Socialist Transformation is a Process, not a Single Cathartic Event.
An article by John Penney of Crewe Left Unity
Almost unnoticed, until it actually happened almost by default at the Founding Conference ,when we voted not to adopt any of the much debated rival “Platforms Statements” as our Aims, we adopted the “Aims” statement component of the Constitution, as originally written by the Internal Democracy Policy commission . A key part of that Aims Statement , in paragraph b) , which I was responsible for as an active member of the Commission, is the sentence :
“…………….a democratically planned economy that is environmentally sustainable, within which all enterprises, whether privately owned, cooperatives or under public ownership operate in ways that promote the needs of the people and wider society; ……”
Towards the end of Conference some representatives of the more fundamentalist Far Left groups present appear to have finally read the now adopted “Aims” statement ! There was much subsequent spluttering and indignation from some of the Far Left group members that Left Unity, (despite being quite clearly accepted by the overwhelming majority of its members at Conference as a radical democratic socialist reformist party, not an insurrectionary revolutionary socialist one), had a vision of the socialist transformational process which included, at least at the outset, the pre-existence and continued existence of a “mixed economy” – indeed a continuing capitalist framework for that economy in transition !
Politics as quasi- religious belief
The spluttering indignation about this recognition of the continued existence of a “mixed economy” , rather than a 100% state owned one, reveals a fundamental ideological weakness in at least some groups on the Far Left’s vision of the process of socialist transformation. It is no original insight on my part that in the long years of defeat for revolutionary socialist politics worldwide – It is not only the strange London-based “Maoist “ sect recently exposed as holding its few remaining members in ideology-based bondage for 30 years, who have been trapped in isolation from society by their politics. From the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the late 1920’s on the corpse of working class power in the USSR, through to the collapse of the various Stalinist caricature “socialist states” at the end of the 20th century ,the revolutionary (mainly nominally “Trotskyist” ) Left often became more akin to “holy truth – possessing ” dogmatic quasi-religious sects –than dynamic political organisations – organically connected to the working class.
This helps explain the response of all too many on the Far Left to any political concept outside of the unchanging “ordained canon of existing texts” if we understand the simplistic conception of what “socialist revolution” involves and is , held by many (but of course not all by any means ) on the Far Left as more akin to the millenarian Christian vision of the “Coming of the Ending of Days” , than a dynamic politico/economic step change and transformational process : ie, a cataclysmic event, or limited series of defining cathartic events, in which, as in Christian mythology , the Chosen Blessed (possibly the working class , but DEFINITELY the Party faithful) will be rewarded by entry into the Kingdom of the Socialist Workers State, and the non-believers/evil ones (the capitalists and possibly other Leftie groups ) will get their decisive comeuppance.
From a distorted political ideology to distorted political action
Though they will of course all fiercely deny holding subconsciously to a quasi-religious distortion of the concept of Socialist transformation, this is nevertheless actually the underlying ideological framework governing the political behaviour of far too many of the Far Left. The “catechisms” of accepted approved texts, The belief that they are the chosen agents of fundamental change , due to their special arcane “Marxist” knowledge”, the belief that if only the definitive “world revolutionary slogan” and “Programme” can be created, then this will mystically unlock the doors to mass working class recognition of the correctness and desirability of the “revolutionary path” – and of course THE Revolutionary Party which wields the correct revolutionary slogan and programme.
What a nasty man I obviously am to say such things about some sections of the Far Left. Yet here we are , in full retreat as a class in the face of the worst world capitalist crisis since the 1930’s , and an “Austerity Offensive” which will continue to rob us of every legal protection, welfare service, pensions, our wages and living standards generally, if we don’t collectively start resisting the Offensive on a mass scale. Yet the radical Left is so trapped in its endless inward looking , mutually competitive, doctrinal debate that it cannot get its act together to help build the fightback . And too many of the Far Left feel politically obliged , as the “true embreo of the vanguard party” to actively and deliberately sabotage any effort by any other Left political movement to build a radical party of resistance.
Barriers to Action.
Due to the last 30 years of neoliberal ideological hegemony, (and the entire socialism- discrediting postwar period of class collaboration Labourism and dictatorial Stalinism) the ever increasing atomisation of the working class into ideologically passive “consumers”, and related structural changes in the way we work in the advanced capitalist economies (particularly the destruction of the “big battalions” of the working class, miners, dockers, steelworkers, etc), the UK working class has no residual widespread radical socialist consciousness left at all . There is no possibility currently of directing the rising anger and despair in the working class in the direction of a head on assault on capitalism. Issuing any of the traditional slogans of revolutionary socialism , such as “General Strike NOW !” has no popular resonance – for a class that has never had such a low level of class consciousness – or background familiarity with socialist ideas, as today.
Because of the harsh political reality of the utter marginalisation of socialist ideas amongst working people, those of us who say we have therefore to build a rising tide of initially defensive struggle, based on the very basic hatred and fear evoked amongst masses of working people by the multi-pronged assault of the Austerity Offensive, based on “transitional” , defensive, limited, reformist, demands, are told by many on the Far Left that all reformist demands are always unwinnable, that UK capitalism simply cannot concede any slackening of the Austerity Offensive at all – because , they say, of the overwhelming power of global capitalist competition, the power of the financial markets to undermine reforming governments, the overwhelming straightjacket of the global capitalist Falling Rate of Profit on any reformist attempt to push back against the drive for ever greater mass impoverishment by the capitalist class. Instead, we are told, it is ONLY total revolutionary socialist transformation, on a world scale, that can , at one bound, cut the Gordian knot of capitalist enslavement – and usher in the new dawn of socialism.
All or nothing – so we’ll do nothing
The problem with this “all or absolutely nothing” approach is that it actually reinforces the capitalist class’s own rhetoric that “there is no alternative” to the pain of their Austerity Offensive. They could , if they felt like it, even concede that it is indeed worldwide capitalist cost-reducing competition – even a problem with the Rate of Profit, that is forcing them to reduce our living standards year on year. They “don’t want to do it” they could say. “But that’s the unchallengable global reality we are trapped in” – its simply “compete or die”. They would argue that if the only alternative put up by the opponents of the Austerity Offensive is a bloody all out revolution, we’d better all just knuckle down to accepting falling living standards, because, they’d say, “ we all know how well that socialist revolution in 1917 turned out for the working classes” ! And who (apart from a dwindling band of Stalinist apologists) thinks they could actually win that particular argument with a typical sample of ordinary working people in the UK today ? If it’s a choice of “all out onto the barricades, and let’s storm Downing Street” – and in case I forget , “GENERAL STRIKE NOW !”, the overwhelming majority of working people will just suffer and grumble and accept the logic and hardships of the Austerity Offensive. “Better the devil they know …” is currently the attitude.
There is room to manoeuver on a radical reformist programme
The reality is that the millenarian Far Left , in the UK context – (not an economy/society in meltdown like Greece – where there is undoubtedly no room for manoeuver for a radical Left government) , has massively overstated the impossibility of a radical Left-led mass movement to resist key features of the Austerity Offensive, and actually achieve significant structural reforms to the benefit of working people. With sufficient mass support behind it a radical Left movement could undoubtedly halt the privatisation of the NHS, scrap he bedroom tax, ensure the collection of , and close the loopholes surrounding, taxation from the superrich and big corporations. A radical Left government with mass support could build millions of council houses – creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs, could renationalise the public utilities, could institute progressive land transaction taxes, and a host of other transformational, pro-working class measures. Would this provoke attacks from the currency speculators, a rabid counter offensive by the capitalist mass media, and all sorts of economic sabotage ? Darn tooting it would ! It would be an era of momentous struggle and permanent crisis – and eventually would lead to assaults by the capitalist class upon the institutions of (bourgeois) democracy itself. So what’s new ? That is the nature of social transformational struggle – in an era like today where “the old order cannot continue to rule in the same old way – but the new order is struggling to be born “.
We need a “Transitional” Approach.
The task of a genuinely radical reforming socialist movement in a systemic capitalist crisis is to progressively build the intensity of the struggle by working people – first as defensive struggles, then as increasingly radical transformational struggles, trying always to be tactically acute enough not to overstep the level of radicalisation reached by the mass of working people during that rising wave of struggle. And No, this isn’t “hiding ones politics” , or “the Trojan horse strategy of politics” , its basic political tactical astuteness – trying not to outpace the struggle-based growing class consciousness and combativity of the mass of the working class – building the intensity and breadth of struggle on an essentially “reformist” platform of demands and policies . So any potential Left Unity government elected on a wave of rising working class opposition to the immediate impact of the capitalist Austerity Offensive is inevitably going to be operating within the existing capitalist framework of the economy.
It would be economic and political madness to attempt to nationalise the entire economy overnight. The key “Commanding Heights” including all the banks, are enough to start with. Nevertheless a key driver for the fundamental transformation of the economy will be the adherence of all components of the economy to an integrated radical National Development Plan. This could indeed be a Plan which is actually very attractive to the SME (small and medium sized enterprises) sector – currently being crushed in classical manner between the rapacious chicanery of the banks (check out the recent rip off of hundreds of thousands of small businesses with the “interest credit swap” scam), and the power of the big corporations. Yep, a radical Left government can, and should, at least initially try to build “class alliances” beyond the working class – as per the now much derided old CP “British Road to socialism”. Class collaboration – leading to abandonment of the socialist objective ? It could be of course , but with a genuinely transformative radical Left government I’d say it was sensible tactical politics. Divide your class enemies – and particularly try to offer positive policies to the small business sector – often the bedrock of fascism in deep social crisis.
The “mixed economy” and socialist transformation
Although it is probably seen by many on the Left generally, not just the Far Left, as heresy to say it, there is a big question as to whether a genuinely socialist economy should ever try to nationalise every single productive/business enterprise. Indeed, to ensure innovation and flexibility in an economy, it has often been argued (and experimented with under even Stalinist “command” economic systems like Tito’s Yugoslavia) that a socialist system should include many “pseudo market” features – particularly small firms operating as workers cooperatives or private ownership. As long as there are operating within the National Plan, with taxation policies in place to restrict rewards to democratically agreed maximums, and trades unions are involved in management , then the crude wholly state-run economic model becomes undesirable. These ideas may well be anathema to many socialists. However the entire “mindset” of the Left, even the nominally anti-stalinist, as much as Stalinist, has been for too long trapped by the economic methodologies and structures employed by the bureaucratic regimes of the USSR, Eastern Europe, China. With a “transitional” approach – based on growing a fundamental social transformation out of incrementally more radical demands and policy measures we can potentially break out of the “only total revolution offers a way forward” ideological and operational cul de sac that much of the Far left is trapped in.
To those who say this is just “Fabianism with a pseudo radical face” – I say it could indeed turn out to be so – if the radical Left Party implementing the strategy is not genuinely committed to fundamental political and social transformation. What will make the vital difference between a party which “talks radical action” (like Syriza up until very recently) , but in office collaborates with and retreats at the first capitalist opposition – and a party which builds its radicalism as the needs of the rising struggle requires it ? It is, ironically (given the stick this article has given to so much of the Far Left) the presence within its ranks of a large revolutionary socialist Left, but one which is not tied down by formalistic , dogmatic, sterile sloganizing, but is flexible and tactically acute – able to be the “best radical reformists” during the opening phase of defensive struggle, but also able to take the lead of the party and working class from a possibly faltering reformist party leadership when the many critical periodic crisis point “forks in the political road” forward appear during the long process of struggle.
39 comments
39 responses to “Socialist Transformation is a Process, not a Single Cathartic Event.”
Left Unity is active in movements and campaigns across the left, working to create an alternative to the main political parties.
About Left Unity
Read our manifesto
Left Unity is a member of the European Left Party. 
Read the European Left Manifesto
ACTIVIST CALENDAR
Events and protests from around the movement, and local Left Unity meetings.
Saturday 21st June: End the Genocide – national march for Palestine
Join us to tell the government to end the genocide; stop arming Israel; and stop starving Gaza!
More details here
Summer University, 11-13 July, in Paris
Peace, planet, people: our common struggle
The EL’s annual summer university is taking place in Paris.
More events »
GET UPDATES
Sign up to the Left Unity email newsletter.
CAMPAIGNING MATERIALS
Get the latest Left Unity resources.
“…………….a democratically planned economy that is environmentally sustainable, within which all enterprises, whether privately owned, cooperatives or under public ownership operate in ways that promote the needs of the people and wider society; ……”
The idea that a future Socialist society should have no place for privately owned shops, child-care, garages, dog-grooming businesses etc etc is grotesque and totalitarian.
what do you mean by “grotesque and totalitarian”?
“privately owned” means run for profit, which IS grotesque:
how would the private owners ensure their profits if not by cutting back on the wages and the conditions (eg cheaper gloves and less breaks and longer shifts)?
private ownership is totalitarian, and you know that if you have ever had a job; compare this toi a vision of the future where democracy rules – that is workers control the workplaces and communities on a thoroughly democratic basis; and everyone is a worker as the private ownership has been wiped out
(yes, post-revolution!)
It is grotesque and totalitarian to prevent someone with initiative and/or a good idea and prepared to work hard from setting up a private enterprise and working for him or herself. If they then go on to employ a number of other people then clearly there need to be safeguards regarding workers rights, gloves, breaks etc and also regarding profit levels and levels of, yes, exploitation.
Those members who glory in total,”democratic”, state control are simply naive when it comes to their understanding of the state (any state) and of democracy. ALL states develop their own, separate interests over time, and those who have a position in the state can easily become as much of a priviledged etlite as any small or medium business owner. Democracy is fine and dandy provided you fit in with the majority and don’t insist on a basic level of INDIVIDUAL
**sorry send by mistake***
INDIVIDUAL freedom. The left just can’t seem to get that living a life totally dominated by the state, or by a majority, is not only unattractive but actually terrifying to those who are not part of that majority. Democracy needs to be tempered with liberty.
I do not want to live in a world where my house, job, school, hospital, holiday, social life, shops etc all have to be run by some state machine, however democratic, leaving me with no choice about my life decisions and no power vis a vis a powerful state machine that can ruin my life if I dissent.
The economy in its broad strategic outlines needs to be democractically planned and managed. This would allow REAL democracy for the first time. It is clear and obvious that the enormous power of international or dominant corporations needs to be broken before such democracy can exist, and this would require common ownership of such corporations as well, of course, as banks, energy and transport companies and other industries vital for the infrastructure.
Once this power is in the hands of the majority, then the real power ro decide profit and wage levels, safety regulations, trade unions rights and industrial democracy and so on will be in the hands of the democratic state, and can be imposed throughout society, in public, co-operative or indeed, private sectors. Democracy and liberty could then be better balanced.
The people of Britain who are muzzled by their sellout politicians, are after a government that truly represents them. In polls conducted they have consistently asked for more socialistic controls of the 1% who run the economy and their puppets. Meanwhile the Left argues about what Marx, or Trotsky, or Stalin, or Che Guevara, or whoever said in the past. While we debate, private vultures like ATOS send people to their grave, insisting they work when they are in a bloody coma. We need to ditch the need to be ‘correct’ about every iota of interpretation of ideology and get stuck into defending the working and unemployed people we claim to represent. Or, they will vote Tory. Again.
Why is the occupy movement so limp in this country compared to America?
You won’t bring transformation into this country with a non-political party aligned movement being weaker than it’s American counterpart.
I don’t want to be too harsh on the “Occupy Wallstreet” Movement in the US, PoliticalPartyBroadcast. It was an important initial spontaneous post 2008 Crash assault on the prevailing hegemony of neoliberalism. But it was a very minimally political populist street protest – that briefly raised important issues, of a very, very, general “anti capitalist” nature only.
There was no long term structure to move this spontaneous street protest into a long term assault on the capitalist power structure – and the movement was essentially clubbed off the US streets and parks by the riot police goonsquads of the 1%. Where is it now ? Gone.
We are aiming to build a political movement with real social weight – able to intervene not only on the streets and in the workplace, but through the electoral democratic structures too. This is the only way to achieve radical change. Populist Street protests in isolation achieve little. The long term impact of the “Occupy Wallstreet” phenomenum in the USA has actually been zilch.
You are raising straw man arguments.
Revolution is a process that paves the way for socialist transformation. It is only a “single event” to the extent that the deep-seated contradictions that leads to capitalism’s collapse into slump and war forces the working class to take revolutionary action.
This crisis IS unstoppable without revolution. The capitalist class has for nearly one hundred years told the working class to “knuckle under because it is better than socialism”. This is nothing new. It does not follow from this that the crisis can be reformed away.
A general strike alone will not end the crisis either. Calls by assorted Trotskyist and revisionist groups for general strikes and other “militant” actions without giving a revolutionary perspective to the working class is not Marxist, so why do you pretend that they are somehow “revolutionary”?
Not one of the 57 varieties hovering around Left Unity are saying that “the only solution to austerity is revolution”. This is a fraud. Their sole purpose is to drag the working class by the nose away from a revolutionary understanding, by their posturing about “general strikes” etc etc. Russell Brand has more of a revolutionary spirit about him than any of them.
Nor will your “incremental reforms” stop the crisis. Fabianism failed over one hundred years ago, why attempt to resurrect it now that the proof of Marx’s theory is glaringly obvious?
Finally, to defend the gains of the workers states, and to struggle to learn from both their triumphs and mistakes does not equate to being a “Stalinist apologist”. Quite the opposite. Stalinism writes off the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death and refuses to learn from his errors. This is yet another straw man argument.
If the argument that there is no solution to the crisis but revolution is such a minority position, not true, and only argued for by “Wolfie Smith Popular Frontists” why do you keep scratching the itch? Is it more because you hate the fact that the theory is actually true, glaringly so?!
Phil, see my argument below on the differnce between revolution and insurrection and please explain why you think they are not distinct, which is what you seem to be arguing.
Your argument that incremental reforms cannot drive back the Coalition’s austerity programme is also dealt with in my post. Please explain why I am wrong in this in your view. Also, it does not follow in logic that because Fabianism failed, which we agree on, that all reform movements will fail. Both John Penney and me are arguing that reform movements have at some point to transform themselves into something which takes on capitalism with an alternative social model – socialism – which is something that cannot be found in Fabian doctrine. Reform movments that become revolutionary are not fundamentally distinct from Lenin’s party spending over a decade raising incremental and transitional demands in the Russian Doumas, working together with others on the LEft who were more limited in their reformist perspective. Why is this period ignored and only the months of 1917 recalled by much of the Left?
Capitalism’s crisis is revolutionary; as the accumulative pressures of the intractable contradictions within the system pushes all manner of revolutionary responses to the surface. For Marxism, all development goes through this revolutionary process, whether in human society or the natural and physical world, of quantity turning to quality.
Insurrection is the revolutionary act of overthrowing the capitalist system, the end point of the long developing revolutionary crisis. How that manifests itself is in part determined by the historical development of particular societies and the context within which the insurrection takes place, and in part by the tactical decisions made by the revolutionary leadership.
Standing in the Duma was a tactical decision; the purpose of which was to expose Tsarist “democracy” and to use it as a platform for raising arguments for revolution. There was never any illusion that it would be possible to achieve socialism, or any meaningful lasting reforms, through “incremental or transitional demands”.
The Bolsheviks worked with others on the “left” in the Duma to expose them for their “parliamentary cretinism” (as Lenin characterised them) in not setting their work within the context of the need for revolution.
You don’t say how “incremental demands can drive back the coalition” and so it is just an assertion. Where is the “significant room for manoeuvre” you mention? How do you think it is possible to turn the clock back to the pre-2008 crash days? (And why would that be desirable or attractive anyway? Life was already pretty miserable for hundreds of millions across the planet even then).
The entire system is held together by the printing of insane levels of paper money, which may have had a short-term limited effect of producing some real value, but it is completely hollow; and it is creating the conditions for a far more devastating crash in the near future.
The “biting point” as you describe it has already arrived. It began over a decade ago, after 9/11. Since then, severe fascist class war measures have been introduced in all Western countries; and any Third World country that gets in imperialism’s is threatened with, or have experienced, devastating war destruction. Capitalism is already in “permanent crisis” and in a “fight for survival”, and is failing miserably because everything it does backfires.
A few token reforms may be achieved on the back of revolutionary struggle, but they would always be short-term, taken away at the earliest opportunity. Fight alongside the working class for all manner of demands by all means, but always present them with a revolutionary perspective of the world so they know what they are up against, and know what is necessary to end capitalism once and for all.
Thank goodness for your entire series of posts here, Phil. I had worried that I might have been a tad harsh on all too many of the avowedly “revolutionary Left” (and within that the sub-set of sentimental neo-Stalinists holding to the “the USSR was socialist and overall, progressive” views of Phil Waincliffe and Nick Wright), for characterising it as being “stuck intellectually in an ossified , narrow, ” quasi religious, “Stalino-marxist mindset” . Your posts simply prove I wasn’t nearly harsh enough !
I have no objection to you and your dwindling band of co-thinkers continuing to try and build a series of miniscule hardline Leninist vanguard parties – complete with the self-isolating demands to the working class to overthrow capitalism though revolutionary insurrection. I just wish you wouldn’t persevere in thinking you have a mission to disrupt the Left Unity project.
This especially now that the Membership at Conference has clearly , overwhelmingly, decided to take a different, radical Left route to socialist transformation .
How does posting some comments to a article on an open website constitute as being “disruptive”?
If there is no space for arguing for a revolutionary perspective within Left Unity there would be no point in disrupting it anyway because it won’t get anywhere as its understanding will have no basis in truth. It would just fall apart like all the other “left” unity projects.
I’ll carry in making my arguments and you can carry on with yours. Reality will demonstrate where the truth of capitalism’s crisis lies regardless.
Incidently, I’m not making “demands for revolutionary insurrection”. This is a parody. I’m arguing for revolutionary theory and a full polemic and debate to a conclusion to understand the rapidly unfolding world economic crisis and turmoil – South Sudan, Ukraine, Thailand, CAR, Syria, etc, as well as the successes and mistakes of the Soviet Union. The majority of the working class can only come to the conclusion that revolution is needed if it is armed with revolutionary theory. This has to be argued for. It won’t come to these conclusions spontaneously.
This is just Fabianism with a pseudo-radical face.
Please don’t just drop soundbitey phrase into serious discussions. This discussion requires anlysis and substantiation.
Yes, socialist transformation most definitely is best thought of as a process, not a single cathartic event. The concept of the seizure of state power in the capital city by taking control of key buildings within a week or so of intense activity has long since been erroneously generalised by the Left from the Bolshevik example; it is only possible in a weak state whose writ barely runs in its provinces. Wherever this prerequisite did not apply in the early twentieth century – which was in nearly all states – revolutions failed. Cuba was a weak state – all colonial states are weak, by definition – which is why Fidel and co were able to build their strength via liberated areas in the provinces. Mao’s Long March succeeded under the same circumstances – a weak state. Bolivarianism has prospered in Latin America by taking advantage of the USA’s preoccupation with the Muslim world.
There are no weak states in the OECD; advanced capitalist states with meaningful sovereignty each have the internal coercive capacity and self-belief to be able to crush any insurrection with ease. The Greek state does not have meaningful sovereignty any longer and so the ruling class there does not cohere around it quite as it once did, but it still has sufficient coercive power and there is no evidence yet of serious splits in its military or police.
Insurrection is completely different from revolution – the turning upside down of social relations takes time, like any sphere revolving on its axis. Revolution starts well before the ruling class loses its effective control of the state and continues for a long time after it is consigned to history. Rome was not built in a day and neither can a New Jerusalem.
Neither do I have any objection in principle to small businesses, so long as they stay small and are genuinely innovatory and based on providing for human needs. If the community at large wants something to be piloted on a small scale, then why not via a small privately-controlled business, which will be bought out by the society once it succeeds and reaches a pre-agreed size?
I am still a Marxist for two main reasons; first, because I believe that Marx’s methodology – dialectical materialism, his theory of history and of contradictions – provides proven analytical tools and, second, because he provided a compelling vision of emancipation based upon common ownership and control of what we need and do to make a collective living. Marx was well aware that, in describing how capitalism functions, he was not producing a total social theory which explained all aspects of capitalist societies. It was Stalinist Russia that pretended otherwise and, yes, both its supporters and critics took Marxism as objective science and as a blueprint for organising an alternative society. In apotheosising Marx, they all but killed his living legacy – an approach to understanding and changing the world that was restricted to a general understanding and was therefore useful across different epochs. Instead of each generation doing the hard work of applying Marxist ways of thinking to their own versions of capitalist society, they (we) fell into the more comfortable and less challenging trap of extrapolating Marx’s conclusions about his own society into theirs, studying old texts like earnest antiquarians rather than paying full attention to processes of change in their (our) own societies.
So, yes, the Left’s a lot like religion, in sociological and social psychological terms. It is at times as unthinking as a religion.
To answer the question of what needs to be done from where we are now, however, we need to bring both political economy and political understanding together and I don’t think John Penney has quite done this. Put simply, you don’t have to be a member of the millenarian Far Left in order to see a problem with his thesis that there is room to manoeuvre for a radical reformist programme and his parallel concept of political activity providing the conduit, via building a growing intensity of struggle, to create this room and bring forth an era of momentous struggle and permanent crisis which ends up raising the prospects for a deeper, genuinely emancipatory social transformation. In this scheme, social transformation gets raised at the end, after a much longer period of defensive struggles.
The problem for this in political economy is that capitalism has reconfigured itself, in the 1980s and afterwards, in response to the eye-watering oil price rises of the 1970s, which undermined the post-war settlement based on the mixed economy, Fordism and the social wage coexisting with moderate profits. The global structural adjustment that was completed by the end of the century was based on credit-fuelled consumption in the OECD and production in the BRIC, a real, long-term reduction of wage levels in the OECD and low wage production in the BRIC. This is now starting to unravel and the chances of it being re-built are slim, but the fundamental point about it remains – that the relative economic power of the OECD over the BRIC and the OPEC states is not at all what it was before the 1970s, such that the OECD countries cannot have the mixed economy, Fordism and the social wage coexisting with moderate profits any more.
Now, I should say that I think some of the distance capitalism in the OECD has travelled away from the post-war settlement derives from its political success in disarming and ideologically undermining the working class rather than from the economic constraints it has had to work within since the 1970s – in other words, it has gone further than it actually needed to by way of adjustment to the new global reality.
Secondly, I should also say that I agree that a successful, radical political movement of the working class could push capitalism back to before the Austerity programme without eating into the Thatcher – Reagan settlement of the 1980s. There is sufficient room to manoevre up to that point, but beyond it the question of socialism or capitalism is inevitably raised, because beyond that point the post-1970s relationships of global economic power mean there is no going back to the mixed economy, Fordism and the social wage coexisting with moderate profits. Beyond that point, the radical reformist programme will have to find a new socio-political model in order to be able to show how it could be implemented, leaving us having to argue that we have to replace capitalism via a revolutionary transformation in order to go forward with our programme.
None of this is a fundamental objection to what John Penney has produced. What it does amount to is an insistence that there is an economic ‘biting point’ at which we will suddenly find that capitalism starts to vigorously fight the class war because, beyond that point, capitalism will be fighting a war for survival. It is this, not the notion of political struggle creating economic space, which will change the nature of the class confrontation further on down the road.
Crucially, this has implications for how we go about the first phase of this – prior to the ‘biting point’. I believe that the most important of these implications is that we must raise issues of social transformation from the outset – which we cannot do if fighting a defensive campaign does not also and from the outset involve a conscious nurturing of ideas and questioning along the lines that Occupy achieved. For John Penney, these are raised by that same growing intensity of struggle that overcomes political economy. I disagree.
Working class struggle has the potential to raise emancipatory issues, but it does not do so within its own nature. The wage militancy of the late 1960s and 1970s that many of us lived through did not, with a handful of exceptions, raise emancipatory issues – the skilled workers of Lucas Aerospace in Burnley who produced plans for transforming arms production into socially useful production, the UCS work-in and the Grunwick Dispute were important because they were exceptions. They did not achieve general traction within the working class as a whole because they did not derive from the intensity of struggle. Emancipatory ideas and campaigns must come out of the engagement of LU activists with working class communities and workplaces and do so as soon as possible; we are in this for the long haul and cannot wait to nurture these until further on down the road when capitalism suddenly stops toying with us and starts ‘heavy manners’; it is a bit late then to realise that we need generalised emancipatory ideas on our side if we are not to be unravelled in short order by capitalism confronting everyone with the simple choice of TINA at the same time as suppressing dissidence with everything at its disposal.
John
I agree that a democratic socialist party is needed, offering real alternatives to the capitalist system that has led to the most recent “austerity” onslaught against the mass of ordinary people
As you set it out above, I agree with your analysis and the possible route to achieve socialism. Yes – it is a process, though I suspect we will simply not be allowed much time at all to introduce many of the measures to which you refer before we come under systained attack and need to rely on our mass support to resist the resistance of the rich and powerful who control the economy and the armed state.
I have to say, however, that over-using and glorying in the word “reformist” is not helpful to any side in the debate.
The way you use the word in your particular analysis is clearly defined but you know the problem with the baggage that words retain. To many good people, not just hardened revolutionaries but many people quite active in the movement, “reformism” is Wilson, Kinnock, Blair and Miliband ie the project to manage capitalism ON BEHALF OF the rich and powerful while trying to soften it sometimes when the “system” decides it can afford it or is willing to offer temporary concessions under pressure.
I don’t want to be associated with that at all, and I am certain that you don’t really want to be either. There are ways to differentiate out party from the old “bureaucratic centralist” Leninists, with their sometimes rigid formulas, without confusing people even more with such toxic words as ‘reformism’.
The virtue of your analysis is that both goes beyond and dispenses with the old false division between reformism and revolution and allows us all to think of an actually imaginable process to get us from here to there.
Good posts , Ray G. I agree the word “reformist” is potentially overlaid with a lot of toxic historical baggage. I don’t use the term without considering this “baggage issue” . I do however think this perceived “toxicity” is mainly an issue for us old , political history-steeped Lefties . I think we always need to “qualify” our usage of the term with supporting words like “radical” and “transformative” and “socialist”. Language use, including specific word selection, is however itself a “political” act , and should be used in a way that is tactically relevant and helpful to different phases of the struggle.
I suppose what I really mean is not “reformism” as it has been toxically tarred by generations of Labourism and social democratic collaboration – but something more akin to “resolutely confrontational transformative radical political action”, ie, building a fundamentally transformative mass-action based political process through defensive and offensive working class struggle – inside and outside of electoral politics. This in contrast to endlessly impotently issuing irrelevant “ultimatist” demands for “the overthrow of capitalism” which are entirely inappropriate to the current (pitifully low) level of class and socialist consciousness and willingness to take insurrectionary action within the overwhelming bulk of the working class today in Britain.
Nevertheless I believe that there is a tactical political value today in presenting our fundamentally transformative radical socialist political objectives in the context of the term “reform” – not only to distinguish our strategy from the futile ultimatist posturings of the ultraleft – but also because for the bulk of our potential new mass membership the term “reform” does not, I believe anyway , carry anything like the toxic ideological baggage that we olde Lefties believe it does.
Most of our potential mass recruits and supporters still have a very positive view of the strictly limited , but far-reaching, radical reformism of the 1945 Labour Government. Therefore today, in a situation of headlong working class retreat, “Reformism” as a term (linked to a radical transformative programme) still has useful “ideological currency” as a political description employed to simply describe the far from simply “reformist” objectives of a radical socialist , but non-insurrectionary, Party operating within the constitutional electoral sphere, like Left Unity – at this stage of our part-building effort.
John
Well i take on board the points you make, but as your own (sorry to say) rather convoluted defence of the term demonstrates, it is more trouble than it is worth. We could talk in terms of campaigns for equality, justice, (not forgetting freedom and liberty), even democcratic socialism or of a radical transformation of society. However I believe that reformism is toxic enough to enough people to render it counter-productive.
Good to have a rational debate though. Happy new year and let’s keep at it!!
Nice try but while it is easy to demolish the self aggrandising delusions of tiny trotskyite sects the creation of a newish descriptive category “radical democratic socialist reformist party” as opposed to, “insurrectionary revolutionary socialist one” doesn’t get over the central problem which hobbles new political forces like Left Unity, Syriza, Bloco etc.
Socialist transformation is certainly a process and “not a Single Cathartic Event” but a qualitative change must necessarily take place when the dominant class ceases to hold and exercise state power. Worthy though Left Unity’s aims are and no doubt valuable its contribution will be to gathering together the forces for radical democratic transformation this, of itself, does not deal with the main obstacle to socialist transformation – the uncomfortable fact that state power resides in the hands of the most experienced, most ruthless, and on the historical record, the most bloody of imperialist ruling classes.
Of course, revolutionary insurrection is not the intellectual property of the tiny trotskyist sects. How could it be when no actual revolution has taken place under the leadership, guidance or decisive participation of trotskyites.
The chief weakness in John Penney’s approach lies not in its well grounded rejection of abstract castle-building-in-the-air but in his dismissal of the experience of actually existing socialism.
You don’t have to be a starry-eyed fan of life in any of the 20th century states where capitalist production relations vanished – or even of the ones that continue in the 21st century with these features – to accept that the capitalist classes in these places actually did lose both their power and wealth and that this crucially depended on the destruction of the state apparatuses on which they relied.
While, given the present balance of forces in British society and the world, it would be foolish to base a political strategy on an insurrectionary challenge to state power it would be equally foolish to discount the willingness of the ruling class to use force (and its inevitable hand maidens subversion, intrigue, surveillance, disruption, dirty tricks and counter gang strategies) to defend its power and wealth.
That being said any serious socialist transformatory project must have in mind the need to bring together the class and social forces that can both negate the political, state and ideological power of the ruling class.
That is why Left Unity – if it places unity at the centre of its work – can make an important contribution to growing and consolidating the forces that can bring about socialist transformation.
Nick, the creation of the East European COMECON states came via the force of arms of the Red Army and the strategic national interests of the USSR, whose leadership wanted to end the creation of another threat to its teritory from the west by instituting buffer states under its military protection. In other words, the destruction of state poer came from without, not from the working class of these countries. That leaves Russia, Cuba, China and a handful of other places in all of which there was a weak state, as the only places where socialist transformation of any kind came about through domestic forces.
Apart from that I can’t see anything in your response that actually challenges what John Penney and me are putting forward – a flexible approach that deals initially with the balance of forces as it exists in order to try to kickstart a sustainable anti-austerity strugle and, in parallel with this, nurturing ongoing discusiion about how a radical socialist programme can be implemented. The only key difffernce in what you seem to be saying is that you want to force this debate into the class rather than engage with the class about strategy once there is sufficinet support for the programme itself.
A brief comment as am now in Berlin but I wanted to both acknowledge fundamental agreement with John P on his defence of the Aims section though I wouldn’t have phrased it quite in the same way. The Economics policy commission for which I will be partly responsible Will though have to address the issues in a more concrete form. Just what sort of structural reforms we should call for we must obviously debate at length. BUT I also agree with John Timmons on the resistance we will face from capital and the financial muscle of the City has been exercised to serious effect in the past and will be again. On that we should not peddle illusions. But right now we simply don’t know what will be the breaking point. What matters is to shift the balance of political debate and that can be done without declaring one solution revolution..which turns into a recipe for despair.
Sorry meant John Tummon (blame the auto type) and to add I also agree with Ray G (in the spirit of Xmas as well as unity)
Simplistic, I know, but wasn’t it factional arguments within the “broad left” particularly in the TU which prevented previous “left ” projects. Am I missing something or isn’t it Left Unity’s purpose to present working people with a socialist party as distinct from the existing Conservative/Capitalist Parties?
Working Class consciousness will be distributed like all variable magnitudes according to a normal or bell shaped curve. Question is if the total number of workers is represented by the values on the vertical axis and class consciousness is represented by the values on the horizontal axis, where does the peak of that curve now lie in 2013.
Given the lack of strikes or even wage demands, the fact that the majority of trade union leadership can still attack workplace militancy by their own members, instead of being forced by the union’s members into supporting and encouraging it. The fact that the tories have gotten away with decimating the welfare state, have already privatised large chucks of the NHS and handed over control of schools and colleges from local education authorities to the local chambers of commerce. The peak of the bell shaped curve that would represent working class consciousness must be close to the zero position on the horizontal axis.
In conclusion reformist demands not revolutionary demands are an unavoidable necessary first step. Trouble is the vast majority of the working class are not even hearing from socialists about even these basic and lets be honest, very limited reformist demands. Together with its support of grassroots campaigns against the bedroom tax, Left unity has got to have more, much more general propaganda campaigns to get their message across. Otherwise Left Unity will remain invisible to the majority of the working class.
The alternative conclusion is that the working class has been led up the hill and down again in persuit of reform as the ultimate goal so many times that they have become deeply suspicious of all such wishful thinking. Time to tell them the truth about the world. Capitalism is falling apart and only offers a future of slump and war. Only revolution will bring about they need. Anything else makes no sense.
How do we get the message across to the working class for the need for revolution. Most working class people have more immediate concerns, children and family, finding the money to pay for the basics. Many, admittedly the least conscious, don’t even know who the current prime minister is.
The socialist left needs to engage with the working class, needs to be at the heart of the most organised sections of the working class, needs members to take positions in the unions. Once in those unions socialists need to set up trade union resource centres in collaboration with local trade councils,if they don’t already exist in a particular town or city. To have effective political action by the working class you need basic levels of organisation parallel to but outside of the reactionary influence of the bureaucratic TUC leadership. TUC Resource centres are effective bases to organise all sorts of campaigns and to set up unemployed action groups etc to help working class people defend themselves and their class.
For a socialist revolution to succeed the majority of the working class needs to be on board and fully committed to overthrowing capitalism. In 2013 the working class are not ready to commit. An entire class of people cannot spontaneously and simultaneously all come to the conclusion that revolution is necessary. It is going to take a lot of time and work by socialists to gain the confidence and support of the bulk of the working class before any socialist revolution to overthrow capitalism is a real possibility.
I agree with you, Streetwise. The working class is not going to spontaneously come to an understanding that revolution is needed but how do you expect them to come to that conclusion if no-one is talking to them about it? Socialists can do all the campaigning work you suggest but what do they say to the working class while they do it? Do they warn them about the realities of capitalism’s slump and where it is heading or di they pretend that that the reforms they are campaugning for are the solution to the crisis?
Left Unity as a potentially ‘radical’ reformist democratic Socialist party ….YES ! As yet another so called Revolutionairy Socialist party……No ! If you want to do that then why not go away and form such a party and go out and compete with all the others already in existence.
The groups of the so called Far Left appear to me to have a decidedly ‘parasitic’ relationship to Left Unity. They dont appear to have changed their spots, nor are they capable of or even interested in changing their spots and are intent on trying to change the party to what they have always wanted but have singularly failed to achieve.At best they simply want to sabotage the process of creating a genuinely democratic socialist party while hoping in vain they suck out a few recruits to their particular sect while at the same time paying no concern or attention to the fact that they can and do (and always have) alienate large numbers of people who might be interested in joining Left Unity but are put off by far left posturing,slogans and basic insanity.
Unless such people are prepared to change and adapt,dump the baggage and be changed by the process Left Unity is undergoing as we all need to be prepared to do then I dont see a very happy,conducive or compatible relationship developing within the party into the future between ‘reformists’ and so called ‘revolutionaires’ unless the latter can genuinely put the question of ‘Revolution’ firmly on the back burner and be prepared to challenge their own failed analyses and dyfunctional ways of working.
Since 1997 over 200,000 people left the Labour party and over 4 million voters stopped voting Labour.I think it is those people in particular Left Unity needs to try to reach to start with as well as the millions who dont even bother to vote
This thread. like most of what has appeared on the Left Unity web site since the founding conference, is frankly awful!
Firstly it is largely concerned, I would say obsessed, with vitriolic attacks on the so-called ‘far left’, secondly it is utterly pessimistic and thirdly it contains virtually know attempts to base any of its assertions on evidence or historical precedent.
An un-informed observer might be forgiven for thinking this was all sour grapes at losing, but you won comrades! Bizarrely the reports of the conference in journals like the Weekly Worker are actually more positive than most of what has appeared here since the founding conference. Can this be because you don’t feel you won at all? I am merely speculating, since I was not a LPP member or supporter, but there are two thoughts that occur to me. Firstly, how many people supported the Left Party Platform not because they agreed with it but because it was the least worst option? How representative are the posts on this site, that reject the very use of the word socialism, of those who voted for the LPP despite its clear and unambiguous commitment to the word? Secondly, is there a feeling amongst some that you won the vote but lost the argument?
As far as pessimism goes, I feel the need to insert quite a lengthy quote from John’s piece:
“Due to the last 30 years of neoliberal ideological hegemony, (and the entire socialism- discrediting postwar period of class collaboration Labourism and dictatorial Stalinism) the ever increasing atomisation of the working class into ideologically passive “consumers”, and related structural changes in the way we work in the advanced capitalist economies (particularly the destruction of the “big battalions” of the working class, miners, dockers, steelworkers, etc), the UK working class has no residual widespread radical socialist consciousness left at all . There is no possibility currently of directing the rising anger and despair in the working class in the direction of a head on assault on capitalism. Issuing any of the traditional slogans of revolutionary socialism , such as “General Strike NOW !” has no popular resonance – for a class that has never had such a low level of class consciousness – or background familiarity with socialist ideas, as today.”
What kind of rallying call to enthuse people to go out and build a new party is that!!
As a veteran of nearly half a century of political struggle I’m getting a bit fed up with these continual references to the so-called failure of the left. Let me remind John of some of the things that we (the working class and its organisations) have done over those 50 years or so:
Won the Vietnam war, overthrown stalinism and torn down the Berlin wall, won the civil rights movement in America, overthrown fascism in Spain, Portugal and Greece, got Nelson Mandela out of jail and elected him president…..Many of those cictories were won from a much weaker position than the one we find ourselves in now and they all had people like John saying they would never happen.
I don’t really have the time to develop my third point, that is the lack of any evidence based argument, I will have to leave it to others.
Colin, the crucial ability for radical socialists if we are to understand the political situation we are in today, and build a movement to change it for the better, is open-eyed, fact-backed realism. “Comfort-blanket” self delusion is the curse of the Left. Always has been – from the toxic delusions held by the Left in the murderous bureaucratic Stalinist regimes as representing any sort of “socialism” at all – to the enduring delusion amongst the ultraleft that the contemporary working class is in any way “up” for an assault on Capitalism – given the correct slogans and correct revolutionary programme.
you cite a list of supposed “working class victories” during the 20th century. in NONE of these states today is the working class living in other than a state of powerlessness, growing destitution, and in the Vietnamese example – vicious oppression and hyper exploitation as assembly workers for globalised capitalism. Similarly Post Apartheid South Africa is one of the most income and wealth unequal society in the world. Where are all these enduring “working class victories” , Colin, really ?
We are actually in a political situation of headlong working class retreat in Britain, and most of the world, in the face of the most sustained and determined capitalist Austerity Offensive since the 1930’s. We have to recognise the ideological and organisational unpreparedness of our class for this battle – and put aside for now all unrealistic ultraleft posturing and sloganizing. In this period of almost complete retreat we have to build resistance by campaigning on the bread and butter issues that even a working class still deeply ensnared by status-quo supporting ruling class ideology is prepared to engage in . We have to politically/electorally engage with the class in retreat on a radical “reformist” platform of demands – NOT on a revolutionary/insurrectionary platform.
To delude ourselves about the current state of our class , and the current potential for system-busting radical political action, might keep us ideologically cosy and warm in our isolated far left bubble – but it will not get a mass party of radical resistance built. At the moment the constitutional Far Right (UKIP) are making all the running in Britain – by relating their political “offer” to where their mass supporter base currently are ideologicaly. We on the Left , have to take a hard look at our class, and our political theories, and start building a party of radical resistance and action based on where the class is, not where we think it should be according all too often to our outdated ,atrophied , distorted, political dogmas.
So the defeat of the white supremacist Apartheid system in South Africa was no victory for the working class?!
The defeat of the US by the Vietnamese working class was awe-inspiring. Are you saying that they would have been better off had US imperialism crushed the resistance movement?
Is this a joke???
Phil Waincliffe, trapped as he is in the Stalinist mindset of labelling each and every successful but very compromised national liberation struggle as an unequivocal “victory for the working class”, needs to be a bit more sophisticated in his analysis.
The defeat of US Imperialism by the Vietnamese people , led by the Stalinist Vietnamese bureaucracy was indeed a victory over US Imperialism – BUT are you seriously suggesting it represented any sort of victory for genuine workers power in Vietnam ,Phil ? Wise up – it was an essentially bourgeois nationalist victory – led by a state capitalist bureaucratic Stalinist regime – fulfilling the historic role of a 19th century nationalist bourgeoisie but in the capitalist era of “Combined and Uneven Development and Permanent Revolution – who had and still do oppress every sign of genuine independent working class self activity in Vietnam. Vietnam is still a brutal Stalinist dictatorship – but with the death of its Soviet sponsor, and the rapid metamorphosis of China into a conventional bourgeois capitalist state, Vietnam too has had to throw itself open to international capitalism – as a cheap labour supplier . It was not a victory for the working class , as a self organising , dominant class, Phil.
Likewise the fall of the Apartheid regime in South Africa was the outcome of decades of heroic struggle by the black masses – the most radical aspects in the lead up to the end of Apartheid being led of course by the Black Consciousness Movement , not the cynical manoeuvring old Stalinists of the ANC/SACP. The ANC actually (as is perfectly well known) did a historic deal with domestic and international capitalism – whereby in return for the dismantling of the legal basis (NOT the wealth and property disparity basis) of Apartheid, and a share in the loot of capitalism for a tiny class of new black bourgeoisie around the ANC cadre, the fundamentally unequal nature of South African capitalism , inherited from colonialism and Apartheid, was left intact. Today South Africa is still one of the most unequal societies in the world – and the South African working class has actually gained very little materially from the end of Apartheid – whereas the tiny new black bourgeoisie has “filled its boots” at the trough of a share in the exploitation. So again , the end of Apartheid was a victory derived from mass struggle by the South African masses – but they were not the recipients of the fruits of their sacrifices.
You really need to clear your head of all the Stalinist era misrepresentations and political garbage you use to try and understand the world Phil. You are trapped in a particularly severe bubble of Stalinist ideological false consciousness. We are for working class self emancipation and democratic workers power – not rule by bureaucratic “proxy bourgeois” Stalinist elites masquerading as “workers power”.
This inversion of reality is barmy. If this sort of anti-communist poison is all that Left Unity amounts to, then it has no future.
The Vietnamese victory amounted to a communist revolution. I’m sure there have been all sorts of mistakes made since. Rebuilding a new society after the complete destruction of the old by US carpet bombing is never going to be easy, even accounting for the problems of revisionism.
The ANC never even claimed to be socialist, so to criticise them on that basis is nonsensical. Maybe the compromised too much on the Freedom Charter, I’m not able to say, but it was a victory fought and won by the working class.
Is this the same “Black Consciousness Movement” that inflicted Obama on the world?!
A strong grouping of new reformists, new fabians, who write and defend the constitution aims. I had wondered how come the constitutional aims was so different from the lpp passed.
It is a classic compromise, but its not good to have contradictions like this. It is being identified on the left that left unity is s reformist party, because of the wording of the aims.
I think actually the centre of left unity is not around this re written reformism. After the block with thr right to establish a majority block, we now have part of the right coming out with its positipns.
Accompanied by huge dollops of anti trot verbiage.
Good luck with that.
I propose left unity turns left, puts out an appeal to comrades leaving the swp, initiate itself as a party of struggle against the austerity cuts and begins to try and launch a socialist youth (and student) organisation.
I think the ecomic crisis means they are destroying past reforms to privitise and give profits to their masters in hard times. We are forced to oppose these cuts to the social wage and to put an alternative to this failing system of capitalism.
That has to be a socialist alternative.
Pete b
Phil
Phil, insurrection is most definitely not the endpoint of the revolutionary crisis, as you argue – Russia remained in crisis throughout the so-called Civil War, Kronstadt and the NEC period, with fundamental problems assuming crisis proportions which were resolved in ways that prevented the withering away of the state and returned social relations to some form of capitalism. This crsis was not resolved in a way which achieved socialist transformation.
Left Unity standing in elections will be precisely as part of exposing British democracy without any illusions in a parliamentary road to socialism but, as with Lenin’s party, to use it as a means of raising radical demands at a more public level. These same demands will be fought for primarily outside parliament, just as Lenin’s party did. Your attempt to draw a distinction is not born out by the evidence.
The room for manoevre that you query arises because some of the distance capitalism in the OECD has travelled away from the post-war settlement derives from its political success in disarming and ideologically undermining the working class rather than from the economic constraints it has had to work within since the 1970s – in other words, it has gone further than it actually needed to by way of adjustment to the new global reality. Once organisation and determination are put back in place through a process of struggle, we have the means to claw back the anti-working class successes of New Labour and this Coalition before we arrive at capitalism’s bting point.
Finally, there are three parts of your response that are in the worst traditions of the old school Left that LU is trying to get away from:
1 To support your notion that the biting point is already with us, you cite ‘Severe fascist class war measures’, but this is a content-free phrase that does your argument no credit. Fascism was so much more than and different from radically cutting back the social wage and real wages.
2 Your reference to imperialism is also fatally flawed – how do you explain the success of the Bolivarian Latin American countries in distancing themselves from US hegemony without having devastating war visited upon them?
3 Your comment that we should “always present them (the working class) with a revolutionary perspective of the world so they know what they are up against” is just more of the same talking downwards at the working class that has characterised all the Left’s failures, when what we really need to do is engage working class communities and workplaces over a long haul. It is the politics of the all-knowing elite as teachers.
We can’t afford to rely on this old school thinking as a guide to strategy. It is a simplified perversion of Marxism based on the idea of some universal and everlasting truth having arisen about 100 years ago and involves an elitist vanguardism. It needs to be consigned to the trash.
The 1917 revolution was an earth-shattering event which transformed the understanding of millions overnight. Of course the revolutionary process had not ended because of the need to consolidate the victory, to defend the new worker’s state from capitalist subversion by building the proletarian dictatorship, and to rebuild society out of the wreckage of the old, but capitalist class rule was overthrown which cleared the way for socialist transformation.
It was creating a viable socialist society in the most difficult circumstances imaginable, including sacrifice of over 20 million lives in WW2. Why would they make that sacrifice if Russia was to be written off as just as bad as what went before? If Russia was such a nightmare and no different to capitalism, why weren’t they welcoming the Nazi invaders as “liberators”? The Russian working class were armed during WW2; why didn’t they simply turn their guns against the worker’s state once they had received the arms if it was all rotten???
To allow the state to “wither away” whilst capitalism is still around would equate to allowing the return of capitalist class rule, which is precisely what happened in 1989. They would have not been able to defeat the Nazi invasion, for example. The state can only start to “wither away” once capitalism has disappeared from the planet.
The ruling class in Britain has found the “post-war settlement” to be very useful as it has allowed them to tell the working class that there is no need for communism because capitalism can provide a basic “safety net” from the worst of capitalist exploitation. It was a begrudgingly given concession, but a necessary one, especially after the WW2 victory of the Red Army and the victory of national liberation and communist movements worldwide.
It is tearing apart the “post-war settlement” because it has to, not because it wants to, but it is worried about the consequences, which is why it will u-turn in some areas and allow some minor concessions in the face of working class resistance in others. The idea that it is just some nasty policy decision by the Tories and New Labour (“making use of the crisis to do what they always wanted to do”) is effectively saying that the crisis is not as bad as it seems, which is just pulling the wool over the eyes of the working class.
The German population in the 1930s was notoriously blind to the repression, scapegoating genocide and war preparations of the Nazis. We are now living in a society where rendition and torture is allowed to go on with impunity and barely remarked upon (including the establishment of permanent large scale torture camps in Afghanistan and and Iraq), long-distance computerised drone assassinations and terror carried out from a control centre in Norfolk are conducted with barely a word of protest, everything we do is monitored, police infiltrate even the seemingly mildest of protest groups, out-of-proportion punishments are handed out to rioters and for internet “offences”, black-is-white Goebbels lies is poured out from state TV about various “rogue regimes”, the growing glamourisation of “our boys in uniform”, the scapegoating of Roma communities, muslims and the unemployed etc, etc. All of this has been stepping up a pace since 9/11.
The ruling class will use as much fascism as it needs to suppress dissent and build up the war atmosphere. There may be further leaps in the process to come but to say that “you cannot call this fascist” is sheer complacency. It is not simply about “cuts and wages”.
US imperialism has been bogged down by war defeats in the Middle East, which is why it has not been able to step up its subversion of the Latin American Bolivarian countries, although it has already managed to overthrow an elected leader in Honduras and usher in the return of death squads there.
What is “talking down to the working class” is the argument that we don’t want revolutionary theory because it is “divisive” and “puts people off”, the working class “is not ready for it”, “we should stick to bread and butter issues because that is all the working class can understand”, etc. Those who make such comments have the air of people who “know things the working class is not ready for” and are condescending. Arguing for a true understanding of the world is the only open and honest approach to take, and the truth is that all development is revolutionary. This is what the working class needs to hear. Your comments are part of a philosophical bid for leadership dressed up as anti-leadership.