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Post by dodger on Jul 31, 2013 22:52:04 GMT
Social Democracy
WORKERS, JUNE 2011 ISSUE
We should reflect on the origins and history of social democracy and its debilitating consequences on our class.
By the year 1850 the Communist Manifesto had just appeared, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It had shown at the level of theory that the working class could effect its own emancipation from wage slavery. At the same time, engineers and other skilled workers were showing for the first time anywhere in the world that organised workers could be a match for any employer. In Britain the Amalgamated Society of Engineers was formed as a national union in 1851. The conclusion should have been obvious: use the practical strength to achieve the theoretical goals.
Yet within a few decades, what had happened? The German workers’ party – the largest Marxist party in the world – was bargaining away its principles in merger negotiations with another party at its congress in the town of Gotha in 1875. It united with the Lassallean faction, adopting a programme limited to obtaining concessions from the government. Meanwhile in Britain, it was being proclaimed that the future lay solely with “new unionism”, the organisation of the unskilled. The skilled workers were described as corrupt “labour aristocrats”. (See the article “Labour Aristocracy” in the May 2011 issue of WORKERS.)
The Communist Manifesto had presented workers as active, self-reliant, able to think, speak and act for themselves, and thus capable of changing the world. It was based on faith in the working class. Social democracy, including its British counterparts such as the Social Democratic Federation and successors including the Labour Party, saw workers as passive, an electorate, a force to be harnessed, “noble savages”, uncorrupted because unlettered, whose lot on earth would be improved by politicians making reforms on their behalf. It was then, and is now, based on fear and hatred of the working class.
The skill, the sheer professionalism, the creative potential in workers is what social democracy most hates and fears, but that is just what must now be tapped if we are to draw up a programme for our class’s survival. Just as the Amalgamated Society of Engineers started the movement for workers’ emancipation, so now the most skilled sections, bringing everyone with them in their wake, must finish the job off.
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Post by dodger on Aug 29, 2013 14:46:51 GMT
There's a thought
WORKERS, JANUARY 2009 ISSUE
Have we British workers any idea what is just around the corner? Do we, the sole remnants of the national entity, understand what we have allowed to develop?
It was clear by the end of the 1970s that Britain had become an industrial wasteland. It was equally clear that we could not survive on finance capital and services alone.
We have also abandoned much of our agriculture and fishing. One wonders what our collective thought has been.
History teaches us that we have been in industrial decline since 1870, when we produced a third of the world’s industrial goods. This decline is not some natural phenomenon out of our control. It is a product of perpetual lack of investment by “British” capitalists. Greed, pure and simple.
There is no wonderful symmetry of nature in being the first to decline because we were the first to develop. There is no justification for being the first to commit suicide because we were the first to organise to resist capitalism. Both processes are in our hands. In other words, both are influenced by our thought processes.
We are suffering the consequences of allowing a strategy of reliance on the madness of gambling with other people’s money. We are going to see a massive and rapid economic decline, worse than that of any other once industrial nation, because “our” capitalists have always been the most greedy.
The only alternative to dealing with this is a future of itinerant pauperism.
Assuming that enough of us are willing to continue, and not surrender to degradation, what can be done? The first, and most important, step is to recognise that our rejection of conscious theory, and our embracing of the false hope of social democracy, was an error.
We have been too cynical, too sceptical. We have shied away from ideas. We should have listened to Marx when he worked here and not surrendered our political thought to others by inventing the Labour Party.
When we have reclaimed the theory based on us, and developed for our use, Marxism, and we have each taken responsibility for its collective development, we can not only survive but we can build Britain anew.
Now, there’s a thought.
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Post by dodger on Oct 1, 2013 8:40:31 GMT
We instinctively recognise the state as the tool for ruling class power. Yet at the same time we see it as providing the answer to our problems...
We’re not going to reform the state – we have to take it for ourselvesWORKERS, APR 2013 ISSUE  TUC march, 20 October 2012: without a fight for wages and conditions,
attempts to retain public sector provision will not succeed.
[Photo: Workers]
Radical changes to the NHS from 1 April are a dramatic and visible sign of the way that the role of the state is changing. There are other, less obvious, changes in the way that the state and government work. At the moment most of our attention is on immediate effects and the increasing role of the private sector. There are other, wider concerns for our class too.
Handing over services to private companies is about more than making profits; it goes together with reducing what workers get from the state. Quantitative easing, inflation and wage freezes cut standards of living – that’s easy to see. This is matched by the undermining of pensions, housing, education, health, local services, arts and all else that we’ve grown up to expect.
It’s tempting to call for a fight against every cut in services, to reverse every new benefits rule, to tax the rich, or even to renationalise key industries. All of those are valid in the right time and place but do not, even together, comprise a programme for the working class to defend itself and to rebuild Britain.
Ambivalence
Historically our class has been ambivalent about the state. We instinctively recognise it as the tool for ruling class power. Yet at the same time we see it as providing the answer to our problems – hence the call for public sector control and against privatisation. Those calls alone miss the point. Capitalists make profits, or hope to do so wherever they can. Yet it is seen as a problem for them to do so in certain areas like healthcare. Food is just as essential, arguably more so, but few challenge the role of capitalism in food production – until something like the recent horsemeat scandal.
Do we hope that state provision of something takes that aspect of our lives out of the grip of capitalists? Or if we work for the state do we hope, against all evidence, that the employer will be kinder? Yet many of the successes of our class and positive features of Britain have become part of the state. That hasn’t been wrong or something to criticise. The fears of life without proper healthcare or of ignorance and low self worth through poor education are rightly high on the list of workers’ concerns. The failure would be not to recognise that those gains are temporary without a continued struggle to maintain them. In the end only we are interested in the future of our class.
The government of the day represents the ruling class and acts on its behalf, whatever the party in power. Parliamentary democracy is limited; it is never directly responsive to our needs. That’s as true now as it was in 1945 or in the 19th century. But at times the working class has been able to influence or even dictate what the government does. Our dilemma is that although we despise politicians and the political process, we don’t see any other way to secure our aims.
At the moment it is the ruling class and its government that appear to be breaking down the old ways of parliamentary democracy. And, if they were to be believed, they are also “rolling back the state”. The opposite is true. They are removing control and decisions as far from working class influence as they can manage. At the same time they are redefining what the state does and how it exercises class power.
Decisions affecting the economy or the working class are made not in the open or in parliament. They are made in EU meeting rooms or company boardrooms (often in tax havens). The ideas they take up are not from workers in Britain, or even local politicians; they are generated by think tanks and research institutes operating only in the interests of capital.
These polices are presented as what’s good for Britain and as the only choice. The limited public debate that follows rarely acknowledges how this is happening, or effectively challenges the presumption that capital decides on the future of Britain. Sadly even trade unions and the TUC aspire to little more than hand wringing and commenting on the worst features of government policy.
The history of the working class and government has been a series of big steps mixed with periods of absorption and attempts at reform. Nor is the development of government the path to ever-increasing democracy, as those in Westminster would have us believe.
A universal franchise took nearly 100 years to emerge after Chartist agitation and the first reforms. The establishment of permanent and effective trade unions in the mid-19th century was followed by 50 years of wrestling with parliamentary repre-sentation ending only in the foundation of the Labour Party, though in this time many laws were passed to regulate employment and working conditions.
Workers’ organisation grew in depth and breadth. The scope of the state was transformed in that period, laying the foundations of local government, education, health provision, and other social changes that benefited our class. We’d recognise many of them even now.
Coercive powers
The modern capitalist state meets common needs through providing state services and managing the economy – or it did. It also holds coercive powers (law and order, defence). During the 20th century there were periods when it seemed that the working class could gain control and make changes, for example in 1945. That followed 30 years of world war, depression and another world war (and a war in Ireland). There was an immense increase in central planning and control. Without that there would have been no victory to celebrate.
The 30 years after 1945 were a historical aberration. The working class could make more progress and gained the illusion it might consolidate post-war aspirations without having to fight for them. Then came the cold shower of Thatcher and the attempt to divert and disarm our class – from within as well as from outside.
Struggle by workers for wages, conditions and a better life has not disappeared, though it is less frequent and our organisation is constantly under threat. But the reasons driving such struggles are as present as they ever were.
That process has continued from 1979 right up to today. Common provision of health and education is being broken up; the carpet baggers are moving in. Governments have abandoned any pretence that the state should secure industrial infrastructure like energy, transport or water. Even more destructive has been the policy of breaking up industry and the skills that underpin it.
The current failures of the capitalist state and its government are evident and insoluble. They cannot manage the economy. Brown the “brilliant” academic could not; Osborne the trust child can't either. Both revere “the market” because the alternative is control and limitation on capitalists. The only answer excluded is to make more goods that people need and provide more services they want to use.
There is little to choose between parliamentary parties on the key issues for Britain – how to avoid an economic depression, getting out of the EU, regulating financial markets, creating jobs, stopping migration, maintaining health, education and other essential services. All potential governments fear organised workers, and fear the decisions we’d make on these questions. Likewise they fear any revival of a planned economy.
When the capitalists want to roll back whatever we’ve achieved in the past, we go into defence of the local, and look to parliament to put it right. We don’t question the power that enables the ruling class to make those decisions. Nor do we, for the most part, claim the right to work not benefits, and assert that it is workers who create the wealth Britain needs.
Our class has the same dilemma over the state as ever. Without a fight for wages and conditions, attempts to retain public sector provision will not succeed. We must make the state come to us, not chase the illusion that we can reform it. |
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Post by dodger on Oct 21, 2013 20:34:54 GMT
www.workers.org.uk/news/news_0509/benn.htmlWORKERS, MAY 2009 ISSUE “The Sage”, Gateshead, is an appropriate billing for the wit and wisdom of this venerable parliamentarian. Tony Benn is the consummate political performer, working his audience with a skill, acquired over more than six decades, that many a professional stand-up comic must envy. This is a stage show masquerading as politics.
It begins with a brief preamble where he draws his audience in by massaging their expectations. These are sympathetic folk wanting their preconceptions confirmed: he starts by reminding them of his honorary membership of the National Union of Mineworkers, number 001. Cue the evening’s first of many rounds of applause. Later he will expound on the 1984/5 strike and allude to a few difficulties in Nottinghamshire. Perhaps he would not wish to dwell on that theme as being the ex-MP for Chesterfield it might call into question his influence in local matters.
The format is largely that of BBC’s Question Time, with a panel of one. Roving microphones invite audience members to ask largely anodyne questions – Who was your favourite prime minister? What’s your opinion of the new US president? Were you too leftwing in the 80s for Labour to get elected? – allowing Benn to draw on his extensive repertoire of anecdotes and make generalised “lefty” pronouncements. Unlike Question Time there’s no opportunity for the questioners to respond, so no indication of how satisfied they were with the answers. They largely played the straight man to Benn’s jester.
He is, or at least has become, the Bob Monkhouse of politics. Monkhouse would similarly invite his audience to give him topics and then respond with appropriate jokes from his vast collection. So it is with Tony Benn. There is certainly no analysis. His claims to be horrified by war were not tempered by his being a minister in Labour governments that deployed nuclear weapons capability. The welfare state resulted from the munificence of the Attlee (Benn’s favourite PM) government, apparently. And no sense of irony when he repeatedly said that the prominent individual wasn’t important and then went on to list all the major world leaders and politicians he’d known personally.
If he truly believes that everyone is equally significant and that no one should be seen as special, how come he was sitting up there on the stage pontificating to 1,600 paying punters and selling his book in the foyer? Once politicians addressed public meetings for free, and the public expected to play an active part. But this is performance, ultimately reassuring the audience that whatever doubts they might have about Labour’s recent history, actually there is no other future than with Labour. The CPB (ML) did receive a passing mention as he listed the initials of various communist and socialist parties and groups. Their members, however committed, are misguided, according to Benn, as the only future for socialists and socialism is in the Labour Party.
Democracy is Benn’s main theme, but it does not go beyond the ballot box. This evening was the epitome of what passes for democracy in Britain; a passive audience invited to applaud (or boo in the full pantomime of parliamentary politics) and then place an X against which of the very similar predetermined bundle of policies they dislike least. An entertaining evening, but no laughing matter.
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Post by dodger on Nov 18, 2013 5:39:25 GMT
imarxman.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/occupy-london-and-misunderstanding-capitalism/Occupy London and Misunderstanding Capitalism
Posted on February 29, 2012 by imarxman The forcible closure of the “Occupy London” camp outside St. Paul’s Cathedral in the London Square Mile was followed next day (Tuesday, 28th February 2012) by a phone-in on Radio 5Live. What emerged from the usual point scoring swapping of entrenched ideas was a general lack of understanding of what capitalism is.
A number of callers professed to be in favour of capitalism rather than the corporate system which, for them, is the source of all the world’s woes. It transpired that what they meant by capitalism was a vague sense of people working hard and getting on to make life comfortable for themselves and their families.
These are laudable aspirations, but they have little or nothing to do with capitalism. Although it is often portrayed by its advocates as the medium of opportunity, capitalism actually has only one purpose, the accumulation of profit. All other attributions are mere persiflage.
What hadn’t occurred to the 5Live callers, apparently, was that the corporate bodies they were objecting is capitalism. The economic crisis wasn’t caused by greedy bankers who were merely the instruments on this occasion. Economic crisis is as fundamental an aspect of capitalism as the occasional booms.
Even if bankers, financiers and their corporations are more strictly regulated, and tax avoidance schemes curtailed, there will still be economic crises in the future. As long as capitalism exists this will be the case and the ordinary people, the workers, will be made to pay the price.
As stated above, the one and only motivating factor in capitalism is the pursuit of profit. The only source of profit is the surplus value created by workers who receive less in wages and salaries than is made through their work.
In the early days of capitalism, the Industrial Revolution, this relationship was stark and obvious: the mill owner owned the factory and machines while the workers owned nothing but their own labour.
The factory and machines were, of course, quite useless in themselves, needing the workers’ labour to operate. Similarly, a worker’s labour was only of value if traded in return for pay with which to buy the means of life. The deal was, part of a worker’s shift created enough value to cover wages, the other part of the shift produced extra value not needed to sustain the worker.
This was surplus value from which, once other expenses were drawn, the capitalist took profit. By obviously owning the means of production, the factories and machines, capitalists could exploit the necessary labour of the work force by paying less than the value produced.
Capitalism, however, became ever more complex: the means of production, technology, continued to advance but this made it increasingly expensive. Capitalism required funds beyond the resources of individuals, so the baking system and financial institutions developed to meet the need.
Before 1900, manufacturing was being surpassed by finance capitalism; the bankers were taking control. In Britain, workshop of the world in the 1850s, manufacturing went into absolute decline, a process becoming more pronounced throughout the twentieth century.
The Thatcher government of 1979 marked the state’s recognition of the strategic importance of finance capitalism. All subsequent governments have been reliant on, and actively promoted, the financial sector at the expense of indigenous manufacturing.
Living standards were apparently allowed to rise, but this was not because the vast majority of Britons, the workers, became evermore richer. Rather they were encouraged to enjoy the benefits of financial instruments. That is, they were encouraged into debt.
Even a pathway to a possibly more prosperous life through higher education became subject to borrowing. People had mortgages, car finance, student loans, credit cards et al. Many thought this was unsustainable: they were correct. None of this creates a single pound (or euro) of value.
People were apparently becoming wealthier without generating any more wealth: although bankers may have been drawing the largest sums, everyone, to some degree was complicit. It was easier to believe promises of easy wealth than confront the very much greater task of rebuilding Britain through manufacturing, agriculture, developing the infrastructure to benefit all.
Occupy London has been tagged as anti-capitalist, but this remains little more than a vague notion. However genuine the protesters were, no matter how grievous their grievances, it seems they lacked any real understanding of what they were against. And even vaguer about what they favoured as an alternative.
Their supporters who called the phone-in stitched together, unfairness, child poverty, climate change and any other single issue exercising them. When asked what they’d put in capitalism’s place they floundered even more.
Idealism has a double meaning: firstly, there is the altruistic motivation to make the world a better place in some undefined fashion. Secondly, it is the belief that if only people thought in a certain way, in this case more humanely, then society would change for the better.
Were that it was it so simple! Such is no more than a starting point, recognition that something is profoundly wrong. Then begins the much greater challenge of discovering the material reality, understanding how it functions and coming to terms with what is to be done to change it.
There are no easy solutions; the working class, that is the vast majority of people in Britain, need to become active participants in formulating their own futures. The exploitative nature of early capitalism caused the workers to establish their trade unions to defend and promote their interests. So it must be again.
However worthy, camping on cathedral steps will change nothing. It hardly disconcerts capitalism for a moment. Initial press interest dies away and it seems likely that before the evictions of the protesters from their camp most people in the country had forgotten they were there.
The British state has learned patience: no need for heavy handed policing while the pedestrian tread of the law allows time to pass and the protesters to become isolated from society. An eventual court ruling and a quick and efficient police operation with minimal arrests and the City carries on speculating undisturbed.
Those who style themselves anti-capitalist must learn the lesson that every act is a political act and if they are really serious then they must develop their political understanding. Otherwise they are just another bubble to be burst.
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