Wednesday 30 October 2019

A Socialist Campaign For Labour and Europe - Part 1

As socialists we support Labour as the Workers' Party, the mass political organisation of the working-class. But, our support for the Labour Party is by no means uncritical. The Labour Party, like the trades unions on which it rests, is bourgeois. That is to say, its ideology is bourgeois, even though its membership, and voters, like the trades unions, is comprised of workers. That is inevitable, because both Labour and the trades unions, exist within capitalism, and capitalism not only automatically reproduces the classes consistent with the rule of capital, it similarly reproduces the ideas that flow from such a social relation. As Marx puts it, being determines consciousness. The trades unions, for example, see their role as bargaining within that system, not abolishing it. Their job is to try to get higher wages – a higher price for the commodity labour-power – or better conditions, not to abolish the wages system itself. And, that same ideology pervades the Labour Party, as well as every other social-democratic party. Those parties see their role, like that of the trades unions, not as abolishing capitalism, but of bargaining within it, the most obvious manifestation of which is welfarism, which has become the new “opium of the people”. Instead of seeking to abolish capitalism, and with it the causes of the deprivation and other social evils that afflict the working-class, these social-democratic parties merely seek to ameliorate that deprivation and those social evils, by offering alms to those that suffer from it, in the way that was done, in the past, by religion. It limits itself in this way, because, ultimately, social-democracy sees no other way of improving the lot of workers than by making capitalism work more efficiently, so that, as the pie gets bigger, workers get a larger portion, even though the proportion of the pie they receive gets increasingly smaller, and the proportion that capital obtains gets increasingly larger. 

It has to see things in that way, because, so long as capitalism continues, that is true. Those social-democratic governments that have sought to increase the proportion of the pie going to workers, and thereby reduce the proportion going to capital, by so called redistribution, have simply run up against the fundamental laws of capital, so that capital accumulation slowed, capital relocated to other countries where the rate of profit was higher, and so on, so that the overall result was slower growth, or recession, leading to rising unemployment, and lower wages, which ultimately means that social-democratic governments have to reverse course, or are thrown out of office by the electorate. Indeed, this basic law of capital is one reason that even progressive social-democracy is not possible in a single country, but must be implemented across a range of countries simultaneously, for example across the EU. 

But, as socialists, we are not sectarians who demand that the Labour Party and the workers on which it is based, are already imbued with socialist consciousness. If they were, then we would have no role to perform, and capitalism would already have been abolished, and socialist construction would be underway! We give critical support for Labour and other social-democratic parties, precisely because we recognise that being determines consciousness, and that consequently, arriving at a socialist consciousness is a process that requires a lengthy journey, with feedback loops whereby, material changes arise, which then change consciousness, and that, as consciousness changes, so the consequences of that result in further material changes, which results in further changes of consciousness, and so on. The process of evolution by natural selection did not manifest itself by a rapid leap from the amoeba to the human being, but involved a very long process of small changes and transformations, whereby quantitative changes turn into qualitative changes. Marx's theory of historical materialism, is a similar theory of the evolution of social systems, and the development of new modes of production. One of the most obvious examples of that is the creation by workers themselves of cooperatives. Cooperatives become possible, as Marx says, precisely because of the material changes that occur within capitalism itself, as the labour process first becomes cooperative, as a result of the division of labour, and then that the laws of capital accumulation leads to capital becoming concentrated and centralised, so that ultimately the private ownership of capital becomes incompatible with capital accumulation, and capital itself becomes socialised capital in the form of the cooperative and joint stock company. As Marx put it in his Inaugural Address to the First International, 

“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. In England, the seeds of the co-operative system were sown by Robert Owen; the workingmen’s experiments tried on the Continent were, in fact, the practical upshot of the theories, not invented, but loudly proclaimed, in 1848.” 

In the worker owned cooperatives, workers, from the start, exercise control over the capital of the firm, but Marx points out that the joint stock companies, what today we call the limited liability company, or corporation, is likewise socialised capital. That is the capital of the company belongs to the company itself, not to any private owners, though we are continually misled into the belief that this capital belongs to shareholders. It doesn't. Shareholders are merely creditors of the company. That is they are people who have loaned it money, in return for which they have been given share certificates, indicating that they are entitled to a market rate of interest on the money they have loaned, and which they receive in the form of dividends. If social-democracy acted consistently, it would, as a start, insist that bourgeois property law be enforced, and prevent shareholders from exercising control over this capital which they do not own, and would instead argue for a continuation of the bourgeois political revolution of the 19th century, that established the right of workers to the vote, and would now extend that right to workers exercising control over the capital of their companies. 

But, workers, and their most advanced elements, who are to be found inside the social-democratic parties, do not spontaneously arrive even at this level of consciousness. For example, if we take Labour's current position, it clearly does not understand the nature of capital, and in particular this socialised capital. It assumes that it belongs to shareholders, and so proposes to nationalise it, mutualise it, and other such variants. It takes it as read that ownership of the capital is equivalent to the ownership of shares, whereas these are two entirely different forms of property, and in the hands of two entirely different classes. So, Labour proposes all sorts of ill-thought out measures for nationalising companies, by buying out shareholders, a process that is inordinately expensive, and unnecessary, when all it needs to do is to pass legislation changing company law, so as to prevent shareholders exercising control over capital they do not own, and instead to ensure that company Boards are elected by the firm's workers and managers. That is, in fact, only to apply the principle behind the cooperative to the joint stock company, and to extend the principle, long since in operation in Germany, of workers' representatives on company boards, a principle that the EU itself drew up 40 years ago, and that was proposed in Britain by the Wilson government in the 1970's. 

Such a policy would not itself be socialist, but merely social-democratic. To be socialist, it would need to recognise the need for each such firm to begin to end the use of its means of production as capital, to produce profit, and to instead use it merely as means of production, required by the workers to produce the goods and services required by society. But, to do that requires that each firm works cooperatively with other firms both in the same industry, and others, so that instead of competing with each other to produce bigger profits, and obtain larger market shares, they instead work to collectively produce more efficiently to meet society's needs. But again, that is not possible if undertaken in a single country, it can only be undertaken at an international level, because, otherwise, the firms operating within this national border would find themselves still in competition with foreign capital, and being outcompeted by foreign firms. 

The issue, therefore, of a socialist campaign for a Labour government cannot be separated from a socialist campaign for Europe, because these two things are inextricably linked. Even a progressive social-democracy is only feasible on at least an EU wide scale. As socialists, we do not expect workers and their mass organisations to arrive immediately or automatically at this level of class consciousness. It is our task to help them move towards it. We give critical support to social-democracy as a transitional phase towards socialism, a phase through which both capitalism and the working-class must pass, in order to arrive at that level of class consciousness required to create socialism, in the same way that the caterpillar must pass through the stage of being a chrysalis before metamorphosing into a butterfly. 

As socialists, therefore, whilst we argue for a Labour victory in the forthcoming election, we cannot call for a vote for Labour uncritically, or on the basis of Labour's inadequate politics when it comes to either the advancement of a progressive social democracy, or its position in relation to Europe. We cannot, for example, simply support the position of conservative social-democracy, as represented by the Blair-rights, which calls for an uncritical support for the existing EU. As socialists, we see that even progressive social-democracy is impossible outside the EU, but the EU, as currently constituted, is an impediment to the development of progressive social-democracy. The answer to that impediment is not to retreat behind national borders, as the reactionaries propose, which represents an even greater impediment, but is to struggle alongside other workers, socialists and progressive social-democrats, across Europe, to transform it. Our perspective is not a nationalist one that starts from the concept that our aim is to somehow negotiate a better deal for Britain inside the EU, and from which British workers might, then, be offered some scraps, as they fall from the table. Our perspective is one that recognises the working-class as an international class, and that the interests of British workers are identical to those of all other EU workers. We do not accept the perspective of the Blair-rights and other conservative social democrats that the rights and freedoms that EU workers enjoy are the inevitable product of the EU itself – though, in so far as the EU, as a large economic bloc, is able to reduce the competitive struggle that results in a race to the bottom, it does offer such benefits – but that the EU, by reducing this drive of a race to the bottom, and enabling workers across Europe to stand together, as a united working-class, better enables them to fight for those rights, and to fight to transform the EU itself, to create a Workers' Europe

But, for the same reason, nor can we accept the reactionary nationalist agenda which stands behind the position of Corbyn, and the Stalinists that form the cabal around him, which gives tacit support to all of the reactionary nationalism implicit in Brexit, and their demand that a Labour government negotiate a fantasy “Jobs First Brexit”, which only then would they put to the country in yet another referendum. This reactionary nationalism that has its roots in the continued influence of the national socialist ideology of Stalinism, destroyed the project of the Left in the 1970's, and 1980's, and it looks set to do the same thing again. The origin of this reactionary national socialist ideology is the development of the Theory of Socialism In One Country by Stalin in 1924, and its adoption since then by the Stalinist parties, as reflected in the various “National Roads to Socialism”, drawn up as the programmes of the various Stalinist Parties, such as the British Communist Party's British Road to Socialism

In The Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky describes the way that Stalin himself, had initially described why Socialism In One Country was not possible. 

“In April 1924, three months after the death of Lenin, Stalin wrote, his brochure of compilations called The Foundations of Leninism: 

“For the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the efforts of one country are enough – to this the history of our own revolution testifies. For the final victory of socialism, for the organization of socialist production, the efforts of one country, especially a peasant country like ours, are not enough – for this we must have the efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries.” 

These lines need no comment. The edition in which they were printed, however, has been been withdrawn from circulation.” 


But, later in 1924, Stalin instead developed his Theory of Socialism In One Country, thereby necessitating the expunging of these earlier writings from existence. As Trotsky puts it, 

“The large-scale defeats of the European proletariat, and the first very modest economic successes of the Soviet Union, suggested to Stalin, in the autumn of 1924, the idea that the historic mission of the Soviet bureaucracy was to build socialism in a single country. Around this question there developed a discussion which to many superficial minds seemed academic or scholastic, but which in reality reflected the incipient degeneration of the Third International and prepared the way for the Fourth.)” (ibid) 

The adoption of this nationalist agenda was initially designed to ensure the survival of the Moscow bureaucracy, by making every other communist party subordinate the interests of the revolution in its own country to that of protecting the Soviet Union. So, when Stalin formed his pact with Hitler, the communist parties elsewhere in the world were instructed to support this pact, thereby becoming apologists also for Hitler's regime. They continued to do so, right up to the moment when Stalin was inevitably betrayed by Hitler, in 1941. Overnight, the communist parties everywhere became ardent patriots, and advocates of imperialist war against Germany, which was now Russia's enemy. In the post-war period, when the USSR adopted its policy of “peaceful coexistence” with imperialism, as drawn up in the agreements between Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt/Truman, that carved up the world into “spheres of influence”, the consequence was that the communist parties in the West had to forswear any commitment to revolution, and limit themselves to the promotion of purely nationally based, reformist, social-democratic programmes. It meant actively opposing the working-class and other socialists when they went beyond those limits, as occurred in France in 1968, when the French Communist Party actively sabotaged the revolutionary struggles of workers and students. As the proponents of revolutionary socialism, or radical socialist internationalism, grew in strength in the labour and student movements, the communist parties were frequently to be found in alliance with Liberals against them. That Stalinists like David Aaronovitch, who epitomised such alliances in the student movement, in the 1970's and early 1980's, should make the full transition to Blairism is no surprise. 

In calling for a Labour Victory, a socialist campaign must begin from these basic principles of internationalism, and progressive social-democracy. We reject the idea that progressive social-democracy is possible on a national basis, and so reject the Stalinist proposals for a reactionary Brexit dressed up in left-wing verbiage about Lexit, a Workers Brexit, or Jobs First Brexit, and other such twaddle. But, we also reject the Liberal/Blair-right demands for uncritical support for the EU as it currently exists. We start from the demand that Labour rejects Brexit, and commits to revoking Article 50, and taking Britain back into the EU if the Tories take us out. But, we also start from the position that the reason we want to remain in Europe, is in order to fight alongside our European comrades to transform Europe into a Workers Europe. Our perspective is not at all one that begins from the relations between governments, or states in the EU, but one that begins from the relations between workers, and their mass organisations across Europe, committed to a struggle for our common interests. Our perspective is – Revoke, Remain, Rebuild. Revoke Article 50, Remain In The EU, Rebuild the mass organisations of the working class on an EU wide basis. 

In part 2, I will examine the demands we should pursue for a Socialist Campaign For Labour and Europe, as well as looking at how we should fight for them, and organise ourselves in the forthcoming election.

Forward To Part 2

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