Will the left gain from the financial crisis?
Posted on Tuesday 30 September, 2008
Filed Under The left
It is a minor historical irony that the financial markets crash of 2008 comes about at a time when there is no dissent from the neoliberal consensus at any point on the spectrum of establishment politics.
For three decades now, people have been told – by politicians of all parties – that there is no alternative. Understandably, most of them have come to believe it. Young people, in particular, haven’t heard any narrative other than free market ideology.
That much has been brought home to me by my recent experiences as a mature student. Last year, I sat what Americans would refer to as ‘economics 101’ for the second time in my life. It’s not that I particularly needed a refresher on the essentials of supply and demand curves, but the course was deemed a prerequisite for the more advanced modules I’m taking this year.
In a classroom full of people mostly a generation younger than myself, I was struck by the differences between the students of 1981 and the students of today. Fittingly for kids keen to get a well-paid job in the financial services sector, they are a lot more smartly dressed, for a start.
And they take things rather more seriously, too; they don’t tend to skip classes, because they have paid for them after all, and I somehow don’t get the impression they too spend much time hanging around in the college coffee lounge rolling spliffs. That’s probably because they are busy with part-time, or even full-time, jobs.
But most striking of all was that most of them tended to think capitalism is great. Where in the Thatcher period we were angry because the Tories had put three million people on the dole, the consensus – in 2007, anyway – was in praise for a system seen as virtually guaranteeing 42-inch screen plasma televisions and two weeks’ annual holiday in Thailand to all but a few unfortunates.
In the first week, the lecturer explained about the differences between free market capitalism and Keynesian demand management, and asked students to vote on which they favoured. When I replied that I was a socialist who didn’t favour either, the derision towards the old git in the corner was almost palpable.
Put simply, anti-capitalist ideas clearly no longer have the resonance they did when variants of Marxism influenced a sizeable minority in the Labour Party, with substantial parliamentary and local government representation, and when a network of shop stewards was able to popularise such notions in many workplaces.
Nor does the left advance a systematic diagnosis of what is wrong with capitalism as it is now, and what can be done about it. Books outlining an Alternative Economic Strategy no longer feature prominently on university library shelves.
That brings me back to the current crash. There have been plenty of predictions that meltdown on Wall Street and in the City will generate a revival socialist fortunes. Interestingly, many of them have come from the right, featuring prominently in quality newspaper opinion slots.
There’s also renewed optimism from some on the left. Alex Callinicos of the Socialist Workers’ Party, for instance, reportedly told a recent public meeting in Tower Hamlets that the crisis represents a ‘moment of opportunity’ for rebuilding the left.
He’s not necessarily wrong. But the important thing to stress is that any upturn in our fortunes isn’t going to happen automatically. For a start, the first thing we have to do is to articulate a coherent set of counterproposals, and as far as I can make out, work on that task hasn’t even begun.
Then we have to popularise our ideas, and that will require a political vehicle to give them organised expression. I’d like to think the British left is capable of doing that, but after the experience of the last period, I’ve got this horrible suspicion that another moment of opportunity is going to just walk on by.
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63 Responses to “Will the left gain from the financial crisis?”
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“..since when did placing a trade union bureaucrat on the board of directors of a company constitute workers control?”
I never mentioned the word ‘bureaucrat”.
Nor was I suggesting a workers’ participation scheme.
How the unions control their representatives is down to the level of internal democracy and political consciousness within them.
When the Tories wanted to destroy the Nationalised Rail and Coal industries, they brought in Beeching and McGregor.
These private sector hatchetmen pushed through massive cuts against public and union opposition, leaving the remnants for re-privatisation.
The consequences for the subsequent development of British transport and energy policy are still playing out today.
High rail fares, over-dependence on road transportation, dependence on imported gas and a looming shortage of generating capacity.
Creating a State Bank with a union veto over management would be a powerful weapon against economic sabotage and misuse of public money by rich bankers.
But without a government to reinforce it, workers control at local level or over a state enterprise will always be in danger of being subverted.
“Creating a State Bank with a union veto over management would be a powerful weapon against economic sabotage and misuse of public money by rich bankers.”
This sounds like a demand for the current situation to me, not someting for the future. Yet in the current situation, who would exercise the “union veto over management” that you suggest? Some bureaucrat. No-body else.
Anyway, whatever kind of “workers’ representative” only having some kind of veto is a long, long way from any kind of workers’ control. It’s not even remotely near co-management.
dzb “This sounds like a demand for the current situation to me”
Every time a bank fails the question of nationalising the banks is raised in practice.
It’s virtually one a week at the moment, I’ve lost count. The biggest US banking failure earlier this week, A massive German one today….
So, yes, why shouldn’t it be adopted by the TUC and affiliate unions as policy, right now?
The alternative is more prevarication and deals with bankers by the Brown/Mandleson team, who represent a centre bloc against both a Blairite coup in the LP or an attempt by the unions to dump New Labour entirely.
Meanwhile a big recession gets nearer, which is not a good situation for union organisation.
The phrase I used was:-
“trade union representation on the board, with the right to veto management decisions. ”
Which IS workers control.
As opposed to workers management, which is something that requires a reduction in the working week, the right to regular mass meetings, education and training.
That will only happen within a fully socialist system.
No Prianikoff you did not mention bureaucrats I did. The point being that the unions as they are presently constituted and as they are likely to remain until a massive working class offensive can oust them are run by bureaucrats. That is to say a layer of people who derive their living from bargaining with the bosses and who do not have the same material interest in destroying capitalism that is the lot of the vast majority of wage workers.
Certaily any element of workers control of production is under the present system of production constantly under threat and can be abolished as and when new technologies arrive on the scene. As has happened time and time again in engineering for example. But that frontier of control marks one of the flash points for the class struggle and indicates why the workplace remains central to any socialist strategy in this country as elsehwere.
Mike Neprimerimye wrote:
‘the unions as they are presently constituted and as they are likely to remain until a massive working class offensive can oust them are run by bureaucrats.’
This sounds pretty abstentionist to me.
One of the reasons for the low level of militancy in the unions has been, precisely the long period of boom and availability of cheap credit.
All fuelled by the rise in home ownership and belief in ever-rising house prices.
With that swirling down the boghole, many workers will be forced to react in the traditional ways. Strikes, occupations and sit ins etc…
We’re also starting from a position where the left is far better placed in many unions than it was in the 1970′s, which began with Scanlon, Jones, Chapple and Gormley in the leading positions.
Bush and Brown were forced to do a turn on “neo-Liberalism” faster than Torville and Dean. Dialectical thinking would indicate that the unions could change just as fast.
Mike Neprimerimye wrote:
‘the unions as they are presently constituted and as they are likely to remain until a massive working class offensive can oust them are run by bureaucrats.’This sounds pretty abstentionist to me.
quotes and writes prianikoff.
Interestingly he doesn’t point out that Mike Pearn is right, although everyone (else) can surely see this.
Anyway: a “trade union veto over management” can hardly be workers’ control. Under workers’ control I understand workers running things, not just occasionally saying “no”.
Hmm. There is, of course, a long standing theoretical debate about how any form of workers control might actually work – and a practical decision to take every time such a possibility raises its head.(Which, let’s face it,hasn’t exactly been that often).However, I do wonder how far anyone on the Left would be happy with ‘workers’(sic) control of the institutions of the financial markets.
Meanwhile, over on his ‘Idle Scrawl’ blog, Paul Mason of Newsnight ( ex-Workers Power according to wikipedia) seems to be saying this is not just a ‘Minsky Moment’ (a predictable fuck up in the global financial markets brought about by the inherent logic of financial capital as analysed by Hyman Minsky, whom I’ve never read) but that the British state is seriously considering adopting Minsky’s Left Keynesian policy response to such problems. What is that response?
“As socialisation of the towering heights is fully compatible with a large, growing and prosperous private sector, this high-consumption synthesis might well be conducive to greater freedom for entrepreneurial daring than is our present structure”. (Minsky, HP John Maynard Keynes, New York 2008, p164-5)
Mason is saying, I think, not merely that a Swedish solution is on the cards – but the socialisation of the banks won’t automatically be temporary. A new style capitalism with the financial sector owned (or persuasively regulated) by the State is potentially possible, or at least within the ambit of ‘legitimate’ policy debate.
Either Mason’s got this very wrong, or really big things are afoot…
An interesting point, but isn’t Mason a qualified musician and not an economist? In some sense, the state guaranteeing all private (?) savings deposits, as in Ireland and now Germany, is basically state control of the banks, in all but name, isn’t it?
Oi, there’s nothing wrong with being a qualified musician and wannabe economist.
Anyway if Paul Mason has any influence, this could be the first time the Workers Power split has had any importance to the wider world: does he take the WP line (capitalism is in crisis and the revolution is just around the corner) or the Permanent Revolution line (no it isn’t)?
Yes, Mason is – or was – a musician. But he’s also a good journalist. I’m not suggesting he’s a guru, just a intelligent commentator with his ear to the ground and a background in left wing politics.
Guaranteeing deposits is one thing, controlling the operations of the banks is another. If the first step automatically implied the second surely governments would now be directing their banks to start trading with one another again…
Bodenburg:”…Under workers’ control I understand workers running things, not just occasionally saying “no”.”
Pearn inserts the term “bureaucrats” for trade union representation. You interpret a veto as meaning occasionally objecting to what the managers do.
But I said neither of those things.
In fact, your definitions of workers control are seriously out of kilter with Marxism. As I pointed out earlier, you’re confusing it with workers’ management.
Having a veto over management is tantamount to dual power within an organisation.
They no longer have unlimited powers to hire and fire, transfer money abroad, engage in fraud and commercial secrecy.
The fact that the unions are emerging from a low level of struggle isn’t an argument against such demands.
Perhaps you think if a few thousand people have a Stop the City demo and absail down the Gherkin it would make an iota of difference?
What’s needed is a bridge between the existing organisations of the working class at their current level of consciousness and the objective needs posed by the economic crisis.
Unless the unions start to engage with the current situation by making their own demands, they will be tailing behind events.
This of course, is leading to greater international rivalry, as Ireland or Germany offer to protect international investments.
Without a clear socialist action programme, the result will be confusion and growing nationalism.
Not only does the left need to combat the false solutions of the BNP, it needs to expose the prevaricating pro-business agenda of the Liberals, Tories and most of all, Brown’s team in the LP.
The main thing to stress is that the 1,000 richest people in Britain, who own over £400 billion in capital, have to pay for the banking crisis, not workers, students and pensioners.
Similarly on an international level.
Nationalisation of the banks is NOT happening on a thoroughgoing basis, as is required by the situation.
As the crisis deepens it more nationalisations may be forced on capitalist states, but what individual states are doing at present is a piecemeal attempt to prop up their national banking systems, without fundamentally threatening the private shareholders in the banking system, or the big capitalist deposits.
Demanding full scale nationalisation, a state bank and a union veto over commercial secrecy,control over the movement of money and protection for the small saver is a first step.
It’s CERTAINLY part of a socialist transitional programme:
“The workers and peasants, organised in unions, by nationalising the banks…abolishing commercial secrecy, imposing confiscation of property as a penalty for concealment of incomes etc.. might with extreme ease make contol both effective an universal – control that is, over the rich, and such control as would secure the return of paper money from those who have it, from thos who conceal it, to the treasury, which issues it..”
VI Lenin ” The Impending Catastrophe and How to Avert it”
Bodenburg:”…Under workers’ control I understand workers running things, not just occasionally saying “no”.”
Pearn inserts the term “bureaucrats” for trade union representation. You interpret a veto as meaning occasionally objecting to what the managers do.
But I said neither of those things.
In fact, your definitions of workers control are seriously out of kilter with Marxism. As I pointed out earlier, you’re confusing it with workers’ management.
Having a veto over management is tantamount to dual power within an organisation.
They no longer have unlimited powers to hire and fire, transfer money abroad, engage in fraud and commercial secrecy.
The fact that the unions are emerging from a low level of struggle isn’t an argument against such demands.
Perhaps you think if a few thousand people have a Stop the City demo and absail down the Gherkin it would make an iota of difference?
What’s needed is a bridge between the existing organisations of the working class at their current level of consciousness and the objective needs posed by the economic crisis.
Unless the unions start to engage with the current situation by making their own demands, they will be tailing behind events.
This of course, is leading to greater international rivalry, as Ireland or Germany offer to protect international investments.
Without a clear socialist action programme, the result will be confusion and growing nationalism.
Not only does the left need to combat the false solutions of the BNP, it needs to expose the prevaricating pro-business agenda of the Liberals, Tories and most of all, Brown’s team in the LP.
The main thing to stress is that the 1,000 richest people in Britain, who own over £400 billion in capital, have to pay for the banking crisis, not workers, students and pensioners.
Similarly on an international level.
Nationalisation of the banks is NOT happening on a thoroughgoing basis, as is required by the situation.
As the crisis deepens it more nationalisations may be forced on capitalist states, but what individual states are doing at present is a piecemeal attempt to prop up their national banking systems, without fundamentally threatening the private shareholders in the banking system, or the big capitalist deposits.
Demanding full scale nationalisation, a state bank and a union veto over commercial secrecy,control over the movement of money and protection for the small saver is a first step.
It’s CERTAINLY part of a socialist transitional programme:
“The workers and peasants, organised in unions, by nationalising the banks…abolishing commercial secrecy, imposing confiscation of property as a penalty for concealment of incomes etc.. might with extreme ease make contol both effective and universal – control that is, over the rich, and such control as would secure the return of paper money from those who have it, from thos who conceal it, to the treasury, which issues it..”
VI Lenin ” The Impending Catastrophe and How to Avert it”
It’s nice that the far left has a number of seats on the leading committees of some of the smaller unions. But the base of the unions as a whole and that of the left within them has shrunken dramatically since the 1970′s. The trots on those leading committees are then isolated and have not been elected to their positions on the basis of their revolutionary views. Which is why they can so rarely lead actions.
By contrast the right wing leaders Prianikoff mentions were, in the late 1960′s and early 1970′s, forced to lead major strikes. What mattered was that the left, including the now defunct CPGB, had a real base in the unions and workplaces that could force the bureaucrats to fight.