Blair, Brown and bad politicians

It is very depressing indeed that Britain was managed 1997-2010 by men of low calibre and principle such as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Peter Mandelson is cut from similar cloth.

There is an old saying in politics: shit floats to the top. The only means of part remedying the problem is to have greater openness in government and more accountability by parliament. It is absurd to have the reform of government departments, for instance, brought about or stymied to avoid the tantrums of ministers.

The limits of social democracy

Geoff makes a perfectly valid point about the limits of social democracy. He argues that as the social product is redistributed to working people, profits are squeezed thus endangering the capitalist system. In fact I would strengthen his argument by pointing out that in addition as personal and civic liberties are expanded, political threats to the capitalist order also become more likely.

I also agree that something like that started to happen in the 1970s and was a trigger for the launch of market fundamentalism. However I will make two points: first in 2010 we are miles away from that situation with massive inequalities having again been built up for potential redistribution. Indeed in the thirty years between the 1930s and 1970s social inequalities were vastly reduced and this could be done again within capitalism if political conditions changed. Second, when (or if) we reach the point where there is a choice between ‘going beyond social democracy’ or accepting capitalist restablisation, then I will be on the side of going beyond social democracy. Until then, I’ll stick with social democracy.

Israel good or bad?

It is perfectly true that compared with the Arab dictatorships, whether they are American puppets or not, Israel is a beacon of Enlightenment values in the region.

That said, Israel is an ethnic nationalist state which, grants citizenship rights to people around the world based solely on their ethnic background and denies (or limits) it to its Palestinian inhabitants because they are not Jewish. Thanks to almost unqualified US support, Israel illegally occupies land and continues to engage in ethnic cleansing.

Socialists must stand firmly behind Palestinians in the their struggle for equal rights (whether in Israel or in a future Palestinian state), support those in Israel who demand a non-ethnic nationalist state and back those demanding democracy and secular human rights against the Arab dictatorships.

Socialism in one country and reformism

The issue of ‘socialism in one country’ is an old question and became a somewhat inevitable one after the foundation of the Soviet Union. Unless the USSR was to be engaged in constant war with all the suffering that would involve, some sort of socialism in one country was necessary. To me the idea that any meaningful progress is dependent on a world revolution in which all existing social conditions are abolished before the Promised Land can be ushered in is a religious-like fiction.

My thinking, as a reformist, starts somewhere else. Socio-political conditions at any point in time are what they are and any given situation hold the possibility of improvement. However to move things forward progressives need three things.

First, they need to analyse and understand the society they live in. Nobody can steer a car if they can’t see the road.

Second, they need a measure of what constitutes progress. For me that means the expansion of personal and civil liberties plus an increase in the social product flowing to ordinary working people.

Third, political change does not come out of thin air, but can only come about through political organisation. Thus agents of change are required.

The three tenets of progress are like a stool. Take one away or have one shorter than the others and the stool topples over.

Will AV help the Liberal Democrats

With the LIb Dems sinking in the polls, in the great majority of seats at the next general election the Lib Dem candidate will come third. All AV will do is to allow Lib Dem voters the choice of transferring their vote to the Tories or to Labour.

In fact, AV might actually contribute to a decline in the Lib Dem vote. Previously many Tories and Labour voters voted tactically for the LIb Dems. Under AV they will have less reason to do so.

The source of opposition

Sustained political rebellion against the status quo does not start in a starving proletariat, but in middle-class (or upwardly mobile working-class) intellectual discontent. It was from these sources that the core of people who formed the backbone of the Bennite movement in the Labour Party in the 1970s and early 1980s and who in the Western part of Germany came together in the late 2000s to set up branches of Die Linke.

Labour in 1979 & 2010: the difference

I suppose I should answer my own question concerning whether the left should now put their hopes in the Labour Party of the future.

Superficially one can find similarities with the ending of the Blair-Brown governments in 2010 and the close of the Wilson-Callaghan years in 1979. Most significant among them is that Labour in opposition tends to start off moving leftwards. But on closer examination there are two crucial differences between now and then.

First, unlike New Labour, the Labour Governments 1964-79 never abandoned social democracy. Wilson’s self-declared remit was left-leaning: to advance the well-being of working people within the post-war consensus and to be progressive in social, civic and personal affairs. In the latter, if not so much in the former, Labour chalked up significant success: abolition of the death penalty, legalisation of male homosexuality and abortion, lowering the age of majority to eighteen, etc. So in 1979 one could argue: “Labour is basically sound, but what we want is a more left-wing and progressive version of it. Let’s join and see what we can do”

The second crucial difference between now and then is that when Labour lost office in 1979, the left was never so strong in the constituency parties and in the trade unions. There was real hope that by mucking in the left could win through. In 2010 Diane Abbott, the token left-winger, is on the leadership ballot paper thanks only to self-interested charity of New Labour MPs. The moment behind her is tiny and marginal.

My conclusion is that the situation in 2010 is fundamentally different from the one in 1979. The stain of New Labour cannot be washed away in a few months. Socialists cannot be, and cannot be seen to be, the junior partners of the people who managed New Labour 1994-2010. The Labour Party will not change its spots soon. If the left has a future it is not with Balls, Burnham and the Miliband brothers.

Is Labour worthwhile for the future?

The Tory-LibDem government’s attempt to reduce the state deficit is disadvantaging most heavily the poorest sections of working people. The unemployed, ever growing in number, who now subsist on state benefits of less than ten pounds per day (out of which they should feed and dress themselves and pay utility bills) will have their income cut. New Labour allowed Britain to become its most socially unequal since 1945; and the bourgeois coalition is now set to drive millions into penury, with Britain’s social profile increasing resembling that of a South American country.

On the left there are two responses, both of which deserve serious consideration.

First, there is the view that however awful New Labour was between 1997 and 2010, nonetheless it is the only political organisation that working people have to advance their interests. We should, therefore, work for a Labour government to be elected in 2015 or earlier because even the worst Labour government is better than this. Of course in the meantime we can campaign and try to move Labour leftwards.

Second, there is the view that the Blair-Brown governments crossed the Rubicon. New Labour in office abandoned social democracy, built up capitalist power and inequality, sought to diminish personal and civic liberties and actively promoted a sycophantic pro-Americanism around the globe. The people actively engaged in this project lead the Labour Party today and will after the September leadership election. Asking working people to put their faith and aspirations in Labour is therefore dishonest and futile.

Something like this is bound to be the core argument on the left in the 2010s

Is working in the Labour Party worthwhile?

Even though I was active on the left of the Labour Party in the early 1980s, I doubt today whether socialist involvement in the Party can be effective.

In the 1980s our complaint against the Wilson/Callaghan governments (1964-79) was that they had been staffed by men with over modest objectives. Nevertheless Roy Jenkins had secured a raft of liberal reforms in the 1960s and the left had strengthened inside the Party and the trade unions. It seemed possible in the early days of Thatcher that a more left-wing Labour government was both possible and meaningful.

New Labour’s (1997-2010) main feature was not the modesty of its reform, but its desire to consolidate Thatcherism under new management. That required a different sort of Labour Party as Blair realised from the outset. Party internal democracy was undermined till it no longer existed, top-down management was imposed leading to choreographed conferences and left-wing activists either resigned or became marginalised eccentricities.

Socialism and social democracy are now too long dead in the Labour Party to be revived. I think I’m right, though I wish I were wrong.

That said, activity in the Labour Party is better than doing nothing or engaging in self-marginalisation through climate camps.

My hope would be that Britain could build a left-wing reformist party to the left of Labour which would win support for itself and prevent Labour from moving to the right. It would have to watch its left flank.

The absence of PR and the fractious left make that difficult in Britain; but nevertheless I believe it should be attempted.

Perhaps we should look to the experience of the German Left Party.

Liberalism & Work

A few remarks in defence of liberalism

Bourgeois liberalism does indeed stop at the factory gate or office door, but that is no reason to reject liberalism. On the contrary that is a reason to take the language of individual choice into corporations; i.e. for the rights of individual workers to trump obligations imposed by de facto imposed employment contracts.

Let me give one small example: give individual workers the right not to wear a tie, or to appeal against uniforms which are unnecessary or demeaning.

Socialism is more likely to be popular by taking the freedoms outside work into the workplace than by extending the discipline of work (even after the revolution!) into other areas of life. I don’t oppose collective action; but I support the collective action of free individuals.