Letters

Robin Hoodism

According to the bulk of the left, our job is to snatch some of the wealth from the 1% and redistribute it to the 99%. This view exists in varying shades and even the pope has echoed it. It regards distribution as of higher importance than the mode of production.

It is a false-headed view that a gigantic, thieving welfare state is the summit of aspiration and is wrong because distribution relations are set by production relations, not the other way around, so such a thing would be perceived by ‘the many’ as ‘unfair’, to the extent that morality is also shaped by the mode of production. To work, such Robin Hoodism would have to be highly authoritarian, but would doubtlessly collapse, as the mode of production (which hasn’t been challenged) reasserts itself and demands ‘fair pay for fair work’, with benefits slashed back to levels that sustain the reserve army of labour and not a penny more. The pope/left’s view is additionally wrong because it fails to grasp what is at stake in an intelligent project for total human emancipation.

As an example of the human potential, I wish to point you to feudal modes of production and contrast this with today, implying an even bigger boon can be made with the overcoming of capitalism. Feudalism unlike capitalism is not primarily concerned with the production of commodities. The aristocracy and the landed gentry owned the land - which was their measure of wealth rather than an accumulation of commodities - and they extracted tithes and taxes from the poor to maintain their social status as ruling class. Nevertheless, compared to the average worker in the 21st century west, the lives of this ruling class were impoverished. Life expectancy was lower, health was worse, and the quality of food and other goods was worse than what can be bought today from the supermarket.

So the sizeable historic change that occurred from the feudal to capitalist period wasn’t just about seizing the landowner’s property - it was about revolutionising the entire mode of production, making a play for freedom. Consequently, even the oppressed masses of the 21st century enjoy a superior quality of life in many regards to the kings and queens of yore. So the gains made by the transition to capitalism did not rest in the snatching of the wealth of the then 1% and ‘redistributing’ it, whilst keeping feudalism intact. On the contrary, the total switch to commodity production has expanded the quality of life for all, albeit with plenty of drawbacks.

If we project this onto the future, it may be the case that everyone will have far better lives than even the billionaire capitalist 1% of today. The trick does not consist in seizing the 1%’s wealth, but in transforming the mode of production. Instead of production for profit - ie, the goal of the production of commodities (owned and exchanged by the capitalists), and contingent upon the private ownership of the means of production - the classless society that follows a social revolution will have production directly to meet human need.

Without the criterion of profitability, the ability of the direct producers to mobilise resources will become so immense that scarcity will be abolished within a few years. Then subsequently the phase of total human emancipation begins, where people naturally desire to put into society their abilities and extract from it whatever they choose.

Barry Curtis
Essex

In and out

The following letter was sent to Jeremy Corbyn MP on August 26:

The majority in England and Wales voted to leave the European Union, whilst the majority in Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain. This shows different constituent parts of the UK want a different relationship with Europe. That is why a future Labour government must guarantee that Scotland can hold a referendum on ending the union with the rest of the UK; and that Northern Ireland can be given the opportunity of ending partition, as the best way to ensure the majority desire to remain part of the EU.

The overall result (52%-48%) of the Tory referendum was close. We should not forget that the Tories excluded 1.6 million EU citizens living in the UK from the ballot. They excluded all 16-18-year-olds. These exclusions distorted the result in favour of exit. The result was that England (53%) and Wales (53%) voted to leave the EU, while Scotland (62%) and Northern Ireland (56%) voted to remain.

Nevertheless there should be no ‘second’ British referendum to try to overturn these results. It would alienate working class voters who supported exit. It would be a handy stick for Ukip to beat the Labour ‘traitors’. It would further divide the working class to the benefit of the Tories. It would do more damage to a divided working class than facing the full consequences of the result.

In your debate with Owen Smith, you rightly said: “A referendum has taken place and we have to recognise that. Whatever we feel about it, there is a result from the referendum which we have to work with.” You emphasised that “Labour must accept the result of the referendum”, adding that Labour should “work with other leftwing parties to ensure that workers’ rights are not lost after Brexit”.

It will be a real struggle to defend workers’ rights after the Tory exit. It will be a real struggle to defend migrant workers’ rights and to prevent even greater chauvinist and racist divisions in our class. This aim will be aided if the democratic views of Scotland and Northern Ireland are fully recognised.

This is not the approach taken by Owen Smith, who is seeking to exploit a divided working class for his leadership ambitions. In the Gateshead debate, he said. “Britain must stay in the EU.” In the Sunday Express (July 18), he said it would be “very tempting for Labour to ignore the referendum decision if they were to win a general election”. His contempt for how people voted on the EU shows he cannot lead the working class movement in a democratic direction.

The EU referendum shows a majority in England and Wales want to leave the EU and a majority in Scotland and Ireland (ie, both a Northern Ireland majority and the rest of Ireland) want to remain. This particular problem will be resolved either by the crown (her majesty’s government) imposing Brexit on the whole of the UK or by democratic means through the application of national self-determination.

In 2014 Scotland voted (55%-45%) to remain in the UK. One major argument used in the Scottish referendum was Scotland would be excluded from the EU if people voted to leave the UK. This has now been turned upside down. Scotland and Northern Ireland cannot remain in the UK and in the EU. As socialists we may have different views on the relative merits of remaining in the UK or the EU, but as democrats we believe the people must be able to decide how they want that contradiction to be resolved by the exercise of self-determination.

In the UK sovereignty does not rest with the people, but with the ‘crown in parliament’. This means that her majesty’s government will decide whether to grant a self-determination referendum to Scotland. Parliament may be asked to approve it. Theresa May has already rejected a new border poll in Northern Ireland. The Scottish and Irish people are to have no rights in this matter.

The Tories are determined to prevent the Scottish and Irish people having their democratic outcome and will throw every obstacle in the way. A Labour government must guarantee that the people of Scotland and Northern Ireland are able, in consequence of voting to remain in the EU, to hold a referendum on leaving the UK. This would be a proper and most important democratic response to the EU referendum result.

The UK urgently needs a new democratic constitutional settlement, a revolution in democratic practices. Democracy has to be at the heart of the new and growing mass Labour Party. We are therefore calling on you to give greater emphasis on democratic change during your re-election campaign. The Tory referendum on the EU is an opportunity to chart a democratic way out the mess that the Tories have led us into. It starts with Labour politicians in England and Wales recognising that the Scottish and Northern Irish people have voted to remain in the EU.

We are calling on you to pledge that any future Labour government you lead will promise and deliver a self-determination referendum for the Scottish people and help facilitate one for the Irish people. This should be a Labour manifesto commitment.

Steve Freeman
Republican Socialist Alliance

Wizardry

I watched both of the recent Labour leadership hustings in Solihull and Glasgow between Jeremy Corbyn, the incumbent, and Owen Smith, the challenger.

Mr Smith is no new Welsh wizard, and it is astonishing and telling that he is apparently the strongest leadership candidate the Parliamentary Labour Party can put forward in 2016.

Unfortunately, Mr Corbyn is still well below even this standard. On both occasions, and others, he appears to mechanically read eyes down most of his responses from some script in front of him on his lectern. It was odd, as he seemed to be able to read off responses to virtually every question, without needing to turn a page or raising his eyes.

I wondered if in fact he had some form of electronic device he was reading from and if so, it was in its own way impressive how his backroom team managed to supply him with ready-made and pre-prepared responses in time for him to speak to them. Efficient and effective, but will surely be exposed in any genuinely live and interactive debate with a real contender for prime minister.

Mr Corbyn’s constant anaphoria is becoming as irritating and off-putting as Gordon Brown’s strange jaw-dropping tick after he thought he had made a point, and marked him out as strange and unfit for national leadership. Anaphoria can be powerfully and rhetorically effective when you choose the occasion and moment, and have the calibre and charisma of a Winston Churchill, but to use it constantly, and even two or three times within each response, denudes it of any effect whatsoever and makes the user sound completely superficial and plastic, and frankly embarrassing.

Mike Macnair pointed out that Blair and New Labour was about “how to get into office, not at all what to do with it” (‘Scorched earth litigation’, August 4). I completely agree, but what Mike omits - and which was superbly described at the time in the Weekly Worker - Blair and New Labour were about not just winning the 1997 general election, but doing so in a way which annihilated the Conservative Party and, even more important, was a project to rule (OK, be in governmental office) for at least 20 continuous years.

The ruthlessness and scale of the New Labour ambition was extraordinary and breathtaking. The parliamentary rout of the Conservative Party in 1997 was one of the greatest post-war events, and intensely pleasurable to follow during the night. Following a repeat in 2001, there was realistic talk and consideration that the Conservative Party, the foremost class enemy of the working people of the United Kingdom, might be killed off altogether. What an extraordinary achievement that would have been, and within the limits and restrictions of ‘bourgeois democracy’.

Yes, New Labour ultimately and disastrously failed, but in electoral and parliamentary terms it achieved three successive majority Labour governments for the first time ever. Previously, Labour had never achieved two consecutive majority governments.

The Labour Party is or should be the mass parliamentary expression of the organised labour movement and the wider working class, within capitalism. I do not believe it is realistic or appropriate to try and transform it into some form of instrument of revolutionary transformation. That is against basic Marxism and Leninism and the theory of the party. We need a Labour Party capable of winning general elections, and able to introduce real reforms and gains for the majority working people in this country.

Mr Corbyn and his ‘movement’ are, I fear, incapable of delivering this. Their electoral ‘strategy’ consists of rallies of hundreds, even thousands, of followers and groupies and some expectation that the millions of people who voted Conservative, Ukip, Liberal and Green in 2015 will somehow gravitate towards Labour, and respond to hastily created and shallow policies and positions.

No strategic sense whatsoever of the need to proactively reach out and engage with the millions of working class and lower-middle class voters and communities and estates and suburbs, who didn’t vote Labour and will never have done so, to take on board and reflect their own interests, hopes, fears and aspirations in a new electoral coalition and policy programme, representing the majority of working class people.

The hastily produced ‘10-point plan’, after 10 months of ‘leadership’, consisting of bullets and slogans rather than policies, amounts to less than 900 words and will be ripped to shreds under any form of scrutiny. Where will the “£500 billion investment programme” come from? By mobilising private-sector cash and capital to somehow invest in the greater good and in the interests of their own profitability (the private finance initiative applied to the whole UK economy)?

Mr Corbyn is old, jaded and going through the motions, but inflated by the adulation and youth of those surrounding him and attending rallies. Mr Smith is not hugely better but is clever, articulate and has an obvious hunger and desire for Labour to win electoral office. Or speak in tedious anaphoria. He is able to speak and perform away from a lectern or device, to engage and interact with his audience, and excite and motivate them and wider layers.

We need a Labour Party capable of winning a general election; otherwise there is no point or value to it.

Andrew Northall
Kettering

Expectations

Last week Hackney Momentum hosted what it described as an educational on social movements. This was the first such session it proposes to hold in order to ‘take a step back’ from the immediate issues and prepare for the coming months and years. The purpose of this particular session was to invite representatives from other political projects with the ultimate aim of forming a much broader movement and situating Momentum within it.

In one of the first meetings I attended last year, when Momentum was in the news, there were nearly 100 people - an impressive figure for a weekday evening meeting. But at last week’s session only about 30 people attended. I did not have many expectations beforehand, but I did think that perhaps there might be an element of politics involved. What I mean by this is that I thought we might at least discuss the aims of the proposed new movement. No such luck. The blurb for the meeting did talk about a “space for reflection”. However, it felt more like a space for the guest speakers to sell their wares and for the assembled to pick from the movementist shelf the key to open the establishment’s Pandora’s box.

The first speaker was George Barda from the Occupy movement. I do not doubt his sincerity, but I have to ask what he has to offer to Momentum. His general demeanour and presentation style made him appear like a consultant pitching his business. We heard that the Labour Party is a “structure-based” organisation, whereas Occupy is “whirlwind-based”, while Momentum, of course, straddles the two. Occupy was a success because it forced the “narrative of power” into the mainstream. Further, he said that we need “programmatic power” as an alternative to top-down politics. But afterwards I tried to find out what he meant by “programmatic power” and came across a 2014 interview he gave to the Financial Times, where he said: “Occupy is not affiliated to the Green Party, but I think everyone needs to recognise that Natalie Bennett will offer something really important to the democratic voter in the next election.” Essentially he is not advocating any particular programme - just what he thinks comes closest to a challenge to ‘the 1%’. Movements such as Occupy create spaces for what Barda told us were symbolic disruptive actions, that bring out ‘our’ narrative to challenge the status quo.

The second presentation was given by a couple of speakers from Take Back the City. Essentially this project involved ‘listening’ to what Londoners are interested in and what they want to change. So their project was to speak to around 70 community groups to identify and formulate a policy platform, on which they stood in the London assembly elections earlier this year. We were told that the left has a tendency to be too abstract and that we need to decolonise our minds and fill them with the concerns of ordinary people. If we listened to such ordinary people we could reach out and make a difference. However, 1,400 votes did not make that much of a difference when the candidate stood on what I would describe as a crowd-sourced manifesto.

At the end of these two sessions the assembled were given some questions and then asked to form small groups to discuss the ideas presented. While some might have found all this laudable, it was not very inspiring for me. Time could have been spent better discussing politics, the direction of travel of Momentum and our relationship to Labour. Perhaps then more people would have turned up. No doubt we can expect more of the same at Momentum’s ‘The world transformed’ event, timed to coincide with the Labour Party conference.

Simon Wells
Hackney

Future routes

With influencing the Democratic Party in the US to the left out of the question, owing to the control its top leaders exercise, and little prospect of its disaffected supporters moving in the direction of Marxism, readers must conclude that writing, as Jim Creegan does, is the only principled activity open to revolutionary socialists (‘Different plot twists, same ending’, August 25).

That may be, but penning propaganda and analysis for a small Trotskyist group and contributing them to an umbrella amalgamation of socialists who do not focus on the origins of some of their confreres critically are very different routes into the future.

Michael Hale
email

Fascistic

Maren Clarke tells us that “The motives of the Orlando shooter were established by witness reports and details from friends and acquaintances, including the shooter’s lover. This, not the initial media reaction, is the most reliable information” (Letters, August 25).

How Clarke gained privileged access to these “reports and details” if not via the media goes unreported. Was it via social media, osmosis or is she actually inside the matrix? Apparently, “Ted Hankin (Letters, August 4) is the embodiment of the media.” For the record, my ‘relationship’ with ‘the media’ consists of around four letters, two of them unpublished, to the erstwhile Independent newspaper. So to retail such a lie entails some chutzpah and indicates Clarke’s propensity to pontificate on things which she could not possibly know about. Clarke concludes the initial section of her letter by informing us that “the truth is one thing; the media narrative is something else”, which, I reckon anyway, will not come as a great revelation to most Weekly Worker readers.

According to Clarke, the media is inclined to initially attribute any act of violence to terrorism. “To simply say, as Ted Hankin does, let us abstract from everything and just lay the blame at the feet of Islam and terror networks, is crudeness taken to absurdity.” It would be, if Ted Hankin had ever said such a thing. But - readers will be getting the idea by now - Clarke is not exactly a reliable source and I have never said such a thing. To automatically classify any and every attack as Islamic terrorism without ascertaining some facts would be as false and useless as the reverse position displayed by Clarke, which appears to be to automatically assume that any attack has nothing to do with Islam.

By the way, arguing that mental illness means that an attack is not inspired by Islam is extremely problematic. Specifically on Orlando, it appears that the killer may very well have been mentally ill and been a ‘self-hating’ homosexual operating within a general culture of support for Islamic State. (And, yes, I did glean all this from the mainstream and left press.) To anyone who claims to know what could act as a trigger for such an individual with a complex individual array of issues to initiate a killing spree I would say: ‘Don’t waste my time with your arrogance’.

In both her letters, Clarke has criticised me for being a “propagandist against Islam”. If only I had such an influence! I would, and for free, certainly be interested in propagandising against Islam, which of the three Abrahamic religions is certainly the most backward, repressive, life-sucking and deadly. The fact that Islam is a plagiarism of Christianity and Judaism and supposedly the final word of God may go some way to explain its deadly aggressiveness. A religion that denies human rights, gay rights, women’s rights - why would any decent person not be interested in opposing this fascistic ideology?

Ted Hankin
email

Glasgow homeless

The number of homelessness care providers in Glasgow is being reduced from five down to one or two between now and November. There is a competitive tendering process going on at the moment. This is open to all providers at a UK level. It is part of the process of the Labour-controlled Glasgow council passing on cuts to services, following big cuts to its budget from the Scottish National Party government and, ultimately, budget cuts from the Tories to the Scottish government.

Pressure is being applied to the workforces ‘to do more with less’- ie, do more work, do it better than now and with far fewer workers. Subtle pressure is being applied - if your company is to win the tender, you may have to think about doing things you don’t do now: shift work, compulsory weekend and evening work, personal care, more community link projects, etc. If you object, then the tender will go to the providers that are willing to dramatically increase their workloads and be totally flexible and you will probably be out of a job.

Back in planet real world, this will mean workers who provide vital services to the homeless finding themselves being made redundant (and potentially homeless themselves) and facing an ever stricter work programme. It will also mean increased worker turnover and absenteeism. It will certainly lead to poorer-quality services to the public. All the current areas of support will reduce in quality - support with finding permanent accommodation, mental health problems and addiction issues not being addressed, more social isolation and exclusion. There will be greater poverty and debt-related issues. All these problems and many more will not be addressed to the same level of quality in Glasgow as they have been up until now. The care side of homelessness in Glasgow has worked so far. The cuts could see a wasteland created, as we go down more and more of an American-type road - more visible homeless, more begging, more people on the streets with mental and addiction issues, as more people fall through the current safety net.

It will lead to increased crime, family stress and break-up and shorter life expectancy. And even on cost grounds alone it will be the council that has to pick up the tab for all of this.

These services have already experienced redundancies on a wide scale in the years since the Tories were elected in 2010, resulting in increased workloads for existing workers. Casework teams who are responsible for moving homeless on to permanent accommodation when they are ‘tenancy-ready’ are in crises now and have been for over a year. Redundancies and new procedures that lengthened the waiting time for homeless people to be moved on have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. Many homeless now have to wait to get a caseworker allocated and, even once this takes place, the new procedures combined with less social housing stock can mean a long wait for permanent housing.

Those classed as homeless living in temporary accommodation have very high rents - on average about £180 per week. In the past homeless people who worked paid £60 per week from their wages towards the rent and the rest would be paid in housing benefit - fairly straightforward and unbureaucratic. Now a ‘revenue and property’ team calculates to the exact pound what they want in rent and council tax based on proof of all income supplied. Every time income adjusts - eg, a person gets some extra hours or an additional benefit - there has to be a readjustment of the claim. There is a delay between housing benefit processing claims and changes to claims and the revenue and property receiving money, leading to demand letters to the homeless for exorbitant rents and council tax.

If the homeless try not to work while they are in temporary accommodation to get 100% housing benefit and council tax benefit, they are hit with the ‘work programme’, so the council knows it can hound the working homeless for more and more rent and council tax. There is a scam in the midst of this that is causing real hardship. Temporary furnished flats (TFFs) that charge £180 per week rent on average are around £225 to £250 per month in rent if they are permanent and unfurnished for the same type of tenancies. This looks awfully like the council trying to line its coffers with state housing benefit money. It has been going on for years, but the removal of the cap means some of the working homeless are now being made destitute.

The attack on the sick is also causing huge stress. If a homeless person on employment and support allowance is assessed as ‘fit for work’, they are not only kicked off employment and support allowance (ESA), but also lose housing benefit. However, it is rare for the homeless person to be informed of this. Housing benefit are immediately informed, so the homeless individual is often unknowingly accumulating rent arrears, as housing benefit has been stopped at soon as their ESA was stopped. They can accumulate large arrears very quickly through no fault of their own. And rent arrears in one of the key reasons housing associations will not move people on from temporary accommodation to permanent accommodation.

And there are queuing systems now for everything. It used to be just the department for work and pensions where it was difficult to get a human voice on the line; now it’s everything - asylum and refugee teams, casework ... There is now a queuing system for housing and council tax benefit problems. A year ago a support worker could get straight through to them on the phone. Now the homeless person has to go into the city centre to deal with any housing/council tax issues, incurring transport costs, as there can be up to a 30-minute wait on the phone.

Glasgow council has moved from a ‘two reasonable offers’ policy of housing to ‘one reasonable offer’ - it’s take it or leave it. If the one offer is refused they ‘discharge duty’ - meaning the homeless are on their own, having to look for a private let. The person has to leave the temporary accommodation or face huge rent arrears and eviction. Many housing associations are now demanding one month rent in advance from people who sometimes only receive £73 per week jobseeker’s allowance.

Even people who are successful at moving on to permanent accommodation will not get a decision about receiving goods to furnish the permanent tenancy for three weeks after they have signed the missives for the permanent tenancy - meaning three weeks of rent arrears on the temporary flat if they have not moved out of it into a completely unfurnished permanent tenancy (and for people with family and young children this is a horrendous state of affairs, raising serious health and safety issues).

The cuts to caseworker numbers, cuts to council workers working on housing and council tax benefit claims, benefit cuts, cuts to support agencies such as translation, are all creating a perfect storm. There are fewer and fewer resources with more and more demand, leading to increased stress, frustration, anger and in some cases sadly intolerance. Immigrants are not responsible for austerity. The rich are.

The Defend Glasgow Services campaign ought to oppose the latest ‘race to the bottom’ cuts by the council with deputations, lobbies, demos, council surgery pickets and putting up anti-cuts candidates for next May’s council elections. The council ought to put forward a needs-led budget. We need an end to austerity!

Glasgow homeless support worker
email