Comrade Cable?

Was Vince Cable's speech, to the Liberal Party Conference, the kind of anti-Capitalist rant that the media has presented, and which has provoked scornful comments from the City and CBI? Was it an indication that the Liberals really are some radical force, acting as a limiting factor on the Tories? The answer is quite clearly no!

Cable himself pointed to the source of his comments, about Capitalism attempting wherever possible to limit competition - Adam Smith. He could, equally well, have referred to Liberal thinkers such as Frederick Hayek, who was the great intellectual force that guided Thatcher and Keith Joseph in the early 1980's. Hayek argued that Liberalism was not the same as Laissez-Faire, because a Liberal State did have to intervene to guarantee Liberty and free markets. It had to act against Monopoly, be it a business Monopoly or a Labour Monopoly. Cable's speech was in that right-wing, Liberal tradition, as witnessed by the fact that, at the same time as attacking the Banks and Finance Houses, he had to link that with an attack on the Trades Unions, with his ill-informed attack on the "Trotskyite" Bob Crow!!!

Of course, there was also a political, with a small "p", aspect to Cable's speech, on a number of levels. Firstly, the Liberals are under attack, both electorally and from their own base, as a result of the coalition with the Tories. The Liberals have been at pains to stress how much of their policies have fed through into Government policy. That, of course, just demonstrates, how right-wing Liberal policies were to begin with, and how duped some of those were who once saw them as some kind of radical force to the Left of Labour!!! In this speech, Cable has simply tried to put some rhetorical space between the Liberals and Tories. Clearly only rhetorical, because the speech was agreed, in advance, by Cameron and Ozzy Osbourne. There is probably another bit of politicking going on here. Even during the initial stages of the election campaign, it was Cable who was the Liberal star, as he had been the darling of the media for the year before. The unknown Clegg went nowhere without him. Overnight, as a result of the Leadership Beauty Contest debates, Clegg became the star, and Cable disappeared from sight. It is perhaps no accident that, just as Clegg disappeared off to the UN, Cable produced this closing speech for the Conference, and ensured media debate over it, by leaking those key phrases from it to the media the day before.

But, the speech, and the fact that the Tories have been so relaxed about it, whilst the City and CBI have poured scorn on it, also tells us something, and confirms the argument I have been putting forward for some time. The other Liberal who could be cited as a precursor of Cable's comments is John A. Hobson, whose analysis of the role of Monopoly and Imperialism, was used by Lenin, in his work, "Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism". As I have been arguing for some time, the politics of the Tories, as with many other similar parties throughout Europe, is based on a type of right-wing populism, whose aim is to win sufficient votes from their core electoral base within the ranks of the middle classes, small Capital, and backward sections of the working class, to get elected, or stay in power. As I have referred to, a similar trend can be seen now, in the US, with the Tea Party movement, as Newsnight's Paul Mason has described in recent blogs. This kind of right-wing populism has been seen at similar conjunctural points in the past. In part, it reflects a reaction by those elements, and particularly by small Capital against the growing power of Big Capital. It was seen at the end of the 19th Century, in the US, with the anti-monopoly measures introduced by the Government, which broke up the Big Oil companies, and so on. But, as Lenin points out, in "Imperialism", these kinds of measure are doomed to failure, and are reactionary. Capital is centralised and concentrated by the normal functioning of capitalist competition. The big monopolies merely reflect its normal trajectory, its more mature form, and therefore, are historically progressive. They are a stage closer to the demise of Capitalism itself. Break up the monopolies, and they will only re-form. In fact, that was precisely what happened in the US. The giant Oil Companies, that were broken up, simply became giant companies in their own right, often bigger than the original companies themselves!

Behind the scenes, Big Capital is no doubt applying pressure to try to ensure that the Tories do not kill the economy, with their irresponsible economic policies of cutting spending, and thereby cratering aggregate demand, in the economy, at a time when the recovery has not been stabilised. As I demonstrated in my blog, recently, on pensions, the Banks and Finance Houses, through the control they exercise over workers' Pension Funds, have influence, over sections of Productive Capital, way beyond their own shareholding. It is Big Capital that has the dominant influence within the corridors of the State, the same State, which has a vested interest in resisting attacks on its own influence by the Tories. The comments, by Digby Jones, on the BBC News recently, attacking the Liberal-Tories scrapping of the Building Schools For The Future Programme, and arguing that any attempt at reducing the deficit had to ensure that it did not kill the recovery, can be seen in that light of on going friction between Big Capital, and the Liberal-Tory Government, still trapped by its own ideology, and the pressure it faces directly from its own base - certainly its base within the Tory Party. In other words, it was a shot across the bows of Big Capital by Cable. Similar skirmishes, in the early days of the Thatcher Government, occurred. Despite its viciousness, that Government saw its spending plans blown apart even in the first year, and the size of the State continued to rise under Thatcher. Already, despite the rhetoric, the latest figures show that, for August, the Government's Borrowing rose substantially - whereas it had been falling steadily under Labour, and in the month or so after it left office. The Liberal-Tories will no doubt make Cuts, which will be noticeable, particularly in relation to Welfare, and in relation to Public Sector wages. But, Big Capital and its State, will continue to work in the background to ensure its interests are met.