It’s the same with the National Minimum Wage, and why nothing Labour (or the ’soft’ Left) have ever done can be considered in isolation. Yes, the NMW is ‘good’ – because New Labour could have passed a different law – but is purely ameliorative, meanwhile everything else that New Labour (and the ’soft’ Left) have done spurs capitalism onwards to ever more exploitative heights.

So, coupled to the NMW, we have the super-exploitation of labour from cheaper eastern European countries which are imported to the UK: out of their wage, which is already shy the full value of what these workers produce, is also extracted ‘housing’ costs and ‘transport’ costs and various other inflated extras to recoup what the capitalist budgets for the cost of labour.

You cannot on the one hand encourage the growth of capitalism and try and ameliorate it. The ameliorative value, whilst objectively good, is never equivalent to the damage done by the encouragements to capitalism.

A better example of this contradiction on the part of New Labour is the massive real increase in health, education and social welfare spending since 1997. But of course this is balanced by the drive to marketize absolutely everything, meaning that all the investment now and in the future is being topsliced so that it funds private companies, building even greater troubles for tomorrows investment.

The explicit ideology of New Labour doesn’t recognize the contradiction of course, but as with your reply, it doesn’t understand the the soft Left only exists in the first place because of rudimentary class consciousness – something enshrined into the very bones of the Labour Party. By attempting to develop capitalism and promote capitalist growth, the leadership is ultimately chipping away at that class consciousness, until the base is gone and down falls the government.

This is as much true with Wilson/Callaghan or even Attlee. To talk about Wilson for a moment, the social partnership agreements between business and the unions were designed to spur capitalist growth and retard the claims of workers on their bosses. Except by doing this, workers grew disillusioned in their unions, whilst capitalist bosses grew ever stronger. Implicit to this action of Wilson is a preference for capitalist growth and the capitalist economy over the class demands of workers.

Ultimately the contradiction of this implicit policy, pro-capitalism in a party built out of the working class – to whom capitalism is inimical, lost the trust of the very people the Labour Party counted on the most – famously so in the 1979 Winter of Discontent – and Labour was ousted.

Basically one can be pro-capitalist or anti-capitalist, but if one is actively pro-capitalist, then building a party out of people who are exploited at every turn by that capitalism is a contradiction. This is true regardless of whether or not one promises to make capitalism better; there’s only so much prestige that can be used up by your pro-capitalist policies among the people whom you promise to help before they abandon you.

“So what seems like success is ultimately ephemeral, as the “soft” Left is caught within its own contradiction. It cannot on the one hand support healthy capitalist growth and on the other, want peace, equality and socialism.”

You seem to think that the left can only do anything of value if it is a step along the way to a socialist utopia. I disagree, as I think do most on the ’soft’ left. New Labour sucked ass, but the National Minimum Wage Act made things better for people in bad situations. It probably didn’t (and won’t) aid class consciousness or mobilise people, but it helps people, and it will continue to do so (unless Cameron feels like taking a crack at it).

And really, that’s a large part of the soft left’s basis: We accept that capitalism isn’t going to go away, and we try to make things better for the people who would otherwise suffer for it. The right believe in capitalism pretty much as an end in itself (or as a mechanism for improving the lives of a privileged few) while the left try to make it work for everyone. Will that ever happen? Probably not. But whatever you might think, not all capitalist societies are as bad as each other (compare Britain during the industrial revolution to Britain now), and the impact of the soft left makes a real difference to real people.

So there is no particular contradiction in the soft left’s mission, although it is not your mission. We recognise that this is an imperfect world, and we try to do the best we can with it. It may not stem capitalism decisively, but if the gains won can become entrenched, the benefits will be felt for generations.

PDS in Portugal certainly isn’t; the ANC certainly isn’t; PASOK certainly isn’t – and so on.

These parties have nothing to teach us about building popular coalitions because they are purely electoralist, benefitting from contingent events such as conspiracy theories or corruption and so on.

except in the USA, India, Bolivia, South Africa, Uruguay, Greece, Japan, Norway, Portugal…

“When the Left party is pursuing policies similar to the Right, should we not expect them to have an equally demoralizing affect? A pretty good symptom of working class demoralization is electing a Tory government, wouldn’t you say?”

Yes, hence the idea of learning from those socialist and social democratic parties which have managed to gain popular support in other countries.

Let’s not pretend that anything but a tiny rump of Labour or the Democrats are Left-wing, or that Lula listens of the PT or that PASOK will solve any of the issues in Greece. Even in strictly electoral terms, with the exception of Obama, none of the electoral victories were decisive.

In most areas, there were shifts to the Right underneath the surface figures of greater numbers of votes for the Left.

2. I agree; the social democratic governments of the post-war period tended to radicalize workers more, by building on what had already been done by the Conservative governments. Thus 64-70, thus 74-79. Yet this is not something that can be read as dogma.

When the Left party is pursuing policies similar to the Right, should we not expect them to have an equally demoralizing affect? A pretty good symptom of working class demoralization is electing a Tory government, wouldn’t you say?

3. Die Linke’s success will of course not radicalize people by itself – anymore than the “success” of other electoral groups will radicalize people. Yet Die Linke has made its mark by extending outside its original base. It has made a wider connection within our class: and electoral success is one symptom of this, which speaks well of the levels of party organisation.

People are not yet radical in Germany, but it’s good to know there are groups working towards that end, under an umbrella like Die Linke.

Die Linke also has the value of pulling in sections of the trades unions, which makes the connection to the working class all the stronger, by virtue of the fact that it required a high level of political consciousness to break from the SPD.

Thoughtful piece as ever.

1. I do think it is worth nailing this idea that the right have been the main electoral beneficiaries of the economic crisis, and that if Labour wants to be electorally successful it doesn’t need to accommodate to the right, but instead should learn from the varied successes of PASOK, the Norwegian Labour Party, the Democrats, Congress, the Brazilian Workers Party, the MAS in Bolivia and so on (obviously some of those will be more immediately relevant than others).

2. The experience of social democratic government, with its successes, limitations and frustrations, can often radicalise people and lead to the development of a stronger workers’ movement. In contrast, long periods of right-wing rule tend to have the opposite effect. After the Keynesian consensus, working class people became more militant in the UK, after 18 years of Thatcherism they voted for New Labour.

3. On the specific case of Germany, the German government ended up doing a bigger fiscal boost than the UK (for all Steinbruck’s talk), and I’m not sure that die Linke’s success will of itself radicalise people – it’s the same people who thought the same things that they did years ago, but perceive that the SPD has abandoned them.