(Socialism Today No 12, October 1996)
When Labour backbencher Kim Howells called for the ditching of the word ’socialism‘, Tony Blair went onto BBC Radio’s Today programme to back him. Peter Taaffe asks whether Labour still has anything to do with the ‚S‘ word.
Just under a year ago we argued „that the Labour Party under Blair was in the process of being transformed from a workers‘ organisation at bottom, with a pro-capitalist leadership, into a wholly liberal capitalist party“. (Socialism Today No.3, November 1995). Despite the ditching of Clause IV, and the vetoing of left-wing candidates such as Liz Davies, many believed that this conclusion was too hasty. So long as the trade union link was maintained, they argued, the Labour Party could be rescued for socialism.
Now, at this year’s TUC conference, Stephen Byers MP has confirmed that Blair will probably seek to break the trade union link after he comes to power. Despite the howls of outrage by trade union leaders, Blair openly supported Byers.
As Socialism Today predicted, Blair’s ‚project‘ is to break with the unions, replacing the money coming from the trade unions by a combination of state funding and increased donations from big business. The £1m donated to Labour by Matthew Harding, insurance broker and Chelsea Football Club’s richest supporter, is only the most recent case of Labour’s growing band of rich backers. Others include the publisher Paul Hamlyn, Pearsons, the owners of the Financial Times and Penguin Books, Christopher Haskins, chairman of Northern Foods, the film director David Puttnam, and the media tycoon Lord Hollick (now owner of the Daily Express and Sunday Express).
While the trade unions are repudiated, big business is openly courted. In a speech to the City of London Corporation Blair proclaimed that ‚improved living standards lay in improved corporate profitability and productivity… companies earning profits in a competitive marketplace are a central plank of any strategy to raise investment and living standards‘. The Welsh Labour MP Kim Howells, in a New Statesman article a few months ago, brazenly extolled the virtues of capitalism. The next logical step was the repudiation of socialism, which he duly took in his now infamous article in Murdoch’s Sunday Times, calling for the term ’socialist‘ to be ‚humanely phased out‘.
Blair also openly backed Howells, saying on the BBC Today radio programme that, while ‚Kim expressed this in his own inimitable style… I think the kernel of his argument was entirely correct‘. Subsequently, faced with an outcry against Howells, Blair indignantly repudiated any idea that he was ‚dumping socialism‘. Yet, in an article in The Guardian (19 September), he outlines ‚my kind of socialism‘, which amounts to an undefined ’set of values of social justice‘.
Moreover, they are ‚the common heritage with other radicals‘, a reference to the ‚radical liberalism‘ of the last century that he dreams of recreating. Labour MPs who suspect that this is part of a ’softening up process‘ to formally jettison any connection even in words with socialism are correct. The intention is to break the link with the trade unions that founded the party and with socialism.
There have been protests from some union leaders and left Labour MPs. Yet it should come as no surprise to them where Blair is heading. He’s given enough notice of his intentions. Clause IV, part IV, which accepted the idea of the socialist reorganisation of society, was ditched last year. Close on its heels was the leaked document by Blair advisor Philip Gould, The Unfinished Revolution, which gave notice of some of the changes proposed by Byers at the TUC.
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The outrage shown by some union leaders at Howell’s suggestion that ’socialism‘ should be ditched flows in the main not from any principled opposition. Their fear is how this will be perceived by the ordinary union members and the few workers who still remain in the party. The right-wing union leaders, in lifestyle, outlook, and acceptance of ‚the market‘, are no different from Blair and his entourage. Their ’socialism‘ is a totem of the past, a screen behind which they can hide their complete abandonment of any idea of changing society. Capitalist commentators, such as Donald Mclntyre in The Independent, are brutally frank about what is taking place: ‚Is the Labour Party any longer a Labour Party? This week perhaps for the first time since the party was born in the early part of the century, the answer to that question seems to be an unequivocal no‘. Most serious bourgeois commentators now implicitly see the Labour Party as another bourgeois party.
Even if the trade union leaders were to dig in their heels and refuse to cut the link with the Labour Party, Blair could, at a certain stage, go over their heads. As we have argued, he could go for a referendum of individual Labour Party members to push this through. Stephen Byers admitted as much to journalists at the TUC: ‚Tony Blair’s allies believe he is considering holding a ballot of all members to secure a mandate for divorcing the party from the unions‘.
All of this is done under the banner of ‚modernisation‘. Socialism is relegated by Blair to the ash-can of history. In his Observer article on 16 September he argued that the influence of Marx had ‚tied Labour to a particular form of economic doctrine‘. This malign influence of Marxism was allegedly ‚heightened by the division in radical politics between Labour and the Liberals‘. Like most Labour leaders of recent vintage Blair is completely ignorant of history, particularly labour history.
Blair argued in his article that ‚Lloyd George, Keynes and Beveridge became separated from Attlee, Bevin and Bevan, though in truth they had the same basic ideals and views‘. He is blissfully unaware that the ideas of liberalism predate not just Marxism but socialism as well.
Socialism was not the invention of a few ‚intellectuals‘ like Marx and Engels as the supporters of Blair have argued. It arose from the very life experience of the working class under a brutal 19th century capitalism. Before Marx and Engels we had the great socialist Utopians such as Robert Owen, Fourier and Saint Simon. In their ideas and their ‚model colonies‘ they gave a glimpse of what would be possible on the basis of the socialist reorganisation of society. But, as Marx pointed out, their ‚islands of socialism were an attempt to change society behind the backs of society‘. The weakness of the socialist Utopians lay in the fact that the working class had not yet developed to such a stage where it was seen as the main agency of socialist change. This came later, with developments like the Chartists in Britain. Already in this movement, as well as in the stirring of the working class in France, the ideas of socialism, in a rudimentary form, existed. Moreover, in Chartism, all the stages of working class struggle were displayed, from the peaceful petition to the idea of the revolutionary general strike, but in an undeveloped form. The achievement of Marx and Engels lay not just in their enunciation of socialism but in summing up and generalising the experience of the working class through the programme and perspectives of scientific socialism. They made conscious the unconscious will of the working class to change society.
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The formation of the Labour Party was also not the result of a ‚misunderstanding‘, or of an unfortunate split between radical liberals at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. It arose from the objective processes at work at that stage. British capitalism could no longer afford – challenged as it was by a rising German capitalism – to grant large-scale reforms to the working class. The ‚pro-reform‘ Liberal Party was bound to be undermined. It was precisely the sons and daughters of working class liberals who deserted liberalism and strove for a new political alternative. This resulted in pressure on the trade unions to form the Labour Representation Committee.
The formal acceptance of socialism in Labour’s Clause IV in 1918 also arose from objective processes, the incapacity of ailing capitalism to take society any further forward, which led to the slaughter of the first world war. Above all, it was the example of the Russian revolution, which left a powerful imprint on the consciousness of the British working class, that compelled the reformist leaders of the Labour Party to enshrine in its constitution the idea of socialist change.
The ideas of Tony Blair then are not at all ‚modern‘. Even in hearkening back to the triumph of the Liberals in 1906, the ‚high water mark‘ of Liberalism, he misses its historical significance. The Liberals scored their greatest parliamentary triumph in that election, but it was the beginning of the end of the Liberal Party as a major party in Britain. Blair’s Labour Party could experience a similar triumph in the next general election. But the very objective processes – a serious crisis of capitalism – which shattered the Liberals in the first decades of this century, also exist today. This could also wreck Blair’s right-wing Labour Party maybe even before this century is out.
Ailing British capitalism took to the road of attacks on the working class. It was the working class through their organisations, primarily the trade unions, which, finding no way out on the basis of capitalism, raised on its back the Labour Party. The very creation of this party signified a rejection of capitalism and a yearning for socialist change. Blair, Howells, Byers and the pro-capitalist cabal which now rules Labour in the name of ‚modernisation‘, have embraced a philosophy and a system, capitalism, which even more than in the early decades of this century daily demonstrates its incapacity to solve the problems of the working class or to take society forward.
In the very issue of The Observer where Blair outlined his new liberal credo appeared another report, showing the colossal and growing gap between the rich and poor in Britain. At the top of the pile is London’s Barbican, where the average household income was over £40,000. At the bottom is Sunderland, where the average was just £8,500. Ninety-seven per cent of families in Sunderland told pollsters that they were ’struggling‘. On the other hand 100% of the residents of the Barbican describe themselves as ‚thriving‘. The gap between rich and poor in Britain is greater than at any time since 1886 when statistics were first compiled. There is now a level of poverty and deprivation which rivals that which existed in the 1930s.
It is rumoured amongst his journalistic friends that if Blair was to ditch the term ‚Labour‘ then he would most likely embrace the title, ‚Progressives‘. In truth, because he rests on capitalism, it would be more accurate to describe himself and his supporters as ‚Retrogressives‘. An economic and social system is justified only in so far as it is capable of developing the productive forces and thereby society as a whole. And yet capitalism today is incapable of fully integrating the most important productive force, the working class, into production. And this at a time when it is allegedly experiencing a ‚boom‘. In reality British and world capitalism is locked into an economic depression, where the economy nudges along and unemployment remains not as an episodic feature, cyclical, but structural.
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The right-wing leaders of the Socialist, Labour and former Communist parties, as well as the trade union leaders, have utilised the collapse of Stalinism to push their parties to the right. In the case of the Labour Party in Britain it has moved so far that it is now an openly capitalist party.
Yet the working class has not suffered a devastating defeat, as happened with the victory of fascism in the inter-war period. Although the ideological campaign of the capitalist class, matched by the rightward shift of the labour leaders, has temporarily thrown back the consciousness, particularly the socialist consciousness, of the working class, a rebound is inevitable on the basis of capitalism. Even without the conscious intervention of Marxists, the working class, through its experience of defeats and victories, will cut a way through to embrace the ideas of socialism once more. Even now, according to a poll in The Guardian, 43% of the population, and 61% of Labour voters, agree with the statement that ‚more socialist planning would be the best way of solving Britain’s economic problems‘.
It is true that The Observer also carried a poll with the majority supporting Howells‘ proposal to ditch socialism. There is undoubtedly confusion in the minds of workers as to what ‚more socialist planning‘ actually means. For many, probably the majority, this is identified with defence of the NHS, of education, welfare, opposition to privatisation etc. As yet it is only a minority who stand for a fundamental socialist transformation of society. In general the consciousness of the working class at this stage is opposition, and mass embittered opposition at that, towards the effects of capitalist cuts. On the basis of an inevitable mass revolt in Britain, however, sometime after a Blair government comes to power, this mood will be translated into opposition to capitalism itself.
The growing gap between rich and poor, the massive increase in the incomes of the ‚fat cats‘, company directors, etc., contrasted with the impoverishment of big sections of the working class, will lead to a mood for greater ‚equality‘. Blair professes to echo this demand for ‚equality‘, but his philosophy of liberalism, resting as it does on capitalism, will be incapable of realising this in practise. The rejection of ‚the unequal society‘ of capitalism will take on mass proportions at a certain stage and a search for an alternative will be undertaken by the working class. Even without the intervention of conscious socialists the working class, through its experience, will inevitably move in the direction of socialism.
However, conscious forces can play a role in enormously speeding up this process, of rehabilitating socialist consciousness on a mass scale. It is not sufficient to merely proclaim, as Tony Benn did in response to Howells, that he could not ‚believe that politics in the 21st century would revert to that of the 19th century when you had two capitalist parties‘. In fact, we don’t have to wait for the 21st century. Unfortunately, there are now three capitalist parties in Britain, the Tories, the Liberals, and now Blair’s Labour Party. The mass of the working class in Britain have been effectively politically disenfranchised. The task, however, is not to lament the abandonment of socialism by Blair but to look to the future, by calling for a mass party of the working class, based on socialist policies, to be prepared.
An opportunity to lay the basis for such a party was presented with the formation of the Socialist Labour Party (SLP). But because Arthur Scargill organised it in a narrow sectarian fashion, thousands of potential supporters were alienated. A small, sectarian SLP has now unfortunately complicated the position in the short term. It will take the experience of a Blair government and the emergence of a new generation which will be paralleled by the resurgence of a real left, particularly in the unions and the factories, before a new mass party of the working class will take form.
Militant Labour stands for the formation of such a party, embracing all trends within the British working class who stand for an explicitly socialist programme. But the best way to prepare for such a party is to build a powerful Marxist force now.
The significance of the recent pro-capitalist statements of Blair, Byers and Howells can only be understood against the background of the problems which will confront a Labour government. The attempt to distance Labour from the unions foreshadows the inevitable clashes which will develop after a Labour government comes to power. Huge problems have been stored up. In eight years the national debt has doubled: debt interest now absorbs more than half the revenue from VAT, or almost the entire cost of the NHS. If the Tories go for tax cuts this autumn this would pile up debt. In the light of this The Daily Telegraph recently declared that ‚the real attack on public spending will come later, whoever wins the election, and much wailing and gnashing of teeth it will cause‘.
In the mighty collisions between the classes which impend in Britain diseased capitalism will be rejected and a conscious turn will be made by more and more workers towards the ideas of socialism, particularly of scientific socialism, of Marxism, and those organisations which stand on these ideas. Leon Trotsky once declared: ‚If a theory correctly estimates the course of developments and foresees the future better than other theories, it remains the most advanced theory of our time, be it even scores of years old‘. More weighty figures than Howells or Blair have sought to bury socialism many times. They failed, as Blair, Howells and Byers will, because capitalism failed. The working class, once it moves into opposition, will embrace those weapons which will allow them to carve out a new future. So it was in the past, and so it will be in the stormy future which looms in Britain and on an international scale.
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