Book reviews

Out of control
Fabian Scheidler. The End of the Megamachine. A Brief History Of A Failing Civilization. Zero books. 440 pages.

Whilst this book could be described as a potted history of control and dissent over millennia it is much more than that. It is filled with relevant historical examples which lead to discussion of current global events and the general state of the world. None of the horrific statistics of current deaths in former colonies or empires of the West are new incidents but are merely the long continuation of what began many years ago, have increased, and have become an integral part of the ‘system’, the ‘megamachine’.
Western Christian efforts through history to control and subjugate whole populations to their beliefs continues to the present with, perhaps, a slightly altered emphasis. Now businesses have ‘mission statements’, governments ‘space missions’, and ‘the market’s radical preachers push a universalist ideology’. Structural racism today, the author suggests, comes from colonialism and empire -building which needed justification in order to subject populations to disenfranchisement and exploitation. Hence the Christian religion, along with scientists and philosophers, to declare ‘white’ superiority and exceptionalism. The author’s point here is that the colonial ‘wars’ should more correctly be referred to as genocide.
The underlying theme of the megamachine is that of the cycles of gradual development, decay, and renewed development of the economy, the military and the power of authority – but always linking current practices to earlier, similar planned events. And reminding us in different ways that ‘modern states have arisen neither for the benefit of populations, nor with their consent, but as products of physical violence.’
There are far too many threads to mention in a brief review but all are relevant to the societies we are living in today where everything is compacted and concentrated and where we are living with the results of past decisions. The post-WW2 years began ‘the rapidly accelerating species extinctions that are now threatening to escalate into one of the greatest crises in the history of life on the planet’ but as constant economic growth is an integral part of the machine then that is exactly what should have been expected and was forecast by some more than half a century ago. There is a section devoted to the ills of the current system’s approach to the environment, ecology in general, agricultural and industrial methods, the need for constant growth and the warning of what’s to follow if the decision is to carry on regardless.
A thoroughly worthwhile read with a wealth of useful and relevant information for a book of this size, plus end notes with references and several timelines relevant to the various topics. What there isn’t is a socialist view of the one and only thing to be done to stop the progress of this megamachine. Instead there is a final chapter on ‘Possibilities’ which, depending on your disposition you could either ignore or write your own.
JANET SURMAN

Not a LOTO Fun
Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire. Left Out. Bodley Head. 2020. £18.99

This is billed as the ‘inside story of Labour under Corbyn’, which says exactly what’s inside the proverbial tin. It is at times insightful, gossipy and scandalous – and as such is hugely entertaining. That the Corbyn project was something of a train wreck by well before the 2019 General Election is now received wisdom and this book shows why. Always an uneasy amalgam of leftist forces (from quasi-Stalinists like Seamus Milne to Bennites, Trotskyists and single-issue campaigners), the surprise was more that the unique circumstances of the 2017 election had enabled them to do so well against the odds. But as one commentator put it, the soufflé never rises twice.
Much of it centres on the machinations of the Leader Of The Opposition’s Office (referred to internally as LOTO) and the internal factionalism that developed there enveloping all else, and their parallel and persistently difficult relationship with the official Labour HQ at Southside, still jam-packed with Blairites and Brownites. To say that policy-making and strategic decisions were made on-the-hoof (when they were made at all) is an understatement. What strategy did emerge – including Labour’s eventual and painful drift towards Remain – was often at the behest of the ‘grandfather’ of the Corbyn project, namely former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, but this was frequently in the face of opposition from other faction-fighters, including Corbyn’s Chief of Staff Karie Murphy, Unite chief Len McCluskey, and Milne.
Over time, Corbyn himself cut an increasingly sad figure in many respects, exhausted and irritated by the job in almost equal measure, and especially unable to understand the furore over anti-semitism in the Party. A backbench campaigner at heart, this attitude never really left him. It was an irony that the backbenchers in the Parliamentary Labour Party, some of whom were to defect to Change UK and/or the Liberal Democrats, ended up being as much a thorn in his side as he had been to Blair and Brown under New Labour – if not more so.
The book also covers the plotting and dynamics behind the succession of Keir Starmer as leader over Rebecca Long-Bailey in the wake of Corbyn’s 2019 election defeat and is telling in its analysis:
‘… on no subject was [Corbyn] more stubborn that his own sense of identity. The painful compromises inherent in the unusual lives of holders of high office – the encroached privacy, the punishing schedules, the relentless demand for executive decision-making and swift judgement – never felt within his command… Unable to rewrite the rules of the game as he had promised, he preferred to ignore them… By 2019, Corbyn had created a vacuum for others to fill. Keir Starmer in particular has reason to be grateful for Corbyn’s squeamishness with power. The Project not only squandered its inheritance from the membership, but left its children without any meaningful bequest’ (p.357).
There is a fair chance Starmer will lead Labour to their next election victory, despite his Trotskyist origins, but clearly more as a latter-day Brown from the Party’s ‘soft left’ than as a Bennite like Corbyn. Plus la change…?
DAP

Not for Workers
Jorge Tamames: For the People: Left Populism in Spain and the US. Lawrence and Wishart, £17

Most populist movements and parties are right wing: Fidesz in Hungary, Law and Justice in Poland, Trump supporters in the US, the Bolsonaro government in Brazil. At the same time, some left-wing organisations are described as populist, such as Syriza in Greece and the former Chávez government in Venezuela. Here Jorge Tamames examines two particular cases of left-wing populism, Podemos in Spain and the support for Bernie Sanders in the US.
Unfortunately it is not entirely clear what he means by ‘populist’. He claims to follow the view of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, according to which it involves people going beyond addressing individual problems such as racism, unemployment and evictions, and joining together as a movement. In Tamames’ words ‘The result is a community mobilising to protest against an entire status quo, not merely asking for a few policy tweaks’. But it is not spelled out just how this is supposed to apply to the movements he discusses or how it relates to the features usually claimed to distinguish populism, the distinction drawn between the elite and the people, and the opposition to pluralism and separation of powers.
Podemos, of which Tamames is a member, means ‘we can’. It was formed in 2014 and received over a million votes in the European Parliament elections in May of that year. Despite its supposed populist objections to an elite, on the ballot papers it was not the Podemos logo that was used but the face of its leader Pablo Iglesias, who had become a well-known contributor to TV discussion shows. Since earlier this year, it has been a junior partner in the government run by the PSOE, which is roughly the equivalent of the Labour Party. Podemos’ programme has included increasing the minimum wage and raising taxation for the rich, so it is hard to see how they are protesting ‘against an entire status quo’, as suggested above.
Sanders, who has a fairly positive view of Pope Francis, has said that he wishes to stand up to ‘the billionaire class’. His policies included implementing universal health care, raising the minimum wage and breaking up the largest banks. In 2019 he extended this to the Green New Deal and abolishing student debt. All this is probably fairly radical in terms of US politics, and he had more support in 2016 from those under forty-five than Hillary Clinton did, but it obviously remains within the limits of capitalism, and he has twice failed to win the Presidential nomination.
As the author says, ‘I refer to Podemos and the Sanders movement as “left” populists because their agenda, while more ambitious that that of contemporary centre-left parties, is nevertheless reformist and not vastly different from that of a Western European social-democratic party in the early 1970s’. So all the fuss about left populism boils down to it being more or less the same as the Labour Party under Harold Wilson! The book gives some useful background on the impact of austerity and rising inequality, but it unsurprisingly fails to show that populism of whichever brand has anything to offer workers.
PB

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