Lessons for the Left
(Lesson 2) – Know Your Enemies
Paul wants to make the basis of his broad alliance “anti neo-liberalism”. Neo-liberalism (conservative social-democracy) is certainly an enemy of the working-class, but, at the present time, its not the main enemy. By making it such, Paul actually makes the same mistake as the Stalinists in the Third Period. The main enemy of the working-class, currently, is not neo-liberalism but actual Liberalism, i.e. the ideology of the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, anarcho-capitalism that wants to return social relations to those that preceded the rise of big socialised capital, and the social-democratic state. Moreover, it is a more imminent and serious enemy for several reasons.
The dominant section of the ruling class – the 0.01% that owns the majority of fictitious capital, and whose interests conservative social-democracy serves – is tiny. Their power resides in the machinery of the state, and in the fact that their ideas dominate society. Electorally, they are powerless without the support of the majority of workers and the middle class, who express it via the main political parties, and particularly their conservative social-democratic wings (what can be termed the political centre). But the petty-bourgeoisie, in Britain, comprises the owners of around 5 million small businesses, and their families. Often, even the workers in these businesses, atomised, marginalised, separated from the more advanced sections of the working-class, imbibe the reactionary ideas that permeate this class. Some may even see themselves following in the footsteps of their employer, and becoming a small capitalist. In Britain, this amounts to around 15 million adults, or about a third of the adult population. It is the core of the Tory vote, and of the support for Brexit, and all the other reactionary ideas associated with it.
Similar alignments exist elsewhere, explaining the rise of Trump, Bolsanaro, Netanyahu, Duterte, Orban, Erdogan and others of that ilk. The larger the social weight of the petty-bourgeoisie, the more secure the Bonapartist political regime of such elements, but, given the amorphous nature of this class, the more its political regime must take the form of Bonapartism, and some charismatic leader. In developing countries this is even more pronounced, and complicated by the continued existence and influence of even more reactionary elements. In certain places, like Tibet, the old landlord class, in association with the clergy, continues to exert influence, for example, and this is true in a number of places in the Middle-East, Africa and South America. Compared to all these reactionary forces, neo-liberalism (and in the case of Tibet et al, Stalinism) is progressive. Yet, what makes those reactionary forces more dangerous for the working-class is not just their comparative social weight, but also the fact that they cloak their reactionary ideas in the garb of “anti-capitalism” and/or “anti-imperialism”, which gives them a superficial appearance of radicalism. It is what Marx describes in The Communist Manifesto in relation to Sismondism, and reactionary socialism.
“In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy was obliged to lose sight, apparently, of its own interests, and to formulate their indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working class alone. Thus, the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new masters and whispering in his ears sinister prophesies of coming catastrophe.
In this way arose feudal Socialism: half lamentation, half lampoon; half an echo of the past, half menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart’s core; but always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history...
As the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so has Clerical Socialism with Feudal Socialism...
In countries like France, where the peasants constitute far more than half of the population, it was natural that writers who sided with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie should use, in their criticism of the bourgeois régime, the standard of the peasant and petty bourgeois, and from the standpoint of these intermediate classes, should take up the cudgels for the working class. Thus arose petty-bourgeois Socialism. Sismondi was the head of this school, not only in France but also in England...
In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange within the framework of the old property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian.”
It is what led Lenin and the Comintern to warn about such trends in The Theses on the National and Colonial Questions.
“second, the need for a struggle against the clergy and other influential reactionary and medieval elements in backward countries;
third, the need to combat Pan-Islamism and similar trends, which strive to combine the liberation movement against European and American imperialism with an attempt to strengthen the positions of the khans, landowners, mullahs, etc.;”
This is the nature of the “Reactionary Socialism” of the “anti-capitalists” and “anti-imperialists”, and in aligning with the reactionary forces against imperialism, and large scale capital, they look backwards rather than forwards, and they align themselves with one elite against another. The literary epitome of that alliance is the abortion that is Spiked Online. But, Spiked and the many front organisations spawned by the infamous Revolutionary Communist Party, and Living Marxism also reflects the problem in the modern world that has arisen from development of cheap media technology, and of free social media, along with the development of multi-channel TV and radio, 24 hour, dumbed down, news channels, and a consequent search for audiences, and sensationalism. Over the last 20 years, barely a day passed when Nigel Farage, or one of his entourage, did not appear on BBC politics programmes, and never a day passes when some representative of Spiked or its fronts does not appear as a talking-head, despite, electorally and socially, representing less than zero.
Paul says,
“Repeated crises of trust and confidence — Iraq, Lehman Brothers, the #Indyref and the Brexit crisis — have loosened the elite’s grip on key institutions, including the Labour Party.”
Its true, the ruling class has lost some of its grip, but not in the way Paul means. They have lost some of their grip, because another elite, a more reactionary elite, representing the petty-bourgeoisie, has been able to strengthen its own grip. What is more, this other, reactionary elite has increased its grip by being able to present itself not as an elite at all, but as a force that is “anti-elite”, “anti-establishment”. That is precisely the message that is given by Trump, Orban, Bolsanaro, Johnson, Farage, Mogg, Le Pen and so on, as well, of course, by Putin, despite being the epitome of an elite!
The question, here, is, which elite does Paul mean, when he talks about loss of grip? Do you mean the corporate elite, acting in the interests of the owners of fictitious capital, or do you mean the elite represented by Rees-Mogg et al? This is the point that mass theorists elaborated. In a mass society, competing elites are more accessible by, and have more direct access to, masses. This is a clear feature of both the UK and US, and of a number of other societies across the globe, which has been created by the development of social media, and expansion of mass media, resulting from the development of technology. But also as a result of the decay of intermediate social institutions, such as trades unions, cooperatives, workers' social and sporting clubs, and of course, workers' political parties and their active involvement.
The petty-bourgeoisie has been able to utilise this condition, whereas the labour movement has completely failed to fill the gap, by creating its own mass media, and so on. The main problem for the dominant section of the ruling class is their loss of grip over sections of the media, as well as over conservative parties, whereby ideas like Brexit, Trumpism, economic nationalism and all the other aspects of populism have gained ground, in opposition to the interests of that ruling class. A look at the BBC, for example, which became a daily mouthpiece for Farage and other Brexiters, is a case in point, whereby, on the one hand, reactionary masses could channel directly through it to pressure the Conservative party, whilst an elite (Farage et al), themselves channelling a wider international populism connecting Putin's Russia, to Trump, to Netanyahu, to Erdogan, to Le Pen, Wilders and others, had direct access to those masses, in a way that previously, the normal functioning of bourgeois democracy would have filtered.
As Kornhauser argues, mass politics occurs when large numbers of people engage in political activity outside the rules of society, which has been a characteristic of the largely atomised, passive nature of those backing the reactionary populists. The lack of intermediate relations leaves elites accessible to penetration, and non-elites available for mobilisation by mass oriented elites. Again that reflects the penetration of the Tory Party by such elements.
The primary target of socialists should be, therefore, to defeat the forces of this reactionary petty-bourgeoisie that seeks to turn the clock back to a less mature stage in the productive relations and social relations developed upon them. In the end, those forces cannot prevail, for the very reasons Marx sets out in Capital, and that Lenin discusses in his critique of the Narodniks, as well as in “Imperialism”. If the Liberals/Anarcho-capitalists were to break-up large scale capital, to try to create a world in their own image, the very competition they seek to restore, as a consequence of that process, would simply, again, result in some firms going bust and others growing larger. The re-establishment of the dominance of these large businesses would simply mean that their needs, in the form of a large social-democratic state, would impose themselves once more. As Lenin describes, this is simply the consequence of material conditions and social laws, which determine the course of social evolution, which is what Marx's materialism uncovered.
Trying to reverse those laws, simply on the basis of force, is, ultimately, a fool's errand, like Canute trying to hold back the incoming tide. But, it does not mean that such attempts are not made, with the consequent disastrous results. Indeed, such a counter-revolution can only be imposed by the use of significant force, as witnessed in the attempt of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to reimpose an agrarian economy on Cambodia. Similarly, the creation of the EU was probably the most progressive event in Man's history, bringing 500 million people together voluntarily into an economic and political union, on the basis of the principles of social-democracy, initially even, given the period it occurred, on the basis of progressive social-democracy. Brexit is a reactionary attempt, by the petty-bourgeoisie, to reverse it in its own class interest.
But, the economic and social laws that lead to the evolution of such larger states are no less powerful than those that lead to the development of larger capitals themselves. Indeed, they are the same laws. Britain can withdraw from the EU, but it cannot withdraw from the real world, and the economic and social laws that operate in it. The fate of Britain, outside the EU, will be the same as any small capital that sets up in competition with larger capitals. Either it will go bust, which really does not happen to countries, they just become more and more impoverished and subordinated, or it will have to join with other small countries to form a larger bloc – which is what Britain did when it joined the EU, and that Brexit seeks to reverse – or else it becomes completely subordinated to some other larger power.
In the case of Brexit, Britain is faced with becoming subordinated to either the US or EU, and, given that the majority of UK trade is, and will continue to be, with the EU, its clear which of those will be the case. A Marxist, as Lenin describes in his critique of the Narodniks, seeks to use the tools of historical materialism to identify these social laws, and to, thereby, define the path of development. They, then, seek to facilitate that path of development, by acting as partisans of the revolutionary forces within it, in this case, the interests of the working-class. It is then bizarre for anyone who considers themselves a Marxist to argue for Brexit, and so against that historically determined path of development.
The task of a Marxist is to point out that the evolution of the European Union, as an economic and political union, is an established fact, and fully in conformance with the social laws uncovered by Marx. The path of its further development is also indicated by those laws. That is just as true as was the case described by Lenin in his criticism of the Narodniks. He points out that the question “Is it necessary for Russia to pass through the phase of capitalism?” was the wrong question, because Russia already was passing through that stage. The task, therefore, Lenin says, was to seek to facilitate that process, to clear away the obstacles presented by the old society to that development, and seek the most rapid development of capitalism in Russia, whilst acting as partisans of the working-class in that unfolding development.
Similarly, rather than supporting Brexit, the task of a Marxist is to seek to remove all of the obstacles to the development of the EU as a fully fledged European state, comparable to the United States, whilst acting as partisans of the working-class within that development, partisans not of the British working-class, but of the working-class as a global class. And, doing so means, therefore, fighting for ideas such as free movement, which are vital to the interests of that global working class.
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