Notes on the News

By Gwydion M. Williams

Hard Right, Faded Left
India Rising
Snippets
Bill Gates Goes to China
Kosovo – Punishing Serbs
Pro-Western Russians Hate Each Other
Unwanted Afghans
China – Solid Politics?
More Illiberalism

Hard Right, Faded Left

Tony Blair persuaded Labour that we should drop our traditional commitment that the state could and should help the needy.

Much of Europe’s centre-left followed, ignoring the success of the Mixed Economy, also called Keynesianism.^[1] As did most of the US Democrats, rejecting their New Deal success.

Great attention was given to the needs of various minorities, which was good in itself. And to giving a 50% share of high-status jobs to a few suitable women.

But what about the mainstream working people? What about the working poor? What about women who could never aspire to high-status jobs? The leaders of centre-left parties showed little interest in their needs.

With all of the quotas they imposed, there was never one for social class. Few MPs now come from the occupational groups normally classed as Working Class. Many, indeed, pass smoothly from student politics into political aids, with no experience of life as it is for most people. And those who were middle-class professionals were almost all journalists, lawyers, or charity professionals.

Most of the political class swallowed the Classical Liberal notion that the state was only there to prevent one type of human being favoured over another. To be referees in a global struggle for wealth and fame and power. They saw no need to help the losers, who maybe deserved it. Who needed to be motivated to try harder.

Much to their surprise, this led to a global rise of a Hard Right. Which in the USA is mostly about hatred and fear, though Trump began the trend to bring home more industrial production. But in Eastern Europe, it has been otherwise:

“The proportion of people in Poland classified as being at risk of poverty or social exclusion is the third lowest among all European Union member states, new Eurostat data show…

“Poland has seen a significant improvement on this measure since 2015, the first year for which data are available.

“Back then, 22.5% of the Polish population were deemed at risk. Its fall since then (of 6.5 percentage points) was more rapid than the 2.4 percentage point decline across the EU as a whole, from 24% to 21.6%.

“During that period, only three member states have recorded large declines: Hungary (12.2 percentage points), Bulgaria (11.1 p.p.), and Romania (10.1 p.p.). Seven countries – France, Estonia, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Sweden and the Netherlands – have seen an increase in those at risk of poverty.”^[2]

2015 was when the conservative Law and Justice party replace the liberal Civil Coalition. I assume they worked to reverse the damage.

Europe’s Illiberal Democracy has shown a real concern for looking after people. More like what Britain’s Tories once were, and Thatcher ended that.

The liberals, libertarians, and liberal-left find it baffling that their progressive social causes become unpopular. Not noticing that such causes get damaged when combined with a massive indifference to growing inequality and poverty. They stick to a mindless acceptance that ‘there is no alternative’.

It goes beyond Europe. I’ve mentioned elsewhere a roll-back of Western influence in the Global South. Including much that I find tragic, but I have no doubt at all about the main cause.^[3]

The Economist, which exists to give business people a broad view of how the world is going, recently had an article that was clear-sighted on some of this:

“This should be a propitious time for Europe’s left. Inflation is fuelling calls for more government benefits. Surveys show citizens are more concerned with climate change and the cost of living than with crime. Antipathy to the EU has faded since the 2010s. Belief in small government, declining since the financial crisis, was all but killed off by the covid pandemic. A recent study of six European countries… found that big majorities everywhere agreed that ‘the state should play a larger role in the regulation of the economy’…

“The left’s problems start with the once-great social-democratic parties. In the early 2000s in western Europe they averaged nearly 30% of the vote. They have declined steadily since the global financial crisis in 2008, to just above 20% (see chart). Having embraced free-market economics during the ‘Third Way’ period of the 1990s, most centre-left parties endorsed fiscal austerity after the financial crisis. That was a huge mistake, argues Björn Bremer of the Max Planck Institute in Cologne: voters could no longer see the difference between the centre-left and the centre-right…

“Nowadays leftist parties offering more government spending face two problems.

“The first is that with much higher inflation, interest rates and debt, they no longer have fiscal room. The second is that on state intervention they have won the argument. Nearly everyone in European politics, from right to left, now accepts that governments must play a big role in the economy. That makes it hard for leftist parties to stand out.”^[4]

Pro-state and pro-planning ideas are regaining popularity.

We’ve seen the Neo-Liberal future. And it doesn’t work.

Inequality is poisonous:

“When the Eastern European countries overtake Britain, it will be a grassroots-led effort. As a result of their Communist legacies, these economies are generally much more equal than Western Europe. Slovakia, Slovenia, Czechia, Croatia, Hungary and Poland all have better Gini coefficients than the EU average…

“It will also be because the Eastern economies have much better science education…

“During the Communist era, many Warsaw Pact nations focused heavily on hard science education because it was less likely to ‘get political’ than humanities education. In the modern period, computer programming became a prestigious job, one of the few ways to earn a Western wage in ex-Communist countries.”^[5]

The Leninist legacy had many positive aspects. And Britain is doing worse than Continental Western Europe, which was also damaged by accepting versions of Thatcherism.

I recently saw a review of a book called The Death of the Left, Why We Must Begin from the Beginning Again.^[6] To judge from the review, it ignores Far Left sabotage of viable social-democratic reforms in the 1970s: Incomes Policy and Workers Control. And is keen to avoid credit for mainstream social norms coming into line with what were once Far Left views.

From Trotskyism, 1960s radicals learned how to look brilliant, but fail completely. Which was Trotsky’s own history, as Lenin’s foe before 1917. And again from the mid-1920s when he became an Oppositionist.^[7] A lethal example that still has a grip on many.

India Rising

He’s been a Hard Right Knight, rising from a status not far above that of a dog.

My Beatles references are based on remembering how they helped spread a sentimental view of Hindu culture. Praising Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who rejected modern values but had no coherent alternative. And The Beatles were part of a general detachment of the new generation from traditional Labour and Trade Union politics: one that also lacked a good alternative.

Mr Modi is a very coherent alternative.

India was led to independence by people from the very top of its ancient and oppressive caste system. Nehru’s Kashmiri Brahmins are widely rated as the very top. And he and most of the rest of them had absorbed many Western values. Did far too little to remove barriers:

“Mr Modi’s most effective populist claim, that he represents the triumph of vernacular, battling India over its complacent Anglophone former rulers. Mr Gandhi is half Italian and, like his father, grandmother and great-grandfather, all Indian prime ministers, Oxbridge-educated. Mr Modi was born poor, is largely self-taught and, partly because that describes millions of Indians, hugely admired for it…

“Mr Modi’s genius is his ability to capture the political narrative in such ways. He is adept at reading mass sentiment and, as a relentless campaigner, courts it as no other Indian leader has since Indira Gandhi, or ever.”^[8]

He continues the non-aligned policies of the old elite:

“India does not love the West, but it is indispensable to America…

“No country except China has propped up Russia’s war economy as much as oil-thirsty India. And few big democracies have slid further in the rankings of democratic freedom. But you would not guess it from the rapturous welcome Narendra Modi will receive in Washington next week. India’s prime minister has been afforded the honour of a state visit by President Joe Biden. The Americans hope to strike defence deals. Mr Modi will be one of the few foreign leaders, along with Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela and Volodymyr Zelensky, to address a joint session of Congress more than once. The praise gushed on Capitol Hill about the partnership makes no mention of Ukraine, democracy or grit in the gears of America’s new bestfriendship.”^[9]

I can’t see he’s particularly damaged what was already a bad electoral system. The Western media call it a decline in democracy. But they always say that, when voters dare choose leaders who resist Western demands.

I’d assume Mr Modi knows that if the USA ever broke the will of Russia and China, India would be next. Salami slicing tactics – Assad’s Syria foolishly helped them against Saddam’s Iraq.

US policy-makers in the 1990s must have thought they were being brilliant, when they caused the downfall of a whole slew of leaders they had previously propped up. Italy’s Christian Democrats. Ceausescu in Romania. Mobutu in Zaire / Congo. Suharto in Indonesia. Even Saddam in Iraq – it gets forgotten that they rescued him in 1987.^[10] Each time selling it as a way of ending corrupt and brutal government, which had not bothered them before. And which was mostly not improved on.

Most of the Global South is now wiser, with Saudi Arabia getting closer to China.

On past form, you’d not expect them to care if Ukrainians loyal to the heritage of their World War Two fascists purged Ukraine of everything Russian or Soviet. Only the West has to hide that truth, helped by what can only be called Non-Investigative Journalists. But the Global South knows that an independent-minded Russia is needed to balance the USA.

Sn ippets

Bill Gates Goes to China

US business people look after their own businesses. The German government has damaged the German economy by getting hostile over trumped-up issues.^[11] But US billionaires know that they can do as they please.

And now much of Latin America dares to ignore US wishes:

“Chinese trade with Latin America has exploded this century from $12bn in 2000 to $495bn in 2022, making China South America’s biggest trading partner.

“Chile, Costa Rica and Peru have free trade deals with Beijing, Ecuador inked its agreement this month and Panama and Uruguay are planning treaties.

“The Biden administration, however, has ruled out new trade agreements, frustrating Latin American nations. The EU has spent 20 years negotiating a free trade deal with the South American Mercosur bloc but has yet to ratify it…

“Trade is not the only issue. Beijing has won friends in Latin America by building and financing roads, bridges and airports. More than 20 Latin American and Caribbean nations have joined China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative and China has lent more than $136bn to Latin American governments and state companies since 2005.

“The US and EU, meanwhile, have been focusing on corruption, democracy, the environment, human rights and the risks of doing business with China. The EU’s Global Gateway initiative, envisioned as a response to the BRI, has pledged just $3.5bn to Latin America.

“Among the US’s talking points with Latin America is an entreaty to avoid 5G phone networks built by China’s Huawei, which is sanctioned by Washington — but US and European alternatives to Huawei are often more expensive.”^[12]

Kosovo – Punishing Serbs

When Yugoslavia began coming apart, the European Union should have taken in the entire Federation. And used membership to persuade the various Republics to re-draw their borders to better match the ethnic divisions. Divisions which were initially not a big issue.

Instead they supported Croat and Bosnian independence, taking with them majority-Serb regions. Regions now purged of Serbs in Croatia, after both sides behaved badly.

It was justified legally, because Tito had showed Leninist idealism. His constitution gave a right of secession to Yugoslavia’s Union Republics, as Lenin had for the Soviet Union.

Kosovo, where Serbs were a dwindling minority, was not included.^[13] Serbs still viewed it as theirs, and legally it was. But NATO forced separation, and was bitterly against first detaching the Serb-majority north.

The trend is now towards clearing out Serbs from a sectarian Kosovo. Just as happened in Croatia.

“The April 23 snap election was largely boycotted by ethnic Serbs and only ethnic Albanian or other smaller minority representatives were elected in the mayoral posts and assemblies.

“Local elections were held in four Serb-dominated communes in northern Kosovo after Serb representatives left their posts in protest last year and the Serbian community has demanded the establishment of a promised association of Serbian municipalities in Kosovo, which would coordinate work on education, healthcare, land planning and economic development at the local level.”^[14]

Set aside, just as the USA encouraged Kiev to ignore the Minsk Agreements. Those would have given autonomy to the Russian-majority Donbass and avoided the current war.^[15]

Yet again, US ‘help’ means ruin.

Pro-Western Russians Hate Each Other

“Russia’s browbeaten opposition gathered in Brussels to plot a path back to democracy this week, with Vladimir Putin’s main rivals in jail or exiled and squabbling about how to move forward.

“Rather than uniting Russia’s liberals, the war in Ukraine has deepened existing rifts and added new controversies, such as backing a military defeat for Moscow and Kyiv’s demands for reparations, which some see as politically toxic among Russians…

“Though the EU had hoped to bring them together, the splits were yet again on display when followers of jailed anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, the most popular Russian opposition leader, refused to take part in the parliament’s event…

“Khodorkovsky — who devoted the bulk of his 50-minute interview to criticising Navalny’s team — said the difference was between a ‘revolutionary party and a popular front coalition,’ much like in Russia before the October revolution in 1917…

“Some European officials hoped the Russian opposition could follow its Belarusian counterparts in creating a united platform and centralised office that could lobby westerners on Russians’ behalf and help the anti-war diaspora. But the Brussels conference ended without any immediate prospects for such a step.”^[16]

But why not indulge themselves? It’s a Fantasy Opposition. They remain divided, because they know that their sort of politics has very limited support among Russian voters. Less than 5% at the last election.

Yabloko, the biggest of them, got 753,268 votes in the 2021 election. 1.37%. No seats. They used to be less marginal, falling from 4.30% and 4 seats in 2003 to 1.59% and no seats in 2007. Part of a decline since the Yeltsin years, when the incompetence of the Westernisers was not so clear.^[17]

The Communist Party, the biggest opposition, got 10,660,669 votes. 19.33%. 48 out of 450 seats.^[18]

Unwanted Afghans

Praise. Encourage. Give damaging advice. Discard. Neglect.

A remarkably consistent pattern by the West, for everyone the USA has supposedly helped since the end of the Cold War.

The only important Armed Progressives in Afghanistan were the ruling Communist faction. The USA could have subsidised a Broad-Front Government, with far less money than they’ve wasted on their grand failures.

Elsewhere, they often had to work with former Communists who’d accept the new order. Those people got elected, formed strong governments, and could not be pushed around. But the USA indulged their silly ideologies in Afghanistan – let everything pro-Soviet perish! They let them be killed or driven out – or maybe some became Taliban. Regardless, the USA in its brief conquest of Afghanistan relied on warlords. People who mostly ran away or made peace with the Taliban, when the USA gave up on the mess they had created.^[19]

Those Afghans who loyally served the US mission mostly didn’t get out. And in both the UK and European Union, those who arrived are being neglected.^[20] ^[21]

China – Solid Politics?

“When the Chinese Communist party leadership gathered in Beijing for its quinquennial congress last October… overlooked by many at the time was the rise of a new group of political leaders in the top echelons of power whose background diverges from the usual careers in provincial government or Communist party administration. Instead, they all have deep experience in China’s military-industrial complex.

“Their swift advancement is part of Xi’s efforts to reinvigorate China’s long-running project of ‘military-civil fusion’, a policy that seeks to harness new technologies from the private sector for the benefit of the country’s rapidly modernising military…

“More than a third of the Communist party’s 205-member Central Committee now have a background in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, according to a report by MacroPolo, the think-tank of the Paulson Institute in Chicago. That is a 35 per cent increase from the previous committee appointed five years before.”^[22]

The rest of the article is negative about this. Warning or maybe hoping that China will repeat the Soviet error of being burdened by their military. But China is much more modest, and not trying to control the wider world.

Raising up more scientists and engineers is also sensible. Unlike lawyers or journalists, they learn to respect Objective Facts.

More Illiberalism

“Slovakia’s president Zuzana Caputova, a standard bearer for liberal politics in central Europe, will not seek re-election next year, adding to doubts over the country’s pro-western politics… after a year of political turmoil in Slovakia that has boosted the Moscow-friendly ex-premier Robert Fico.

“Elected on a pledge to uproot corruption…

“Fico and his Smer party are now frontrunners to win a snap parliamentary election in September…

“A comeback by Fico in Slovakia’s election would pose a further challenge to Nato and EU unity over Ukraine, bolstering Viktor Orbán of Hungary’s more sceptical view of sanctions against Russia.”^[23]

All over the world, politicians elected on an anti-establishment and anti-corruption platform achieve nothing much. It is an empty idea, because corruption may be there to keep society functioning where there are few shared ideals.

Liberalism as reborn in the 1980s has been a global failure.

Slovakia is likely to be another crack in the anti-Russian front.

The left party, SMER–SD, is actually doing worse than they did in 2020.^[24] But the ruling liberal / anti-corruption party OĽaNO has lost most of its support.^[25]

Old newsnotes at the magazine websites. I also write regular blogs – https://www.quora.com/q/mrgwydionmwilliams

^[1] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/problems-magazine-past-issues/the-mixed-economy-won-the-cold-war/

^[2] https://notesfrompoland.com/2023/06/20/poland-has-eus-third-lowest-poverty-risk-figure/

^[3] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/problems-magazine-past-issues/the-west-fails-in-five-civilisations/the-west-fails-in-five-civilisations-2/

^[4] https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/06/15/the-problems-ailing-western-europes-left-are-not-just-cyclical – pay site.

^[5] https://medium.com/@cailiansavage1/is-britain-really-about-to-become-poorer-than-poland-f7c311084e5d

^[6] https://labourheartlands.com/book-review-the-death-of-the-left-why-we-must-begin-from-the-beginning-again/

^[7] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/past-issues/labour-affairs-before-2014/why-trotskys-politics-achieved-nothing-solid/

^[8] https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/06/15/narendra-modi-is-the-worlds-most-popular-leader – pay site.

^[9] https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/06/15/joe-biden-and-narendra-modi-are-drawing-their-countries-closer – pay site.

^[10] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/very-old-issues-images/magazine-001-to-010/magazine-004-october-1987/why-the-west-saved-saddam-hussein-in-1987/

^[11] https://www.ft.com/content/3034d39c-118a-44d3-b9bf-6482b786018f – pay site.