How’s this as a possible scenario for the development of British politics over the next decade or two? Let’s say Brown holds off calling the next general election until the last possible moment, but is forced to go to the country in 2010.
The Tories waltz home in a landslide victory, with even the low IQ golf club pissheads that were only allowed to stand in theoretically unwinnable seats to make up numbers in former mining constituencies finding themselves duly elected with comfortable majorities.
And youth will be still in our faces when we cheer for an Eton crew. Thatcherism and Blairism find their continuity in the shape of a bunch of floppy-haired Smiths fans in open neck shirts, delivering touchy-feely petit bourgeois homiletics to mask policies that push the Gini Coefficient ever upwards. But that’s OK, because the poor no longer vote.
The Labour Party – reduced to around 50 seats - implodes. Even the present pitiful living dead existence it aspires to in many places instantly evaporates, leaving it without meaningful presence over large swathes of the country.
It may never be rebuilt, after its New Labour component throws its lot in with the equally emaciated ranks of the Lib Dems, on the impeccably logical grounds that sod all remains by way of political differences.
The left holds on to the brand name as a consolation prize, perhaps reaching a federalist lash-up deal with Trots, tankies and a few other sundry odd buggers, in a sort of Traditional Labour Movement Preservation Society that debars membership to anyone other than pot-bellied middle-aged real ale drinkers with beards. And that’s just the women.
As a result, the trade union bureaucracy becomes ever more supine. Industrial action becomes rarer and rarer and eventually peters out altogether. The more ‘realistic’ denizens of general secretaryland call for ‘dialogue’ with the Conservatives, on the grounds that they are going to be in office for a long, long time.
The British National Party makes serious inroads into the white working class, running a few councils and picking up a handful of MPs, while the Greens will mop up the Stoke Newington Church Street senior social worker vote that previously went to Labour.
Political Islamists cut to the chase and secure election in predominantly Muslim areas, on the back of a mosque-directed block vote and campaigns generously funded by business interests, dispensing with the already pointless intermediary services currently on offer from Galloway & Co.
Scotland dominates debate on the constitution after the Scottish National Party narrowly wins the independence referendum they are currently threatening, while Wales can’t particularly be arsed one way or the other so long as nobody scrutinises the expense accounts of those participating in that little sideshow in Cardiff too closely.
Me? I’ll probably emigrate to somewhere where life is more pleasant, political debate more open and living standards for ordinary folk somewhat higher. Like Belarus, for instance.
What do you reckon, comrades? Am I being a tad too pessimistic here? Well, show me where I am going wrong. Outline the alternative take, in which the party of which you are a member leads us to the sunlit uplands that naturally results from the application of your chosen ideology.
Posted at 14:03, 11 July 2008
Comments (24)
The idea of industrial action petering out is the least likely. If history has taught us one thing about industrial relations it's that, if you squeeze workers hard enough, unless you have a seriously repressive military state prepared to clamp down on them (and sometimes even then) the workers will fight back eventually. An absence of functioning national trade unions is not going to prevent that.
Yeah it's much more likely that as they lose the Labour Party as a vessel for their political ambitions, the TU chiefs will either move on to pastures new or start talking a bit tougher on the grounds they no longer have anywhere else to go.
This scenario is very close, well done.
I consider this analysis to be mainly wrong.
You are mistaken if you think there is any similarity between New Labour and the Liberal Democrats, as the LDs have always been full supporters of social & civil freedom, & do not have the same managerialism, & urge to extend state power because of a firm conviction in their own righteousness, as Labour imagine that because they are morally superior they can ratchet up as much power as they like. Which is about as far from liberalism as it's possible to be.
Also, New Labour do not satisfy the economic liberals, as their thraldom to large corporations is the antithesis of liberalism, & the social democrats are also unhappy with them.
I do not think Islamism will ever become an electoral force, as I can't envisage it getting Muslim support, so even in very heavily Muslim areas it will not be supported. The time is coming when the imams will be undermined: beneath the surface, liberalisation is going on, & the hysteria of the jihadists is not a refutation of this thesis but proof of it, a frightened response to the rising of liberal Islam (which should be aided by a state taking a firm stance on secularism, disestablishment of the church, & utter opposition to "faith" schools of all kinds & palliness with the religious of any variety.
Labour are going to take a blow but will become a stronger, & probably more left-wing & libertarian force after a time. They will, in short, revert to being the true Labour party, which I will be against but which I will be able to respect as I cannot respect these spivs.
I also think the BNP are a flash in the pan, & due to their utter uselessness are never really going to be achieved anything. They should be allowed to speak freely, as I have always been an opponent of No Platform & similar bollocks, & in such a setting they will be flayed alive. Also, I think that under a right-wing government the BNP would have far less success than they have now: in areas such as Stoke, where I live, Labour will start bouncing back the day they are out of office nationally.
I think you have left the question of Europe out of your description of the future. What impact do you or anyone else, think Europe will have on the Britain/England of the future. (Sorry, that sounds like a question from 'Does the Team think...').
By then you should be able to emigrate to an independent Scotland, and you will be most welcome.
Just read an interesting post on 'Harry's Place' under the 'We're being sued by Hamas UK' thread. It explains a lot about the Labour Party and this faith nonsense. Apparently Tony Blair was very pally with a PR guru called Anthony Bailey who is a high-level Catholic and pushes all this religion bollocks. The actual post is by someone called 'V Samuel' and it is towards the end. Perhaps everyone already knows fall about it, but I must admit it was news to me. All I can say is that people like Anthony Bailey will not be around once Labour is no longer electorally successful. Please read it it is too complicated for me to detail what he says and I don't have a clue how to link to it.
this is the link http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/07/10/were-being-sued-by-hamas-uk/
Still look on the bright side of things, Socialist Equality and Chris Talbot got double the votes of the Church of the Militant Elvis Party in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election, that's progress!
84 today, tomorrow millions :)
The poor no longer vote because they have nothing to vote for. However, that situation can be expected to change once Nu-Labour has been shafted.
Look, in South Wales, the independent Dai Davis holds Nye Bevan's old seat and the Independents run the councils. Except neither Davis nor those councillors are really independent. They are Labour men who believe in Labour values.
Post-deluge I do not see the Labour Party being run by infantile Trots - it is more likely to become the vehicle for those Welsh independents, plus all the other people in England and Scotland who used to belong to it but don't anymore.
> Also, New Labour do not satisfy the economic liberals, as their thraldom to large corporations is the antithesis of liberalism
Although Adam Smith warned against the dangers of big corporations, today's Actually Existing Economic Liberals love them - most right-liberal politics seems to be about attempting to justify handing control of state-run institutions to multinationals. I think New Lab loyalists and the Orange Book crowd will get along just fine.
> Labour are going to take a blow but will become a stronger, & probably more left-wing & libertarian force after a time.
The above sentence should appear in the dictionary, as an illustration of the phrase "wishful thinking". Labour (who'll probably end up with something like 150 MPs, rather than the 50 Dave suggests) will respond to a Tory election victory by moving to the right, just like they did the last time. The political ground won't shift to the left again until larger events (collapse of the neoliberal paradigm, climate change, war) demand it.
McGazz,
Labour didn't move to the right, what happened was it ceased to be Labour.
The right consisted of the likes of the late Jack Braddock and his Catholic gang in Liverpool and its national face was the Roy Hattersley types.
No way can you claim that the Nu-Labourites represent the old Labour right - they are something totally different.
Well, it's not really "wishful thinking" since that isn't really a scenario which I want, given that I'm against socialism. But bloggers like Chicken Yoghurt & Ministry Of Truth are people I've always respected, & if their tendency came to prevail in Labour we'd be the gainers.
> No way can you claim that the Nu-Labourites represent the old Labour right - they are something totally different.
I never said they did. I said the party moved to the right, not that the old Labour right gained control. The Blairites created a new Labour far-right that made the likes of John Smith look like Leninists. I don't think it's impossible that the likes of Miliband or Purnell could do the same once Labour are out of power. A New-New-Labour would campaign for welfare "reform", more power to big business and as much union-bashing as they could get away with. And some unions (not mine, thank God) will still support them.
> Well, it's not really "wishful thinking" since that isn't really a scenario which I want, given that I'm against socialism.
Fair enough :)
But one does hear a lot of that kind of talk from people who want it to happen, but give no suggestion as to how it might happen.
To address the declared theme of Dave's post, first we have to enquire into what exactly is the relationship between negativity and positivity in Leftist politics. The revolutionary Left's first great historical surge (1792 - 1871) was characterised by an enormous sense of positivity. The Paris Commune is the ultimate demonstration both of Lefist optimism's strength and its great weakness. Yes, it was a principled experiment, but this same naive optimism meant it could not defend itself against counter-revolution. The revolutionary Left's second great historical surge (1917 - 1976) was characterised by a sense of negativity. Yes, it could industrialise an entire continent of peasants, build a civilization and keep counter-revolution at bay, but only at the expense of its ideals.
If history works in cycles, then the revolutionary Left should be encouraged by the feeling that it may be due a third great surge.
What then of negativity and positivity from the capitalist perspective? Capitalism faces a different problem. On paper, in economic theory, it is a positive vision. When it comes to implementing this positive vision, however, governnments have to intervene (in a negative sense) to prevent disasters: breaking up monopolies, emergency bail-outs and nationalisations of financial institutions. The problem here is that the positive vision of capitalism set out on paper in economic theory is not positive enough - in other words, it is not radical and revolutionary enough. It doesn't consider, for instance, that preventing private individuals accumulating vast amounts of capital need not require a negative reappropriation of capital through higher taxes; it could, for instance, mean placing an expiry date on capital, effectively forcing people to spend their earnings and therefore boosting the market.
Socialists and neo-conservatives fear capitalism. They both fear that it might not work, hence socialists argue for a state which will moderate the effects of capital and the social class system, whilst neo-conservatives insist on the right of private accumulation, so that the bourgeoisie have a reserve of capital in the event of economic collapse. This lack of confidence in capitalism, shared in different ways by Left and Right, can only be overcome through a revolutionary radicalisation of capitalism itself. A positive vision which will represent both the triumph of capitalism AND the third great era in the history of revolutionary politics.
Sorry - my comment didn't really address the situation in Britain in particular. I was more interested in the question of how positive or negative we should be, and what role positive and negative 'talk' plays in politics.
A lot of socialists, Toodle Noodle, are against capitalism tout court and therefore don't regard socialism as 1) a bit of state intervention in the market or 2) as the 'revolutionary radicalisation of capitalism' (whatever that is). I'm not sure that 'positive or negative talk' plays a massive role in politics - or at least no more of a role than any other form of postmodern-ish jargonistic bollocks.
Dave , What you say is plausible if defeatist, If the Labour Party collapsed and that is a distinct possibility. What’s in a name, I say a lot and however small the Labour Party could finish up there is a hard core of supporters that would rally to it. Our biggest problem in that scenario would be the attitude of the rest of the left and could they be persuaded to work towards a reformed L.P. That would be a monumental task knowing the attitude and the way some on the left work. The trade unions are also vitally important. Would they do a deal with a re grouping of New Labour and the Lib/dems? Or would they re-enact history and dump the centre as they did 103 years ago.
Don’t loose sight of the fact we are now in this country moving into a far harsher and brutal capitalist era with the E.U. setting a very neoliberal agenda. The working class are going to have to learn the meaning of class war all over again. We on the left also will have to learn the meaning of solidarity and unity. Anyway I have invested to many years in the struggle to give up now, and I can’t afford the fair abroad.
The problem is at the moment we have two parties I think Labour will lose the next election and will spend a few years cleaning out the Blair's and the browns the Purnels the milibands and a new party will slowly come up, once into power it will do the same as Labour always does, come in with a big bang everyone will say great it's Labour after two years we cannot get rid of it because it's failed again.
"A lot of socialists, Toodle Noodle, are against capitalism tout court and therefore don't regard socialism as 1) a bit of state intervention in the market or 2) as the 'revolutionary radicalisation of capitalism' (whatever that is)."
I didn't actually specify how much "moderation" of capitalism socialists advocate - arguments about who is a true socialist aside, there is a sliding scale from social democracy to full-blown communism. Of course, once you reach this latter form, you can hardly be talking about "moderation" any longer. Maybe you've not mixed widely enough in certain circles, but most socialists I meet do advocate a mixed economy. But, as it happens, I have more time for, and interest in, communists.
And I've never met a socialist who argued for the revolutionary radicalisation of capitalism either. So what?
"I'm not sure that 'positive or negative talk' plays a massive role in politics - or at least no more of a role than any other form of postmodern-ish jargonistic bollocks."
Actually, the characteristic trend within postmodernism is to avoid any notion of a dialectic between positivity and negativity. In the works of Hegel and Marx, political economy is introduced to something called 'dialectics', in which the relations between positivity and negativity are addressed. And Lenin made his great revolutionary breakthrough at the precise moment when he finally got to grips with Hegel. Coincidence, perhaps, but an interesting one.
In Marx's work it dialectics has more to do with the interaction and mutually transformative interplay between more or less definite forces and entities than with nebulous concepts such as 'positivity' or 'negativity'.
What do you mean by 'positivity' and 'negativity'? Do you mean these terms in a normative sense? By what criteria are things to be judged as 'positive' or 'negative' or is this an entirely arbitrary categorisation? Are these just things that you like and things that you don't like?
The 'radicalisation of capitalism' sounds like a total nightmare to me. It also sounds like an interesting idea in the abstract, but one which will probably melt away into nothingness when you try to explain what it actually means in terms of practical application.
Isn't there a chance that we will see very little dramatic change at all. The Tories will win the next election. Those leading figures in the PLP lucky enough to survive the deluge will be quitely delighted to be out of office and leaving the incoming Conservatives to cope with the turbulent economic waters ahead. The Labour Party regroup during its two terms out of office and return victorious after years of Tory inertia and wrangling over Europe. Same old, same old.
Ed - to understand the role of the dialectics in Marx's work, one must already have an understanding of Hegel. I don't know how much Hegel you've read, but it sounds like you're less familiar with him than with Marx. (That's no crime, btw.)
I think you've lost sight of the fact that I am actually a critic of the way in which different political movements (including the theory behind those movements) are dialectically positive or negative with regards to situations. To answer your question about normativity, for instance, I would pass it on to the Marxist Hegelians for whom it is actually a serious problem which they need to address!
In the 1970s, there was an interesting debate between Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky (in fact, you can watch it online http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=WveI_vgmPz8&feature=related ). Part of the debate between these two is over the question of to what extent does emancipatory politics depend upon positive visions of what we can hope to implement in the future. Chomsky thinks we need visions such as the anarcho-syndicalism which he favours, whilst Foucault prefers a discrete approach of resisting what we are currently faced with. Foucault thinks models such as anarcho-syndicalism are a distraction at best.
Now, a vulgar reading would align Chomsky with 'positivity' and Foucault with a kind of 'negativity'. But is precisely this assumption which Foucault and his post-structuralist colleagues try to reverse. Chomsky's approach is rooted in a traditional negativity-positivity polarity - on the basis of a negative judgement about capitalism, he articulates a positive alternative. This disjunction is what Foucault resits - in favour of a model of political intervention and experimentation.
So instead of trying to come up with the all-or-nothing answer which we fight to implement, the true solution is to re-invent the political experiment as such. Ironically, then, I would endorse political organisations such as the Solidarity Federation ( http://www.solfed.org.uk/ ), who are resist the all-or-nothing politics of both parliamentary and traditional revolutionary politics. For SolFed, taking over an unused shop unit and turning it into an unofficial community centre is a political intervention which is optimistic, but not utopian.
But you asked for a concrete example of what radicalising capitalism might involve... So what about putting an expiry date on capital? This would have two effects - it would stop the bourgeoisie accumulating capital and it would give a boost to the market. Of couse, this may appear utopian, but it's true purpose is not to construct an image for which we must fight, but a challenge to capitalist ideology on its own ground, challenging its own assumptions.
Socialists will have nowhere left to turn after 2010. Blair knew that the centre-ground was the only place to win an election in the modern era and I cannot see Labour pushing back to the left.
ok TN fair enough. I don't think that putting a use-by date on capital would work (why would capitalists accept that reform?) - but interesting ideas. Thanks