The most obvious of these are the various Leninist/Trotskyist parties, who are openly vanguardist in theory and practice (derived mostly from the writings of Lenin). Leninist theory states that the working class is by itself unable to achieve the required consciousness to challenge capitalism, and so requires a political party led by professional revolutionaries to lead it – a vanguard party. The concept of leadership is very important. Trotsky himself wrote that “the historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership” and this perspective continues to inform his contemporary followers.

This means that vanguardist politics of the Leninist/Trotskyist kind aims essentially at securing leadership of various campaigns and organisations. The clearest recent example is the attempts to unseat NUS President Aaron ‘Despicable’ Porter. The problem here is that the mass, direct action and social disobedience witnessed at Millbank and subsequently in London and across the country has already bypassed Porter and made him irrelevant. So to channel that energy back into replacing Porter with a member or fellow traveller of some Trotskyist party is to recuperate the movement, to go from mass, self-organised direct action back onto the terrain of representative politics, where action once more becomes the preserve of privileged actors – the ‘revolutionary leadership’ of the vanguard party. The proliferation of anti-cuts fronts, all calling for unity whilst splitting off under the leadership of the different Trotskyist parties has to be understood in the same light.

Vanguardism lives by sucking the life out of mass movements, and lives the more the more it sucks. But Leninists/Trotskyists are only the most obvious, because they are self-described, kind of vanguardists. Vanguardism also exists in the form of radical liberal activism, often aping the language of anarchism.

Radical liberal activism talks about ‘direct action’, but it has a very different take on what that means compared to anarchists, based on a very different reading of history. For anarchists, Emile Pouget sums up the concept eloquently: “Direct Action is a notion of such clarity, of such self-evident transparency, that merely to speak the words defines and explains them. It means that the working class, in constant rebellion against the existing state of affairs, expects nothing from outside people, powers or forces, but rather creates its own conditions of struggle and looks to itself for its means of action.” This is the original idea of direct action as mass, collective, working class action carried out by workers themselves. For anarchists, it is mass struggles which change the course of history – winning things from the 8-hour day to universal suffrage.

However, the clarity and self-evident transparency that Pouget saw in the term ‘direct action’ has given way with the later emergence of a rival conception which in many ways is the opposite of the anarchist one. This radical liberal version is best summed up by an oft-quoted maxim by Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Here instead of mass, collective, working class action we have individual, exemplary action by ‘committed citizens’. A clearer example of the gulf between anarchism and liberalism would be hard to find.

It is this liberal version of direct action that also ends up in vanguardism. Once more the task of social change is taken away from the workers themselves and entrusted to a group of specialists acting on their behalf. However, instead of a vanguard party, here the specialists are “committed activists” willing to sacrifice themselves to arrest and police brutality for the cause of justice. There is no doubting the sincerity, and often courage of such activists. But such a mode of action is nonetheless vanguardist – activists are substituted for the working class in our emancipatory struggle.

This has practical implications for anti-cuts struggles. The liberal conception of direct action promotes tactics which privilege individual actions, often favouring ‘accountable action’ where arrest ceases to be an occupational hazard but part of the objective. Activists encourage people to glue themselves to crime scenes and get criminal records which can seriously hamper employment possibilities. For full-time activists this isn’t a problem (whether they scrape by on the dole or are personally wealthy enough to not need a job). And many students don’t realise the consequences further down the road – consequences which apply disproportionately to working class students lacking the connections of their more affluent peers.

Encouraging people to sit down and be beaten by police is rationalised as providing outrageous footage – a sign of the righteousness of the cause, no doubt informed by a Mead-style misreading of the history of US Civil Rights and Indian Independence struggles (which were won by mass struggles, not individuals martyring themselves). In fact police violence is explained by protestors not being passive enough – the cries to ‘sit down, sit down!’ effectively blame the victims of police violence. The youths who fight back against the police don’t ‘get it’. Lacking the ‘correct’ consciousness, they should leave it to the specialists in social change.

But most importantly, by separating action from class struggle, the liberal activist idea of ‘direct action’ dooms us to defeat. The only power workers have, whether currently employed or not, is in disrupting the economy. Vanguards acting on our behalf, no matter how committed, sincere or courageous simply cannot stop the cuts; the numbers of people willing to be assaulted and arrested as a point of principle are simply nowhere near sufficient. Which is reassuring when you think about it. On the other hand, thousands of young people have already shown a willingness to resist police attacks, break out of kettles and inflict property damage. This mass, self-organised collective action just might generalise into a movement capable of disrupting the economy and stopping the cuts. All attempts to channel it into vanguardist politics of any kind can only throttle that potential.

And then there’s the cuts. Here too it is pointed out how neoliberal deregulation in the financial sector led to the kind of speculative antics that triggered the financial crisis – yet more neoliberalism is prescribed as the cure. The PCS union and UKUncut activists point out the massive £120bn or so ‘tax gap’ that if collected could easily save more than austerity (instead, the government is cutting tax collectors). It is pointed out that the welfare state was founded at a time when Britain was bankrupt and heavily indebted from WWII, but is now being dismantled in the upswing from a relatively minor recession and a modest national debt. In short, there’s no shortage of arguments as to the ineffectiveness or unreasonableness of neoliberal policies. So why aren’t we winning?

The reason that reason gets us nowhere is that politics is not based on good arguments but on power relations. Democracies institutionalise power struggles to a certain extent, since it’s rather disruptive to have periodic coups and civil wars every time there needs to be a change of government. But only certain interests are institutionalised. Here’s a clue: they’re not ours. Thus none of the parties anywhere near power oppose the cuts (Labour included). The Lib Dems are a textbook example of what happens when previously minor parties get near power – they become all-but indistinguishable from the rest. Since our interests do not figure in this system, reasoned argument gets us nowhere. We win the argument, the cuts go ahead anyway and at best we can feel a sense of righteous indignation.

If we want to win, we need to recognise that being right doesn’t cut it. It’s a matter of power. A case in point: it is true that the British welfare state was founded at a time when the national finances were in a far worse state. But it’s worth looking at what the ruling class were saying when the welfare state was founded. For the avoidance of any doubt, let’s hear from a Tory: “We must give them reforms or they will give us revolution”, said Quintin Hogg in 1943. When the ruling class feared the working class, a welfare state was a price worth paying. Now they don’t fear us, they feel confident to dismantle it. So the paradox is without the threat of revolution, reformism is a non-starter. On the other hand, with an unruly mob on the streets and a strike-prone workforce, those reasoned reformists all of a sudden look like workable negotiation partners to whoever’s in government. They’ll no doubt claim it was their ‘responsible’ protests which got them there.

It’s all about the balance of class forces. It’s primarily a power struggle, not a moral argument. We might have right on our side, but might will determine the outcome. For the fight against the cuts, there are several implications. Symbolic protest won’t cut it. If actions like UKUncut move from largely awareness-raising into the realms of economic blockades, then we’ll be getting somewhere. And the state will react accordingly, we must be prepared for more police violence if we’re serious about winning. No doubt such tactics will also be condemned by those notionally on ‘our side’ just like Aaron Porter condemned the Millbank Riot which kick-started this movement. The irony is without such a movement, they’re powerless too. But given the TUC to the Labour Party, and the lack of independent workers’ organisation, sustained, co-ordinated strike action against austerity looks unlikely. On the other hand economic blockades have been used to great effect in France both as a standalone tactic and in support of strike action.

The essence of the idea is to blockade economically significant targets from shopping centres to commuter hubs to fuel depots in order to inflict economic damage comparable to a strike. To be effective, these must be mass actions, otherwise the police are adept at arresting the participants, especially if d-locked or glued-on in the activist fashion. We don’t need martyrs, we need results! We’ve already seen that large crowds can be capable of defending themselves against police attacks, especially if they go prepared knowing what to expect (like some of the protective clothing that has appeared on London demos). Winning the arguments and making reasoned criticisms is all well and good, but it won’t stop the cuts. As a man who spent most of his life making criticisms said, “not criticism but revolution is the driving force of history.* When the ruling class fear US, we’ll start winning concessions.

* Karl Marx, The German Ideology – his philosophical attack on those in his day who thought ideas alone drove the course of history.

You can download a copy of SolFed’s basic workplace rights leaflet, ‘ the Stuff Your Boss doesn’t want you to know’ here.

Liberalism: doctrine of the violent minority

Liberalism in fact is nothing but the ideology of minority violence par excellence. Margaret Thatcher’s favourite thinker, Adam Smith, was refreshingly frank about this back in the 18th century:

“Laws and government may be considered in this and indeed in every case as a combination of the rich to oppress the poor, and preserve to themselves the inequality of the goods which would otherwise be soon destroyed by the attacks of the poor, who if not hindered by the government would soon reduce the others to an equality with themselves by open violence.” (source)

The father of liberalism, John Locke, was equally candid: private property was prior to government, and government existed to protect private property. Consequently, property is freedom, and only proprietors should have political representation in the state. For liberalism legitimate political violence is that of the state, exercised to defend the privilege of the propertied minority (Locke’s ‘right to revolt’ only applied should a government fail to do this). Despite the bitter struggles to extend the franchise beyond the male propertied elite, it still does this remarkably well. The Liberal Democrats’ pre-meditated abandonment of their pledge on tuition fees is only the latest example. Much like Aaron Porter, subsequent self-serving backtracking notwithstanding, they stand at odds with those they purport to represent.

This has led many to say they’re not doing their job. Our representatives are meant to represent us, and they’re not doing an adequate job. This completely misunderstands the nature of representative politics. The string of ‘bad apples’ that have headed the NUS; warmonger Jack Straw, racist liar Phil Woolas, despicable Aaron Porter; the undeniable Machiavellianism of politicians who say whatever it takes to get elected then go back on their word once in office… These are not exceptions but the rule. Representation produces so many bad apples because it is rotten to the roots. It was designed to empower the propertied class and it does so like clockwork. The problem is not that ‘our representatives’ aren’t doing their job but that they exist.

Chomsky meets Gramsci

Once elevated to positions of power, with the salaries, prestige and privileges to match, representatives no longer share our interests. Careerist NUS bureaucrats and lying politicians are a symptom not a cause, the problem is the inherent divergence of interests between representatives and the represented, which forever frustrates attempts to replace ‘bad’ representatives with ‘good’ ones, who go bad in turn. Representation means elected officials are empowered to speak for and take decisions on behalf of those who elected them, as opposed to simply carrying out the will of the electors (as with mandated delegates). Guy Debord had the Leninist dictatorships in mind when he wrote that “the representation of the working class radically opposes itself to the working class” (source), but the point generalises to representation itself. So if the system’s rotten, how does it survive?

Clearly, it does not do so by brute force alone. Unlike the various flavours of tyrannical regime, liberal democracy requires a large degree of consent, without which the rule of the propertied can only be enforced by brute force – too much of which reduces liberal democracy to straightforward tyranny. This consent is not a natural phenomenon, but is constantly being manufactured. The role of the free press here is central – as the headlines following the Millbank riot would suggest.

Noam Chomsky’s famous ‘propaganda model’ explains how this works, without the direct political censorship of dictatorial regimes nor resort to conspiracy. Rather the media consist of businesses that aim to make a profit by selling a product to a customer. However the product is not neutral information sold to readers – the media make most of their money by selling their audience’s attention to advertisers, which in turn means that information is subjected to different pressures and filters. The information reported is shaped by business interests and corporate hierarchies : at the top sit corporate and state interests, and like in any hierarchy, promotion is achieved by pleasing your superiors. Writing cutting exposes of said corporate and state interests is a sure-fire way to abort a promising career. The safer path is to internalise the expected line and repeat it like Pavlov’s dog.

Altogether now: ‘the violence was despicable’, ‘anarchist infiltrators’, ‘outside agitators’, ‘ruining it for the majority’… We even see this working with the unpaid careerists around the student press. In York, the student paper has even been identifying students who took part in the occupation of Millbank. The aspiring Pavlovian editors are no doubt eager to bolster their CVs with examples that they’ve learned the correct script. In a year or two, they’ll likely be on the dole queue with the rest of us, if they aren’t copying and pasting press releases for some local paper somewhere. But hey, maybe if they grass up enough students they’ll get a foot on the propaganda ladder, manufacturing consent.

Hegemony and repression

The consent thus manufactured is what the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci called hegemony, where the ideas of the ruling class – the propertied – are accepted by the majority. Thus liberalism is the default ideology of capitalism. Pretty much all of us start off as liberals, and only change our ideas when certain facts hit us in the face. Sometimes those facts are batons.

Since liberal democracy rules by hegemony and not brute force alone, using too much repression undermines itself. While liberal regimes have historically turned into illiberal ones when faced with internal unrest (we need only think of the Weimar Republic), in general hegemonic rule is far more stable, easier to maintain and more conducive to capitalist economics than plain old tyranny. Thus the violence of liberal democratic states can be self-defeating. An example is the occupations here at Sussex uni earlier this year.

When students occupied management offices in Sussex House in March, management fabricated a hostage situation and called in riot police (clearly they knew perjury charges wouldn’t be brought against the defenders of property). The subsequent police violence hastened the end of the occupation, but created a massive backlash on campus. The next week, hundreds of students occupied the Arts A2 lecture theatre in direct defiance of a High Court injunction.

The first time, no major laws were broken and the police attacked with violence not seen on campus for some time (the videos are still on YouTube). The second time, over a thousand students and staff openly broke the law with impunity. No doubt the state had the violent capacity to evict the occupation. But it felt unable to use it for fear of losing legitimacy and weakening their hegemony.

Direct action, not representation

So direct action like occupations or the Millbank riot opens up a counter-hegemonic space that not only challenges the state but exploits a chink in its armour. And few who take part in such actions are unchanged by the experience. Once you’ve broken a window or punched a cop, or even simply left the route of the sanctioned A-B march against the orders of cops or stewards, liberal democratic hegemony never quite has the same hold over you. Once you’ve read the newspapers take on events you experienced first hand, you can never quite take them at face value again.

“Direct Action is a notion of such clarity, of such self-evident transparency, that merely to speak the words defines and explains them. It means that the working class, in constant rebellion against the existing state of affairs, expects nothing from outside people, powers or forces, but rather creates its own conditions of struggle and looks to itself for its means of action.” – Émile Pouget

Direct action is fundamentally opposed to the politics of representation. It means the dispossessed – i.e. those of us who don’t own enough property to make a living – taking action for themselves independently of, and invariably against those who claim to represent them. It can mean strikes, occupations, riots, blockades. It is strongest when it is done on a mass scale, involving people who’ve never taken such action before.

Representatives want to channel anger into safe outlets which don’t challenge existing power structures – of which they are a part. They oppose direct action so vehemently, so reflexively precisely because it renders them superfluous. If they had it their way, we’d all peacefully march through London, chant some slogans, then go home. A million marchers didn’t stop the war. The difference between representative politics and direct action is the difference between saying ‘Not in my name’ and ‘No fucking way’, between feeling like you’re doing something and fighting to win.

With the vicious, and yes, violent austerity programme, the stakes are simply too high for all of us to do anything else: the future they have written for us is call centres and SSRIs. The Millbank riot has to be just the beginning. It has to set the tone. In 1912, the Suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst wrote:

“There is something that governments care for more than human life, and that is the security of property, and so it is through property that we shall strike the enemy…. Those of you who can break windows—break them.”

We need not necessarily break windows, but we will need to break some laws. In doing so, we’ll no doubt meet the uniformed violent minority of liberalism, defending the interests of the propertied, of capital, of austerity. No riot, no matter how spectacular will reverse the austerity programme alone. But widespread direct action in our campuses, towns and workplaces just might. In 2006, French students reversed the CPE law which attacked the rights of young workers after weeks of rolling direct action, including the use of economic blockades of strategic targets – train stations, department stores, major junctions… It can be done, and as friends new and old, lovers and strangers we can do it.

Thousands of students walked out, 2500-3000 people at the peak; good mood on the demo, good reception, lots of conversation with passers-by; the official end-point was ignored; 1500 people went to try and occupy the Town Hall, were kettled there, broke out; then 500 of them went to occupy vodafone, looted Poundland, blocked roads, attacked a police station, then got dispersed and kettled on the sea-front. The Brighton Student Walkout blog is updating an already-detailed account of the day here.

Follow the occupation on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stopsussexcuts
Website:  http://defendsussex.wordpress.com/

From a story in the Argus, the local paper:

A student who only wanted to be known as Tom, said: “About 200 of us have just started an occupation in a lecture theatre on campus in protest at the proposals to cut tuition fees and the cuts to education funding.

“The occupation is calling for students in universities and colleges across the country to follow our lead. People are discussing how long we will stay here at the moment.”

The 22-year-old added that the occupation had been a spontaneous decision and that people had been inspired by the protest in London last week.

He said: “It has brought new energy to our campaign. The support of our Wednesday protest has been carried forward to our campus.”

He said they had decided to occupy the Fulton building because it was new and expensive.

He said: “It opened at the same time they made more than 100 lecturers redundant. We are now reclaiming this space.”

Breaking glass, building solidarity?

Yesterday was glorious. It was inspiring, fun and yes, ‘anarchic.’ I spent most of it laughing and hollering into the brisk air on those sunlit streets. Scary, huh? The news reports seemed to think it was very serious. That may have been because of the seriousness of the cause for which the demonstration was organised, and indeed the violence of the attack on education by the politicians, directors of institutions and the rest, is far greater than anything demonstrators could have dreamed of doing, even the absolute plank who chucked a fire extinguisher from the roof.

Larger demonstrations have at least 3 important functions- inspiring the local campaign work, adding courage and perhaps leverage to the national campaigns by raising their profile, and creating a semi-autonomous space which is a sort of ‘practise’ for a revolutionary situation where people discuss, learn, show their creativity and put their beliefs into action. As such, tactics should be weighed up with these in mind.

It just so happens that on Tuesday I had been reading an article on such tactics as those used at Millbank, only regarding the Toronto G20 demonstrations (http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2010.12-essay-the-question-remains/1/). Much of the article is precisely about ‘the limits of protest,’ and pointed out that discussion of the demonstrations was shut down in what we might call ‘mainstream discourse’ because of the tactics used. I’m not interested in the ‘intrinsic morality’ of property destruction.

My only sympathy is with the invariably low-waged sods that have to clean up. A part of me says that it is not our fault if people use their own deluded sensibilities as an excuse to ignore the issues, and that we shouldn’t pander to such sensibilities. Another says that like it or not, this is a consequence and could be marked up as a downside of such tactics. However, I suspect it simply vindicates those who disagree with our position anyway, and does raise the profile of the cause, nay the movement, in a way that the march and rally alone wouldn’t. Whatever your opinion of it as a whole, in the popular recollection of the British suffrage movement, whose tactics were best remembered and are probably the most inspiring? I’d suggest it was the WSPU, and so I’ll throw it out there that property damage is a valid way to grab public attention. And let’s remember that mainstream media and majority opinion, however linked, are not equal.

The media reaction would be disappointing if it weren’t so predictable. Jeremy Paxman’s attempt at character assassination of Clare Solomon on Newsnight was pathetic for example, but pretty standard. It was, after all just ‘a bunch of rowdy anarchists and other troublemakers, not ‘real’ students.’ The implication that only students currently in formal education, and within that perhaps only HE students, have the right to be there is in itself preposterous of course. The cuts are an assault on us all: lower management, families, school students, teachers, lecturers and practically everyone else in between. Even the bankers are affected, although they probably don’t lose sleep over such long-term repercussions. And more than that the cuts are, in fact, an assault on thought itself.

A more rooted problem in much of the mainstream coverage, perhaps, is the caricature of a student as a twenty-something consumer of Heinz products. This isn’t an accurate reflection of students. It also couldn’t be further from the general concept of each and every individual in society being a student – I know I never want to stop learning, and that concept is something I firmly believe in as a principle of action and organisation. And for the record, if we are to make such concrete distinctions, there was a greater proportion of those ‘ordinary students’ than ‘troublemakers’ in and around that building.

Finally, on the demonstrators’ side of things, I’d say a large number of the people there, and yes there were thousands at Millbank Tower (don’t take my word for it, check the Daily Mail), had never been on a demonstration before. Was it educational for them? Yes. Did it radicalise some people? Yes. Did we descend with some of the fire in our bellies that the French and Greeks are famous for? Yes. Would I say it was a positive experience overall? Certainly. Never surrender!

Since finishing a postgraduate course, Teresa has been looking for a job in Brighton. “I have been applying for at least 4 to 5 jobs a week for the past 4 months but did not get any job. Often I have been told I am overqualified for the positions and even though I tried to impress on them that I would like to work – I was told that they can get someone less qualified to do the work on minimum wages.”

“When renting any place I have to keep in mind that I will not get any help towards any heating or water rents etc. I only get £62 a week for unemployment benefit, which also has to cover heating and water bills together with food, travel expenses or any other bills that I may have to pay.”

“I am in deeper debt now than before I was on benefit. I had to borrow money off friends to pay for any extra cost that I incur. For example, I needed to move out of my place and had to find £1420 to secure myself a studio apartment away from the city center which is relatively cheaper.”

“It is very difficult to find something that is suitable. Ideally I would have liked to rent a one bedroom flat, but that is out of question if you are living in Brighton as the maximum we can claim on housing benefit (HB) is £600/month. And remember there is no extra money for gas/electricity/water bills. A decent sized studio with a separate but very small kitchen in Brighton/Hove and surrounding area will cost approx £575/month. You can find a bedsit (one room containing sleeping and cooking area) for less, but they are extremely small and badly kept, often sharing bathrooms with several other tenants – they are utterly depressing. People on benefit are forced to choose from the bottom of the pile as most of the time these are the only properties rented to them.

Given their precarious money situation, people on HB face additional hurdles. “Most places are reluctant to rent out to people on benefits and sometimes say so openly.  “No DSS needs to reply” and such. Also, even if they do not say this openly, often they will require you to to pay a minimum 6 weeks rent as a deposit and a month’s rent in advance on top of minimum £270 for agency fees. This is almost impossible to pay for someone who is in receipt of benefit and so in all probability does not have any savings.”

“I know a few people that have ended up in hostels, an environment that is extremely depressing and self destructive as it is very difficult to keep up hope without help and understanding. The system does not cater for this reality but is geared to make one feel unworthy and a failure instead of pointing out that this is a failure of the society as a whole.”

How can we fight back? By making sure we spread the truth : anyone can end up in this situation. Unemployment is the product of a warped capitalist society that we live in today which is only interested in making the maximum profit with giving very little back to the society. A decent standard of living by unemployed people is not a privilege but is the right for everyone including employees who work in an environment which provides no job security or guarantee. And remember, todays employed are tomorrows ‘dole scroungers’.

The proposed changes
• The local HB rates will be reduced from the median rent in a particular area to the 30th percentile. This means that while at the moment half of all places are affordable, from 1 October 2011 only the cheapest 30% will be.
• The maximum amount that can be claimed will be the four bedroom rate, rather than five as now. This means that some families will have to move if their rent is higher than the four bedroom rate.
• An end to “excess” payments of up to £15 a week which claimants could keep if their rent was below the average local rent (from 1. April 2011).
• People under 35 will be forced into shared accomodation (from April 2012).  As more people will require shared accomodation, rents will go up for everyone – landlords are already rubbing their hands.
• The unemployed will be arbitrarily punished: after one year on JSA, HB will be slashed by 10% (from April 2013)
• For example a 30 year old currently receiving £150pw to stay in a one bedroom flat, will only receive £78pw to stay in a bedsit (30th percentile, current B&H rents). If they are jobless for a year, this will go down to £70pw.
• Changes will not take effect at once for all claimants, but will generally be on the anniversary of the first claim

October 20th saw the unveiling of the long-awaited Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), the coalition government’s detailed blueprint on precisely how they plan to screw the working class. Little within the CSR was a source of surprise, with cuts roughly at the level that had been predicted in the run up. While the scale was predictably significantly below the 40% that had been mooted, this was clearly an attempt to ‘soften us up’ and feel lucky the cuts were “only” 20%, as if it had been taken straight out of the pages of ‘Negotiation for Dummies’.

These attacks are directed across the entire working class, with no section spared. Savage attacks on the unemployed, sick and disabled sit alongside mass public sector redundancies, attacks on parents side by side with increasing prices through the VAT increase. Clearly, this is not an attempt to attack or discipline any section of us, but a comprehensive, wholesale assault on us all. Basic safety nets of the welfare state that most of us would take for granted are being dismantled before our eyes – this can’t be seen as just a slight rejigging of government spending, but an attempt to significantly shift the balance of class forces, and to redefine the support an individual can expect from society.

What becomes clear however, is that just as much as these attacks are clearly not about reducing the deficit or dealing with the recession (with most major economists predicting it will have the opposite effect), it is also not just a matter of ‘nasty Tory ideology’. These are the exact same attacks that any of the other political parties would have been forced to make at this point – the administration of a capitalist state requires constant attack on the working class to be profitable, and here it continues. While certain leftists may lie about or whitewash the past in order to deliberately hide Labour’s complicity (and essential role) in the cuts in order to serve the ends of their organisations, this is far too important for that – while the vast majority of the public quite rightly blame these cuts on the coalition, attempts to lumber the movement to resist them with the legacy of an utterly despised and discredited party such as Labour would clearly be suicide.

As this is an attack across all of us, it is only on that basis it can be successfully fought – the opposition to the cuts must be on a class-wide basis. It is no good a multitude of separate contesting campaigns resisting the cuts “in their area” – as this will just reduce any movement into a zero sum game whereby the exact allocation of cutting is battle out – it would be a tragedy if where cuts are successfully fought off, the government is able to merely push them onto a different section of society. Nor is it something we can win by making the correct argument and appeal to the rational judgement of politicians. The only way these cuts can be stopped is making their implementation impossible. As the anti-Poll Tax movement of the early 1990s showed, and as the current movement in France begins to reveal, the only way these plans can be derailed is if we simply do not accept their imposition, and make the country ungovernable.