“It’s the economy, stupid!”

My most recent column for Bangor Student Union's Newspaper - Seren. I was a little short of space for this months column so I had to be very brief on the issues concerned.

Those were Bill Clinton’s famous words about what the main issue was during the 1992 US Presidential elections. And in the wake of the freezing up of the banking system last month, the part and full nationalisations that have taken place, increasing rates of home repossessions and the rising tide of unemployment have made it the main issue in this years U.S. Elections.
Of course, in the early days it was all about change, as Barack Obama positioned himself as an alternative to both the continuations of the last two US Presidents in the Republican Party candidate John McCain (potential successor of George W Bush) and his rival for the Democratic Party nomination, Hillary Clinton (potential successor to the aforementioned Bill Clinton). Of course Bush was responsible for the Afghani and Iraqi invasions, but Clinton had previously been responsible for the sanctions against Iraq and other U.S. military actions too.
The selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate, as an apparent political ‘outsider’ (she still is the Governor of Alaska though!) was an attempt to undermine Obama’s theme of change which had actually mobilized a lot of younger voters to support him in the U.S.
But it is the economic crisis deepening that has swung Obama decisively into the lead. Thousands of families in the US face losing their homes as a result of the subprime crisis. Whatever anger about the Bush government’s policies that existed before (and unlike here the anti-Iraq war movement in the US was getting bigger not smaller), it has been massively multiplied by the economic crisis their ultra-neoliberal policies have driven the U.S. It is the height of irony that government’s who love the idea of the free market like those of Gordon Brown, George W Bush, Angela Merkel etc. have been forced to nationalize or part-nationalise so many companies to save the market they so cherish.
You may think that being a socialist I’d be on top of the moon at the moment with capitalism taking a battering, but unfortunately not. The truth is that what these governments want is to bail out these company’s bad debts, get them back into shape and then sell them back to the private sector. And its ordinary people that they are going to try and make pay for it with cuts to public services.
Capitalism goes through economic crises every so often like this, but the only way to make the situation better for the rest of us is to fight for it to be better. Although these companies have been nationalized, they are still gonna be run by similar people to those who wrecked them who won’t be as interested in the human cost of their decisions as opposed to the need for them to make these companies profitable again. And both McCain and Obama agree on this basic strategy, rather than what I would advocate which is placing them under the democratic control of the people who work at the company and the people who use their services.

Review – Comrade Criminal by Stephen Handelman (1994)

This is a useful book written by a western journalist who was based in Russia in the years either side of the collapse of Stalinism. The books main focus is on the spiralling crime that engulfed Russia and the rest of the CIS with the restoration of capitalism.

Handelman begins by tracing two main criminal groups in the Soviet Union. Firstly there were the bureaucrats who engaged in corruption and were subject to regular purges by other bureaucrats eager to maintain their positions. Secondly there was the Vor, the Theives Guild in effect the Russian Mafia to be, who at this time were concentrated in more small scale crime.

But it is the collapse of Stalinism that led to the creation of the ‘Comrade Criminals’ that the book is named after. He uses this to describe the former party and state bureaucrats who used their connections to plunder Russia’s resources and then maintain their position. He also describes how the Vor expanded their influence into smuggling all sorts of items, from people, to stolen raw materials and ancient artefacts. Indeed as Handelman goes on to note there becomes a convergence of the two as time goes on.

Handelman also discusses how investigations into organised crime are both commenced and curtailed as part of the battle between rival bureaucrats. He discusses how this frustration feeded into support for the political right for more draconian measures to tackle crime. Of course, the political right were led by just another set of ex-bureaucrats too, which Handleman picks up on when he discusses how the organised criminals saw themselves as the defenders of law and order.

One thread that runs though Handelman’s book, however, is that capitalist restoration was ‘derailed’ from the course it was supposed to take. If only the West had stepped in or the economic ‘entrepreneurs’ had seen the danger from the former state bureaucrats, he laments. Of course, despite the economic problems of the Soviet Union, it needed a section of the bureaucracy to lead it back to capitalism which had a stake in that capitalist future – hence China’s slow authoritarian march to capitalism and why sections of the Cuban bureaucracy are struggling in that direction given the existence of exiles who wish to stake their claim to such positions. Although his exposition of recent times in the Soviet Union is quite good, historically it is appalling equating Stalin with Lenin for example. It is to these mystic roots that he equates many of the problems, which I think is the fundamental weakness of this book which provides a lot of information about organised crime in the present.

The Dominant Capitalist Superpower in the World

I was recently reading Where is Britain Going? By Leon Trotsky, written in 1925 when I was struck by this paragraph.

“A fairly well-known populariser of British history, Gibbins, writes in his outline of modern British history: ‘In general – though, of course, there are exceptions to this – the guiding principle of British foreign policy has been the support for political freedom and constitutional government.’ This sentence is truly remarkable; at the same time as being, deeply official, ‘national’ and traditional-sounding, it leaves no room for the hypocritical doctrine of non-interference in the affairs of other nations; at the same time it testifies to the fact that Britain has supported constitutional movements in other countries only in so far as they were advantageous to her commercial and other interests. But on the other hand, as the inimitable Gibbins says, ‘there are exceptions to this rule’. The entire history of Britain is depicted for the edification of her people (the doctrine of non-intervention notwithstanding) as a glorious struggle of the British government for freedom throughout the world. Every single new act of perfidy and violence – the Opium War with China, the enslavement of Egypt, the Boer War, the intervention in support of Tsarist generals – is interpreted as an exception to the rule.”

Can’t this depiction, with substitution in of Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam to name a few, also refer to today’s dominant superpower – the United States?

Review - The Prison and the Factory (1981) by Dario Melossi and Massimo Pavarini

this is the version translated by Glynis Cousin and published by Macmillan

This book is a useful study in the development of the forms of punishment under capitalism. For marxist criminologists, how punishment and other methods of crime control cam into existence and developed is an important question, particularly given as marxists would theorise that the forms of the criminal justice system depend on the stages of economic development to an extent.
Others have studied the development of prisons as punishment too, and Melossi and Pavarini draw on both Rusche and Kircheimer as well as on Foucault in their analysis.

They start with asking why imprisonment is the dominant form of penalty under capitalism. pretty much every punishment under modern capitalism is either imprisonment, or non-compliance is backed up by it (which is the case for probation, home detention curfews, fines, community sentences etc.) The only major exception being the death penalty, but even this requires imprisonment to hold people on death row.

They also point out thatunder feudal regimes prisons were only used to hold debtors and not as punishments themselves which in those times, Foucault points out in Discipline and Punish, were corporal rather than carceral. This they link to life, physical condition and money being of more value to a person, than "human labour measured in time" (pg3)

Another theme running through this work is the influence of religion. The authors note the existence of a distinction between 'good poor' and 'bad poor'. Both were out of work, but the 'bad poor' were wicked because they'd been forced to resort to crime and had to be forced to work, whereas the 'good poor' hadn't and should be given assistance.

The work then goes on to argue that the development of prisons and workhouses were places "for the teaching the discipline of production" (pg 21) and thus are closely realted to the formation fo the proletariat from the landless, workless ex-peasant masses created by the enclosure of pastures. Indeed, they also speculate that the intensity of repression depended on the availability of labour during the period.

The development of the prison in Italy is then discussed, considering the specific economic development of that country. There is one question that they tunr to that deserves special mention, social banditry. This occurs becuase of the explusion of peasants from the land, some trun to banditry to survive. The authors view it as a form of class rebellion, and to them some sort of proto-revolutionary action. However, whilst I recognise the class nature of the banditry, their actions were incredibly destructive, either robbery or destruction of property, and thus it is a backwards looking, reactionary course of action. For me, it's like rioting, whilst we understand that social conditions have caused it, such acts will get the oppressed carrying them out nowhere.

Similarly, the development of prison in the early USA is examined. One of the interesting things that the authors note is the introduction of the 'Philadelphia model' of prisons (which was based on the strict isolation and observation of prisoners - like Bentham's panopticon) happened at a time when prison labour was uneconomical. When this changed due to a shortage of labour, gradually the 'Auburn model' was adopted which saw inmates working communally during the day.

The final chapter of the book is a sort of conclusion to the book. In it they state their central thesis - that when there is high unemployment prison takes on a destructive punitiveness, but when unemployment is low it takes on a re-educative, rehabilitative form, partially to lower wages. Personally, I think this simplifies things too much and certainly makes little sense when applied to Britain and other neo-liberal countries over the last 20 years or so. Furthermore I'd question what they mean by discipline - I could see prison having a physically controlling/coercive effect but they seem to mean some sort of mental effect to produce 'disciplined proletarians' or un-thinking slaves. the prisoners rights movements that developed around the 1960's and 1970's show this as being inaccurate. Moreover if prison is supposed to be this wonderful invention for creating 'disciplined proletarians' how come recidivism is so high (above 60%). Melossi and Pavarini's theory is an interesting one, but it's full of holes.

Alienation and Crime

NB: As you may have noticed, i'm now going to attempt to update the blog regularly on thursdays, saturdays and tuesdays, so here's the first post for that.

Criminology is in the midst of an aetiological crisis, or Jock Young and others pointed out in the mid 90s. Aetiology, is a theory of what causes criminal actions to occur. For left realism this is usually explained through the concept of relative deprivation, which they take from Robert Merton's concept of anomie. However, in this post i wish to talk about alienation and how this process can also lead to crime.

A note of caution I wish to strike is that in talking about the aetiology (or causes) of crime, I do not wish to lump all crime together as caused by the same things necessarily. Crime (indeed how you actually define crime can be a contentious issue), we must note, consists of various things including drug-related offences, sexual offences, violent offences, property offences, health and safety offences, white collar crime, anti-social behaviour etc. What links them (or at least most of them) is that they are all endemic problems under a capitalist society. That is not to say that they don't exist outside of a capitalist society, but that they will always exist within one. The aetiology between each group will vary with its character (and also with the groups).

Returning to alienation, I wish to deal with how thsi is presented in Hannah Sell's "Socialism in the 21st Century" (pp. 28-30). In particular the quote she takes from Marx's "Wage, Labour and Capital",

'And the worker, who for twelve hours, weaves, spins, drills, turns, builds, shovels, breaks stones, carries loads etc. - does he hold this twelves hours weaving, spinning, drilling, turning, building, shovelling, stone breaking to be a manifestation of his life, as life? On the contrary, life begins for him where this activity ceases, at the table, in the public house, in bed. The twelve hours labour has no meaning for him as weaving, spinning, drilling etc. but as earnings which bring him to the table, to the public house, into bed. If the silk worm were to spin in order to continue its existence as a caterpillar, it would be a complete wage worker'

I have to say I really like that quote. It sums up how I feel about my current job and probably many others about theirs too.
Hannah goes on to say "As capitalism has become more brutal over the last 20 years, alienation has undoubtedly increased. Without exaggerating, there is a small section of young people in Britain for whom the system has offered nothing, and who are, as a result, almost entirely alienated from society". Then slightly later, "One of the worst of all experiences in capitalist Britain is to be a young person who cannot get work - to have been thrown on the scrap heap".

I wish to labour on this point for a minute. In some areas there are simply very few jobs at all for anyone, let alone young people, or even when they are they are so mind-numbingly dull, like working in a call centre etc. So you drink (and other activities) to forget about how depressing work is. This will of course lead (not in all or even many circumstances) to binge-drinking and drunken violence. As for drugs, Hannah comments "There has been an increase in drug addiction, for example, a 400% increase in the number of children who have died from sniffing gas and glue between 1980 and 1990", and drug taking also can lead to burglary and theft (to obtain money to pay for drugs, although this is usually from friends and relatives), as well as the possibility of violent action under the influence of drugs.

Hannah then says, "The increase in alienation is a direct result of neo-liberal policies. This is graphically illustrated by the experience of the ex-mining villages around the country. The defeat of the 1984-5 miners' strike and the closure of the pits have left previously strong communities suffering the ravages of unemployment, poverty and drug addiction."

The point I wish to make is that crime is certainly not a rational choice. There are very decent jobs for young people today, such a dismal prospect of life of course brutalises peoplewhen they see no future for themselves (and probably accounts for quite a few suicides). You certainly cannot be wholly rational about your situation (indeed it's probably difficult at the best of times), and as for choice, I think this is best summed up by the lyrics from the Anti-Flag song No Blood-Thirsty Corporations (N.B.C.) "But a choice between shit is still shit!!!"

Not that the criminal actions that people take are defenicble, indeed they cause even greater harm to working class communities, but the finger of blame needs to be pointed elsewhere. "As long as we live in a capitalist society, then, as Marx described, "brutalisation" and "moral degredation" will remain, " Hannah concludes, before talking about how working class collective action could tackle that.

By the way, in amongst these few pages in various parts there is also mention of relative deprivation too. In fact, Marx also discussed this in Wage, labour and Capital, and as mentioned earlier is the favoured aetiological concept of left realist criminology, so i'll try and get to grips with it and post on this in the future too.

Corporate crime: Sign of an out-of-control economy

THE CAPITALIST press expressed shock and condemnation recently as three businessmen, directors of Independent Insurance which collapsed in 2001, were facing prison sentences for conspiracy to defraud. The three had used off balance-sheet accounting and other tricks to hide the fact that the company was in serious financial trouble.

Whenever a case like this comes to court, the capitalist press always tries to make it seem like a freak occurrence, due to a few 'bad eggs', but are occurrences like this quite so rare?
The collapse of US energy giant Enron was due to similar circumstances with certain traders being encouraged to take 'risks' to maximise their 'reward'.

Due to the competitive nature of free-market capitalism, companies feel forced to take ever bigger gambles to increase their profits. As in all gambles some people lose and then, in cases like this, try and hide their mistakes in the hope that it will all work out okay.

Furthermore cases like this are endemic. PricewaterhouseCoopers' recently released global economic crime survey showed that 48% of British corporations had suffered from some sort of economic crime in the last two years.

The capitalist press' main gripe is that the three directors of Independent Insurance misled 'the City'. Only after this do they comment on the over 1,000 staff who were made redundant, many of whose savings were wrapped up in company share schemes.

In all situations like this, where companies collapse, it is the working class that suffers the most. Meanwhile Michael Bright, one of the businessmen, has managed to keep his three homes and live off a £3 million pension pot despite bankruptcy!

Capitalism is a blind system, with the world's resources being used to create even greater profits for the wealthy, whilst failing to provide for many people's needs.

The capitalist press are complaining of these three businessmen's crimes. But they can't hide the fact that the capitalist economy is to a great extent out of control. The surest way to end corporate crime is by building a socialist society.