Lessons For the Left
Lesson 7 – Strategy, Tactics and Principles (iii)
Paul says,
“Because the liberal+centrist vote is clustered in the big cities, or in the exurban constituencies we already hold, there is no route to government unless you regain votes lost in the ex-industrial small towns.”
Again, this assumes that the most important thing is being in government. But, of course, the old people in those decaying towns are dying out, and their inherited reactionary ideas are dying out with them, as those ideas themselves were generated by a different world that has gone. But, also, those towns themselves are dying and changing. In ten years time, smaller towns, some filled with people who have migrated from high cost cities, as COVID encourages a more rapid move to home-working, will have entirely new populations that more closely resemble the cities in their attitudes. Indeed, as I wrote some time ago – Metropolitan Elite Myth, already in those decaying towns, there are also young working-class people, who already share all those same values, as their metropolitan counterparts. Its not a metropolitan v old industrial town dichotomy, but simply a young, educated, progressive working-class v old, ill-educated, reactionary working-class and petty-bourgeois dichotomy. The only factor is the weight of each of these in the different locations.
So, Paul is completely wrong when he says,
“The left is strong when it’s broad”
All experience says otherwise. Broadness is simply a symptom of lack of class consciousness, vagueness, lack of political development and amorphousness, more characteristic of the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie, which is why, as Marx says, they could never form a ruling class. There is a huge difference between a Left that is large, and enjoys mass support, and a Left that is simply broad. The latter will simply fall apart on first contact with reality and battle, as the experience of the 1980's showed, when the soft elements of that Left capitulated, or has happened with the Popular Front in Spain and elsewhere.
Paul says,
“I’m part of a left that wants to engage with Starmer’s project and to help shape it, defending its core agenda of climate, social and economic justice from the inevitable pushback from the party’s right, and by solving through practice the strategic problems outlined below.”
The best way to shape it is as an independent Left with its own agenda, not as an appendage of the centre.
Paul continues,
“The left should critically support the Starmer project and lead the attempt to define what radical economic change means post-Covid and post-Brexit.”
That depends on what you mean by critically support. The Left should adopt the position that Starmer represents a significant defeat for the Left, and should start from a position of deep suspicion, pointing out that he is almost certainly merely a stopping off point in a further rightward movement of the party, unless the party rank and file mobilise to prevent it. In so far as Starmer does things that can be supported, we should provide critical support, but that is all. If attacked from the Right, we should oppose those attacks, but not by liquidating our own politics in favour of Starmer's. The only reason that Lewis would have been preferable to Starmer, is his greater commitment to democratisation of the party, which would have helped preventing the Right undermining the party rank and file, and because Lewis's anti-Brexit stance would have put us in a better position to advance a socialist internationalist position.
Paul sets out four strategies to win an electoral majority:
- For an alliance with other parties
- Become the coalition inside Labour
- Stick with Corbynism and wait for the electorate to change
- Ditch social liberalism and economic radicalism so as to win over those reactionary voters in old urban areas.
But, the fifth strategy is none of the above, and to recognise that whilst the socio-economic aspects of Corbynism were far from perfect, amounting to merely warmed up Wilsonian social-democracy, it did mobilise a large degree of support behind it in 2017, but did so in conjunction with a view that Labour offered the hope of stopping Brexit. As I pointed out some time ago, many of those who said that they could never have voted for Corbyn in December 2019, clearly must have done in 2017!
It was the abandonment of that hope that did for Labour in 2019, as Corbyn's pro-Brexit stance turned away the young progressive voters, and his continual appeasement of the Right, dithering and appearance of simply offering uncosted bribes made him look incompetent and untrustworthy. The way forward is for Labour to be the party that mobilises that coalition of voters it won in 2017, by being the clear party of socialist internationalism in opposing Brexit, and committing to going back into the EU, fighting alongside European workers, but to do so on a clearer programme of economic and political reforms than Corbynism offered, that emphasises the need for an extension of industrial democracy, for example, as the only means of making real changes in the distribution of wealth and power in society.
Paul says,
“So this is going to be hard. So hard, in fact, that it would be a lot easier just to become an “opposition” to Starmer, defending every line of the 2019 manifesto while fighting each other over Brexit. If so, the outcome is predictable: the Labour right will get to define the next Labour government.”
But, again, these are not the only options. As the Bolsheviks said, it was possible to be with the workers always, and even with the workers' leaders sometimes. We can be with Starmer, in so far as he does things that can be supported, whilst simultaneously recognising the nature of what he represents as a significant shift to the Right, which will almost certainly be merely a temporary situation until the Right can use him to defeat the Left, and undermine the party rank and file, before re-establishing their own control. Nor is there any need to defend every line of the inadequate and confused 2019 Manifesto, in order to offer up a principled opposition to the policies of Starmer, as they inevitably drift rightwards. On the contrary, precisely because the 2019 Manifesto was confused and inadequate, and had at its heart the problem of Corbyn's pro-Brexit position, its necessary to reject it!
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