17.12.1998

Workers’ millennium?

Around the left

Optimism is a good thing. Marxism and pessimism are fundamentally incompatible. But our optimism must be rational, scientific and human - that is, based on what is and must be, not on whims or flights of fancy. This is by no means a stoic acceptance of the world as it is now. It enables us to tell the truth. To become a truly political class the workers’ movement must be equipped with the necessary knowledge and understanding.

Virtually all left groups subscribe to the view of revolution as predestiny, whether in an evolutionist or catastrophist form. History as a thing is unfolding - albeit with a few hitches and blockages - in our direction. Mechanical historicism as opposed to Marx’s dialectical and emancipatory historicism.

However, in the real world we need consciousness and combativity. Sorry, comrades, history is not going to do it for us. Then again, it is not going to do it for them either. History is there for the making.

The Socialist Workers Party is a typical offender - though not as bad as some. We may have missed out on the ‘red 1990s’ so confidently predicted by the Socialist Party’s Peter Taaffe in 1990 (or is there still time for an 11th-hour miracle to rescue SPEW’s catastrophism?). But the SWP is looking forward to the ‘red millennium’.

In the November issue of Socialist Review, Kevin Ovenden writes that

“the seismic shift in the composition of Europe’s governments has confounded those who argued in the late 1980s and early 1990s that Tory parties were destined to be in power for a generation because workers had accepted the core of the free market ideology”.

Perhaps comrade Ovenden has been hitting the Christmas sherry a bit early - or reading (uncritically) too many leader columns in the bourgeois press. This “seismic shift” exists mainly in his head. Possibly the comrade is expressing what he feels ought to happen. Reality - regrettably, it has to be said - tells a more humdrum story. The centre-left parties, if you care to describe them as such, that have come to power in most of Europe have swung to the right and have accepted - albeit in this or that modified form - free market ideology. One of the campaign slogans of Gerhard Schröder was ‘Not different but better’. Whatever the exact political coloration of the centre-left parties now in government, it is crystal clear they are all anti-working class. The fact that they won general election victories does not indicate in any way that the workers are rejecting the free market ideology, let alone capitalism or the rule of the bourgeoisie.

The latest issue of Socialist Review (December) carries on in this light-minded yuletide vein. It is relentlessly upbeat, even when talking about economic crisis. In comrade Peter Morgan’s ‘critique’ of the past year, we see the following headline: “Labour: things only got worse.” Sorry, comrade - worse for Labour or for us?

We get the usual empty poll-chasing - apparently Blair’s personal rating had “plummeted” according to a Guardian/ICM survey conducted in September. Wow. Comrade Morgan’s conclusions represent an excursion into fantasy land, as reality/history has to conform to the SWP’s theory. Thus we are told: “In Britain the year is ending with the Labour Party in disarray”. We could be generous and assume that this is a typing/printing error. “Labour Party” should obviously read “Tory Party”. Still, an easy mistake to make, as Blair keeps shifting New Labour to the right. (It is almost getting difficult to remember the vehemence with which the SWP in the past attacked supposed “ultra-leftist” or “third period nutters” like the CPGB who dared challenge Labour in the ballot box.) 

To keep his argument going, the comrade reels out the familiar economistic litany which is apparently meant to cheer us all up:

“Blair’s relentless shift to the right has led to growing protests and demonstrations over council house sales, school closures, closure of such services such as libraries and old people’s homes. Many are determined not to put up with Blair’s Tory policies in the coming year.”

Why talk about “growing protests” when working class action is at an all-time low? More to the point, if such a movement was on the rise, it is what is missing from comrade Ovenden’s perspectives that speaks volumes. As Blair and his acolytes attempt to command, determine and control high politics - taking on and using constitutional-democratic issues for their own narrow advantage - the workers’ movement is supposed to operate as a slave class: a ginger group whose horizons are limited to defending the local library or school. Where is the ambition to turn the working class into an alternative ruling class? Socialist Review seems to view the workers as passive objects whose only task is to vote Labour - or even SWP if they are lucky - and go along to their local union meeting. No tribunes of the oppressed here.

Ultimately, empty posturing is all that is left. Comrade Morgan booms: “As the economy gets worse the political crisis will deepen ... This can lead to splits at the top of society, but these can fuel the confidence of workers.” Perfectly true in some respects. Yes, we have had had anticipations of these “splits at the top of society” over the last few weeks. But these “splits” can only act as “fuel” for the workers if they have a political vision, leadership, and are organised as a political class. If not, any spontaneous resistance or movements will fizzle out - and could in the long run generate even more disillusionment and cynicism.

In other words, the SWP needs a Marxist minimum-maximum programme. This can best be achieved through dialogue and interaction with other left groups - and by uniting around democratic and political tasks and questions. The SWP has tentatively begun to break from auto-Labourism - the first step in the fight for working class independence. Let us hope that as the new millennium approaches - red or otherwise - it will start to crawl out of its economistic ghetto.

Don Preston