The GameStop short squeeze and why any market indigestion can be very bad for working people

Lisbeth Latham

Over the last week social media and the mainstream media has been filled with stories of how Redditors may have bankrupted some hedge funds who had been attempting to short the stock of US games retail company GameStop which had been struggling during 2020 under the dual pressures of the COVID pandemic and the increasing competition from games streaming platforms for market share. Much of the commentary has been a level of schadenfreude at hedge funds being beaten at their own game, which is understandable - however in enjoying the idea that this is ordinary people bringing down mighty capitalists, it is important to understand that the potential impact of the disruption of the shorting of GameStop is potentially much broader than that event, and the impacts will potentially be felt outside the stock market, and if that happens it will be working people who pay the price.

The origin of the stock market was a mechanism for raising capital for the establishment and expansion of companies. Companies, in exchange for investment, would offer other capitalists ownership of part of the company (i.e. shares) these could then be traded on the stock market with other capitalists. Originally the main value of shares was that they entitled their owners to a share of future profits - dividends. However as capitalism expanded and the opportunity to invest in profitable expansion of production in the real economy the stock market became an avenue for the investment of excess capital for speculation, but rather than for long-term returns on company profits speculation was based on short-term returns on variation in stock value and the creation of novel financial instruments that could be traded and invested in. For decades the stock market has primarily served as an avenue for such speculation by capitalists who are able to achieve better returns via such speculation than they can via investment in the “real economy”. This reality has been exacerbated in the last year where disruptions in the real economy caused by the COVID pandemic has further disrupted the real economy and there has been more concentrated speculation in stocks seen as either safe bets - such as big tech stocks - or raiding stocks which are seen as vulnerable, as was attempted with GameStop.

GameStop had been widely seen as one of a number of legacy stocks whose business had had its day. In late 2020, the value of the shares in a number of bricks and mortar companies such as GameStop, AMC Entertainment (US cinema company), and BB Liquidation (the holding company for the liquidation of BlockBuster). A number of hedge funds predicted this rise would be short term and began to short the stock - they were not quiet about their efforts and more and more funds joined the effort, demonstrating the irrationality of the marketer as the total short position of all the hedge funds accounted for 140% of GameStop stock.

Shorting is essentially a bet, or speculation, that a financial instrument will decline in value in either immediate or medium/long term. Depending on the type of instrument you want to short you will do it in different ways. With stocks, an investor will “borrow” stocks from another owner with an agreement to return them at a later date. The investor then sells the stock, reaping the full value at their current price on the assumption that when they need to return the stocks they will be able to purchase the stock at a lower price than they sold it at - they reap the profit between the two values - if the stock instead goes higher then they will lose money on their bet.

In response members of the sub-Reddit WallStreetBets, which regularly coordinates collective short-term investment by small traders, noticed the massive short and proposed an effort to boost the share prices of these three shares using online trading platforms such as RobinHood - as doing so would not just undermine the shorts of the hedge funds but provide an opportunity to also make money as the hedge funds tried to cover their losses.

Between the close of the exchange on Wednesday, January 20 and January 27, the price of Gamestop stock had risen from US$39.12 to US$347.51. A number of the hedge funds had already covered their position by the close of trading on the January - hedge fund Melvin Capital announced they had covered their short position for a loss of US$2.75 billion while Citron Research reported it had covered the majority of their short with a 100% loss of their investment. The need for hedge funds to cover their short position and buy massive volumes of shared was a major factor in the driving up on the share prices, adding to this was other investors seeing an opportunity to make money in the process and buying shares in the hope of selling them again to the hedge funds.

The response by many to the events around GameStop has been one of joy at the pain being experienced by hedge funds. While this demonstrates understandable hostility to Wall Street and more particularly hedge funds, which are thoroughly parasitic, however, the process has a much wider impact than simply these funds losing money or potentially going bankrupt - this has the potential to spread much further through stock markets and more problematically into the real economy.

It is estimated that hedge funds have lost up to US$5 billion in their short, most companies do not have that level of liquidity, as a result in order to cover these losses they have had to sell other assets to meet their obligations - in a number of situations the shares they have gone long. Offloading large volumes of collateral at short notice can only result in driving down the value of those assets and potentially forcing others, particularly those who are heavily leveraged, to dump their position to avoid the risk of losing money themselves. For this reason, there has been a dramatic increase in the level of volatility in stock markets with the Volatility Index rising sharply. A number of tech stocks that had been massively overpriced over the past year have seen massive sell-offs. A primary driver for this has been the need of hedge funds covering their short positions selling their long positions in these stocks - but also other investors selling in response to the volatility with stocks such as Netflix dropping five per cent.

The problem with this process is not that an individual hedge fund may collapse, or that this or that firm may see it’s stock rise or fall, or that a lot of the people participating in the events of Wednesday will lose a lot of money - while others will make a fortune. Let’s be clear everyone involved was participating in a gamble to make money, no matter what their professed motivations. What we should be concerned about is that the stock market - whilst technically separated from the real economy can cause major disruptions to the real economy. An economy which is extremely fragile due to the impact of not the Pandemic but the lingering effects of the 2007-2008 global financial crisis and the ongoing accumulation crisis which was highlighted by the 1973 oil crisis. What this means is that sneezes such as that of January 27 risk a broader financial collapse, the consequence of which will not be primarily felt by billionaires but by ordinary working people who will lose jobs and see their retirement funds evaporate - just as has happened after every major stock market crash.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

This article is posted under copyleft, verbatim copying and distribution of the entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved. If you reprint this article please email me at revitalisinglabour@gmail.com to let me know.

Read more...

On Trump’s Twitter ban

Lisbeth Latham

On January 8, Twitter announced that Trump would be permanently banned from the platform, this was followed by an announcement by Amazon that it would no longer be hosting right-wing social media platform Parler on its servers, and that Apple and Google were removing Parler from their app stores. These announcements have greeted with predictable howls of outrage from the right about freedom of speech and prompted discussions to limit the ability of Twitter and other social media companies to ban users. However, the move was also met with concern and opposition by sections of the left concerned by these bans and the potential that the same policy could be used to silence the left. Whilst the right’s statements are inspired by demagoguery, both their statements and those by left opponents fundamentally misunderstand the question of free speech as an unfettered right that trumps all other concerns. Moreover, many left’s criticisms fundamentally misunderstand the problems of corporate control under capitalism and how we should challenge this power.

Trump’s banning from Facebook and Twitter was not just a response to his comments and tweets around the insurrectionary storming of the Capitol building on January 6. It followed years of Trump using Twitter as a platform for incitement and misinformation in violation of Twitter’s terms and conditions. Moreover, there has been an ongoing debate about the proliferation of racist and misogynist material and harassment on social media platforms and their failure to properly apply their own Terms and Service about appropriate behaviour.

The emergence of the internet, social media, and digital media have been seen as making a massive contribution to the democratisation of the dissemination of information, as they offer relatively cheap mechanisms to potentially reach millions of people. At the same time, the reality is that the democratic character and opportunity to equal access to these mediums is relatively illusionary. Whilst anyone can establish a Twitter account, the ability to use Twitter, or any other social media, as a mechanism for communicating with others is not equal and it is not unmediated. From their inception, social media companies have been attempting to develop ways in which to monetise their platforms. This has primarily been achieved by the introduction of algorithms which limit organic reach encourages users to explore spending money to increase reach or attract followers. The reality is that like other mediums, social media do not provide equal platforms across society – they disproportionately favour the powerful – who are able to exploit their power and wealth to generate substantially greater reach than the average person.

Freedom of speech is one of the great achievements of the bourgeois-democratic revolutions beginning in the seventeenth century – the idea that the state should not be able to punish or persecute individuals and groups for saying things that the state objected to. Having said this, it is also a concept which is now widely abused, with people increasing suggesting any critique of speech as being a violation of this “right” – seeing freedom of speech as a right to speak without consequence or responsibility, and right that more important than all other rights including the rights of others to their own freedom speech and autonomy.

The denial of a platform is not a violation of freedom of speech, as there is no right to any given platform – if there were then the reality would be that for the majority of the world’s population it would be a right that is violated on a daily basis. Moreover to argue that to deny the right of any publication or organization to be able to withdraw a platform, on the basis that it is a violation of free speech is to reject the concepts of editorial independence, moral responsibility, and autonomy of individuals in general. Moreover, it robs the powerless of important political weapons of demanding the withdrawal and denial of platforms.

It would mean that a publishing house could not withdraw a publishing contract because of an assessment that a particular author was an anathema to their values (or more accurately a risk to their profits) such as publishing company Simon & Schuster cancelling Milo Yiannopoulos’s publishing deal. It would mean that the other Simon & Schuster contracted authors who threatened to leave the publisher were really part of denying freedom of speech – even though they were threatening their own loss of a platform. It would mean a right to the far-right to appearances on TV and Radio, something that has been a central target of left and anti-fascist mobilising for decades.

More chillingly, this argument feeds into the campaign by conservative government’s globally to criminalise boycott and divestment campaigns aimed at promoting that companies and organize withdraw commercial and financial relationships with problematic corporate actors such as the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign targeting businesses operating illegally in the Palestinian Occupied Territories; the campaign to block financing and insurance for Bravos’ massive Carmichael coal mine project in Queensland, and numerous corporate campaigns for justice that have been key tactics of a range of movements for decades.

The reality is that companies and other organisations act in their own interests. This means that there can be a confluence of interests between capital and the far-right, even “liberal-capitalism” will see its interests more in line with the aggressive right than the left, particularly when push comes to shove.

As a consequence, the left is less likely to have the same level of access to platforms, and we will face the danger of being denied platforms. There are a range of responses that we have historically taken – the first is recognising that capital will protect their interests and seeking to build our own networks of platforms. Historically this has been clearest with the establishment of left papers, magazines, and publishing houses. While the advance of digital technology has opened up new opportunities for communication, the underlying cost of starting up some aspects of platforms have also increased. It is potentially outside the means of individuals, but most likely not outside that of collectives of the left, most notably unions. In the event where the ability for the left to be hosted on the internet were to be challenged, it would be possible to explore and establish this capacity, and ideally, we would be doing this prior to such a challenge. Beyond this, as with anything, we need to be making the case in defence of the right of the left and progressive voices to speak and be heard, placing pressure and mobilising resistance to any attempt to silence us. However, this can’t be based on an agnostic view of, or even worse a defence, of the right to promote hatred and violence opposing actions by private companies to limit this type of speech.

The development of corporate power poses a massive threat to democracy globally. However, this power cannot be challenged by the left throwing itself into a defence of the far-right’s right to platform on social media or the internet or any other communication medium, or backing right-wing governmental attempts to limit democratic space to contest their policies and their protection of anti-social corporations and organisations.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This article is posted under copyleft, verbatim copying and distribution of the entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved. If you reprint this article please email me at revitalisinglabour@gmail.com to let me know.

Read more...

United States: On the threat of the far-right

Lisbeth Latham

On January 6 - thousands of pro-Trump militants, including members of the Proud Boys, and other white-supremacist armed groups, held protests in DC which culminated in the storming of the Capitol Building aiming to disrupting the certification of the presidential results by Congress. Similar actions occurred across the US outside of state buildings and governors’ residences. In the wake of the storming of the Capitol, there has been a wide range of reactions, this has included Trump’s sympathisers in the media seeking to shift responsibility for the attack and at the same time downplaying the importance of that attacks on the capitol. At the same time sections of the left have sought also downplay the significance of the events focusing on finding humour in the limitations of the action, the form it took, - as a mechanism both ridiculing the protests and the failures of the US state in handling them. It is important that what was attempted on the sixth is properly appreciated and that it be taken seriously by the left. Both as a stand-alone event, but also as a consequence of what it symbolises regarding the development and confidence of the fascist forces and the accommodation that they have made with the centre-right in a significant number of countries.

From the start of the confrontation at the Capitol building, sections of the right-wing media sought to downplay and shift responsibility for the actions at the capitol. Miranda Devine on Twitter attempted to argue that the protest was a consequence of the “left” supporting and normalising the “violence” of black lives matter protests - Devine, writing in the New York Post pivoted to argue that the real tragedy of January 6 was going to be felt by Republicans and Trump. Whilst as the seriousness of what was occurring became harder and harder for the right to downplay, sections of the far-right, such as Sebastion Gorka, a former Deputy Assistant to the President in the Trump Administration, shifted to an argument that in reality, it was really a false flag exercise driven by the left, most particularly Antifa. This is a gaslighting strategy, relying on the ready distribution of disinformation in the media and on social media. This is a lie that has been picked up widely on Twitter at the same time as significant numbers of registered Republicans support the events at the Capitol building.

The reality is that a significant number of participants came both intending and prepared to disrupt not just the city but the Capitol Building. That this was encouraged by Trump and other Republican leaders in the lead up to, on the day after the protest. It is also clear that these mobilisations have not stopped, and are likely to escalate in the lead up to Biden’s inauguration on January 20 and its wake.

The events of January 6, must be viewed from the broader context of the efforts by Trump and his supporters to identify ways to overturn the results of the November 3 elections and to reinstall Trump for a second term in the presidency. The right has been entirely open in this attempt to subvert the elections. This included discussions of trying to stop the certification of the elections in Congress, which had the potential to trigger a vote within Congress by state delegations, with each state getting one vote. If this was to have occurred there was a possibility that the Republicans would have potentially have had the numbers to give the presidency to Trump.

Blocking the certification of the elections has been a key focus of a number of the failed court challenges launched by Trump and his proxies. It has also been a point of public discussion as to whether VP Mike Pence had the power to do so. Also, there has been open discussion within the administration regarding Trump’s ability to invoke the “Insurrection Act” as a mechanism to mobilise the military to overturn the election results. All of these examples are attempts by Trump and his supporters seeking mechanisms to give a legal veneer to attempts to subvert the democratic process. While there was a clear intent to disrupt and intimidate the confirmation of voting, it is not clear how coherent the plan was or whether there was what could be called a plan rather than a shared intent.

It is highly unlikely that what was attempted could have been more than a disruption. Importantly it is unlikely they would have been able to maintain the disruption for much longer than was realistically possible. Even if successful, the overturning of the elections would not just have faced a judicial challenge, but may not have been accepted as legitimate by either significant sections of the state, most importantly the armed forces, or the broader community. While they were clearly trying to create a veneer of constitutionality, if it was not accepted the attempt would either have collapsed under its own weight or turned into a bloody struggle within both the state and broader society. Such a conflict would have had significant negative consequences for working communities. It would have also required the left to take a clear position against the far-right, seeking to mobilise the working class initially in defence of the state, aiming to build the confidence for independent mobilisation in defence of the working class’s interests.

The storming of the Capitol Building was only possible as a result of sections of the state deliberately undermining the capacity to respond to the known threat to Congress.

For weeks it was known that there would be a large scale mobilisation of Trump’s supporters, Most likely heavily armed, with the aim at best of disrupting and terrorising the city, if not disrupting the confirmation process itself. Much has been made of the fact that the security response to this protest was substantially smaller and less hostile than for previous protests by progressive groups, most particularly the Black Lives Matter rallies in 2020.

It is important to recognise that there are several factors playing into this. The downplaying the significance of the event, and likely size. The non-calling calling up of national guard units to support police presence at the Capitol building - this is being blamed on both the Capitol Hill Police and the Department of Defence (DoD). Who both failed to take the threat seriously and responded slowly to the unravelling events despite efforts by the Democratic Party leadership in Congress and by the Governor of Maryland to mobilise the National Guard.

However, in addition to this deliberate undermining of the capacity of the Police to protect the Capitol, there is substantial evidence of police enabling the protests in entering the building. Joshua Chaffin, Courtney Weaver, and James Politi writing in the Financial Times described the police response as “a strangely flaccid police force”. In the wake of the protests, the Capitol Hill Police chief, and the sergeants at arms for both the Senate and the House all resigned, under threats from Democratic Party Congressional leadership that they would push to remove them. Given these events, and the reports of Secret Service agents being overly close and intertwined into Trump camp. Sections of the US state will likely require heavy de-Trumpification by the Biden administration. This should be supported, both to clear out Trump’s supporters within the state and to send a message to the Republicans that there is a consequence for their actions.

Some on the left have dismissed the seriousness of the events in Washington. This dismissal has primarily based on three issues:

• That it was a relatively small ineffective action; 
• That the insurrectionists are clownish and ridiculous.
• That this was a chance for the US to get a taste of their own medicine; 

While the mobilisation and incursion into the Capitol Building were relatively small, poorly organised, and ultimately failed, those are facts that we should be thankful for. It is not something to make jokes about as that risks us being complacent about the threat posed. It is also important to understand that right-wing insurrectionary movements tend to have a very different appearance to left-wing ones. As the right is more likely to find support within significant sections of capital, and because it is often the expression of frustration and anger by the petty-bourgeoisie, it is likely to also start to develop influence within the state. This may be either by direct recruitment or as a proxy for those sections of capital supporting the movement. This means, as against left-wing movements which are reliant on the social power of mass movements. Right-wing movements don’t necessarily need to have the same level of mass base, at least initially, they can simply rely on capturing sufficient amounts of the state, most notably the armed forces and police to bring society and the rest of the state to heel. However, fascism, as a mechanism of social control and repression over the working class does eventually need to take on a mass character but in doing so it also tends to become entwined with the state.

The outfits, which people have derided, speak to the development of networks of shared identities which are being developed within sections of the US far-right which tap into a range of right-wing traditions within the US and speak to and have resonance within those traditions. Most particularly within the QAnon conspiracy, the militia movement, and various other neo-nazi, proto-fascist and far-right groups. However, despite whatever we may think of their fashion choices, it doesn’t take away from the reality that there is a significant number of heavily armed right-wing groups who are developing an insurrectionary outlook and which are being engaged with and successfully mobilised by Trump and his proxies - and that is seriously dangerous for working people, particularly communities of colour, within the US.

While there may be some sense of schadenfreude regarding the events of January 6, the people who would have paid the price were not going to primarily be the US ruling class. They would be able and willing to come to an accommodation with whatever was to be installed. The people who would have paid the price would be working people, communities of colour, queer communities, people with disabilities, and women. When people think that seeing the US unravel into a dictatorship as in some way funny they are not thinking about the real targets of any mass repression of progressive forces and marginalised communities.

While some people may see the process unfolding as a weakening of the US state and think it is a good thing. It is not primarily that. At present what we are seeing is an unravelling of US ruling class hegemony and the emergence of an extreme right-wing movement, primarily within the US petty bourgeoisie. This movement is parts, at least, developing an insurrectionary outlook. The key problem here is both weaknesses of the left which is not currently in a position to act as a counterweight. The problem is that the US capitalist class is likely to become increasingly unpredictable both domestically and internationally. While this may provide some opportunities it may escalate potential threats.

It is not the role of the left to help rebuild the hegemonic power of bourgeois liberal democracy, but we should care about a shattering of democratic norms and we should be opposed to any attempts by the right to subvert democracy. This is not just a danger in the US, but across the globe where far-right populist movements have grown in strength and confidence. Moreover increasing sections of the centre-right are embracing the language and symbolism of the populist far-right, while much of this is cynical the reality is that it serves to strengthen and legitimise the far-right. Adding to this danger is the reality that sections of the police and armed forces in several countries have been penetrated. This is not just the case in the US where off duty police and armed forces personnel participated in the storming of the Capitol building. In Germany where the government has moved to disband special forces units due to the influence of the far-right. Sections of the US government are making noises about the need to clear out the US armed forces of far-right influences, on January 12, the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a memorandum to those serving in the US armed forces reminding of them to their “duty to defend the US Constitution”, but it is important that they be held to account in doing this and that this not just be limited to the armed forces but to police and sheriffs departments as well.

A central objective for progressive forces everywhere must be to build our ability and confidence to mobilise and counter mobilise to oppose the far-right threat. The left must continue the tradition of being the most consistent and ardent defenders of democracy. In the US context, this would include pushing firmly against the undemocratic features of the US constitution and electoral laws which the Republicans have sought to exploit both before and during the current electoral cycle. We must demand that the state consistently apply the law against legitimate violations that pose a threat to working people and marginalised communities. It also means being prepared to push back against overreach and attempts by the state to go further than is necessary to respond to the threat posed by the far-right, however, we must be clear that the far-right poses a serious and existential threat which must be responded to.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

This article is posted under copyleft, verbatim copying and distribution of the entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved. If you reprint this article please email me at revitalisinglabour@gmail.com to let me know.

Read more...

France: Joint statement following the demonstrations on Saturday, December 12: 60,000 protesters against liberticidal legislation in France, arbitrary arrests in Paris

Paris, December 13, 2020

Around 60 demonstrations against the proposed "Global Security" bill are still punctuating this weekend throughout France. At least 60,000 people marched on Saturday, December 12. More than 150 cities, from metropolises to smaller towns, have already seen at least one gathering since 28 November, thanks to the associ
ative, trade union and political fabric on which the democratic vitality of this country still rests. We welcome that.

tch(err) {} However, as we feared, the Paris demonstration, although duly declared by a collective of organisations and authorised by the police prefecture, turned into a mousetrap.

Many observers observed on Saturday 12 December in the capital unacceptable excesses linked to a brutal police and military deployment and infringing on the right to demonstrate: mass arrests, unfounded charges causing the procession to break up, detention without legitimate reason beyond the legal deadline, police custody notified to the channel on the basis of misguided criminal offences, refusal to contact the lawyer designated by the detainees ... Once again, both journalists and protesters were targeted. The executive branch has given its determination to stop any challenge.

In Lyon and Caen, similar practices were noted.

Let us make no mistake: the total number of arrests updated live on the Home Secretary's Twitter account too often conceals arbitrary procedures. Testimonies are pouring in and confirm this. The government narrative is based on artificially inflated figures. This manipulation has already been used on May 1, 2018 and during the Yellow Jacket movement.

The power seeks to discourage us, but it will not succeed!

Our organizations are seeing that the offensive against our fundamental freedoms continues. The three decrees of 2 December 2020 extending the possibilities of registering activists and their entourage to minors as well as their health or activities on social networks will be challenged in court. The so-called "Separatism" law represents another wedge against freedoms.

This is unheard of in France. We are slowly but surely sliding towards an authoritarian regime, an illiberal state, a police state. The less legitimate the policies of this government appear, the more it uses repression and stifling freedoms to impose them.



Initial signatory organizations:
Association du cinéma indépendant pour sa diffusion (Acid - Association for the Dissemination of Independent Film) - Association des cinéastes documentaristes (Addoc - Association of Documentary Filmmakers) - ATTAC – Black Robe Brigade - Collectif Kelaouiñ - Club de la presse Occitanie (Occitan Press Club) - Confédération générale du travail (General Confederation of Labour - CGT) - La Quadrature du Net (LQDN – Squaring the Net) - Ligue des droits de l'Homme (LDH - League for Human Rights) - Politis - Profession : pigiste - Reporters en colère (REC - Profession: Freelancer - Angry Reporters) - Scénaristes de Cinéma Associés (SCA - Associated Film Writers) - Société des personnels de l'Humanité - Société des réalisateurs de Films (SRF - Society of Human Personnel - Society of Film Directors) - Syndicat de la magistrature (Magistrate’s Union)- Syndicat national des journalistes (SNJ - National Union of Journalists) - Syndicat national des journalistes CGT (SNJ-CGT - National Union of Journalists-CGT) - Union syndicale Solidaires -

Read more...

France : Mobilising Islamophobia to mask the deepening authoritarian state

Lisbeth Latham

Since the brutal murder of Samuel Paty in October, there has been a ramping up of rhetoric from the French government against the Muslim community in France. This rhetoric came to a head with the announcement of draft legislation to prevent “Islamic Separatism” by French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin which makes more explicit the state's vision of the Muslim community as a threat to the Government’s vision of Republican values. This attack on the Muslim community, and any critics of racism, islamophobia, or colonialism within French society – is paired with the introduction of new security laws that would further protect France’s repressive state apparatus from scrutiny for violence against France’s social movements -repression which has been dramatically escalating since the declaration of a state of emergency following the terror attacks in Paris in November 2015.

On October 16, Paty, a history teacher, was murdered in Paris, he was publicly beheaded by Abdullakh Anzorov, an 18-year-old Chechen refugee from Russia. The brutal murder had been motivated by Paty’s sharing with students, in a class on freedom of expression, satirical images of the Prophet Mohammed published by Charlie Hedbo in 2015, which had provoked a terror attack on the office of that publication and across Paris. Paty’s display of the images caused significant anger not only within France’s Muslim community, but globally, and followed a familiar pattern of anger at the previous publication of similar images globally. This included the sharing of a video by Abdelhakim Sefrioui an Imam describing the Paty as a thug and denouncing him for displaying the pictures and arguing he should be disciplined.

In the wake of the murder, President Emmanuel Macron described the attack as “a typical Islamist terrorist attack”, whilst describing the motivation of Paty’s murder as being “for teaching children freedom of speech”. Seven people were quickly arrested. This included students who had pointed the teacher out to the killer, Sefrioui, and Brahim Chnina a parent of a student at the school who had protested outside the school and sought a meeting with the school’s principal with Sefrioui’s support. Darmanin made a public statement indicating that up to 51 institutions faced dissolution including BarrakaCity and Collectif contre l'islamophobie en France (Collective Against Islamaphobia in France – CCFI) which he described as being “enemies of the Republic”, and threatened to move to dissolve them. This was despite the fact that there was no evidence that the CCIF, which was formed in 2003 to monitor and combat Islamophobia in France, making any statement supporting the attacks. Darmanin went further arguing that it was an “Islamist dispensary”. French Minister of Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, also argued that indigenist, racialist, and “decolonial” ideologies,’ imported from North America, were responsible for ‘conditioning’ the violent extremist who assassinated school teacher – a position endorsed by a manifesto of 100 academics published in Le Monde on November 1. This attack on anti-racist academics has prompted a counter open letter against the threat of "threat of academic authoritarianism"

.

On November 9, Darmanin announced the final draft of the “law confirming republican principles”. This legislation contained the following proposals: 

• An extension France’s public school student ID system to students enrolled in private schools; Make it an offence to share online information which allows an individual to be identified; 
• Provision for summary trials of individuals accused of “online hate speech”; 
• Make it illegal to intimidate public officials, including teachers; 
• Will allow judges to bar individuals convicted of certain offences, such as provocation of acts of terrorism, or incitement of discrimination, hatred, or violence – from entering places of worship; 
• Requiring associations seeking public funding to agree to "respect the principles and values of the republic" and return the money if found to have flouted the rules; 
• All foreign donations above €10,000 must be declared.

While not stipulated in the bill, the government has requested that France’s Muslim federations form a national council of imams. This council will be in charge of proclaiming new imams. The council must also draft a charter of "republican values", which will stipulate that Islam is a religion and not a political movement in France.

While on the face of it some aspects of this legislation could be seen as necessary protections or limitations, the reality is they are both very vague and open to abuse. This combined with the fact that they are aimed at France’s marginalized Muslim community specifically, rather than France’s Catholic-inspired far-right and neo-fascist organisations reflects a racist vision, shared throughout many western countries, that Muslim communities are the real threat rather than far-right extremist groups.

Coinciding with this assault on the rights of France’s Muslim community. Has been the release of the draft legislation of the “Global Security Law”. This law:

• authorizes the police and gendarmes to film their interventions by "mobile cameras", to access the images they have recorded and to transmit them in real-time to the command post; 
• authorizes the deployment of drones to monitor public space; 
• prohibits the public from disseminating "the image of the face or any other element of identification of an official of the national police or of a soldier of the national gendarmerie when acting within the framework of "a police operation" and when this dissemination is made "with the aim of harming his physical or mental integrity”.

This new legislation has created considerable anger in the context here over the past five years, there have been escalating levels of repression against France’s social movements, most notably the Yellow Jackets, labour and students movements – with “non-lethal” weapons being regularly deployed at protests resulting in injuries, most notably the maiming and death of protestors – with riot squad units in both the CRS (Republican Security Companies) within the National Police and gendarmerie (France’s national police force which is part of the military) acting with impunity against the social movements.

While releasing two such anti-democratic and repressive pieces of legislation would normally be a tactical error, as it would provide an opportunity to unite an even more diverse array of social forces against the bills, in this case, it is likely to have the opposite effect. This is because like the rest of French society, much of the French left and other progressive forces hold deeply Islamophobic outlooks, which are justified on the basis on the need to defend laïcité (the French concept of secularism) and women’s rights. However, these actions, particularly the bans on the wearing of the veil and attempts to control the Muslim community, are premised on anti-secular, racist, and sexist ideas about the right of the state to control not just how people practice their religions, but its right to control the lives of women within the Muslim community.

In the past sections of the French left have supported the ban on the wearing of the hijab in public schools, bans on the burqa and niqab, and participated in attacks on other left parties, like the Nouveau parti anticapitaliste (New Anti-Capitalist Party – NPA), who have stood candidates who wore the hijab. There have also been broader problems of the left being slow or inconsistent in their response to attacks on the Muslim community in France. While some of the left have been very clear regarding their rejection of this attack on the Muslim community, most notably the NPA, other parties have not been so explicit, the Communist Party and France Insoumise however have both argued that while they argue that the law fails to address the marginalization of significant sections of French society and instead seeks to hide the social crisis behind the stigmatization of Muslim communities.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This article is posted under copyleft, verbatim copying and distribution of the entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved. If you reprint this article please email me at revitalisinglabour@gmail.com to let me know.

Read more...

France: Support for the Collective Against Islamophobia in France in the face of the attacks of Macron and Darmanin!

Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste
November 20, 2020

Last night, we learned that the Ministry of the Interior had just notified, by mail, the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (Collectif contre l’islamophobie en France - CCIF) of its intention to initiate a plan to dissolve. Gerald Darmanin[1] thus carried out his threatened action and claimed to be acting "in accordance with the instructions of the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister".

By attacking this organization whose role is to combat Islamophobic violence and discrimination, especially including through the support of victims and the publication of an annual report on Islamophobia in France, the government is taking a further step in its authoritarian state policy.

While the content of the pre-bill "separatism" (renamed "strengthening republican principles") has just been made public, confirming that the government continues its headlong authoritarian and Islamophobic rush, the desire to silence the CCIF and, through it, those who stand up against stigmatisation and discrimination against Muslims, is revolting.

Thus, the Minister of the Interior who wants to ban the denunciation of police violence also wants to prohibit the denunciation of Islamophobia. Everyone should understand that these are two sides of the same policy, whose aim is to silence any criticism of their "republican order", at a time when the government's bankrupt failure to manage the health crisis makes it fear social explosions.

The NPA condemns this attack on the CCIF and assures its facilitators and volunteers of all its support in their indispensable action against Islamophobia. It is the whole of the social movement and the labour movement that should now stand against this new authoritarian measure: the future of the anti-racist struggle and, more generally, all the struggles of our social camp are at stake.

[1] Minister of the Interior in the government of Prime Minister Jean Castex

Read more...

Capitalist Class Fractions and Socialist Tactics and Strategy

Lisbeth Latham

The last decade has seen the growth in significant differences within the capitalist class, both globally and within individual countries. The open intra-class hostilities reflect the increasing instability and uncertainty within the capitalist system. The uncertainty which is both the result of external factors, such the climate crisis and the COVID pandemic, and also within the system with the ongoing long-run crisis in capitalist accumulation of the past five decades since the end of the long post-war boom.

Within capitalist societies the capitalist class act in the interests of the class and the system as a whole these include: 

• Achieving constant growth in profits; 
•  Achieving a stable environment in which capital accumulation can occur; 
• Stability for the system as a whole;

However, despite these shared interests, conflicts between sections of the ruling class can occur. These different segments of the capitalist class, or class fractions, can develop on both the different needs of the fractions for the accumulation of capital in their specific sector of the economy. This can be a simple as the interests of finance capital versus industrial capital, or export-focused industries versus industries primarily focused on selling within the domestic markets (a conflict that has given rise to historic tensions between pro-free trade versus pro-protectionism wings of the capitalist class) or on differences in subjective political outlook as to how best achieve the interests of a specific class fraction or the capitalist class as a whole. These differences also articulate themselves as conservative versus more liberal wings of the capitalist class, which in itself can have further differentiations.

The primary mechanism via which intra-class conflict within the ruling class has been mediated is through the state and governmental structures. During the early period of parliamentary democracy, when the franchise was more limited in terms of ownership of capital in some form, parliaments held greater power over the state, however as the franchise expanded, and parties emerged that represented the interests of the subaltern classes emerged and there was a danger of these parties gaining control of or having significant influence over the government, the state in many countries became more independent from the government with the creation of career bureaucracies, primarily loyal to the state, and thus the ruling class.

While some sections of the bureaucracy are drawn from the capitalist class, the vast majority of the bureaucracy are drawn from other classes and as the bureaucracy has gotten ever larger and the working class more educated, increasingly from the working class. Whilst this could be seen as a threat, the processes of education and reward tends to build an outlook within the bureaucracy, particularly its leadership (which is overwhelming drawn from sections of the ruling class and increasingly moves freely between capital and the state), that it views its interests with that of the capitalist class.

This relative autonomy, although primarily aimed at mediating and protecting the interests of capitalism, also creates space for these state actors to shift directions and support between fractions of the ruling class, based on either their judgements as to the best interests of capitalism, for a class fraction, or their own interests as a bureaucratic caste. This can also give rise to conflicts within the bureaucracy and between the bureaucracy and the capitalist class fractions most clearly reflected in their more extreme forms in young officer movements and military coups.

Whilst the capitalist class has interests that tend to converge as outlined above, there are periods of time where the interests of individual capitalists or groups of capitalists can diverge from those of other capitalists. Whilst, this can be an objective divergence of interests, it can simply be subjective, i.e. that they believe what they need for their interests to be advanced are different from what other capitalists or the state are advocating or pursuing. This can particularly be the case during periods of crisis, or where new technologies are emerging casting into the question the survival of sections of capital. 

Because the world is complicated, and no one is omniscient, divisions can open up as to how to respond to this uncertainty. These differences may be in relation to the focus re industries to be supported, but it can also be in relation to the level of aggression that should be deployed in responding to challenges to capitalist power. Repression or undermining of rights, whilst they can cement the position of capital and reinforce capitalist accumulation, can also result in unintended consequences. Most notably, rather than forcing the popular classes into retreat, repression can instead intensify class antagonisms and force subaltern groups to defend themselves resolutely, resulting in further destabilisation of the state, the system, or both. It is for this reason that sections of the ruling class, or at least their mouthpieces in the mainstream media, may publicly oppose actions by the government or state which on the face it might appear to be in their immediate interests because those sections of capital have made a judgement that course of action is too dangerous, and ultimately against their interests.

The convergence of interests between subordinate classes and ruling class fractions As conflict occurs between the ruling class and subaltern classes, the intraclass conflicts within the capitalist class can bring into alignment, at least partially and for a limited period, the interests of subaltern class(es) with those of a capitalist class fraction. In these circumstances, it is possible to build alliances with these capitalist class fractions in order to strengthen the position of the subaltern class forces. Doing so is important. Not just because we cannot be indifferent or ambivalent about intra-class conflict within the capitalist class - those conflicts can have dire consequences for the rest of society - but because they can create new opportunities for challenging the system and shattering the class unity which the capitalist system relies so heavily on to reproduce and maintain itself. The classic example of this includes alliances within national liberation struggles which include sections of the national capitalist class which have been in revolt against colonial powers.

Whilst such alliances can be important in bolstering the position of the working class and its allies, any such alliance should only be of a tactical nature, around specific demands where interests converge, and not be strategic in character, most notably this means that the working class and its allies must seek to maintain their independence from the “progressive wing” of the capitalist class fractions and resist efforts by these sections to co-opt the movement, and instead seek to maintain the leadership of the movement. This is not a question political class purity, but a recognition that as conflict escalates, there is a danger that the “progressive-wing” of the capitalist class will move to defend capitalism and support escalating repression against radical forces as these forces become a greater threat to their class interests than other wings of the capitalist class or the course of action which they had been proposing.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This article is posted under copyleft, verbatim copying and distribution of the entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved. If you reprint this article please email me at revitalisinglabour@gmail.com to let me know.

Read more...