Confidence and Class; Confidence in Class
Outmoded, ill-considered, divisive; how many times have these and other adjectives been levelled at anyone who specifically seeks the overthrow of capitalism? By the media, by the unthinking left, by anyone who fears moving beyond the cosy consensus that our democracy does now or can ever accurately represent the people who are the basis of all wealth, against those who are its exploiters.
Since the elections, left and right have been battling over what the elections mean, what we should do, what we should do. Two recent articles from blogs (1, 2) I’ve never read before demonstrate the right-wing counter-attack upon the left-wing claims that the Party must return to its socialist roots. Alas that the left wing is so ill-informed as to either what the public ‘want’ or what the nature of the Labour Party is.
I’ve made several answers to that over the last few days. I would like instead to address some of the issues of the right. For a start, the “Necessity of New Labour” article contends that the South East should be regarded as naturally Tory and this should inform our electoral strategy. The preconceptions inherent in this are manifest: the first is obvious, about the South East. The second is that our goal should be winning elections.
Perhaps I am mistaken, but I always saw elections as a process, a means to an end – the end being the achievement of all our goals in respect of society. Winning elections in itself achieves nothing – it is what happens after the elections that counts. And as a one-time socialist once said, if voting changed anything, they’d abolish it. Elections change little, for a variety of reasons. Analysis on this subject these days is widespread.
The more obvious of the preconceptions is much more damaging to alternative suggestions of strategy. Too long has the South East been simply dismissed as the natural territory of the Tories, because of the demographics, because of the differing degrees of urbanisation between the south of England and the North, and so on. Perhaps instead of merely focusing on elections, we should be dealing with unionisation, activism and getting bodies on the ground precisely where we most need to make our case: the South and South East.
“Don’t Trip Up” attacks a particular straw man of the left-wing view of the Labour Party and Labour history that I have dealt with elsewhere, at least partially. Contentions are evinced that Labour can’t be a working class based party since much of our proposed ‘core vote’ actually votes for the Conservatives. Certainly a fair proportion even of militant trade unionists vote Tory. This is even more pronounced with the Republicans in the United States.
This doesn’t necessarily challenge the concept of a class-based party. It does challenge the failure of Labour to sufficiently organise and wage the economic struggle against capitalism, while at the same time promulgating a stable political alternative. Class-based politics, according to “Don’t Trip Up” conflates the interests of too many disparate groups. Interestingly it falls into the same trap in identifying Blair’s appeal to the ‘southern middle class.’ Quite the hypocrisy.
All of this, as far as I can tell, amounts to a lack of confidence in Labour’s ability to win elections on the basis of a socialist platform, and to wage a struggle when out of power that can stymie Conservative attacks upon the Party, upon the Unions and upon the wider socialist movement. That lack of confidence is justified, having witnessed the 1980′s – but it is also self-justifying. Timidity is one thing that will kill resistance to the Tories.
Talk of tactics, of electoral success and failure, is a ruse, however. The people who are talking about how socialism will never win elections etc often don’t want it to win elections, at least not in any powerful form. It’s time we dropped this talk about what wins elections and get back to discussing with one another why we even deserve to win elections and what we hope to accomplish when we do win.
Having lost that focus, no wonder we’ve lost so many members over the last forty years.
The use of State power for ‘the common good’ might make winning parliamentary power seem attractive, but the most egregious failures of socialism in practice, have sprung from its ability to use the State: authoritarianism, nationalism, corruption, bureaucracy, and the limitation of economic liberty.
The co-operative and mutualist networks didn’t depend on the Government for their creation: they developed in a much more democratic manner, and they seem to me to be the best hope for combining economic freedom and efficiency, outside capitalism. The likelihood of this approach creating greater well-being is surely greater than the likelihood of someone being able to create a mainstream, top-down socialist manifesto that the UK electorate will buy. It’s also more honest than trying to use a moderate Labour Party as a delivery mechanism for much more radical policies. Perhaps leave the party to tinker with capitalism, while investing in a movement that can offer a way out?
Andrew (for presumable tis you?) I don’t buy this stuff about a ‘moderate’ Labour Party. Granted, the extreme left has never held a commanding position within the Party, but then we have no more claim to the roots of the Party than the current Blairite deviation, or do you disagree? Sure the Party is moderate, and the leadership has always been relatively moderate – but even the definition of moderate shifts over time.
I don’t know if you thought that last comment was me- it wasn’t, but it is now. I shan’t prolong this argument as we’ve disagreed elsewhere before and it’s not likely to be fruitful. However, I think you’ve misread my entry. When I said the south east is naturaly Tory, I implied that this was the Compass position: it is not my own and I’ve amended the entry to clarify this. In fact, my point is that there are a great number of people in the south east who need a Labour government. You know from experience that there are many areas I disagree with the government but being in government is the only way to deliver change: yes elections are only a means, but they are an important means that we neglect at our peril. To characterise me as right-wing misses the point slightly: we have different conceptions of the role of the state, the interplay betwen the state and society, and the ease with which society can be dismantled along class lines. None of my positions on these issues make me right-wing per se- I simply have different conceptions of the basis of politics which lead me to draw different conclusions from yourself.
No I didn’t think it was you Andrew – B4L is Andrew Regan, for tis he who runs Bloggers4Labour. Narcissism much! Only joking.
I’m very glad that your view is not in fact that the South East is naturally Tory territory, and I disagree that this is the position of Compass either.
Incidentally nice to find your real blog Lomas! I’ve added you to our blog-roll and hopefully there will be much more fruitful interplay between our articles.
Yes, you’ve outed me…
I guess the point I really wanted to make was that the Labour left continues (dissenters from this view are few and far between) to have a mystifying attachment to state control, despite the appalling record of ‘state socialist’ regimes throughout history, seemingly unaware of centuries of economic thought that has allowed for (what we would now call) free-market anti-capitalism, as evidenced by the development of cooperatism, from which the Labour Party itself sprung. One attributing factor is the ignorance of, and contempt for, the study of economics, within the contemporary left, perhaps due to being linked with ‘Thatcherism’ or to ‘materialism’.
I really don’t expect the electorate to be interested in a set of pre-1993 Labour policies, which don’t offer any new solutions, and whose answer (insofar as there was one) to job insecurity was ‘controls’, as if nothing has been learnt over the last 15 years. I don’t think I could support a party like that. Anything more radical is, due to the feebleness of collectivism in Britain (I’m including the public sector here, crippled as it is by managerialism), going to seem too alien, if pitched in a Manifesto rather than encouraged to develop over decades…
I think you underestimate the potential of explosive and revolutionary ideas to catch on very quickly, if they are pitched and fought for in the right way.
I admit I am not well versed in economics, beyond the classic texts of Smith and Hayek; it is a deficiency I’ve been seeking to rectify, but I can never find any literature which engages my interest. The only reason I’ve read Trotsky’s treatises against direct workers’ control and some of Preobrazhensky’s works because of their social and activist implications.
My instinct is in favour of non-statist approaches; I am, after all, a socialist. The classic texts of socialism speak against the view of the state as an inanimate tool. Only the post-Althusserian turn towards cultural studies would disagree with such a summation. I have been meaning to look into the practical applications of Parecon and so forth. Nevertheless, if these things are genuinely anti-capitalist, then by definition they would ultimately have to be revolutionary, no?
“the Labour left continues (dissenters from this view are few and far between)”
I dissent! I don’t believe that a trustee model is an appropriate or neccesarily efficient version of worker’s control. Plus, co-operatives provide material individual incentive, which I feel has a role to play, provided that the every day struggle to exist can be eradicated.
However I do believe that the statist model is a necessity for states who have recently been under imperial control, or who have undeveloped and/or rurally based economies. It’s a phase you need to go through, but in the right way. A means, not an end.
Consider foremost the model supported in Venezuela, whereby co-operatives are given direct government funding to develop agricultural machinery, medicine etc.
I’d like to see us do that with the NHS, particularly if both patients and staff can be involved.
So long as Venezuelan troops are breaking strikes, I don’t think we can regard the experiments in co-management between the government and its “safe” supporters as being exactly selfless or idealistic. I imagine advisors of Chavez think about the prospect of actual workers’ control and lose control of their bowels!