THE
UNKNOWN SOLDIERS
Ms.
Toynbee is quite right, there is no ready-made word to describe
the new revolutionaries who are bringing governments to their
knees all across Europe. Unlike the archetypal "workers of
the world," in whose name the socialists of all countries
speak, these guys aren't looking for any government action
to save them, succor them, or "liberate" them from the responsibilities
of life in a capitalist society. Instead, they want to get
government off their backs. And unlike the official
victim groups of race, gender, and sexual "orientation," they
aren't demanding special legal status, apologies for past
injuries, or reparations; they are not lionized in the media,
hailed as heroes, and interviewed on PBS (or the BBC). These
are the unknown soldiers of liberty, whose organizations are
largely ad hoc alliances, and whose voices are rarely heard
in the media or the establishment political parties. Who are
these guys? The New York Times describes them as "a
mixture of truck, bus and taxicab drivers, farmers and small-business
owners, all of whom say the increasing cost of fuel threatens
their livelihoods. Not organized by a union or any one group,
they have joined together out of a common desperation."
THE
WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN
Desperate
to get out from under the heel of their socialist rulers and
the burden of a crushing taxation, the militance of the protesters
is driven not only by the economic threat to their livelihood,
but by the arrogance of the socialist elites. Ms. Toynbee
is right on another score: this is the world turned
upside down. With socialist governments in power in Britain,
France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, and Spain, the
middle classes have taken the place of the proletariat as
the new agency of revolution. A specter is haunting Europe
– the specter of Poujadism.
. . .
A
HARBINGER
In
the 1950s, with French shopkeepers, small businessmen, truckers,
and other self-employed citizens bent under the weight of
oppressive taxation, Pierre Poujade, a grocer, led a largely
middle-class rebellion that threatened to topple the French
government and threw a scare into Socialists, bureaucrats,
and liberal elitists everywhere. The whole point of this movement,
which shook French politics to its foundations, was energized
by a desire to preserve the economic viability of the self-employed
middle classes. Squeezed between the rise of mega-corporations
and the insatiable greed of government bureaucrats, the shopkeepers,
farmers, and independent artisans and entrepreneurs of all
sorts found their voice in the fiery polemics of Poujade,
whose followers carried out similar direct action tactics
against the French state and its corporate allies. Poujade's
party, the Union for the Defense of Merchants and Artisans
(UDCA), won 53 seats in the 1956 parliamentary elections.
The movement didn't last long under assault from the government
and the established political parties, and the wave of protest
receded along with the political fortunes of the Poujadists.
Caught between left and right, and overshadowed by the looming
cold war standoff between the US and the Soviet Union, the
Poujadists of yesteryear could not have succeeded. They were
what we might call premature anti-globalists, clearly ahead
of their time – and their time, it appears, is now.
. .
THE
EUROPEANIZATION OF POUJADE
Unlike
French Poujadism, which is invariably disdained by academic
sociologists and political scientists as provincial to the
point of "xenophobia," this is a European-wide movement: it
started but did not end in France, where the government quickly
capitulated. Instead, it leapt across the Channel, spilled
over into the Low Countries, quickly arose in Germany, and
is now reaching as far as Poland, Spain, Hungary, and Norway.
In Britain, where the price of petrol (as they call it) is
a whopping $4.50 a gallon, even
the fishermen have joined in the protest. Forty fishing
vessels sailed up the Clyde river and staged a demonstration
outside a Trade Union Congress meeting being held at the Scottish
Exhibition Center. Their first action, on Monday, blockaded
a fuel depot at Cattledown Wharf. Clyde Fishermen's Association
chairman Kenny MacNab declared: "We are sick to death of being
messed about by the government, not only on the fuel prices
but in other matters involving fishing. The government does
not seem to want to listen to us at all."
OIL
AND ABSINTHE
This
isn't about the price of gas, but the price of EU-style socialism
– and the aristocratic arrogance of Laborites like Ms.
Toynbee, for whom petrol is a dubious luxury, like absinthe
or fox-hunting, that ought to be curtailed if not altogether
abolished. As the London Telegraph succinctly put it:
"This
is not a fuel crisis. It is a tax revolt. This is the nation
of the stiff upper lip. We put up with war and rationing,
disasters and poverty, bad public services and worse traffic
jams. We even put up with high taxes. In Burke's peerless
words: "To tax and to please, no more than to love and to
be wise, is not given to men." Up with penal taxation, though,
we will not put. For most of the population, fuel is a necessity,
not a luxury. And the penny has dropped that it is more heavily
taxed here than anywhere else."
WORKERS
OF THE WORLD – SUBMIT!
Far
from listening, Tony Blair was doing all the talking, promising
that the whole crisis would be over in 24 hours and declaring
that he would not "capitulate" to the tax protesters demands.
He was backed
up in his hardline stance by the unions, notably the Transport
Workers Union. The headline in the Telegraph summed
it up: "Get back to work, say union leaders." The British
Trade Union Congress ordered its workers "to beat the 'bosses'
blockade'" and get busy building Tony Blair's workers' paradise.
In an incredible inversion of the popular image of unions
as the tribune of those who work for a living, the TUC general
secretary denounced the workers rebellion as a capitalist
plot! As the fishermen jeered at him from their vessels parked
in the Clyde outside the hall, John Monks, the TUC general
secretary, told delegates:
"Companies
that have refused to recognize unions, and who would be straight
to court at the first hint of industrial action against them,
have clearly colluded in lawless protest and civic disruption.
Let us ask who owns the lorries that have been used to disrupt
supplies. Let us ask whether fuel companies have been as firm
in resisting disruption as they should. We call on Britain's
trade unionists to work normally and to take no part in this
bosses' blockade."
CONSPIRACY
THEORY
According
to this rather unusual conspiracy theory, the oil producers
are blockading their own facilities! It's all a rather complicated
scheme to get rid of the taxes, you see. But the big oil producers
don't care that much about the taxes, which make market entry
more difficult and thus stifles their competition: the cost,
in any case, is merely passed on to consumers. The real villain
here is not the oil producers, but the government, which keeps
prices artificially high not only through steep taxes, but
also on account of onerous environmental regulations and anti-auto
regulations that threaten to drive independent truckers and
small businesses over the brink. As the apologist for a socialist
state that thrives on confiscatory taxation, Mr. Monks must
conjure the absurdity of a "bosses' blockade" to disguise
his role as a keeper of the social peace rather than a fighter
in what they used to call the "class struggle." Instead of
"workers of the world, arise," the slogan of the Left in state
power is "work normally"; instead of acting as a social catalyst,
British trade unionists are scolding companies for not having
"been as firm in resisting disruption as they should."
KNOW
THINE ENEMY
The
world is indeed turned upside down – and that, coincidentally
or not, is the tune they played to celebrate the victory of
another great tax revolt that became a revolution: the American
Revolution. In this struggle, Tony Blair is the 21st
century equivalent of George III. Along with his counterparts
all across Europe, the socialist ministers of France, Germany,
and other countries where the Third Way holds sway, Blair
faces a formidable challenge: spontaneous rebellions by independent
associations of self-employed professionals. This is the vanguard
of resistance to the social planners of the EU, and what promises
to be the United Socialist States of Europe – and the
protesters are clearly winning the first round. In Brussels,
the Euro-crats' capital city, Belgian
hauliers drove right up to the European Parliament building.
They know who their real enemies are. The protesters have
made a point to target and surround EU facilities all across
Europe: and this is only a harbinger of things to come if
the Eurocrats don't back off. . . .
THE
END OF THE BEGINNING
In
spite of the hardships endured, public support for the protest
never flagged. "I heard Tony Blair say he wouldn't cave in
to the protesters, but he should know that 90 percent of the
public are with them, not him," said Dave Cummings, an Edinburgh
tax driver, described in the New York Times [14 September
2000] as one who "backed the movement even though he had only
a half tank of gas left this morning and no likelihood of
a refill." Having made their point, protest leaders called
off blockades in much of Britain on Thursday, so that emergency
supplies could get through. In Belgium, too, after the government
partially caved in to their demands, the protesters relented
and let oil supplies go through. But this is hardly the end
of it: indeed, it is only the beginning. . . .
TAKING
IT TO THE STREETS
What
we are witnessing in Europe is nothing less than a revolution,
a radical reaction to the consolidation of continental socialism
– a reaction that goes beyond the ballot box and takes
the fight against the Eurocrats to the streets. As even the
idea of national sovereignty is erased, and the rule of the
managers and corporate planners seeks to rationalize European
social and economic life into prescribed patterns of political
correctness, the intended victims of this new order –
the small business owners, the independent truckers and lorrie
drivers, the Belgian hauliers, the French farmers, the fishermen
– in short, ordinary people throughout Europe –
have been thoroughly radicalized by the stubborn arrogance
of their socialist elites. While the Brits and the Belgians
have a bit of a breather, new protests are erupting in Germany,
where thousands of truckers and farmers stopped traffic in
Hanover, and protesters parked their vehicles in the center
of Magdeburg and paralyzed that northern city. The oppressed
and exploited producers of Europe are rising up against the
socialist parasites: a giant is awakening, and we have just
begin to see what he is capable of...
GO
GREEN?
Polly
Toynbee and her ilk disdain the automobile as the symbol of
capitalist greed and individualism run amok. Bemoaning its
power as a potent weapon in the political wars, she writes:
"Margaret Thatcher's deadly political instinct recognized
the car as her great ally, her symbol of individual selfishness.
New Labour has yet to find an eloquent language or attractive
policies to tackle it. Now it must." Her alternative, however,
is unlikely to appeal to the working masses: "Go Green," she
urges Blair and New Labor, and forget the working stiffs who
depend on fossil fuels for their livelihood. Such rhetoric
is the contemporary equivalent of Marie Antoinette's admonition
to the masses to "Let them eat cake." This is why Polly Toynbee
and her friends are doomed, and why the revolution unfolding
across Europe has taken her and New Labor completely by surprise.
It is also why we will win.
THE
CRISIS OF EUROPEAN SOCIALISM
We?
Who dat? This column is already too long to get into that
whole question, which could easily take up another two-to-three
thousand words. Suffice to say that the Battle of Europa illuminates
the outlines of a new political landscape, as the issues of
globalization and economics begin to interact – with
potentially explosive results The victims of the socialist
super-state are coalescing into a militant mass movement,
and threatening to bring the system to a screeching halt:
they are sure to run up against naked repression – the
mailed fist of the state. The attempted coup d'etat represented
by the European Union, and the continued electoral dominance
of socialist "Third Way" parties from London to Berlin and
all points in between, is far from defeated – but neither
are the protesters, who may yet bring the mother down. The
British protest leaders have given Tony Blair and his government
of socialist prigs an
ultimatum: they have 60 days to lower fuel taxes, or else
face the prospect of another massive disruption. Keeping in
mind that the protesters are up against the same governments
that unleashed a deadly assault on the former Yugoslavia,
one question comes immediately to mind: In this showdown between
the socialist bosses, and the capitalist workers, who will
blink – Blair or the protesters? From one end of Europe
to the other, a different version of the same question will
be asked. The answer depends on the ability of the producing
classes to organize their own defense – and, when the
time comes, to go on the offensive.
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