Why Do We Need Libraries?

No, its not a rhetorical question. Seriously, why do we need libraries?

About fifteen years ago, when I was a County Councillor, and sat on the Libraries Committee, we had a discussion about how to improve Library Services, to communities that did not have libraries, and were only served, for some of the time, by mobile libraries. At about the same time, the Council was adopting a policy of making schools more open to the communities in which they were based. They do, after all, represent an expensive, and valuable asset, whose use should be maximised, rather than just being used during school times. I suggested, in this vein, that we should beef up school libraries, and make them open to the public.

In fact, the suggestion opened up the question of why, even where there were libraries, such a facility should duplicate what exists in schools. Merging Local Libraries with School Libraries would mean that existing facilities could be more effectively used, professional library staff could be employed in schools, freeing up teachers for teaching, school libraries could be improved with a wider range of books and materials, and the kind of closer relation between the school and the local community, that the Council was purporting to support, would be encouraged.

Of course, the proposal got nowhere, like the idea that schools should be truly opened up as community facilities. Now as then, the main people who use school facilities, outside school hours, are the kids who decide to scale the walls, fences and gates, on their own initiative, in order to hopefully use the playground to play football, skateboard etc, and unfortunately also for less positive pursuits. One of the main reasons, given at the time, was concern about the risks of schools being open during the school day, with unknown adults wandering about!

Unknown? If the school was being used as a community facility, what does the idea, that the adults wandering about within it would be “unknown”, say about the communities we now live in? Surely, the whole point about using significant community assets, is that they should be a means of building communities in which people are not unknown! But, what also does it say about the kind of mentality that is generated about those communities? Are parents to take from this message that it is also unsafe for their kids to go out to play in these communities, because of all the “unknown” adults that may be wandering about in them? Perhaps, that is why you rarely see kids out playing these days, or why some of the young adults that do go out on the streets only feel safe to do so if they are part of a gang, and armed to the teeth!

That, of course, or something like it, is part of the argument sometimes given for Libraries, i.e. not that they provide a useful resource for books and reference material, but that they provide a useful community facility for people to meet etc. But, that is a pretty weak argument for Libraries. Its a good argument for having community meeting places, not for Libraries. The same is true of some of the other arguments, such as they are somewhere warm for people to go, who can't afford to heat their homes. We should instead be ensuring that people have sufficient incomes, to heat their homes adequately.

Some of those arguments about the need for such community facilities could as easily be met today by using school, college and university facilities as by using Libraries. But, one of the real reasons that such efficient use of community facilities does not happen is that it involves stepping on the toes of competing bureaucracies, and could only properly be resolved by transferring ownership and control of these community facilities to the communities in which they reside.  Those bureaucracies are more interested in the buildings and their Empires that go with them.

In fact, the best way to make schools safer would be, precisely, for them to be open, all day, to the local community. Moreover, a commitment to life long learning should also involve the freedom of everyone, of any age, to enrol to any class they choose, and efficient use of community facilities, under the control of local communities, would make that possible. And, of course, if local communities did have actual day to day control, over these facilities, they would have a direct interest in how their money was being used. In all of the discussions over the Cuts, it is important to remember that it is actually our money that is being spent by local councils, i.e. by the local representatives of the Capitalist State, and we do have an interest in ensuring that the money is spent efficiently! We have no interest in sacking Local Authority workers, or in reducing their wages and so on, but nor do we hand over our taxes just so that they have a job, or so that some of the top executives can earn huge sums! As workers we have a shared interest in ensuring that they are employed on decent wages, with decent pensions, and at the same time employed productively and efficiently. The more efficiently expensive things like public buildings are utilised, the easier it is to combine those objectives.  Unlike the top bureaucrats, we should have a shared interest in people and services not buildings and empires.

But, this then brings me back to the central point. Why do we need libraries? Its now possible to have every book, every paper, every bit of written material, in fact pretty much every bit of communication of any sort, provided digitally. It is simply ridiculous to have multiple copies of books available at multiple libraries across the country, when the same book in electronic form could be made available from a single Electronic National Library, and available for as many people who wanted to view it simultaneously. That is something which is not possible with a physical book. A deal could be done with publishers to pay for such electronic availability, and if publishers refused, then legislation could be introduced setting reasonable fees for the National Library to pay for having digitised such material.

That means that the vast sums currently tied up in library's book collections could be released for other purposes. Some copies of those books etc. could be kept in archives, and museums for posterity. But, it would also mean that existing library buildings would no longer be needed. Library staff could be relocated into schools, where they could use their skills, to help students and adults, using those facilities, be better able to undertake research and utilise online resources. The computers, currently based in libraries, could be relocated to schools, as an additional community resource, for that purpose. But, the creation of such a National Electronic Library would also massively expand the resources available free to every school, college and university too. Imagine what Marx could have done with such a facility, rather than having to pour over books, papers and periodicals.

It also means that those resources would be available for everyone at all times, and, to facilitate that, some investment in the UK's Broadband would be required, but that is needed anyway. Instead of wasting a lot of money on HS2, which will suck in vast resources, for year after year, before any value is returned to the economy, a fraction of the amount could provide an ultra fast broadband network, for Britain, in a couple of years, if the will existed, and it would start returning far more value to the economy, straight away, than HS2 is ever likely to bring.

In other parts of the world, education has already largely gone on line. In Singapore, the country's ultra fast broadband allows students to receive their lessons in their own homes, and to benefit from the skills of the best teachers. Some of the top university courses are now available on-line, at a fraction of the cost of enrolling at the actual university. This is part of the revolution in service provision that Neo-Fordism is bringing about. It is a transformation in education that Gillian Tett, of the FT, describes here.

Some of the tremendous opportunities for learning, opened up by that, are described in her article. The downsides listed are not downsides for individuals, but for universities, whose economic models will be disrupted. These are, of course, the same universities who, in the US, currently charge astronomical student fees, and who, in the UK, have rushed to take the opportunity to raise student fees up to the £9,000 p.a. maximum allowed. In fact, its precisely those high fees that ensure that some more efficient, cheaper, and more effective delivery system will be offered now that technology makes it possible.

Scrapping existing analogue libraries, and using the freed up resources more efficiently, through the establishment of a National Electronic Library makes perfect sense. It both saves us, as workers, money in taxes, it makes valuable, and currently expensive, resources freely available for all on demand, and it means that the savings obtained can be used to utilise staff more productively. For all those reasons it should make library workers' jobs more rather than less secure. Of course, in the real world, the bosses of the Capitalist State would instead see it as an opportunity for reducing staff. That is not an argument against it. Instead its argument for removing the control over those issues from the Capitalist State, and instead placing these services under the ownership and control of local communities themselves.

The Street That Cut Everything

The BBC's The Street That Cut Everything, last night was one of the worst instances of kitsch, docu-journalism I've seen. What was it trying to say, let alone prove? Its main purpose seems to have been to try to make the old Conservative arguments about why Socialism is impossible. Not surprising, given that Nick Robinson was once Chair of the Young Conservatives. On the one hand, it seemed to be trying to make the point that workers cannot run things for themselves, as Socialists claim.

We are just a bit too thick, and don't understand all the complexities of running modern enterprises. We have to depend, the Conservative argument has always run, on Capitalists and bosses to organise things for us, and tell us what to do. Of course, Conservatives usually prefer that to be private capitalists and bosses, but where that is not the case they would still prefer State Capitalists, and bosses to be in charge than workers themselves. The second thing, it seemed to be saying, was to repeat Maggie Thatcher's claim about there being no such thing as society. It tried to make that point, by attempting to show that the natural tendency to individualism means that people will not act collectively, and when important issues surrounding the needs of individuals arise – for example, over the payment of Housing Benefit to a member of the Community who requires support – then this will cause a fracture within the group, as each individual looks to their own separate interest. But, despite all of the rigged nature of the situation the people in the street were placed in, it succeeded in proving neither of these points.

The basic idea, of the programme, was that a Street agreed to have all of its, Council provided, services taken away, for a period of six weeks. In return, the residents were provided with a refund of six weeks Council Tax, so that they could provide these services for themselves. But, this is where the first obvious objections to the programme arise. The residents received back just over £1,000. Now, I don't know how many houses' Council Tax this was supposed to represent, but it seems a very, very low level in respect of what I would expect the Council Tax for an entire street to be for six weeks. My Council Tax is £180 per month. In other words on a six week basis my Council tax comes to about a third of the Council Tax that this entire street was refunded! Put another way, even if the residents paid only half the Council Tax that I pay, then this £1,000 would amount to only about six houses, which hardly constitutes a Street. That is important, as every economist knows because of what are called Economies of Scale. That is the larger the production level, service provision etc. engaged in, the lower the marginal costs become i.e. the lower is the cost of producing another unit of production/service.

But, the second, most obvious objection to this way of proceeding is that Council Tax accounts for less than half of most Council's income used to provide those services. The rest of the income comes from Central Government, and from charges levied by the Council itself. So on that basis even the £1,000 was less than half the money that should have been returned to these residents. They should have received back the equivalent of all the Income Tax, National Insurance, VAT, Excise Duty, and on and on that Central Government collects from us, and which it then passes on to Local Government to cover the provision of those services.

But, in addition to that Council's charge us for parking to visit the shops, the charge us individual prices for using facilities such as Leisure Centres, and so on. Although, its a fact that, if you look at the accounts of say most Council run Leisure Centres, they will appear to make a loss, that is due to two main things. Firstly, many of these facilities are very old, and so require large amounts of money for repairs to be spent on them. But, secondly, because of the way Local Government Accounts are set up, each cost centre such as a Leisure Centre, has to bear the costs of the Council's overall bureaucracy, management, and administration. This is done via a series of recharges of these Central Support Costs to Departments, which is then shared out. The importance of this can be seen from the fact that, whilst most Council run Leisure Centres run at a considerable loss, over the last 10 years or so, every major town has seen a profusion of private leisure centres spread, all of which make good profits.

The fact, that the residents, even using the £1,000 figure as in any way a realistic figure for the Council Tax for a street, only got back half of what they were entitled to have been refunded, is again very significant. In order to make the point about decisions over how to spend this very limited sum leading to divisions between the residents, and to make the point that ordinary workers are incompetent to provide services themselves, compared to State Capitalist bureaucrats, a number of financial burdens were placed on the residents such as a request for several hundred pounds to cover Housing Benefit for one resident, who was also claiming for taxi fares for her daughter to attend extra-curricula activities, and a request for payment again of several hundred pounds to cover the care costs of another resident's father, who did not even live in the street!

Up to this point, the residents of the street, despite the most difficult conditions for them to have done so, had been able to fairly quickly organise themselves into a democratic decision making body, and to make arrangements to cover for themselves the services no longer provided. These financial requests went over the small amount they had to spend on such things. But, in reality had they had all of that tax, and other income back that they were entitled to, they would easily have covered these other costs, and had around £500 left over. In other words, they would have replaced the Council Services that had been taken away from them, and done so for around 75% of the previous cost.

But, even this understates the savings the residents could have made by organising things for themselves. Take the issue of the taxi fares for the girl attending music lessons. This is an instance of the consequences of economies of scale referred to earlier. There are a whole range of alternatives that a community could take in such circumstances. Firstly, a community could ensure that demand from a number of children for music lessons could be met by a music teacher coming to its school.

Secondly, even a reasonably small community could group together to buy a Community Minibus, which could provide all of its residents with Public Transport. It could also provide one or more of its unemployed or partly employed members with a job, driving the bus! And, if this community owned its own housing via a Housing Co-op, then this contribution of labour-time, could be the means by which such members of the community repay the Benefits received to cover their Rent etc.

If we take the first option, this leads into another means by which such a Community could reduce its costs, and expand the services it receives at the same time. Fifteen years ago when I became a County Councillor, I was pleased that the Council was proposing turning its schools into Community Schools, so that instead of shutting the gates at 3.30 p.m., the school would remain open to meet the Community’s needs for playing fields, use of computers and other facilities. But, of course it never happened. The only people you saw using the school facilities outside school hours were the kids who'd climbed over the fences.

But, a Community that actually owned and controlled the School would utilise it for the extremely valuable asset that it is. Every school has a Library of sorts, and a rational Community would expand it so that it could act as a Community rather than just School Library. The same goes for the Hall to be used for Meetings, lectures and so on, or just a Community Hall. This is how the schools set up by the Co-op in the 19th century operated within working class communities. Moreover, many people in the more deprived areas spend large amounts of money eating, or buying in food from the local McDonalds etc. Many more people have turned eating out into a leisure activity in itself. A Community School could use the canteen facilities needed to provide the kids with their midday meal, in order to provide the whole community with nutritious and cheap meals, at all times of the day.

Again this is what used to happen with the restaurants established by Co-op shops in the 1920's and 30's. In so doing, it would resolve another of the problems presented to the residents that of having to dispose of fridge freezers. If you had such good quality restaurant facilities in the middle of the community, it would remove the need for individual fridges/freezers because everyone could treat themselves to eating out every day rather than just on special occasions.

The other problem the street was presented with was having its street lights turned out. This highlights two things that were wrong with the underlying argument of the programme. Firstly, no community that was going to take on the job of providing for itself would do so in this way. It would plan out in advance what it actually required, what it could do itself, and what it needed to buy in. It would not decide to provide its own street lighting, and simply ask for it to be turned off, before it had made alternative arrangements. But, that applies to all the other services that were just taken away overnight. If we take the example of street lighting, then again a reasonable sized community could provide itself with efficient alternatives.

In Spain, many estates – called Urbanizations – do not have street lights, but every house or villa has external lighting that replaces it. But, even street lighting could be provided efficiently by the Community either creating its own, or buying in, from a producer co-operative, electric and heat, produced in a Combined heat and Power Station. In the 1980's, I wrote an article for “Socialist Organiser” on Energy Policy that set out how CHP could provide efficient power. A CHP station is smaller than a conventional power station, and produces both electricity and hot water for a local community. Because hot water is produced as a by-product of the electricity generation, it can effectively be provided to the community for free, and is pumped to each house via pipes to be used for central heating, and domestic hot water.

Moreover, when electricity is transmitted over the National Grid, around 30% of the electricity is lost over the wires in heat lost to the air. Because a CHP station is based close to its community, the electricity only has to travel short distances, so much less is lost in transmission. Of course, Capitalist enterprises be they private or State Capitalist, have no incentive to do that, because their main concern is to reduce their own costs, and maximise their own profits.

At one point in the programme, Nick Robinson claimed that not everything had been cut, because the Police had not been taken away. But, no Police were seen in the Street! I suppose that is typical, however. But, the Police were not there when the programme arranged for yobs to come to play car radios loud one night, nor were they there to prevent about twenty dog walkers, specifically drafted in to get their dogs to crap all over the street. But, in fact, the answer was simple. There was no need for Police, because the residents provided their own much more effective solution to the yobs. One bloke rang a couple of his mates who came round, and when they threatened to take a crow bar to the car the yobs moved on. After all, if there were no police, the yobs could hardly complain to them could they?

In fact, as the workers militias set up in Egypt have demonstrated, workers can police their own communities much better than the Police. Drug dealers, and other petty criminals, would soon be removed from these communities, if workers organised themselves to patrol and police themselves, suitably tooled up with baseball bats where necessary. And where that is not sufficient, then a workers militia under democratic neighbourhood control could do the job, by bringing to bear superior firepower to that of the criminal gangs.

It is true that under the pressure that the Community was placed under, because of the rigged way the experiment had been set up, friction arose between some of the residents. But hold on, frictions sometimes arise even amongst members of a family. The fact, is that the friction was quite minor, and at the end of the day, if people do not wish to remain in a particular community, they are free to leave. In fact, I thought the way the people, having been thrown in at the deep end, responded, by helping each other out, and organising themselves into a democratic, legislative and executive body was extremely hopeful for the establishment of such Collectivist, Co-operative bodies in the future, which will form the basis of Socialism.

But, this is the final part of what I think are the more obvious criticisms of the experiment. If it was supposed to be some kind of comment on the Tories idea of the Big Society, based on volunteering, then it might have some validity. But, a community can organise itself without a reliance on State Capitalism, and without having to rely on volunteering too. The simple answer to the Tory argument against Socialism that workers cannot run things themselves, is that in reality it already IS workers who are running these companies, and providing all the goods ans services we require.

The Capitalists in the main sit back, and just draw their profits from the workers efforts. Where higher managements – often hugely, excessively paid, to tie them to the Capitalists – do play any kind of active role, it is usually only to receive reports, and make decisions upon those reports, drawn up by lower tiers of management, down to levels of managers who are themselves essentially workers. A Co-operative Community could simply commission all of the services it currently receives from a Monopolistic local State Capitalist, from producer Co-operatives set up by the workers who now currently already provide those services. It is likely that such a Workers Co-operative, providing say a Refuse Collection Service, would not waste money on things such as spending £30,000 on Consultants to advise on a change of Council logo, which the Council in Preston had done.

I don't know if the people in the Street did only get the £1,000 back for their Council tax, or if they were recompensed in other ways for taking part. If not, I would be asking the BBC to refund the rest of the money that was owed for the services they had previously paid for out of their other taxes and duties.

TUC Votes For Co-ordinated Action

The TUC has voted this morning for Co-ordinated action aginst the Cuts and Privatisation, as the BBC has reported. Only one union voted against the composite. BALPA questioned whether such action was the best way of winning Public Support. They are wrong. When someone is about to hit you over the head, your first response has to be to raise your arms to block the blow, not look around to see whose assistance you might enlist! The question is not whether co-ordinated action is needed, but what kind of co-ordinated action should be taken.

Matt Wrack of the FBU pointed out what should be obvious, and his view was partly echoed by a commentator from IPSOS, the polling organisation, on the BBC News. An IPSOS poll shows that only 30% of people are definitely opposed to the Cuts. But, as he says, this does not relate to how people feel about cuts that might affect them. This is precisely the point that Matt made in his speech. It is one thing for people to say, in the abstract, that they accept the Government's line that the Cuts are necessary - the Government has the advantage of an appeal to "Common Sense" - but when it is no longer a matter of considering it in the abstract, but of considering the closure or lack of maintenance to your kids school, the closure of the Care Home, or withdrawal of Social Workers that assist your elderly relative, the closure of your Library and so on, then it may not appear to be such "Common Sense" after all. But, it is necessary for the unions, and the LP to get this over to workers, in their communties, now not wait until the Spring, when Local Authorities will begin making these cuts in earnest.

At the Council where I used to work, the Housing Department enlisted the assistance of its workers, to go out into the estates, handing out leaflets and organising meetings, to convince tenants of how beneficial to them the handing over of their Council houses to an ALMO would be. The unions need to do the same thing now, but to convince workers in their communities how devastating the withdrawal of particular facilities will be to their lives. National Demonstrations etc. are all very well and good, but they are fighting on that abstract level, which is a space in which the Liberal-Tories have an advantage. Everyone can imagine that what appears to be "common sense" is so, so long as it is thought to affect someone else. If widespread support is to be built, such that the inevitable attempt of the Liberal-Tories, to split Public Sector from Private Sector workers can be defeated, then it is vital, and urgent, that such a campaign be built from the ground up, from within each community, giving concrete examples of the services that WILL be axed, or reduced. The strength of the anti-Poll Tax movement was precisely that it grew up out of such community based campaigning.

But, there are other things that can be done immediately too. Every union Branch should ballot for industrial action to black any work on formulating Budgets, which are based on a requirement to cut jobs and services. A strike is a blunt tool, that frequently hurts the workers, who depend on the service, at least as much as the employer - in fact, as Engels says there are times when employers seek to save money, when they welcome strike action. The Left has frequently spoken about "Workers Control" in the abstract, linking it in a Utopian manner to the demand for nationalisation. But, here is an opportunity to use the idea of Workers Control in a concrete, practical way. Rather than a blanket strike that withdraws vital services from those that need them, why not actually take industrial action that asserts such Workers Control over the work process, and which directly hits the employer. If UNISON pulled out all of its workers responsible for collecting and processing Council Tax, and rents and other income that would be popular with those who were not being taxed, and would immediately hit the employer without hurting those who need the services. Withdrawal of Cashiers from Sports Centres, whilst leaving supervisory, and manual staff in to run the service would have the same effect - in fact it would probably increase Sports Centre usage no end! HMRC staff could follow a similar line of action ensuring that rebates were paid out, but blacking action on collection.

And, as I have previously suggested, if such action is built from the ground up uniting both Public and Private Sector workers, a plan for actual defence of facilities needs to be put in place. Government workers are used to having to deal with Emergency Planning. That expertise needs to be used now, to put in place plans to defend Public buildings and facilities. Any facility threatened with closure should be occupied, and kept running by the community, and by its workers. Better still, having taken it over, and brought it under direct Workers Ownership, we should demand it stays that way, to prevent the State from merely waiting until a better time for it to renew the attack. As I've written previously, it was great that Liverpool Council built lots of Council Housing in the 1980's, but if those houses had been transferred to the ownership of the workers who lived in them, by establishing a Housing Co-operative, the later attacks on them, in the form of higher rents, and privatisation could never have happened.

The problem is that the TUC leadership on past experience will talk a good fight now, but any action will be limited to the kind of action that fails to challenge Capitalist property, fails to challenge the right of management to manage, and is limited to a series of tokenistic gestures, which unless they are properly built for from the ground up will be damp squibs which will then be used to justify calling off any further action. That is its function, to absorb the pressure form below to negotiate with the employer, and to sell out for some kind of shabby compromise deal. That is another reason that, if the fight against the Cuts is to succeed, it has to be based on the establishment of local Rank and File Committees of workers inside and out of the Public Sector, and has to be co-ordinated by a National Rank & File Steering Committee.

But, we should take heart. As Chris Bambery said at the NSTC meeting against the cuts, the Government is not the same as the Thatcher Government of the 1980's. It is a weak Government. That is true. This is not the 1980's, which is a point I have been making for some time. Every Trade Union militant knows that the attitude of bosses to strikes is not the same all the time. There are times when, as Engels says, employers welcome strikes, when they have an excess of goods to sell, when they need to save money, and a strike saves them wages, for instance. At those times a wise union militant will look for alternative actions to take than just the strike the employer wants them to employ. There are times when the employer does not welcome a strike, but when they will endure it rather than concede, because they cannot afford to make concessions. Under such conditions, a strike is likely to be long and bitter, and risk the possibility that even if succesful, it might be at the cost of the business closing down. Finally, there are times when the employer does not welcome a strike, and where the costs of it will outweigh the profits they could be making, and the market share they might be losing, and so they will quickly make concessions. In the 1980's, as in the 1930's, the global economy was going through a Long Wave decline. During the 1960's and 70's the Rate of Profit was falling, and when the Slump arrived, the use of Keynesian measures only drained the available stores of profit, with no sign of a sustained recovery during which they could be replenished. Ultimately, Capital decided that the costs of conceding were greater than the benefits of resisting.

But, this is not the 1980's. For the last 11 years, the world has been in a Long Wave Boom, rates of profit have been rising, and around the globe massive amounts of profits have been stored up as Money Capital, sitting in sovereign wealth funds in Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere, as well as on the Balance Sheets of the big corporations. Only a portion of those reserves were mobilised to stop the crisis caused by the Banks. The profits to be made by Capital by an early resumption of the global boom are immense, the costs to it of a renewed recession are equally immense, not just in economic, but also in political terms. The Tories, like other right-wing governments in Europe, are not carrying out this policy because Big Capital needs it, or because it is in the interests of Big Capital, quite the opposite is the case. That is a big difference from the 1980's, and a fundamental weakness of the Government's position. It is no coincidence that sections of the State, most dear to the hearts of the Tory faithful - the Police and Armed services - have over recent weeks been issuing repeated statements about the calamity that will befall the nation as a result of the Cuts. In the last few days we have had heads of the Police coming out, and talking, for instance, about it being like Christmas for the criminals. We should not and cannot rely on these elements within the State fighting our battles for us, nor should we even think of making common cause with them simply to defeat the Tories - our interests do not coincide except superficially and momentarily. But, we should recognise the real basis on which the Tories are fighting this battle, and recognise the weakness of their position. We should recognise that just like the bosses in that last scenario, a determined and effective campaign can quickly defeat the Government, because immense pressure will be placed upon it by the big bosses to do so, once the threat to their profits becomes even more apparent than the string of bankrupties, and profits downgrades already makes it.

Core Vote

New Labour's electoral strategy was based on the idea that the core working class Labour vote was not big enough to secure election victories. It ws basically an acceptance of the embourgeoisement theories of the 1960's and 70's, which argued that rising affluence was transforming large sections of the working class into a middle class, whose aspirations made them look away from the traditional affiliation to Labour. Many sociological studies showed that the embouregoisement thesis was false. Yet, there was no doubting the fact that from 1945 onwards Labour's vote was declining. New Labour's strategy basically amounted to the idea that the traditional, working class, core Labour vote would turn out for it almost whatever it did, and, therefore, to win it had to woo the middle classes, even at the expense of policies that were seen to alienate the core vote.

There were quite a lot of flaws in this strategy. Firstly, it assumes that the embourgeoisement thesis was right after all. Secondly, it assumes that the other parties could not equally appeal to that middle class vote, thirdly it assumes that a sufficient number of workers would keep that core vote at a suficient level, and finally it assumes that appealing to the middle class also involves policies that are geared solely to them, rather than that it is possible to design policies that are aimed at workers, but which not only do not attack, but which also benefit the middle class.

I don't intend going over all of the refutations of the embourgeoisement thesis. You can look those up for yourself. However, what I would point out is that many of those traditional groups of workers that have most frequently been seen to fall into this category have themselvess been some of the more militant groups of workers of the last 20 years. On the second point, it took some time for the Tories to regroup, but Cameron embodies the fact that the Tories have indeed, reshaped themselves to win back the middle class, and for that matter so does Nick Clegg for the Liberals. On the third point New Labour appeared to have been proved correct until the last few years. In successive elections large numbers of workers DID continue to come out to vote Labour, which alongside thee middle class vote provided it with huge majorities. In a way that is not surprising. Although the Left has criticised New Labour for not pursuing the kind of socialist, interventionist policies it sets as being the benchmark for judging workers parties, the reality has been that New Labour DID carry through a whole raft of policies that benefitted ordinary working people, such as the building of large numbers of new schools and hospitals, a tripling of the NHS budget, the inroduction of the Minimum Wage, and so on. Yet, despite all of that a section of workers, or what has previously been described as an underclass, remained relatively excluded from these benefits, and if anything relatively more so, as the benefits and rising wages of workers above them increased quite rapidly. Although, this group is quite small, perhaps only 5-10% of the population, it is concentrated in certain areas that make it appear larger than it is, and that is enhanced by the fact that groups like the BNP have been able to latch on to it. Its problems of exclusion, and the causes attributed to it - largely large scale immigration - have been turned into an emblem of the failings of the Government in general.

Politics hates a vaccuum, and as large numbers of Labour activists left the Party, the basis of communtiy organisation began to be undermined, though not as much as is often stated, because that communtiy organisation was always mostly the work of the ordinary worker Branch members, rather than the politicos who focussed on "political" activity in the CLP and higher bodies. The activists who had Left were neither the kind of activists who were going to immerse themselves into the kind of community activism that the ordinary Branch members were engaged in, and as they either dropped out altogether, or else isolated themselves from thee class in tiny sects, they were in any case in no position to do so. Its no surprise that both the Liberals who for several decades have built up their local organisation and position in Local Councils through Community activism, and the BNP who have made a conscious turn to such work have filled the vaccuum that was left. We will have to see how much of Labour's core vote turns out for it, in the election, but it is being attacked from several directions.

The greatest tragedy is that it was, in fact, quite possible to have appealed to and won over sections of the middle class, whilst at the same time advancing policies that were directed towards the traditional working class. The German SPD at the beginning of the twentieth century went out of its way to win the support of the middle class, of small traders etc., whilst advancing a solidly pro-working class programme. Unfortunately, it is the idea that most of the Left has adopted of "redistributive socialism", which undermines this strategy. It is frequently pointed out that if you want to finance the spending that is seen as necessary for the NHS, Education etc. this cannot be raised simply by raising taxes on the few billionaires, and multi, multi-millionaires. The massive growth of the Welfare State, and attendant bureaucracy requires huge amounts of finance, and in order to finance it taxes are raisd not just on the rich, but on everyone. As Eric Hobsbawm has pointed out, what the Welfare State has done is not to redistribute from the rich to the poor, but merely to redistribute from one group of workers to another. In doing so, it necessarily creates the basis of intense division and antagonism within the working class. That is why so many workers, complain about scroungers, about single mothers, and so on. It is not just the fault of the gutter press that enhane and play upon those ideas. They can only do so, because those stories play into the experiences of many workers in their daily lives. Middle class lefties might not want to accept that, but it is a fact.

What the Left has done is to abandon all hope for now of challenging the wealth and power of he bourgeoisie, and instead settled for a redistributive socialism that attacks not the bouregoisie, but the petit-bouregois, the middle class, and even as the need fo more taxation has risen, even the better off sections of workers. It has advanced a strategy that divides the majority of workers from its natural allies, and drives those other sections of society into the hands of the Liberals and Tories. It does so whilst, trying to attract to it those very sections of the working class, least likely to form a "Vanguard", the least advance sections, the sections who are in fact, being attracted to the BNP. In that respect, the strategy of the Left has been at least no better thaan that of New Labour.

More than a hundred years ago, Marx argued against such a strategy. He pointed out why such redistribution could never work. It does not matter whether it is proposed to effect this redistribution by militant Trade Union struggle to raise wages and conditions, or by the Tax policies of a "Workers Government". He advised workers not to spend too much of their time on the former, precisely because of the limitations that existed to it, due to the natural laws of economics and Capital accummulation. He pointed out the fallacy of the latter, because it assumes that Distribution and Production are two separate spheres, whereas those very same laws of economics that he and others had uncovered demonstrated precisely that Distribution was a function of Production. If you want to change the Distribution of Wealth and Power in society you first have to change the distribution of ownership of the means of production. So long as capitalist retain the majority ownership of the means of production, whatever measures for reeduistribution of income or wealth are undertaken, will come to nought. But, as he says, once Co-operative ownership of the means of production begins to increase, those same laws, bring about a decisive shift in distribution of wealth and power to workers.

If Labour or any other Workers Party is to have a succesful strategy it has to build that alliance between the working class and the middle classes. It cannot do so on the basis of redistributive socialism, which to be credible has to place the burden of taxaation on those very same middle classes, and sections of the working class. It has instead to focus its attention on attacking the real basis of inequality in society - the concentration of ownership of the means of production in the hands of a tiny number of very, very rich families. It can do that by immediately demanding control of the workers pension funds, in which those same middle classes also have invested large amounts. It was not just workers after all who were aghast at the actions of the bankers and financiers. At a time when even the Tories are talking about Co-operatives and Mutualisation, let's take them at their word, and begin by turning those pension funds into Co-operatives, owned and controlled directly by the workers.

Immediately, the rise of the Liberals opens an intersting prospect for Labour. If the Liberal vote were to turn out anything like that being suggested in the polls, then this would mean that it is that large centre ground that has been divided up. No longer would Labour have to worry about losing it to the Tories. The most sensible strrategy for labour then would be a core vote strategy. If labour can turn out its core vote, whilst the centre ground vote is split fairly equally three ways then it has every chance of winning.

Pandering To Backwardness

For the last few General Elections, there has been concern at the poor voter turnouts. It has caused some discussion as to why turnouts have been declining, and has led to various suggestions to be made of how to reverse it. There has been proposals to follow the Australian solution, and make voting compulsory; there have been proposals to make voting easier, such as the introduction of postal voting for all; and there has been proposals to allow people to vote at the supermarket and so on. The various gimmicks etc., that we see introduced by the politicians themselves, whether it be in some novel advertising, or use of celebrities and so on, all fall into the same category.

Yet, none seem to work. On TV over recent days, a succession of vox pops have shown just how dire is the level of political culture in Britain, the home of what is supposed to be the oldest democracy. People of all ages seem to almost glory in their own ignorance of what is the most important thing for them to understand - how the decisions that affect their lives, and how and who the people who make those decisions are arrived at. It appears that people can spend plenty of time finding out the most intimate details of the lives of various "celebrities", whether to be able to vote them off some mind numbing "unreality" show, or just for the hell of it, but cannot be bothered to find out anything about how their lives will be governed.

That is not to blame such individuals; we are all what society makes us. People are not born able or unable to participate in political life, any more than people are born theives or criminals. But, that understanding does not lead Marxists to simply pander to criminals, still less to simply ignore the affects on the lives of ordinary workers of those criminals. We are keen to explain the social causes of crime, and to seek to address those causes, but in the meantime our main concern is with the class conscious workers who are the means by which those social conditions will be changed, not with the criminals that are an obstacle towards it. In the same way, it should be no part of a Marxist approach to pander to the backwardness of those who simply cannot be bothered to involve themselves in politicals life. We should oppose the further dumbing down of politics to accommodate them, we should oppose making it easier to vote, which only devalues each vote. Yet, at the same time we should address ourselves to those causes of that apathy.

In a similar vein, watching the news tonight, I was struck by the response on the street to the release of the Tories manifesto, and, in particular, its proposals for enabling ordinary citizens, and communities, to take control of various aspects of their lives. I have already written, in my blog "Red Tories", about the limitations of the Tories proposals in that regard. Gordon Brown is right to say that the Tories proposals substitute form for content. Yet, that should not lead us to reject that form, only to fill that form with our own content. Many of those same people, who cannot be bothered to find out, about the politicians whose decisions control their lives, were the same ones who also voiced the idea that they could not take over the running of schools or other facilities in their area, that it was the job of the politicians to do that - the same politicians, who on other occasions, they will accuse of being all the same etc - that it would "never happen", and so on.

Of course, its not surprising that many people have such ideas. Capitalism and bourgeois democracy have conditioned people into such a belief, into the belief that, just as society cannot function without bosses, who own the factories, and manage them, so society cannot function without professional elected politicians who look after that side of workers lives, and all they have to do is vote every few years, just as all they have to do is turn up to work and do what they are told every day. And, as I've written here many times, the Left also falls into that category. Most of the Left, itself completely tied to statism, agrees with those interviewed, who said that it was the responsibility of the Capitalist State to run things, like schools, and not for them to concern themselves with such functions. That Left argues that otherwise it would be to "let that State off the hook", that its necessary to demand that it does so that workers lose their illusions in it, and so on. None of it arguments that demonstrate any faith in the working class being able to actually run these things for itself, which is the bedrock requirement for Socialism, none of them arguments that actually address the needs of workers here and now, for effective, efficient provision of these services.

Last week, I attended a Compass Meeting called to discuss the "Way Forward For Labour", and found myself feeling as though I were talking a different language. In fact, so much so that I didn't at first realise that this was the reason I was not being understood. Whereas, I was talking about the need for LP members to act like shop stewards or TU activists on the shop floor, acting as facilitators to encourage rank and file organisation by workers in their communities to control and struggle to change their own lives, it was some time before I realised that some of the LP members, and Councillors to whom I was speaking understood this to mean simply them dealing with ordinary problems in those communities. Of course, as some of those Councillors pointed out, here and now, there are some things that simply cannot be controlled by groups of self-acting workers in the community. If you want to oppose a particular type of school organisation, such as the Academy, then, as things stand, that can only be done at a political level. But, nobody says that everything can be done immediately. The point is how can a bedrock be created that facilitates bringing about those higher level policy changes?

And yes, listening to those workers on the TV who cannot see how it would be possible for them to set up and run their own school or other Public Service, does play into the idea of simply leaving it up to the Capitalist State, leave it up to the professional politicians. But, our experience of that ,be it under Western Capitalism, or Eastern Stalinism, shows that, if you settle for that, you will get a deficient service, and the growth of a self-serving bureaucracy that eventually will collapse the whole provision. We should remember that those backward workers who cannot be bothered to find out anything about what they are being asked to cast their vote on, cannot see the possibility of being able to have any control over their services and lives, and who can see no alternative to the State doing that for them, are the same people who cannot be bothered to go to their Trade Union meeting if they can be bothered even to join a Trade Union. Such people are not the basis of transforming society, and creating socialism. We cannot pander to such elements, and we cannot limit our forward march to their speed.

To the extent that the Tories have opened the door on groups of workers being able to take power back into their hands, Marxists should support it, and push it forward as far, as fast and as widely as we can. We should not be concerned that those groups of more advanced workers, who do organise themselves, to establish their own Co-operative and Mutual organisations, may gain advantages over those who do not, anymore than we argue that advanced workers should not form Trade Unions, and win for themselves better wages and conditions for fear that less advanced workers, who do not, will suffer relatively. On the contrary, we argue that the former show the way to the latter. It requires a completely different mindset to that which most sociaalists have operated for the last 100 years. As I said at the meeting last week, it is the mindset which says, "I don't give a shit who the Councillor is or who the MP is, because its all about what I do as an individual socialist, and individual LP member to encourage other workers to organise themselves. Get that right, and we'll get the Councillors, the MP's, and the Party we need."

Of course, that's a bit of bending the stick. We are concerned whether its a Labour or Tory who is elected, whether it is a right-wing or Left-wing Labour candidate. But, for too long the Left has operated the same kind of Parliamentarism that it criticises reformists for. It has operated thaat mentality in its Trade Union work as much as in its political work. But, the reality is that winning positions, getting "Left" policies adopted means absolutely nothing if it is built on sand, if it does not reflect a massive level of rank and file, active support. That is why "Left" policies won at Conferences can be ignored by leaderships, for instance. There is no shortcut to the task that Marx set out, to win the battle of democracy.

Solving the MP's Housing Expenses Problem

Later this week Parliament will be trying to stitch up seom deal to avert the current furore over Ministers and other MP's expenses claims that have in recent weeks been reduced to farce. Here is a simple solution.

For all those MP's who live outside London, and who need accommodation near to Parliament, why not simply provided them all with a house on some run-down Council estate? Now, I realise that the press would undoubtedly use this to run stories about well-paid MP's doing homeless people out of Council Houses, but the answer to that is simple. Currently, those same MP's get oodles of dosh to cover their expenses for hotal accommodation, or to cover the mortgage payments on their various other homes, or ven homes of their relations who they claim to be living with. That amount comes to way more than the rent on such Council houses, so simply Capitalising that Rent would mean that the Government could hand that over to the relevant Council so that it could build replacment accommodation, which would have the added benefit of providing some building workers with jobs!

Ministers and MP's are always telling us how much they want to "listen" to ordinary people, having them living on such a Council Estate would be an ideal opportunity for them to put that into practice!

Lessons of the Ravenscliffe By Election

The results of last week's Ravenscliffe By-Election were.

Stephen Blair - Con - 229 (25.3 per cent)

Gill Burnett - Lab - 213 (23.6 per cent)

Sarah Barnes - BNP - 180 (20 per cent)

John Parsons - Lib Dem - 149 (16.5 per cent)

Geoff Locke - Ukip - 131 (14.5 per cent)

26.18 per cent turn-out (902 votes in total)

Even for a local by-election the poll was pretty low, so not too much can be judged by it. But, this was not a good ward for the BNP to stand in, and yet it came third. As can be seen, if the BNP Light UKIP vote had gone to the BNP they would have won comfortably, though, in reality, the UKIP candidate, who lives in the ward, is not your normal UKIP nutter, and he did warn against voting for the BNP.

Labour's showing was respectable, given the position of Labour nationally, and the fact that Labour's campaign was pretty abysmal. The Tories were able to use the fact that they now control the Council, and have done a few cosmetic improvements, in the area, to get out enough votes to win. It's possible some Lib Dems voted tactically, to make sure the BNP were kept out - the Tories were always likely to win - but, given the low poll, that seems unlikely to account for much of their poor showing. The BNP will no doubt see the result as encouraging for their further forays into Newcastle Borough, as a logical extension of their strong position in Stoke Council. Having won secure positions in the large Council estates, in Stoke, at Bentilee and Meir, and other traditional working class areas, they now look likely to expand into the deprived areas of Newcastle, in Chesterton and Silverdale, where large former Council estates could provide them with further bases.

The result shows that what I said in my previous blog clearly applies. It is no longer enough to simply attack the BNP, certainly not to base activity on the idea that its just a matter of preventing a vote for the BNP. Its necessary to provide a positive alternative, and realistically that can only be the LP. The events of the last week have shown to me that, also, what I said previously has been proved to be correct. The idea of an anti-fascist organisation that seeks to defeat the BNP, without itself developing a political alternative, is very limited. There are two alternatives. Either an anti-fascist movement has to be one which is fairly homogenous, that is it must essentially be one made up of working class organisations, which have at least some generally shared principles, or else that anti-fascist organisation has to focus on a very limited set of objectives - in effect just mobilising to counter the BNP when and where it mobilises.

If the BNP are attacking a local ethnic community, I'm not bothered whether the bloke standing next to me opposing them is a rugby player from the local Conservative Club, or a philosopher from the Socialist Party, but, if some propaganda is going out, then I know, in advance, that I will have some common grounds with the SP comrade, but absolutely none with the Tory. But, in reality, as experience has shown, if a political alternative is to be presented to workers, it has to be a credible alternative, and not the fantasy politics of the sectarian left. In reality, it means that the political alternative to the BNP can only be channelled through the LP. That is not going to come through the current LP leadership, and, unfortunately, it is unlikely to come through many of the ordinary rank and file LP members in the branches. It's only Marxists who can put forward the interests of the movement tomorrow in the movement of today. The long, balls-aching job of plodding away, day in day out, patiently explaining to those workers the solutions that need to be developed remains the main task of Marxists today.

Mr Brown Comes Back From The Coast

The Labour Party might still be mired in the Brown stuff, but the by-election victory at Glenrothes means they are smelling slightly sweeter today. Speculators talk about a dead-cat bounce when shares make a half-hearted recovery the day after a huge decline. No doubt a number of appropriate descriptions of what bounced here could similarly be adduced.

Partly, the explanation for the win seems to be tactical voting. Some Tories interviewed last night on TV said they had voted Labour to stop the SNP, because of their opposition to Scottish Independence. Partly, it could e a reaction against the rule of the SNP in Scotland itself. But, a main consideration must be that Gordon Brown has been seen in the current financial crisis to be a safe pair of hands. A drastic turnaround from the situation only a few weeks ago - though it has to be said that itself was a turnaraound from Brown's initial popularity. This is the problem with bourgeois Parliamentarism. Electors are faced with essentially two choices between identical products - just like choosing between two identical soap powders in different packets - and so change their allegiance based on ephemera. See: here .

Yes, in Scotland they also had the option of voting for two avowedly Socialist even revolutionary parties, but, as has happened for the last 100 years, the working class, if it was aware of their existence, ignored it. Yet again it should be a lesson that if socialists want the working class to take them seriously then socialists have to go that working class - as Trotsky once put it, "the Mohammedans beleive the mountain will come to the prophet, Marxists believe it is much more sensible for the prophet to go to the Mountain." Surely, even the faux Marxists wrapped up in their own little world who believe they are involved in "mass work" by handing out a few leaflets for candidates with no hope at elections, or when they engage in harangues with political opponents at Trade Union Branch meetings must realise that they are doing nothing of the sort. Mass work involves being involved with all of those workers that have not ven reached that level, and you require a conduit to reach them, a lever by which the infinitessimally small numbers of the Marxists can move a bigger weight.

Rank and file organisations within workplaces, or Factory Committees can be one way of doing that in the industrial sphere provided that they are geared to real mass work at organising the self-activity of the workers within the factory rather than as they have been simply election machines or resolution mongering machines. Tenants and Residents Associations can fulfill a similar function within communities. But, if such work is to be done on a meaningful level if such work is to be joined up across communities across workplaces it requires much greater numbers than the revolutioanries can currently provide. And if such activity is not to simply be a form of syndicalism it wil require a political perspective that the tiny revolutionary groups - even were they combined - cannot provide. It will require a focus on the Labour Party. A focus again not on the Labour party as a forum to slag off right-wing Labour members, but a means of connectin with ordianry workers in their daily lives of using its machinery to work within the community, and help initiate the self-activity of the class.

At the present time there are a number of campaigns going on around the question of housing and evictions, in Manchester and lewisham for instance. The stock response of the statist left is to simply demand that the bourgeois state resolve the problem. Those that raise such demands know this bourgeois state will not do that, but their horizon is geared not to providing real solutions to the working class, but the insignificant task of embarrassing the Labour and bouregois politicians. A real solution for the working class in these situations runs through showing them how they can establish Co-operative Housing to take over both the houses and the management of Estates so that they the workers living there can exercise real democratic control without continually having to fight a running battle with Landlords or Banks whether they be private or State. It runs through demands that the working class take control of things like the Co-op Bank, of Unity Trust and so on and runs them to meet its needs. Of course, where workers take action to prevent evictions, or to stop the privatisation of Council housing Marxists should support them in the same way they support workers striking for higher pay or better conditions, or against redundancies. But the job of Marxists is to explain to workers why such solutions are inadequate, why at best they provide a temporary solution, and why they need to act themselves to take over ownership of the means of production for themselves, by utilising their resources and the credit already available to establish their own Co-operative property.

Once workers see that works they can see a different world is possible. Then they will support politicians and parties whose ideas are based on that different world, but not before. Then workers will not be so fickle in their voting moved one way or another by ephemera, but will begin to see and udnerstand the path ahead, and will stick to it.

"I Was Born By the River"

Sam Cooke once sang, "Its been a long time coming, but I know a change is gonna come" (see bottom). One one level the election of Obama as the first black American President does signify that change. It is an event that Sam Cooke and other Black Americans in the early 1960's could only strive for. We should remember, that in what is supposed to be the world's greatest democracy it has still taken half a century from that time before a Black man could become President.

But, as I have written in previous blogs the question is not really about the change that has occurred within American Society that allows a relatively privileged black man to become President, but what has changed in American society for the vast majority of Black men and Women, and what difference will the election of Obama make to their condition.

The answer to the first question is fairly easy to answer. Black men might not suffer the same lynchings by white supremacists that they did in the 1960's, but they still suffer State sanctionded lynchings through the far higher proportion of Black Men on Death Row compared to their white counterparts. Ordinary Black Men and Women still suffer huge discrimination in employment, in housing etc. despite the small number of Oprah's and Cosby's that have for some time provided a role model for aspiration. It seems unlikely, that after decades of such individual successes even Obama's triumphant ascent to the White House can make any greater effect in that direction. And how could it? The problem for poor Blacks is effectively the same as for any other group of working class people. It is not a lack of aspiration, no lack of desire to be affluent. It is the fundamental fact, that in a capitalist society not everyone CAN be rich, and whatever the delusion presented as the American Dream, the fact is today in the United States more than anywhere, the fact is that the best way to become rich is to be born rich. Study after study has shown that despite all of the propaganda the US has a much lower - and falling - rate of social mobility than many other countries, particularly Scandinavia, and Germany.

One of the basic reason for that is the low level of social support in the US, and in particular the poor standard of Education provided the lowest levels of society. Being black simply exacerbates that discrimination that all of the poor experiences whatever its colour, whatever its creed, whatever its gender or sexual orientation. Just look at the experiecne of Hurricane Katrina which showed that in the world's richest country a large proprtion of its people live a life similar to people in the Third World. This is a country where something like 25% of the population do not have wealth, but have negative wealth that is they live he whole of their life in serious debt. Yet, this is a country where Warren Buffett has as much personal wealth as the bottom 40% of the population combined. Bill Gates who until recently was slightly ahead of him owns a similar amount.

To get a grip on how much Marx was right about the degree to which Wealth would be concentrated in the hands of an ever smaller minority consider this. In order to come within the wealthiest 1% in the US you need a Net Worth of $3 million. Most of the people that come within this category are not really rich odd as that may seem. Certainly they are rich compared with the vast majority of US citizens, but in reality most of these people are not true Capitalists, they are really only Middle Class. Th majority are people over 50 whose wealth is tied up in their house, and their Pension Plan. For most of them - particularly given US Health and Social Care costs - this wealth will disappear in their retirement. Compare that wealth with say Warren Buffett or Bill Gates with a Net Worth of around $40 BILLION. Put another way either of them has as much wealth as 13,000 of those that just scrape into the top 1%! To Buffett's credit he favours much higher taxes on the rich like himself, and both he and Gates have transferred the vast bulk of their wealth into Gates Charitable Foundation which seeks to provide Healthcare and other humanitarian aid for the world's poorest people. But, the point is that society should not have to rely on such philanthropy, it should be ordered such that these gross maldistributions of wealth and income do not arise int he first place. That cannot be achieved by redistributive tax policies either. It can only be achieved when the system that creates such iniquities is abolished, when workers own and control the means of production for themselves.

Unfortunately, the charges of the republicans that Obama is a socialist are nothing more than slurs. If he were and attempted to introduce socialist measures the US ruling class would quickly undermine him, and replace him one way or another. They will have no need. Obama is no socialist. That doesn't mean that Obama's polcies will be totally indistinguishable from those of George Bush. At the beginning of the Twentieth Century once of the consequences of the Long Boom was that in the US and elsewhere a series of reformist measures was introduced. Under Teddy Roosevelt in the US, under the Liberals in Britain. Similarly, after a similar period of expansion in the Long Boom after WWII similar reformist measures were introduced under the Wilson Government in Britain, under DeGaulle in France and the Great Society under LBJ in the US. It will be no coincidence if such a period of reformism happens under Obama. But, the nature of that reformism has to be understood. Marx spoke of the "Civilising Mission" of Capitalism the way it is forced to raise the living standards of the working class, to expand the scale and scope of the Use Values produced and therefore consumed, the way the nature of its production leads to the need for the education and culture of the workers to be raised. On the one hand that provides part of the basis for workers to become the ruling class. On the other hand, those reforms also act to socialise and tie workers to the bourgeois regime,and to reliance on the bouregois State.

The nature of Capitalism is to break that personal tie that existed between Landlord and serf, and to replace it with the open cash nexus. The nature of the Welfarism introduced by an expanding Capitalism is to reconvert a sizeable proportion of the working class to serfdom no longer existing as free wage workers, but existing as dependent vassals on the good graces of the Capitalist State, watched, investigated, their activities restricted, their whole existence dependent upon a paternalistic State, with the consequent effect on their own dignity and conscioussness. That is the true nature under Capitalism of those kinds of reforms.

Watching, the jubilation of tens of thousands of Black Americans on the news today it is difficult not to share their joy, the joy of those like Jesse Jackson who are of the generation that saw the lynchings and all the other vile outpourings of racism and white supremacism, and the joy of those thousands of young Black Americans of a generation that only knows of that from what it has read, and seen on TV, and that looks to Obama as offering a new hope. Yet, I was moved to think about the difference between the two. I heard a comment last night that said something about in the 1960's we as young people were in the streets trying to bring about change, today the young people are in the voting booths bringing about change. As someone has pointed out the latter would not have been possible without the former. But, that difference also caused me concern. It is very well to have mobilised tens of thousands of young people - black and white - to vote for Change, but what Now. The likelihood is that they will see their job as done. The whole of bourgeois ideology is geared to the idea that you elect someone else to do the politics, because bouregois ideology says that the politics happens elsewhere in some elected forum - it does not occur on the streets, in the factories, or in the communities. But, of course for workers it is precisely in all of these latter places that politics does, and must occur if real change is to be won.

The consequence of that can be seen in advance. Disappointment, disillusion and demoralisation. Already, all of those stock bouregois phrases of One Nation Toryism are coming out of the Obama Camp, talk of bringing in Republicans to the Government, talk about how tough things are, and must be - always the introductory statements of Government intent on squeezing the workers - and a general rowing back of positions. The only answer to that is not to ask the workers, the poor and the middle class to simply look for some alternative more left-wing politician to resolve their problems. It is to tell them in advance what is going to happen, and to help them t organise themselves, to rely on themselves and not on some politician/s. It is vital that US socialists are active at the grass roots of the Democrats as these discussions on "What Now?" take place, as well as in the Unions, in the Community Organisations and so on. It is necessary to organise and orientate the workers around a program of self-activity building their own co-operative organisations for control and ownership of their housing and communties, for building other co-operative enterprises geared to meeting the immediate needs of those communities, and to tie them together preventing them from being isolated utopian, small-scale ventures, to mobilise the Unions and Labour Movement to support and be supported by such ventures, to help mobilise the necessary Capital through the Unions funds, through the workers pensions and savings, through the Mutual Societies, through the creation of Local Credit Unions, and of a Co-operative Bank under the ownership and control of the workers through their unoins and other Labour organisations.

A Change is gonna come, but it requires the working class to bring it about now through its own activity. The working class has to end its servility, and its servile dependence upon the bourgeois State, has to get up off its knees.

Sam Cooke - "A Change is Gonna Come"

Communities in Control

The proposals announced by the Government today in “Communities in Control” contain some useful ideas on paper. See:Communities in Control

The idea that democracy should be participatory, and built from the ground up is one that socialists should support. The idea also that communities should be given control over their own neighbourhoods, and the facilities within them is also one that socialists should support, and one I have proposed for some time. Socialists will also welcome the proposal to remove the sold “Widdicombe Rules” introduced by the Thatcher Government which removed the human rights of Local Government workers by preventing them over a given salary scale level from being able to participate in Party politics – as though most of the top Civil Servants, and Local Government Officers weren’t themselves Tories, and representatives of the ruling class. The proposals to make the top Local Government Chiefs more accountable to communities by giving people the right to drag them before local panels to be questioned should also be welcomed.

However, some caution is clearly warranted. As the Liberals spokesperson said, often farming out local assets such as Community Centres has been done by local Councils as a means of shifting off their books services which are unprofitable, and a drain on Council resources. If such assets are to be transferred to local communities then those communities need to have the Council’s books opened to them so that they can see what they are taking on. If taking on such an asset saves the Council money then Council Tax payers in that area should receive a rebate on their Council Tax, or else the Council should provide an annual rebate to the Community for running the facility. It is one thing for local Communities to voluntarily establish at their own initiative co-operative ventures to control immediate aspects of their lives, such as ownership and management of housing estates, and facilities, it is another for those communities to have things foisted on them from above, even if it is made to look like something they have agreed to.

We have lots of examples of how co-operative ventures are more efficient, more equitable, and more democratic than capitalist enterprise either of the private or state variety, but simply because some enterprise or activity is organised on co-operative lines does not of itself guarantee that it is so. Only, if such ventures are genuinely the initiative of workers, created from the bottom up, are well planned, organised and run – not to mention effectively capitalised – can they offer the kind of example, and inspiration that Marx and other socialists said they could be. Moreoever, such co-operative ventures can only provide that level of efficiency and so on if they are developed on a wide scale bringing together a number of co-operative ventures, and integrating their activities. A good start would be to utilise the resources of the Co-op itself both financial and administrative to train local community workers leaders to act as a vanguard in establishing such ventures. Branch LP’s could also act as a means of igniting and organising such activity, but of course there is no indication from Blear’s speech that such is proposed, because to do so would imply that there is a connection between consistent democracy and working class political activity.

Indeed, having said in her Parliamentary speech that her proposals follow in the footsteps of those throughout history that had insisted on the right of greater participation, having wrapped the proposals, correctly, in the clothes of an extension of participatory democracy, in reply to a Question from a Tory backbencher, she said that the proposals were not intended to weaken but to enhance representative democracy. That is a collapse right at the beginning. Representative democracy is bourgeois democracy, it is the form of democracy established by the capitalist class as the best means of it retaining real control, whilst giving the veneer of popular control over the central and local state. If local bourgeois representative democracy is to remain dominant then any participatory democracy, and proposals for handing over ownership and control of community assets will be a fraud. At the end of the day it will be that representative democracy that will override any direct democratic decisions made by local communities.

Ultimately, control is a function of ownership. If workers want control over the enterprises they work in, or the communities they live in, that can only come from ownership of those enterprises and communities. Some short term control might be exercised in exceptional conditions, but the capitalists will ultimately reassert their control. Only real workers ownership through the creation of co-operative forms at the real instigation of workers can avoid that problem, as a stage toward as Marx proposed the extension of such forms on a national basis, and that only as a transitional stage on the way to the establishment of a Workers State, which can complete the process of transforming property relations and secure power in the hands of the working class. That is the task Marxists have to set themselves. If Blear’s proposals can be utilised to assist in that process all very well.

A Reply To Mike McNair Part III

“The Russian October was (as the left socialists predicted) simultaneously the forerunner/ trigger, and an outlier in a backward country, of a powerful revolutionary movement of the working class in Europe as a whole in 1917-20. The failure of the USSR is ultimately merely the long-delayed result of the failure of this European revolutionary movement.”

I agree, but we cannot forget that this failure is dialectically linked to the Revolution itself, just as the degeneration (in Trotsky’s view) or I would say deformation of the revolution was dialectically linked to the role of Leninism. Indeed, I would go further and argue that the loss of control of the workers organisations by the workers – though I would want to place caveats on that conception – was itself a function of the division of the labour movement that Leninism created. It drew the most advanced workers and revolutionary Marxists away, thereby giving the right reformists an open field in the socialist parties – which largely remained where the majority of the class gave its allegiance – and it created, ultimately, the conditions under which Stalinism could control not just a national section of the international labour movement, but all of the sections of the Comintern. At the same time it created the kind of tribal warfare within the working class that we have seen replicated in miniature within the ranks of Trotskyism ever since, the tendency of individuals to say “My party right or wrong”, which in and of itself mitigates the basic requirement of any Marxist to learn to think for themselves.

Mike argues that the failure was due to the loss of control of the workers organisations to the petty proprietors, by which he means the middle class intellectuals. I think this is very debatable. I think there is plenty of evidence to show that it was not middle class individuals that captured these positions, rather it was often workers who were elected/appointed to such positions, and who as a result of the nature of the position – necessarily a mediating role, balanced between the employer and the worker often with a lifestyle closer to that of the employer than the worker and so on – that led such people to adopt a petty-bourgeois lifestyle and outlook. I have given some examples here in my blogs on the development of the Labour Movement in Stoke, and of the 1905 TUC.

Moreover, if we accept the Leninist view of the working class as remaining a slave class until the moment of its emancipation then this process of the workers organisations falling into the hands of such individuals must be a phenomenon that must continually repeat itself. What this concept seems to lack in my opinion, is any questioning of the actual material conditions which could enable such a process to come about, and therefore, what changes are required in those material foundations to prevent it. In Part II I think I have suggested how that is possible i.e. in developing co-operative enterprises here and now, in owning and controlling the means of production, the workers not only themselves become “petty property owners” in the form of means of production, but also in that other form of developing their own skills etc., become trained and conditioned from the beginning to participating in the control of their own lives in every respect. The very fact of the need to hold shop meetings in works time to discuss this or that item of production, and so on means that this form of property can only function if the workers participate fully in its administration and control. And it necessarily follows that the other workers organisations that arise out of this property form require the same degree of involvement and control by the workers themselves. This is not the same as some nationalised industry, be it one nationalised by a bourgeois state or a “Workers” state, where that state itself can employ a Manager who can become alienated from the rest of the workers.

Moreover, the most important caveat I would put to the notion that the workers organisations being captured by the petty producers would be that although there is clearly a dialectical relationship between leadership and mass, I think that Mike falls into the Trotskyist mindset of seeing all evils, and all solutions being simply a question of “leadership”. It is not at all clear to me that the existing leaderships of the Trade Unions or other Labour Movement bodies, such as the Labour Party do so in opposition to the views and wishes of the mass of their memberships. This view which implies that there is some vast reservoir out there of working class anger just waiting to be given the correct leadership, so that it can be unleashed against capitalism seems in my opinion to be so at odds with the empirical evidence that it simply beggars belief. Just look at the results of the last local elections and see how bad the “revolutionary” left alternatives to Labour did, even in comparison to the BNP. The fact that Labour did badly too doesn’t make that any better, it makes it worse. It means that in deserting Labour workers moved not left to the revolutionaries, but right to the Liberals, Tories and BNP!!! On that basis, perhaps we should be grateful that these bodies were captured by the petty property owners rather than being too reflective of that mass.

And how could it be otherwise? Ideas are a function of the material base. Workers can only develop socialist consciousness if they can see some form of property relations that advance their interests. Its not surprising that workers voted for New Labour, as opposed to the Tories or Old Labour. Both had offered failed solutions. But, when New Labour proved to be no better, the solutions offered by the left could have no grip on the working class, because there was nothing in reality, nothing in the workers actual experience that could suggest to them that these solutions were in any way possible. Of course, they viewed Capitalism as the only way things could be done, of course when one lot of Capitalist parties failed the only realistic solution for them was to look to some other Capitalist parties.

That is why Marx said in his address to the First International,

“But there was in store a still greater victory of the political economy of labor over the political economy of property. We speak of the co-operative movement, especially the co-operative factories raised by the unassisted efforts of a few bold “hands”. The value of these great social experiments cannot be overrated. By deed instead of by argument, they have shown that production on a large scale, and in accord with the behests of modern science, may be carried on without the existence of a class of masters employing a class of hands; that to bear fruit, the means of labor need not be monopolized as a means of dominion over, and of extortion against, the laboring man himself; and that, like slave labor, like serf labor, hired labor is but a transitory and inferior form, destined to disappear before associated labor plying its toil with a willing hand, a ready mind, and a joyous heart.”

But, all workers see at the moment is the failure of the Soviet experiment, they see the inefficiency and bureaucracy of the old British State Capitalist enterprises, and conclude from these deeds that speak more loudly than words, if this is socialism, I’ll stick with Capitalism.

Mike’s argument that this process of the workers organisations being “captured” by the middle class didn’t happen in Russia until after the revolution again I find hard to accept. It seems to swallow the myth of the Leninists about the nature of the Bolsheviks. The fact is as Trotsky points out the Bolsheviks for most of the period up to October were largely inseparable from the Mensheviks and SR’s. Whether it is on the question of revolutionary defeatism, or the question of the Democratic Dictatorship, or the question even of the insurrection the mass of the party not only was against Lenin, but certainly on the first of these simply ignored his position, and that which was supposed to be the position of the party. Only when Russia began to do badly in the War and opposition began to arise did the Party masses begin to change their position. But also, a look at the actual mass organisations of the workers, the Trade Unions, shows most of them in the hands not of the Bolsheviks, but of the Mensheviks, so even were the myth of the steeled Leninist Bolshevik party true it would be irrelevant in respect of those organisations. A look too at Trotsky’s History of the Russian revolution shows as I have said elsewhere that even in that most revolutionary period, and in those organs most closely associated with the proletarian vanguard – the Soviets – we find them made up not on the basis of some super proletarian democracy, but instead made up of the troops (largely, therefore, representative of the peasantry), and in Trotsky’s words all kinds of hangers on who used their elbows to push their way in.

“They attributed the failure of the Second International not to capture by the party and union apparatuses but to capture by "accidental elements" in the socialist intelligentsia or "opportunists" (the latter not in the sense of rightists as such, but of career bourgeois politicians who saw an opportunity to obtain office by attaching themselves to the workers' movement, a real but secondary phenomenon).”

I do not think this is a correct assessment. Rather I believe that Lenin’s argument is that precisely because the ideas of the bourgeoisie remain the dominant ideas – including amongst the working class – until the workers are emancipated, then those self same bourgeois ideas must find their reflections within the labour movement itself. They find themselves replicated necessarily within the Trade Unions – which is why Lenin was opposed to the incorporation of the unions into the party and insisted they be kept separate – and must even find their way into the workers party, and so leads to the need for regular purges to remove such influences, and so on. He was well aware that one manifestation of that was within the ranks of the intelligentsia, and accepted that the Revisionists – Bernstein and his followers, and the economists in Russia – had some of the better theoreticians. It was precisely for that reason he argued against freedom of criticism fearful that alternate views might infect the workers. We see the same approach by Leninist organisations today, for example in the way the AWL have censored my own posts to their website, showing that Leninist organisations are so unsure of their own politics that they even fear the views of individuals.

The issue of the role of the Comintern in limiting workers struggle is what I meant earlier by recognising the dialectical interrelationship between the fate of the Revolution, and the way they fed back on to the subsequent failure of revolution throughout Europe, a failure which in itself doomed the USSR. In effect the role of the bureaucracy became no different from the role of the trade Union or Social Democratic bureaucracy. Each has some vision of “socialism”, each seeks to move towards its aim, but within the constraints imposed on that, by the overarching requirement to keep that process tightly under its control. But, I think that even had Bolshevik parties existed in Germany in 1918 or 1923 the outcome would not have been considerably different. It is as likely that the statist conception of socialist construction would have simply replicated in Germany the system that developed in Russia. It would have simply strengthened Stalinism as an economic and military force. Other consequences flowing from that might have heightened the contradictions inherent within the system, the working class within those societies might have developed economically, socially and culturally and from that base overthrown the bureaucracy, but we can only speculate on that. The fact is that the Revolutionary wave that erupted in 1917 was the necessary reflection of the end of the Long Wave boom, whereas the defeats that the working class suffered in the 1920’s and 30’s were a reflection of the onset of the Long wave decline, just as the outbursts of ’68, the militant actions of the 1970’s were the equivalent response to the ending of the post war Long Wave boom, and the defeats of the 1980’s were the consequence of the Long Wave decline. It is impossible to separate out what are dialectically interrelated phenomena. The ability of Stalinism to exert the upper hand, the degeneration of the workers movement was itself a function of the inevitable defeats and demoralisation that accompanies those periods of Long Wave decline, in its turn the role of Stalinism gave those defeats their particular character.

“The solution of the Left Communists, Spontaneists and Autonomi - rejection of permanent organization, or of intervention in bourgeois politics - has proved over eighty years to create organizations which are ineffective and are often in reality as strongly dominated by the intellectual petty proprietors as their opponents. The left Maoists' attempt in the Cultural Revolution to pursue a similar policy of the immediate destruction of the middle classes was ineffective and massively destructive. The idea that anti-bureaucratic ideological commitment is enough is disproved by the fate of the Trotskyists, including state-capitalist and bureaucratic-collectivist variants, over sixty years.”

This seems to amalgamate two different things – at least. ON the one hand Mike points to the failure of the anarchistic type organisations that reject Leninist discipline, and then points to the failure of the Trotskyists who as Leninists clearly don’t. I agree both have failed, but it seems to me that the reason for their failure is not in and of itself a function of those particular ideas in regard of organisation. It seems to me that the reason for failure is because both are separated from the class, both offer solutions to which the working class cannot relate on any level. The reason that the BNP in Britain is being successful in winning workers votes is precisely because the solutions it offers, and increasingly the practical activity it undertakes within working class communities CAN be related to by ordinary workers, and does create a link between them.

Go to Part IV