Greek and Spanish Lessons For The Left

The demonstrations of a couple of hundred thousand people against the Cuts yesterday was a cheering event. The working class needs such events. They are a sign that at least sections of the class are still willing to fight. By bringing together large numbers of people in one place, they are a visible symbol of that, and of the workers' most important strengths – their numbers, and their solidarity. They fulfil the same kind of function as a Manager's pep talk before an important football match. Just how important a role they play in that regard can be seen by the effect they have on those taking part, compared to what a cold, rational analysis would lead them to conclude. For example, suppose 300,000 people took part yesterday. There are more than 600 Parliamentary Constituencies in the UK, but call it 600. That means that on average each Constituency sent 500 people. But, the average Constituency has 65,000 voters, and many more people than that in total. On the basis of a cold rational analysis, then the demonstrations were tiny and meaningless. Yet, from the standpoint of those taking part, from the standpoint of raising morale they are far from that. A good manager, even if they believe the team has little chance of winning, still has to give a good pep talk before the match. But, we shouldn't confuse a good pep talk with actually winning the match.

But, Marxists in developing their tactics and strategy, in deciding what demands to raise at specific times do have to be aware of that difference. A football team has to play on a Saturday afternoon, and even a terrible performance is not a matter of life and death. The same is not true in the class war, as in any other kind of war. Workers lives and livelihoods are at stake. It is irresponsible adventurism to send workers into a battle knowing that their forces are wholly inadequate to win. It is the same kind of squandering of workers' lives that First World War generals like Haig were guilty of. The calls on the demonstration, and echoed in a number of papers of the sects, for a General Strike are of that order.

Back in the 1970's and 80's, organisations like the Militant, today's Socialist Party, repeatedly called for a General Strike to bring down the Government. But, then like today, all that they could offer workers as the fruits of such a momentous event, was merely the replacement of the Tories with Labour, the replacement of one Capitalist Government, with another, even if less reactionary, Capitalist Government. That is light minded in the extreme. A General Strike by the working class is no insignificant matter. Even in 1974, when the Miners had effectively brought the country to a halt, Ted Heath framed the situation as it was - “Who Rules?” That is what a General Strike is about, which class rules. Reducing it to the trivial issue of which Capitalist Government should serve the interests of Capital is an insult to the working class, and their struggle. Moreover, without a revolutionary leadership of the working class, a General Strike will never go beyond such a question.

In his autobiography, Nye Bevan wrote about the 1926 General Strike. He writes about the meetings that the TUC leaders had with the Government. The Government said to them “Well gentlemen, you have won. The question is are you prepared to run the country instead?” Bevan reports that at the point, the TUC leaders knew they had lost, because they were not prepared to take over. No one seriously believes that any of the TUC leaders, today, even the most left wing sounding, would be proclaiming All Power To The Soviets, as the consequence of even a successful General Strike.

Moreover, if the General Strike is reduced to being a 24 hour General Strike, what really is its point. It is nothing more than a protest. Certainly such a strike would have the merit of not placing the question of which class rules at a time, when it is clear that the workers are not ready for such a fight, but then what would be its significance? It would fulfil only the same kind of role that yesterday's protest marches fulfilled, one of raising morale. But, that is a double edged sword. Although, yesterday's marches in reality mobilised relatively, insignificant numbers of workers, from the standpoint of those taking part, they mobilised absolutely large numbers of people. But, if a General Strike was able to only gain the support of the same kinds of numbers of people – and it would, in practice probably be less – then it would be a dismal failure. It would be obvious that the vast majority of workers had not taken part. Rather than raising morale, it would be a thoroughly demoralising event for workers.

In the 1920's, Trotsky made precisely this point in relation to similar calls for General Strikes by the German Communist Party. The German Communist Party had missed the revolutionary opportunity when it arose in 1923, and then attempted to catch up under conditions when the workers had moved on to the defensive.

But, it is quite clear that any General Strike called by the TUC would be precisely of that nature. It would gain the support of very few workers. Firstly, there simply is not the level of class consciousness within the working-class to make such a strike successful, but even if there were, why would workers support simply a 24 hour protest strike. If workers are struggling for a pay rise, then Marxists know that 24 hour protest strikes by Trade Union bureaucrats are simply a means of dissipating anger, and demobilising any struggle. They have no chance of persuading employers to concede, and sap the willingness of workers to fight, for that very reason. Only an all out strike to win has any chance of gaining victory.

But, as stated earlier, if the workers did engage in an all out General Strike, which is essentially an insurrectionary act, why on Earth would they settle for putting Ed Miliband in Downing Street, rather than Cameron?

But, the implications are much more serious than this. If we look at Greece, there have been such 24 and 48 hour General Strikes repeatedly for the last two and a half years in response to the austerity measures. Not only have they failed to bring those measures to a halt, but in some ways they have done the Government's work for them. During every such strike, the Government saves money in wages, and the provision of services. Moreover, the very fact that they have taken place with such regularity without any effect is itself demobilising and demoralising. That can be seen in the actual political developments in Greece.

Large sections of the Left hold to the bizarre notion that economic crisis is beneficial for the struggle for Socialism, because it provokes the workers into resistance. Its true, that there are times, when after a prolonged period of economic boom, that has promoted workers strength and organisation, a sharp crisis can provoke resistance by workers that is capable of defeating the employers offensive, and flowing over into a revolutionary struggle. But, as Trotsky described in many of his writings, in general, periods of economic crisis are very bad for the workers struggle for Socialism. They create the very conditions of high unemployment and uncertainty that weakens workers ability to resist, increases the competition and atomisation amongst them, and erodes their organisations. The main forces that benefit during such periods are not those of progress and socialism, but those of reaction. That is why the main beneficiaries of the economic crisis of the 1930's was not the left, but was the fascists in Italy, Germany, Spain and elsewhere.

We see the same thing again today in Greece. Paul Mason's accounts of the rise of Golden Dawn in Greece, and their increasing fusion with elements of the Greek State - Alarm At Police Collusion With Far Right – should be a powerful antidote to the catastrophists on the left who continually proclaim the “Death Agony of Capitalism” in the hope that their hoped for economic crisis will magically bring the workers to power, in a way that the frantic activities and propaganda of the sects has failed to mobilise them to do. In the last two years, the consequences of the economic crisis in Greece, has been to destroy PASOK, which even in Social Democratic terms, was rather an oddity. But, its destruction has not benefited the revolutionary Left. Despite the most terrible austerity, the Left sects in Greece have not been able to increase their support in the working class any more than their UK equivalents. Syriza has filled the place of PASOK, but Syriza, whose core comes from Greek Euro-Stalinism, is merely a left reformist outfit. Yet, even they in all of this crisis, and despite the repeated General Strikes, and large scale protests, were still unable to beat the right-wing New Democracy in the last elections.

Now, according to the latest polls, the fascists of Golden Dawn – I can't help thinking about Alan Rickman citing Asian Dawn, who he'd read about in Newsweek, from Die Hard – are in third place, and their share of the vote continues to rise. According to latest reports, they are now winning over sections of people who were supporting the Left. That is not surprising. Mussolini had previously been a member of the Italian Communist Party, who was infected with Nationalism and Statism. Many of the German Stalinists, whose politics, like that of Stalinism and Left Reformism is also based on Nationalism and Statism, reflected in their calls for things like nationalisation, and their veneration of the power of the State, also went over to the Nazis, when it was clear that their star was clearly in the ascendant. As in Germany in the 1920's and 30's, the other parties, including the Stalinists have attempted to respond to the nationalist demagogy of Golden Dawn, by adopting it themselves. The consequence, as with Germany then, is to legitimise and strengthen that ideology in the minds of the masses.

But, more importantly, and as was seen in Germany with the Nazis, what is important is not who scores a few more points in the opinion polls, or even a few more seats in the Greek Parliament. What is important is who controls the streets. That has been seen time and again. It was true of the Bolsheviks in 1917-18. It was true of Mussolini in the 1920's, of Hitler in 1933, of Khomeini in 1979, and it is true today of the jihadists in Libya. It is quite clear that in that respect Golden Dawn are already winning, and they are winning, because the Left has no real solutions for the workers problems. In that respect, another of Paul Mason's reports holds out more hope.

On the one hand, Paul has reported from Spain, on the potential for a similar development to that in Greece - Unrest drags Spain towards buried unpleasant truths . For the first time since the death of Franco, there is discussion about the Civil War. Francoists have begun to show their faces again, and sections of the military have again talked about preventing any secession by Catalonia. On the other hand, Paul has reported on the action s of ordinary Spanish workers who have placed their faith not in the State, nor in dead-end economistic struggles, and the politics of protest, but in their own direct self-activity. In some senses that has been seen in both Greece and Spain. That is in the sense that in order to survive the austerity, workers have relied on their own extended family networks for support. That in itself is a kind of working-class solidarity even if it is a restricted for of it. It also means that workers are able to retain a sense of dignity and independence that Welfarism denies them. But, Paul has also reported on other forms of self-activity by workers in Spain that go beyond that.

As he shows - From networked protest to 'non-capitalism' – based on his own visits to Spain, and on the work of Manuel Castells, “Farm workers union members dig abandoned land they have occupied during the crisis. Castells' survey shows large numbers of people in Spain have engaged in co-operative or non-profit work since the crisis.” In other words, rather than relying on some promise of jam tomorrow by reformist politicians, rather than being derailed by maximalist calls for Revolution as the only answer, or simply allowing themselves to fall into a passive victim mentality encouraged by Welfarism, workers throughout Spain have become to take collective responsibility for their lives, and their future. It is the kind of self-activity that Marx and Engels proposed. Spain, of course, has a history of such actions. It is home, in the Basque country, to the Mondragon Co-operatives, which continues to grow, and employ more and more workers in a wider and wider range of industries across Europe, as well as Spain, and which has now formed a strategic partnership with the Steel Workers Union in the US.

But, of course, for the reasons that Marx and Engels described, although workers have to develop such Co-operative alternatives to Capitalism, because they both provide the workers with their own bulwark and source of economic and social power, and because they provide the most powerful example, in practice of how the future society will be organised, they are not a solution in themselves. Capital will never simply allow Co-operatives to grow to replace it, any more than they will simply allow a Workers State to live in peaceful co-existence with it. Workers have to build these powerful Co-operative organisations, and they have to build the socialistic social and political relations that logically flow from them, as an alternative to bourgeois social and political relations. An inevitable consequence of that is that workers alongside such activity have to build their mass Workers Party, as part of a struggle for political power, a struggle to smash the existing Capitalist State, which will be used against them, and to build their own Proletarian State organisations in opposition to it.

If workers are not to be isolated in such a strategy, then it is clear that workers cannot in these struggles within their own national boundaries. Workers need to build their own Co-operative enterprises across Europe, that by their very existence begin to break down national borders, in a way that the bureaucratic EU never can.

But, by the same token, and because Marxists do not see economic crisis as in any way desirable for the workers struggle, neither are we indifferent to the kinds of economic policies pursued by Governments either. Marxists, are not Keynesians. We do not believe that Capitalism can be turned into a crisis free system, by clever state policies. But, that does not mean we are politically indifferent as to whether that State undertakes Keynesian stimulative measures as opposed to Austrian measures of a Balanced Budget! Those who oppose calls for Keynesian stimulus at the moment, because it does not conform to the “purist” notions they hold about only Socialism being the solution are the same as those criticised by Marx - Political Indifferentism – here. Of course Marxists believe that many reforms are not the solution to the workers problems, and we have a duty to say so, even as we support the workers as they advance their struggle for them. But, only an inveterate sectarian would outright oppose the struggle for such limited solutions by the workers, precisely because as Marx says,

“It cannot be denied that if the apostles of political indifferentism were to express themselves with such clarity, the working class would make short shrift of them and would resent being insulted by these doctrinaire bourgeois and displaced gentlemen, who are so stupid or so naive as to attempt to deny to the working class any real means of struggle. For all arms with which to fight must be drawn from society as it is and the fatal conditions of this struggle have the misfortune of not being easily adapted to the idealistic fantasies which these doctors in social science have exalted as divinities, under the names of Freedom, Autonomy, Anarchy. However the working-class movement is today so powerful that these philanthropic sectarians dare not repeat for the economic struggle those great truths which they used incessantly to proclaim on the subject of the political struggle. They are simply too cowardly to apply them any longer to strikes, combinations, single-craft unions, laws on the labour of women and children, on the limitation of the working day etc., etc.”

Marx and Engels in their debates with Weston and others described at length the reasons why strikes and other economic struggles by workers were a dead-end, why ultimately Trade Union struggles would lose, and could only ever achieve wages and conditions for workers that competition between Capitalists would itself have brought. That in no way meant that they were indifferent as to whether workers fought back through those Trades Unions, and via strikes! They believed that Capital and its State would never allow workers to simply develop their Co-operatives until they replaced Capitalism. But, they still argued passionately that workers had to build those Co-operatives. Marx in Capital describes the way the capitalists avoided the laws set down in the Factory Acts, that did not mean he was opposed to workers struggling for those acts. Keynesian intervention cannot resolve the contradictions of Capitalism, but at specific times, it can cut short recessions, and that is in the workers interests. So why would workers not demand it is implemented as an alternative to Cuts.

And, in fact, some sections of the Left, have a totally illogical attitude in this respect. In an article in this week's Weekly Worker - Keynes The Great Saviour & His leftwinger Converts - Jack Conrad has written just such a piece. It tries to deny that Keynesianism played any role in the Long Wave Post War Boom. Ernest Mandel, in his book “The Second Slump” has demonstrated that such an argument is not sustainable. Jack argues,

“Marxists - authentic Marxists, that is - would first and foremost look to the horrendous destruction of capital in Europe and Japan during World War II and after that the replacement of British by American hegemony. That surely explains the 25 years of economic growth, not the “technical tricks” of Keynes.”

Marxists – authentic Marxists that is, of course – would not claim that Keynesianism was responsible for the Boom, but that is not the same thing as saying it played no part! But, the argument that the Boom was due to the reasons Jack sets out is rather bizarre, not to say contradicted by the facts. The most obvious question to ask is, if that is the case, why then was the massive, possibly even more massive in proportional terms, destruction of Capital, that accompanied the First World War, and was, if anything the moment when the US really replaced Britain as top dog, not followed by a similar prolonged boom? In fact, it was followed not by a Boom, but the prolonged Long Wave downturn of the 1920's and 1930's!! Secondly, that downturn was already showing signs of ending by the late 1930's. At that time, even in Britain, the new dynamic industries that provided the basis of the Post War Long Wave Boom – automobiles, consumer electronics, pharmaceuticals, and petro-chemicals – had begun to develop and provide workers with stable, well paid jobs in parts of the Midlands and South-East, and in these newly developing areas, new building techniques were being used to develop suburban areas, where these workers for the first-time began to become owner occupiers.

Its actually not clear that there was significant Capital destruction in Britain during the War. There was certainly a lot of old housing destroyed in Britain and Germany, but that is not really the same. The country that grew most after WWII, and which had grown most prior to WWII, was the US, which not only suffered no attacks on its mainland, and no destruction of its Capital Stock, but which during the War had been able to grow its economy, and its Capital Stock by a significant degree.

But, even were that not the case, the rapid economic growth that occurred in the post war period went way beyond any possible destruction of capital that might have occurred, as the boom saw a massive expansion of fixed capital, a large increase in the number of workers employed, and a massive rise in living standards.

But, this denial of the role of Keynesianism in the post war period is just the basis for arguing against demands for Keynesian stimulus now. Yet in reality, the Weekly Worker DO argue for Keynesianism. As Jack describes, Keynesian stimulus works by the State spending more money than it takes in in tax. It uses this deficit to stimulate demand in the economy. But, the reality is that the UK like most other economies at the moment – apart from dynamic economies like China, India and so on – IS running a deficit, and quite a large one at that. In other words, the current Government IS using Keynesian demand management. So too, actully did the thatcher Government during the 1980's. What is really at issue at the moment is, therefore, not whether the State should use Keynesian Demand management, but how much of it should be used. What should be the balance of how the State intervenes in the economy to provide stimulus, Keynesian fiscal stimulus, or Friedmanite, Monetarist stimulus.

But, if we look at the Weekly Workers actual positions when it comes down to it, the Weekly Worker is quite clear that it opposes the current austerity policies being pursued in Britain and other European countries. In another article in this week's WW - Economic Crisis Rewarded For Services Rendered – Eddie Ford writes,

“the Eurocrats almost seem hell-bent on destabilising the imperialist system with their plainly suicidal austerity politics and irrational voodoo economics.”

It is quite clear from this and many more WW articles that when it comes down to it, they are opposed to these austerity measures, they are opposed to the State reducing the amount of Keynesian fiscal stimulus it is providing to the economy. In other words, they too are in favour of more rather than less Keynesianism!