Lessons For The Left
Lesson 6 – Being Determines Consciousness (iii)
If we look at those voting for Brexit, they were overwhelmingly Tory voters, and they were reactionary Tory voters drawn predominantly from the ranks of the petty-bourgeoisie, a petty-bourgeoisie that is often conflated with the working-class purely on a subjective basis of income, education and so on. The same group holds reactionary views on a range of other subjects. It was supplemented by other groups, which a materialist analysis, also demonstrates had objectively determinable reasons for holding the views that it did, and does. Some are workers employed by these petty-bourgeois, whose ideas and condition rubs off on them, who may see themselves pursuing a similar course of action. In the main they are atomised workers, outside the organised labour movement and in some senses alienated from it, as they envy the higher wages and advantages of organised workers in larger businesses, etc. Its amongst this group that you most often find the expression of ideas such as hostility to the “gold plated” pensions of public sector workers, particular hostility to benefit “scroungers”, given the real or perceived small differences in income between them. The same mentality extends to immigrants, and a willingness to accept the ridiculous stories of the racist tabloid rags about them getting the best houses for free, getting cars provided free and so on.
In addition, there are older workers who have either retired, or else who have been thrown into chronic unemployment, or precarious employment ever since Thatcher de-industrialised the economy in the 1980's. They too are atomised, remote from the free flow of ideas within the organised labour movement, a mass prone to the appeals of an elite that is able to utilise mass media to provide easy solutions, of the kind such an elite has always done in the past. They are reduced to a level of almost feudal dependency on a paternalistic state, and their ideas are framed by that too, a reliance on that nation state to resolve their problems rather than any form of self-reliance, or collective class action.
It breeds an individualistic mentality. And yet, these individuals, often, themselves thrown into a common condition, can formulate these prejudices on the basis of their opposition to modernism, and a world around them that they increasingly cannot understand or relate to. They determine their ideas and consciousness, in the same way that the petty-bourgeoisie has always done, on the basis of what it is against rather than what it is for, on the basis of antagonism to change and forward development, and a utopian and reactionary desire to turn the clock backwards.
As Marxists, we can understand that material basis upon which they develop this set of ideas, just as we can understand the material conditions that lead some in society to become petty criminals. We can understand, and even sympathise, but that does not in any way mean that we should accommodate them, any more than we would accommodate criminals. As Marxists, we can understand the material conditions that create fascists, but, in the, here and now, that does not change the fact that we have to stamp on them with heavy boots, not accommodate to them!
Paul is right to say, therefore,
“But it retains a strong collective identity, which has been increasingly defined against the progressive cultural values of younger, more diverse, city-dwelling workers — a division that is consciously encouraged by the right-wing media.”
However, it will be all the more so if Labour tries to appease it, and, thereby, tails it rather than basing itself on the advanced section of the working-class, and, thereby, provides a clear lead for those backward and reactionary sections. That is precisely the mistake that the German Stalinists and social-democrats made in the 1930's, when they attempted to appease such reactionary views, and tried to outdo the Nazis in their nationalistic rhetoric, which instead merely legitimised the ideas of the Nazis even more in the minds of those susceptible to them.
Paul explains the growth of these reactionary ideas on the basis of communities that have adopted “survival strategies” rather than “resistance strategies”.
“To me, family, fairness, hard work and decency sound like something more than “values”: they describe a survival strategy adopted by working class people in the face of neoliberalism...
Our aim should become to promote agency in the face of powerlessness. To move people from strategies of survival to strategies of resistance.”
In fact, resistance is rarely a strategy that is adopted, and is never successful. During the growth phase of capital, resistance is not required, because living standards do improve, strikes are themselves infrequent, and short-lived, as the demand for labour acts to push up wages. Resistance only arises when workers retain this level of organisation, and belief that they can win better wages, but when capital enters a period of crises of overproduction. But, its only ever the minority of better organised workers in large workplaces that are able to resist, and resistance itself is not a strategy.
It requires that the system be overthrown, as in 1917. Otherwise, the workers are defeated, and must survive as best they can. That is not a feature of neo-liberalism, but of every other period of stagnation, from the 1820's – 40's, 1870's – 90's, and the 1920's – 40's. The weakness of the strategy of the labour movement has always been, as Marx said in Value, Price and Profit that it focused on those ephemeral guerrilla struggles over wages and conditions, rather than focusing on the property question, on the class struggle to gain control over socialised capital, during periods when it was strong.
But, the class struggle has never been conducted on the basis of purely workplace conflicts. Marx notes that it was precisely at times that workers were weak in the workplace that capital also provided them with worse housing, and higher rents. Its low wages that means that workers are forced into those conditions, and also must borrow to cover their consumption, leading to them paying out interest to usurers. Its what enabled employer to pay wages in Truck, before workers established their own cooperative stores. Its what enabled the capitalist state to effectively destroy workers Friendly Societies, and put in their place National Insurance, and the Welfare State, which is simply one huge Truck System, run on behalf of all capital.
In the 1920's, the Labour Party was heavily engaged in supporting tenants in rent strikes, for example. A lot of my time, in the early 1980's was spent turning the local LP outwards towards community struggles over the lived environment, opposing toxic waste tips, demands for improvements to local environments and housing, and so on. These are all class struggles over issues of ownership and control. They are struggles over what Marx termed “workers self-government”.
Paul says, of Corbyn's Labour,
“It had a viable strategy for what to do in power but no adequate strategy for achieving it.”
It didn't have a viable strategy for what to do in power either, because its policy of social-democracy in one country is not viable. And, the strategy that Paul puts forward is not viable either, for the same reason.
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