14.11.1996

Working class wiped off the map

The United States election produced no surprises. Not for nothing has it been dubbed the ‘So what?’ election, given the ‘choice’ offered to the American masses: either the conservative Clinton or the conservative Dole. In the end the alienated electorate voted for the status quo, Clinton scraped in with 49% of the vote and America now has a ‘Republicrat’ president.

There is nothing to cheer about in these elections. Only those who have completely lost contact with reality could argue that Clinton’s narrow victory was in any way whatsoever a ‘victory’ for the working class, or even the triumph of the lesser of two evils. The ‘liberal’ bourgeois press has not even attempted to dress up Clinton in ‘pink’, social democratic colours - one can even detect a slight note of annoyance with Clinton, for being almost embarrassingly rightwing. “He’s not even a liberal,” grumbled Rupert Cornwell of The Independent (November 6).

The grey uniformity of current US politics is quite staggering, and depressing. Hardly surprising that vast numbers of Americans ‘drop out’ politically; many in their despair join religious sects and some even form semi-crazed militias in obscure rural areas. The White House and the whole machinery of government is viewed with sullen resentment - at best. And who can blame them?

However, apathy and cynicism do not make a good breeding ground for revolutionary politics - or any sort of progressive political outlook. In such primitive and unfavourable conditions, all manner of backward and deeply reactionary movements and ideologies can take seed, and eventually mutate into horrible political life forms.

The working class has been wiped off the map as a political force. This has reached such proportions in the US that the words ‘working class’ are never uttered by any ‘serious’ politician. Everyone is ‘middle class’ - nothing else exists. If you want votes, appeal to the ‘downtrodden’ middle class, suffering under the yoke of oppressive taxation.

Political gridlock looks set to be a permanent feature of US politics. In both the house and the senate the balance of power now lies firmly in the so-called ‘centre’, distributed among conservative Democrats and ‘moderate’ Republicans. Whoever you vote for, you get the same.

This offers an omen of the future in Britain, as all the mainstream parties converge and compete for the ‘centre’. We can look forward to conservative New Labour and ‘moderate’ Tories controlling our future. The news that Blair is shipping in Democrat political adviser George Stephanopoulos to sort out Labour’s future election strategy only accelerates the ‘Clintonisation’ of British politics.

Even now, incredibly, there are still those who think New Labour is qualitatively different from the Democrats - it has a ‘soul’ that can still be saved. Socialist Worker (November 9)notes with dread that, “New Labour figures in this country look to the Democrats as a model.” But reality proves just too much for it and so it retreats into fantasy: “But Labour is not the US Democratic Party and most party activists and supporters still believe in some form of socialism.”

Labour may be a different animal to the Democrats, but the only “party activists and supporters” around Labour who believe in “some form of socialism” happen to be found in the Socialist Workers Party and various Trotskyist groups. The rest of the world knows that the Labour Party, from top to bottom, is committed to the running of capitalism.

Tragically for the SWP, and others, New Labour continues to hurtle to the right. Even mild reform of the House of Lords is well beyond the pale for Blair. New Labour’s ‘commitment’ at the 1994 Labour conference to abolish the voting rights of hereditary peers has all but fallen to the wayside. Showing his deep attachment to democracy, Blair now wants to hang it over the head of naughty Conservative peers and their allies like the Sword of Damocles - ‘Disrupt my devolution bill and I’ll cut you off.’

Just like the US election the general election in Britain will be fought over through media sound bites and rhetoric. Just as Clinton had absorbed anything distinctive about the Republicans, Labour has taken on all the Tory clothes - the Tories hope to fight the election over Europe was dashed as Labour sceptics Gordon Brown and Robin Cook took centre stage to put a damper on European integration.

Like over Clinton, the ‘liberal’ press has expressed some discomfort at Blair’s lack of reforming zeal. The Observer noted that if Blair continues to shelve constitutional reform, “it would rob Labour of its political distinctiveness and any claim to represent the reforming tradition in British politics” (November 10).

The message should be clear. The Labour Party is a ‘reformist’ party that is promising no reforms - only the status quo.

Paul Greenaway