Marxists have never seen the Labour Party as a socialist party. Even compared to the social-democratic parties established, towards the end of the 19th century, and affiliated to the Second International, the Labour Party was always a bourgeois party, basically a continuation of the Liberal Party that arose as the party of the new classes – industrial bourgeoisie, and industrial proletariat – created by the development of industrial capitalism, and its assertion of dominance, after 1848. The Labour Party, unlike those other parties, never had any commitment to Socialism, let alone to Marxism. On the contrary, its founders, in the trades unions, specifically excluded any such commitment, instead, enshrining the purely bourgeois, trades union notion of bargaining within the existing system into its Constitution, in Clause IV.
But, the Labour Party, as a bourgeois workers' party, much as a trades union is a bourgeois workers' organisation, geared to bargaining within the capitalist system, rather than overthrowing it, was, at least, relatively progressive, because its material basis was a continuing development of industrial capitalism itself, a development, which, as Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky noted, is progressive, because it creates all of the conditions required for socialism. It develops the forces of production; it creates large oligopolies/socialised capital, which plan and regulate their production; it extends that planning and regulation, via the social-democratic state, into the whole economy; it expands beyond the fetters imposed by the borders of the nation state, and creates a world economy, and a series of ever larger, multinational states; it creates a global working-class, as the agent of change.
But, under Starmer, none of that is, now, true. Even conservative social democracy, such as that epitomised by Bliar/Brown, which bases itself, directly, on the interests of the shareholders that, currently, control the socialised capital, rather than on the interests of the socialised capital, was led to pursue all of those aspects of the creation of larger single markets, which, inevitably, means an extension of regulation and planning within such markets, such as the EU. But, under Starmer and his Blue Labour Party, all of that has gone.
In December 2018, as Corbyn, under the influence of his Stalinist advisors, reverted to his 1970's anti-EEC views, and support for reactionary, economic nationalism, I argued that he must go. That was confirmed, as Labour did disastrously, in the Spring local and EU elections, with 60% of its own members voting for other, pro-EU parties. It was a catastrophe from which it could not recover ahead of the 2019 General Election. But, at least, Corbyn, like Benn, was a progressive social-democrat, who based himself on the interests of the actual collective owners of that socialised, industrial capital, the workers, rather than the interests of shareholders.
It was delusional, because, in the age of imperialism, which arises on the material basis of that large-scale industrial capitalism, the measures of promoting the interests of that capital, require the creation of large multinational states, such as the EU. It was, also, confused, utopian and reactionary, because, rather than addressing “the property question”, i.e. the fact that this large-scale socialised capital is, already, the collective property of the “associated producers”, but that they are denied, by law, their legitimate right to control it, they sought to simply tax it more heavily, to restrict its growth, in favour of less developed forms of small-capital, just as they sought to restrict the expansion of capital, beyond the fetters imposed by the nation state.
Moreover, to assert those interests, as against the interests of shareholders, and other owners of fictitious-capital, requires workers across such a large, multinational state to assert their control. Otherwise, any government will find it faces capital strikes, capital flight, runs on its currency, and higher interest rates, as happened to Mitterand, in the 1980's. The same happened to Syriza in 2015. It shows, that, in the era of imperialism, even these attempts at progressive social-democracy are only possible on a large-scale, and that, even where one single country seeks to act in the vanguard, it can only do so, if, first, it has built a powerful movement of support across other countries that will be drawn in behind it. Social-democracy, even progressive social-democracy, and Left populism, always fails, because it is, ultimately, based upon a set of reactionary, petty-bourgeois, nationalist ideas that are “always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history” (Communist Manifesto).
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