The news has been occupied, this week, by the tragic loss of life of people in the raging fires in Australia. Like every one else - other than perhaps, those who appear to have deliberately caused some of the fires - I have the deepest sympathy for those who have lost friends, and family in this tragedy. However, I am bound to ask why weren't precautions taken to avoid such a situation arising.
It isn't as though bush fires in Australia, or, the similar fires recently in California, are something new. So, why not clear large areas to provide a firebreak between the trees and human communities? No doubt cost is one reason, but what is the cost now? But, its not just that. Last year, and the year before, the news was full of similar, sad stories about people in this country whose homes had been ruined by floods. But, again, apart from in a few instances, its not as though such floods were something new. Some were in coastal areas, some were in flood plains between two large rivers, for God's sake. If you are going to build houses on a flood plain - and shouldn't the very name give you some clue as to what is likely to happen there - then aren't you, in fact, inviting disaster? Yet, the Government says, they will not prevent further building on flood plains, and when the insurance companies say - and whatever I might think about insurance companies I find it hard to disagree with their logic here - that they either won't insure houses in flood plains, or else the premiums will be sky high, there is uproar.
With the fires in Australia, you can understand the situation of families who have grown up in a particular home or area over a long time, but not all the houses or families were like that, so what are people thinking when they buy a house in the middle of a tinderbox? Similarly, in Britain some of the houses that were flooded were old houses - though many of the people living in them bought them knowing what they were buying - but probably the majority were not. Again, what were the people thinking when they bought a house next to a river. Don't they ever watch the news to know that fairly frequently rivers cause floods?
But, the same thing is actually true about the current financial crisis. What was the cause of that crisis. Well, its roots can be found in the creation of huge amounts of credit by the US and British governments in particular. That meant that there was a large amount of money available for people to borrow at ridiculously low interest rates. In turn, that encouraged banks and financial institutions to make risky loans to people who had a good chance of not repaying them, and also led them into developing financial derivatives that falsely showed huge profits in the accounts of those institutions, and on which were paid huge salaries and bonuses to the bankers that claimed those profits were down to them.
But, its the same thing. No one forced those bankers to take the risk of lending to people who probably wouldn't pay back the loan. No one forced them to take the risk of buying Credit Default Swaps and other derivatives that they didn't properly understand, whose real value they couldn't determine and so on. Similarly, no one forced people who couldn't really afford to buy a house to do so, or who couldn't afford the interest payments, even at ridiculously low rates, to borrow the money. No one forced people to take out mortgages at 5, 6 and more times their earnings, whereas, historically, you wouldn't have been able to get a mortgage of more than twice your annual earnings. Certainly, no one forced people to rack up debts, running into tens of thousands of pounds, on credit cards, to buy things they really didn't need. People knew what they were doing, but simply seem to have failed to have taken any account of any downside of their actions. Why?
It seems to me we have developed a culture, in which, that is the way people's behaviour is shaped. I think the rise of anti-social behaviour is another example of it. Some kids think that they can do anything they like without any downside. If they are picked up on their behaviour they act as though they are the offended party. And kids that grew up like that are now adults behaving in exactly the same way, and passing that on to their kids.
When I grew up my parents had gone through the Depression. They had learned valuable lessons. It was not always going to be the case that you had a job, or that when you didn't the State would look after you. They had known what it was like not to be able to have things. So I grew up, like many other people at the time, learning not to spend every penny I had, not to get into debt and so on. In other words to understand about risk. That's why from the day I got married, and, despite both us being very young, and on low wages, we lived on one person's wages and saved the other, just as many Chinese workers do today.
But, welfarism has changed that. It has created a dependency culture, which at the same time has created a culture of irresponsibility. Go ahead, buy a house in the middle of a tinderbox, or a flood plain, don't worry, someone else will pick up the bill when things go wrong. Go ahead, lend money to people who can't pay you back, in order to make big short term profits, and boost your bonus, when your bank goes bankrupt the State will bail you out. Go ahead, borrow money you can't pay back for things you don't really need, or can't afford, when you go bust the Government will bail you out, and wipe away your debts through inflation, and by reducing interest rates, for the pensioners, and others, who've saved rather than spent, to zero to help bail you out.
The reason modern capitalism does this is clear. On the one hand, it develops the kind of self-centred individualist culture that bourgeois society needs. Anti-social behaviour is a direct result of it, it is individuals saying I'm going to do what I please, and I don't give a fuck for anyone else. Secondly, monopoly capitalism is built on a fusion of the state and big business. The State has to be able to intervene to bail it out, and to support it for the whole system to work. But, it also then has to be seen to be bailing out everyone else, and in doing so it helps to diminish some of the social tensions that would otherwise arise, tensions that would more clearly pose themselves in terms of a clash between Capital and Labour. Without, social security benefits workers would be far more likely to fight to defend jobs, and to rely on their collective strength.
Worse, this kind of culture demeans workers, taking away their pride, that should come from taking responsibility for their lives and the decisions they make, it helps to keep them in a servile condition. It says, don't think about things too much, everything will be alright, someone else will pick up the tab. No wonder the most common phrases heard are "Someone (alternatively the anonymous 'they') should do something", rather like the question asked by Trigger on Only Fools and Horses when Rodney was explaining about the Sun eventually swallowing up the Earth. No wonder we have such a booming business for Accident lawyers and other such forms for people wanting to shift the blame for everything that happens to them on to somebody else.
Only, a change from that kind of reliance on the bourgeois state and its associated organs, can save the working class from a continuing decay of its basic character. I am not at all suggesting some kind of Thatcherite individual responsibility culture, though there is certainly room for workers as individuals to take more responsibility for their lives too, but a return to the ideas on which socialism was first developed,a nd from which it has increasingly departed, a reliance on itself as a class, and on co-operative, and solidaristic actions.
26 comments:
On Australia, it is a very large area so building some sort of contraption to hold the fires would be impractical. You may as well say lets get rid of all the trees and then the fire won’t spread. This kind of logic reminds me of Stalinist Russia or Maoist China, I seem to recall that the Chinese communists decreed that all starlings were to be killed but this had the affect of increasing the insect population and the crops failed.
A far better and less insane solution would be instead of creating an environmental disaster they should invest in housing that is fire proof , create shelters the population can use and develop early warning systems.
Re welfarism, Modern capitalists didn’t invent the welfare state to create a workers dependency culture, they are not that smart! This was achieved by the struggles of the Labour movement and they/we must take responsibility for it. The recent rightist attacks on welfarism have created far more problems than it has solved.
Surely part of the development you talk about is the sixties revolution and a rise in working class self confidence, as a result of consumerism. This “liberalising” of society has had some pretty depressing results admittedly but we must be careful not to fall into the right’s trap of going back to a time when everyone knew their place and respected their “betters”.
I partly agree with the comment above that it was Thatcher’s attack on the welfare state that has led to the problems we see today. This seemed like a deliberate attempt to atomise the working class and create a consumerist dependency culture rather than a welfare dependency culture. (Though I don’t necessarily disagree with your criticisms of it).
You say no one was pressured, forced into buying loans etc but this ignores the pressure of society, the force of expectations that society has upon an individual, these people are not Robinson Crusoe’s. This has nothing to do with the welfare state but inequality/division of labour combined with advanced production, ie mass production of commodities and a flexible labour market.
People have come to judge themselves and others by the commodities they own.
For some reason you seem to have eschewed your usual rigorous analysis for some superficial ideological rantings.
“On Australia, it is a very large area so building some sort of contraption to hold the fires would be impractical. You may as well say lets get rid of all the trees and then the fire won’t spread.”
I wasn’t talking about building a contraption I was talking about not building houses in the middle of a forest in a country where forests are prone to going up in flames! Just as I was talking about not building houses in flood plains in Britain. Its precisely because Australia is a big country that there is less excuse for building houses in inappropriate places! Britain is not so big, but contrary to the myths perpetrate by the Right who talk about us being an overcrowded island, and the petit-bourgeois environmentalists, who from the comfort of their own homes want to squash workers into even smaller spaces, in congested towns and cities, Britain’s housing stock is squeezed on to just 10% of the available space, whilst the old and new landlords continue to occupy millions of acres of open space. So even here there is no excuse for building on flood plains. The reason is to keep the cost down so the builders make more profits.
“This kind of logic reminds me of Stalinist Russia or Maoist China, I seem to recall that the Chinese communists decreed that all starlings were to be killed but this had the affect of increasing the insect population and the crops failed.”
Not at all. Its the logic used in large parts of North America of building firebreaks so that you can contain the areas devastated by fires.
”A far better and less insane solution would be instead of creating an environmental disaster they should invest in housing that is fire proof , create shelters the population can use and develop early warning systems.”
I’m sure it would be possible to build such a fireproof house, and given the temperatures that were generated by these fires, perhaps the same methods used for fireproofing ovens could be used, because the people inside those houses would have ended up in such heat being roasted like turkeys. I’m sure that the shelters you propose and early warning systems could be developed, and were the people in these areas prepared to pay the cost for them fine. But, why should workers who take a reasonable decision not to buy a house in a flood plain or in a firezone pay that cost through higher taxes on behalf of people who make such an irrational choice?
”Re welfarism, Modern capitalists didn’t invent the welfare state to create a workers dependency culture, they are not that smart! This was achieved by the struggles of the Labour movement and they/we must take responsibility for it.”
Yes, and no. The first welfare measures were brought in by the Liberals at trhe beginning of the 20th Century, and although there was some pressure form the Labour Movement for pensions etc. I don’t think that can really be adduced as the main reason for their introduction. Similarly, the Beveridge Report was the product of a Liberal. They were part of a whole corporatist shift within certain sections of the bourgeoisie, of which Keynes ideas on demand management were also a part, and into which FDR’s New Deal fitted. They were less a response to the demands of the Labour Movement, and more a pre-emptive strike from the bourgeoisie given the experience of the 1917 Revolution, and the need to resort to fascism in Germany. Did they think they could create a dependency culture? Probably, not, but the bourgeoisie have shown themselves very adapt at utilising measures intended for one thing and adapting them for their own purpose.
“The recent rightist attacks on welfarism have created far more problems than it has solved.”
Maybe, but the statist attitudes of the Left offer no alternatives, indeed they simply offer more of the same.]
”Surely part of the development you talk about is the sixties revolution and a rise in working class self confidence, as a result of consumerism. This “liberalising” of society has had some pretty depressing results admittedly but we must be careful not to fall into the right’s trap of going back to a time when everyone knew their place and respected their “betters”.”
I think the idea that anti-social behaviour is due to the cultural changes that occurred during the 1960’s is a convenient myth created by the Right. I don’t think anti-social behaviour has anything to do with that. Nor does it have anything to do with working class self-confidence. Most of those involved are best described as lumpen proletarians rather than working class, and it is indeed the working class proper who are the people suffering from it. I am far more inclined to see responsibility lying in the transformation of the 1980’s under Thatcher’s dictum of “There is no such thing as society”, and the development of an individualistic, loadsamoney culture. A society where you just think of yourself, believe that anything that you do has no consequences, that if things go wrong it must always be someone else’s fault, and so you always look to someone else to pick up the tab.
“I partly agree with the comment above that it was Thatcher’s attack on the welfare state that has led to the problems we see today. This seemed like a deliberate attempt to atomise the working class and create a consumerist dependency culture rather than a welfare dependency culture. (Though I don’t necessarily disagree with your criticisms of it).”
It was both. Despite all the hoo ha, welfare spending under Thatcher went through the roof, and was paid for by the proceeds of North Sea Oil, and selling the family silver. That was a deliberate tactic to defeat the unions. Had their been really savage attacks on welfare benefits at a time when workers were being laid off in their droves over a very long period, then not only would workers have been more likely to resist, but the social unrest would have been far greater than it actually was. Bear in mind what actually happened. A lot of the workers who were laid off were older workers. They were people like my old man who was made redundant when he was 59. I remember going to the dole with him, and blanching when he told the clerk he wasn’t really bothered at his age about getting another job. Fine soon came back the answer from the Government, if you sign up to say you don’t want another job we’ll actually give you MORE dole money. And as my old man told me about a year later it was the best time of his life. He got his Council rent paid, and his Poll Tax, he had enough to live on, not much less than his after tax wages, and he was able to go out walking or playing bowls or dancing most days.
So they bribed a lot of workers out of the workplace, often the most experienced Trade Unionists like my old man, and simply the figure of unemployment acted as a weight on workers still working. Clearly, in some areas it was much worse than that, but during the 1980’s a clear culture grew up in which you could survive on benefits, and casual employment. It also helped create the conditions under which that kind of casualisation could be introduced more widely in the 90’s.
”You say no one was pressured, forced into buying loans etc but this ignores the pressure of society, the force of expectations that society has upon an individual, these people are not Robinson Crusoe’s. This has nothing to do with the welfare state but inequality/division of labour combined with advanced production, ie mass production of commodities and a flexible labour market.”
Precisely my point. No one forced people to do these things just like nobody forces anyone to smoke or drink. But, a culture was created in which it became natural to do these things without thinking about the consequences. And as I said, doesn’t capitalism have an incentive for a culture in which people don’t think about things too much? But, let’s not get too carried away. The Capitalist advertising machine is powerful, but not all powerful. It couldn’t get people to buy Sinclair C5’s. People have to be at least partly willing dupes. After all, the era of “Keeping Up With the Jones’s” was particularly marked during the 1960’s, but besides the fact that Consumer Credit controls, and Bank legislation prevented financial institutions from lending too much money to people, there was also still an attitude inherited from previous generations that if you wanted something you had to save for it. Now I agree, that when you hear the inane cliché statements that people come out with (especially for someone like me whose still wearing clothes I bought more than 20 years ago) like “Retail therapy”, or “shop until you drop”, these ideas didn’t suddenly spring into people’s heads from nowhere it is something that has been carefully cultivated by bourgeois ideology desperate to keep the tills ringing, and soaked up by an atomised and alienated working class, that has become as a result decadent and looking for its “opium of the people”. But, again that in large part is the result of the failure of the Left to provide that working class with real solutions and alternatives to its problems. On the contrary, its solutions have in fact played into the hands of the bourgeoisie that has been developing that culture, in place of advocating working class self-reliance and self-activity, it has rather reinforced all of that dependency culture, by advocating statist solutions such as higher state benefits, nationalisation by the bourgeois state and so on. It has played its own part in degrading the working class, and stripping it of any remaining pride.
The way to undercut all of those bourgeois ideas is precisely to advocate such working class independence and self-reliance.
”People have come to judge themselves and others by the commodities they own.”
Precisely.
”For some reason you seem to have eschewed your usual rigorous analysis for some superficial ideological rantings.”
The blog is intended to try to mix longer more detailed analysis with such shorter items that simply raise questions. This one has succeeded in doing that. I’m working on a lengthy piece on Co-operatives which will hopefully be back in the rigorous analysis category that I’m glad to hear you appreciate.
The power of the capitalist advertising machine cannot be judged by taking one example of failure as proof of its fallibility. Taken as a whole this machine has an enormous role to play in reinforcing the values of capitalist production and has been extremely successful in achieving its objectives.
I think this culture has arisen mainly out of the production of an abundance of cheap consumer goods, coupled with the inevitable consequences of a capitalist society, inequality, accumulation of wealth and power etc and has little to do with a welfare state. The welfare state seems just another symptom of capitalism to my mind and not a cause of the problem.
Even more your critique of it is irrelevant as the bourgeoisie state isn’t going to get rid of it because it is in their interests as you suggest, and the left has no power to get rid of it. So how does the working class gain this self reliance? The answer must lie within the “welfarism” you describe.
Your criticisms of the left are revisionist, as is much of your analysis here. The left has always tried to encourage working class self empowerment through trade unions and has reacted when the right has attacked working class interests. Marx did this kind of thing all the time, for example, his agitation against the Sunday trading bill.
“The power of the capitalist advertising machine cannot be judged by taking one example of failure as proof of its fallibility. Taken as a whole this machine has an enormous role to play in reinforcing the values of capitalist production and has been extremely successful in achieving its objectives.”
I didn’t think I’d dissented from that view. There is a very good documentary called “The Corporation”, which deals in detail with the way in which big companies and advertisers shape the market using psychological techniques. I was merely making the point that it is not monolithic. We shouldn’t have a mechanistic attitude to it, otherwise the logic is we can never break out of that ideological domination.
”I think this culture has arisen mainly out of the production of an abundance of cheap consumer goods, coupled with the inevitable consequences of a capitalist society, inequality, accumulation of wealth and power etc and has little to do with a welfare state. The welfare state seems just another symptom of capitalism to my mind and not a cause of the problem.”
There are two different things here. I agree that the consumerism has been facilitated by the availability of cheap consumer goods. The beginning of that was in the US at the beginning of the last century, which went along with the development of Consumer Credit by US companies to enable people to buy the vast amounts of stuff being churned out. Even middle class families couldn’t afford to buy cars straight out for cash usually. But consumerism really took off in Britain during the post-war boom from the mid 50’s on, with a similar development of HP. I grew up during that time and there was not the same kind of attitude that you could simply go and buy anything without regard to the need to pay for it that has pervaded the last 20 years. That I think is new, and is part of a deeper cultural and ideological shift. Undoubtedly, its because despite the depression of the late 70’s to mid 90’s, that same kind of grinding down that the wartime generation knew from the 1920’s onwards, was missing.
How do you combat that? Well I’d suggest that its necessary for Marxists to have to try to create the conditions in which workers horizons are broadened beyond trying to overcome their alienation by looking forward to the next shopping trip. Its necessary to try to rebuild some sense of solidarity in place of the atomisation that has occurred, to rebuild it within the communities and in the workplace. But, that has to be built on the right kind of programme. Simply reproducing the same kinds of ideas about “Demand the State” do this or that, which is what the left normally does whether in the workplace or in the community can only reinforce those bourgeois ideas that workers can’t do things for themselves, that workers should act as consumers demanding the bosses or their state provide, and its all just about haggling over the price.
The development of welfarism is separate from that, but keys into it, because again it says to workers you can’t provide for yourself, you need us. But, what both do is to reduced workers to consumers – consumers of goods and services, consumers of State provided welfare. It atomises them it reinforces the ideas of individualism of moving forward by individual actions, and individual negotiations. It is deeply subverting of proletarian culture and solidarity. Welfarism is separate from consumerism, but it is a reinforcing ideology and culture.
”Even more your critique of it is irrelevant as the bourgeoisie state isn’t going to get rid of it because it is in their interests as you suggest, and the left has no power to get rid of it. So how does the working class gain this self reliance? The answer must lie within the “welfarism” you describe.”
I totally disagree. The first workers organisations were not just Trade Unions, but Friendly Societies. They were workers organisations owned and controlled democratically by the workers themselves to provide for workers at times of need, precisely because the State did not, prior to the Poor Law. Given the poverty that workers faced at the time the limits of such societies were obvious. But, those conditions do not exit today. Workers have savings, even individual share holdings, mutual fund holdings, and in Britain alone around £500 billion in their pension funds. As I’ve argued before, Robin Blackburn has pointed to the Swedish example of where a scheme was established whereby employers had to deposit shares into a pension scheme, and which in short order accounted for 7% of the Swedish Stock Market.
I think that workers interests would be much better served if all their savings, all their National Insurance payments, their tax payments etc. along with their pension payments, both into the State pension scheme and the Company Pension Schemes went into a single Workers Fund, under their own ownership and control. A start at least could be made by the setting up of such a fund into which workers could pay their savings and investments, and a much bigger start could be made by the unions demanding the basic democratic right for workers to have direct control over their money in their pension schemes, which could then be transferred into it.
”Your criticisms of the left are revisionist, as is much of your analysis here. The left has always tried to encourage working class self empowerment through trade unions and has reacted when the right has attacked working class interests. Marx did this kind of thing all the time, for example, his agitation against the Sunday trading bill.”
No. Its the Left itself which is revisionist. It has abandoned Marx in favour of Lassalle and statism. The left has not tried to encourage working-class empowerment through trade unions at all. The left has tried to dominate the working class through the Trade Unions, to manipulate and coerce them using its discipline and organisation. It has tried to use the unions as merely a milieu in which to party build, just as the Trotskyist Left, or sections of it tried to use the LP and other Social Democratic parties through the Entrist tactic to do the same thing. Look at any of the experiences from the Minority Movement onwards, and that has been the feature of the way the left has related to them. Stalinists have been the worst in that regard, but the Trotskyist left has been not much better. Look at the current Rank and File and Broad left organisations. Nothing to do with building rank and file workers self-activity, everything to do with being sectarian bear-pits in which different groups contend to get their own slates elected, and to get meaningless motions which workers aren’t going to fight for – without some real work being done to build real workers self-reliance - adopted at union branches and Conferences. Look at the responses of most of the left to the recent wildcat strikes. Most of them said, the workers aren’t acting the way we want them to, so we oppose the workers!!!! In fact, not surprising because that was the attitude that the Bolsheviks took to Russian workers and the Soviets after 1917.
Yes, the left has responded, but has usually responded with calls that simply reinforce that reliance on the bourgeois state. Of course, Marx opposed attacks by the bosses on workers interests, what else would you expect, but look at the way he always phrased his response. What was Marx’s attitude? He said Marxists shouldn’t raise demands that tie the workers to Capitalism, but should always support workers when they fight Capitalism even on an inadequate or even reactionary basis, and through that support, should point out to them what they did wrong, what demands they should have raised, what programme they really needed. Again the recent refinery strikes show how far much of the left has abandoned that approach. So Marx said, support workers strikes for higher pay, but tell the workers the truth, the fight should not be for higher pay, but abolition of the system of wages. Marx, supported the passing of the Ten Hours Act, but look at what he says in Capital, about the way in which after the defeat of the Chartists, the bosses with the full support of their State simply ignored it, so workers could not rely on such laws being passed by the bourgeois state to protect their interests. Look at what he says in his Address to the First International where he puts this into context and shows what Marxists really mean when they talk about empowering the workers, and when they talk about real working-class self activity.
““But there was in store a still greater victory of the political economy of labour over the political economy of property. We speak of the co-operative movement, especially the co-operative factories raised by the unassisted efforts of a few bold “hands”. The value of these great social experiments cannot be overrated. By deed instead of by argument, they have shown that production on a large scale, and in accord with the behests of modern science, may be carried on without the existence of a class of masters employing a class of hands; that to bear fruit, the means of labour need not be monopolized as a means of dominion over, and of extortion against, the labouring man himself; and that, like slave labour, like serf labour, hired labour is but a transitory and inferior form, destined to disappear before associated labour plying its toil with a willing hand, a ready mind, and a joyous heart.”
That statement alone when compared to the craven pleading of the modern Left at the altar of the bourgeois state, is enough evidence of the extent to which the Left has revised Marx.
“But, why should workers who take a reasonable decision not to buy a house in a flood plain or in a firezone pay that cost through higher taxes on behalf of people who make such an irrational choice?”
This seems to have gone beyond Stalinism and into Marie Antoinette, do we say the same to people who live in earthquake zones or in areas common to drought, or areas where Tsunamis have hit. Do we extend it beyond this, do we say that people who drink, smoke, sunbathe, eat badly cannot have free medical care? Is this socialism?
You also seem to building up straw men with your attacks on the left. The left have done what Marx did, support workers in times of agitation but provided an alternative manifeto to capitalism, it's just that the workers, thus far, have ignored this alternative.
Who on the left doesn't want workers to take control of society?
"I think the idea that anti-social behaviour is due to the cultural changes that occurred during the 1960’s is a convenient myth created by the Right."
This is exactly why I needed to respond to your post. It seemed like a rightist attack on modern capitalist society and blaming it on workers.
Trumpton,
Read again what I said. I made a distinction between people who ere born in particular areas, and who were victims of circumstance. That crtainly applies to people who live in earthquake zones, or drought areas.
However, if I go to live in Spain knowing that it is in an earthquake zone, that is my choice. I balance the risk against my desire to live somewhere with better weather than here. I will look to buy somewhere that is hopefull earthquake proof knowing that as a consequence it will cost more money. I wouldn't expect a worker who remains in Britain's bad weather to bail me out if my gamble doesn't pay off, anymore than I'd expect them to bail me out if my horse at Kempton comes in last.
Your point about people who drink, smoke etc. is a better one. But again isn't this similar to the people who are born into a risky area? Those things are well established features of culture. Moreover, society does now charge these people. There are high taxes on drink on fags etc, and because drinkers and smokers die younger they are less of a drain on resources than those who don't, and who draw their pensions and benefits for many more years.
But, a socialist society would probably also do that in the first stages wouldn't it. It would seek to modify such behaviour by similar taxes on those activities which drained its resources unnecessarily.
I don't think my critique of the Left is at all building up straw men. The working class have not taken up the Programme offered them by the Left, because the programme they have been offered by that Left is not the programme suggested by Marx, the behaviour of that Left has not been that which Marx advocated. The left has offered the working class a statist solution to its problems, and having seen that statist solution in practice the working class has sensibly rejected it. It sought that statism in practice in Russia, and the consequences it had for the workers. It saw that statist solution in practice in the various nationalised industries, and Muncipal Socialism, and again recognised it as the fraud it was. Yet, those are still the options the left wants to impose on the workers.
And a look at the recent refinery strikes shows how far the Left is from Marx in he way it relaates to the class. The left is far too concerned with building its own organisations to be concerned with really supporting the workers in developing to a stage whereby the workers themselves can control society. The Left doesn't want the working class to control society it wants itself to control society in the name of the workers, that is already how it behaves in the workers organisations now. Just look at the response of that left to the recent refinery strikes!
It was you that refferred to the 1960's not me.
"Surely part of the development you talk about is the sixties revolution and a rise in working class self confidence."
And far from me attacking workers, I was blaming the rise in anti-social behaviour on the atomisation of the class, the concept of "no such thing as society", and the indivdualism created during the Thatcher revolution. I was arguing that the culture of action without consequence whether its, anti-social behaviour, the running up of huge debts or other similar phenomena is a result of that, a product that Capitalism was quite happy with until the consequences for it also were felt.
I just feel that its a pity that the left's respons to that individualism is not a return to the kind of programme of working class self-reliance advocated by marx, but is simply a regurgitation of that old failed statism, a statism, which under current conditions means telling workers to submit pleas to the bouregois state for assistance rather like Oliver Twist asking plaintfully, "Can I have some more please."
It is the kind of approach which Marx condemned saying that in so far as he working class proceeds on that basis it simply proves "And particularly in the case of a toiling people which, through these demands that it puts to the state, expresses its full consciousness that it neither rules nor is ripe for ruling! ….”
I don’t think the people who died in those fires will be draining any more resources. Though they won’t be making surplus value for their employer anymore either. I actually live near houses built on floodplains and I don’t know the motivation for people living there, but it certainly wasn’t the sun and sand.
I mentioned the 1960’s, but not in the context that this was the point when everything started going wrong! I was pointing out that the problems you outlined had a positive side as well, ie lack of servility among the workers, at least to the upper classes, increasing freedom for women etc. Your article seemed to represent a rather one-sided moralising view, rather than a serious analysis of the subject.
The rise in this consumerism probably began before this and was reinforced by the influence of American culture. I don’t think the effect of television can be underestimated in this regard.
I wasn’t around in the sixties but it seemed like a time of great possibilities for the left, I think the “decline” since has been the result of a counter revolution by the Bourgeoisie and petit Bourgeoisie.
As for the solution. Statism, as you call it, doesn’t mean pleading at the feet of the Bourgeoisie, like some obedient dog, it means taking over the state and handing its power to the workers, which is exactly the position Marx took. The communist manifesto talks of free education for all and progressive taxation, this can only be achieved through state power.
You talk of an ideological shift, a society that had one set of values, namely thriftiness and then another, reckless spending.
I look at it as more of an evolution, what you actually describe is an old society coming into conflict with a new one. The ideas of the old society still existed, of course, in the minds of the older generation but the new generation gradually adapted to the new conditions with new ideas, and gradually the old ideas became obsolete. Thriftiness replaced by consumption through credit.
The problem is, as you alluded to, how will this change when we still have this abundance of consumer goods. The left has no alternative but to try and persuade workers that this abundance can be better controlled by a socialist system. We must present clear and realistic alternatives to the current system and uncertain times like these present great opportunities.
With that in mind, I think your idea of a workers fund sounds like an excellent idea but a bit more detail would be needed to make a proper evaluation.
“I don’t think the people who died in those fires will be draining any more resources. Though they won’t be making surplus value for their employer anymore either. I actually live near houses built on floodplains and I don’t know the motivation for people living there, but it certainly wasn’t the sun and sand.”
I have every sympathy with the people who died, and with the friends and relatives of those people. I am trying to get to grips with what creates a society, which leads people to make such short-term irrational(?) decisions, and what the consequences of that are for the working class. I put a question mark after irrational, because the question is to what extent are such decisions irrational, and in what context. You talk about the people near you who live on flood plains, and say the reason they live there is not for sun and sand. But, could it be that one reason is that the houses built there are cheaper than in other nearby locations? Could it be that being by a river, people only see a nice scenic view, but don’t look further than that to consider anything else? How does this tie in with the fact that alongside those other aspects of the culture that has grown up – been fostered by Capitalism – we have another culture – the Lottery Culture, in which people – again influenced by that other culture, the cult of the celebrity – are daily presented with the detailed lives of the rich and famous – and often not so famous – and through whom they often seem to live their lives vicariously. That in order to get out of their humdrum existence they seek solace in such fantasy, and the fantasy that the next lottery ticket or scratch card will be the one, that an accident claim will bring them thousands of pounds, or that their kids might become a millionaire soccer player etc.
Isn’t all this just a modern version of what Marx was talking about when he spoke of the “Opium of the People”? But, therefore, don’t we have a duty as Marxists to understand the implications of that, and just as Marx did with Religion present a critique of it, and a progressive alternative?
”I mentioned the 1960’s, but not in the context that this was the point when everything started going wrong! I was pointing out that the problems you outlined had a positive side as well, ie lack of servility among the workers, at least to the upper classes, increasing freedom for women etc.”
What you said was,
“Surely part of the development you talk about is the sixties revolution and a rise in working class self confidence, as a result of consumerism. This “liberalising” of society has had some pretty depressing results admittedly but we must be careful not to fall into the right’s trap of going back to a time when everyone knew their place and respected their “betters”.”
I don’t think the rise in working class self confidence had anything to do with the rise of consumerism. It had everything to do with the fact that in that post-war period, and certainly by the time of the 1960’s, the Long Wave boom had created a relative shortage of labour, and the conditions under which workers could successfully place demands on the bosses. It was no different in that respect with previous such cycles such as that at the end of the 19th century that led to similar rises in workers confidence, and the development of mass workers parties etc. And if consumerism started at any time it was probably then with the rise in workers living standards making it possible for them to begin to buy the new consumer products that began to be produced. What was different then to now – apart from the greater sophistication of advertising techniques now – was the existence of large workers organisations, and the provision of some sort of set of solutions for workers problems based on collective workers actions. Now, as we have entered a similar long wave boom from around 1999, we may see a similar development as workers are able to struggle more successfully. I would make the suggestion that the things I have described are in part a consequence of the fact that during the Long Wave downturn from the mid 70’s till late 90’s, that the kind of working-class self confidence based on collective and co-operative action was missing – certainly after the defeat of the Miners – and that this atomisation of the class under Thatcher, inevitably led to such a culture. In short, as I said before not a consequence of the 1960’s but of the 1980’s. Not of labour’s advance, but of its decline. That is why I argue that the solution has to lie in rebuilding the working class self-confidence through its own self-activity.
“Your article seemed to represent a rather one-sided moralising view, rather than a serious analysis of the subject.”
I’d invite you to read it again. Isn’t the clue to what I was saying contained in this sentence.
“It seems to me we have developed a culture, in which, that is the way people's behaviour is shaped.”
In particular that last word shaped. Of course as a materialist I don’t believe that people’s behaviour springs out of thin air, but is shaped by the society, the material conditions in which they find themselves, and to which they have to relate. That is precisely why I spoke of the role of Welfarism and of Consumerism as the means by which this culture, and this behaviour was shaped. It can hardly be moralising to point to the material causes of people’s behaviour can it? Moralising, precisely implies that behaviour is due to an innate deficiency in those making the choices. It is precisely, by identifying those material causes of that behaviour that I was posing the question, and at the same time locating the pernicious role that the Left has played in that in so far as it has reinforced it, by framing solutions not in terms of workers looking for solutions to their problems, by their own actions, but in statist solutions that tell them to look for solutions by the State.
”The rise in this consumerism probably began before this and was reinforced by the influence of American culture. I don’t think the effect of television can be underestimated in this regard.”
But again that is the argument of the Right. Of Mary Whitehouse and co. The question is not is television – and radio before that, the newspaper the Music Hall and so on before that – a purveyor of a necessarily bourgeois culture and ideas – a culture and ideas that are shaped by the times in which they are set – because, of course, the answer to that question is yes. The question is rather why are workers influenced by that at some times and not at others. I would suggest to you that the answer lies in what credible alternatives, what attractive alternatives the working class is presented with at the time, and the conditions under which it views those alternatives.
”I wasn’t around in the sixties but it seemed like a time of great possibilities for the left, I think the “decline” since has been the result of a counter revolution by the Bourgeoisie and petit Bourgeoisie.”
I was, and yes it was a time of great possibilities as May 68 and other events demonstrated. But, it was also a time of great confusion, and almost necessarily so. On the one hand the strongest influence within the workers movement itself was the Stalinists, which placed a dead hand on everything. But, the alternatives were not really much better. What the 60’s really brought forth was a blossoming not of the workers movement, but of the petit-bourgeoisie, and petit-bourgeois ideas. Remember, that one of the most powerful symbols of that time was flower-power, the pacifism and anarchism of the hippies. People remember the anti-war demonstrations, and I can remember because my old man was a lefty watching them on TV with approval, but the sentiment of many workers to what was essentially a series of student demonstrations was “Bloody students, they ought to get a job.” Again, the left has a rose-tinted view of the time, because the left has always contented itself with vanguardism. It is only interested in hearing the reinforcing – and then only sometimes – views of a tiny section of the working class, those that are already to some extent politicised, who make up the politicos in the union braches, and the various campaign organisations, but in reality it was divorced from the real workers movement, or at least from the real working class. That wasn’t so true of May 68. where the students were able to go actually into the occupied factories and talk to workers directly it has to be said, but again the reality was there that the main force within the student movement was the petit-bourgeois anarchists around Danny the Red (should really have been black, but that’s the media for you), and even amongst the Trotskyists, the vanguardism led to the idea that what everything was building to was a 1917, style revolution, rather than any conscious programme of developing workers self-activity even in the occupied factories. What was needed was a programme not just to sit on those factories, but to take the limited workers control that existed, manifested in the production and supply of necessities to hospitals etc., into an active programme of running those factories as workers co-operatives, of building a real system of workers democracy arising out of that production system, of linking one factories production to another, and thereby linking the workers of one factory directly to another.
”As for the solution. Statism, as you call it, doesn’t mean pleading at the feet of the Bourgeoisie, like some obedient dog, it means taking over the state and handing its power to the workers, which is exactly the position Marx took. The communist manifesto talks of free education for all and progressive taxation, this can only be achieved through state power.”
Completely, wrong. I’d suggest that you read Lenin’s “State and Revolution”, in which he completely demolishes the idea put forward by Kautsky and the Second International that the task was to “take over”, the State. No, as Lenin said, Marx was as much an Anarchist as Proudhon and Bakhunin when it came to the bourgeois state. He saw the need to smash it. Yes, the Communist Manifest written by Marx and Engels in their youth does contain some pretty statist positions, a hang-over from their days as radical Liberals, and Hegelians. But, read what Marx and Engels say in their mature writings, not in their youth on those things. Marx and Engels moved away from that statism the more they recognised the role of the working class as the agent of historical change, the need for that class to bring about change from below, not of some state from above.
Unfortunately, their comrade of the time Lassalle did not move forward in that. Unfortunately, it is the statist politics of Lassalle that the labour Movement has gone forward on, not the liberating politics of Marx and Engels.
On free education read Marx, for example in the critique.
““"Elementary education by the state" is altogether objectionable. Defining by a general law the expenditures on the elementary schools, the qualifications of the teaching staff, the branches of instruction, etc., and, as is done in the United States, supervising the fulfillment of these legal specifications by state inspectors, is a very different thing from appointing the state as the educator of the people! Government and church should rather be equally excluded from any influence on the school. Particularly, indeed, in the Prusso-German Empire (and one should not take refuge in the rotten subterfuge that one is speaking of a "state of the future"; we have seen how matters stand in this respect) the state has need, on the contrary, of a very stern education by the people.
But the whole program, for all its democratic clang, is tainted through and through by the Lassallean sect's servile belief in the state, or, what is no better, by a democratic belief in miracles; or rather it is a compromise between these two kinds of belief in miracles, both equally remote from socialism."
Critique of the Gotha Programme
“You talk of an ideological shift, a society that had one set of values, namely thriftiness and then another, reckless spending.
I look at it as more of an evolution, what you actually describe is an old society coming into conflict with a new one. The ideas of the old society still existed, of course, in the minds of the older generation but the new generation gradually adapted to the new conditions with new ideas, and gradually the old ideas became obsolete. Thriftiness replaced by consumption through credit.”
Correct, but what I am interested in is WHY? I’ve tried to set out in my reply above to Trumpton the basics of what I think are the answer to that.
”The problem is, as you alluded to, how will this change when we still have this abundance of consumer goods. The left has no alternative but to try and persuade workers that this abundance can be better controlled by a socialist system. We must present clear and realistic alternatives to the current system and uncertain times like these present great opportunities.”
I agree. But, as I have tried to set out in some of my economic articles on the crisis, what the current situation represents is that classical Marxist description of disproportionality. A disproportionality which necessarily arises due to the separation of production from consumption. The reason a culture in the West – and bear in mind that even though consumerism is rife in China’s new working and middle class, they have a phenomenally high savings rate – of taking risks, of acting as though there re no downside consequences of actions, has been developed, is precisely because at a time of stagnant or falling real wages, people had to be encouraged to mortgage their future, and the future of their kids to keep buying all the crap. Capitalism resolves disproportionality through crisis. Look at those disproportionalities. We have a global labour market. But, rather than one Value of Labour Power we have a huge disproportionality between Western wages and Chinese/Asian wages probably still in the region of 30-1. No serious economist can believe that short of socialism that can be resolved without either a prolonged period in which western wages are stagnant or slightly falling, or without a sharp sudden fall. Capitalism has attempted the former, and used the issuing of credit, and workers mortgaging their future as its preferred method. Partly, as a result of the above, and the inability to shift production and consumption patterns adequately, we have huge disproprtionalities arising manifested in huge trade deficits for the US and UK. The capitalist solution to that again depends upon a resolution of the previous disproportionality. But, a further disproportionality flows from that, which is the continued production of certain types of goods in those old industrial economies alongside the rise of new more efficient production of those same goods in China and Asia. The clearest example is that of motor cars in the US where both GM and Ford have continued inefficient production for years, pumping out millions of cars all sold at a loss. In fact, its ironic that for Marxists Capital employs Labour to extract Surplus Value, and in these companies over the last, perhaps 10 years, it would be more true to say that their workers have been subsidised by Capital!
”With that in mind, I think your idea of a workers fund sounds like an excellent idea but a bit more detail would be needed to make a proper evaluation.”
I’d like to provide more information here, but I’m very busy at the moment. I’ve been trying to reply to the arguments put by a nationalist on another socialist blog, and which I intend to return now, and in addition the BNP are standing in a by-election here next month, and I’ve been helping to draft a leaflet to respond to them, and we have other actions planned. I was however, talking to a comrade th other day and commented that I’ve been reading Hobsbawm’s “Industry and Empire”, and was struck by the fact that was it a coincidence that the State introduced National Insurance just at the time when the Friendly Societies created by workers alongside the Trade Unions could have taken off as workers wages had risen, and they were beginning to be able to save reasonable sums, and buy a wider range of consumer goods.
I’ve already written a lot about the idea of a Workers Fund alongside Co-operatives, and will write more in my upcoming multi-part blog on Co-operatives. In the meantime search on the blog under Co-operatives, and you will find a lot of related discussion.
I don’t think you’ve answered in any way the question of why people live in these areas. The houses built on flood plains near me are in a deprived area, very close to the old local mine. Maybe this was the reason people lived there. This is a subject worthy of study but your speculations serve no Marxist interest whatsoever.
Capitalism has done a great job of replacing religion as the “opium of the people” and what better example of the horror of being a worker under capitalism than the obsession with celebrity culture? Marx's critique of work under capitalism is more relevant than ever.
I would agree that the atomisation of the working classes has reduced its strength and contributed to some of the problems we see today but this was just a symptom of monetarist economics, which itself was a reaction to failed Keynesian policies. No capitalist solution can ultimately solve the problems of the working class and with the failure of monetarist economics, maybe a new opportunity for collective action will arise.
Though, how a genuinely socialist struggle will develop in a society with such a small industrial proletariat is another matter.
As you are busy with important work i'll make this short.
Workers are not dependent in a capitalist society, they go out to work and put food on the table. The real dependency culture within capitalism lies with the bourgeoisie and their reliance on workers labour.
“I don’t think you’ve answered in any way the question of why people live in these areas. The houses built on flood plains near me are in a deprived area, very close to the old local mine. Maybe this was the reason people lived there. This is a subject worthy of study but your speculations serve no Marxist interest whatsoever.”
They weren’t intended to be some kind of Doctoral Thesis on why people risk living in flood plains. It was a short blog using that as an example of people taking short term decisions without any apparent thought of the consequences, and asking the question why? It was tentatively suggesting a relationship with a change in culture. The intention was to provoke discussion, and it achieved that objective.
”Capitalism has done a great job of replacing religion as the “opium of the people” and what better example of the horror of being a worker under capitalism than the obsession with celebrity culture? Marx's critique of work under capitalism is more relevant than ever.”
Absolutely.
”I would agree that the atomisation of the working classes has reduced its strength and contributed to some of the problems we see today but this was just a symptom of monetarist economics, which itself was a reaction to failed Keynesian policies.”
I have to disagree. The atomisation of the working class had nothing to do with the role of Monetarist economics. On the contrary, both the atomisation of the working class and the introduction of Monetarism had the same route. The defeat of the working class, during the 1980’s, and the Capitalist offensive that followed it. Monetarism was not the product of a failed Keynesianism, it was the result of the ruling class being unable to afford a Keynesian solution, and being able to impose a Monetarist one. That is why in the conditions now of the Long Wave economic boom, the availability of large amounts of Surplus Value accumulated on a world scale, Capitalism is using a Keynesian response on an unprecedented scale.
See: Where We Are Going and preferably the other two parts on why Capital chooses different tactics.
“Though, how a genuinely socialist struggle will develop in a society with such a small industrial proletariat is another matter.”
The struggle for socialism does not depend on an industrial proletariat, but on the existence of a large proletariat. I was discussing this with comrades last night, in fact, and the fact that changing forms of production although creating new forms of problem in terms of workplace organisation, are also providing new opportunities. For example, one comrade was relating his experience in a village in Wales where everyone worked from home. Although they worked for different companies the fact that they all had the ability to organise their time within a small community meant that they had focussed on their own community organisation, and political activity around that. In fact, the Internet makes possible direct dialogue between workers on a large scale possible more than did the normal working practices in a factory.
To Montreal,
But, a dependency culture has grown up for that section of the proletariat that Marx referred to, that section which suffers, prolonged unemployment and poverty. The working class does not suffer a dependency culture in terms of being economically dependent as such, but does suffer a dependency culture all the same. It is not an objective dependency, but an ideological dependency.
The working class has been led to beleive, and he Left has fed this belief that here and now workers are not capable of organising their lives, of organising production etc. They are led to beleive that here and now only the bosses or their state can do that. That is the message that bourgeois society sends to workers. At a political level it is represented by the notion of "Don't worry your heads on thinking too much about politics, just elect some group of politicians to do that, and you can keep the satisfaction of slagging them off for being a bunch of tossers."
But, the left feeds that notion - indeed some seeme ven to have abandoned the notion of workers direct demcoracy in favour of some form of representative democracy as the necesary means of administration in a large, modern society e.g. Martin Thomas of the AWL has argued that.
It is rampant in the left's arguments against workers self-organisation and creation of workers property and organisation in the form of Co-operatives, which the left argue are Utopian, and instead on its calls for workers to demand that the bouregois state nationalise this or that area of life and work.
In a Capitalist society workers are in a very real sense dependent upon both the bosses and their State for their existence, but only insofar as they accept the rules of Capitalism. The point is that Marxists should be showing to them in practice that not only are their a different set of rules to play by, but their is a different game to play.
“They weren’t intended to be some kind of Doctoral Thesis on why people risk living in flood plains.”
Fair enough. But remember that your writings are in the public domain, Marx would never have put such speculations in the public arena. At least signpost the fact that the article was intended as an exploration of the issues.
“The struggle for socialism does not depend on an industrial proletariat, but on the existence of a large proletariat.”
I never said it did but I can’t conceive of how this can happen with an economy built on finance and the service industry. It seems to me that there is a world of difference between “productive” workers and “unproductive” ones. The office tends to have many levels of petty hierarchy and is a bastion of petty bourgeoisie values. I have yet to come across a convincing explanation of how these workers can develop a class consciousness.
This could certainly explain the petty bourgeoisie nature of sections of the left.
I can’t imagine how a local community struggle can develop into a class conflict, except with a struggle against the bourgeoisie state, which people do not associate with a ruling class, they do get to vote for these people after all.
Home working would strike me as the ultimate in atomisation.
As for the internet, yes it does present the left with a great tool to build internationalsim but the down side should not be ignored either. Opium at your finger tips.
Whatever the reasons for this “dependency culture” and I did find your analysis illuminating, it is a consequence of capitalism and not the actions of the left. I make the point that the move back to Keynesianism MAY negate some of this culture, at least the atomisation of the working class.
I’m not sure I entirely agree with your idea of an “ideological dependency”, as something workers actually believe, yes workers rely on elected politicians to carry out policies on “their behalf” but this has more to do with time issues etc (i e, material rather than ideological) and as you say the real politics occurs in the workplace, only democracy in this sphere will begin to change society.
Now I agree that there is an idea that society relies on “great men” like Richard Branson (Ha Ha) and that workers are too stupid to run things for themselves. This is, of course, nonsense, as that is what the ruling class argued when denying universal suffrage. But look at how society has progressed as a result of this.
Now there may be some abstract dependence by workers upon the state and the bosses but when I hear people say we depend on these capitalists for our jobs, I argue that it is they who rely upon us for our labour and skills
I suspect the barriers to progress are more structural than your argument suggests.
“Fair enough. But remember that your writings are in the public domain, Marx would never have put such speculations in the public arena. At least signpost the fact that the article was intended as an exploration of the issues.”
Actually, I’m sure he probably did, probably passed similar type comments when he was in the pub drinking with his mates and so on. It’s a blog. I think the length of the article, and the way it was written was itself a signpost that it was just raising thoughts for discussion.
”I never said it did but I can’t conceive of how this can happen with an economy built on finance and the service industry.”
They’re still workers. Many who work in Finance, and particularly those that work in service industries are often low-paid.
“It seems to me that there is a world of difference between “productive” workers and “unproductive” ones.”
Not according to Marx, and Marxists since have had considerable difficulty determining just who is a “productive” worker and who isn’t. For Marx a productive worker was one who exchanged their Labour Power with Capital. So although, Merchant Capital does not produce Surplus Value, but only shares in – by enabling a more efficient realisation of – the Surplus Value created by Productive Capital, the worker who works for Merchant Capital is still a productive worker, because they exchange their Labour Power with Capital, and enable that more efficient realisation of Surplus Value. Their relationship to Capital is no different than that of the worker who exchanges their Labour Power with Productive Capital. But, even aside from that some of the most militant workers in recent years have been those workers who really are “unproductive” that is those who do not exchange their Labour power with Capital, teachers, Civil Servants and so on. In fact, its truer to say that the economy is based on the employment of such people – as around 40-50% of GDP is accounted for by Government Expenditure – than on Finance and Services. The latter have merely created the Surplus Value used by the former.
“The office tends to have many levels of petty hierarchy and is a bastion of petty bourgeoisie values. I have yet to come across a convincing explanation of how these workers can develop a class consciousness.”
Probably, fewer hierarchies than does the factory with its more skilled workers, its older workers, its foremen, supervisors, Departmental managers, Middle Management and so on. In a consumerist society where the “ruling ideas” are the ideas of the ruling class I don’t think the office is any more a bastion of petit-boyregois ideas than is the factory floor.
”This could certainly explain the petty bourgeoisie nature of sections of the left.”
No, I think that is explained by the fact that most of them are students or ex-students who have continued to live in a studentist milieu. The fact, that many work in State jobs, or jobs related to the state I think could be an explanation for their statist politics.
”I can’t imagine how a local community struggle can develop into a class conflict, except with a struggle against the bourgeoisie state, which people do not associate with a ruling class, they do get to vote for these people after all.”
I think its precisely such conflicts that do crate class consciousness. Lenin points out that workplace struggles, Trade Union struggles are NOT class struggles. They do not go beyond a struggle between individual groups of workers and individual bosses. In other words they are SECTIONAL not class struggles. Only insofar as such a struggle escalates beyond that level, and the State intervenes, thereby representing the WHOLE Capitalist class, does it become a CLASS struggle. The ideas that can develop from such sectional struggles are not at all necessarily the ideas of class struggle. On the contrary, they can be very reactionary and divisive ideas that arise – take the “British Jobs for British Workers” idea for a start. In fact, Capitalism by its very functioning creates the conditions under which such struggles will, in fact, tend to produce such ideas within the minds of the workers involved, because by its very competitive and individualistic nature it creates conditions under which individual workers are forced to compete against each other for jobs, groups of workers for work and so on. In fact, such workplace based struggles can never create a socialist class consciousness within the working class, they can only provide the basis for explaining to workers why they have to break out of the cycle of such struggles by taking ownership of the means of production for themselves, by creating Co-operatives.
”Home working would strike me as the ultimate in atomisation.”
I tend to agree, but not necessarily. I have written elsewhere that such a development could in fact lead to the disappearance of the working class, and the creation of a technological peasantry. But, the Marxist argument as to why the traditional peasantry could never form itself into a class in the true sense of the word was based on the specific nature of that peasantry, whose heterogenous conditions of life, its scattered nature etc. prevented the formulation of any coherent, shared interests, and politics. I am not sure that that applies to a technological peasantry, and the other shared values and interests that could arise could easily overcome that restriction. The existence of instantaneous communication over large distances, the fact that such a peasantry would be living not scattered over large areas of land, but concentrated in towns, and cities changes everything.
”As for the internet, yes it does present the left with a great tool to build internationalsim but the down side should not be ignored either. Opium at your finger tips.”
True, its dialectical.
”Whatever the reasons for this “dependency culture” and I did find your analysis illuminating, it is a consequence of capitalism and not the actions of the left. I make the point that the move back to Keynesianism MAY negate some of this culture, at least the atomisation of the working class.”
I disagree. The dependency culture has been created by Capitalism, but the left has reinforced it with its statist politics. In that sense, I think Keynesianism by further extending the realm of the bourgeois state into the functioning of the economy will only increase that.
“I’m not sure I entirely agree with your idea of an “ideological dependency”, as something workers actually believe,”
I am absolutely sure of it. As Marx put it, “The ruling ideas of every age are the ideas of the ruling class”.
“Yes workers rely on elected politicians to carry out policies on “their behalf” but this has more to do with time issues etc (i e, material rather than ideological)”
Not true. Workers have far more time on their hands now than at any time in their history, yet political involvement today is minimal compared to the political activity of workers even in the 19th Century, for example the Chartists. They don’t get involved because they have been conditioned by bourgeois democracy to believe that politics like everything else is like a division of labour, the job of politicians just as woodworking is the job of a joiner. In addition they have been conditioned to believe that politics is something they shouldn’t be interested in – its for nerds and weirdos. Look at the way the programmed response to Party Political Broadcasts is presented in TV Programmes i.e. time to turn over. And survey after survey shows that people believe that they can have no effect on Government by their votes or actions, so why would they waste their time?
“and as you say the real politics occurs in the workplace, only democracy in this sphere will begin to change society.”
Yes, and no. See my latest blog on that. Only activity by Marxists in the workplace and in the workers communities can begin to reverse that ideology, can enable workers to claw back elements of control over their lives, give them confidence in themselves, and enable them to begin to visualise a different politics. But, I’m not an Anarchist or a Syndicalist. I recognise the interplay of forces here. You can build workplace organisation, a shop stewards movement etc. that extends the ideas of the recent wildcat strikes so that workers simply ignore anti-union laws, but you can’t dismiss the fact that those laws have and do have an effect on the way workers are able to organise and act. Marxists can’t be indifferent to them, we’d rather they weren’t there. Where I disagree with the statists is in their appeals to the bourgeois state, and a bourgeois Government to scrap them, appeals which convey the idea that this State is class neutral or that a bourgeois Government might be persuaded to act in workers interests. On the contrary, I am in favour of spelling out to workers why such calls are pointless and dangerous, precisely because the State IS their main enemy, and Brown’s Government is a bourgeois Government, that it is for these reasons that they must rely on their own strength, and build a Workers Party that truly reflects their interests and is directly under their control. THEN, you can demand that such a Party scrap such laws, and pass measures that look after workers interests.
”Now I agree that there is an idea that society relies on “great men” like Richard Branson (Ha Ha) and that workers are too stupid to run things for themselves. This is, of course, nonsense, as that is what the ruling class argued when denying universal suffrage. But look at how society has progressed as a result of this.”
Has it? I’d argue that the ruling class conceded Universal Suffrage when it was convinced that its hold on power was secure, that bourgeois democracy was sufficiently developed that it could contain the aspirations of workers. That’s why when it can’t it is prepared to scrap it at the drop of a hat like in Germany in the 1930’s etc. and even the proposed coup against Wilson’s Government. I don’t think the advances of the last century are anything more than the “civilising mission” of Capital that Marx referred to, the necessary improvements in workers living standards that Capital needs to be able to extend the market of consumer goods to continue making profits, and the establishment of other useful features such as Socialised Medicine and education, which reduce the overhead costs for Capital of producing Labour-Power.
”Now there may be some abstract dependence by workers upon the state and the bosses but when I hear people say we depend on these capitalists for our jobs, I argue that it is they who rely upon us for our labour and skills.”
There’s nothing abstract about it. When Capitalists remove their Capital from Britain to China workers here lose their jobs. In order to work in a modern economy you need access to Capital, and Capitalists have a Monopoly over it. Even were we to create a post-capitalist economy you would need Capital at the beginning of the transition period. Now I agree that what workers need is Capital not Capitalists. That is my point about workers creating Co-operatives. Its true that in an objective sense Capitalists also depend on workers without whom their Capital would not constitute Capital. But, so long as Capitalism continues then the ideology of Capitalism that workers need bosses and their state itself acts objectively on workers. Its necessary to break that ideology, but that ideology can only be broken IF the material conditions which reproduce are changed. That is the chicken and egg situation that Marx found himself confronted with in the Grundrisse. His solution, build Co-operatives whereby workers see in practice they do not need bosses, thereby breaking that ideology, and by breaking it feed that into the class struggle, in which workers daily confront Capital, demonstrating in practice the alternative to dependence on the bosses and their state, not on the basis of this new mode of production gradually supplanting the old, but of it developing sufficiently and proving itself sufficiently that workers can confidently see how a new society could be run, and who thereby take hold of the means of production in their entirety..
“I suspect the barriers to progress are more structural than your argument suggests.”
I think in my various writings on the need to build Co-operatives that I have shown that I am well aware – more aware than most of the statist and Leninist Left of the considerable structural barriers that have to be overcome.
The ruling ideas are those of the ruling class but surely they can be challenged, weakened? I actually feel this reverence of the higher classes has been weakened, partly as a result of the developments mentioned in these discussions.
You quoted me below,
“and as you say the real politics occurs in the workplace, only democracy in this sphere will begin to change society.”
If you read what I said again, I talked about beginning to change society, of course ultimately workers will have to join up and politicise.
On the workers not being involved due to time issues, I would agree with your assessment, I stand corrected.
“I don’t think the advances of the last century are anything more than the “civilising mission” of Capital that Marx referred to, the necessary improvements in workers living standards that Capital needs to be able to extend the market of consumer goods to continue making profits, and the establishment of other useful features such as Socialised Medicine and education, which reduce the overhead costs for Capital of producing Labour-Power”
So don’t you think the battles of the labour movement secured some of these advances, forcing the Bourgeoisie to compromise?
Don’t political parties have to pander to some extent to workers interests as a result of their vote?
“I think in my various writings on the need to build Co-operatives that I have shown that I am well aware – more aware than most of the statist and Leninist Left of the considerable structural barriers that have to be overcome.”
Exactly. The idea presented in your original article overstated the left or “ideological dependency”.
“The ruling ideas are those of the ruling class but surely they can be challenged, weakened? I actually feel this reverence of the higher classes has been weakened, partly as a result of the developments mentioned in these discussions.”
Its not monolithic that is true, but the basic Marxist concept is that it is sections of the ruling class i.e. Marx and Engels themselves who through access to education etc. first uncover the truths that become then wedded to the labour movement. But, how? Small groups can learn can break through the mists, but ideas spring from experience and material conditions. Exposure to Marxist ideas can for some convince them of their correctness, but it can under the conditions of Capitalist production and social relations only ever be a minority. The experience of what has passed for socialism in the last century has in fact made that task, much, much harder. Lenin realised that problem, which is why he sought to shortcut it by focussing on a revolutionary vanguard, but we saw the consequences.
You quoted me below,
“and as you say the real politics occurs in the workplace, only democracy in this sphere will begin to change society.”
”If you read what I said again, I talked about beginning to change society, of course ultimately workers will have to join up and politicise.”
I agree, but its not a now and then situation, the two things go together.
”So don’t you think the battles of the labour movement secured some of these advances, forcing the Bourgeoisie to compromise?
Don’t political parties have to pander to some extent to workers interests as a result of their vote?”
To an extent. Disraeli created working class Tories, that’s what “One Nation Toryism is”. And when workers got the vote both the Tories and Liberals had to compete for their votes because without them they couldn’t win elections. But, its like oligopolies competing for consumers for their products, products which are to all intents and purposes identical. The bosses don’t usually concede things automatically to workers, but remember that as Marx shows in Capital some of those advocating the restriction on workers hours were Capitalists themselves like Wedgwood, who feared that competition was being destructive of the workforce, a workforce whose longer term reproduction they counted on. Again, as I said recently, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that National Insurance and pensions were introduced precisely at the time when workers living standards and their ability to develop their own Friendly Societies had developed considerably. It was typical of the way large capitalist enterprises destroy small ones. More importantly, Capital will only make concessions that do not fundamentally challenge the rule of Capital, and which it knows because they are under the control of its State they can manipulate to the interests of Capital. That’s one reason why big Capital in the US now wants socialised medicine.
Read my blog about Where We Are etc. about why Capital is choosing Keynesian methods now as opposed to the Austrian and then Monetarist methods of the 1980’s. What is different. Then like in the 1930’s Capital was in a Long Wave downturn, there was a lack of Surplus Value that could be utilised for Keynesian methods. Instead of real Capital being mobilised Keynesian methods had mobilised fictititious Capital causing inflation. Capital could not bail itself out of the crisis, it had to force the cost on to workers. In the 1930’s strong Labour Movements meant it resorted to Fascism or the threat of it. In the 1980’s weakened Labour Movements only required the use of a strong state, and Thatcherism and Reaganism. Today in a Long Wave boom there is in fact lots of spare Surplus Value in the world economy. It can be mobilised by Keynesian methods so that Capital can bail itself out without imposing a huge immediate burden on the working class, thereby risking unleashing social unrest.
”Exactly. The idea presented in your original article overstated the left or “ideological dependency”.”
It’s a question of understanding time. Here and now there exists that ideological dependency. Workers DO believe they are dependent on Capital and the Capitalist State. The task is to undermine that belief, and the only way to do that is by showing in practice through Co-operatives that they are NOT. But, we have not even begun that process yet.
If 100 years of Marxist debate hasn’t settled the issue of productive labour, I don’t think we will solve anything by debating that here. I do wonder how his concept of socially equalised labour stands up with such a broad definition of productive labour. Anyway I was thinking more about the nature of the work and the psychology involved. Productive work is far more measured and efficiency driven than unproductive work.
I think the militancy of teachers and civil servants would have something to do with the fact that their jobs are being treated like those of productive workers. Their jobs are ever more being measured, monitored like those in a capitalist enterprise. However, I would point out that the state currently offers far better terms and conditions than the private sector, any cleaner could tell you that.
I would agree that co-operatives could not be born from the state sector as these control public money. For unproductive public sector workers (a large proportion of the workforce), statist solutions are the only solutions possible. I think this makes the point about the difference between productive and unproductive in relation to developing a socialist struggle.
Your analysis of the left was,
“No, I think that is explained by the fact that most of them are students or ex-students who have continued to live in a studentist milieu. The fact, that many work in State jobs, or jobs related to the state I think could be an explanation for their statist politics”
Pure fantasy. Both in content and in reasoning.
It’s more to do with the “dependency” culture we have debated and the unproductive make up of the workforce. People just look to others to solve their problems for them, so the left have to adopt practical measures and write manifestoes that tell people what they can do for them etc.
Your idea would suggest that all the left can do is retreat into the shadows of party politics, leaving the reformists and Bourgeoisie parties to set the agenda.
“If 100 years of Marxist debate hasn’t settled the issue of productive labour, I don’t think we will solve anything by debating that here. I do wonder how his concept of socially equalised labour stands up with such a broad definition of productive labour. Anyway I was thinking more about the nature of the work and the psychology involved. Productive work is far more measured and efficiency driven than unproductive work.”
Really? How explain then all of the targets for Hospitals, for schools and so on. I was talking to a friend of mine a couple of days about the Council where I used to work, and relating to him the oppressive nature of the place, the extent to which everyone time was measured by having to clock on and off, to fill in timesheets that accounted for what you were doing every fifteen minutes, the extent to which the Internal Audit Department used Gestapo like surveillance techniques including videoing staff etc. He told me that a mutual acquaintance who retired a few years ago from an industrial job had gone to work there a while ago, and stuck it for three days. The last straw was when he had been suffering from an upset stomach, and on his return from the toilet was questioned by the office supervisor who had timed his visit, and told him it was too long! There have been for some considerable years now computer programmes used by managements for measuring productivity of white collar workers in a wide variety of jobs including in finance.
”I think the militancy of teachers and civil servants would have something to do with the fact that their jobs are being treated like those of productive workers. Their jobs are ever more being measured, monitored like those in a capitalist enterprise. However, I would point out that the state currently offers far better terms and conditions than the private sector, any cleaner could tell you that.”
I think the measuring etc is common as the above example demonstrates. The idea that terms and conditions are better in the Public Sector is a myth. It may be true more in relation to manual workers, but it is certainly not true for white-collar staff. I’ve worked both for the State, for a large private enterprise and for several small private enterprises. I was paid more by the large private enterprise for less demanding work, and even though I worked there in the 1970’s actually worked fewer hours than I did for the Council in the 1990’s, but the Pension arrangements were better at the latter. The wages at the small places were worse and no pension scheme at the time, but the general working relationships were more relaxed.
”I would agree that co-operatives could not be born from the state sector as these control public money. For unproductive public sector workers (a large proportion of the workforce), statist solutions are the only solutions possible. I think this makes the point about the difference between productive and unproductive in relation to developing a socialist struggle.”
I disagree. Capitalism itself has privatised a lot of those jobs. Look at the transfer of Council Housing to ALMO’s for a start. Yet, all of the work done by workers in a Construction and Building Maintenance Co-operative would be productive work.
”Your analysis of the left was,
“No, I think that is explained by the fact that most of them are students or ex-students who have continued to live in a studentist milieu. The fact, that many work in State jobs, or jobs related to the state I think could be an explanation for their statist politics”
Pure fantasy. Both in content and in reasoning.”
Well the content is quite clear. Look at the sociological make-up of the left. It is overwhelmingly from a student background, present or past. That is not something new it has been true of the Trotskyist Movement from the beginning, and something Trotsky was aware of, and warned against. Look at the experience of the refinery strikes. A contributor to the permanent revolution website I think made a valid point. He wrote,
“It's telling that the groups opposing the strike, like SWP, AWL and SP have their social base at British universities. Racism is a major concern to left-wing students (and a latent hostility to the "uneducated" working class is widespread), whereas subcontracting in order to undermine union rights is not. It's much easier to score points at the campus with a purely abstentionist positions. But of course that makes any kind of intervention into the workers' movement more or less impossible.
WP's "tin soldier Bolshevik" language is pretty clearly directed at their own members, who must realize what a childish mistake they made (after Polish workers came out on these "racist strikes") but aren't allowed to say it.”
He meant WP not SP above.
See: PR
I agree as I said on their site,
“I'm taking it he emant WP not SP, as the SP, along with PR, the Commune and the CPGB are the only ones I can see who have anyhting like a correct position on these strikes, as I said in my blog - http://boffyblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/sanity-and-sectarianism.html.
But, as I also said there it brings out something different too. The SP WERE the only ones with members on the ground there, and its difficult under those condiitons to hold your ground, rather than the groups who have commented from the sidelines either way. That the SP, which has always tended to have a larger proprtion of worker members than other groups did so I don't think is any more a coincidence than Wladek's spot on comment about the studentist organisations. In essence we have organisations that still fall into the "Build the party" category, and have chosen different routes to it. This explains the SWP posiiton too. Essentially, having given up on the real working class they have looked to other milieu in which to Party Build - that is why they broke with the SA and set up Respect with assorted Stalinists, petit-bourgeois politicians and communalists. Even having left Respect, that anti-racism, and "anti-imperialist" milieu remains the pond in which they have chosen to fish, just as the AWL fish in a generally petit-bouregois, studentist pond with their front organisations. As Trotsky said, look to the social groups on which political forces base themselves and you will understand the basis of their politics.”
Some of these organisations such as the AWL even in recent times wrote documents about the extent to which their members had gone straight from being students into being employed in various QUANGOS that is state sponsored organisations that were in some way supposed to intervene in making people’s lives better. As Trotsky said, look to the sociological base that an organisation is derived from and you can understand its politics. These groups are overwhelmingly studentist, the culture of these organisations is itself studentist, and a large proportion of their members depend on the Capitalist state for their livelihood.
“It’s more to do with the “dependency” culture we have debated and the unproductive make up of the workforce. People just look to others to solve their problems for them, so the left have to adopt practical measures and write manifestoes that tell people what they can do for them etc.”
But, that clearly is NOT what the left do. The measures they propose never ARE practical, they are completely divorced from the lives of ordinary workers. They don’t even seem to understand that the Transitional programme was written as a programme to be used essentially in conditions of heightened class struggle, in fact essentially of a pre-revolutionary situation. Certain elements of it can be utilised outside that context, but then are not Transitional demands at all, and even then require that a whole series of other actions have been taken beforehand to prepare the working class to be able to adopt them. There is no point advocating a Sliding Scale of Hours to workers who have absolutely no workplace rank and file organisation to enforce it, who do not have the necessary committees to check workers price indices and so on. In other words it already presupposes a very high level of class-consciousness, and organisation.
Yet, it is at best that the left pull out the demands from the Trotskyist toolkit as a stock in trade response to various situations. More frequently, today they simply call on workers to engage in this or that campaign to demand that the bourgeois state resolves their problems. The left do not write Manifestoes telling the workers “what they can do for them etc”, in fact, that would be an improvement, but rather tell them what they should demand the bourgeois state does for them.
”Your idea would suggest that all the left can do is retreat into the shadows of party politics, leaving the reformists and Bourgeoisie parties to set the agenda.”
No what I am suggesting is the very opposite of a retreat into Party politics. What I am advocating is that Marxists should focus their attention on that very basic work of organising working class self-activity. The left itself cannot undertake that work on its own. Its too small, even were it to encompass the whole of the left, which it doesn’t because most of that left is too entrenched in its own sectarian existence, and tribal loyalties, to wedded to party building and to statism, to do that work, but the real Marxist left CAN utilise the Branch structures of the LP, it can rally around itself on that basis the forces, which can begin to go out into the communities and address that problem of organising ordinary working people to resolve their own day to day problems. It can in the same way provide the resources for supporting local TU struggles, for intervening at a workplace level etc. In short it can begin to build from the bottom up the kind of Labour Movement based on the self-activity of the working class, which alone can provide a solid basis for the development of the Labour Movement outside the normal bureaucratic and statist structures, which in turn is the precondition for the struggle for Socialism being one about the winning of the battle of democracy, as opposed to being simply the quest of some revolutionary vanguard.
Public sector workers cannot start up a co-operative as they would be controlling public money, not their own. Taken objectively, not as individuals, the public sector worker is tied to the state and statist solutions.
Only by leaving the public, unproductive sector, can they form co-operatives.
Look, I broadly agree with your ideas for progressing the workers struggle, I just don’t accept your views of the left.
Was George Galloway a student? Many on the left, from various backgrounds cling to statist solutions for the reasons I have outlined.
It’s possible the SWP logically think that racist thinking is a barrier to socialism so prioritise fighting that above “NON CLASS struggles”, ie strikes. Is racism not a major concern for all on the left? Does racism not have very real consequences?
“Public sector workers cannot start up a co-operative as they would be controlling public money, not their own. Taken objectively, not as individuals, the public sector worker is tied to the state and statist solutions.
Only by leaving the public, unproductive sector, can they form co-operatives.”
First, of all it is the left that advocates “Nationalisation Under Workers Control”, not me. For reasons I have outlined elsewhere I think that demand is either Utopian, meaningless, or Maximalist. No one, especially the bourgeoisie and its state, simply hands over control of its property to some else other than if that person is employed to run it more profitably for the owner. No one in their right mind would hand over such control to someone who said they were going to run it for their own interests rather than the interest of the owner. That’s why when even the bourgeoisie’s own chosen manager’s do that, for example at TYCO, Enron and so on, the bourgeoisie will tolerate it to a certain extent, but beyond which they come down heavy on those thought to be abusing it, and threatening the interests of the owners. So, for the most part such a demand is meaningless, as Marx also sets out in his criticism of “democratic control” of state owned or sponsored property in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, saying that it was raised “out of a sense of shame”. But, it is Utopian, because there is no point raising a demand as a solution without there existing the force to bring such a demand to fruition, and at the present time there is no such force, the organised labour movement is far too weak to implement it. The only time that such a demand could make any sense would be in a situation of dual power such as existed in Russia in 1917, or the kind of conditions that existed in Italy in 1920, where Workers Councils and such supervision were being imposed by workers. So, the demand is maximalist, because what it is actually calling for is Revolution Now!
However, for existing State industries, such as the NHS, where the establishment of a realistic Workers Co-operative Health Service, is not a credible solution here and now, it is possible to raise the demand for greater democracy within it, and control over it. Its not unrealistic to suggest that some degree of democracy could be won, though it would be far from giving control over such an important aspect of Capitalism. But raising, such a demand within the context of explaining why the bosses State would never concede meaningful democracy and control over what is supposed to be the People’s Health Service, does help reveal the true class nature of the State, and does lay the basis for arguing for workers to begin to establish their own credible alternatives to it. And that is not at all unrealistic either. Not only have Trade Unions long had Funds for supporting members when they are ill, but have also run their own Sanitoria and Rest Homes etc., and already a large number of workers are covered by private health insurance. The demand instead, for a Workers Health Insurance Scheme is not at all an impossible idea as a longer term project.
More, importantly, as I said large numbers of Public Sector workers have already found themselves transferred into the private sector. In the 1990’s, CCT, transferred millions of Local Government manual workers into the private sector, Best Value, has begun transferring many white collar workers too. The establishment of ALMO’s the establishment of similar not-for profit organisations to run Leisure facilites is about to finish the job, leaving Local Councils in the position that one Tory proposed more than a decade ago, of simply meeting once a year, to vote on the Budget, and sign the Contracts for all the private contracts to provide the services. Far better, in my opinion for workers to establish Co-operatives to provide those services linked closely to the communities in which most of those workers themselves live, than either some private company to make money from it, or for the local Capitalist State to continue providing those services in its current, bureaucratic, inefficient and expensive manner that continually fails to meet the needs of ordinary workers as consumers of those services, and frequently is very oppressive of the workers providing those services.
”Look, I broadly agree with your ideas for progressing the workers struggle, I just don’t accept your views of the left.”
Well, I spent a long time as part of it, and you’d have to convince me by some good argument that I’m wrong. Everyday that passes only convinces me more that I’m not.
”Was George Galloway a student? Many on the left, from various backgrounds cling to statist solutions for the reasons I have outlined.”
I wasn’t suggesting that statism comes from the studentist, petit-bourgeois background of much of the left. In fact, I’ve argued that I think Hal Draper’s assessment of that is correct in his “Two Souls of Socialism”. That is that although the German SPD, from which most of the post Marx, Marxists took their lead, was supposedly a Marxist Party, it wasn’t, and not just for the reasons Lenin adduced in relation to Kautsky and others later. It was not Marxist, precisely because its main ideas were taken not from Marx, but from the statist politics of Lassalle, and of the English Fabians. Although, Lenin and other revolutionaries of the time, broke from the reformism of the Second International, they inherited at the core of their politics that statism, merely giving it a revolutionary rather than a reformist character. Given that the majority of the left today – those that consider themselves the Marxist left anyway – are in that Leninist tradition they have themselves inherited that Lassallean statism too. It is apparent in everything they say. Its only a few organisations like the Commune that appear to be breaking away from that tradition.
I wasn’t saying it was studentism that causes the statism, but that ideological thread, AND possibly sociologically supported by the fact that a large proportion of the left are themselves dependent upon the bourgeois state for their existence. Galloway is a Stalinist, a bureaucrat of the highest order, and demagogue, someone who believes that he NEEDS an income of at least £150,000 in order to function. What clearer example of statism, of an elitist idea of handing down socialism to the masses from on high could there be????
”It’s possible the SWP logically think that racist thinking is a barrier to socialism so prioritise fighting that above “NON CLASS struggles”, ie strikes. Is racism not a major concern for all on the left? Does racism not have very real consequences?”
Yes, of course it is, but the question is not whether Marxists should fight racism, but whether the fight against racism is for an organisation such as the SWP, or others, merely a means of “building the party”. My experience over the last nearly 40 years is that such organisations flit from racism, to support for the Palestinians, to CND, to Anti-Apartheid and so on like a moth to a flame. I remember at University in the late 1970’s seeing a poster for a CND meeting, and saying to another comrade, “Are they in a time-warp or something?”, because CND had disappeared as a force for about 20 years. Within a matter of weeks even, let alone months, everyone on the left – me included - was engaged in CND work. Why? Because, they had had some epiphany? No, because it had a load of lovely new potential recruits for whatever organisation you belonged to! And, whatever any of these organisations say, that is what their raison d’etre is, to recruit, new young people to replace the ones that have got warn out, to bring in new subs to keep the leaders of the organisations living in their world of permanent fantasy, in which the working class is about to re-enact 1917, and they are about to become a modern day Lenin or Trotsky.
The point is that these organisations shaped their politics in relation to a workers struggle, not on the basis that a Marxist does, of supporting the working class in struggle, of interacting with it to raise its level up from however low a base, but did so on the basis of, “How will what we say affect our immediate periphery of contacts and potential recruits? How will it impact our goal of ‘Building the party?” It is the ultimate form of sectarianism.
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