Though Cowards Flinch

Ding, ding! It’s time to continue my discussion with Tom (me, Tom, me, Tom), with whom I’ve been discussing the nature of class consciousness, the origins of ideology and the nature of determinism within a structure versus agency dualism. In my last article, I attempted to explain the materialist confines within which the Lab/SDP split occurred, balancing structural determinism with human agency. Apparently the job wasn’t adequate as Tom has reproached me for missing out the function of human agency.

This is hardly an unusual critique to make of a Marxist writing in the traditions of historical materialism, but an unjust one, I think. Firstly, let me quote from E.P. Thompson on the subject of ideology: “an ideology is not constructed out of inner responses alone, but only as these are selected and endorsed within a particular context of power and social relations.” Thompson here attempts to sketch out the landscape within which human agency must operate.

To apply this, consider that I am a communist. How did I become a communist? Perhaps the strong sense of social justice imparted by a Catholic upbringing pushed me towards the Left, and my preference for an ordered and intelligible world pushed me towards historical materialism. Yet tomorrow I could simply decide to cease being a communist, to resign my membership in the LRC and to begin attending meetings of the local Conservative Association instead. That would be a choice.

This choice is made available to me by circumstances beyond my control, just as other choices are prescribed for me by circumstances beyond my control. I can’t resign my membership in the LRC and choose to join the All Martians Together party because it doesn’t exist. In distinguishing between all the available choices, I am constrained by the limitations of human consciousness. Every preference of mine is conditioned by life experience, which has brought me to this point.

It’s unlikely, therefore, that I’m going to turn around and deny the validity of that life experience just because. Even the methods of thought, even my conceptions of the “alternatives” are conditioned by my experience of my life, that dim correspondence between objective reality and subjective thought. The validity of all this is generally accepted, and it is what Thompson argues in his assault on Althusser’s agency-deprived structural Marxism, the Poverty of Theory.

That correspondence is mediated by ideology, but ideology itself, as I suggested earlier, is not independent of the material. Herein lies the Marxist assertion that economics is determinant in the final instance; but, crucially, Marx nor the more worthy of his successors don’t imply that everything can be reduced to that final instance. Thus there are normal people who believe in a return to absolutist monarchy – I know one or two Sci-Fi/Fantasy nuts of this description.

Such a view will not gain acceptance merely according to its cogency and inner rationality; similarly fascism – the doctrine of the irrational where contradictory elements can co-exist – does not gain support according to its inner rationality. This is because ideology does not exist in a vacuum; as Thompson says, it is endorsed or rejected with a pre-existing context of power and class relations. Sticking with fascism, capitalism in crisis opens the door such a context as would allow the emergence of fascism.

Whether or not we walk through the metaphorical door is a different matter, some of which depends upon human agency. It is our choice to build the organs of socialist thought (unions, newspapers, parties), to motivate the working class in defence of their own class interest and so turn them against fascism, which motivates them in the opposite direction. But even that choice is constrained, and how we understand it is constrained by conditions given to us from the past – whether global or personal.

No part of ourselves exists in a vacuum.

Tom overemphasizes the structural when he wonders about my thoughts on the failures of the 1980s; he suggests I might think that we failed because Thatcher wasn’t bad enough. I don’t think that at all, of course. The socialist movements failed for a variety of reasons, many of them tactical failures on the part of the Left. Since Tom mentioned Militant, the spectacle of Derek Hatton rushing around Liverpool giving people redundancy notices is one example of that.

It would be a mistake to read into my notion of capitalist crisis a “stagist” notion that capitalism will fall inevitably of its own accord, when it is “bad enough” as Tom might say. Such a contention stands in stark opposition to every Marxist theory. To borrow from Irish Republicans, the difficulties of capitalism are the opportunities of socialism. Whether or not we take those opportunities is not determined by their existence; it is a matter of choice. But choice, like humanity itself, does not exist in a vacuum.

History has shown us that there are Tony Benns and there are Neil Kinnocks and John Smiths. These figures emerge because of their own backgrounds and the interplay of direct experience with the ideologies, some developed, some inchoate, of others. There is a logic to how this happens of course, and Thompson’s statement is in support of Gramsci’s attempt to place this logic very firmly in the context of a class-based objective reality and the power relations which flow therefrom.

That is to say, they all choose which direction to lean in, but the very mechanism for making that choice is influenced by the social milieu into which they were born, grow up and exist in. So are the potential choices limited. This is true within capitalist crisis as much as at any other time. The recognition of crisis will not suddenly switch the ideology of many Labour leaders from Right to Left, and indeed their very terms of understanding such crisis speaks against a switch.

Elevated above the working class and seeing things not merely from the point of view of that class, their very position mandates against such a switch. Indeed it is Tom himself who lapses into a rather rudimentary attempt to understand the ‘right’ mentality: capitalist incentive, fear of the electorate and lobbying are all very well, but where do these spring from? They aren’t conjured up as it by magic, that is for sure. They are some of the vivid reminders of the structural.

Nor are they the only ones, of course, merely the most obvious – as I’ve been at pains to point out when discussing the nature of ideology. To over-emphasize the structural aspects to the question of “Why did Labour MPs split?” is almost to assume bad faith. All this is by way of saying, ideology is important. It defines the terms within which we understand or fail to understand objective processes, but ideology is itself reinforced by, dependent upon and emergent from the objective processes.

Labour MPs had the choice to split, but their choice was taken within the context of a set ideology that failed to grasp the objective reality.

Part 2: Drawing lessons?

Tom then attempts to take some lessons from the discussions we’re having. I have separated this off into Part 2 because I think his own argument trips him up a bit and is a bit unclear. I mean no criticism; I’ve been writing for about two hours now and even my brain is tired and more inclined to be imprecise.

Our valiant Miller attempts to discuss how inflexible the LRC and the Conservative Right have been. If only, says Tom, the neo-liberal right had chosen some consensus path, then perhaps this current economic debacle might have been avoided. He attributes to the impetus to class warfare a tendency to lose sight of the bigger picture. Insofar as monetarism has not delivered all that was promised, he is of course correct. Yet this is not necessarily to do with inflexibility.

Crisis is inherent to the nature of capitalism. Had the monetarist wing of the Tories not been so determined to break the unions and raise productivity by attacking workers’ terms and conditions, a crisis in capitalism would still have emerged. Indeed, it was because of such a crisis that these attacks began in earnest. The choice was not between ‘seeing the big picture’ and ‘class warfare’, it was between ‘class warfare’ and the collapse of capitalism.

Similarly with regard to the LRC, the choice is not between ‘the big picture’ and ‘the immediate demands of the class’, it’s between ‘the immediate demands of the class’ and surrender to organised capital. I think Tom also conflates organisational problems with this failure to comprehend the constraints placed on human agency by the objective processes of capitalism.

He is absolutely right when he despairs that the LRC is too close to the union bureaucracy, and that the nature of Compass and Progress mean they are constrained within the dynamics of capitalism itself and are therefore ‘baseless’ in the sense that they can represent neither the working class nor the capitalist class entirely. But being too close to union bureaucracy is the opposite of choosing the immediate demands of the class, which Tom also accuses the LRC of.

The LRC does need tactical flexibility, of activists versus union bureaucrats, for example, or an advanced web strategy to begin recruiting those activists and putting them to use in the real world. Armed with campaigning flexibility and a grounding in the working class, with internal democracy to match, the LRC will be well on its way towards rebuilding the weapons of class struggle. It can possess its own maximum programme whilst upholding the minimum programme of Labour.

Problems arise (and herein lies the nature of splits) when the ‘minimum programme’ is in fact harmful to the interests of the working class. Labour now represents not the working class but a moderated form of capitalism – and some extreme elements of Labour don’t even represent a ‘moderated’ form of capitalism. It would be one thing if elements of Labour didn’t want to go so far as the LRC do, but the leadership actually wants to go in the opposite direction.

This is as much true about the relationship between left-wing Compass activists and the Labour leadership as it is true about LRC supporters and Labour leadership. One body cannot sustain powerful elements pulling in different directions, and I think Tom recognizes this because he advocates a ‘tactical retreat’ on the part of the Left, to save Labour from a split. Yet at a time like this, a tactical retreat would be madness.

Capitalism is in crisis, bosses are on the attack; the time is now or never for a defence of what we have. Class consciousness is not just about the vagaries of capitalist ups and downs, as I have been stressing; it will not continue to emerge unabated just because capitalism is in crisis. Defeat for the working class movement can inhibit the emergence of class consciousness, and ‘retreat’ at a moment when it is time to go forth and multiply means ‘defeat’.

The development of a hegemonic strategy is not predicated upon the use of buzzwords and riding the waves of the intelligentsia; it is about identifying the needs of the working class and identifying how best to achieve those needs. This requires agential engagement from the point of view of the individual, but it also requires structural (i.e. class) awareness, for if we fail to analyse closely the structure, we end up like Jon Cruddas – a left-sounding wing to a rightwards driving project.

How to best satisfy those needs, though it depends on being able to assess those needs by assessing the relative position of the working class within capitalism, is a different debate.