parties to grab these tool and to use them.

Against Lexit 1: Is the EU Undemocratic?

Part of a series about the EU and socialism

Most left wing criticisms of the EU, the Lexit criticisms, have at their core the lazy acceptance of the “democratic deficit”. This lack of democracy is often simply assumed at the core of an anti-EU argument before any ideas of the economic or social policies that the EU supposedly blocks. Outside political science circles, it is normally put that the EU is simply undemocratic. Why?

 

The democratic deficit is rarely, if ever, explained but rather assumed by many authors, so it’s hard to define exactly why the EU is supposedly less democratic that, say, the UK.

 

If we ignore the particular, and ridiculous, British complaint against the EU that we can’t ‘throw the buggers out’*, What seems to be at the bottom of the assumption is the fact that a majority of voters in a single Member State of the EU do not have the power to overturn decisions taken by the legislator or executive of the EU.

 

This is clearly only somehow un-democratic if you think of the democratic legitimacy only being possible within the nation state. The EU by it’s very nature creates a pan-European space that means decisions are taken beyond the national level, so the idea that British voters alone should be able to overturn a decision of the EU legislator is as ridiculous as the idea that the voters of Islington South could reverse a law adopted in Westminster. It can be argued that the British voter never gave his or her consent to become part of this European polity, but unfortunately they did by voting in successive Tory and Labour governments who consented to, or did not question this idea.

 

Now the British people have voted to not be a part of this polity, as has always been their right and, presuming they do not change their mind, they will face the consequences of that decision positive or negative – in my opinion, certainly negative. If the EU were not democratic, would this withdrawal even be possible?

 

The same arguments hold for the poster child of the Lexit case, Greece. The Commission was economically wrong in how it bailed out Greece – imposing austerity was wrong, but this doesn’t make the EU undemocratic either. Again, in the broad European sense, the Greek bailout and the austerity wrongly imposed on the country was a symptom of there being more people across Europe who had voted for governments who believed in these austerity politics than those who opposed them. That the people of Greece rejected the bailout terms is neither here nor there because the people of Europe, through their representatives, supported the terms of the bailout.

 

No country is absolutely sovereign in the sense that all courses of action are possible to it at all times. It’s very clear with hindsight, but arguable it was clear at the time that Greece had only three options open to it at that point: accept the majority will of the EU Member States, try to change the majority opinion of EU Member States or leave the EU. The problem was that Syriza’s leaders misunderstood the mechanics of making the second option work. They thought that a mandate from their voters would force a rethink in the governments of the other EU Members, when actually this could only ever have served as the spark that helped boost an anti-austerity coalition across those Members. Syriza didn’t need to convince Greeks that the bailout terms were wrong, but Greeks, Dutch, Germans and others.

 

And this is where there remains a flaw in the EU’s application of democracy (a flaw yes, but no less a flaw than exists in other democracies, and certainly not enough to make the EU as a whole un-democratic). The mechanisms for Greek people and their representatives to convince people and political parties from other parts of the EU of their ideas are very weak or underused.

 

The political families that unite European political parties are too weak. Most of the left and centre-left were against austerity in Europe at that time, but failed to unite behind a common rejection of austerity to refloat the European economy. This lack of common message was amplified by the fact that in many European countries, the left had been in charge when the financial crisis hit and was taking the blame – leaving its voice largely discredited. The lack of a common message on the left against austerity combined with the left’s weak standing to leave the space for a right wing European Parliament, and therefore a right-wing European Commission.

Simply put, if there had been a centre-left majority in Europe at the time, then it is unlikely that austerity would have been imposed on Greece.

 

This brings us back to the Lexit critique of the EU: that its lack of democracy prevents the realization of left-wing policies (or more accurately, that the lack of democracy prevents resistance against liberal policies). This is clearly untrue – what prevents left wing policies being implemented in the EU (in as far as they are prevented) is the failure of socialists as internationalists. Socialist parties have failed to realise that they are in a pan-European system and that winning national elections, whilst still important, is not the only thing that matters

An organized European left, with coherent aims and ambitions, winning elections in a majority of European countries as well as the European elections, could achieve anything it wanted to within the rules set out in the EU treaties. It could even set out to change the rules of the EU treaties if it wanted to – this would be more difficult, as constitutional change should be, but it is possible.

Even outside the EU, a socialist European governmet would need the support of socialist allies within the EU. Jeremy Corbyn, to his credit, talks the talk of socialist internationalism. He seems to realise that a socialist Labour government in the UK would need international support to get anywhere near achieving its ambitions. How can the Labour top team realise this but not see that with the same international support they could mould the EU into their own image and take the current economic benefits the EU offers whilst negating the problems they (mistakenly in my opinion) think the EU poses towards things like nationalisation and supporting industrial policy?

On the left, we are asking the wrong questions about the EU – we are criticising the EU for a democratic deficit that doesn’t really exist when we should be asking ourselves why the left is failing to harness the European democracy that does exist to achieve its ambitions?

 

 

* The fact that the EU Commission is ‘unelected’ is a particular British complaint because in the UK Ministers tend to be elected MPs rather than appointed (although what about the unelected Lords?), but whilst voters in the UK may elect a government with some idea of who will be minister for what, they have no real democratic control over who the Prime Minister appoints as ministers, they don’t even have real control over who becomes Prime Minister (in the last 10 years both Brown and May became PM without being elected as such). The President of the Commission has always been subject to some form of democratic oversight, whether through their appointment by the EU Council (composed of heads of democratically elected governments) or recently through the appointment of the candidate of the largest party elected in the European Elections as Commission President.

Is it OK to be a socialist and like the EU?

The referendum result and the Brexit negotiations have shown, amongst a million other things, that there’s a divide on the left about the EU and whether it is a good thing.

Admittedly, the Parliamentary left is mainly in favour of the EU with the notable exception of the Labour party leadership who reflect a trend in the wider left (the further left you go, the more likely) to see the EU as an obstacle to achieving socialist objectives.

This strand of thought has led to the ‘Lexit’ position for leaving the EU. Lexiters were either for leaving the EU before and during the referendum, or may not have voted to leave the EU but see a benefit now in doing so.

As a socialist, who works in the European Institutions, I obviously don’t agree with my comrades who think leaving the EU is the only, or the best way to achieve socialist goals. That doesn’t mean that I don’t share some of their criticisms of the EU (although, not that many as I think most criticisms come from a misunderstanding of what the EU is and how it works), but I think the benefits of being in the actually existing EU already outweigh any negatives, and that more importantly, the EU has the potential (currently unrealised) to be the best vehicle towards achieving socialism for the people of Europe – certainly far better than any single state. This is mainly because the EU is large enough and powerful enough to in some way counteract the global power and reach of capital (which is obviously the classic leftist case for the EU). It’s also because I think that whilst the Union is currently mainly being used to the benefit of capital we already have the tools to shape the EU towards socialist ends, but that they are being under exploited.

Over a series of posts (which at my current incredibly non-prolific level of blogging will probably take at least a year to unfold) I want to set out why Lexit arguments for leaving the EU are usually based on false premises about what the EU does or doesn’t block governments from doing, about how much power we have to change the EU and about where the power lies in the EU. I also want to show what a left wing takeover of the EU might look like and examine the tools we have for achieving it.

 

Why the Lib Dems aren’t the answer to post-referendum blues

Iain Row, writing in the Guardian, explains why he has joined the Liberal Democrats as the only party that can democratically overturn the EU referendum result through a general election.

Leaving aside the ability to overturn the referendum result at all for a moment, he makes some important mistakes in his calculation of why the Lib Dems are best placed to fight a general election on staying in Europe.

1. “Someone must speak for the 48% who voted remain” – to varying degrees all the main political parties do speak for the 48%. The referendum result transcended political party, geographical and demographic lines. Voters from the Tories, Lib Dems, Labour, SNP, Greens all voted remain and unless a general election were to be fought exclusively on the referendum (no chance), these voters would not have much else to bind them to one political force.
2. “Labour’s heartland delivered the leave vote”. Yes and no. 37% of Labour voters voted to leave, 36% of SNP voters and 30% of Lib Dem voters also voted to leave. 58% of Tories voted to leave. On the electoral map, most parts of the country with the exception of (Labour) London, (SNP) Scotland and Northern Ireland voted leave. What is clear from these numbers is that there is no particular area which delivered the leave vote and if there is a party that drove the leave camp, it is the Conservative party. In the Labour heartlands which have apparently lost the referendum, threatening the overturn of the result is clearly not the way to win enough support to retake the constituencies in a general election.
3. The Liberal Democrats are best placed to represent the remain voters – The Parliamentary party, yes all 8 of them, may be fractionally more united than Labour on the leave/remain issue (They’re certainly more united on the issue of the leadership, but don’t forget that the overwhelming majority of Labour MPs backed remain) but they can only take 70% of their 2.5 million votes in the last general election with them. Geographically, traditional Liberal areas have also voted strongly for leave. The toxic legacy of the Clegg years still haunts the party – mainly known amongst the electorate for broken promises, they will now ask that another ‘promise’ (to obey the results of the referendum) be broken.

These three concerns with the Lib Dems’ claim to be best placed to represent remain voters don’t touch on the fact that any political force or forces hoping to win a general election and overturn the referendum would also have to convince a few leave voters at some stage in order to win enough constituencies to do so. Economically, the Lib Dem’s policies don’t seem to reach out to address the underinvestment in both towns and public services, and labour competition pressures that many leave voters in the traditional Labour areas of the north and Wales have cited as reasons for wanting to leave the EU. Being a consistent pro-European party (a point that should be admired) also doesn’t allow them to address concerns of sovereignty which tended to be more prominent in the leave vote amongst Tories. This is not an easy circle to square and almost definitely not one that a single party can achieve.

If the UK were to overturn the result of the referendum through a general election, this would probably require a coalition of parties committed to doing so which would eventually have to include Labour and probably at least elements of the Tory party. This would allow the remain voters to be represented by this broad coalition, but also allow the individual parties to project their ideas of a better settlement in the UK to their voters. Clearly if such an alliance were to win they wouldn’t all be able to implement their solutions to the concerns of voters which had prompted Brexit and would most likely simply be in government to halt the leaving of the EU, ideally the coalition would aim to put in place constitutional reforms, chief amongst which a PR system for elections, that would end the disenfranchisement of large swathes of voters – but this would probably be a bridge too far for this highly unlikely electoral coalition. Their job of ending the process to leave the EU done, another general election would then have to be called.

This is an incredibly unlikely scenario.

Far more likely, in terms of blocking the trigger of article 50, is that the pro-EU majority in the commons simply blocks any enacting legislation (which may or may not be needed). Again in this the Lib Dems would play a far less significant role than either Labour or pro-remain Tories.

Even this however should be considered as highly unlikely.

Both main parties have seen that, whilst legally they could ignore the result of the referendum or even block any enacting legislation, morally they cannot.

One of the major issues at play on the doorstep was a lack of trust in politicians, experts and elites in general. There is no single culprit for this, but political parties must accept their share of the blame for a string of broken promises. This is a trust that needs to be rebuilt, and the first step to rebuilding that trust is almost certainly not to overturn the results of the referendum.

Much as I support the EU and think the UK will be far worse off outside, the people have voted and their decision must be obeyed. A general election, with it’s first past the post system meaning the government can assume power with the support of as little as 25% of the population isn’t the way to regain this trust. MPs also have no mandate in the current parliament to block the trigger of article 50.

It might be accepted that as the leave campaign lied, lied and lied again that another referendum could be possible once the facts of the UK’s alternative relationship with the EU are known, but this would come at the end of the Article 50 negotiations and it would by then be too late to save the UK’s EU membership in its current form.

Dreams of maintaining the UK’s current relationship with the EU are just that – dreams. As progressives, socialist or Liberal, our job now is to make sure in whatever way we can that the new relationship with the EU that we establish, and the new order inside what is left of the UK is as progressive, just and fair as possible and works for the needs of the majority and not the few.

 

What next for Labour?

The campaign to depose Jeremy Corbyn as Labour’s parliamentary leader is still going strong. As things stand, following yesterday’s vote of no confidence, either Tom Watson or Angela Eagle (more likely Tom from what I understand) will become the ‘official’ unity candidate for the Labour party leadership today. Then, the business of deciding the future of Labour will begin. Will Jeremy be allowed onto the leadership ballot? If he is not, will an alternative candidate from the left be allowed on to represent the membership (at least as expressed at the last leadership election)? Is there still enough support within the membership to make the victory of a left wing candidate (either Corbyn himself or another) a shoe in?

It is probably important to start by saying that I am someone who voted for Jeremy in the leadership election last year. I do also believe that he should now resign for the good of the party and the good of the country, but only on the condition that in the subsequent leadership election, a left wing candidate is allowed onto the ballot (in my opinion this would have to be John McDonnell). Whilst there wouldn’t be enough votes in the PLP for this, they should accept this as the price to pay for removing Corbyn for a couple of reasons:

1. A leadership election without a left-wing candidate (and indeed possibly an election without Corbyn himself) will lead to the alienation of the Trade Unions and much of the membership base – any prospective unity or right wing candidate should want to have the broadest possible support from the party and so will have to defeat the left if they are to effectively lead the party as a whole, and not just the Parliamentary party.
2. This could be the only way that Corbyn resigns – I think it is clear that he is staying in order to continue his project rather than for narrow self-interest. Having a left successor from the Corbyn camp could remove the need to preserve Jeremy himself.
3. If, as seems likely, the left would win any ballot of members at least the party could feasibly stay together and try to rally around a new leader for the general election. Were Corbyn to be re-elected in a leadership contest there is no way this can happen after the mass resignations and vote of no confidence.

It might be said that the Members of the PLP who have voted no confidence in Jeremy simply wouldn’t stand for another MP from his ‘camp’ to be the Labour leader. The question is really whether they would prefer to split the party or for this to happen. In the scenario above, where Jeremy goes and another left-wing candidate replaces him, the rebels have a way out that falls short of splitting the party: either beat the new left-wing candidate in a leader ship vote or get behind him or her for the next general election and revisit the question following that election. If the MPs feel that no left-wing leader of Labour could ever win a general election under any circumstances, then sadly the time will have come for the party to split.

As things stand now 4 things seem to be reasonably clear:

1. That Jeremy personally doesn’t command support within the Parliamentary party
2. That the Labour party with Jeremy as a leader whom the parliamentary party doesn’t support can’t connect with enough voters to win a general election were it to be held this year (or potentially any other year)
3. That the larger membership and Unions want a leader from the radical end of the party – neither Tom Watson nor Angela Eagle would cut it in this respect.
4. The only way to square 1, 2 & 3 within the broad church Labour party is for an alternative to Jeremy from the left to emerge, who is somehow acceptable to and therefore supported by the full parliamentary party and who is then given the best possible chance to win over voters in the country as a whole.

This 4th point above must be allowed to play out until a general election for the views of the membership to ever be able to concede that a left wing candidate is inherently unelectable (something which right wingers in the party seem to take as gospel on the basis of the very questionable historical reference to Michael Foot’s 1983 election – unfortunately for them, this isn’t the 80s and unless the party splits again, the conditions are not the same to make a repeat of history inevitable).

Is the above likely? perhaps not very, but the way that the party is heading at the moment, with Jeremy clinging on to power but unable to command his parliamentary party and the membership base seeming to demand that he stay, will lead Labour to split just in time for a general election and that serves no-one: not MPs, not party, nor country.

 

Circular Economy: What comes next?

From my day job:

We face the end of the era of cheap oil and materials. With resources scarce, the focus is on changing the current model of economic growth linked to resource consumption.

At the current rate of growth and levels of resource intensity we will need three planets’ worth of resources by 2050 – with Europe alone already using resources that equal twice its actual land area. Economists, politicians and businesses alike have advocated that the best answer to these challenges lies in a change from a linear economy, which uses a “take-make-consume and dispose” (cradle-to-grave) approach to resources, to a circular economy which conserves scarce resources by giving an economic value to waste – turning waste into a resource (a ‘cradle-to-cradle’ approach).

In order to answer the challenge of resource efficiency the European Commission produced its communication entitled: “Towards a circular economy: a zero waste programme for Europe”. The sought after net impact of these proposals was to force a re-think in how products are designed and made at every stage of their life cycle in order to use as little overall resources as possible – including energy and water, and create the minimum amount of waste. This should encourage companies to change their business models and seek ways of retaining more of the value of the material, energy, and labor inputs that go into their products.

However, one of the Juncker Commission’s first acts was to scrap the package and promise to come back with a new, improved version. So what is needed to make the new Circular Economy package workable?

Increasing digitization presents one solution. Increasingly companies are able to remotely manage their products – reducing the risk of guaranteeing a product, and adding incentives to actively manage the life cycle of the product after it leaves the factory. This makes it easier for businesses to use existing assets, instead of increased resource consumption, to provide products or services.

Increasing digitization of data could also boost a circular economy, giving manufacturers access to the secondary raw materials (i.e. recycled primary materials) market.

Once new rules on waste are in place, a pertinent challenge will be to ensure that the waste produced in Europe, stays in Europe. If secondary raw materials are to be reintroduced as sources of value in the European economy, they must remain on the continent and not be disposed of via their illegal shipment to 3rd countries. In the context of international trade agreements, it will be important to recognize the role that waste will play in the European economy.

Finally, in the medium term there will need to be a perception shift amongst businesses and consumers. Established businesses must be encouraged to buy in to changing their business models, while there also needs to be an incentive for consumers to change their consumption patterns away from outright product ownership and towards a view of the product as a service – i.e. Car sharing rather than car ownership. Once the market in secondary raw materials is established, consumer demand for products created with these materials must be present – this will mean that efforts need to be made to improve the reputation of these secondary materials, making sure that producers understand they are as valid as primary materials.

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What will the UK elections mean for Britain’s relationship with the EU?

From my day job:

Even considering the long and fine tradition of British mistrust and even dislike of the European project, the rising tide of Euroscepticism in the current parliament has been remarkable.

This was expressed in the polls as a rise in support for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and in Parliament by Prime Minister David Cameron’s promise to re-negotiate the UK’s relationship with the EU followed by a referendum on the new terms. Just months ago, with UKIP having achieved its greatest success in the European elections and with a General Election approaching, the prospect of a British exit (Brexit) from the European Union seemed uncomfortably real.

The General Election taking place this week in the UK is set to be the closest in a generation. Of the major parties, only the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) and Liberal Democrats do not include some form of EU referendum in their manifestos. So should the Brits living and working throughout the EU be eyeing up the residency requirements of their host countries nervously, or is the threat of an in-out referendum all just a storm in a (British) tea cup?

If current polling predictions prove to be accurate, the election on May 7th will deliver the UK a second hung parliament. Most predictions have UKIP winning 3-4 seats at most, and it does not seem possible that the Conservatives will be able to command a majority or cobble together one with the support of UKIP, the Liberal Democrats and the Northern Irish DUP. The most likely government currently seems to be a minority Labour administration propped up by the votes of the SNP and Liberal Democrats. This situation would not exclude an EU referendum, but it does make it far less probable – in addition to the opposition of the smaller parties, Labour only commits to a referendum in the event of a major transfer of powers to Brussels, not something that appears likely in the next five years.

Will simply not having a referendum be enough to make fears of Brexit evaporate though? On the one hand, support for the staying in the European Union was recently put by YouGov at 45%, a lead of +10% over the no camp and the largest since YouGov began polling on this question in 2010. On the other, public support for the EU in the UK has never been solid and not having a referendum would deny the UK a chance to put the question of its EU membership to bed for a generation.

Considering the economic damage that a Brexit could do to both the United Kingdom and also the rest of the European Union, the prospect of putting that off for at least another five years could seem appealing to some. However, this is an issue that will refuse to go away whilst a large proportion of the political establishment are still pushing for it.

It could be the greatest legacy of this election for Britain’s relationship with the EU, is that it allows the pro-EU majority the chance to spend the next 5 years making the case for Britain’s continued involvement in the European Union. Any future referendum would then be far less likely to result in the Brexit that is the fear of so many.

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Five reasons not to exercise

In the usual hubristic post-festivities world of January the third, once the post new year hangover has more or less gone and the working drudge has started again, many people’s thoughts turn to the subject of burning off those Christmas calories/turning over a new leaf/improving their life. Unfortunately, in many cases this masochistic thought train leads people to give serious consideration to exercise. I include myself in this group as for a brief instant I considered a run around the block before thinking better of it and compiling these five reasons why, once the insane world of the first week of January is past, no-one should ever want to exercise:

1. No-one looks good exercising

• I realise that this is not the point, but given careful consideration why is it not the point? Unless you are a professional athlete there really is no other point to exercise. It is not a coincidence that the more society values the stick thin and the musculose over the chubby, the more we value the cross-trainer and the sweatbands over the cheeseburger. Exercise is designed to make people look good. Whether it is in that summer swimwear or in the eyes of others as you complete that marathon for charity, it is validation you are seeking when you exercise. But no-one looks good exercising. Some people move in a decidedly odd manner (think the waddlers and the gangly), others inspire ire and not-so-disguised mutterings questioning the legitimacy of their birth as they jog along in various shades of ridiculous get-up pausing only to check  their heart rate and chant power slogans to themselves. You’ve defeated yourself before you’ve even begun. So give up now as, even when you’re a stone lighter, you’ll still look stupid on a cycling machine.

2. Exercise wastes your time

• Our time can be split at its most basic level into productive and non-productive activities. Most people would have it that exercise counts itself in the former, rather than the latter category. It’s time to change that way of thinking. In order to produce, we must create something greater than what was there when our activity started. At an abstract level, if we start with the self, what we end up with must be greater than the self in order to categorise the intervening activity as productive in some way. Considering this, exercise for exercise’s sake must be one of the least productive activities mankind has ever devised! What do you actually do whilst exercising? Burn valuable calories for the sake of some personal endorphin rush?  You can’t actually do anything whilst you’re engaged in it either. Your hands are inevitably engaged in the activity, your brain is probably screaming for oxygen/pain relief, your mouth is more likely than not contorted into such a grimace that even were your brain able to form coherent thoughts; your mouth would be too busy gurning to be able to translate them into words.  You can’t paint that masterpiece whilst you’re pumping the guns at the gym; a double whopper on the other hand leaves that other hand free to hold the brush. Exercise is then as much a waste of your time as drinking, drug taking or watching TV. And at least they’re fun!

3. Exercise mocks the world’s poor and hungry

• Exercise is the embodiment of sticking two western fingers up to the developing world. We all know that there’s an overabundance of food available in the West which seems to have been diverted into the mouths of many Scots and Americans as if the estuaries of the two great rivers, prosperity and overabundance, flowed directly into the mouths of the people of those two great nations. This might not be a nice thing to consider when so many in the developing world are to some degree or another undernourished. But at least this reaction to a glut of available food (i.e. shovel it into your mouths fatties) is to some degree a biological imperative. What is outrageous is the bare faced cheek of using the extra calories available to your prosperous western stomach simply to burn them off in pursuit of the eternal hare that leads you by the nose round and round your personal dog track. I don’t care how much charity work you do, you sir, are a hypocrite.

4. Exercise promotes inequality

• How could it not? No coincidence that rising levels of inequality in the UK have seen rising levels of jogging. This is the competition principal at its most basic; it separates those that do from those that don’t and perversely rewards those that do with a greater sense of entitlement than those that don’t. It structuralises the class system for the 21st century: the exercising class – our great overlords. Couch potatoes of the world Rise up! Unite and fight! (metaphorically of course as the physical reality of a fight would see us betray our most fundamental principals)

5. Exercise promotes global warming

• The harder we breathe the more we use our respiratory system for what it is: A giant global warming carbon dioxide producing engine. Think about it. Breathe less: Save the world!

Archive: Universal Welfare

Reposted from 4th January, 2012

After reading articles by Chris and Liam Byrne in the Guardian both of which questioned the continuance of the present form of welfare system into the 21st century on the 70th anniversary of the Beveridge report, I’ve started to wander about the long-term viability of a universal welfare system.

As Byrne points out (obliquely), Beveridge’s report and idea for the foundation of the Welfare State was premised around full employment and a safety net to catch those for whom employment didn’t provide – temporary unemployed and those unable to afford shelter, healthcare and provision for old age. Importantly, this wildly differs from today’s conception of welfare in its use of the phrase full employment. The viability of this type of welfare state – providing a universal safety net, rather than an insurance based one – is severely diminished without a simultaneous commitment to full employment for four reasons:

1. Stigma

• Without a commitment to full employment most of the time, the stigma that is generally attached to receipt of benefits in a universal system (as opposed to the personal contribution social insurance systems) becomes overblown. The majority of the unemployed or underemployed are characterised as workshy (see the right wing press or the Conservative, and increasingly Labour, parties for examples of this). When a proportion of the population is expected to be permanently jobless this stigma is largely misplaced resulting in point 2.

2. Legitimacy

• The increased perception that there is an army of workshy scroungers taking benefits which others have paid for in taxes decreases legitimacy for the entire welfare system. Should full employment be a commitment then instances of long term unemployment are stigmatised on an individual basis and not on a class basis (the employed ‘class’ and the unemployed ‘class’). This results in an increased legitimacy of the system which is seen as a genuine safety net.

3. Conditionality

• The conditionality of unemployment benefits – conditional upon seeking alternative employment – cannot work without enough employment for all. This is a point that the Tories continually and wilfully miss in their attempts at benefit reform.

4. Agency

• With a large unemployed ‘underclass’ in existence and the resulting decrease in legitimacy that this causes, consciousness of the agency which has the power to change the present conditions is lost. Housing benefit is a problem of rent being artificially high, unemployment is a problem of too few jobs: both require state intervention and not stigmatisation of the poor. The presence of a permanent proportion of unemployed drives the perception that it is the responsibility of the individual to correct the situation – by being less workshy or by moving to lower rent accommodation, in fact it is policy which must solve the problem by creating more jobs and making those jobs pay in order to stop subsidising private enterprise when they refuse to pay their employees a living wage.

Governments of both stripes have tried to cover up the fact that it is the missing element of full employment which causes most of the dysfunction within the British welfare system. The Tories consistently blame the feckless and the workshy for rising benefits bills and indeed unemployment, when the majority of the increase in both is a direct or indirect result of their policies (it’s not that no-one is workshy, just that there are far, far, fewer than the Tories and right wing press would have us believe). Labour plays its part by refusing to admit the problem and refusing to deal with it. So unemployed are shunted onto disability lists, benefits are increased rather than the root causes of the need for benefits being tackled and public sector employment is expanded to try and reduce unemployment but this is never portrayed as a short term fix to the problem and is de facto accepting permanent unemployment as a social phenomenon.

Orthodox economics posits that unemployment is natural and full employment is impossible in a modern economy. This view mainly relies on the theory that the reduction in labour market competition will make the economy uncompetitive and lead to slow growth. As usual, within a single economy this might not matter as everyone would be affected more or less equally, but the global nature of the economy interferes leading to an eventual flight of capital and business (isn’t this always the problem?).

If we take this contention, as all political parties have, as fact then in fact what is needed for our welfare system is not changes to conditionality and amount of benefit, mixed with programmes to get the ‘work-shy’ back to work – If full employment is impossible, this will never succeed by its own definition – What we require is a complete redesign of our welfare system.

If we do not accept this contention, then government is attempting to fiddle with the spark plugs when there’s no petrol in the tank. In other words it is time to stop fixing a system that isn’t broken and to turn our attention to the external factor causing it to work below the optimum level – lack of jobs.

Either way, the current changes to the system are unnecessary and unwelcome.

Archive: Workers of the world unite…

Reposted from 3rd January, 2012

It is a belief of mine that increased Unionisation in the UK could be a panacea for many of our political, democratic and even economic problems. This might appear a troublesome statement considering the political, democratic and economic woes encountered at the end of the last great period of unionisation c. 1975 but considering the changed social and political landscape, a unionised workforce might be an idea worth re-visiting.

One of the fundamental problems faced by Britain, acknowledged to some degree by politicians from all parties, is the rise of both an unproductive, rentier capitalism and of growing inequality within the country as a whole, best symbolised by the disparity between the pay of CEOs and the average worker. A solution that is often put forward to correct these malaises is an increased degree of mutualisation (yes there are degrees of mutualisation) and John Lewis is often held up as an exemplar in this regard. The theory behind this being that, as in society, increasing democracy in economic spheres is both more equitable and increases accountability to a greater amount of stakeholders. The result: increased worker productivity, decreased salary inequality and pursuit of sustainable, rather than short term, profit (due to workers, as active participants in the company, having a greater stake in its long term future at the expense of short term profit than shareholders have reason to).

Mutualisation, then, is probably a good thing and clearly flavour of the month for those interested in reforming capitalism. But why the sudden interest in this form of economic governance? What on earth has the workforce done for the past 100 years to make sure their interests are heard vis-a-vis those of the shareholders? As one commenter on liberal conspiracy put it: ‘We already have a mechanism for employee stakeholdership in the workplace, it’s called Unionisation’.

The function of unions is to provide a voice for the workers within an organisation; they’re cheaper and more feasible than mutualisation as well, so where are the calls for a turnaround in declining union memberships and a greater presence of unionised workforces in the private sector to counteract rampant shareholder capitalism?

There are two historical problems to this form of workplace organisation – democratic legitimacy and confrontation. In the heyday of the unions, participation was no guarantee of democracy. The problems of union bosses controlling their vote are well known, what is equally well known and almost always forgotten in terms of their positive connotations by those on the right and left, are the reforms introduced by Mrs. Thatcher’s governments of the 1980s. They may have broken union power in the UK but what they certainly have done is ensured democracy within the unions – balloted industrial action and elected leadership being the two most important pillars of this.

Undeniably, there is more confrontation in a system which pits workers and employees on different sides of a divide than there would be in mutualisation which emphasises the all-in-it-together attitude towards workplace relations. It is this confrontational attitude between employees and bosses that in part led to pressure for de-unionisation in the late 70s and early 80s and it remains an obstacle to any ambition for greater unionisation now. It would be vital to manage this confrontation in order for society as well as individual employees to gain from any increase in workplace democracy.

The role of mediator, the agency to manage conflict in such a fashion that it keeps management alert to the interests of its employees whilst not over-favouring employees to the extent that they can dictate policy to the detriment of profitability, should be taken by the government. This system of corporatism has been tried before and found to be wanting, in principal due to the partisan nature of UK political parties combined with the rarity of coalition government, and it remains an obstacle that would have to be overcome.

The Conservative party is naturally the party of employers and this is unlikely to change, however even conservative governments of the past have been willing to mediate in the interests of the wider economy – they tend to take exception when they feel that union power is stifling growth. This suggests an accommodation could be made with the Tories; should they find one day that this system was now the order of things, it would be in the interest of their government to mediate in order to provide the growth and tax cuts that electorally they thrive on. Labour presents a greater problem as they have a complicated union relationship due to the fact that they are the party of unions but cannot be seen to favour them overly in government (especially with regards to industrial action) as it the belief that to do so would be perceived as defending sectional interests rather than the interests of the workforce as a whole.

Assuming these historical problems can be overcome, we come to the practical problem of how to create a climate that would be favourable to increased unionisation. Legislative action is required for this to forbid the proscribing of unionisation in private firms and the discrimination against employees found to be union members or trying to set up unions. On top of this, a social force would have to be unleashed that would convince workers of the benefits of unionisation. The Tories could not and would not undertake the first and the Labour party is best placed to achieve the second. But a Labour government enacting pro unionisation laws and encouraging workforce unionisation is almost unthinkable as it would be blatant gerrymandering of the electorate in order to expand Labour’s constituency.

This problem, as well as the problem of Labour’s inability to act as an impartial mediator, could be resolved by Labour foregoing its ties to unions. There has been much conjecture over the viability of Labour’s union ties both within and outside the party and what better compromise for Labour and the unions to make than to exchange direct political representation for increased economic representation? Labour would continue in its mission to be a facilitator for working class voices in Parliament (a job which it has sorely neglected since the early 90s), but would be non-partisan with regards to the unions themselves.

This should all be qualified by saying that both increased unionisation and the delinking of the party from the unions are unpalatable options for the right and the left of Labour respectively and this is perhaps a greater obstacle to overcome than the inevitable opposition from the right. Of course, it is also clear that Unions are not a perfect device and can legitimately stifle economic growth in some cases (I would contend that in the majority of cases the threat to business growth from unions is greatly overstated, but that’s not to say it doesn’t exist – non-anecdotal evidence is sorely needed on this point). One cannot simply wave a magic unionisation wand and expect growth to be sustained with increased responsibility and worker protection, and issues of union affiliation, the size and structure of unions themselves, public sector unions – where the government would be both employer and mediator of last resort, and the potential negative effects of increased worker protection on new business creation would all need to be addressed in more detail; however, when we are looking at ways – specifically at mutualisation – for making businesses more equitable, more responsible and more representative, it would be crazy not to also examine the positive effects of the system that is already in place to deliver these goals and see how we could expand upon them to the benefit of the entire economy.