End of The Boom and The Limits of Economism
I don't accept the argument that it was a breakdown of working-class community that led to defeat in the 1980's. It had not led to defeat ten years earlier, in the Miners Strikes of 1972 and 1974, or in the struggle to release the Pentonville Five, to defeat In Place of Strife, and so on. In fact, even in 1981, Thatcher was forced to retreat over pit closures, having to wait until 1984 before they were strong enough to launch their offensive. Nor can the role of Stalinism nor social-democracy explain the defeat. The role of the latter has been a constant going back 150 years, and the former had played a treacherous role for already half a century by the 1980's. The cause of the defeat, as with every other defeat, in every other long wave cycle, was that the economic conditions turned against the workers in conditions where their only strategy was based on Economism and where they had no history of building up independent working-class property and self-government, as bulwarks from which to defend or advance their position. Indeed, they had less of that in the 1980's, as a result of welfarism than in previous such periods. The most obvious manifestation being the development of a “dependency culture”, that turns them into modern day serfs, and recreates a paternalistic society.
Paul examines Italy as a case study to illustrate his point. In fact, the picture provided by Paul confirms some of the points I have set out earlier. For example, he writes,
“Real wages had risen 15% in the decade to 1960. The major industrial brands invested heavily in canteens, sports and social clubs, welfare funds and designer overalls.” (p 204)
He goes on to illustrate the further point I made earlier that this new more technological capitalism also requires a different, better educated kind of labour-power, and so the number of students, in 1968, was double what it had been a decade earlier. The problem for capital was that, at the point that its boom phase starts to falter, towards the end of the 1960's, as labour shortages push up wages, and squeeze profits, all of these students came increasingly from the working-class. At the time of the 1926 General Strike, the majority of students came from the middle class; they were a significant element used, however chaotically, and dangerously, to drive buses and trucks, as part of a scab army of strikebreakers. The problem for labour, however, was that its agenda was still based upon economism, and a focus on what it was against, rather than what it was for. The point is illustrated in this quote given by Paul,
“We set off; just the seven of us. And by the time we got to the head offices where all the staff hung out, there were about seven thousand of us!... Next time we'll start with seven thousand and end up with seventy thousand, and that'll be the end of Fiat.” (p 205)
This is the kind of mindless strategy of the SWP, ironically reminiscent of the mantra of Bernstein that the movement is everything, whereby everything is seen simply in terms of building the next, bigger protest/demonstration etc. Even if it had been true – and, of course, half a century later, Fiat is still with us – the question arises, as indeed with the Occupy Movement, what then? The Fiat workers still required jobs, other workers still required cars, trucks and so on, in which case putting an end to the existence of Fiat would have been a reactionary step, not a progressive one! It's rather like the quote given by Nye Bevan about the General Strike, where the government said to the TUC leaders that if the strike continued the government would fall, and power would then fall to the TUC. “Are you ready to assume that responsibility?”, the Ministers asked, and at that moment, Bevan notes, the TUC leaders knew they had lost.
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