No Dog In This Fight

The bourgeois media are inevitably having a field day reporting the problems of Gordon Brown, which they have helped ferment. Those of us on the Left who have no time for Brown's politics, and who might be tempted to look on with some glee, should, however, remember that this intervention is not being undertaken for any noble let alone progressive purpose. It is anindication of just how much power the bouregois state, and its ideological wings have to intervene in the Labour Movement. If they have this attitude to Brown, imagine the way they would behave if we had even a John McDonnell as Labour Leader!

The events of the last week were almost reduced to farce. I was reminded of some of the tactics that teachers used to use at school. The media sensing blood, and a new story as the expenses scandal was beginning to become stale, told us that an anonymous e-mail was to be circulated asking Labour MP's to sign to get rid of Brown. That sounded like the tactic teachers used to use to smoke people out. For all we knew this e-mail was simply the invention of the media itself - a bit like gthe Zinoviev Letter - designed to bring about precisely the story the media wanted. But, if it was anonymous then any MP who signed it would have to be a bit simple. If the opposition to Brown was really so intense and open then why have an anonymous e-mail, after all people like Mark Fisher and Barry Sheerman have already openly come out to call for Brown to step down. So why not just openly say who you were and circulate the e-mail? In fact, even though these people HAVE come out, apparently the e-mail still has not been circulated!

On "This Week", Diane Abbot got it right when she said that this was not a Left and Right fight inside the Labour Party. It is essentially just the Blairites seeking revenge against the Brownites. Those two caamps, just like the Tories and Labour are not two ideologically separated groups, but merely two groups with essentially the same bouregois ideology, but coalesced around different personalities. As much as anything it is about people choosing, which horse to tie their fortunes to in the very literal sense of where they think their own pesonal careers can be best advanced. What we have is a Blairite attempted coup, but concerned for prrecisely their own political careers some of the Blairites like Miliband and Mandelson have, for now, switched caamps. Without them as potential candidates, its difficult to see where that coup can go.

From the perspective of most Labour MP's the coup can hold out little prospect of anything good. A change of leader would mean that an election would probably have to be called within a matter of weeks, and judged by the election result most of them would be looking for other jobs. At a rank and file level within the LP there is already massive hostility to many of these MP's. On top of the anger that the expenses scandal gave rise to, the consequences of that in the election results have further heightened that feeling. On top of that much of the anger is being levelled not at Brown, but at those like Blears, Purnell and co. who have acted like prima donnas putting their own pesonal interests above those of the Party. Rather than the NEC clearing out many of these people, it ought to be the foundation for rank and file activists clearing out these careerists, and selecting new candidates who more accurately reflect the interests of workers. We would be in a better position to bring that about were it not for the fact that much of the Left has abandoned the political struggle, and gone off on their own Third Period style sectarian fantasies.

But, in relation to Brown's fate itself, the fact is that the attitude of the Left should be, "We have no dog in this fight." That is precisely because the attempts to oust him, are not attempts by a massively mobilised base of the Party clamouring for a Left-wing alternative, but are just a Blairite coup aimed primarily just at getting revenge on Brown at a time when they think Labour has already lost the next election, but secondarily at putting in place one of their own like Miliband. We can have no interest in such a venture. In fact, even if such a prospect were to open the possibility for John McDonnell to stand we should not favour such a venture at this time. Even as the LP rank and file begin to show their disgust at the consequences of Blair/Brown New Labourism, there is little evidence of a massive shift to the Left in the rank and file of the Party. In the working class at large there is on the contrary clear evidence of a further shift to the Right in the increased support for the Tories, Liberals and even the BNP and UKIP. A McDonnell leadership would be only meaningful if it weere a reflection of real rank and file support for such a political stance. Without it such a leadership would be isolated, as has been seen with union leaderships under such circumstances, and under pressure to adapt and comproimise, and thereby destroy itself. Given the kind of power that the recent week has shown that the media has to organise such intervention in the Labour Movement, more than ever it is necessary to win the battle of democracy wihin the working class in order to ensure that leaders really are solidly based upon real and massive support from the base, and not just the result of effective organising by small groups.

The reality is for Marxists and the left in the LP at the moment the events over Brown's position are a diversion. The task remains to work through the LP in the communities, in the workplaces to mobilise ordinary workers to deal with their problems via their own self-activity. That is the basis under which a real transformation of those workers conscioussness can be achieved. It is the basis on which they can begin to create their own effective rank and file organisations, which can in turn begin to change the Labour Party, The Trade Unions and the Co-operatives, increasingly bringing them more into line with the real interests of the working class, increasingly honing its programme.

What we do not need as workers find themselves drifting further to the Right, is for the left to set its course in exactly the opposite direction! That kind of Third Period, ultra=leftism, disdaining the existing workers in their Workers Party, because they do not yet have the politics the sectarians desire them to have, and instead going off to create their own fantasy parties that can relate to a fantasy working class that DOES meet their delusions of what the working class should be like, the ideas it should have in its head will lead to the same kind of disaster that it led to in the 1930's. Not yet, because fortunately, the bosses themselves do not want such a turn of events. They have no need at the moment of the fascists, both because we are in a Long Wave Boom, and because the Left is too weak to threaten their interests. But, in ten or fifteen years time when that Boom ends and a new Long Wave decline sets in, a decline, which for countries like the US, UK and Western Europe is likely to be more like that of the 1930's, as they face the increased power of more dynamic economies in Asia, they may well need those fascists. The Nazis did not just spring tolife with the Depression they too were a couple of decades in the making.

The question is will history repeat itself. Will the left blow it yet again as it did during that period of the 1920's and 1930's as a result of its sectarianism, or will it go back to the advice of Marx and Engels and stick with the working class helping it to build its own Party - "at first on however inadequate a programme" as Engels put it. If it fails the worekrs this time, then the division of the world into huge competing economic and military blocs in North America, Europe and Asia will undoubtedly plunge the world into an imperialist war that will make the previous two seem like a small skirmish. Indeed, its difficult to see how such a conflict would not ultimately result in a resort to nuclear weapons and the destruction of civilisation if not mankind.