Liam Mac Uaid looks at some of the political questions thrown up by the fascist successes in the local government THE MATTER of how socialists deal with resurgent fascist organisations has been given a new practical and theoretical significance by the BP's results in the local government elections.
How the far left tries to provide leadership against the fascists and how it relates to existing mass organisations is already emerging as a source ot some controversv
The BNP had 33 councillors elected in May's council elections, bringing their total to 48. Twelve of these were in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham but they also managed to win seats in Epping Forest, Havering and Redbridge, boroughs on London's eastern periphery, three in Sandwell and Stoke and fewer in a number of other areas. The organisation fought in 354 wards and won 234,483 votes.
If working class voters had followed
Workers Power's advice the fascists
would have been given a free pass into the council chambers This represents an average support of 18.1%.
In the
WUL new Councillors taking its total to 18. Respect has only existed since January 2004 and contested many fewer wards.
The underlying trend is a willingness of many traditional Labour supporters to start looking for alternatives. Labour's dominance of the working class vote is still strong but it is starting to erode.
Both Respect and the BNP are taking votes away from Labour. Much of the British far left is agreed that there now exists the possibility of the development of a new mass party to Labour's left.
However al a moment when the fascists too are seen as a serious alternative by many working class voters the issue of how to fight them becomes more than a theoretical question.
Workers Power during the council elections proposed that, in a ward in which the BNP, Respect and Labour were standing, voters should abstain.
The fascists, they claimed, could be defeated by a campaign against them. "The way to stop the BNP on the streets is to challenge them wherever they try to organise.
"More importantly we need a new mass party that can really fight for a radical working class solution, a party that can offer real hope to those left behind and ignored by Labour." Workers Power May 2006.
This prescription would have carried some weight if the comrades had tried implement it in east London where the fascists were standing. But much more serious is the political error contained in the approach.
Voters in council elections are more likely to use their votes to express a momentari protest rather than a longterm commitment to a party.
Nevertheless working class voters have a sharper understanding of the value of electoral politics than some on the far left.
Assuming that working class voters had followed Workers Power's advice the fascists would have been given a free pass into the council chambers to which they had hoped to be elected.
This would have given them confidence and demoralised their enemies. It is certainly the case that Respect has received a new lease of life
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For the first time since the collapse of the dot-com bubble in 2000 sharp falls in stock markets have hit the news. What has caused this stock market turbulence? ANDY KILMISTER shows how Marxist ideas can explain what is happening to financial markets. THE DOWNTURN began on May 1l and over the next two weeks share prices in Japan, Britain and much of Continental Europe fell by around 10 per cent.
In late May the market fell
Turkey, Russia, Brazil and India. On May 22 trading in the Indian stock market was suspended after it had fallen by 10 per cent; this followed a further 10 percent fall over the previous two weeks.
Finally, in early June the slide in market values reached the USA with a decline of 200 points in the Dow Jones index erland
TEN conventional economists indicate the failure of standard theories to cope with what is happening. Marxism provides the basis for a more convincing alternative.
For Marxists the root cause of the current turbulence in financial markets lies in the underlying weakness of production internationally over the last decade, despite the supposed benefits of globalisation and technology.
This weakness, expressed in the financial crises of the late 1990s and the slowdown in Japan was what led Greenspan pump money into the US economy, first in 1997 leading to the stock market boom and then again in 2000-2001 leading to the housing boom.
In turn American spending kept the world economy afloat