An Alternative Reich? (2025)

Book Review from the October 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Alt Reich. By Nafeez Ahmed. Byline Books 2024. £12.99

This is a book about the challenge to conventional liberal bourgeois democracy posed by a network of far-right populists, ‘nativists’ and neo-nazis that appear to be in the ascendancy in many parts of the world, including the United States. They locate society’s problems not in the inability of the market economy to provide for people’s physical and psychological needs, but in the inability of the established systems of political democracy to deliver ’change’ to those who appear disgruntled with it.

Ahmed is a good researcher and he traces the way in which a relatively small number of multi-billionaires have set up or founded think tanks and pressure groups that have spread these far-right viewpoints over decades: most notably organisations like the Henry Jackson Society and the Heritage Foundation. Their reach has been deep and profound – into the heart of the media, and politically into the Trump administration, the Boris Johnson and Truss governments, and others in Western Europe and beyond.

The phenomenon is undoubtedly real and it is chronicled in detail here, but like others out to make a distinctive point, he can sometimes overstate his case. In the Conclusion, he seems to recognise this himself, saying:

‘The fascism of the Alt Reich is … a contradictory amalgamation of shifting white supremacism, extreme nativism and anti-globalist nationalist corporatism, which inherently pines for deregulated private capital to be backed by an authoritarian state reliant on unitary military power merged with techno-corporate autocracy. This is hardly a coherent worldview; rather it is an evolving mishmash of contradictory and competing worldviews’ (p.379).

Indeed, and this can be seen by the way in which some of its major players (like Trump and Musk) can fall out so easily, or why Reform UK has become a by-word for political resignation in more ways than one.

That the market fails to deliver on people’s expectations of it (and seems to have been doing so increasingly over the last 20 or so years) is at the root of why this rather incoherent set of viewpoints has gained such traction . . . the popular narrative is that all governments fail to deliver and they’re fundamentally all the same. As Mark Twain said, history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes and so it’s almost a minor variation of the old anarchist slogan about the futility of elections, in that whoever you vote for the government always gets back in.

And allied to all this there are worrying undercurrents – the blaming of immigrants as a source of society’s problems in a way not seen since the 1970s, an unshakeable belief in capitalism as a system but not its obvious and inevitable consequences, and a leader-loving authoritarianism that underpins a not-so-sneaking admiration for dictatorial abominations like Putin, Orban and Modi.

So Ahmed’s book is worth reading for these reasons alone. It’s just worth bearing in mind that the fascism of which he writes is not really the fascism of the 1920s and 30s, and while the ‘Alt Reich’ book title is a clever one it is, in this respect, not entirely accurate. Another caveat is that it seems odd that a book of this nature (around 400 pages) does not have an index. Perhaps it’s just the sort of left-field, unconventional, liberal approach the alt-reich themselves would decry. But without having an obsession with tradition and procedure, it might just, actually, have been rather useful . . .

DAP

Broken Britain (2024)

Book Review from the August 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

How They Broke Britain. By James O’Brien. Penguin. 2023. £10.99

This is an entertaining and well-written book from the host of Britain’s most popular radio talk-show. It has been floating around the top of the best-seller lists for the last few months and it is easy to see why. It taps effortlessly into the view that Britain has been hopelessly misgoverned for years and it focuses – with a chapter for each – on a number of the leading players, from media moguls Rupert Murdoch, Paul Dacre and Andrew Neil through, inevitably, to the likes of Johnson, Truss and Sunak. Dominic Cummings also gets his own chapter.

As with all books of this type, there is a tendency to overstate the role politicians in particular play with regard to the state of the economy, though where the book is most successful is the focus it places on the ideological ties and networks that have underpinned and sustained the dominant political assumptions of our time. These are the view that ‘trickle-down’ economics has some merit, that the EU was both a singular barrier to UK economic growth and also to genuine democratic sovereignty, that the poor are poor because they are essentially feckless and that immigration is the major issue of our times that should be (pre-)occupying political minds everywhere. As the General Election demonstrated, they are dominant views that Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour has done little to challenge.

O’Brien is strongest when he writes in detail of the revolving door that exists between the right-wing think-tanks generating this stuff, the right-wing media and the recently departed Tory government. Many people will not have heard too much about the plethora of secretive ‘policy institutes’ and similar that exist in and around Tufton Street in Westminster, but they will have seen their representatives pop up with unerring regularity on news and current affairs programmes for years, opining in the manner of independent ‘experts’ – the Centre for Policy Studies, the Institute for Economic Affairs, Civitas, the Adam Smith Institute, Policy Exchange and the bizarre Taxpayers’ Alliance. These are the people who fomented and nurtured the likes of Liz Truss and O’Brien isn’t in a forgiving mood towards them.

The think-tank/media/political nexus that has dominated UK discourse for years and which has more recently formed ever more bizarre offshoots like the increasingly unhinged GB News, is indeed laid bare. It is good stuff and worth buying for this alone.

Less intuitively, there is also a chapter on Jeremy Corbyn, largely on the grounds that he failed to provide effective opposition to this nexus. Much of what O’Brien says here has resonance too, though occasionally he is a little unfair perhaps:

‘There used to be two ways for non-Conservative politicians to negotiate the UK’s hideously right-wing media: either you appeased them in the hope of avoiding their nastiest attacks or you took the fight straight to them and relied on sympathetic or impartial outlets to get your message out there. Corbyn and his closest advisers invented a third: completely fail to engage; alienate and demonise almost all journalists; claim constant victimhood; and offer up pathetic excuses when confronted with evidence of your own poor judgement’ (p.268).

Arguably, this is more Corbyn of 2019 General Election vintage, as earlier one of the more successful aspects of his period leading Labour was the way his supporters built up alternative media in opposition to the mainstream (even though he lost in 2017 too, it was narrow and this is something that helped him win over 6 percent more of the vote than Starmer did in his recent landslide, amounting to almost 12.9 million votes compared to Starmer’s 9.7 million). Indeed, while socialists have little to learn from the Corbyn experience generally, this aspect is interesting and O’Brien arguably seems to rather overlook the influence of alternative media like The Canary – which became the UK’s third most popular politics news website – and related social media.

This is a minor caveat though, and there can be little doubt that much of what O’Brien has written is a tour de force, exposing and cataloguing a network of pro-capitalist, right-wing goons who have just received an unexpectedly large – to most of them at least – kick in the ballots.

Dave Perrin

Sting in the Tail: Warning to our readers (1995)

The Sting in the Tail column from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Warning to our readers

Shock horror! A spate of muggings in what was once ‘appy ‘ampstead has resulted in some very valuable Rolex watches being nicked.

Several of the well-heeled fraternity including one of Michael Heseltine’s daughters and ex-model Jilly Johnson have had their prized timepieces snatched from their persons. Some of the watches cost as much as £20,000 and one is described as being “diamond encrusted' (Guardian, 29 April.)

In a cunning and very well publicised attempt to surprise the muggers, decoy policemen wearing fake designer clothes are parading around Hampstead sporting imitation Rolex watches provided by the company which is, naturally, anxious to see that its customers are not discouraged from buying the real thing.

So our warning to all our readers is: do not go up to Hampstead flaunting your £20,000 Rolex as you could easily be mistaken for a policeman.

Somebody tell them

What happens if you put a lot of predatory fish, large and small, into a fish tank and leave them to get on with it? That’s easy, the little fish get gobbled-up by the big ‘uns.

This is what has happened in Britain’s passenger bus industry since it was deregulated in 1985. The government’s declared aim was to end “public monopolies” run by municipal authorities and “open up the industry to competition”.

For a while, this is what happened as lots of new operators emerged to compete with privatised ex-municipal bus companies for a share of the lucrative market.

But since then hundreds of the smaller companies have been taken over or forced out of business by biggies like Stagecoach or Badgerline, and the end result will be a few big companies each aiming for the legal maximum of 25 percent of the market.

The government and its think-tank advisers completely failed to foresee the so-predictable consequences of their policy, but shouldn’t capitalism’s loudest advocates at least understand how the bloody system works?

Natural unemployment?

Socialists are used to dealing with well-paid apologists for capitalism’s shortcomings. Politicians who tell us that it is natural to be aggressive and acquisitive. Priests who tell us that it is natural to have poverty amidst plenty.

Now we have another piece of “natural” nonsense. The economic journalist Evan Davis in the Independent (20 April) wrote a column entitled “How Much Unemployment Comes Naturally?”. He reviewed various “expert” opinion on what the natural figure for unemployment might be. One of these groups of experts, the Centre for Economic Policy Research, comes up with a figure of 6.4 percent. He favours a figure “of about 5 or 6 percent”; this is based on comparing the commercial property market with the labour market.

“There are significant ‘hiring and firing ’ costs in both—so companies usually don’t hire property by the day any more than they hire labour by the day. Well, I am told by those who work in it that a typical period in that market might see about 6 percent of buildings unemployed, or vacant. ”

One pleasing aspect about the establishment of socialism is that such experts as the CEPR and economic journalists will be freed from their arduous research and allowed to pursue some useful occupation.

Poverty and TB

The British Medical Journal recently carried a report that the incidence of tuberculosis is rising. In the last five years there has been a 12 percent increase.

“Anyone can catch tuberculosis but it is more likely to spread from person to person in overcrowded conditions and individuals who are badly nourished or otherwise in poor health are less liable to fight off the infection, ” says the British Medical Association. Dr John Moore-Gillon and Dr Malcolm Law of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, have now discovered that TB is 10 times more common in the poorer tenth of the population than the richest tenth " (Herald, 13 April.)

The increase of unemployment and homelessness has led to an increase of this poverty-related illness. Just another example of the needless suffering of a section of the working class because capitalism is more concerned with profits than public health.

Who are the immigrants?

The Observer (30 April) under the headline “Jospin hopes to recruit Le Pen’s rag-tag army” reported that the so-called Socialist Party in France were eager to get some of the votes cast in the first ballot for the National Front candidate.

“Pierre Buccelato, 60, is one such voter. A former builder who found himself among France’s three million unemployed when recession struck, he now sells flowers on the edge of a sprawling estate . . . Railing against the foreigners who he claims are awarded council flats ahead of ‘French people ’ he said he once voted for Mitterand but now agrees with Jean-Marie Pen’s National Front. ‘Immigration is why we have no work. Get rid of the immigrants and we’ll get our jobs back,’ he insisted, pausing to admit that he himself was an Italian immigrant who had arrived in France in 1957.”

All workers must seek wages wherever they can. Blaming “foreign” workers for unemployment is stupid. In the world recession of the 1930s there was hardly any immigration to France but there was high unemployment. As long as workers support politicians like Le Pen, Chirac or Jospin capitalism will continue, with all its problems.

Is democracy evil? (2022)

Book Review from the October 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard 

In 2018 a free-marketeer think-tank, the Henry Dearborn Institute, published a 90-page book entitled Socialism is Evil by a Justin T. Haskins. What is interesting is that, for once, an opponent gets the meaning of socialism more or less right. Basing himself largely on what we say on our website, from which he quotes extensively, and on some quotes from Marx, Haskins concludes that socialism (or communism, which he accepts means the same in this context) is a necessarily world-wide, democratically-organised society based on the common ownership of the means of production with distribution according to need:

‘I think it’s fair to say that Marx’s socialism should be defined as a classless, mostly stateless, democratic economic and political system under which all or nearly all private property ownership, especially the “means of production,” is abolished and replaced by a system in which property is owned collectively. Further, in Marx’s system, society embraces the general operating principle “from each according to ability, to each according to needs”’ (pp. 22-23).

‘In a world with few, if any, markets and perhaps no money, people would get the product and services they need from the collective (many socialists would reject that this group should be called a “government”) without having to “pay” for anything’ (p. 11).

This leads him to accept (at least for the purpose of his argument in this book) that Cambodia, China, the USSR, Venezuela, etc., are not socialist.

As a supporter of unregulated market capitalism, Haskins doesn’t think that socialism in the sense defined could work. For him, it is impossible because it is incompatible with human nature. He repeats the usual objections – What about the lazy man? Who will do the dirty work? Who will get to live in the best areas? – that have been dealt with time and again.

However, this is not enough for him. He wants to go further and demonstrate that, even if socialism was not impossible, it would still be ‘evil’. By which he means ‘highly immoral’ (what else could he mean without descending into mysticism?).

To call something ‘immoral’ is to imply some standard of morality. In Haskins’s case,

‘ …it’s immoral to force – using the threat of violence or imprisonment – peaceful people to participate in activities they are morally opposed to. Or, put another way, it’s highly immoral to force people to engage in actions they believe are immoral’ (p. 43).

He claims that this is what socialism would have to involve:

‘Collective property ownership… necessitates that the majority have total power over the minority to make all important moral decisions’ (p. 80).

What total power? Democratic decision-making where ‘the majority has its way and the minority has its say’ does mean on paper that the majority could vote for anything, but that does not give it ‘total power’ to impose what it has voted through. In fact, unless the majority has at its disposal a coercive political machine it has no power to enforce it at all. Socialism will have not have the means to threaten ‘violence or imprisonment’, as Haskins himself accepted when he wrote that socialism would be ‘almost stateless’.

What this means is that in socialism the carrying-out of a majority decision will depend on the acceptance of that decision by the outvoted minority. This assumes not just formal democratic procedures but also a democratic consciousness amongst the participants, which includes allowing majority decisions to be implemented in the common interest. It also encourages decision-making based on seeking and finding a certain degree of consensus; in fact, majority voting is not the only way of reaching a decision democratically. Why in these circumstances would a majority even consider trying to impose a uniform system of morals? Would a majority even be found to vote for this?

But Haskins persists and argues that, in socialism, not only would a majority vote to allow some activity that might offend or discomfort some people – which is possible – but that it would force those people to participate in such activity. Socialism, he claims,

‘either requires all people to abandon their personal morals in favour of some universal standard of morality … or some people must participate in social programs or activities that violate their beliefs.’

Where does that come from? Why would everyone have to agree on ethical issues? And who says that, if the majority votes to allow rearing animals to eat, this means that those opposed to this ‘must participate’ in rearing and killing animals and eating them? Who says that, if the majority votes to allow contraception and abortion, those opposed to these must practice contraception or take part in abortion procedures? A decision to allow something is not the same as a decision to make it compulsory.

Haskins is not arguing here against socialism as such but against democracy and only indirectly against socialism because it would be democratic. His arguments amount to a rehash of the old individualist anarchist objection to democracy as ‘the tyranny of the majority’. It is not clear if Haskins is himself an anarcho-capitalist. A footnote in which he says that he does not necessarily share the view of some free-marketeers that ‘taxation is immoral’ suggests that he might not be. In which case, he leaves himself open to the charge that he too is ‘evil’. Assuming that he regards taxation as moral to fund armed forces, this would be forcing pacifist taxpayers to pay for something against their moral principles.

So, while he gets what socialism means more or less right, his arguments against are weak and contradictory.

Adam Buick

Just in one country? (2008)

Book Review from the April 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

2050 Vision. How can the UK play its part in avoiding dangerous climate change? By Matthew Lockwood and Jenny Bird with Raquel Alvarez. Institute for Public Policy Research. 2007. £10.95.

This 100-page study by the left-leaning IPPR argues that Britain “should be aiming to make reductions in carbon emissions of at least 80 per cent from 1990 levels by 2050, if we are to avoid a 2ºC global warming above pre-industrial levels”.

The authors show that this is technologically feasible in that wind power and carbon capture (from fossil fuels) and storage could be developed if enough resources were devoted to this. Technically feasible, no doubt, but how likely is this to happen? The authors themselves mention, though only in passing, the main flaw in their analysis: UK emissions represent only 2 percent of the global total, so even if these measures were adopted in Britain this would only have a very marginal, if any, effect on global warming. But if other countries didn’t follow this would have a disastrous effect on British capitalist industry.

The authors admit that the forecasting models they used failed to include “interactions with the wider global economy” and add limply:

  “Some of these interactions involve risks for energy-intensive, and therefore carbon-intensive, industries exposed to international competition, and these may need extra support in decarbonising if production and jobs are not to relocate.”

Well, yes, and if that happened global warming would not be affected at all. The emissions would continue but in a different part of the world. And since all industries depend to some degree on energy they would all be affected by the increased energy costs the authors proposals would involve, even if it is true that energy-intensive industries would be the worst hit.

In short, applying unilaterally what is technically feasible but more costly would undermine the competitiveness of British industry on world markets, and that no government would dare do. So, in practice, there is no chance that any British government would go it alone on this issue. But the authors still maintain the illusion that one might, by talking of Britain giving a lead which others will follow. Some of those they consulted thought this might happen. Others were more realistic:

  “Respondents from the United States were generally less convinced that leading by example would be enough to encourage movements from the US – despite the ‘special relationship’ between the US and the UK – or from other countries. Differing national circumstances were cited as one reason for this. The UK’s (and the EU’s) increasing dependence on fossil fuel imports puts them in a very different position to many of the world’s major CO2 emitters, which have access to large reserves of coal and/or other fossil fuels. It was therefore felt unreasonable to expect these countries to reduce their fossil fuel consumption just because the UK had taken a lead”.

Precisely, and that’s the whole point. The EU countries, including Britain, are prepared to reduce their reliance on having to import fossil fuels to generate energy. That makes economic sense for them. The US and China, which do have access to large internal reserves of oil and/or coal, are not so keen. And, given that under capitalism “nation shall compete with nation”, why should they be? Why would they shoot themselves in the foot by undermining their competitiveness any more than any British government is likely to by unilaterally adopting the measures proposed by the IPPR’s naïve researchers?

There is, quite simply, no solution to the problem of global warming within capitalism.

Adam Buick