[p2p-research] Prospect Magazine: After Capitalism

[Andy Robinson]

Michel,



Well, this discussion might have to wait till we both have time to discuss
it properly.



But I’m inclined to think the statement (about China), “many alternatives
are possible, as long as you not directly challenge the rule of the party”,
would be true most of the time in post-49 China, in Russia after the death
of Stalin in 1953, in most of eastern Europe most of the time, in Franco’s
Spain and Mussolini’s Italy.  But with qualifiers which also apply to China
today:  that the definition of what constitutes a “challenge” lies with the
rulers, and can include pretty innocuous peaceful societal activities (Falun
Gong for example, or waving a Tibetan or Taiwanese flag); that the risks
involved in being deemed to be “challenging the rule of the party” or the
state are extreme, the punishments severe; that the space for alternatives
is far less if one is deemed part of the “anti-nation”; and that the
alternatives are possible only at the level of ideas, and are suppressed the
moment any attempt is made to realise them.  So if this typifies
authoritarianism and not totalitarianism, then totalitarianism becomes
almost nonexistent in history, referring to only two cases – Nazi Germany
and high Stalinism in Russia.



Has there been “a severe social defeat of popular and democratic forces”?  I
think this would be a fair depiction of the situation in Britain (recent
resurgence notwithstanding), predicated first on the Miners’ Strike and then
the recourse to highly repressive policing of the Mayday protests.  There’s
been a dearth of any kind of widespread resistance or protest from about
2002 to the present day.  And the remaining dissident forces – numbering a
few thousand perhaps, and very much demonised – have been attempting to
recompose in a climate where any public dissident activity faces instant
repression.



I’d similarly argue that there was never an *absence *of dissenting forces
during any of the other totalitarian regimes, from contemporary China (the
resurgence of urban unrest and persistent Tibetan and Xinjiang separatism)
through Francoist Spain (persistent anti-regime protests and counterculture)
to high Stalinism (peasant resistance and insurgency from marginal
nationalities) and Nazism (movements like White Rose, Edelweiss Pirates, the
early AFA, etc, not to mention resistance in the occupied countries).  It’s
more a difference in *status *of the dissenting forces – in all these
regimes, the dissenting forces operate as “dissidents” in a hostile climate,
at considerable risk and outside the social mainstream, whereas in a
democratic regime (even a degenerated/authoritarian democratic regime) they
would normally be safe unless they were accused of particular acts.



The boundary between totalitarianism and authoritarianism is contentious,
but I’d associate the term “authoritarian” with a kind of regime found
commonly in the global South and historically in Europe, in which the
political ruling elite is part and parcel of a wider social Establishment
composed of conservative/reactionary classes (landowners, comprador or
extractive capitalists, military elite, judiciary, civil servants,
professionals) and in which the political regime exercises power mainly to
maintain and administer the broader social rule of the Establishment.
Establishment
power, as distinct from political power, is composed mainly of “concentrated
informal sanctions” and is exercised through patronage, unequal control of
resources, prestige, and cultural conservatism.  In contrast, I’d associate
totalitarianism with rule by a political class which has separated itself
from other social forces to a substantial degree, connected to a
“modernising” project which is more bourgeois than “quasi-feudal”.  It gets
more complicated I think.  There are cases where the two come very close to
one another (Franco’s Spain for instance, and several of the Latin American
dictatorships), but there are clear differences of type.  There is an
intermediary case of “army-states” where the military holds extensive power
in the state and intervenes in politics, where it is a social as well as a
political power (not simply a political class), but where it is coextensive
with a wider elite rather than accountable to it (Russia, Turkey, Pakistan).
There are also times when some authoritarian regimes may be crueller, less
tolerant, and worse in human rights terms than some totalitarian regimes.



But the point here is whether ‘authoritarian’ is a better designator than
‘totalitarian’ for a certain group of regimes.  I don’t think that what I’m
calling neo-totalitarian regimes fit with this model at all.  For one thing,
Peter Oborne’s book “The Triumph of the Political Class”, from someone with
clear affinities to the Establishment, would seem to debunk the view that
the Establishment still holds political power in Britain.  For another, the
social composition behind authoritarianism is typical of “quasi-feudal”
societies, exhibiting slow economic growth or stagnation, in which
established classes impede or channel capital accumulation to reinforce
their own power and prevent instability.  I would also expect an
authoritarian regime to contain substantial “checks and balances”, but of a
kind which hand power to the Establishment classes and elites.  And I’d
expect elite groups outside the state to be given considerable immunity and
official respect.  The traditional British unwritten constitution actually
conforms to an authoritarian model quite closely – checking the power of the
political elite by means such as the unelected House of Lords, extensive
judicial power using common law, local autonomy of each police authority
(implicitly connected to local elites), a large interpretive role for the
civil service with its inflexible appointment procedures, independence of
schools, universities, doctors, etc.  A contemporary example might be
somewhere like Thailand, with an elite-linked judiciary able to dismiss
governments, the army periodically intervening in politics on the side of
the elite, and police chiefs as concerned to represent elite interests as to
obey their political superiors.  Yet, what we have seen recently in Britain,
America and elsewhere is a corrosion of all checks and balances, including
those which hand power to the Establishment.  Indeed, the Establishment as a
social force seems to be decomposing.  The professions are not at all shown
respect, quite the opposite – they are subject to increasingly severe
surveillance and micro-regulation (proposals in Britain for doctors to be
re-tested every five years and certified by the state instead of the BMA
being a case in point).



Your point that things could get even worse is certainly valid.  But I’d
question whether things would need a qualitative change to reach the depths
of the most extreme kinds of totalitarianism.  I feel it would only need a
quantitative change, a more systematic, even crueller application of
existing categories and “powers”.  For instance, the proscription of
dissident organisations, the periodic arrest and harsh sentencing of
dissident “leaders” and a portion of the membership, mistreatment in
custody, arrest for expression of opinions, systematic denial of all rights
while in prison or even on release (“control orders”), extensive
surveillance, constant vulnerability to pretext or suspicion raids, are
already suffered by the radical Muslim political movement in Britain.  It
would only take an executive decision, not a change of regime or even of
law, to extend this to other categories of dissidents.  If that happened,
anyone who professed (say) anarchist or Marxist views could be locked up, or
at least purged.  There’s very little limit, too, to what could be done with
the ASBO regime in regard to banning and harshly criminalising any type of
social activity the executive decided to target.  In America, an equivalent
would be the use of the “enemy combatant” designation, or of already
existing powers to strip citizenship for political reasons.  Which doesn’t
leave very much they CAN’T do.  They could probably even set up death camps
if they wanted (though not being racialist regimes, I doubt they will –
they’re quite happy with detention/torture camps such as Guantanamo).



There are a few things that, at present, they don’t do.  They don’t execute,
they don’t usually open fire on protesters, they don’t carry out mass
arrests, they don’t generally detain in camps (actually China does execute
on a huge scale, and America too; and both also detain in camps, but let’s
stick with Britain for now).  But I think this is because they’ve found more
publicity-friendly variants of the same practices.  For instance, instead of
executing, they give “indefinite” (life) sentences, or keep people on
“control” regimes which could lead to re-imprisonment at any time.  They
don’t open fire, but they extensively abuse “less lethal” weapons, sometimes
fatally.  They “corral” as an alternative to mass arrests.  They use
detention centres instead of camps.  And there are also things that
neo-totalitarians can do, which classic totalitarians cannot.  For instance,
the surveillance regime is far more intrusive now, and the former limits on
the frequency of things like ID card checks are being eliminated by
technology.



bw

Andy
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