Humanitarian government is under attack and progressive opposition can no longer afford to be weak, scattered and resigned

The humanitarian crisis signified by the proliferation of food banks is a controversial legacy of the coalition government. Photograph: Woodcock St food bins in 2013 by Birmingham News Room (License) (Cropped)

The financial crisis and the austerity that followed exposed a vein of deep conservatism in Europe. Prodded in this raw spot, Europe has become defensive, closed and mean (The Guardian, 2015). That has been most apparent in the attack that has been launched, across the continent, on humanitarian government.

Everywhere, there is an eagerness for the throwing up of fences to separate us (Colonnelli, 2015), as nationalism has reared its head. As it has risen, it has brought with it a creeping fear and a deep mistrust of otherness. Those tensions have become so obvious, and so threatening, that the question of whether the Jewish people of Europe are still safe on the continent has even been asked (Omer-Jackaman, 2015).

All the while, internally, the community safety nets are being torn down in the name of austerity. The harsh and narrow terms set for what little support remains has left it in the hands of individual insurance, food banks and personal philanthropy to 'handle' those who fall behind or fall outside of the system (Snow, 2015).

By advocating the protection of the poor from their poverty, openness towards - and acceptance of - outsiders, and the protection minorities from the tyranny of the majority, humanitarianism is flying in the face of these, the dominant political values of the time. As a result, the idea of a humanitarian government is being besieged upon all sides and is slowly being deconstructed.

One place where it would be tempting to lay all of the blame for this, would be upon the ascendency of conservatism.

Conservatives, taking the opportunity presented by government institutions weakened by taking on the debt of private firms to allay the financial crisis, have shown an aggressive determination to strip back the state in the name of 'fiscally responsible' austerity and balanced budgets.

Yet, a large part of the blame must go to a damp progressive opposition that has failed to stand up for humanitarianism. This has been particularly stark in the UK, where the Labour Party so spectacularly failed to oppose the Conservative's coercive restructure of welfare (BBC, 2015).

The largest factor in this weak response seems to be a loss of confidence in positive government action. The financial crisis damaged the reputation of government - even despite government having been the mechanism with which the original crisis, that the private sector catastrophically caused, was tackled.

Without confidence and trust in government, and its ability to tax and spend to act positively, the Left - liberal and socialist - has lost its traditional tool. That has left progressives stranded, caught between accepting the popular conservative austerity narrative and trying to resurrect the old statist one. The lack of fresh ideas has been astounding.

That lack of conviction, and ingenuity, is proving disastrous for the progressive vision of civil society, where something not far short of a class war is playing out.

Even as conservatives have taken away 'dependence' creating government organisations, withdrawing the state's helping hand, around the world NGOs - Non-governmental organisations - are facing regulations and crackdowns that hinder their work supporting human rights and humanitarian aims (Sherwood, 2015). Control over civil society is being consolidated by those in power and it is being reshaped around their own competitive agenda.

This is leading to a kind of class consolidation, reinforcing the social hierarchy with meritocratic competition. Individuals are being pitted against each other in order to generate innovation and end the 'dependence' of the individual upon society. However, the deconstruction of humanitarian government is burdening, predominantly the poor, individuals with the prospect of a life of servitude.

For the Left, communitarians and individualists alike, these factors aught to be acting as a rallying flag. This is a common humanitarian cause which strikes to the heart of what progressives cherish most: justice and liberty.

The old welfare state served as holding pattern, a bastion against conservatism. As the stronghold began to show cracks, in the UK the Liberal Democrats arguably held back the worst of the flood in government (The Guardian, 2015{2}). However, that party has been cast out to the fringes and the walls of the fortress have crumbled.

So new barricades are needed.

As the argument of Oscar Wilde goes: charity is an insufficient and insulting partial restitution to the people of what was taken from them; and the ethical aim is to reconstruct society so poverty is impossible. That is the kind of radical thinking that is demanded from progressives if they are going to defend humanitarian government.

From political reform, to economic reforms like the Citizen's Income, co-operatives and mutuals, to policies aimed at ensuring sustainability and addressing the cost of living like green energy and housebuilding plans, the necessary ideas exist. The task ahead of progressives is to construct a reformist program for government with these ideas, rooted in strong evidence, and to assemble around it a formidable alliance to stand, both in civil society and at elections, for the common good.

References

'Hungary may use army to secure border against migrants'; in The Guardian; 26 August 2015.

Alessio Colonnelli's 'Porous borders allow migrants into Germany. And?'; on Open Democracy; 24 May 2015.

Jack Omer-Jackaman's 'Is it time for Jews to leave Europe?'; on Open Democracy; 24 August 2015.

Mathew Snow's 'Against Charity: Rather than creating an individualized “culture of giving” we should be challenging capitalism’s institutionalized taking'; in Jacobin Magazine; 25 August 2015.

'Labour made 'a mess' of welfare vote, Andy Burnham says'; on the BBC; 21 July 2015.

Harriet Sherwood's 'Human rights groups face global crackdown 'not seen in a generation''; in The Guardian; 26 August 2015.

'The Guardian view on the Liberal Democrats: missing them already'; in The Guardian; 15 May 2015.

Oscar Wilde's 'Soul of Man under Socialism'; 1891.[Buy Now]