Two questions about the Euston phenomenon arise from its life so far: first, is this a genuinely new form of political organisation that deserves attention?; secondly, are the politics of this thing actually any good?

On the first question, the way the Manifesto emerged might seem surprising to those who have some contact with the world of political blogging. Blogs – referred to as ‘weblogs’ by those struggling to keep up with the changing terminology – are, for the uninitiated, a form of online diary. There are millions of them, some simply recording the mundane details of people’s lives, others providing running commentaries on every issue from science to sport, and from pornography (this is the internet, after all) to politics.

There are plenty of reasons to dismiss political blogs as trivial or ephemeral, with a depressingly low standard of debate. Take a random visit to Harry’s Place, which supports the Euston Manifesto and is regarded as one of the more significant and respectable examples of political blogging. You may be lucky to find a thoughtful piece about world events. Or you may find a bit of puerile sniping at Ken Livingstone, Polly Toynbee or George Galloway (all right, some people do deserve puerile sniping).

Even if you found a thoughtful piece, click on the ‘comments’ link at the bottom (especially if it shows there are more than about 30 comments), and you’ll find that only a couple of the early responses involve to-the-point criticism. Indeed, you’ll be very lucky if you don’t find the comments descending into point-scoring, ad hominem attacks, apparently irrelevant asides (usually referring to separate arguments elsewhere on the site) and a good deal of personal abuse. It’s unlikely to make you want to get involved.

Cultural context
So how does an apparently serious political movement arise from this kind of thing? Well, let’s try to explain the cultural context of the internet first. There is something about the internet that causes people to behave in ways that they would never do elsewhere. Kate Fox’s work of popular anthropology, Watching the English, notes that even the normally-reticent English use the apparent distance and impersonality of the web to reveal personal details to strangers they would not normally tell intimate friends. The apparent distancing effect also seems to explain the intemperate tone of internet discussion. One might think of this as paradoxical – after all, a remark spoken in anger can soon be forgotten, but one posted on the web is there for anyone to refer back to in future.

(For some people, there seems to be a real dichotomy between the web and the rest of the world. A friend of mine has a weblog of the online diary kind and in one of his daily musings he said that he was leaving his job. As he works for a company with which I do some business, I saw him shortly afterwards, and asked, ‘So, where are moving on to?’ He looked startled and anxious and said ‘How did you know about that?’ ‘Well, it’s on your blog.’ ‘Oh, er, yeah…’)

So we can look at the abusive content as an inevitable by-product of the genre rather than something that fatally harms it. Indeed, it is a positive aspect of the phenomenon. Political blogs are open to everyone in the way that political party meetings are not. So for every reader and commentator who is there to throw rocks, there may be others who are sympathetic but have a slightly different viewpoint.

As a result the barriers created by the demarcation between political parties break down. To be sure, people still take sides, but the sides they take are defined differently. A whole lexicon of political terms has entered UK political discourse from web discussions – ‘decent left’, ‘muscular liberals’, ‘stoppers’, ‘moonbats’ – arising from the positions people take on a basket of issues rather than their party loyalties. Genuine debate and criticism, including some ‘Fisking’, is abundant if you look in the right places (see below for all definitions).

The apparent decline of political meetings is partly because they are being replaced by online discussions. The Euston Manifesto represents one of the first attempts to put together an informal coalition from such discussions – looser than a political party in the normally-understood sense, but an attempt to crystallise the arguments around a consistent body of ideas
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It should be said that political blogging is not all characterised by the yah-boo style found in the comments box at Harry’s Place. You can find longer analytical pieces at Ministry of Truth, along with a few scornful polemics. Likewise, topical economics from a free-market socialist point of view can be found at Stumbling and Mumbling; intelligently sarcastic attacks on self-appointed censors can be found at Media Watch Watch; and campaigning issues have their own blogs, such as at Labour Friends of Iraq. There is much, much more (see below).

The resurgence of the soft left in political blogging is all the more striking given the moribund nature of the left in pretty much every other sphere. Those of a certain age will recognise a number of the characters involved in this revival, and might be led to wonder whether the spurt of activity can be accounted for, in part, by an en masse mid-life crisis among those active in the student left of the 1980s. Simon Pottinger went so far as to create a ‘Comrades Reunited’ website, which is either pitifully sad or a brilliant stroke of wit, according to taste. And for those aged around 40, the Proustian rush you may feel on reading some of the left-blog debates could just be because they resemble the Clause Four versus Trots arguments of 20-odd years ago.

Robust ideas
But is this really a new organisational phenomenon? It’s fair to say that it has a number of new features, and the contacts made by political blogging do seem to create a different pattern of discussion and organisation. But it’s accompanied by some familiar features: the Euston Manifesto is so called because it was thrashed out in a pub on Euston Road in London (O’Neill’s, if you’re interested) and the pub meeting is of course a traditional mainstay of this kind of politics. A more orthodox launch meeting was held soon after at the Union Chapel in nearby Islington, attended by 250 people.

Whatever its origins, however, the project’s future – its sustainability – will be dependent to a great extent on the robustness of its political ideas. The Manifesto (full text) is a deliberately generalised set of principles, open to argument about the implications of its content.

There is plenty of stuff that is uncontroversial for the left: it’s against racism; for equality (though it’s a bit vague about what that means); and supports a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine. The two issues that have generated most comment, however, are its underlying philosophy, and its perceived position on US foreign policy and the war in Iraq.

The philosophical arguments are, in many ways, the most interesting, and in my view the most coherent part of the document. Its arguments about the nature of historical truth, cultural relativism, human rights and intellectual heritage have puzzled some, leading, on one hand, to accusations that the Manifesto is merely a statement of the obvious, and, on the other, to attacks on it for ‘liberal imperialism’.

The Manifesto argues, essentially, that the values of the Enlightenment are not only relevant as a philosophical underpinning, but urgently need to be asserted in the face of some current political trends. The extraordinary alliance of Leninism and fundamentalist Islam that underlies some of Respect’s outpourings is just one such trend.
But this is not just about supposed leftists in the SWP, who ally with Baathists and jihadists and dismiss their murder of a trade unionist as a ‘hullabaloo’. Among liberals, there is a strong stand of cultural relativism that denounces all the failings of the United States and its allies but is highly cautious about atrocious breaches of human rights in the Islamic world. For more egregious examples see, for instance, almost anything written by former Demos director Madeleine Bunting.

The Manifesto argues that the attack on Enlightenment values goes to the heart of the government. Labour has extended controls on free speech from relatively small prohibitions on, for instance, incitement to murder or racist violence, and widened the concept from the protection of people to the protection of ideas. A senior policeman has demanded powers to proscribe slogans on banners that may merely cause offence. Bizarre positions are being taken up on the left, while the right to participate in ordinary robust debate is being challenged, supposedly in the interests of liberal concepts of multiculturalism.

Telling criticism
It’s reasonable enough to view these developments with alarm, and to this extent the robust response of the Euston Manifesto represents a welcome ‘back to basics’ approach for progressive thinkers. But it is on questions of current events in foreign policy that the Manifesto has come in for more telling criticism.

Let’s do the authors of the Manifesto a service that most others have denied them and stay off the specific case of Iraq for the moment. The Manifesto states clearly that it is neutral on the question of the invasion:

‘The founding supporters of this statement took different views on the military intervention in Iraq, both for and against. We recognise that it was possible reasonably to disagree about the justification for the intervention, the manner in which it was carried through, the planning (or lack of it) for the aftermath, and the prospects for the successful implementation of democratic change.’

So the manifesto is not the pro-war document that some have made it out to be. But it does, crucially, introduce what might be called a doctrine of intervention that underlies the views of many of its supporters on the Iraq war. The weaknesses of this doctrine go some way to explain why the pro-war left finds itself in a political mess almost as bad as some of the anti-war elements.

The Manifesto says:

‘Humanitarian intervention, when necessary, is not a matter of disregarding sovereignty, but of lodging this properly within the “common life” of all peoples. If in some minimal sense a state protects the common life of its people (if it does not torture, murder and slaughter its own civilians, and meets their most basic needs of life), then its sovereignty is to be respected. But if the state itself violates this common life in appalling ways, its claim to sovereignty is forfeited and there is a duty upon the international community of intervention and rescue. Once a threshold of inhumanity has been crossed, there is a “responsibility to protect”.’

It is easy to see where this reasoning comes from. Does anyone feel comfortable when those who could intervene stand by during massacres in Rwanda, or when tyrants are tolerated in the interests of expediency in foreign politics? But as a competing doctrine to the much-abused principle of sovereignty, this is a poor thing indeed.

A couple of reducio ad absurdum arguments against this statement are obvious – and while the following ones are deliberately on the edge of reasonableness, they are not entirely straw men. Who is actually to decide – dismissing the absurdly vague concept of ‘the international community’ – whether the ‘threshold of inhumanity has been crossed’? The UK was, by any normal definition, responsible for the torture of some of its own citizens in the 1970s. Does it follow that someone somewhere should have invaded because of this? Torture and murder is undoubtedly a systematic component of current US foreign and security policy. Does it really make a difference to the argument that the victims are not its own citizens and therefore fall outside the Euston principle?

But these are mere debating society points when set against the real hole in the principle, which is not the question of who is to decide in such cases, but who is to act. To be fair, some of the main figures in the Euston Manifesto group have acknowledged this difficulty – at the Union Chapel launch Norman Geras spoke of the important difference ‘between principle and agency’, while Alan Johnson warned against the idea of a ‘fantasy UN’ that would step in to solve the evils of the world.

Back to Iraq
But others have not had the sophistication to share these doubts, and this means that we do, in the end, have to return to the specific case of Iraq. The current conflict has led to bizarre alliances on the pro-war left as well as the anti-war left, and the Euston doctrine crystallises the thinking that led to these contradictions.

How else to explain how it was that liberal and progressive people became so focused on the admirable aim of removing Saddam Hussein that they dismissed the problem of agency that Norman Geras sketched out? How else could they conclude that a US administration, whose fundamental principles were so at odds with almost every left-wing idea, could be supported as the agency for delivering this goal? How else could they believe that the disconnect between their aims and the aims of the Bush administration could lead the enterprise to anything but disaster?

Okay, as I said before, the Euston Manifesto isn’t all about the invasion of Iraq. Norman Geras himself concluded that, had he known now what he knew then, he would have quietly witheld support for the war. And many of the ‘Eustonards’ have been vocal and active in their support for trade union rights in Iraq while their anti-war adversaries have, as in the shocking example of the SWP noted above, been silent or treacherous. But the war has been poisonous to the left in general, and the Euston Manifesto has not been immune to the problem.

Finally, a less remarked-upon, but still striking, feature of the Manifesto is its almost complete absence of economics. There is a passage on open source, which adds up to support for the free exchange of ideas and opposition to attempts to claim ownership over currently shareable intellectual resources. This is important and topical in its own right, as the current disingenuous campaign by corporations to extend copyright to almost the entire sound archive of history proves. (Don’t be fooled by Cliff and co – most recorded musicians, especially the poorer ones, don’t hold the rights to their own recordings and would be harmed rather than helped by extension of copyright).

But there is nothing on redistribution, workers’ control, mutual ownership, and so on, apart from a vague aspiration to equality and an acknowledgement that there are differences about how to achieve it.

So what does the Euston Manifesto add up to in the end? Well, to be fair, one if its features is that does not make great claims for itself. Norman Geras put the point poetically at the Union Chapel meeting as he recalled lines from TS Eliot’s ‘Little Gidding’:

What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.

‘Well, we make no extravagant claims,’ he concluded. ‘It's a beginning, that's all.’

In spite of Bernard Hughes’ misgivings, he is a supporter of the Euston Manifesto

Some definitions
Decent left. A term applied to themselves by those on the left who trumpet their opposition to Hizbollah, Iraqi insurgents, and their apologists.
Fisking. Making line-by-line attacks on newspaper opinion pieces held to be tendentious, contradictory or lacking a factual basis. Named after Robert Fisk, who detractors argue is a prolific source of articles worthy of such a line of attack.
Stoppers. Supporters of the Stop the War movement. Invariably pejorative.
Muscular liberals. Originally a term of abuse aimed at ‘Eustonards’ and others accused of wanting to impose their philosophy by force on supposedly ‘unenlightened’ types, in the manner of the Henry Jackson Society. The term has been substantially reclaimed as a badge of pride by those it was intended to criticise.
Moonbat. A term of abuse aimed at leftists implying a level of disconnection with the real world. It is a source of delight to many that George Monbiot’s surname resembles this term.

A breathless tour of political blogs
Ministry of Truth, Stumbling and Mumbling, MediaWatchWatch and Labour Friends of Iraq are all mentioned in the main article. Harry’s Place deserves a better review than it gets in the main piece and is worth regular visits. PooterGeek (Damian Counsell) is one of the leading Eustonards and although he keeps quiet in most political fights his brand of whimsy with a political slant is good value. The measured tones of Norman Geras are evident in the grand-daddy of all left blogs and his list of links is probably the most comprehensive of all. Drink-soaked Trotskyite Popinjays for WAR is intended as an ironic title but is a good read, especially if you can handle the surrealism in a Geordie accent that is produced by one of its contributors, Will from A General Theory of Rubbish. If you want some real Trots, Dave’s Part represents the saner end of the tendency, while a more spittle-flecked but often entertaining account of things can be found at Lenin’s Tomb. A variety of contributors provide a thoughtful account of politics with a British Asian slant at Pickled Politics. The Sharpener also uses multiple contributors including the outrageous but now almost silent John Band to provide a magazine-like feel – a more traditional magazine format can be found at Democratiya. Off to the right wing, the indefatigable Tim Worstall provides an infuriating antidote to sloppy thinking and a weekly round-up of good blogging, while Mr Eugenides delivers a series of sweary rants that occasionally hit the right target so effectively that you forgive the many times he shoots at the victims and not the culprits. Chicken Yoghurt delivers vitriol at targets more pleasing to the left. Across the Atlantic, Majikthise gives us a wide-ranging discussion of issues touching leftists in the Democrats. Butterflies and Wheels exemplifies the Enlightenment principles behind the Euston Manifesto. Back home, Recess Monkey delivers Westminster gossip. Councillors, MPs and former MPs are also in on the act. Slugger O’Toole is one of the veterans of the blogosphere and his account of Northern Ireland politics is mentioned in reverential tones by political bloggers. Most of them have compendious links to other blogs so visit them to find more.

Armies of design and marketing consultants make fortunes from thinking up clever new names for everything from countries to companies. Labels and logos line our increasingly homogenised high streets, badge our clothes for peer approval, and mark our identities into safely sealed categories. Adverts saturate our media, colour our buses; corporate slogans infiltrate our brains. However much we ignore them, they just do it.

These are the bright, shiny signs of western economic success, the all too visible power of global corporations.

And it's on these "brand bullies" of 1990s corporate capitalism that journalist Naomi Klein trains her acidic aim in her much-heralded book, No Logo. This 450-page tome for our times has been lauded far and wide, praised almost continuously since it was first emerged on the book review pages last year, just as the ringing battle cries of the Seattle anti-world trade protests were dying in our ears.

It is a "timely, vivid and trenchant analysis of the globalised international economy", according to one reviewer; "a complete, user-friendly handbook on the negative effects that '90s überbrand marketing has had on culture, work and consumer choice", according to another. It has been described, variously, as "top quality reporting", "an attack on the excesses of capitalism", "a call to arms" for the direct action generation, and a "sophisticated cultural commentary".

No Logo is already a publishing phenomenon, and Klein has become the newest star of radical social commentary. Twelve months after her book was published, the former Toronto Star columnist is still doing the rounds of the media circuit, popping up on Radio Four round table discussions on the power of brands, or being interviewed on Radio Five Live about globalisation and the World Trade Organisation. During the last few weeks alone No Logo narrowly failed to win the Guardian's annual first book award, and sat smartly on the top of the paper's on-line sales lists. It was proclaimed paperback of the week in the Observer this January, described by Robert McCrum as "a thrilling achievement, a genuine thought provoker". Go into almost any major bookshop and it's there on the bestseller shelves, next to the latest John Grisham novel and David Beckham's biography.

Astonishing success
This is success on an astonishing scale for any political publication, but especially for a book that explicitly intends to "fuel the next big political movement, a vast wave of opposition squarely targeting transnational corporations".

At a public meeting organised by the World Development Movement in London last November, where Klein was speaking, No Logo was even described as "the Das Kapital of the anti-globalisation movement", a kind of communist manifesto for the millennium generation.

Comparing a 30 year-old Canadian consumer journalist with Karl Marx may be ridiculous at one level, but it is quite revealing at another. For while Marx's genius, and lasting value, was to dig below the surface of the system, to excavate its historical sources and expose the economic underpinnings of capitalism's power, it is Klein's failure to place 1990s capitalism in historical context, or to delve far behind its corporate faces, that is her biggest weakness.

Klein's argument is based on the notion that the growth in wealth and cultural influence of multinational corporations, such as McDonalds, the Gap, Nike and many others over the last 15 years, is largely due to a shift in corporate priorities from "making things", that is products, to creatin g brands or images with which people can identify. It is this consumer identification, they claim, that gives them their market power. The Nikes, Microsofts and Tommy Hilfigers of this brave new world were "pioneers", says Klein, who "made the bold claim that producing goods was only an incidental part of their operations".

"What these companies produced primarily were not things … but images of their brands," she writes. "Their real work lay not in manufacturing but in marketing."

She argues that the trade liberalisation and anti-labour laws of the 1990s encouraged corporations to get their products made by franchised overseas contractors, leaving them to concentrate on building their brand identities. They are engaged in what she calls "a race towards weightlessness", a race in which the winner will be "whoever owns the least, has the fewest employees on the payroll and produces the most powerful images, as opposed to products". Klein musters an impressive arsenal of statistics to back up her claims, showing how the weight of corporate budgets has tipped from manufacturing to marketing.

Battle of the brands
Much of No Logo concentrates on this battle of the brands, diligently documenting how corporations and their images have crept further and further into more and more areas of our lives, privatising public spaces and incorporating private ones. Klein describes how brands have colonised, and in some cases even control, areas of human activity, like sport and music, once associated with freedom and leisure.

She shows how they have encroached on government and education, winning exclusive sponsorship deals with schools and universities in north America, and have even begun to direct individuals' values and sense of themselves. Klein points out how we are all now expected to think of ourselves as a kind of "brand", how we must market our "selling points" to the highest bidder - whether we're after a job, a college place, or the most eligible partner.

Everything, it seems, has been turned into profit-fodder by the power of the marketers, as they "built corporate empires around brand identities". Youth and street cultures are scoured by teams of corporate "cool hunters" desperate to pick up on the latest inventive craze of the kids on the block. Ideas once thought to be a threat to the mainstream are lapped up by new firms keen to establish their niche.

Ideas like "diversity", for example - the darling concept of late eighties left wing identity politics - has been transformed into the defining images of a string of multinational firms, such as the Gap, Benetton, and the Body Shop, all keen to play the politically correct marketing game. According to Advertising Age, the coffee shop chain Starbucks became on overnight success precisely because, "for devotees, the Starbucks' 'experience' is about more than a daily espresso infusion; it is about immersion in a politically correct, culture refuge".

Klein's research is nothing if not thorough, and her prose moves with a kind of breathless energy. The fountain of anecdotes and examples of intrusive sponsorship are almost overwhelming, and often entertaining. For example, in a chapter on how American companies have begun to brand schools and classrooms, offering sponsorship and equipment for exposure to young people, she relates the story of a pupil in Georgia who was suspended for wearing a Pepsi shirt on his school's official "Coke Day".

She goes on to show that, far from increasing consumer choice, the corporate fight to monopolise both commercial and cultural space has led to mergers, franchises and corporate censorship which leaves many people with virtually no choice at all. Whether you're in Leeds, London or Washington, the brands on the high street, and in the shopping malls, are always the same.

Sweatshops
Meanwhile, of course, someone, somewhere is making Adidas's shoes and track suits, Microsoft's CD Roms, and the Gap's khaki pants. More often then not these are desperately poor young women in countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan and Haiti, hired for a pittance to slave in sweatshop firms making goods to order until someone, somewhere else, can do it even cheaper.

In the most impressive section of the book, Klein describes her visit to an "export processing zones" in the Philippines, a 682 acre free trade zone in Rosario, a town 90 miles from Manila, where 207 factories are crammed into a walled-in industrial area, employing 50,000 workers to produce goods exclusively for the export market. These are "windowless workshops" where visitors aren't allowed. "If Nike Town and the other superstores are the glittering new gateways to the branded dreamworlds," says Klein, "then the Cavite Export Processing Zone … is the branding broom closet."

There are 52 EPZs in the Philippines alone, employing 459,000 people; China has 124 zones, employing 18 million people. These are virtually tax free areas, where there are no import and export duties, where working days last between 12 and 16 hours before overtime (which is often compulsory), where wages are subsistence, the work low-skilled and tedious, and the management military in style. In some factories, refusing to do overtime is a cause for dismissal. Klein tells the story of one seamstress in Rosario who died "of overwork". It goes without saying that union organisation is virtually impossible - in some factories even talking discussions is prohibited.

"Fear pervades the zones," writes Klein. "The governments are afraid of losing their foreign factories; the factories are afraid of losing their brand-name buyers; and the workers are afraid of losing their unstable jobs. These are factories built not on land but air."

Klein's argument throughout is that there is increasing public and political disillusionment with the activities of corporations - their encroachment onto public and private space, their betrayal of the promise of greater consumer choice, and their "decision" (as she calls it) to "bankroll their innovative branding forays by slashing jobs" and moving production abroad. This has led to a rise in anti-corporate activism. There is, she contends, a real movement of resistance, "an activism that is sowing the seeds of a genuine alternative to corporate rule".

In last section of the book Klein describes the work of the various anti-corporate initiatives and groups that she puts so much faith in, from so-called "culture jammers" and "ad busters" undermining corporations' images and logos with graffiti and graphics; to campaigns by environmentalists against the likes of McDonalds and Shell; to protests by human rights and labour movement activists against Nike and other companies whose contractors use child labour to make their trainers, footballs and clothes. For Klein and others the Seattle "riots" - and similar recent protests in Washington, London and Prague - were merely the most visible expressions of this "movement's" disparate attempts to wrest some public control from the seemingly all powerful multinationals.

Major flaws
Yet, by locating the origins of this resistance in the mid-1990s, Klein highlights one of No Logo's major flaws. For, despite the huge amounts of detailed research and an impressive grasp of her material, Klein often comes across as naive as she gets carried away by the oldest marketing trick of all - believing that everything she sees and describes is new and different. In her scramble to emphasise the radical departures of 1990s marketing and consumerism, for example, she pinpoints 1993 as the birth date of the "super-cool extra-premium 'attitude' brands that provide the essentials of lifestyle". As if companies haven't always employed logos and built identities within their markets to entice their customers, as a recent exhibition on brands at the V&A museum in London confirmed.

Trademarking, it pointed out, dates back several hundred years, and battles for brand recognition have always been part of industrial capitalism, part of the process of establishing market prominence in the endless competition for profits that is capitalism's driving force. In 1917, for example, there were more than 300 brand name rivals to Coca Cola registered in the USA, all making similar products. Are we really to believe that Coke won its current global dominance simply because it tasted that much better than all the rest? We are left with "the real thing" because it won, and continues to win, the endless marketing war.

Klein implies that the growth of "brands over products" marks a new phase in capitalism, but she neither explains why capitalism began to structure itself that way, nor attempts to distinguish it from any proceeding phase. She sees the politics, but never the political economy.

As Robert David Sullivan of the Boston Phoenix put it, in one of the few critical reviews of No Logo: "Workers' conditions are being forgotten, Klein seems to say, because corporations are increasingly run by executives who never even see the factory floor. Maybe, but … strip away workers' rights here at home, and Nike will be more than happy to make its sneakers in Lowell or Fall River. When has the mass production of clothing ever been anything but a horrific experience for almost everyone involved? (Do the words 'cotton picking' ring a bell?) We can't blame the originators of the 'Just do it' slogan, as Klein implies we should, for the continued exploitation of labour."

Klein fails to see the modern emphasis on branding, and all that goes with it, as a continuation of capitalism's searching need to reach more markets and make more profits. As Sullivan puts it: "No Logo is an attack on the excesses of capitalism, hidden inside a less-threatening critique of the hard sell … Klein would have been more convincing if she had depicted these outrages as part of capitalism's evolution, rather than as part of a conspiracy less than a decade old."

This has important political consequences. Klein talks of a "genuine alternative to corporate rule" sought by the activists of her new "movement", groups like Reclaim the Streets. But neither she nor they seem able to say what that alternative is, nor how it can be achieved. It's tempting to say they know what they are against, but not what they are for. But even this is unclear, for Klein conveniently ignores the fact that within her so-called movement there are many disparate voices, sometimes with competing aims, and often with very different reasons to protest against quite different enemies.

Hard questions
It's not that Klein doesn't understand the system within which the giant corporations operate. As she herself says: "The conduct of the individual multinationals is simply a bi-product of a broader global economic system that has steadily been removing almost all barriers and conditions to trade, investment and outsourcing. If companies make deals with brutal dictators, sell off their factories and pay wages too low to live on, it's because there is nothing in our international trading rules to prevent them."

Yet, while she seems to recognise the limits of "brand based politics", ultimately, Klein sidesteps the hard questions of how to make change. She both underestimates the ability of the corporations to absorb opposition, and overestimates the significance of actions taken by Reclaim the Streets and their ilk. "Eliminating the inequalities at the heart of free market globalization seems a daunting task for most of us mortals," she writes. "On the other hand focusing on a Nike or a Shell and possibly changing the behaviour of one multinational can open an important door into this complicated and challenging political arena."

True, but opening the doors alone won't bring the house down.

In Rosario there's a Workers' Assistance Centre, which campaigns for workers' rights and provides education to the employees of the Cavite EPZ. During Klein's visit to the Philippines she argues with a leading member of the centre who doesn't believe the codes of conduct imposed on some cororations in recent years will make any difference. "Haven't you read Marx?", he asks, to which she replies: "It's different now".

And, of course, it is. It always is. But Klein has consumed so much of what is apparently so new that she is blind to how much is just the same. Marx himself, in the Communist Manifesto over 150 years ago, best described how capitalism's need for "constantly expanding markets for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe"; how "its exploitation of the world market has given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country"; how "in place of old wants … we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes"; how, indeed, "it creates a world after its own image". Globalisation? It's an old idea.

No Logo, like its message, is easily absorbed, mediated. A new coffee shop opened in north London recently - the latest of many competitors to the Starbucks chain, and the other lifestyle cafés of modern city life. It has its own logo, evocative name, and shop front slogan. Inside it's decked out in sleek beech and chrome, with high stools, airplane-style reclining seats, and its own range of coffee pots, cups and trays. The workers wear matching designer shirts and serve from art deco coffee machines. The music system plays the Byrds' sanitised version of Dylan's Chimes of Freedom while the customers tap away on their laptops, read the Guardian, and wait for their next meeting.

Down one side, against the wall, there's a row of shelves and a glass fronted cabinet. And there, beside the '60s LPs and model scooters, is the cool black designer cover of Naomi Klein's book - on sale for £14.99. No Logo, another lifestyle accessory for our corporatised world.

Matthew Brown is a member of the ILP National Adminstrative Council

‘I remember it so well because it was all so unexpected. I was at the switchboard with two others. There weren’t many calls. Three or four anarchists were standing guard just outside the switchboard room which was on the third floor of the Telefonica. The guards were nodding off against the wall.

‘It must have been about 2.00pm when I looked out of the window. I saw several small lorries screeching to a halt outside the building. Assault guards started jumping out and running silently into the building. It all happened very quickly. So quickly that the guards outside the switchboard room had no time to react. Before they knew what was happening the assault guards were taking away their rifles.

‘But others upstairs must have heard the shouts. The assault guards rushed into the room and lined us up against the wall. Then we heard shots coming from the stairs. The guards told us: “Don’t touch the switchboard and don’t worry. Nothing will happen to you.” Still we were very scared.

‘They kept us there until 10.00pm when the next shift arrived and then they let us go home. As I walked out I remember seeing big crowds outside the building. A few scattered shots could still be heard, but I couldn’t tell whether they came from the Telefonica.

‘Four days later we were allowed to return to work. There were no anarchists there anymore. Only assault guards.’

Compared with many of the dramatic and bloody events that took place in Spain in the 1930s, particularly during the three-year civil war, Enriqueta Cervera’s encounter may sound relatively minor. But what she witnessed that day at work, and what took place in the few days before she resumed her duties, settled the fate of the republic.

To understand why the event was significant, it is vital to lift the veil that still continues to obscure the Spanish civil war. It means probing into actions that many still prefer to forget. It means refusing to be satisfied with the nostalgia about the undoubted courage of the International Brigades that so often substitutes for the full truth about events in Spain.

Rebellion
The civil war began in July 1936 when General Franco led a military rebellion against the democratically-elected republican government. The war and its aftermath led to the deaths of at least half a million people and forced 300,000 Spaniards into prolonged exile.

While the rise of Mussolini and Hitler had caused shock waves throughout Europe and America, the Spanish civil war moved many tens of thousands of working class men and women, and a great many intellectuals and writers, to take up the cause. Some of the most politically committed went to fight, others from a wide political spectrum, rallied round campaigns to aid Spain.

Among those who volunteered their military services to the Spanish republic was a 17-year-old member of the Young Communist League (YCL) from Bristol, Stafford Cottman. Anxious to get to Spain, he applied to both the commmunist-led International Brigade and the smaller ILP contingent. The ILP answered first and so he joined it. He was later expelled from the YCL.

Nicknamed ‘the boy’ because of his age, Staff became friends with another volunteer, Eric Blair, better known as George Orwell, who was later to win acclaim as a writer. ‘We used to hammer out the question of the war and the revolution and the relation between the two,’ says Staff. They agreed upon ‘the impossibility of getting people to give up what they had already accomplished’.

And here we come to the nub of the dispute. What had been accomlished by the Spanish people? What was really happenning in parts of republican Spain? Was the civil war primarily a fight between democracy and fascism, a precursor to the second world war, as Communist orthodoxy insisted?

Or was there more to it? Was Spain, as a former US communist, Murray Brookin, argues, also ‘caught in a world-historic revolution – a rare moment when the most generous, almost mythic dreams of freedom seemed suddenly to become real for millions of Spanish workers, peasants and intellectuals … the last of the classical European workers’ and peasants’ revolts’? (New Politics, no. 1 1986)

The answer to these questions were not merely academic. They were to have grave consequences for the course of the civil war and for the people of Spain for decades to come.

In common with other European countries in the 1930s, Spain was undergong serious social convulsions, but it also had special features of its own. It was a society in transition. In 1931 the monarch was swept away. Uprisings in the countryside against the land-owning classes were savagely put down, leaving behind a legacy of class hatred. In addition, Spain was also a land of several peoples, with the Basques and the Catalans struggling for autonomy from Madrid.

Far from being a supposedly ‘timeless’ feudal society, Spain was rapidly becoming industrialised. In the process a combative working class was being created out of an impoverished peasantry.

Governments swung from left to right, those of the left proving to be a bitter disappointment to the working class, those of the right brutally suppressing dissent. In 1934, after an abortive uprising in the Asturias against a right-wing government, at least 1,500 miners were executed and 30,000 people of various political persuasions were imprisoned.

Spain had become deeply divided. The capitalists, the landowners, the reactionary and hierarchical Catholic Church, the petty bourgeoisie, the top civil servants, the military leaders, the police and the fascists stood on the side of the existing order.

On the other side, seeking a new order, were the trade unions and political parties of the working class and the politicised peasantry. The trade union federation, UGT, which was linked to the socialists, had a million members. Equally large and influential was the anarcho-syndicalist movement, CNT, with its stronghold in Catalonia among industrial workers.

The election of the coalition government known as the Popular Front in February 1936 had an electrifying effect on both sides of the class divide. Its success had much to do with the widespread desire for an amnesty for the many thousands of political prisoners. Even though the initial composition of the government was notoriously moderate, its victory raised the confidence and expectations of the working class.

At the same time, the result fanned the fears of the Spanish right which plotted feverishly to overthrow the government. These plans were an open secret. Yet the Popular Front government, which was more fearful of the working class that elected it than the forces of reaction, did little to prevent the rebellion. The day before the rising the government prevented the left press from publishing warnings of what was about to happen.

Working class power
The real resistance to Franco’s forces came not from the republican government but from the people themselves. Badly armed and even unarmed, they threw back the military in large areas of Spain with acts of great courage. Much of the machinery of state – including the army and the police – melted away or, rather, went over to the other side.

While the Popular Front government formally held office, power in the republican zone was dispersed among the towns and villages. Armed workers’ and peasants’ organisations set up their own militias, ran their own police forces and dispensed their own, sometimes rough, justice.

In the countryside, large private properties were either collectivised or divided among the local people. The government then ratified these actions. The wave of collectivisation was not restricted to the rural areas, however. According to one estimate, 18,000 industrial and commercial enterprises were taken over, 2,500 in Madrid and 3,000 in the capital of Catalonia, Barcelona.

One historian of the revolution, Burnett Bolloten, records:

‘Railways, streetcars and buses, taxicabs and shipping, electric light and power companies, gasworks and waterworks, engineering and autmobile assembly plants, mines and cement works, textile mills and paper factories, electrical and chemical concerns, glass bottle factories and perfumeries, food processing plants and breweries, as well as a host of other enterprises were confiscated or controlled by workmen’s [sic] committees.’

He also reports that cinemas, theatres, department stores and hotels, restaurants and bars were also brought under workers’ control.

Josep Costa, secretary of the CNT textile workers in Badalona, found himself facing a massive problem.

‘The workers were ready to work but there was no management, no orders, no system. The truth is that we had no intention of collectivising … The decision to take over fuller control of the industry started taking shape as we heard the news of repression by the reactionary forces … Now we [the union] had been forced by events into becoming the vanguard of the working class in its fight against capitalism.

‘But I was not optimistic. I felt that the great powers abroad would not allow a revolution to happen in Spain. Why did we decide to forge ahead with the revolution anyway? Because we had no option. We were being pushed by the workers themsleves. That is what we had always preached, now we had to put it into practice regardless.’

The CNT also introduced important social reforms. Costa mentions ‘totally free and very efficient health plans under which workers could choose the specialist they wanted to be treated by. They also had maternity leave and better pension schemes.’

Nor were the changes confined to managing the workplaces. Republican Spain experienced an outburst of creativity and innovation. Agricultural collectives built their own schools. Education was freed from Catholicism and made available to everyone. Museums and libraries were opened to all. Crêches were introduced.

A new wave of popular art hit the streets – posters, murals and even trains and cars were painted. Music and poetry were revived and radical theatre groups, like that of the poet Lorca’s, toured remote rural regions. Bull-fighting was abolished.

As in Russia after its revolution, social relationships began to change. Divorce and abortion were legalised. In some areas church marriages were swept away. Eduard Pons Prades, who was 14 in 1936, recalls heated arguments among anarchists about young people, ‘free love’ and morality:

‘As a result of these debates our union devised a way of formalising relationships. The couple would be brought to our offices and a long statement would be read to them on the revolutionary meaning of love. They would sign the statement and a copy would be kept at our offices. The final words of the ceremony were: “Now, dear comrades, we wish you happiness for your own good and the good of the revolution.”’

Lola Iturbe recalls that, like her, most women had no formal education. She was also socially handicapped by the stigma of illegitimacy which made her extremely timid. ‘When I came into contact with libertarian ideas I felt myself to be freer, more secure, more able to face up to life. With a changed perspective on life.’

She tells how in Barcelona the CNT wing of Free Women took up neglected aspects of women’s struggles with extensive campaigns against prostitution and the denigrated lives led by most women. There were literacy programmes. Cultural, technical and professional training were provided. Leaflets were distributed in the poorest districts, inviting women there ‘to come to study centres. Workshops were planned and set up for them to learn a skill. All this was done on a grand scale and a lot was achieved.’

Untimely revolution
Despite the growing weight of evidence that, in the midst of civil war, republican Spain was undergoing revolutionary changes, albeit unevenly, these facts are relatively little known and still less appreciated. One reason for this is the eventual victory of the forces of reaction which did much to physically annihilate the opposition and erase its memory.

There is another reason why the picture remains blurred – the strategic role played by the international communist movement and the historic failure of communist parties to confront their terrible record. For it should be remembered that on the republican side it was the communist strategy that prevailed.

In the 1930s the world communist movement was very much the instrument of Stalin’s foreign policy. After the rise of fascism in Germany – and the very real threat this posed to the Soviet Union – the suicidal and sectarian strategy of denouncing the rest of the left as ‘social fascists’ was dropped in favour of broad, popular front campaigns.

Just as Stalin sought to build diplomatic alliances to protect the Soviet Union from Nazi Germany by courting Conservative Britain and Popular Front France, so communist parties sought wide alliances with left and liberal forces to combat fascism.

Spain presented Stalin with a problem. As the former leading Spanish communist, Fernando Claudin, writes, Spain was ‘the untimely revolution’ for the Soviet leadership. Neither Britain nor France would swallow a Soviet-supported revolution in Spain, but nor could the communist movement do nothing to assist the Spanish working class.

Stalin aimed to make the republic presentable to the governments of Britain and France, portraying it simply as a parliamentary democracy. In fact, neither government was persuaded and both stoutly upheld their policy of ‘non-intervention’ (at a time when Germany and Italy were actively backing Franco).

The communist strategy, which allowed it to build links with the most moderate forces in the republic, brought it into conflict with the majority of the organised working class, even though its emphasis on military struggle had much merit. In a futile attempt to encourage other governments to aid Spain, communists not only sought to disguise the Spanish revolution but to contain it, and then inevitably they started to claw back advances. They were set on a collision course.

What strengthened communist influence over the conduct of events was the republic’s dependence on Russian arms and equipment – for which the Spanish people paid a heavy price in the gold bullion they shipped to the Soviet Union as payment. The communists also had the advantage of having a clear strategy when compared with the vagueness of the socialist leadership and the contradictions of the anarchists. They also installed their own political representatives, military advisers and secret police in Spain to ensure that Stalin’s policy was carried out to the letter.

Enemies of the people
There is another reason why the international focus on Spain came at an inconvenient time for the Soviet leadership. The now notorious Moscow trials of the old Bolsheviks, who were charged with being Trotskyist/fascist agents, were in full swing.

While many on the European left either defended or turned a blind eye to the trials, one Spanish revolutionary party publically denounced them as bogus. This was POUM, the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unity (which was closely linked with the ILP in Britain).

Formed from a fusion of two political groups only 10 months before the outbreak of the civil war, and heavily concentrated in Catalonia, POUM nonetheless had a politically experienced leadership. Several had been founder members of the Spanish Communist Party, others had broken with Trotsky. The most senior was Andres Nin who had worked in Moscow for some years for the communist movement. He knew too much about Stalin’s Russia from the inside.

Denounced almost from the outset by the Communist International as Trotskyists and, much worse, as agents of fascism, POUM members were, in fact, anti-Stalinist communists. They were subjected to a massive and continuous torrent of abuse.

A speech by the general secretary of the Spanish Communist Party, José Diaz, in March 1937, shows the nature of these attacks. He asked rhetorically:

‘Who are the enemies of the people? The enemies of the people are the fascists, Trotskyists and the “uncontrolled” elements. Our chief enemy is fascism agasinst which we concentrate our fire and all the hatred of the people. But our hatred is directed with equal force against the agents of fascism, against those who, like the POUM, these Trotskyists in disguise, conceal themselves behind pseudo-revolutionary phraseology so as to better fulfil their role as agents of our enemies in our own country.’

Later, for good measure, he added, ominously:

‘Fascism, Trotskyism and the “uncontrolled” elements are the three enemies of the people which must be removed from political life not only of Spain but also of civilised countries.’

Teresa Pamies, a Young Communist active in the women’s movement, had some misgivings. ‘I had close relatives who belonged to POUM, and I knew them to be honest and decent; I knew in my heart that they could never be enemy agents. No, I wasn’t following Moscow’s instructions when I attacked POUM but I just wanted to believe what Moscow was telling us.’

May events
Staff Cottman, on leave in Barcelona in May 1937, explains that ‘the business of the war or the revolution came to a head’ when the Communist-led security forces attacked the telephone exchange in Barcelona. The exchange had been under the control of the anarchists since the outbreak of the civil war.

The reaction on the streets was immediate. Barricades were erected against the communists by rank and file anarchists and POUM members. ‘You had to take sides,’ says Staff.

For five dramatic days the organised working class controlled the city and the Communists were pinned down. It was civil war within the civil war. Fearful of the consequences the anrachist leaders drew back, much to the anger of their members who felt betrayed. POUM followed suit.

The Communists were quick to capitalise on the events which they described as a fascist-inspired revolt organised by POUM and certain anarchists. They succeeded in replacing the left socialist, Largo Caballero, prime minister since September 1936 (who was growing increasingly hostile to the daily detailed directives from the Soviet ambassador), with the right wing socialist, Juan Negrin.

Within two months POUM was outlawed, many of its leaders were put on trial for treason, and Andres Nin was murdered by Soviet agents. The anarchists were next in line for repression. In the summer, a Communist general led a bloody campaign to smash the rural collectives in Aragon.

The May events marked the beginning of the end. Josep Costa summed it up:

‘The men were like lambs going to the slaughter. There was no longer an army, no longer anything. All the dynamic was destroyed by the treachery of the Communist Party in the May events. We went through the motions of fighing because there was an enemy in front. The trouble was there was an enemy behind us too. I saw a comrade lying dead with a wound in the back of the neck that couldn't have been inflicted by the Nationalists.’

Lola Iturbe says of the world of Free Women:

‘The political events of May cut everything short, all those movements which had been growing with such intensity.’

Eduard Pons Prades says of the republican assault guards who took over his district in Barcelona when the anarchists capitulated:

‘The first thing they did was to burn the libraries of the union and of the Juventas Libertarias [anarchist youth]. The first things to take the rap were the books because they were apparently a danger to the status quo be it republic or Francoist … You know that the first thing the Francoist troops did when they entered a town was to burn books before they started on the people.’

Hope
The civil war dragged on until April 1939, although Soviet arms dried up six months earlier. Instead of the republican struggle becoming an inspiration to others, a glimpse of the better society that a politicised working class is capable of achieving, it ended in bitterness and recrimination.

Criticising the way the Communists reduced the war to a conventional one in which the fascists were better able to win, George Orwell wrote in Homage to Catalonia: ‘Perhaps the POUM and the anarchist slogan “the war and the revolution are inseparable” was less visionary than it sounds.’

Enric Adroer, a POUM militant, says that the internal fighting continued even at a French concentration camp.

‘News about Nazi victories were broadcast every day through the camp loudspeakers and I remember how the Communists used to cheer. At the time, remember, Hitler was Stalin’s ally. When they [the authorities] shipped us out to Mexico, the Communists threatened to throw me overboard, but I was well protectedby the POUM people and our CNT friends.’

Eduard Pons Prades, returning to Spain after 40 years in exile, recalls a trip he made to a village where there had been a successful socialist/anarchist collective and a conversation he had with an old countryman. Reflecting on that experience the old man told him: ‘Yes, yes, life in the village had never been the same before and probably never will be again. It was the first time that we, the wretched country labourers, realised that we were worth something in this world.’

Then, after a short silence, he added: ‘The shame is that there had to be a war and we had to kill each other.’

The torch that had been lit in revolutionary Spain may have been extinguished, and the hopes of a generation may have been dashed. Yet we have a duty to remember, to retrieve the truth and to learn the lessons. Only then can we say that the attempt by millions of Spanish people to take control of their own destinies was not wasted.

This was originally published as an ILP pamphlet in 1996 to coincide with the release of Ken Loach’s feature film, Land and Freedom

Before and after

December 1936

‘The revolution was still in full swing … the aspect of Barcelona was something startling and overwhelming. It was the first time I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flags of the anarchists… Every shop and cafe had an inscription saying that it had been collectivised… Waiters and shop workers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal… Tipping was forbidden by law; almost my first experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy … There was no unemployment, and the price of living was still extremely low; you saw very few conspicuously destitute people and no beggars except gypsies. Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine.’

April 1937

‘The revolutinary atmosphere had vanished … Once again it was an ordinary city … with no outward sign of working class predominance… Fat, prosperous men, elegant women, and sleek cars were everywhere… There were two facts that were the keynote of all else. One was that the people – the civil population – had lost much of their interest in the war; the other was that the normal division of society into rich and poor, upper class and lower class, was reasserting itself… But it was significant that all over Spain voluntary enlistment had dwindled… Undoubtedly it was bound up with the disappointment of the revolutionary hopes with which the war had started.’

From Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

But before we assess developments in Sweden and the thinking behind them, we should remind ourselves of some of the relevant background.

The background
Swedish social democracy has long historical roots, a point Taylor could have developed further to set the context for crisis as well as progress. The Swedish Social Democratic Party (Socialdemokratiska Arbetarpartiet or SAP) first came into power in 1932 and held on to it until 1976. Traditionally, the SAP had an organic relationship with the trade union movement particularly the blue collar federation, the LO (Landsorganisationen).

The celebrated Swedish welfare state emerged in the post-war years, following an historic deal between capital and labour in 1938. It was underpinned by universalist principles, funded by national insurance, and achieved redistribution through taxation. The economic context was one of growth and full employment within a framework of demand management. All of this was overseen by pragmatic, gradualist, consensual and humanistic, rationalist social democracy.

However, in the 1970s, an economic crisis propelled by international financial pressures, wage inflation and an increasingly uncompetitive economy led to questions about whether the Swedish dream could continue. In the face of trade deficits a programme of currency devaluation was embarked upon to maintain competitiveness. There were also criticisms of over-powerful trade unions and a monopolistic public sector, as well as high taxes and high spending.

In the late 1980s Sweden and other Nordic countries underwent economic restructuring, with mergers and takeovers, in the face of increased competition and globalisation. Although financial markets were reformed to stimulate investment, and greater financial prudence was pursued, the protection against markets afforded by the Swedish welfare state was not abandoned, although taxation levels were reduced, with some impact on the public sector. There was also increased unemployment and inequality, and some privatisation. In 1991 the SAP lost power to a centre-right coalition, which had to deal with a serious financial crisis. The SAP was re-elected in 1994.

The economic crises faced by Sweden may not be disimiliar to the British experience, but the response to them was. The British experience has been a largely neoliberal one, more harshly so in the case of Thatcherism, but that project continues under new Labour. More specifically, as Stuart Hall has recently argued, the new Labour government is committed to a hybrid political formation with neoliberalism as the dominant discourse and social democracy as the subordinate one.

Taylor persuasively argues that despite the apparent achievements of what he terms ‘the British model’, neoliberal responses have generally proved inefficient, both in economic and social justice terms. Sweden and other Nordic countries, he states, show that a commitment to economic modernisation, growth and progressive welfare states go hand in hand and can deliver traditional values of equality, freedom and solidarity.
But what is the nature of contemporary social democracy in Sweden and what have been its achievements?

The project
Inevitably, earlier versions of social democracy in Sweden have been reviewed in the light of changes at the level of ideas, economy and society and, according to Taylor, part of its continuing success is the ability of the SAP to adapt to changing times and circumstances. In power for all but nine years since 1932, the SAP has not only held office but has done so with what Taylor describes as ‘the democratic approval and active consent of the Swedish electorate’, all necessary ingredients of a long-term hegemonic project. However, a narrative is also necessary to such a project.

The creation of the most recent variant of the Swedish model is a good illustration of that ability to adapt, and explains its longevity. Taylor spends some time rooting this model in a thoughtful programme that the SAP declared in 2001. It was drawn up in the light of globalisation and technological innovation but continues to emphasise the importance of freedom, equality and solidarity.

People should be free to develop and be free from various threats. They should have the freedom to decide and to participate with others. Such freedom, however, should be founded on equality. People should be given the same opportunities without their differences creating divisions of rank, power and influence. Thus, the programme argues for a society without ‘division into higher or lower orders, without class differences, sexual segregation or ethnic divisions … where children can grow up to become free and independent adults, where everybody can run their own affairs, and in equal and solidaristic co-operation work for the best social solutions that serve the community best’. The programme emphasises solidarity as being important for recognising mutual dependence, participation and obligations.

While recognising the opportunities that capitalism brings, the programme is also critical of capitalism, especially the dangers of international speculation, the lack of democratic accountability in monopoly ownership, and the threats to the environment. Despite Sweden’s particular accommodation with capitalism, the SAP remains an anti-capitalist party, says Taylor, and therefore recognises the need to have measures to balance the power of capital. The answer to this lies in: ‘the reassertion of the concept of the public interest through the progressive activities of an enlightened state, effective and strong trade unions, independent non-governmental movements in civil society, professional associations and wider democratic forces at local, national and international level.’

The SAP sees itself as a progressive political force in the context of globalisation, for democracy, welfare and social justice. The programme argues for the regulation of the market economy by independent public bodies. Social rights such as care, education and health should be provided by mechanisms that deliver best in terms of justice and efficiency, recognise the need for alternatives to meet a variety of different needs, but only allows such alternatives to have recourse to public funds if they follow the same rules as public services. What’s more, the public chooses the services and not the other way round. Such services should be delivered within the context of equality and should strive to eliminate inequalities. The commitment to social rather than private insurance is reinforced.

Taylor argues that the SAP has effectively written ‘an ideological manifesto for the new age’ with ‘underlying values … applied in a clear and coherent way so that they are rooted in the realities of our dangerous and complex world’. This is a bold claim and one that needs to be tested against the future behaviour of capital. Despite moments of crisis, Taylor argues that Swedish social democracy’s adaptability and flexibility demonstrates its resilience.
But how has the Swedish economy fared in the turbulence of globalisation?

The economy
Supported by a wealth of data, Taylor describes the Swedish and other Nordic economies as ‘open, thriving and efficient’, reflected in good export records, especially in relation to telecommunications equipment, although investment is also healthy across a range of other industries. Integral to this, argues Taylor, ‘is the ability of its governments to pursue sensibly prudent and responsible financial policies without undermining their publicly funded welfare states’. For instance, the Swedish currency remains strong, wage and price rises have been modest, and inflation has remained low in recent years. Sweden also reports a healthy surplus on its current account, which, according, to the Ministry of Finance, helps to protect its citizens in less economically congenial times.

Sweden’s famous companies, such as Volvo, Saab, Ericsson and Electrolux, are now largely foreign-owned. While this kind of investment helps to account for Sweden’s economic success, it also shows that welfare state models are not necessarily ‘a disincentive for foreign investors and companies’, argues Taylor.

While Sweden enjoyed full employment in the post-war period, during the 1990s unemployment rates climbed to 10 per cent, and now stand at just over five per cent. Rates of growth in labour productivity, both now and in the recent past, are also higher in Sweden and other Nordic countries than most other European countries. Sweden’s ability to compete in world markets is underpinned by comparatively low wage rises and labour costs despite strong unionisation (a staggering 85 per cent of the workforce is unionised) and a continued commitment to collective bargaining. Of course, this does not take account of the social wage enjoyed by Swedish workers and citizens, a topic we shall return to.

There is also evidence of a commitment to new industries rather than a defence of old ones. For instance, in a recent survey Sweden was ranked fourth (Finland was ranked first) among the countries most prepared to use new technology, with impressive rates of ‘network readiness’ among people, businesses and public authorities. The commitment to modernisation is also matched by comparatively significant investments in research and development, with Sweden spending more than twice the amount on R and D that the UK does. Sweden also rates highly on its investment in knowledge. In fact, Sweden and Finland have a greater proportion of IT in business services than all other countries. Taylor also highlights the high personal usage by Swedes and their Nordic neighbours of new technologies. Sweden ranks third in the world and the UK 15th in this regard.

Although many of the old corporatist structures have gone, according to Taylor, active participation by workers in industry continues and trade unions are seen by the state as necessary to social cohesion and corporate success. Taylor emphasises that Swedish trade unions tend not be defensive but have been in favour of investment, innovation and participation to humanise work and maintain competitiveness. Such an approach, argues Taylor, has not only resulted in gains for trade union members but ensured that many workplaces are among ‘the most environmentally friendly and healthy in the world’, although he does point to a problem with ‘high levels of sickness absenteeism’.

Taylor further argues that Sweden’s employers take the notion of corporate responsibility seriously. Those at the leading edge of export industries are ‘open and consensual’ in their dealings with well-organised trade unions and an increasing number of firms in the Nordic region have abandoned the unhelpful command and control management strategies. Taylor makes strong claims for them:

‘They not only preach the virtues of flat hierarchies, workplace diversity, informal team-working, direct communication and commitment but they apply such human resource management techniques in a coherent and holistic way with positive effect … the pervasive influence and creative strength of trade unionism in mutual co-operation with openly progressive companies has worked effectively to stimulate the most advanced forms of work humanisation and corporate success.’

In other words, Taylor suggests, progressive trade unions have been ‘a precondition’ to Swedish economic success.

Taylor also points out that short-term responses by firms to market fluctuations, such as hiring and firing, are less common in Sweden. More ‘mature companies’ tend to regulate turnover and appreciate experience. When this is not possible, many firms try to avoid compulsory redundancies and have programmes for training, job relocation and financial compensation.

While it is not always clear what evidence there is for some of the managerial practices of employers, the industrial and economic achievements are impressive. His point about workplace absenteeism is an intriguing one. While Swedish social democracy may have socialised capitalist society considerably, a significant part of the economy still has to operate within capitalist production, no matter how humanised, and we might speculate that the absenteeism suggests the problem of workplace alienation is still difficult to resolve. A fully socialist society would need to address the question of work, well-being and human fulfilment.

The society
Taylor provides some interesting data on contemporary Swedish society which help us to make some judgements about its nature and how far it matches the aims of the 2001 SAP programme.

Quality of life
When it comes to quality of life issues, for instance, Sweden scores highly, Taylor informs us. According to one authoritative annual survey carried out by the Zurich Contonal Bank on quality of life in the most advanced countries, Sweden scored most highly in the 2004 report. Other Nordic countries also scored highly. One hundred measures are taken into account, covering environmental protection and sustainability (US came bottom in this regard), and social indicators including ‘levels of crime and corruption, civil rights, living standards, life expectancy, gender equality, international commitments on aid, arms and refugees, levels of alcohol and tobacco consumption’. The report, Taylor says, commended Sweden’s relatively high spending on research and development and the sense of social responsibility shown by companies.

Income equality
While Taylor acknowledges a recent increase in inequality in the distribution of disposable income, including in Sweden and other Nordic countries, they nevertheless remain, according to OECD data, ‘significantly more equitable than their competitors’. The standard measure of income inequality is the Gini coefficient, with 0 representing perfect equality and 100 a situation where all income goes to those who earn the most. In 2002 Sweden scored 24 (the other Nordic countries scored 26), while Britain scored 31 and the US 36. Although impressive, we have to note the slippage since the earlier days of social democracy, a fact that does not warrant a great deal of space by Taylor.

Looking beyond its own territory, Sweden more than meets its obligations on international aid. In fact, all five of the Nordic countries meet the UN target of giving 0.7 per cent of GDP as foreign aid. In 2004 Sweden gave 0.83 per cent, much more generous than both the US and the UK.

Benefits for the unemployed are generous by British standards and people in such a situation are encouraged and supported back to work. Such a policy operates in a different context in Sweden in that there is a strong Lutheran work ethic within society.

Sweden’s and the other Nordic countries’ achievements in terms of quality of life and equality are of course paid for by high taxes. OECD figures confirm Sweden’s high rates of taxation as standing at 51.9 per cent of GDP whereas Britain’s is 37.3 per cent. Taxes for the average worker (as a percentage of labour costs) were 46.6 per cent in 2003 whereas in Britain and the US the figure was 31.1 per cent.

Gender equality
Part of the commitment to equality by the SAP has been the emphasis on gender and race equality. In terms of gender, the progress in tackling inequalities have been striking, the most impressive in Europe, according to Taylor. For instance, according to the World Economic Forum, in a survey of 58 countries, Sweden scores most highly on gender equality when the areas of economic participation and opportunity, political empowerment, educational attainment, and health and well-being are aggregated. For instance, it is interesting to note 45.3 per cent of Swedish MPs are women compared to 19.7 per cent in the UK.

While child care provision has always been more impressive in Sweden, reforms in 2003-4 ensure that every child from one to five has the right to child care and fees are kept deliberately low so that all can participate. To dovetail with the education system, there is a commitment to lifelong learning and a national curriculum to ensure common standards and values. While local authorities are the main providers of child care, some private and co-operative provision is also publicly funded and fees are charged at the same rate in all provision. As many as 80 per cent of one to five-year-olds take up child care places. School age child care is also taken up by 75 per cent of six to nine-year-olds. But such provision does not come cheap at a staggering two per cent of GDP.

Race
Sweden faces problems as it has a modest birth rate and a significant growth in the population of people over 65. Immigration has taken place and the growth of a multi-cultural Sweden will test the strength of its model. Despite an ambivalent attitude to immigration of various sorts in the past, since the 1970s Sweden has given asylum to foreign refugees fleeing oppression. Now over 11 per cent of the Swedish workforce are thought to be migrants and Sweden practices what Taylor describes as ‘regulated immigration’, although there are no restrictions on the free movement of labour within the EU.

While there is evidence of ‘racial incidents’ there is no ‘threatening populist movement of the radical right … seeking to incite racial and religious hatred’. Sweden has a strong commitment to progressive integration policies with ‘substantial financial support for language learning, cultural adjustment and labour market adaptation’. As Sweden faces up to its labour market shortage immigration will expand and test its commitment to multiculturalism.
Taylor ignores any reference to the right wing party, Ny Demokrati (New Democracy), which won 25 seats in the 1991 election. Although they have since disappeared, as recently as the 2002 election the Folkpartiet (Liberals) focused on immigration and increased their vote. Nor does Taylor explore the issue of residential qualifications and the social wage issue in Sweden. Some benefits, for example, depend on the length of time citizens have lived in the country.

Taylor argues that the Swedes are a comparatively happy people despite accusations of high suicide rates (not true), alcoholism and depression. He suggests that the Swedish are proud of their country, that there is a ‘close identification between social democracy and the nation’, and that ‘this has ensured the encouragement of a rather benign and peaceful form of national identity, less defined by any exclusive attempt to distinguish “us” from “them” but founded on the creation of a genuinely internationalist image of well-being, altruism and moral virtue’. While this might seem ‘complacent’, he says, it has ‘protected Sweden from the ethnic tensions and cultural confusions of other European countries’. The experience of 1991 suggests that this conclusion might only apply when social democracy is not threatened.

Conclusion
Taylor has performed a valuable service in highlighting the extremely impressive achievements of Sweden. Swedish social democracy, it seems, despite its crises, continues to be hegemonic with a high degree of popular consent. Its hegemony is also underlined by the degree to which opposition parties, broadly speaking, do not propose to unravel existing arrangements.

If I was to be critical of Sweden – and Taylor is not – then I might be concerned by current levels of inequality compared to the SAP’s past record, and question whether racial equality is quite as advanced as Taylor suggests. The achievements also need to be set alongside the future impact and unpredictability of a capitalist global economy, which caused crisis in Sweden in the recent past. There are also aspects of Swedish life that Taylor does not cover, such as gender relations in the home, the care of older people, and the position of children, to name but a few.

Finally, Taylor reflects on what the Swedish experience might mean for the UK left. Although he acknowledges the different cultural and historical contexts of Sweden and Britain, he