19.06.1997

New left dogma

Around the left

Since the Blairites’ champagne corks started to fly, the revolutionary left has been very busy indeed. Busy, that is, constructing an extraordinary myth. Left organisations en masse are trying to kid themselves that Labour’s landslide victory was a glorious harbinger of imminent class struggle - a massive “class vote”. This is the new left dogma. It is rather sad myth, to be honest, and an even more pathetic piece of dogma.

But then it was only to be expected that most on the revolutionary left would completely misread Blair’s victory. The true nature of the current period is a mystery to them and they have always been ‘soft’ on Labour and Labourism.

This brings us to the Socialist Party. When the Soviet Union collapsed, it fantastically claimed that this heralded the beginning of the “red 90s”. Similarly, it now seems to believe that the vote for Labour signifies the start of the ‘red 2000s’ - or, at the very least, demonstrates the “aroused expectations” of the masses. Whatever the exact case, good times lie ahead.

Peter Taaffe expresses this mind-set in the June issue of The Socialist. Like many on the left, comrade Taaffe headily talks of a “political earthquake”. The comrade is clearly dazzled by parliamentary arithmetic and Peter Snow’s computer-generated swingometer. We should not forget that only 44% of the electorate, not of the population as a whole, voted for Labour. The massive parliamentary majority Blair enjoys is of course far more the consequence of the first-past-the-post lottery than of popular will.

It is a bit worrying that comrade Taaffe cannot see what is in front of his face. Almost bemused, he states: “It is ironic then that the British people have ruthlessly repudiated the sado-monetarist, brutal anti-working class policies of Thatcher and her acolytes ... yet the new government accepts the basic tenets of Thatcherism”. This only demonstrates that the working class at the present is a slave-class, which was forced on May 1 to choose the butcher. There is nothing “ironic” about this. Blair’s victory is a living symbol of the workers’ slave status - a barometer to measure their atomised passivity, not a sign of their latent militancy.

Comrade Taaffe does not want to hear such talk. He prefers ‘feel-good’ subjectivism instead: “A huge wave of relief and celebration swept throughout the working class and labour movement as the yoke of 18 years was lifted from their back ... It was as if the country had been liberated from foreign occupation.” Like an alcoholic who wants just one more drink before opting for virtuous sobriety, comrade Taaffe just cannot stop himself from cheering on Labour. Still, he is not alone. Pavlovian pro-Labourism is a common condition on the revolutionary left.

The silver linings which comrade Taaffe sees everywhere eclipse the great big dark brooding clouds looming overhead, leading to silliness like this: “It was the scale of the victory which had such decisive psychological effect on the working class. This must terrify Tony Blair and his New Labour cabinet more than anybody else, as it has generated huge expectations.” Is Taaffe serious? The idea that Blair went around on May 2 going, ‘Damn, damn, damn - I’ve got a landslide victory’, is plain wacky. The landslide he got only reinforces his programme, giving him the extra confidence to really hit the working class.

However, comrade Taaffe is positively glad that Blair got a landslide: “A small Labour majority, as welcome as it would have been, would not have evoked the kind of response which was seen immediately after the election.” If this is the case, why did the SP stand candidates against Labour? Given Taaffe’s logic, they should have campaigned vigorously for a Labour vote everywhere.

Warming to this theme - after mentioning that teachers “gave children an extra five minutes’ playtime, partly to celebrate the victory over the Tories” - comrade Taaffe plunges headlong into the ‘crisis of expectations’ scenario which obsesses the left: “Sceptical workers, even those who didn’t vote, were swept along as a mood of expectations and big illusions was generated amongst the broad mass of the population.” Perhaps, but what sort of “illusions” are we talking about? The “expectations” people have in Labour are no different from the ones they have in any victorious bourgeois party. After years of ‘Reaganomics’ a large section of the American masses’ undoubtedly had “expectations” in Clinton. Should communists have got excited because US voters chose him in preference to the republican incumbent, George Bush? Should they have preferred Clinton because he promised hope?

Taaffe’s argument eventually becomes an impenetrable mass of contradictions. Suddenly he tells us: “Socialism Today argued in the past that the politics of New Labour were now no different to the Tories or Liberals” (my emphasis). If so, then why get euphoric about Blair’s victory?

The comrade informs us, quite correctly, that the ruling class is perfectly happy with the Tony Blair team, pointing out that “for the first time in history shares on the stock exchange rose on the morrow of a Labour victory”. So where do these “big illusions” the comrade previously talked about come from?

It is clear that comrade Taaffe has dug a big hole for himself. The only way he can dig himself out is by resorting to inevitabilism, the last refuge of the theoretically bankrupt. So, don’t worry, “opposition is inevitable” from the Labour left, even if it will not resemble the “mass left resistance of the 1930s ... Or the mass Bennite wing of the 1980s, which Militant played a key role in developing”. More reassuringly for comrade Taaffe, with its “crushing majority there can be no excuses for Blair, Brown and the New Labour cabinet. Failure to deliver the goods, inevitable so long as the government remains within the framework of diseased British capitalism, will produce a profound change in consciousness, first of all amongst the more thinking workers and then amongst the mass at a later stage.”

In other words, everything is predestined. History falls into neat, clearly delineated stages, which have to be played out in the correct order. There is no need for conscious intervention (ie, the Party), as workers will spontaneously reach ‘left’ conclusions - when the time is right, of course.

With such a passive and other-worldly schema, the Socialist Party is sooner or later due for a big fall. Now there is a prediction for you.

Don Preston