Laundering carbon — The Gulf’s ‘new scramble for Africa’

By Adam Hanieh

Published 24 July, 2024

First published at MERIP.

In early November 2023, shortly before the COP28 summit opened in Dubai, a hitherto obscure UAE firm attracted significant media attention around news of their prospective land deals in Africa.

Reports suggested that Blue Carbon — a company privately owned by Sheikh Ahmed al-Maktoum, a member of Dubai’s ruling family — had signed deals promising the firm control over vast tracts of land across the African continent. These deals included an astonishing 10 percent of the landmass in Liberia, Zambia and Tanzania, and 20 percent in Zimbabwe. Altogether, the area equalled the size of Britain.

Blue Carbon intended to use the land to launch carbon offset projects, an increasingly popular practice that proponents claim will help tackle climate change. Carbon offsets involve forest protection and other environmental schemes that are equated to a certain quantity of carbon “credits.” These credits can then be sold to polluters around the world to offset their own emissions. Prior to entering into the negotiations of the massive deal, Blue Carbon had no experience in either carbon offsets or forest management. Nonetheless the firm stood to make billions of dollars from these projects.

Environmental NGOs, journalists and activists quickly condemned the deals as a new “scramble for Africa” — a land grab enacted in the name of climate change mitigation. In response, Blue Carbon insisted the discussions were merely exploratory and would require community consultation and further negotiation before formal approval.

Regardless of their current status, the land deals raise concerns that indigenous and other local communities could be evicted to make way for Blue Carbon’s forest protection plans. In Eastern Kenya, for example, the indigenous Ogiek People were driven out of the Mau Forest in November 2023, an expulsion that lawyers linked to ongoing negotiations between Blue Carbon and Kenya’s president, William Ruto. Protests have also followed the Liberian government’s closed-door negotiations with Blue Carbon, with activists claiming the project violates the land rights of indigenous people enshrined within Liberian law. Similar cases of land evictions elsewhere have led the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Francisco Calí Tzay, to call for a global moratorium on carbon offset projects.

Beyond their potentially destructive impact on local communities, Blue Carbon’s activities in Africa point to a major shift in the climate strategies of Gulf states. As critics have shown, the carbon offsetting industry exists largely as a greenwashing mechanism, allowing polluters to hide their continued emissions behind the smokescreen of misleading carbon accounting methodologies while providing a profitable new asset class for financial actors. As the world’s largest exporters of crude oil and liquified natural gas, the Gulf states are now positioning themselves across all stages of this new industry — including the financial markets where carbon credits are bought and sold. This development is reconfiguring the Gulf’s relationships with the African continent and will have significant consequences for the trajectories of our warming planet.

False accounting and carbon laundering

There are many varieties of carbon offset projects. The most common involves the avoided deforestation schemes that make up the bulk of Blue Carbon’s interest in African land. In these schemes, land is enclosed and protected from deforestation. Carbon offset certifiers — of which the largest in the world is the Washington-based firm, Verra — then assess the amount of carbon these projects prevent from being released into the atmosphere (measured in tons of CO2). Once assessed, carbon credits can be sold to polluters, who use them to cancel out their own emissions and thus meet their stated climate goals.

Superficially attractive — after all, who doesn’t want to see money going into the protection of forests? — such schemes have two major flaws. The first is known as “permanence.” Buyers who purchase carbon credits gain the right to pollute in the here and now. Meanwhile, it takes hundreds of years for those carbon emissions to be re-absorbed from the atmosphere, and there is no guarantee that the forest will continue to stand for that timeframe. If a forest fire occurs or the political situation changes and the forest is destroyed, it is too late to take back the carbon credits that were initially issued. This concern is not simply theoretical. In recent years, California wildfires have consumed millions of hectares of forest, including offsets purchased by major international firms such as Microsoft and BP. Given the increasing incidence of forest fires due to global warming, such outcomes will undoubtedly become more frequent.

The second major flaw with these schemes is that any estimation of carbon credits for avoided deforestation projects rests on an imaginary counterfactual: How much carbon would have been released if the offset project were not in place? Again, this estimate depends on an unknowable future, opening up significant profit-making opportunities for companies certifying and selling carbon credits. By inflating the estimated emissions reductions associated with a particular project, it is possible to sell many more carbon credits than are actually warranted. This scope for speculation is one reason why the carbon credit market is so closely associated with repeated scandals and corruption. Indeed, according to reporting in the New Yorker, after one massive carbon fraud was revealed in Europe, “the Danish government admitted that eighty per cent of the country’s carbon-trading firms were fronts for the racket.”1

These methodological problems are structurally intrinsic to offsetting and cannot be avoided. As a result, most carbon credits traded today are fictitious and do not result in any real reduction in carbon emissions. Tunisian analyst Fadhel Kaboub describes them as simply “a licence to pollute.”2 One investigative report from early 2023 found that more than 90 percent of rainforest carbon credits certified by Verra were likely bogus and did not represent actual carbon reductions. Another study conducted for the EU Commission reported that 85 percent of the offset projects established under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism failed to reduce emissions. A recent academic study of offset projects across six countries, meanwhile, found that most did not reduce deforestation, and for those that did, the reductions were significantly lower than initially claimed. Consequently, the authors conclude, carbon credits sold for these projects were used to “offset almost three times more carbon emissions than their actual contributions to climate change mitigation.”3

Despite these fundamental problems — or perhaps because of them — the use of carbon offsets is growing rapidly. The investment bank Morgan Stanley predicts that the market will be worth $250 billion by 2050, up from about $2 billion in 2020, as large polluters utilize offsetting to sanction their continued carbon emissions while claiming to meet net zero targets. In the case of Blue Carbon, one estimate found that the amount of carbon credits likely to be accredited through the firm’s projects in Africa would equal all of the UAE’s annual carbon emissions. Akin to carbon laundering, this practice allows ongoing emissions to disappear from the carbon accounting ledger, swapped for credits that have little basis in reality.

Monetizing nature as a development strategy

For the African continent, the growth of these new carbon markets cannot be separated from the escalating global debt crisis that has followed the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. According to a new database, Debt Service Watch, the Global South is experiencing its worst debt crisis on record, with one-third of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa spending over half their budget revenues on servicing debt. Faced with such unprecedented fiscal pressures, the commodification of land through offsetting is now heavily promoted by international lenders and many development organizations as a way out of the deep-rooted crisis.

The African Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI), an alliance launched in 2022 at the Cairo COP27 summit, has emerged as a prominent voice in this new development discourse. ACMI brings together African leaders, carbon credit firms (including Verra), Western donors (USAID, the Rockefeller Foundation and Jeff Bezos’ Earth Fund) and multilateral organizations like the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. Along with practical efforts to mobilize funds and encourage policy changes, ACMI has taken a lead role in advocating for carbon markets as a win-win solution for both heavily indebted African countries and the climate. In the words of the organization’s founding document, “The emergence of carbon credits as a new product allows for the monetization of Africa’s large natural capital endowment, while enhancing it.”4 

ACMI’s activities are deeply tied to the Gulf. One side to this relationship is that Gulf firms, especially fossil fuel producers, are now the key source of demand for future African carbon credits. At the September 2023 African Climate Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, for example, a group of prominent Emirati energy and financial firms (known as the UAE Carbon Alliance) committed to purchasing $450 million worth of carbon credits from ACMI over the next six years. The pledge immediately confirmed the UAE as ACMI’s biggest financial backer. Moreover, by guaranteeing demand for carbon credits for the rest of this decade, the UAE’s pledge helps create the market today, driving forward new offset projects and solidifying their place in the development strategies of African states. It also helps legitimize offsetting as a response to the climate emergency, despite the numerous scandals that have beset the industry in recent years.

Saudi Arabia is likewise playing a major role in pushing forward carbon markets in Africa. One of ACMI’s steering committee members is the Saudi businesswoman, Riham ElGizy, who heads the Regional Voluntary Carbon Market Company (RVCMC). Established in 2022 as a joint venture between the Public Investment Fund (Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund) and the Saudi stock exchange, Tadawul, RVCMC has organized the world’s two largest carbon auctions, selling more than 3.5 million tons worth of carbon credits in 2022 and 2023. 70 percent of the credits sold in these auctions were sourced from offset projects in Africa, with the 2023 auction taking place in Kenya. The principal buyers of these credits were Saudi firms, led by the largest oil company in the world, Saudi Aramco.

The Emirati and Saudi relationships with ACMI and the trade in African carbon credits illustrate a notable development when it comes to the Gulf’s role in these new markets. Beyond simply owning offset projects in Africa, the Gulf states are also positioning themselves at the other end of the carbon value chain: the marketing and sale of carbon credits to regional and international buyers. In this respect, the Gulf is emerging as a key economic space where African carbon is turned into a financial asset that can be bought, sold and speculated upon by financial actors across the globe.

Indeed, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have each sought to establish permanent carbon exchanges, where carbon credits can be bought and sold just like any other commodity. The UAE set up the first such trading exchange following an investment by the Abu Dhabi-controlled sovereign wealth fund, Mubadala, in the Singapore-based AirCarbon Exchange (ACX) in September 2022. As part of this acquisition, Mubadala now owns 20 percent of ACX and has established a regulated digital carbon trading exchange in Abu Dhabi’s financial free zone, the Abu Dhabi Global Market. ACX claims the exchange is the first regulated exchange of its kind in the world, with the trade in carbon credits beginning there in late 2023. Likewise, in Saudi Arabia the RVCMC has partnered with US market technology firm Xpansiv to establish a permanent carbon credit exchange set to launch in late 2024.

Whether these two Gulf-based exchanges will compete or prioritize different trading instruments, such as carbon derivatives or Shariah-compliant carbon credits, remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that major financial centers in the Gulf are leveraging their existing infrastructures to establish regional dominance in the sale of carbon. Active at all stages of the offsetting industry—from generating carbon credits to purchasing them—the Gulf is now a principal actor in the new forms of wealth extraction that connect the African continent to the wider global economy.

Entrenching a fossil-fuelled future

Over the past two decades, the Gulf’s oil and especially gas production has grown markedly, alongside a substantial eastward shift in energy exports to meet the new hydrocarbon demand from China and East Asia. At the same time, the Gulf states have expanded their involvement in energy-intensive downstream sectors, notably the production of petrochemicals, plastics and fertilizers. Led by Saudi Aramco and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, Gulf-based National Oil Companies now rival the traditional Western oil supermajors in key metrics such as reserves, refining capacity and export levels.

In this context — and despite the reality of the climate emergency — the Gulf states are doubling down on fossil fuel production, seeing much to be gained from hanging on to an oil-centered world for as long as possible. As the Saudi oil minister vowed back in 2021, “every molecule of hydrocarbon will come out.”5 But this approach does not mean the Gulf states have adopted a stance of head-in-the-sand climate change denialism. Rather, much like the big Western oil companies, the Gulf’s vision of expanded fossil fuel production is accompanied by an attempt to seize the leadership of global efforts to tackle the climate crisis.

One side to this approach is their heavy involvement in flawed and unproven low carbon technologies, like hydrogen and carbon capture. Another is their attempts to steer global climate negotiations, seen in the recent UN climate change conferences, COP27 and COP28, where the Gulf states channelled policy discussions away from effective efforts to phase out fossil fuels, turning these events into little more than corporate spectacles and networking forums for the oil industry.

The carbon offset market should be viewed as an integral part of these efforts to delay, obfuscate and obstruct addressing climate change in meaningful ways. Through the deceptive carbon accounting of offset projects, the big oil and gas industries in the Gulf can continue business as usual while claiming to meet their so-called climate targets. The Gulf’s dispossession of African land is key to this strategy, ultimately enabling the disastrous specter of ever-accelerating fossil fuel production.

Adam Hanieh is a professor of political economy and global development at the University of Exeter’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies. His forthcoming book is Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market (Verso, September 2024).

• 1

  Heidi Blake, “The Great Cash-for-Carbon Hustle,” The New Yorker, October 16, 2023.

• 2

  Katherine Hearst, “Kenya concedes ‘millions of hectares’ to UAE firm in latest carbon offset deal,” Middle East Eye, November 5, 2023.

• 3

  Thales A. P. West et al., “Action needed to make carbon offsets from forest conservation work for climate change,” Science 381/6660 (August 2023), p. 876.

• 4

  “Africa Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI): Roadmap Report,” ACMI, November 8, 2022, p. 12.

• 5

  Javier Blas, “ The Saudi Prince of Oil Prices Vows to Drill ‘Every Last Molecule’,” Bloomberg, July 22, 2021.

‘Modi’s Hindu supremacist and pro-US foreign policy have greatly set back regional cooperation’

 (CPIML Liberation, India)

By Clifton D’Rozario, Federico Fuentes

Published 24 July, 2024

LINKS.ORG.AU

Clifton D’Rozario is a Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation leader and All India Central Council of Trade Unions national secretary. In this interview with Federico Fuentes for LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal, D’Rozario discusses Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role as a global far right leader and the impact of US-China tensions on South Asian politics and struggles.

After the Cold War’s end, global politics seemed dominated by US imperialism. More recently, however, a shift appears to be taking place. While the US was forced to withdraw from Afghanistan, we have seen China’s rise, Russia invade Ukraine, and even smaller nations, such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia, flexing military power beyond their borders. How do you understand these dynamics within global imperialism?

All these developments point to a multidimensional global crisis and waning US hegemony. The US-led imperialist core, despite its military debacles, continues expanding its clout though covert and overt operations and alliances across the world. But current dynamics mark a transition within global power structures, with traditional Western dominance being challenged by rising powers. This creates a more complex and competitive international landscape in terms of domination of weaker nations.

Regardless of the internal character of competing global powers, a multipolar world is more advantageous for progressive forces and movements seeking to reverse neoliberal policies and advance social and political transformations. Inter-imperialist rivalries in the early 20th century not only produced World War I but facilitated the Russian revolution, which snapped the imperialist chain at its weakest link.

Despite its severe internal distortions and subsequent degeneration, the Soviet Union succeeded in overpowering fascism and ending World War II on a victorious note for anti-colonial struggles and revolutionary movements. Even as the Soviet Union stagnated in later decades and trapped itself in an unsustainable arms race between superpowers, its existence as a countervailing force to US domination helped many Third World countries and movements pursue their own course with a considerable degree of relative autonomy from imperialist control.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the US has sought to unite liberal democracies from the Global North (such as Britain, Germany and Australia) in the name of defeating autocracies and totalitarian regimes, including by military means. But the US always uses these claims in justifying endless wars, brutal occupations and coups (including against elected governments) to install puppet rulers and dictators. Israel’s genocide in Gaza, aided and abetted by “liberal democracies” and “authoritarian regimes” such as India, further exposes the fallacy of this argument.

Yet the space being opened by this emerging unstable “multipolar world” has largely been filled by right-wing, authoritarian regimes, such as Modi’s. What role does Modi play in regional and global politics? More generally, what threat does the global far right pose today?

We stand at a critical moment in history. Fascism is on the rise globally, through the consolidation of fascist regimes accompanied by intense resistance movements in several countries. This is a direct result of increasing contradictions in the international capitalist system and the tragic destruction caused by neoliberalism. This global crisis of capitalism — which is also a climate crisis — has led to deep insecurity and deprivation, creating fertile ground for fascist and authoritarian forces. The working class must defeat these forces.

These forces blame minorities and immigrants for inequality and insecurity, rather than neoliberal policies. In power, their regimes have been characterised by: organised racial and/or communal violence by fascist groups; attacks on dissent, civil liberties and freedom of speech; intensified anti-feminist politics and assaults on women’s and LGBTI rights; the use of fake news to whip up hatred and prejudice; and personality cults and centralisation of power in a single powerful leader. The ideologies of most of these right-wing regimes are rooted in racial supremacy, religious politicisation and the construction of the nation on a singular identity.

Unsurprisingly, there is ongoing collaboration between right-wing regimes. But these same regimes are being legitimated by the international order. It is worth remembering that for a long period after the 2002 Gujarat genocide, Modi, who was Gujarat state Chief Minister at the time, was denied a visa by several Western countries, including the US and Britain. But given right-wing authoritarianism’s growing ascendancy in global politics, Modi, as prime minister, now receives strong support from the West — even after [former radical right US president Donald] Trump left office. This too is an undeniable reality of the emerging multipolar world.

Modi has played his role in all this, given Indian fascism has perhaps been in power longer than any similar regime in the world today. Modi has sought domestic and global support by combining Hindu supremacist hyper-nationalism with a pro-US foreign policy. His aim is to leverage global attention for the Indian market, deepen corporate India’s integration with global capital, and secure India’s strategic role as a close ally of the US and Israel. Under Modi, India’s strategic subservience to US global hegemony has greatly increased. His lack of support for Palestine, even in the face of genocide, is a product of his regime’s growing strategic partnership with Israel.

Modi portrays a measure of autonomy from the US-led West by being part of BRICS [the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa alliance] and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, where India shares a platform with Russia and China. But the real direction of Modi’s foreign policy is the opposite. Modi’s refusal to condemn [Russian president Vladimir] Putin’s unjust war on Ukraine is due to India’s dependence on Russia, which is India’s largest weapon supplier and a major energy source.

Growing tensions between the US and China are of great concern. What is behind US military strategy in the region? How should we view China’s role and its relations with neighbours such as India? What role has Modi played in regional tensions?

China’s rise as a major economic powerhouse has seen the US-led imperialist bloc search for new avenues to counter China, in its attempt to maintain and strengthen a unipolar world order. In this context, India has stepped up military relations with the US, becoming a member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) alongside Japan and Australia. The Quad forms part of the US’ regional military alliances aimed at countering China in the Indo-Pacific region. It is also an attempt to deploy US military personnel and assets in India against China. We condemn India’s involvement in the Quad, which goes against the sovereign interests of the country.

The growing identification between India’s foreign policy and US strategic priorities has led to a worsening of India’s relations with, and growing isolation from, almost all its neighbours. The recent past has seen border clashes between China and India, with reports of Chinese incursion into areas under Indian control. Modi has refused to come clean about the actual state of affairs in the border region, preferring to step up anti-China rhetoric for domestic political calculations, even as imports from China reach record highs and India’s trade deficit surges.

More generally, India’s regional hegemonic ambitions, growing promotion of Indian corporate interests in the region, and attempts to define Indian nationalism in Hindu supremacist terms have created deepening mistrust and tension in South Asia. Hindutva’s [Hindu nationalism] transnational spatial ambition, with its claims on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka as parts of its strategic vision of Akhand Bharat (Undivided India), has further complicated matters.

All this has greatly set back prospects for regional cooperation and friendly ties with neighbours. Yet India’s neighbours are important to our struggles, given historic connections and shared concerns arising from interconnected patterns of economic development and foreign policy factors.

What stance has the CPI(ML) Liberation taken on issues such as Ukraine and Taiwan?

The CPI(ML) categorically condemned Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, and has insisted on restoring peace in a way that guarantees Ukrainian sovereignty. We have condemned Russian chauvinism and its expansionist Eurasianism, which sees Ukraine as an integral part of Russian territory and culture, and attributes Ukraine’s sovereign existence to a “mistake” by [Russian revolutionary Vladimir] Lenin that needs correcting. We do not accept Russia’s claims that NATO’s eastward expansion justifies the war.

At the same time, while Ukraine and Russia bleed and much of the world pays a heavy price for this war, the US benefits the most despite not being directly involved. While claiming to help Ukraine defend its sovereignty, the US and corporate capital is busy effectively colonising Ukraine’s economy, with vast swathes of land, state-owned enterprises and industries being transferred to corporations that are benefiting from deregulation and the slashing of labour laws [enacted by the Ukrainian government].

As for NATO, the US historically used it as a weapon to sustain its geopolitical and military domination during the Cold War and post-Soviet periods. There was no justification for NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. But instead of dismantling NATO, the US expanded it from 12 member countries to now 30. This expansion aims not just to contain Russia and its growing cooperation with China, but to hold back the rise of Europe as a parallel power.

Regarding Taiwan, the US considers it a pawn in its imperialist designs for the region. It continuously seeks to maintain tensions between China and Taiwan through its military manoeuvrings. China and Taiwan have a complicated history, but it is for the Taiwanese people to decide their future course.

I would add that Ukraine is not the only war in the world today. We have, for example, the genocide in Palestine. The forces of peace, justice and democracy must speak up against every unjust war of invasion and occupation, and every suppression and denial of democracy.

How have these global and regional dynamics impacted politics in India?

Global dynamics, particularly the rise of China, the US’ shifting foreign policy, India’s proximity to the US-led imperialist bloc, and its own regional power aspirations impact domestic politics and struggles in India.

Over the past decade, Modi’s reference to India as the vishwaguru (spiritual mentor to the world) has become an overused figure of speech. The fact that India held the presidency of the G20 summit during 2023 served as a chance for Modi to domestically highlight India’s self-proclaimed vishwaguru status. Also repeated ad nauseam is the refrain that Modi’s reign has heralded a major change in India’s image abroad, with the country emerging as a true global leader.

The hollowness of this claim is apparent, given the abject poverty facing most Indians on account of Modi’s neoliberal economic measures and disastrous policy prescriptions, such as demonetisation, Covid lockdowns and imposing a GST. Even so, this discourse has found a willing audience among India’s aspirational middle class and social and economic elites, who seek equal status with their counterparts from the Global North.

It has also found an audience among the diaspora, which for decades has been a focus of indoctrination and mobilisation by the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, of which Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is a political front]. This was particularly the case in the US and Britain, but is now true for most Global North nations with a significant Indian diaspora population. This has led to the formation of various supremacist organisations abroad, such as the Hindu American Foundation and Overseas Friends of the BJP, among others. These organisations play an instrumental role in whitewashing Modi’s divisive ideology by organising huge rallies involving elements of the local political establishment.

An example was the “Howdy Modi” event in Texas in 2019, where Modi interacted with the diaspora alongside Trump. There was also an event in Sydney in 2023, where Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese heaped praise on Modi, likening him to US rockstar Bruce Springsteen in his cringe-worthy introductory speech. Such support from abroad and legitimacy from world leaders is crucial for Modi, given his deeply divisive, oppressive and controversial ideology and policies. Unsurprisingly, after the recent Lok Sabha [national parliament] elections, Modi once again took off on one of his countless foreign trips, this time flying to Italy for the G7 Summit.

A statement by South-East Asian left parties in 2022 raised the need to “promote and advance progressive regional peace initiatives as building blocks toward a common security policy to foster a more peaceful and cooperative global order.” Looking at the situation in South Asia, what kind of peace initiatives do you think could help achieve this aim?

The Asia-Pacific region is witnessing a concerted effort by US imperialism to restore its waning global hegemony. The Australia-United Kingdom-United States trilateral security partnership (AUKUS), the Washington-designed Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) and the Quad are all part of its attempts to counter the strategic partnership between China and Russia.

In South Asia, we must seek closer and more effective links among progressive forces to counter these imperialist designs, and struggle for global peace and planetary survival. To this end, we must strengthen struggles against neo-colonial domination, imperialist intervention, military aggression, environmental destruction and climate crisis. We must develop closer ties with Communist parties and progressive forces in South Asia and the world to strengthen international solidarity for peace, justice, freedom, democracy and human rights, and against fascism, war, terrorism, religious extremism, racism, Islamophobia, and the politics of hate and bigotry.

Do you see any chances to build bridges between anti-imperialist struggles, considering that national movements may have different powers as their principal enemy and therefore seek support from rival powers? Is it possible to advance a position of non-alignment with any of the competing blocs (neutrality) without abandoning solidarity? In sum, what should a 21st internationalism that is anti-imperialist and anti-fascist look like?

In the struggle for global peace and planetary survival, we must develop closer cooperation and coordination with all movements resisting fascism and predatory global capital. In this sense, we need to strengthen solidarity with the Palestinian struggle as well as the West Papuan and Kanak struggles [in Kanaky/New Caledonia].

While we see multipolarity as evolving for the better, India’s position should be one of non-alignment and solidarity against imperialism, alongside maintaining good neighbourhood relations at the regional level as a means of undermining US imperialism.

The growing unsustainability of decaying capitalism, the renewed rise of fascist and authoritarian regimes, recurring calamities caused by the growing environmental and climate crisis, and dramatic uncertainties and vulnerabilities resulting from digital technology (especially the huge labour-displacing use of automation and artificial intelligence) are creating new challenges and opportunities for the international Communist movement and for socialist experiments in the 21st century. We need to be particularly attentive to any revival of socialist politics in the unfolding international situation.

Podemos’s Left-Populism Fell Victim to Its Elitist Culture

Upon its creation ten years ago, Podemos promised to rally the masses against the establishment parties. But it soon became dominated by highly educated progressives, confining its appeal to just part of the working class.

Pablo Iglesias at a party meeting in Madrid on November 15, 2014.

 (Dani Pozo / AFP via Getty Images)

BY RAÚL ROJAS-ANDRÉS SAMUELE MAZZOLINI JACOPO CUSTODI

JACOBIN
07.24.2024

This year marks a decade since the creation of Podemos, the party that emerged three years after the 15M movement challenged austerity in the squares of Spain’s major cities. In its early days, anything seemed possible. Podemos was soon leading national polls on over 20 percent support, suggesting that it could overtake the Socialist Party (PSOE) and create an earthquake in the party system that had endured since the Transition to democracy in the late 1970s.


But a lot has changed, and today Podemos’s representation in the Spanish Congress has slumped to only four MPs. At its peak, it had seventy-one. In June’s elections to the European Parliament, Podemos and its offshoot, Sumar, ran separately and obtained just 3.3 and 4.7 percent respectively.

Podemos burst onto the scene ten years ago by adopting a populist strategy inspired by the work of political theorist Ernesto Laclau. It departed from the traditional logics, discourses, and symbolism of the Left, and instead of framing itself in opposition to the Right, it sought to appeal to the “people” as opposed to the “caste.” But even the first tapering-off of its election results saw its strategy split into two opposed factions.

The first faction, led by Pablo Iglesias and known as Pablismo, increasingly advocated a return to an openly leftist identity. Podemos’s second-in-command, Íñigo Errejón, instead gathered those who wanted to maintain the populist road map: building broad majorities around a deliberately ambiguous discourse, sufficiently wide-ranging to include different and politically unengaged sectors of the population. Errejonismo eventually left the party to form its own outfit, Más País, which is now part of Sumar.Podemos’s star shone brightly — but all too quickly.

Podemos’s star shone brightly — but all too quickly. Surely, it faced unfavorable external conditions: a parliamentary system and electoral law designed to favor bipartisanship, and an unprecedented media and lawfare campaign aimed at discrediting the party with fake news and illegal police surveillance. Despite its impressive initial success, other right-wing parties soon emerged, also attempting to capitalize on the same crises in Spanish public life.

Finally, in 2017, the Catalan independence process shifted the focus of public concern from the economic crisis to the territorial secession crisis, changing the opposition from “the people versus the elite” to Catalonia versus Spain. Internal factors in Podemos’s decline have also already been widely analyzed: various authors have criticized its vertical organizational model, its constant electoralism, its cult of leadership, as well as the discredit brought about by its constant internal conflicts.

But one element of this story has gone overlooked. In addition to all these external and internal factors, another issue that prevented Podemos’s continued success was a certain cultural elitism. Present from the beginning, this later emerged more prominently and in new forms as Podemos returned from the more properly “populist” camp to a more conventional radical-left position. This is a problem that seems to be affecting many contemporary left-wing forces across Europe to various degrees, and thus deserves closer examination. To understand this problem, we should briefly look at Podemos’s theoretical underpinnings, and how they evolved.
Less Identity, More Identity

In his now-classic reading, Laclau defines populism as the construction of a frontier that polarizes society around a single antagonism: the people versus an enemy accused of systematically frustrating its demands. Such a populism is meant to articulate different grievances in their common confrontation with an elite. When such varied groups have a common enemy, they cease to see themselves as different from each other, and this generates a new popular identity: a new political subjectivity that was previously impossible due to their internal splits. Political, economic, or social crises help along this process. They foster popular discontent, providing fertile ground for the creation of a frontal opposition to the establishment.

This implies two things. Firstly, the specificities of various groups need to be at least somewhat set aside, to allow for the emergence of this new shared identity. Secondly, anyone aspiring to lead the people must be identifiable as their representative. For this reason, they must downplay their own specific traits, maintain a degree of ambiguity, and carefully choose the characteristics they adopt if they wish to become the symbol — an “empty signifier” in Laclau’s terminology — of such a broad community.

Karl Marx already knew that it is not enough to defend someone’s “interests” for them to identify with you and the political option you represent. How to make millions of people identify with you? Podemos’s founders understood that no matter how much the Left defended the social majority, few people in Spain identified with the Left’s chosen vocabulary.Podemos’s founders understood that no matter how much the Left defended the social majority, few people in Spain identified with the Left’s chosen vocabulary.

Accordingly, they not only centered their discourse on “the people versus the elite” but also abandoned traditional symbols, for instance replacing the raised fist with the V sign and choosing purple as their color instead of the classic socialist red. Their language was direct and colloquial, avoiding the Left’s technical jargon and sloganeering.


It focused on creating explosive political marketing campaigns and constructing an attractive brand, as opposed to the more convoluted style of the traditional left. They understood that an electoral campaign is not merely a phase of “reaping” what has been sown over previous years of political organizing, but a period when political identities can be built at a faster pace. They rejected the idea of playing a merely “testimonial” role of moral integrity, at a distance from ordinary people.

At the same time, Podemos attempted to re-signify elements of people’s common sense. For instance, it spoke of love of country and presented itself as the only really patriotic movement, although since the Franco era this notion has traditionally been associated with the Right. The aim was to establish a fresh Spanish identity rooted in a national-popular ethos — not only to garner legitimacy but also to reinterpret Spanish identity in progressive terms and thus reclaim it from conservative narratives.
High vs. Low?

When we talk about “the establishment,” we imagine a world of carpeted floors, well-pressed suits, polite language, and the impeccable manners worthy of a president. This is what Pierre Ostiguy calls the “high” dimension of politics. In periods of stability, where governments meet popular demands enough to be seen as legitimate, this pomp and protocol is how a leader is expected to relate to those they govern. But, as Ostiguy argues, when the status quo loses legitimacy, new leaders tend to move away from that image and embody the popular dimension.

They instead enter into a proud display of the “low,” the plebeian — even if its peculiar characteristics differ from country to country. Accordingly, a populist strategy involves not only a descriptive layer (i.e., the articulation of unmet demands into a new identity and the naming of a common enemy) but also a performative one: the “people” must see themselves represented in the supposed leader’s manners, way of speaking, and acting, not just in the literal content of their discourse. We see this in current leaders like Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, or Javier Milei, famous for their coarse and direct manner, speaking bluntly and not holding back controversial statements.The 2008 crisis condemned millions of people to see themselves as failed individuals. It was only a matter of time before political leaders came along to offer new frameworks.

This identification with a leader or a political project recalls Freudian reflections on the superego. The subject we politically identify with has a double nature: it must be unattainable and imitable at the same time. It is always beyond reach, and in this sense, it works as a moral ideal. However, it also needs to be sufficiently close to us, in order to be imitable and thus satisfy our narcissistic needs through identification. On the contrary, when a model becomes unattainable, it starts to become a merely repressive element: it generates feelings of inferiority and frustration. In the long run, the desire to imitate this model thus fades, and the situation of superiority of those “up above” is not recognized as fair. Then, a political space emerges for new leaders.

This, according to Freud, is what explains the psychology of the masses: the collective finds in its charismatic leader a kind of externalized, embodied common superego. They are someone to imitate — and in whose reflection you feel better than you did in some previous moral mirror. The 2008 crisis and subsequent recession condemned millions of people to see themselves as failed individuals responsible for their own sudden ruin. It was only a matter of time before leaders from either side of the political spectrum came along to offer new frameworks, allowing people to reinterpret their fate in a way that would assuage their guilt and frustration.
Unearthing Cultural Elitism

As Thomas Piketty argued in his brilliant Capital and Ideology, the sociodemographic composition of the Western left has changed significantly since the 1970s. Until then, it primarily directed its discourse at the working classes, from whom it received its main electoral support, while the Right appealed to and relied on both economic and cultural elites. But in recent years, the trend has changed. The Left increasingly appealed to cultural elites, and the manual working class increasingly abstained from voting until recent years, when right-wing populism began to harvest that abandoned vote.

In Spain, this process has not occurred exactly in this way: the PSOE maintains good support among the working people, including layers with lower levels of education. However, voters for Izquierda Unida and Podemos are mostly university graduates, with a greater cultural capital. The stereotype of the “Spanish leftist” holds a series of traits consistent with that cultural capital: convoluted and difficult-to-understand ways of speaking and an aesthetic that vaunts their ideological positioning and high-culture consumption habits.

These are expressions of what we call cultural elitism. As Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron argued, elites maintain their status by accumulating “elitizing goods” that confer exclusivity and differentiation. This is ensured in material terms by high prices and in cultural ones by restricted accessibility, although cultural elites need not deliberately limit this access.

The ritualization of culture that makes it inaccessible to most people is learned along with the acquisition of culture itself, just as all elites acquire various manners that differentiate them from other people, such as specific linguistic registers, niche cultural references, and forms of identification. This is what Bourdieu calls the habitus. Obviously, cultural elitism is not equivalent to economic elitism, and belonging to the cultural elite is not a guarantee of economic wealth, especially in today’s world. But it surely does pose a significant barrier to identification among people who may have equally low economic means but have dissimilar cultural capital.In recent decades, the Left has increasingly appealed to cultural elites, and the manual working class has increasingly abstained from voting.

Throughout Podemos’s history, some of its leaders have demonstrated a strong cultural elitism. Following Ostiguy’s terminology, these leaders, although initially capable of distancing themselves from certain attitudes with which the Left is commonly identified, could not genuinely abandon the “high” and embody the “low.” This made it difficult for many working people to identify with them. Paradoxically, it was Errejón’s faction that mostly exhibited clear attitudes of cultural superiority, despite its proclaimed populist strategy, by forming a closed club often perceived as inaccessible, opaque, and exclusive.

When speaking, leaders like Errejón and his main allies displayed such an intelligence and culture and such a manner of speaking and dress that they dug a trench between themselves and the people. Unlike the Latin American left-wing populism from which they claimed inspiration, Podemos’s populist-minded leaders eventually replicated the patterns of urban, highly educated elites.

In this sense, unlike the stirring exuberance — sometimes disorganized, chaotic, and “dirty” — of Latin American populism (and the European right), Podemos’s populism seemed inauthentic. This was a “populism worked up in a laboratory” — too brainy, too aseptic — whose origins as a strategy conceived by academics could not be erased. This attitude has been successively replicated and amplified in the political experiment of Más País-Más Madrid.

This made it harder for the much-vaunted “people” to identify with this project. Leaders must be somehow “above” in order to inspire imitation and thus lead. However, they must not be so far above the people that they cannot be imitated, and thus followed. Due to their cultural elitism, Podemos leaders appeared unattainable. They managed to generate intellectual admiration but not political identification, and this eventually short-circuited their attempted populist operation. During Podemos’s initial rise, the populist strategy successfully managed to keep this contradiction at bay. However, it was too significant not to reveal itself when the party inevitably faced major political challenges and had to abandon its strategic discursive ambiguity.

This was visible even after the split in Podemos’s ranks. Errejonismo remained nominally faithful to the populist strategy but failed in its performative aspect, i.e., in really making the “low” and plebeian its own. Pablismo, for its part, opted to abandon the populist political gamble and return to an undisguised radical-left identity. It first did this in terms of image, vocabulary, and symbolism; such a shift was facilitated by the massive influx of loyal Communist Youth cadres promoted by Iglesias himself. From the initial freshness that made it difficult to neutralize Podemos using old ideological schemas, the party returned to occupy the stereotyped slot of the typical radical-protest force, well-exemplified by the rhetoric employed by its two main leaders, Ione Belarra and Irene Montero.

Secondly, in an attempt to connect with new social-justice movements, this shift was accompanied by the adoption of the new radical left’s talking points: a focus on identity politics and minority rights advocacy, moralizing micropolitics and various tenets of radical progressivism favored a discourse that privileges particularism over universalism and demands a high level of cultural capital for the electorate to even be able to engage with it. The points of appeal thus shifted from embodying the people, corruption, and socioeconomic issues to a kind of activist purism centered on the celebration of fragmented minorities. In particular, the past attempt to redefine Spanish national identity was abandoned, as was any aspiration to represent the whole instead of the part.Podemos had a ‘populism worked up in a laboratory,’ whose origins as a strategy conceived by academics could not be erased.

Tellingly, the problem of cultural elitism affected both wings of Podemos. Although the aesthetic register of Pablismo was less “high” than Errejonismo, the open embrace of what opponents eagerly labeled a Spanish import of “wokeness” also led to a shift toward a discourse that requires significant cultural capital to be accessible and produce identification.
For a National-Popular Left

In a now-famous passage, the Argentine writer Ernesto Sabato vividly recalls the downfall of President Juan Domingo Perón — and the yawning gap between the reactions of intellectuals and that of poorer Argentinians:


That night in September 1955, while doctors, landowners, and writers in a hall noisily celebrated the fall of the tyrant, in a corner of the kitchen I saw how the two indigenous women who worked there had their eyes soaked in tears. . . . For what clearer characterization of our homeland’s drama than that double, almost exemplary scene? Many millions of dispossessed and workers were shedding tears at that moment, for them harsh and somber. Large multitudes of humble compatriots were symbolized in those two indigenous girls crying in a kitchen in Salta.

Is this not a situation analogous to the European and Western left’s inability to stand on equal footing with those it claims to represent — to connect with their desires, frustrations, and ways of life?

We find a similar reflection in the writings of Antonio Gramsci, who denounced Italian intellectuals for being distant from their people and identifying with abstract models that lacked any connection with the lived experience of the country’s common people. According to the Sardinian thinker, it is necessary “to produce elites of intellectuals of a new type which arise directly out of the masses, but remain in contact with them to become, as it were, the whalebone in the corset.”

This was, broadly speaking, the approach that successively made the Italian Communist Party the most popular, rooted, and electorally successful such party in the West. It seems to us that this concern for the popular has been partially lost and that many on the Left are often focused, more or less consciously, on perpetuating their status as a cultural elite.

Podemos’s trajectory shows how this problem can hinder even the most successful and interesting attempts to revamp left-wing politics. The populist moment of the 2010s in which a stark polarization was possible has probably passed, with a return to the structural importance of the Left-Right axis. But the populist experience has taught us something we should not forget: the Left should not stray too far from the “low” discussed by Ostiguy, and should avoid a niche, performative leftism that only those with a high cultural capital can engage or identify with.

This implies working toward a national-popular left — that is, one rooted in a widely shared ethos, and capable of connecting with the people who should be the Left’s most natural interlocutors, i.e., working people, or what might be called the social majority. This means not only proposing social programs that will emancipate people from economic distress, but also a political aesthetic that individuals can identify with regardless of their cultural capital. This is not an easy task — indeed, it goes against the trends that have become entrenched over recent decades. But if it is difficult, it is also urgently necessary.

CONTRIBUTORS

Raúl Rojas-Andrés is lecturer in sociology at the University of La Coruña, Spain.

Samuele Mazzolini is a researcher in political science and philosophy at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

Jacopo Custodi is a political scientist at the Scuola Normale Superiore and a comparative politics professor at Georgetown University. His books include Un’idea di Paese. La nazione nel pensiero di sinistra (Castelvecchi, 2023) and Radical Left Parties and National Identity in Spain, Italy and Portugal (Palgrave, 2024).

Why I Filed an Unfair Labor Practice Charge Against the NBA

NBA bylaws allow the league’s commissioner to punish players for statements “prejudicial or detrimental to the best interests” of the NBA or a team. The rule violates workers’ rights — which is why I’ve filed unfair labor practice charges against the NBA.

New York Knicks forward Obi Toppin defends the rim against Washington Wizards forward Rui Hachimura during first half action at Capital One Arena on January 13, 2023. (Jonathan Newton / Washington Post via Getty Images)

BYMATT BRUENIG

JACOBIN
07.23.2024

I filed an unfair labor practice charge against the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the New York Knicks, as joint employers, yesterday in the New York City region of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The charge takes issue with a provision of the NBA’s bylaws that empowers the NBA commissioner to suspend and fine players for statements that they make.

Specifically, the rule in question states that:


The Commissioner shall have the power to suspend for a definite or indefinite period, or to impose a fine not exceeding $50,000, or inflict both such suspension and fine upon any Player who, in his opinion, (i) shall have made or caused to be made any statement having, or that was designed to have, an effect prejudicial or detrimental to the best interests of basketball or of the Association or of a Member [Team]. . . .

Under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), workers have a right to make statements critical of their employer for the purposes of mutual aid and protection. This includes the right to criticize safety, pay, hours, and other working conditions (such as bad refereeing).

An NBA player would reasonably read this rule as prohibiting them from engaging in this kind of protected activity because critical statements about the NBA or a team could have “an effect prejudicial or detrimental to the best interests of” the NBA or that team. This is especially true because the rule states that whether a statement is prejudicial or detrimental will be determined solely by the opinion of the NBA commissioner, the league’s top boss. Thus, under Stericycle, this work rule violates Section 8(a)(1) of the NLRA.

NBA players are unionized under the National Basketball Players Association, and there is a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) in place between the players and the league. Unions can waive certain Section 7 rights in CBAs, but not these specific rights. As indicated in Universal Fuels, “employees should be free . . . to voice their views concerning what the contract grants them as to pay and benefits, whether or not their union and their employer take a different view.” A player would reasonably construe this work rule as prohibiting them from voicing such views because the NBA commissioner could easily conclude that the expression of such views is “prejudicial or detrimental to the best interests” of the NBA or a team.

I filed the charge against the NBA and the New York Knicks because the bylaws also make each NBA team include language in their contracts with players that require them to abide by the bylaws. So the contract of every NBA player essentially reincorporates this violation. The Knicks play in NYC where the NBA is located, so it is the most convenient team to include on the charge as a joint employer.

CONTRIBUTOR
Matt Bruenig is the founder of People’s Policy Project.

Canada’s Social Democrats Are Fighting for Their Survival

Canada’s social democratic party, the NDP, is grappling with Conservative inroads into its voter base, declining support, and internal divisions. As the party confronts the phenomenon of class dealignment, its future is an open question.

Jagmeet Singh, leader of Canada's New Democratic Party during a news conference at the House of Commons in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on February 29, 2024.

 (David Kawai / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

BY ROMAIN CHAUVET
JACOBIN
07.23.2024

Not very long ago, the Canadian New Democratic Party (NDP) was on the doorstep of power in Ottawa. However, over the past decade, their seats have dwindled from 103 to 24. If an election was held today, they could lose even more seats. It’s difficult to see how the party will be able to reverse its downward trend.

“Things need to change,” is the key message that the NDP leader, Jagmeet Singh, will hammer home this summer. Singh will visit several cities and districts across the country to convince voters dissatisfied with the Liberals that his party is a credible alternative. The tour will serve as sort of preelection campaign ahead of the next federal election, which must be called before October 2025.
Election Blues

Whenever it is called, the election will very likely bring big changes to Canada. The Conservatives, headed by Pierre Poilievre, are now leading in all polls and could even win a majority. They are currently credited with nearly 42 percent of voting intentions, compared to just 24 percent for the Liberals, if the elections took place today. After nearly ten years in power, Justin Trudeau’s political viability is in question, especially following the loss of the thirty-year-old historically Liberal riding of Toronto–St. Paul’s, to the Conservatives last month. Trudeau described this as “a difficult moment” for the Liberals, but made assurances that he will remain in power, despite criticism from his party and calls for his resignation.

The NDP intends to take advantage of this moment of weakness in public opinion for Trudeau’s party. However, the challenge is immense, as they currently hold only 17 percent of voter support. Times have been tough for the party lately, with only 24 MPs out of the 338 in the Canadian Parliament.

In 2015, before the enthusiasm grew around Trudeau, the NDP was favored to win the election. However, in the 2019 federal election, the party had its worst result since 2004. Now the fourth-largest party in parliament, the NDP was on the rise thirteen years ago, with 103 elected MPs and held the position of official opposition.

Despite only receiving less than 20 percent of the votes in the 2021 snap election, the party has exerted considerable influence on the latest Trudeau government. This is because the NDP agreed to a confidence and supply deal to support the minority liberal government. According to the agreement, the NDP supports the government on key votes in the Commons to avoid triggering an election and, in return, the Liberals pass initiatives important to the NDP. In effect until June 2025, the deal ostensibly facilitates collaboration between both parties on key policy areas like health care spending, climate change, reconciliation with indigenous peoples, economic growth, and efforts to make life more affordable.

Thanks to this agreement, the NDP was able to push the Liberal government to make significant advances in Canadian health care. They introduced a new national dental care program for low-income Canadians, with an annual family income of less than CAD $90,000 a year. Detractors point out that the program’s income cap will leave 4.4 million Canadians uninsured. Undeterred by the critics, Singh hailed the program as “life-changing.”

New Democrats and Liberals are at odds over the rollout of the new federal dental plan after the government announced it will not be fully implemented until 2025, contrary to the agreement it signed with the NDP. The program has also faced criticism from provinces like Quebec, which denounce interference from Ottawa, since health care is a provincial jurisdiction.

Although not without its drawbacks, the NDP can also congratulate itself on having pushed the universal pharmacare plan. The plan lays the foundations for universal, single-payer drug insurance and will also cover contraceptives and medications for the treatment of diabetes.

During the pandemic, the NDP also wielded its influence by pushing the Liberals to be more generous in their financial aid to Canadians. This included advocating for extensions to the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) in an attempt to improve a program fraught with design flaws, like its sister program, the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS).

Class Dealignment

Although the agreement allowed the NDP to implement its dental and drug insurance projects, two social projects dear to the party, it still does not appear to be a viable alternative for many Canadians. By failing to differentiate itself from the Liberals, the NDP is often seen as too closely aligned with them, which could partially explain its poor polling numbers. According to an Angus Reid Institute poll, 36 percent of NDP voters said they’d be likely to switch to the Liberals.

Poilievre’s Conservative Party is also attracting traditional NDP bases, such as working-class voters and unions. Recent data from Abacus, shows that 10 percent of those who voted for the NDP in 2021 now support Poilievre’s party. The difference in party leader popularity is also stark, with working-class impressions of Poilievre being very positive at 18 percent, compared to Singh’s 7 percent.

This phenomenon of vote-switching, called class dealignment, is currently evident worldwide. While it seems new to Canada, it is already well-established in other countries. Working-class voters, historically aligned with the Left, feel abandoned and disappointed by broken promises, similar to trends in Europe and the United States. This dissatisfaction pushes them to vote for parties that do not share their class interests.

In recent months, several NDP MPs have announced that they will not run again in the next federal elections, further weakening the party. The situation is exacerbated by Naheed Nenshi, the former NDP mayor of Calgary and the new leader of the Alberta provincial NDP, who has announced his desire to distance himself from the federal NDP.

Nenshi reports that many members in Alberta want to separate themselves from Singh, who is heavily criticized for propping up the Liberal government through their confidence and supply agreement. The situation is also difficult in Quebec, where the party has only one elected MP.

The next federal elections will be decisive for the future of the party and its leader. When Singh took over as NDP leader in 2017, he had the winds of hope and change in his sails as the first federal party leader from a visible minority. He gained considerable popularity, especially among young people, through social media savvy. However, seven years later, he is now the most unpopular NDP leader since 1974, with a rating of negative 14.

Getting Back to Basics

The NDP has struggled to translate their political victories with Trudeau’s minority Liberals into increased support in the polls. Meanwhile, the Conservatives have seized the opportunity to target NDP seats in British Columbia and northern Ontario, focusing their “common sense” campaigns on cost-of-living issues. This resonates strongly with Canadians, especially after the country experienced a forty-year high in inflation in 2022, peaking at 8.1 percent.

The Conservatives blame the liberals and the NDP for the rising cost of living and, because of the supply and confidence agreement, the NDP suffers from being seen as part of the incumbent government.

In a surprising move, the NDP withdrew their support for the Trudeau carbon tax. The party, which campaigned in favor of the tax in 2019 as a measure to combat climate change, has now softened its stance. The Conservatives have criticized this shift, stating, “It is clear that Jagmeet Singh is a weak leader who is desperately trying to flee his own record.”

While elections could be called in the coming months, the NDP faces a critical decision about how to regain control of its political fortunes. Should they break the deal with the Liberals or change their leader? All options are on the table.

Only three elements remain to implement out of the twenty-four included in the agreement: the adoption of a law on long-term care, defining affordable housing as 80 percent or less of market value, and creating a permanent federal-provincial-territorial table on missing and murdered indigenous women, girls, and LGBTQ people.

We can expect Singh to be more demanding when parliamentary work resumes after the summer. He will probably try to extract other measures from his agreement with the Liberals before eventually filing for divorce. But to really make any change in the party’s success, the NDP must have a reproachment with its working-class constituents and commit to ambitious social democratic initiatives such as public housing, industrial policy, and climate change actions. The possibility of Donald Trump returning to the White House in the United States and potentially bolstering the Canadian right underscores the urgency for Canada’s social democrats to get their act together.

CONTRIBUTORS
Romain Chauvet is a French Canadian journalist based in Europe. He's interested in stories linked to politics, migration, social issues, and climate change.

Ontario Booze Workers Strike Against Privatization

Striking Ontario public alcohol store workers won a new contract with job protections and modest wage increases. However, their future remains uncertain as privatization plans threaten their jobs and public revenue.

TORONTO, ON- JULY 6 - On day two of their historic, first-ever strike, LCBO workers picketed in Toronto on July 6, 2024. (Steve Russell / Toronto Star / Getty Images)

BYADAM D. K. KING

JACOBIN
07.24.2024

On Sunday July 21, workers at the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) ratified a new three-year contract, ending a two-week strike fought to protect jobs at Ontario’s publicly owned alcohol seller.

Their union — the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) — struck the LCBO on July 5 to win job security improvements and wage increases. Overshadowing union members’ immediate demands, however, was Doug Ford’s Conservative government’s stealth plan to further privatize alcohol sales across the province.

As it stands, OPSEU has managed to hold off the worst effects of the government’s privatization scheme on union members, while winning modest wage increases. But the future of work at the LCBO — a Crown corporation already enfeebled by years of outsourcing and workforce restructuring — remains uncertain.

The union claims that the newly inked deal “includes the protection of good jobs and public revenues,” but there is reason to remain concerned. According to OPSEU, the contract will prevent LCBO retail closures and will cap the number of “agency stores” (private stores licensed by the LCBO), while increasing the number of permanent, largely part-time, jobs.

Throughout the strike, the Conservatives plowed ahead with their efforts to expand alcohol sales at private grocers and convenience stores and thus outsource OPSEU work. The new contract won’t change the government’s plan.

The next three years will therefore test how Ford’s giveaway to big-box retailers will mesh with the new union contract. For now, union members can celebrate a victory, albeit a partial and precarious one.

The Long-Term Privatization of Alcohol Retailing

This recent strike was fought with the threat of privatization looming, but the push toward outsourcing alcohol retailing in Ontario has been decades in the making.

The LCBO currently operates nearly seven hundred retail locations across the province, employs over nine thousand union members, and invests roughly $2.5 billion a year into public services like health care and education. Thus, despite years of purposeful erosion, it remains an important source of public revenue.

Yet for decades, the Crown corporation has been in the crosshairs of Conservative and Liberal governments alike, considered ripe for a sell-off. Unable to implement a wholesale privatization, governments have instead slowly undermined the LCBO by casualizing its workforce and opening additional privately operated “agency stores.” On the eve of the strike, roughly 70 percent of LCBO workers were nonpermanent casuals.


After its election in the mid-1990s, the Conservative government of Mike Harris swiftly initiated a broad privatization plan affecting huge portions of the public sector and Crown corporations, alongside an aggressive overhaul of the province’s labor legislation. Notably, revisions to the act governing Crown corporations eliminated successor rights for unions whose jobs were outsourced to private or not-for-profit sector employers. This meant that the battle against privatization was also an existential fight for public sector unions such as OPSEU, who engaged in a bitter, five-week strike in February 1996.

Like this most recent strike, job security was a central issue in the 1996 job actions. As a result of the 1996 strike, the union was able to extract contract language that forced the government to make “reasonable efforts” toward securing new jobs for affected workers. Litigation over the meaning of these “reasonable efforts” ultimately helped to frustrate and delay some of the government’s privatization and outsourcing but did not appreciably change the direction of change. In the intervening years, alcohol privatization has proceeded apace.

Moreover, the push to privatize liquor sales has gained momentum across the country, with current and former governments in Western Canada implementing various outsourcing schemes and undercutting unions in the process. The current Ontario government has sought to supercharge liquor retail privatization up to and during the recent OPSEU strike.
“The Elephant in the Room”: Ford’s Privatization Scheme

In May, Ford announced that his government was fast-tracking its plan to expand the sale of beer, wine, cider, and ready-to-drink cocktails to convenience stores and all grocery stores by 2026. The proposed framework would maintain the LCBO as a wholesaler and the only retailer of high-alcohol spirits, but gut its retail sales footprint. The union correctly identified the threat posed by hundreds of shuttered LCBO retail stores and massive job losses.

Consequently, a contentious round of bargaining at the LCBO was all but inevitable. As OPSEU reported to members in early May, LCBO bargaining representatives refused to discuss the government’s ongoing plans to expand alcohol sales at private retail outlets — “the elephant in the room,” as the union characterized it.

While claiming that the retail privatization was about “more choice and convenience,” the government couldn’t hide the considerable costs involved, both in terms of choking off LCBO revenues and breaking preexisting contracts with beer retailers.

For example, the fast-tracked scheme requires paying the Beer Store $225 million dollars to compensate for exiting an agreement signed by the previous Liberal government that made the Brewers Retail corporate partnership the exclusive seller of twelve and twenty-four packs of beer. The plan seems to involve reducing the Beer Store’s retail operations, while continuing to rely on its distribution network and recycling program.

As the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation further reported, the LCBO itself expected revenue losses of between $98 million and $150 million per year due to the privatization plan. This is in addition to the millions in rebates, subsidies, and other payments to private sellers that the full proposal will necessitate.

The union characterized Ford’s announced plan as “a corporate handout to big-box grocers,” attempting to draw public attention to the revenue impacts of privatization. “Expanding private alcohol sales is just the latest scheme to transfer public funds into the pockets of CEOs and Ford’s friends while further gutting our public services,” OPSEU president J. P. Hornick said.

Adding insult to injury, just days into the strike, the Ford government premiered an online tool — “a searchable digital map” — directing consumers to private alcohol retailers during OPSEU’s strike at the LCBO. The union countered with a demand that not a single LCBO job be lost through Ford’s privatization plan. For now, it appears they have secured this demand, though its long-term outcome is uncertain.
Returning to Work and the Fight Ahead

Throughout the strike, the Ford government remained steadfast in its commitment to privatization, showing no signs of backing down.

In response, OPSEU worked to build a broad base of public support around its strike demands, focusing in particular on the public revenue consequences of LCBO outsourcing. As the union succinctly put it, “When you buy a beer, that should help build a hospital — not pay for a billionaire’s new yacht.”

The union also pitched a set of core demands meant to simultaneously address the needs of members and garner support from the general public. These included expanding LCBO retail locations and hours; growing the LCBO’s warehousing, logistics, and ecommerce capacity; and fighting for more full-time permanent jobs. Many of these issues will need to be addressed in future negotiations.

Earlier in the bargaining process, the union outlined two possible futures: In the first, the Ford government hands over alcohol sales to big-box retailers like Loblaw and Circle K, leading to gutted public revenues and worsened working conditions. In the second, workers and the public demand the LCBO grow its retail and distribution footprint, continue to help fund public services, and expand access to good jobs.

With Sunday’s ratification, the union seems to have secured a hybrid of the two futures. Members return to work with assurances that their contract protects against job losses for the next three years. However, outsourcing will continue during this period, meaning that the fight to protect the LCBO is far from settled.
SHARE THIS ARTICLE
FacebookTwitterEmail
CONTRIBUTORS

Adam D. K. King is an assistant professor in labor studies at the University of Manitoba. He writes the weekly labor newsletter “Class Struggle” at the Maple.

Swedish Social Democracy Has Always Been Contradictory

Over the last century, Sweden’s Social Democrats built a world-leading welfare state. But the party’s role in undoing some of its own past achievements also shows the contradictions in its project of democratizing capitalism.

Swedish Social Democratic prime minister Olof Palme, photographed in Stockholm in September 1973.

 (Daniel Simon / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

BYJOEL NORDSTRÖM

JACOBIN
07.23.2024

Review of The Rise and Fall of Swedish Social Democracy by Kjell Östberg (Verso Books, 2024)

To say that social democracy was the dominant force of Swedish public life during the last century is an understatement. It’s often said here that “everyone is a social democrat — they just vote for different parties.”


There are good material reasons for this. From the cradle to the grave, a person could be submerged in social democracy. They might be helped by the various institutions that the party built, have their daily bread working for and consuming from the organizations it led, and even be buried by the movement’s own funeral home. The Social Democrats have been in power for more than seventy-five of the last hundred years.

The party’s domination was so strong that when it weakened, from the 1970s and onward, from near-total unstoppability to “only” being the strongest party, the Swedish political field had its center of gravity thrown off course. Whether, and when, a new equilibrium will be achieved is still uncertain.It’s often said here that ‘everyone is a social democrat — they just vote for different parties.’

Kjell Östberg’s new book, The Rise and Fall of Swedish Social Democracy, should be read as part of this debate. It aims to explain how and why all of this happened, and what this means for the party’s future. But as a historian, Östberg does a thorough job, and starts with the equally important question of how the Social Democrats become the dominant force to begin with. It doesn’t just come from the soil. Without this insight into the Social Democrats’ earlier strength, it is impossible to understand why the party has weakened over the last forty years.

This volume is perhaps the most comprehensive historical primer on Swedish Social Democracy. This is true not only for a non-Swedish audience — it is unparalleled even within the Swedish context. Still this does not mean that this is the definitive book on Swedish Social Democracy. Östberg provides a good portion of analysis, but the brevity of the book (150 years in under 300 pages!) means that the avid reader who wants to dig in on specific developments needs to look into other sources. The vast list of references makes for a good starting point.

But there is also an important first comment to make about how we frame its history. The death, fall, or final defeat of Swedish Social Democracy is quite often, if not declared to have arrived already, at least predicted to be imminent. Östberg’s own view is revealed already in his choice of title. However, we might ask: Is it really accurate to describe a party polling over 30-percent support as “fallen?”

Today’s Social Democrats play a different role and get qualitatively different electoral results from those of decades past. Those days seem to be gone, or at least out of sight. It has quite clearly been a fall, but the party seems to have landed on a relatively stable plateau. The Swedish Social Democrats are still the country’s undisputedly biggest parliamentary and political force. Reports of their death seem greatly exaggerated.
The Myths

Throughout the book, Östberg dispels many of the myths within Swedish Social Democracy. Some of these legends are designed to explain why it’s supposedly not possible or suitable to take a more conflict-oriented path, while some fulfill a romanticizing function of giving a radical socialist shimmer to what is at its core a grayer realpolitik. An example of the former is the question of wage-earner funds: the party promised to set out a proposal for economic democracy, but never actually took up the fight for it (see below). An example of the latter kind of myths are the famous quotes from Swedish Social Democratic leaders from over the years, presented as supposed proof of a genuinely radical party with concrete ambitions of transcending capitalism.

Ernst Wigforss is often used in such cases. He was finance minister in different Social Democratic governments between 1925 and 1949 and a (even the) driving ideological force of the party from the late 1920s up until the late ’50s. This was the period when social democracy became the ruling force in Swedish society.

One of Wigforss’s most frequently quoted remarks is: “If the goal of societal development were that all of us should work maximally, we would be mad. The goal is to liberate man to create maximally. Dance. Paint. Sing. Whatever you want. Freedom.” Östberg shows that however beautiful this and other quotes of Wigforss’s are, he was still a key proponent of the Social Democratic economic thinking that social development was possible only through first increasing production and then distributing the proceeds.

Given this, it is interesting that Östberg refers to Wigforss as a kind of historical socialist consciousness, which the party ignored when making the neoliberal turn. In the later parts of his career, Wigforss was a staunch proponent of Keynesian economic policies. At the same time, however, he was an equally staunch proponent of class collaboration. In the earlier parts of Wigforss’s career, he supported neoclassical economic policies that led to higher unemployment. He even led a government commission that rendered toothless previous election-program promises of steps toward industrial democracy.In the early days of his leadership, Olaf Palme took a clear stance against the American actions in the Vietnam War.

During the 1930s, Wigforss changed his views of the economy according to international economic currents, although his Keynesian turn was early (influenced by the Stockholm School, he actually anticipated John Maynard Keynes’s magnum opus of 1936).

This leads us to another at times rhetorically radical Social Democrat: Olof Palme, party leader (1969–1986) and prime minister. During the 1980s, Olof Palme and the Social Democratic leadership changed their views in accordance with the global neoliberal turn. In some strange way, Palme followed in Wigforss’s footsteps, even though Palme’s hunt for economic growth took him, the party, and Sweden into the neoliberal desert instead of thirty years of growth.

Östberg thoroughly describes Palme’s radical positioning, speeches, and quotes. In the early days of his leadership, Palme took a clear stance against the American actions in the Vietnam War and on other international issues. As sincere as these statements were, Östberg shows how they shouldn’t be seen as an unequivocal opposition to interventionist American foreign policy, but rather a sign that he believed that the United States betrayed what he saw as its core liberal and anticolonial values. Palme was a firm anti-communist and supported Sweden’s secret military cooperation with the US and NATO.

The late 1960s and ’70s also brought a radical turn on domestic issues. Calls for socialism, economic democracy, and equality grew enormously. Östberg convincingly describes how Palme also got swept away with this radical turn. At the same time, he paradoxically kept his views on the need to achieve economic growth through class collaboration. Palme spoke of the risk of climate change and the idiocy of the gadget society but maintained his views on the only way forward being increased production (without any mention of environmentally oriented decoupling). He spoke of a planned economy and economic democracy as something inevitable. At the same time, he strategically maneuvered to water down the radical and hugely popular (among the party members and unions) proposal for wage-earner funds. In this way, he tried to make it less threatening to the interests of capital.From the late 1960s, calls for socialism, economic democracy, and equality grew enormously.

The idea of the wage-earner funds came from the trade union movement, which managed to make this the party line in the early 1970s. The funds were intended as a way toward workers fully owning and controlling the private companies. The implemented reform, which was voted through parliament in 1983, however, ended up meaning that the funds, financed through an extra company tax, were to buy shares in companies (a maximum 8 percent of each company) and then use a maximum of half their shares to influence each company. But the funds were scrapped within a decade.

Perhaps the most tiresome myth is that of a single radical and consistent social democracy that supposedly existed in the past, but which was at some moment suddenly abandoned for good. In this simultaneously shimmering and blurry past, the wage-earner funds, the building of the welfare state, and so on all get blended into one thought-out plan toward the socialist tomorrow. In this story, the party’s socialist project was broken in the 1980s by the evil finance minister Kjell-Olof Feldt, the main Swedish proponent of the third way, who led Olof Palme and the party astray down the neoliberal road with cutbacks and the so-called November revolution where they suddenly deregulated the credit market. Without Feldt, it is claimed, the party might well have continued on a reformist road to socialism. An almost-as-tedious myth is the one of an equally consistent but right-wing and politically renegade force scheming to undermine this very objective. In this narrative, the Social Democrats never intended to implement the wage-earner funds and only built the welfare state to serve the interests of capital.

One of the biggest strengths of the book is that it clearly shows both myths to be false. It isn’t possible to establish one single and consistent path that Swedish Social Democracy took. If anything, the party has been an undulating force carried by often-conflicting streams. The direction and velocity of the undulations has depended on the various levels of radicalization and power of the popular movements that the party has been deeply connected to and made up of. The struggle for, and against, the wage-earner funds is a perfect example of this. Often — as in the case of the funds — key proposals even had different meanings to different parts of the movement. So both criticism and praise of Swedish Social Democracy needs to be specific about which periods and tendencies we are talking about.Östberg argues that popular movements were the driving factor of periods of radicalization.

Östberg argues that popular movements were the driving factor of periods of radicalization, and the party leadership and the parliamentary groups and bureaucrats the driving force behind periods of deradicalization. I fully agree with this view, but I find myself wanting more explanation of how this actually played out. How was the party’s right wing able to maintain its grip on the parliamentary groups and party bureaucracy for so long if the membership was consistently to the left? From where did the different parts of the movement get their forces in that moment, and where did they go? These are urgent questions for anyone who is interested in building and maintaining left-wing political power in our day.
Lessons

One of the main lessons going forward is the importance of close ties between popular movements and political parties. Their collaboration was a key feature in building and maintaining broad social support for radical reforms. However, when the party (especially the parliamentary group) controls the movements — instead of the other way around — this leads to parliamentary shortsightedness.

According to Östberg, one economic dogma seems to have been constant: it was only through increased production that social reforms could be made possible. This was not a rejection of redistribution, but it meant that economic growth was the party’s highest priority and that it often prioritized cutbacks over redistribution. This has been proven time and time again, since the first occasion the party formed cabinets and onward. This has key lessons.

The importance of convincing the electorate that you are indeed good managers of the economy is a lesson well needed for parts of the Left. People know that the system is unjust but tend to vote for an unjust system that they believe will put food on the table rather than for a just system that they don’t believe can achieve this.The importance of convincing the electorate that you are indeed good managers of the economy is a lesson well needed for parts of the Left.

However, the way in which Social Democratic economic “responsibility” manifested itself has had a major downside. Since economic downturns generally affect the working class the hardest, these are the times where redistribution is most needed. They also often coincide with popular radicalization. A party that consistently turns to cutbacks during such times misses out on the opportunity to turn radicalization into organizing.

Östberg shows that the Swedish Social Democrats didn’t have a clear economic horizon of their own, beyond the need for growth. This meant that they were especially exposed to the risk of changing economic currents turning them away from their other goals. This can be seen by how easily the leadership adjusted to the neoliberal turn, which not only temporarily paused its expansive reform agenda but made it turn in the other direction. A movement needs to prioritize building a stable economic framework of its own and to combine this with its other strategic goals.
A Road to Socialism?

What was the real Swedish Social Democracy? The rhetorical figures of Wigforss and Palme, or their actual politics? Östberg poses this as a question of whether Sweden was on the road to socialism. His answer, however, seems to be less clear than his question and gets lost amid Palme’s own ideological and political turns.

On the one hand, he describes the party’s ambitions to fundamentally transform society. On the other, he describes the party’s reformism as being unable to transcend capitalism. Should we understand Östberg’s view as that Swedish Social Democracy was a movement that wanted to transform society beyond capitalism, but was inherently unable to do so?

From the book, it is clear that much of the party thought that it was on the path to socialism — by which they meant democratizing the power of capital. The leadership seems — no matter what nice words they used — to have continuously been on another path.

After the neoliberal turn, the leadership step-by-step swayed the membership behind this perspective. Where Swedish Social Democracy is currently heading is unclear, but it isn’t toward socialism. The greater ideological goal of the last forty years could perhaps be described as “making the economy work, and after that has been done, hopefully redistributing some of the increased wealth.”

This impressive book should be both an ending and a start: First, an ending to the strange myth-building that Swedish Social Democracy was ever just one thing. Second, a start for a sober discussion on what the Left (including the Social Democrats themselves) can learn from the ups and downs in this history.

CONTRIBUTOR

Joel Nordström is a lawyer and elected official of the Swedish tenants’ union living in Malmö, Sweden.