Owen Jones, in this recent video, is, more or less, 100% correct about why socialists, and even consistent democrats cannot support or vote for Starmer's reactionary, Blue Labour Party. He is wrong in concluding that they should abandon the party, itself, to Starmer, and his reactionary Bonapartist gang.
Of course, no self-respecting socialist, nor consistent democrat can vote for Starmer's Blue Labour policies. But, then, nor should they have been able to vote for the bourgeois, anti-working class policies of Wilson, or Callaghan, let alone Blair, Brown and Miliband. Indeed, the policies and ideology of the Labour Party have always been bourgeois, going back to its inception. The much eulogised Atlee government of 1945, was no different.
It spent billions on developing nuclear weapons, at a time when it was implementing rationing of food and other essentials for workers; it sent troops to fight in an imperialist adventure in Korea, in support of US imperialism; as well as keeping thousands of troops in the British colonies, holding millions in bondage. It also sent troops to break the strikes of British workers. Yes, it nationalised bankrupt, core industries, necessary for the British economy, but that was precisely the point. It did that for the benefit of British capital, not British workers, just as, in 2008, the banks were nationalised to save the interests of capital.
The Attlee government invested in, and rationalised those bankrupt industries, but for the benefit of capital, not workers. The former owners, that had failed to invest in them, and so, drove them into bankruptcy, were heavily compensated for decades after nationalisation, but, for example, in the coal mines, the reward for workers was to be given the sack in their droves. The Attlee government was responsible for far more mine closures, and job losses than was the rightly hated Thatcher government of the 1980's. In those coal mines that actually were owned and controlled by workers, as cooperatives, they, too, were taken over by the state, and the one bit of actual workers ownership and control was lost along with it.
Yet, as Owen says, he, his parents, grandparents, and great grandparents, were members of, and loyally canvassed and voted for these bourgeois Labour governments. In the absence of a socialist workers' party, this has always been a problem. The organisation that nominally went by that label - The SWP/International Socialists - was placed in the invidious, and totally unprincipled position, in the past, of condemning the Labour Party, and those socialists that fought inside it, but then, on election day, calling on workers to vote for it! As one of its leading members, Paul Foot, once wrote, during the election he would be the most loyal Labour supporter.
In 1979, some socialists inside the Labour Party, like myself, formed the Socialist Campaign For a Labour Victory, as a means of resolving this contradiction.
We argued that socialists could not simply vote for Labour's official programme, in the way that the SWP proposed, and nor were the adventures of various Left sects, a credible or progressive alternative. We proposed, instead, that we would draw up a socialist programme of demands that we sought to mobilise around, and to have Labour candidates, CLP.s, branches and trades unions sign up to, and campaign on. That meant that we could, go out during the election campaign to argue for those positions, to encourage workers to vote for those policies, and to join the Labour Party so as to take part in the political struggle to transform it, democratise it, and to replace the existing right-wing leadership, and party machine. One of the supporters of the SCLV was Jeremy Corbyn.
Now, today, is not 1979. despite Rachel Reeves channelling of Margaret Thatcher, as Blue Labour prepares a similar Thatcherite assault on workers' pay, conditions, and freedoms. The labour movement, in 1979. was strong. It had had all of the 1950's, 60's and 70's to have built up its organisations, and confidence from the ground up. It had defeated Wilson and Castle's anti-union proposals in In Place of Strife; it had defeated Heath's warned up attempt to implement such laws; it had defeated and then thrown out Heath's government, via the 1972 and 1974 Miners' Strikes; and it had defeated The Social Contract of Callaghan, during the Winter of Discontent. All of that, also fed through into a political reflection inside the Labour party itself, with the leadership being serially defeated in conference votes.
Today, although we have the same conditions as those that arose in the 1950's, and early 60's, with labour becoming scarce, enabling workers to begin to regain confidence, gain strength, and rebuild their organisations, it is still at an early stage. The rise of Corbyn was a harbinger, as with Sanders, Podemos, Syriza and so on, but the confused, inadequate Stalinoid/populist politics of those movements, inevitably, led to their defeat, and has, itself, set back the movement, temporarily. In the same way that the failure of conservative social-democracy has opened the door to right-wing populism, so the failure of these left populists has opened the door for the failed conservative social-democrats to, again, seize bureaucratic control over workers' parties.
Owen Jones is absolutely right that the experience of Germany, and, now, in the US, shows that the result of that will be, as these "centrists" fail, abysmally, again, and do so whilst inflicting even greater attacks on workers, that, the beneficiaries will be the far right, as with Trump, the AfD, Le Pen, and so on. The best antidote to that lies not in abandoning the field of political struggle to Starmer, but to mobilise the working-class to fight back against those attacks, and, on the back of the mobilisation and radicalisation that inevitably flows from it, to draw it into the Labour Party, and to again throw out the reactionary leadership of Starmer and his gang. Indeed, that political struggle is fundamental to the process of creating a truly socialist, mass workers' party itself, as opposed to the gaggle of petty-bourgeois sects that fight like rats in a sack, and offer no alternative to workers.
The reality, is, of course, unlike 1979, that, we cannot easily and openly organise a SCLV. To do so is to invite immediate expulsion, though even a political struggle surrounding such expulsions can be radicalising and mobilising. The Internet, and social media, however, provides ample alternative means of organising, and propagandising, in ways that the Bolsheviks could have only dreamed about, when organising their secret operations, after 1903. Owen Jones, himself, talks about voting for Labour candidates that offer such an alternative. The problem with his approach is that it leaves things at a purely electoralist, parliamentary level, meaning that individuals who pursue this course, are left atomised. It offers no way forward.
The Left often talk about the Labour Party as a bourgeois party, but the reality, currently, is worse than that. As Lenin noted, in his polemics against the Narodniks, the bourgeoisie is more progressive than the petty-bourgeoisie, including the petty-bourgeois socialists of the type of the Narodniks themselves. Much of the Left, today, is of a similar type of petty-bourgeois socialist, and even simply petty-bourgeois nationalists. If it were the case that Starmer's Blue Labour were bourgeois, as with, say, the party of Attlee, Wilson, Callaghan, or Blair, it would not be so bad. Those parties were internationalist in outlook, and based upon the needs and interests of large-scale industrial capital.
That is not the case with Starmer's Blue Labour. It has sunk to become a clone of the petty-bourgeois nationalism of the Tories, as exemplified by its support for Brexit, collapse into jingoism, and attempts to wrap itself, to ever more ridiculous degrees, in the flag. That makes it all the more necessary to oppose those outright reactionary policies, and that ideology. It is more like the kind of petty-bourgeois nationalism of Pilsudski, Mussolini or Moseley, but without their more radical economic programme.
Socialists, should stay, organise, propagandise, and mobilise inside the Labour Party, and we should use the next few months of heightened political activity, in the run up to the elections, to draw others into the party to engage in that struggle, a struggle that inevitably must be conducted on the shop floor, in the communities, and in the trades unions and cooperatives.
We should draw up a minimum platform of positions upon which to mobilise and campaign upon, in order to try to commit labour movement bodies and activists to such an alternative. That is the basis of developing a movement that extends beyond just the constraints of electoralism, and beyond the elections.
In reality, the question of the vote itself is less important. We know that Blue Labour is going to win with a huge majority, and that is just the start of its troubles, as it has cut off all avenues of a solution other than a huge attack on workers conditions. In Spring 2019, we know that 60% of Labour members, let alone Labour voters, voted for pro-Remain parties, in the local and Euro-elections. Labour members cannot advocate a vote for other parties, as to do so means instant expulsion, but, as 2019 showed, campaigning for a series of progressive policies, such as an immediate commitment to re-join the EU, oppose austerity, an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and end to arming the Zionist state, opposition to the imperialist war in Ukraine, the repeal of all anti-union laws, and legislation of positive rights for workers, means that voters will have a clear steer on which candidates they should vote for in their constituency.
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