In praise of Enough is Enough

One of the few silver linings to the cost of living crisis has been the re-emergence of trades union power and the start of the Enough is Enough campaign. These could potentially be the start of a new and better politics.

As Enough is Enough say:

We can’t rely on the establishment to solve our problems. It’s up to us in every workplace and every community.

This is a challenge to Labourism, in which as Ralph Miliband put it, the Labour party "have treated the voters not as potential comrades but as possible clients." It is a rejection of retail politics, in which people are victims of policy and not contributors to it, mere passive consumers who wait until a general election to make their choice.

Which is to be welcomed, because what matters in politics is not intellect but power. Brexit did not come to dominate the agenda because it was the best idea around, but because it had influential and rich supporters. Living standards cannot be adequately protected merely by appeals to decency or reason. They must be protected by force. A stronger, more organized and more vocal working class is one such force.

The right has for decades practiced extra-parliamentary action, through "think" tanks; control of the mass media; corporate lobbying; regulatory capture; the promise of lucrative jobs to MPs on leaving office; and so on. Which is why the interests of the richest 1% dominate policy-making. To believe that Labour can win office and implement pro-worker policies in the face of the pressures created by such action is like thinking you can win a marathon by turning up in your brogues without doing any training.

Policy-making is driven by the fear of losing office. We need the Tory and Labour parties to fear the working class as much as they have feared the racist rabble aroused by Farage. In this sense, the trades union movement is what J.K. Galbraith called a countervailing power - a balance to the influence upon government of capitalists, racists and assorted fantasists. It was this that humanized the Tory party under Macmillan in the 1950s. Owen Jones is surely correct to say that it is the fear of the mob on the streets that inhibits attacks upon people's living standards. As Tony Blair said, what matters is what works.

Such countervailing power, however, brings something else - cognitive diversity. As Peter Allen argues in The Political Class, "inclusive decision-making results in better outcomes than its exclusive counterpart". A voice for the organized working class forces the Westminster bubble to heed real problems such as living standards rather than culture war fantasies. It reminds politicians and journalists that there is more to politics than the voices in posh people's heads.

From this perspective, the re-emergence of working class voice is the start of a reversal of a project begun under Thatcher, well discussed by Phil Burton-Cartledge in Falling Down. He describes how she wanted to restore state authority so that the relationship between state and individual was unmediated by any other independent authority, be it local government, a neutral civil service, or trades unions. You can interpret the Tories' hold over the BBC, its dismissal of experts, and the Daily Mail's describing judges as "enemies of the people" as extensions of this tradition. Believers in limited government should therefore welcome Enough is Enough as a constraint upon government.

So too should democrats. The value of democracy lies to a large extent in the idea of political equality. This requires that a worker have as much political influence as a newspaper proprietor. Stronger unions nudge us slightly towards this direction.

Of course, in saying all this I might be claiming too much. Enough is Enough is, as Phil says, only a beginning. We've seen activist movements come and go before: think of Occupy. Whether the revival of unionism can withstand the coming recession and rise in unemployment - not to mention the capitalist media backlash - remains to be seen. Nevertheless, it offers hope - and that, right now, is scarce and valuable.

Comments

[Satisficer]

In the early 1990s, inflation was roughly the same as it is now (in fact, underlying inflation was higher), Bank Rate was in the double-digits and a housing-market boom had turned to bust. Yet, no one was complaining about a cost of living crisis; it simply wasn't a thing. What's changed?

[Dafis]

As a (well) right-of-centre member of the electorate I am delighted to see "E is E" gain traction. Some may see it in terms of "left wing" bogeyman but it's far bigger than that with an appeal to the people at a number of "levels" of society and economy. The present ruling regime is often dismissed as right wing Tories but in reality it is a corporatist puppet regime with little or no real moral compass. It interferes excessively where there is need for a more measured response yet fails abysmally to intervene where there is real need. Had these buffoons had the wit to intervene they might have stifled the surge in costs of living which in turn have fed the wage demands we now witness. But that would have meant letting down their friends in Big Energy, just as they promoted the interests of Big Pharma over the last 2 years or so. No doubt shareholders in those sectors are having a laff but will their divi's cover their inflated Gas and Elec bills this coming winter ?

[Christina Horsfield]

We should be raging at what going on what else do they expect the working classes to do they expect.?

[Christina Horsfield]

I mean, how do they expect working people to carry on working and starve.?

[Christina Horsfield]

Whilst they catty on destroying people's lives, . No indeed,the time has come to act about the things we care about ."What matters in politics is not interlect but power.Enough is Enough.

[Graham]

In answer to Satisficer petrol prices have nearly doubled, and electricity & gas prices are expected to rise at least threefold over the winter. So this looks like an inflation rate of several hundred percent, which will feed into the price of everything else. Further, energy and the essentials that depend on it represent a very significant proportion of the budget for poorer households. These households won't just be a little worse off, a problem that could be fixed by working a little extra overtime; they will be completely unable to support themselves. Expect more strikes followed by civil unrest!

[rsm]

Is an inflation-adjusted, generous, non-tax-funded, universal, unconditional basic income looking better and better yet?

[aragon]

The energy market is working as intended - Economists.

Not exactly a quote but the sentiment of economists who designed the market for energy.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/uk-sees-170-billion-excess-192126590.html"

"UK gas producers and electricity generators may make excess profits totaling as much as £170 billion ($199 billion) over the next two years"

It is nice to see the Labour party appear to intend to keep up some traditions.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-tory-party-myth-isn-t-real

"Keir Starmer’s deep red pledges to the Corbynite left of Labour during his election in 2020 were the most transparent, contemptuous soft sell since Harry Enfield’s turn as owner of the posh junk shop ‘I Saw You Coming’."

[...]

"We need to look with fresh eyes at what people actually do in the world, what they are, rather than what they think they are or what they claim to be."

[Tom]

Agree with almost all of that, but when it comes to Enough Is Enough specifically, having gone to their event in Manchester on Tuesday, the problem was that it was full of all the usual SWP and SWP-adjacent arseholes who in a general election would lose their deposits in almost every constituency in this country, handing out as they were their flyers and newspapers blaming the war in Ukraine on NATO (etc etc). What would be nice is a trade union movement (or something rallying against the current crisis) without all that bollocks, but then of course on the flip side I'm not holding my breath on the Labour right doing anything substantive on the issue either.

[Blissex]

«Which is why the interests of the richest 1% dominate policy-making»

That is the usual "leftoid" delusion, it is the interests of the 20-40%, the "Middle England" propertied upper-middle classes.
The elites use the support of that huge voter block to also put in policies that serve themselves, but the primary focus of policy is on the 20-40%.

The current situation is mass rentierism more than elite rentierism. But it still is far more convenient and conventional to blame elite rentiers than the mass rentiers.

[Blissex]

«blaming the war in Ukraine on NATO (etc etc).»

Outrageous:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Donbas
“3,393 civilians killed (349 in 2016–2021)
13,100–13,300 killed; 29,500–33,500 wounded overall
414,798 Ukrainians internally displaced; 925,500 fled abroad”

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/05/10/ukra-m10.html
“the events in the major eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol yesterday. After tanks, armored personnel carriers and heavily armed troops were unleashed on unarmed civilians in the city, the Kiev regime claimed to have killed some 20 people. The Obama administration immediately blamed the violent repression on “pro-Russian separatists.” This is the second time in a week that the Obama administration has defended the role of the Kiev government in the murder of anti-government demonstrators, having done so following the Odessa killings (see: “US defends role of Kiev regime and fascists in Odessa massacre”).
The violence bore all the hallmarks of a calculated provocation on the 69th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany by the Soviet Red Army. [...] many of those targeted by the Ukrainian National Guard and associated fascist elements on Friday had been participating in a Victory Day rally commemorating the anniversary.”

[Blissex]

«they might have stifled the surge in costs of living which in turn have fed the wage demands we now witness. But that would have meant letting down their friends in Big Energy»

The price of energy is rising because there is a physical shortage as the USA boycotts the cheapest and largest european energy supplier, the higher energy company profits are a windfall consequence of that, not a cause.

Given the physical shortage, the only solution is to cut consumption, either by rationing via higher prices, or by rationing by government quotas.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/29/european-gas-shortages-likely-to-last-several-winters-shell-chief-rationing-europe-russia
«Ben van Beurden said the situation could persist for several years. “It may well be that we will have a number of winters where we have to somehow find solutions,” he said. Van Beurden said solutions to the energy crisis would have to found through “efficiency savings, through rationing and a very, very quick buildout of alternatives”. [...] competition for scarce resources has pushed wholesale European gas prices up by a factor of 12 compared with a year ago. [...] The French prime minister, Elizabeth Borne, warned companies that energy could be rationed this winter»

[Satisficer]

Thank you for your reply Graham.

I think you're right, this is a prospective problem. Not so much a current one, in my view, despite the protestations.

I'm looking at the CPI components. Food prices are up 30% since the Financial Crisis, and fuel prices up 34%. Over the same period, earnings are up 46%.

[rsm]

《The price of energy is rising because there is a physical shortage as the USA boycotts the cheapest and largest european energy supplier, the higher energy company profits are a windfall consequence of that, not a cause.

Given the physical shortage, the only solution is to cut consumption》

Why not print euros and pounds (backstopped by unlimited dollar swap lines with the Fed) to pay for Russian supply rerouted through many middlemen to avoid sanctions?

[Blissex]

«when it comes to Enough Is Enough specifically, having gone to their event [...] was full of all the usual SWP and SWP-adjacent arseholes»

That is almost irrelevant, as they are almost irrelevant.

The real problem is that it was *not* full of New Labour MPs and local officials, or from any major party, as they are all committed against COMMUNISM! :-)

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/jun/10/labour.uk
Peter Mandelson, 2002: “in the urgent need to remove rigidities and incorporate flexibility in capital, product and labour markets, we are all Thatcherites now”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/22/tony-blairs-speech-on-the-future-of-the-labour-party-in-full
Tony Blair, 2015: “I wouldn’t want to win on an old-fashioned leftist platform. Even if I thought it was the route to victory, I wouldn’t take it.”

As to "Enough is enough", I am sceptical: the large long protests by the Yellow Vests in France achieved pretty much nothing, and anyhow if they were about to achieve something, the government could "find" some new terrorist/communist external threat to consolidate public opinion.

Unless "Enough is enough" turns from a protest movement to a political force, and it was strong enough that it could withstand years of of attacks by the security services, and repeated attempts to compromise its leaders, one way or another.

[Blissex]

«large long protests by the Yellow Vests in France achieved pretty much nothing»

Also on the difference between english conformism and french rebelliousness:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jJj0NgA08SUC&pg=PA244&lpg=PA244
George Orwell, "Review of The Civilization of France by Ernst Robert Curtius" (1932):
“In England, a century of strong government has developed what O. Henry called the stern and rugged fear of the police to a point where any public protest seems an indecency.
But in France everyone can remember a certain amount of civil disturbance, and even the workmen in the bistros talk of la revolution - meaning the next revolution, not the last one.
The highly socialised modern mind, which makes a kind of composite god out of the rich, the government, the police and the larger newspapers, has not been developed - at least not yet.”

Currently as in 1932 “the rich, the government, the police and the larger newspapers” are still on top, supported by the mass of "Middle England" propertied voters.

[ltr]

As Enough is Enough say:

"We can’t rely on the establishment to solve our problems. It’s up to us in every workplace and every community."

[ The essay is terrific, but the problem I have is finding where leadership come in. When Labour had a superb "every workplace" oriented and responsive leader, Jeremy Corbyn, the leader was undermined by rival Conservative leaders as well as by rival Labour leaders and the media.

"Every workplace" was unwilling to stand with Corbyn against the malicious antagonism even of Labour leaders such as the Blairites.

Absent a Corbyn, there is no hope of offering a real alternative to Conservative rule. ]

[ltr]

Blissex, who once raised the matter of fish farming in China, might be interested in the dramatic advances that have been made such as in combined fish and rice fields, and offshore combined with green energy production, and this:

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-05-20/China-delivers-world-s-first-100-000-tonne-mobile-fish-farm--1abyPjeFiw0/index.html

May 20, 2022

China delivers world's first 100,000-tonne 'mobile fish farm'
By Gong Zhe

In a world first, China delivered a 100,000-tonne smart aquaculture vessel on Friday in Qingdao City, east China's Shandong Province.

The ship, named Guoxin-1, is the realization of an innovative mobile fish farming model regarded as a technological breakthrough for China's deep-sea aquaculture industry....

[ltr]

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-08-14/How-new-ocean-buoys-improve-fish-farming-in-S-China-s-Quanzhou--1ctsQz2pfnW/index.html

August 14, 2022

How new ocean buoys improve fish farming in S. China's Quanzhou

Quanzhou is one of the major port cities in Fujian Province, south China that is abundant in marine and fishery resources. The mariculture equipment in Quanzhou City has been improved to support a sustainable economic expansion of the fishing sector....

https://english.news.cn/20220720/256dbd14f9ed4feea3c12cf85da0f844/c.html

July 20, 2022

Marine ranching helps restore biodiversity in south China island

HAIKOU -- When Wang Aimin, then a professor of oceanic science at Hainan University, started helping with marine ranching by dropping artificial reefs into seawater in 2011, he was ridiculed by local divers....

[ There is much more, just on fish farming, but Chinese development means innovating then repeatedly revising project plans. ]