Can fascism make a comeback?

Yes it can I’d argue and it already is in some parts of the world in places like the Ukraine and Greece for example there are significant forces building and more worryingly growing all the time. When I was a member of the socialist party combating fascism was not a priority we were always told the capitalists would only use a fascist koo as last resort and the working class will have many chances’ to take power well before it comes to fascism. What they did not tell us was that fascism could make a comeback well before that and indeed right under our noses’. For me it appears as though the old centre ground centre left and centre right are in crisis and are finding their votes and popular support in collapse right across Europe. The centre left in particular is facing a big decline as ice outlined in previous posts on this blog this is no more confirmed than France's president Holland this week seeing his poll ratings sink to their lowest ever for any French president of all time. This is quite an achievement considering the dross they have produced down the years. Fascism can find a hold in times of fear and desperation in the downtrodden middle class's but also the working class too. Fascism was always considered a middle class movement those who have been disenchanted but this misses the point fascism can cover multiple classes in its mass popular support it is a tempting appeal when things are heading quickly down. Fascism in its traditional sense opposes communism but this is the traditional understanding we have fascism in the future and even today will and do look very different to what we understand it to have been in the past. Things do not repeat themselves in history but can take parts of the past with them. I think we may see the rise again of a mass movement against corruption on a European scale and even more so in here in the UK with the likes of UKIP appealing to those who are fed up with the current political elite even though many of their leading figures are hardly too far out of touch of the political establishment themselves. IN a piece in the guardian last November "In the years since the global banking crisis in 2007, commentators across the political spectrum have confidently predicted not only the imminent collapse of the euro – but sooner or later an unavoidable implosion of the European Union itself. None of this has come to pass. But the "European Project", launched after the devastation of the Second World War, now faces the most serious threat in its history. That threat was chillingly prefigured last november in the launch of a pan-European alliance of far-right parties, led by the French National Front and the Dutch Party of Liberty headed by Geert Wilders, and vowing to slay "the monster in Brussels".. Of course, the growth in support for far-right populist, anti-European, anti-immigrant parties has been force-fed by the worst world recession since at least the 1930s and possibly since before 1914. Mass unemployment and falling living standards in the euro-area and the wider EU made worse by the crazy and self-defeating austerity obsession of European leaders has opened the door to the revival of the far right. Parties that skulked in the shadows for decades after 1945, playing down their sympathies with fascism and Nazism are now re-emerging having given themselves a PR facelift. Marine Le Pen, leader of the French NF, plays down the antisemitic record of her party... The Dutch far-right leader has ploughed a slightly different furrow – mobilising fear and hostility not against Jews but rather Muslim immigrants in the Netherlands. Like Marine Le Pen, Wilders obsessively focuses on the alleged cosmopolitan threat to national identity from the European Union. It is a chorus echoed in other European countries by the Danish People's party, the Finns party and the Flemish Vlaams Belang among others. For now, the French and Dutch populists are carefully keeping their distance from openly neo-Nazi parties such as Golden Dawn – whose paramilitary Sturmabteilung – have terrorised refugees and immigrants in Greece, and the swaggering Hungarian Jobbik, who terrorise the Roma minority. For now, our own Ukip is tactically keeping its distance from the new European far-right alliance while whispering a similar story about "east European immigrants". Ridiculous comparisons have been drawn by some commentators between the rise of the populist far right and the growth of the radical left – notably the Syriza party in Greece, which has pushed for a reverse of austerity crisis policies, both in Greece and throughout Europe. In fact, Syriza represents the main challenge to Golden Dawn's offensive. Moreover, while the Italian Northern League may be drawn to the far-right alliance, the bulk of the semi-anarchist followers of the comedian Beppe Grillo in the Italian parliament are anti-fascist and unlikely to take the same path. According to some pollsters – the far right might win as many as a third of all the seats in the European parliament after the European elections this May. That would still leave the centre parties – Christian Democrats, Social Democrats and Liberals – with many more members. But for the European parliament to form a credible majority all of these parties might well be forced much closer together than is good for them or good for European democracy. It could threaten eventual paralysis of the European parliament itself. Such a situation would be unsettlingly reminiscent of 1936, when the centre and the left – notably in France – temporarily halted the swing to fascism but formed an unprincipled and ineffective coalition. Its collapse on the eve of the Second World War accelerated the advent of Phillippe Petain's Nazi collaborating regime. History does not normally repeat itself in an automatic fashion. But it would be foolish to take the risk. More worrying than the growth of the far right are the temporising gestures to the racists and anti-immigrants now coming from mainstream Tory and even Liberal Democrat politicians and from some of the new "Blue Labour" ideologues. The warning from the likes of David Blunkett that hostility to Roma immigrants might lead to a popular "explosion" is worryingly reminiscent of Enoch Powell style rhetoric. An effective antidote to the growth of far-right populism requires that the European left is capable of articulating and following through on a comprehensive alternative to economic stagnation, an ever-widening income and wealth gap, the degradation of our social standards, civil liberties and democratic rights and the mindless drift to a global arming catastrophe. But to succeed that alternative has to be fought for at European as well as national and local levels, and to be delivered will require more, not less, European integration." So to conclude fascism is back in some shape or form and can grow further still if allowedto. Our job must be to oppose it wherever it raises its ugly head. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/15/far-right-rise-european-marine-le-pen-geert-wilders

support the 3 cosas's campaign on strike this week lend solidarity with ULU cleaners

Plans and information on the 3 COSAS STRIKE – come to support the strike at Senate House! We, the outsourced workers responsible for cleaning, security and maintenance at the University of London, are striking next week on the 27th, 28th and 29th January. We are striking for our union, the IWGB, to be recognised by our employers, Cofely GDZ Suez, to be entitled to the same sick pay, holidays and pensions as directly employed University staff, and also for assurances from the University that we won’t lose our jobs as a result of the student halls of residence – the Garden Halls – being closed this summer. We feel picketing is very important, and if you can spare some time to come down to support our strike, it will help immensely. Bring your solidarity, love and warmth. Here are our plans for the three day strike: DAY 1: MASS PICKETING FROM 6 AM! We want as many supporters, students and others to come down to support us! We will begin pickets at 6 am at the main Russell Square entrance to Senate House. To find you way, click here. The first day is crucial to having an impact on the University and explaining why the strike is happening to colleagues, but also for boosting confidence! Please come down! DAY 2: TOUR OF LONDON! On the second strike day, from 9.30 am, the entire picket line will board an open top bus and do a whistle-stop tour of high profile sites throughout London, including national media outlets and places of particular interest to the University of London and Cofely. This will be followed by a contingent of supporters on bikes. Bring your bike along to follow the moving bus picket! Importantly, we will still be maintaining pickets at the University! DAY 3: MASS PICKETING! SOLIDARITY WITH THE NATIONAL STUDENT MEETING! We will be continuing the strike picket lines at Senate House from 6 am. Workers from the campaign will also be going to Birmingham to link up with students and staff from across the country to protest and develop national demands for ours and similar campaigns. * On each of the strike days workers at the University of London will be producing a daily strike bulletin through 'Open Book' - this will be to share news, counter management myths and give updates on the strike. See the current bulletin in the lead up to the strike: As well as coming down to the picket lines, how can you support the strike? 1. Contribute to our strike fund: http://donate.3cosascampaign.com/ 2. Pass a motion in your trade or students’ union or community group, info here: http://3cosascampaign.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/model-motion-support-for-the-outsourced-university-of-london-workers-3-cosas-campaign/ 3. Invite us to speak at a meeting to spread word of our campaign: http://3cosascampaign.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/a-national-speaker-tour-3-cosas-the-university-of-london-struggle-and-beyond/ 3cosascampaign

The young who just cant move out

New findings out today suggest more of us young people are living at home with parents for a long time now. I would place myself in this bracket. I simply cant afford to move out the prices even just to rent in my area are ridiculous and buying is way out of the question as i simply dont earn enough. "British society is undergoing a significant shift as 1 in 4 young adults now live with their parents according to national statistics released on Tuesday. Those aged 20 to 34 are now more likely to be sharing a home with their parents than any time since 1996. That's 3.3 million UK adults who are either unwilling or unable to live in a separate home from their parents. A closer look at the data from the Office for National Statistics reveals who is most likely to be in that 1 in 4. A sharp and significant rise Almost two decades ago, 21% adults aged 20-34 were living with their parents - 2.7 million people in the UK. Now, as 670,000 more individuals in that age bracket are in the same situation, that figure has risen to 26% of young adults. For every 10 women, there are 17 men aged 20 to 34 living with their parents. There are a few possible explanations for this wide gender gap: On average, young women are more likely to form relationships with men that are older than them and are therefore more likely to be living as part of a couple in their own household. (600,000 more women than men in this age group are cohabiting) Young women are also more likely to be lone parents in their own households (590,000 more women than men in this age group) Finally, young women are more likely than men to be studying in higher education - and move away from home to do so In the capital, the number of young adults living with their parents drops considerably to 1 in 5 while in Northern Ireland it is more than 1 in 3, well above the national average. Those regional differences have existed since records began, despite the fact that they've grown more noticeable. In 1996, just 17% of 20-34 year olds in London lived with their parents while in Northern Ireland it was 33% - though the figures were lower back then, they still represented the country's high and low spots. As adults get older, they're less likely to be living at home, though the figures for older age groups may come as a surprise. 14% of male 30 year-olds still live with their parents, a year later that percentage has fallen to 12%, then 9% before finally dropping to 8% for males aged 34. The reasons for younger adults living with their parents may seem self evident but the statistics released still offer some explanations. The first of these is that average earnings of adults rise steadily through their 20s and don't begin to level off until they are in their mid 30s, giving them additional means to leave the parental home. What's more, as age increases, so too does the likelihood young adults will be living with a partner - just 8% of people in the UK do at the age of 20, but by the time they're 31 years old, that rises to 70% of Britons. Finally, the house price paid by first time buyers is now higher compared to their incomes. In 1996, the ratio of first home price to income was 2.7 to 1 - by 2013 it had risen to 4.4. That house price problem is made all the more insurmountable by rising rates of short- and long-term unemployment. The percentage of young adults living with their parents who are unemployed is almost twice the unemployment levels found amongst those in the same group who don't live with their parents (13% compared to 6%). Comparable figures for other countries are based on a slightly different age group - those aged 25 to 34. On that basis, the UK has the 7th lowest percentage of young adults living withe their parents out of 28 EU countries. The lowest rates were in Denmark where it was just 2%, compared to 68% in Croatia. Aside from differing attitudes towards marriage and cohabitation, similar factors are put forward to explain the trends - from university attendance to incomes, unemployment and house prices. You can add your thoughts about the reasons for the British trends below the line. " with extracts from http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/jan/21/record-numbers-young-adults-living-with-parents?CMP=twt_gu

Why we need a truly rank-and-file movement from below

With trade union sell outs at the likes of grangemouth signing away terms and conditions and where a no strike agreement was signed the need for action from below and organisation of a sort to bypass the trade union buraucracy is needed more than ever in this period. Are groups like the national Shop Stewards Network NSSN, Right to work and unite the resistance and the people’s assembly fit for purpose? Most if not all are front organisations for various left sects including the socialist party who took over the running of the NSSN leading to many of the militants who had been around from the start walking out in disgust. I wasn’t around at the time but speaking to others in the movement since it is noticeable how Trotskyist parties like the SP are held in contempt by genuine militants who see them as outsiders coming in to push their own people into positions and in affect either gain control or ruin a project that would otherwise benefit workers. With so many anti cuts fronts it is a sketch from Monty Pythons life of Brian which instantly springs to mind. This mode of behavior is already well beyond a joke. Three anti-cuts fronts, all mouthing commitments to unity while stubbornly undermining it; all criticising control-freakery while surreptitiously clinging to private ownership of their members’ political work; the obligatory reference to Monty Python’s Life of Brian (splitters!) no longer cuts the mustard, now that reality has outdone fiction in its absurdity. We need a version of what the NSSN was supposed to be, something to link up trade union activists beyond their unions, something to help rebuild radical trade unionism again across the country - because, like it or not, without it there's no hope of stopping this government (local groups are fantastic, but they don't have the ability to mess things up by some co-ordinated strike action). That means, sometimes, we have to hold our noses and work with people we don't like at times. The need for a genuine rank-and-file movement which is non hierarchical with no enforced leadership from any trot group is necessary today I feel for workers facing attack after attack. I mean with the CWU effectively caving in to privatisation and hoping for the best they can get now where is the room for workers who do not agree with their union’s position and do not wish to just take a resolution to conference. Many wish to see action now and organise from below there needs to be the room for this. Many workers in unions like my own Unite are limited in what they can do. They are unfortunately stuck under the unite union leadership. After the sparks dispute which proved a big victory for our side We need a way of reaching out to workers like that to assist them in understanding why those tactics work so well and supporting them against the union leadership when they do so. I think the recent attacks on the ability to take legal strike action opens up the possibility for direct action. This is what we should be enthusiastically cheer leading. Over the years there have been many attempts to build something from below in the face of reformist trade unionism and try and move beyond endless battles with the bureaucracy. That is not to say that the 'left' has not tried to get over the problems posed by the dominance of the reformist trade unions. Since the war they have attempted to organise 'rank and file' groups in the unions. These have taken various forms, for example Flashlight and Building Workers Charter have set up around the National Rank and File Movement of the '70s, and of course there is the broad left. But the very nature of these groups, and of the politics of those who have tried to organise them, has meant that these groups were also doomed to failure. Since the war this has taken the form of trying to build rank and file groups within the unions. This task has been undertaken by various political groups from those set up by the CP in the 1950's and 60's, eg Flashlight and Building Workers Charter through to the SWP-dominated rank and files of the 70's and of course the militant-dominated Broad Lefts. Needless to say, such Marxist groups were not slow to manipulate rank and files for their own ends, even if this was to the detriment of those rank and files and the workers involved. (...) The manoeuvering of the Marxists should come as no surprise because they all saw rank and files not only as recruiting grounds but also as a way of increasing their influence in the unions. This followed from their political theory, that the unions were the place where workers organise at an economic level, whilst the 'more advanced' would wish to organise on a political level and join their organisation. (...) It would be a mistake, however, to put down the lack of politics simply to the Marxist influence. Instead we should look at the nature of rank and file groups themselves. They were not made up of masses of ordinary workers but trade union activists who were members of political groups with axes to grind, sinking their political differences to the lowest common denominator that is militant trade unionism. /forums/announcements/classic-trot-manipulation-nssn-13122010 So the question remains how does a future rank-and-file grouping avoid being taken over and ruined for some political parties own ends? I think that we firstly need genuine workers involved in the workplace on the shop floor where there is no leadership as such but a forum for discussion to allow workers to discuss and come up with their own ideas without having the tactics and ideas forced upon them by any self appointed leader. “There are many contradictions and limits of a rank-and-file level of trade unionism. It is not simply a matter of the unions ‘not doing their job properly’ – they do it only too well, since they need to be able to control workers’ struggles in order to function as representatives of those struggles. Shop steward and convenor positions - often taken by the most militant workers - must mediate between shop floor interests and the union bureaucracy's organisational interests. Workers often see the union as an organisational framework giving them a collective identity and protective strength; and on a day to day level it often does so, within existing conditions and agreements. What workers don't always acknowledge (or fail to act upon) is that this strength is their own power mediated – and therefore limited – by the union structure as its representation; a power that has the potential to conflict with and go beyond both the control of their employers and their union leaders. In place of the representation of workers in the trade unions, what is needed is self-organisation by workers exercising their collective power directly. How can this be done? Fortunately, many millions of workers have faced these problems before, and out of their trial and error some forms of organisation have repeatedly proved the most successful. Mass meetings the central form of self-organisation is the mass meeting. However, it is vital that mass meetings do not just give a democratic rubber-stamp to decisions made elsewhere (as happened in the Ford-Visteon dispute), but take an active role in organising and controlling the struggle. Workers should demand whatever information they need to make informed decisions from management or union officials, and develop a culture of discussion to ensure all workers, even those with less experience or confidence can play an active part in the struggle. Many workplaces have several recognised unions. Workers should open up their meetings to members of other unions as well as non-union workers – who should not be assumed to be scabs since they have the same interests as their workmates. Management and scabs should be excluded from workers’ mass meetings, but workers should consider letting supporters attend without voting rights at their discretion. Mandated, recallable delegates not everything can be done in a mass meeting. Sometimes a strike committee is needed to draw up demands. Other times workers may want to produce a leaflet or do some research. They may also want to send delegations to other workplaces in order to encourage solidarity actions and spread the struggle. These kind of things cannot practically be done by mass meetings of tens or hundreds of workers; delegation is needed. The important thing when electing delegates is that the mass meeting retains overall control. Even members of the strike committee are not there to lead the rest of the strikers, but to implement their will. This means delegates should be mandated, given a specifically defined task or tasks to carry out. Delegates can then be recalled and replaced by the mass meetings if they fail to carry out or overstep their mandates. Networks of militants In the heat of a dispute many a solid shop steward or convenor has been forced to choose between the interests of their workmates and those of their union bosses. This highlights the need for militant workers to organise independently of the trade unions as well as inside them. Such networks of militants can help provide the moral support to do the right thing, as well as advice, practical support and a continuity of experience between the ebb and flow of struggles. They can also link militants in different workplaces, industries and places, creating the potential to spread struggles that terrifies bosses and wins disputes. Such networks are not there to represent workers, but should agitate and organise for self-organisation: mass meetings and the use of delegates. However as they grow, such networks can take on some of the useful functions of trade unions (such as legal advice, co-ordination with other workplaces etc) without the problems of representation (a bureaucracy that needs to control workers struggles in order to persuade bosses they are ‘responsible’ negotiating partners). “ With extracts from http://www.libcom.org/library/workers-control-lessons-recent-struggles-uk

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Why do we fight for workers self management

You will often here by some on the left of the labour movement that workers self management is the way to go instead of the tired worn out slogan of nationalise everything which a lot of people on the old left seem to cling to like it is the key to all troubles. “What is workers self-management? Workers self-management is a way of running a workplace without bosses or a fixed managerial hierarchy. Instead, the workplace is run democratically by its workers. By democracy, we do not mean that workers elect a manager to make decisions for them. We mean that the workers themselves decide how they will do things as a group. No one in a self-managed enterprise has control over any of the other workers - decision making power is shared equally between all workers. How does it work? Each self-managed workplace is managed by a face-to-face meeting of everyone who works there – a workers’ assembly. The workers of each enterprise collectively make all "management" decisions on a basis of one-worker-one-vote or consensus. The workers of each department form their own smaller assemblies, in which they make the decisions that affect only their department, and so on to the smallest work groups. Isn't that very time consuming? Not really. Managers will often complain about how time consuming their jobs are, but they spend most of their time doing administrative work. Relatively little time is spent making big management decisions. However, in great factories and plants there are too many workers to gather in one meeting every day. The workplace-wide assemblies might occur once a week, or once a month instead. They are the focus of major "policy" decisions - i.e. those which the workers DECIDE are most important. So how will work be coordinated on a daily basis? The workers will meet in their department assemblies and work groups to make the thousands of day to day decisions that crop up. Each department sends a delegate to a "shop committee" to coordinate their activities. Delegates are not professional managers: They are ordinary workers who have been sent by their department assemblies with special instructions (mandates); they return to these assemblies to report on the discussion and its result, and after further deliberation the same or other delegates may go up with new instructions. Once the shop committee meeting is over, they return to their everyday jobs. Any compromises reached at delegate meetings are subject to ratification by the department assemblies, and delegates can be recalled and replaced at any time. Therefore the shop committee does not tell the workers what the official policy is - the workers tell them. They are not a management board, but means of communication between the different departments. Indeed, the shop committee is not even a permanent body, since different delegates will probably be chosen for each meeting, so that everyone in the workplace gets to serve this role. Will there be managers? No. Workers’ self-management abolishes the permanent division between managers and workers. Instead, the people who do the actual productive work – making products, designing them, maintaining machinery, collecting information and so on - will collectively manage their own work. Workers self-management means that workers literally manage themselves, and therefore there are no professional managers or managerial hierarchy – just normal workers cooperating as equals. Note that rejecting a fixed managerial hierarchy does not necessarily reject leadership. If packing luggage onto an aeroplane needs a team leader, then so be it. But there is no reason why it should be the same person today as it is tomorrow. Similarly, a book may require a chief editor, but there is no reason why that person should be in charge of all the books published. Another member of his working group might edit the next book they take on. And where a team requires a leader for a specific task, she should be elected and removable by that team, and should work within the democratic decisions made by the whole team. But even if cleaners have full voting rights in plant decisions, how will they ever exert the same influence as those who develop budgets or design products? You are right. Despite equal rights, cleaners' work may not challenge their intellectual capacities or provide them with information about technological options or with skill at making decisions. One approach is to rotate jobs regularly, so that engineers do some cleaning work and so on. The most unpleasant jobs could be rotated between the whole workforce, so that no one is made to spend their whole working life doing degrading tasks. However, hierarchies of power will not be wholly undone by temporary shuffling, if the quality and empowerment of peoples’ day to day jobs differ largely. Instead of dividing workers into brain workers and manual workers, it has been suggested that each worker have a “balanced job complex”*. Each worker has a set of jobs composed of comparably fulfilling responsibilities. This does not mean everyone must do everything. But it does mean that the half dozen tasks that I regularly do must be roughly as empowering as the different half dozen tasks that you do regularly. Everyone must have a comparable balance of conceptual and rote tasks. So Instead of secretaries answering phones and taking dictation, some workers answer phones and do calculations while others take dictation and design products. We are not suggesting that everyone has completely equal abilities, although better education and less poverty would do a great deal to equalize things. We won’t all do intellectual or manual jobs equally well, but we will all do them well enough to bring our own unique experiences and insights to bear on decision making. After all, good ideas aren’t the monopoly of any individual or group. For sex or sports we don't say that only the "best" should participate - the same should be true for using one's head. But what about relationships between workplaces? Well, this depends on how people wish to do things. Self managed workplaces could compete in a market as capitalist workplaces do now, although this could still create a myriad of injustices. Others argue that workplaces should join “confederations” – free and equal associations of workplaces which replacing competition with co-operation. These would be run through conferences of delegates elected by each workplace, who come together to make decisions that effect the economy as a whole. These would be controlled from below, because delegates would be mandated and subject to instant recall by the workers who elected them. All decisions made at conferences would be subject to ratification by a vote of the workers’ assemblies in every workplace. So in fact, decisions affecting the whole economy would be made by everyone, with delegates being ambassadors rather than decision makers. In these confederations, workplaces would agree a fair price for each product, probably based on the number of hours they take to produce. Or otherwise, workplaces might make a mutual agreement to give their products away for free. * The credit for this idea must go to Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel. Many of their books and essays are available online at www.zmag.org/parecon/indexnew.htm By Alejandro Vega With thanks to sam sanchez Over at http://www.libcom.org/library/workers-self-management-faq