The Noughties – The Decade of the People on the Hillsides

Commentators will find many obvious ways of summing up the last decade but the phenomenon of the Noughties, in my view, has been the rise and spread of left-wing governments in South America.

From Hugo Chavez in Venezuela to Evo Morales in Bolivia, these governments have inevitable flaws, their reforms often modest and the privileges of the old elites remain incredibly difficult to dislodge, but they are undeniably rooted in the genuinely popular power of the streets. In 2002, it was the poor from the barrios overlooking the Venezuelan capital Caracas who descended on the city to defend their democratically elected president after a US-backed military coup. In Bolivia, indigenous peasants and out of work miners descended from the poverty of the El Alto suburbs into La Paz to protest at the fire-sale of the country’s resources. In 2005, it was they that elected in a landslide victory Bolivia’s first ever indigenous president in the 470 years since the Spanish conquest.

But something else changed too: as John Pilger observes in his 2007 film The War on Democracy, “history is crowded with heroes who offer new beginnings. The respectability of great power and its games and deals and plunder always beckon. If these new leaders succumb, their biggest threat may not be from Washington, but from the people on the hillsides.”

Perhaps there is something peculiar to a continent that has suffered so much interference from outside (and in Chile’s case, outright fascism) that has created the conditions for South America’s democratic decade. Those who come down from the hills have demanded not only economic justice but also the return of the governance of their countries from tiny minorities who ruled for their own gain and in the interests of multinational corporations and US foreign policy. But a similar condition exists across the world. In Europe – in the UK – economic injustice may not be in any way as stark as faced by the poor of Caracas or La Paz, but the neoliberal experiment has been just as advanced.

And people, too, feel as distant from Westminster as they ever have. Yet in the aftermath of the MPs expenses scandal, a financial crisis that has seen little structural change in the way the banks operate and a heightened awareness that, in war, we are little more than a suzerainty of the greater American empire, it is depressing to realise this. In Britain, we are about to elect early in a new decade another right-wing government – possibly one even more right-wing than the privatisation-loving, corporation-friendly, Washington-obsessed governments of the Noughties.

So why are things so much more dispiriting? Is it that Britain has no people on the hillsides? Or is it that just there is nothing to inspire anyone to bother descending them for?

Another remarkable change over the last ten years has been how ‘anti-capitalism’ has become a recognised stand of political debate, a counter to the assumed invincibility of neoliberal dominance. We have travelled a long way since Seattle in 1999 and the global financial crisis and the threat of catastrophic climate change has added much weight to anti-capitalist arguments.

But we haven’t come as far as we sometimes might like to think. There is no recognisable ‘anti-capitalist movement’, more a disparate gathering of single issue groups, a dwindling number of advocates for the creation of ‘new worker’s parties’ and the occasional self-publicist. There is, nevertheless, a buzz of ideas, but these are still far from centre stage. In many ways this should be a surprise: debating the merits of and alternatives to the free market are no longer abstract discussions about the rights of individuals to buy a particular car or a pair of jeans, but about whether markets have been busy selling financial instruments that basically don't exist or whether governments have the right to sell our hospitals and schools to the highest bidder.

The political terrain was always going to be hard going but I think the problem often lies with us: with our inability to work together, to see the common enemy, to stop sniping at each other, to prevent ourselves becoming sidelined into ploughing enormous energy into the election of fundamentally flawed, unaccountable characters like George Galloway. More than anything else, it is about sometimes being unclear about what exactly we are against and what alternative we want to see – in the short term, as well as the distant future. So we oppose war because war is bad and about oil, speaking nowhere nearly enough in straightforward terms about American empire and war’s bounty for multinational business. We oppose climate change, arguing that market solutions will not work but finding the message that neoliberalism is an intractable barrier to carbon reduction is drowned out by the NGO messages calling for governments to ‘do the right thing’ (and then end up thinking that summit battles with the police are still some sort of victory).

And I also think we have a tendency to celebrate the successes of South America for their own sake, without seeing what lessons they may give to communities on our doorsteps. The victories of the people on the hillsides, the organisation of social movements of South America, are inspirations, not a reason to abandon political activism in Britain in despair (as some friends have already done).

But what about the short term? More collaboration, certainly, less scepticism about its likely outcome and for me, a very big step. I’ve never been a fan of electoral politics but willing to concede this. If, in my lifetime, politicians evolve out of a movement to defend the interests of unions, the working class and campaigning organisations, stand for and win elections on an explicitly anti-capitalist platform in opposition to both the mainstream political parties and the far right and then understand that if they succumb to compromise and the trappings of power, their biggest threat will come from the people on our hillsides, then I’d be happy. It would, at least, be a great leap forward.

How we reach even these dizzy heights is a matter for the next decade. Tonight is for marking the passing of the old, which for me means a few bottles of Singha and a plate of spicy noodles. Wherever my friends are, I hope they too have a very happy New Year.