That condition that existed for the last 40 years, could not continue once the demand for labour exceeded the supply, and the clear manifestation of that was the global rash of strikes, and increases in unionisation that arose in 2022/3, once lockdowns were ended. The underlying economic reality was that the regime that had persisted from the mid 1980's, in which asset prices were inflated, by falling interest rates, and revenues were created by converting capital gains (asset stripping, consuming the seed-corn), was no longer tenable. Yet, the ruling class, which owns its wealth in the form of those assets (fictitious-capital) and had become dependent upon these continual, speculative capital gains, could not countenance any other regime.
Its state, therefore, was forced to act against the interests of real capital itself – and hence, also, the interests of the state, and longer-term interests of the ruling class – by attempting to restrain economic growth, and capital accumulation, so as to restrain wages (and their squeeze on profits), and interest rates, so as to prevent falls in the prices of speculative assets. It did so via, austerity, lockdowns, etc, but that simply heightened the contradiction further, as I said it would, at the time. Its notable that during lockdowns, and long before the war in Ukraine could be used as an excuse for inflation, the prices of those speculative assets soared again, as the massive increase in liquidity (reduction in the value of the standard of prices) flooded into that sphere. Between March 2020 and January 2022, for example, the S&P 500 rose by 120%! In Britain, despite the fact that lockdowns meant that people could not get out to be buying houses in great numbers, house prices rose during the same period by around 26%, again reflecting their status as speculative assets.
The conservative, social-democratic regime that existed from 1990, could no longer be sustained, without doing increasing amounts of damage to capital itself, demonstrating the extent to which the interests of the ruling-class of speculators and money lenders is, itself, no longer consistent with the interests of real capital, and why it is now the interests of workers, as objectively the collective owners of that real, socialised capital, that occupy that role. The ruling-class of shareholders/money lenders seek to maximise the amount of interest/dividends they receive, and/or the capital gains they obtain from the rise in the prices of their shares, bonds and property assets. But, the former reduces the profit available for capital accumulation (profit of enterprise), just as does the rent paid to landlords, or the price paid for land/property, and the latter has been achieved by holding back capital accumulation, so as to use profits to buy back shares, and having the state hold back economic growth, so as to reduce interest rates, and, thereby, inflate asset prices.
It is workers – who as Marx points out in Capital III, Chapter 27 are the collective owners of real, socialised capital – whose interests are consistent with the interests of that capital. It is workers who have an interest in its profits being used for capital accumulation, so as to safeguard their jobs and living standards. It is workers who have an interest, provided its under their control, to develop these productive forces, so as to raise productivity. Yet, the workers were excluded, except in the worker cooperatives, during this period, from exercising any such role, because their parties continued to try to represent the interests of the ruling class, by clinging to the conservative policies of the previous 20 years.
On the one hand, as this centre ground collapsed, the Tory Party, and its international equivalents, based on the petty-bourgeoisie, moved sharply Right, on to the ground of reaction, whilst the parties based on the working-class saw a move in the opposite direction, as represented by Corbyn, Sanders, or else new parties like Syriza, Podemos, Die Linke, the Left Bloc, and that of Melonchon arose. These first outbursts were necessarily confused, picking up existing tools that were themselves inadequate to the task, and had proved so, in the last period of crisis, in the 1970's, and early 80's.
Existing “Left” social-democrats were thrust forward, with all their historical baggage, which itself, usually contained a large amount of reactionary, national-socialist rubbish, as with Corbyn's tacit Brexitism. As Trotsky describes, therefore, those oppositional forces never punch at their real weight. Their ideas are muddled, and in a process of development; their leaders are inadequate, and often untested, a new leadership being in the process of formation; they lack the organisation and machinery at the disposal of the ruling class, and its agents in the labour movement.
But, the almost inevitable failures of those initial political reflections of the changed material conditions does not alter these underlying realities. It has simply diverted them into different channels, much as happened in the 1950's and 60's, when workers developed the shop stewards movement, to by-pass an ossified union bureaucracy, and found other political organisations through which to develop their ideological response.
In a sense, Starmer's response is a reflection of this reality, because it represents an understanding of the threat presented by a rising working-class wave. It is why he cannot tolerate Labour MP's even standing on picket lines with striking nurses, and other workers.
“The growth of the war danger will force Stalin to choose. He has made an effort here to show that the choice has already been made. After the massacre of the Chinese workers by the bourgeoisie, after the capitulation of the Political Bureau to Purcell, after the speech of Chen Duxiu in Pravda, Stalin sees the enemy only on the left and directs his fire against them.” (p 103-4)
And, it is not just Starmer. The centrists and left reformists that have tied themselves to that trend, and increasingly defined themselves by it, and their opposition to confused sections of the “Left”, under attack from it, have necessarily been led to apologise for Starmer, and to paint up the nature of those bourgeois forces, as the USC does with Ukraine. The classic example of that is the rapid trajectory to the Right of Paul Mason.
“Fraternization with Purcell and baiting Zinoviev, eulogizing and painting up the bourgeois leaders of the Guomindang and baiting the Left Opposition in the CPSU and in other parties – one goes closely together with the other. This is a definite course.” (p 104)
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