Come back Gerry Healy, all is forgiven
Posted on Sunday 25 April, 2010
Filed Under The left
WELCOME to Weimar Britain; the impending paralysis of the mainstream parties will throw politics back on the streets, to the benefit of either the far left or the far right. That’s the view of one of our foremost exponents of the dialectic, doubtlessly reached after exhaustive analysis of the contradiction between parliamentary and extra-parliamentary politics.
John Rees – a man whose matchless capacity to marry theory and practice is highlighted by his role as the principle intellectual architect of the Respect project in the heady days of its initial success – spells out this stance in a piece just posted on Counterfire, a website that groups 60 people who quit the Socialist Workers’ Party earlier this year.
Taking his cue from the evidence provided by opinion polls, the writer and broadcaster postulates that the most likely outcome on Thursday next week is either a coalition government or a government with a miniscule majority.
Rees couples this with the idea that there currently exists ‘a level of popular discontent not seen since the 1970s’ which has in turn ‘led to renewed levels of popular mobilisation, though not yet industrial action’. This is ostensibly evidenced by consistent opinion poll opposition to privatisation and growing disparities of wealth.
Such assertions inevitably reduce to judgement calls. Yet it seems to me unlikely that popular discontent and popular mobilisation in 2010 exceeds popular discontent and popular mobilisation in the 1980s, either quantitatively or qualitatively.
Telling a pollster over the phone that bankers get too much money is hardly on a par with travelling hundreds of miles up north to join an early morning picket outside a closure-threatened pit.
If by ‘popular discontent’ is meant simply widespread distaste for mainstream politicians claiming duck houses on the exes and consequent willingness to abstain at the ballot box, Rees may have a slightly stronger point.
Even on this interpretation, it is important to distinguish between discontent and radicalisation; while some left groups have grown slowly in recent years, their influence is well below the influence of their forerunners 40 years ago.
That’s why far left candidates in most seats will in the main pick up just one or two percent of the vote, a range that is by now established as traditional.
Nevertheless, Rees’ understanding of dialectical categories enables him to see what remains hidden to others:
So perhaps extra-parliamentary politics will carry more weight under a weak government. It’s hard to see a government with, say, a four seat majority withstanding a mass movement outside parliament in the way in which Tony Blair’s massive majority protected him from the mass movement against the Iraq war (and the biggest back bench revolt in history).
Such a statement requires definitional clarity before it can properly be evaluated. The last time the phrase ‘extra-parliamentary politics’ was in common usage was the early 1980s, when the Bennite left habitually deployed it in a deliberate effort to blur the classical distinction between reform and revolution.
If you were a Trot, the word implicitly hinted at barricades; if you were not, it instead designated peaceful demos designed to put pressure on the Tories, and perhaps one day to keep a left Labour government on the path of socialist rectitude.
Moreover, what is meant by talk of a government not being able to ‘withstand’ a mass movement outside parliament? It can only be taken as a claim that it is concretely possible for the left to mobilise popular discontent in order to topple such an administration. Given our weakened and fragmentary state, that has to be a Big Ask. And what happens if we don’t?
A weak government may alter the balance between parliamentary government and extra-parliamentary action to the benefit of the latter. The left could benefit from this fact. But a weak government may also prove a chance for the far right. If the political elite looks both unanimous and unable to alleviate the crisis, the right can gain.
The truth is that the failure of parliamentary politics is a challenge for the left as well as an opportunity. If the left doesn’t take the opportunity to build a mass, extra-parliamentary response to the recession then the populist right, the Islamophobes, the EDL and the BNP will be the beneficiaries.
Here it is asserted that parliamentary politics has ‘failed’. Really? Although the cash for honours and parliamentary expenses scandals have tarnished individual politicians and perhaps even politicians collectively, support for parliamentarianism appears undiminished.
There has been no obvious influx of support for parties that publicly advocate anything other than parliamentary democracy. Nor am I aware of any untapped base of mass support for such sentiments.
To sum up, Rees appears to be advancing a stridently alarmist scenario, entailing that either the left builds a united front that brings down the next government, or stands by as it witnesses the rise of a powerful fascist movement.
Perhaps I am being a bit cynical here, having failed to grasp the internally contradictory totality, and all that. But London in 2010 does not immediately strike me as politically analogous to Berlin 1930.
Unfortunately, such a perspective puts one in mind of a watered-down take on the febrile fantasies once peddled by the last Trot sect guru famous for a penchant for dialectics. Come back Gerry Healy, all is forgiven.
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22 Responses to “Come back Gerry Healy, all is forgiven”
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Didn’t really need that crack at Healy, did it Dave? No better or worse than other followers of Lenin. Look for the fault in that man, not more recent disciples of Trotsky.
“support for parliamentarianism appears undiminished.”
The drop in turnout suggests something of same, even if it doesn’t indicate positive support for revolution.
The mention of the late Gerry Healy sparks a question:
Who [person or institution] inherited all the SLL – WRP files – you know, the papers detaining the dirty deals with the Iraqis, the Kuwaitis, spting on Libyan exiles for Libyan intelligence and so on?
Or are the papers still in Trot hands, perhaps the hands of a devoted band of acolytes unswervingly devoted to the untarnished memory of The Leader?
The ill-typed reference was, of course, to WRP persons allegedly spying on Libyan political exiles at the behest of Libyan intelligence.
If this actually happened it was probably very illegal indeed.
Yeaterday (Saturday) I engaged in my first overtly political act for 20 years; I helped distributed anti-BNP leaflets in Enfild Town. I must say, we got a very poor recepion. The interesting thing was that the WRP (in their latest incarnation) was handing out leaflets. They have a candidate standing in Enfield North (Joan Ryan’s seat)and they were actually getting a fairly positive response. Several of the stall holders in the market were displaying ‘Vote WRP’ leaflets as well. To be honest, if they were standing in Enfield Southgate I would consider voting for them, although I am aware of their history and I don’t agree with everything they say, but it warms the cockles of my heart to see someone raising revolutionary slogans. As for John Rees,I wouldn’t buy a used car from hm or his wife.
SueR. If you juggle the letters they end with a P. Hard to believe that capitalist stall holders were displaying WRP leaflets. Trying to do themselves out of business with collectivisation! Empty stalls and such!!
SueR. It may raise the cockles of your heart. But if you were in the sight of the revolutionary firing squad for being an alleged splitter then your cockles will be falling out of yer erse. Stick to baking cakes!
I would expect a scenario as Rees’s, in a period of relative recovery. Bold action and recession don’t follow.
OT: You might know rightist/nudist blogger Sonia Belle from her visits to my blog. Apparently today her blog was deleted. More news as it becomes available.
Jimmy: You might know the Glasgo working class (which somehow I doubt), but you sure as hell don’t know f**k all about the London working class!
“Although the cash for honours and parliamentary expenses scandals have tarnished individual politicians and perhaps even politicians collectively, support for parliamentarianism appears undiminished.”
“Undiminished”? Really? Is this the feedback you’re getting on the Hackney front line, Dave? The masses saying, “Yes Labour is a war-mongering rag bag of neo-libs, hacks and chancers, but we loves our dear old Parliament, it’s the forum of the nation…Ralf M? Wot a tosser! Mass turn-out May 6th (touch forelock). God bless you Mam! Labour to power on Socialist policies…”
“Fantasies are not just the province of the (febrile) Happy Healys.” (Lenin Vol 38)
Good piece, Dave. But I do still like the phrase “Weimar Britain” which accurately conveys a picture of the political establishments in all 3 main parties coasting, as if paralyzed, through crises to greater crises.
SueR. The only working class I notice in London are the foreign workers that are keeping Londons economy floating. I do not know all of Glasgows working class just the people I worked with. Most of them are actually middle class being home owners some thanks to mrs T.
Is this twat for real?
The only working class I notice in London are the foreign workers
Spent much time in London recently have you? Outside zone 1?
Most of them are actually middle class being home owners
Owning your home means you’re not working class? Hooray, capitalism is over! Genius.
Rees is half right – not a bad average for a middle class idiot.
The inevitable consequences of failing to keep working people in even the marginal level of comfort they’ve become accustomed to and the nonexistence of any realistic redistributive strategy in the absence of any source of ruling class wealth/profit (land excepted, for what that’s worth) that can’t be spirited across borders at the click of a mouse ain’t gonna be pretty.
Boilermaker. You are the Twat. The overwhelming majority of working class vote for capitalist parties. Perhaps you have not noticed that for decades socialist dictatorship has been rejected by the masses.
What the fuck are you on about now?
Can you read?
Do you want me to re-post my last comment in capitals to help you understand?
You seem to just be arguing with the voices in your head again.
The overwhelming majority of working class vote for capitalist parties.
Possibly a full majority of working class voters don’t vote at all. Largely for the want of an egalitarian, redistributive party rather than a series of Tarquin-riddled troupes (faux left grouplets included) coalesced around the unspoken position that “the proles have too much.“
Jeezus Ker-rist! LOL and quelle horreur!!! This from the person who presided over the wrecking of just about every potential marshalling of left forces over the past ten years? Weren’t we getting the tour T-shirt? Socialist Alliance, our Scottish friends, Respect, Left Thingy, and now the SWP itself? Not to mention the imploded STWC. Have I left any out?
boilermaker seems an angry person! All this Twat and Fuck! Must be a leftie surely.
Whatever political potency the Trotskyist tradition has is rooted not in it’s willingness or capacity to critically appropriate complex empirical realities. Rather it’s appeal to some resides in it’s ability to construct a powerful political discourse built on appeals to alleged objective necessities, the drawing of highly misleading parallels with favourable historical episodes, and the delusional (and politically dangerous) view that Jacobinite elitism can and will deliver transformatory social change.
In this context evidence and historical record mean little to most Trotskyists. History and contemporary realities are important only to the extent they can be mined for examples that serve to support and perpetuate apriori conclusions: that socialism is immanent to contemporary conditions, that all political and social events and processes must be assessed by reference to this immanence, and that the problem of socialist transition is primarily a problem of leadership and political will.
In short: arguing with Trotskyists such as Rees is a waste of time.
Jimmy, unless you have a convincing argument to prove that only manufacturing workers are really workers, you’re a moron.
I live and work in London. Here today I saw nurses, health care assistants, cleaners, bus drivers, shop assistants, road sweepers, security guards, receptionists, administration assisants, coffee baristas(?), electricians and maintenance technicians, unemployed patients detained under forensic mental health sections, and bankers. Of these surely only the bankers could possibly not be considered working class. Most of the others depend on (often low) wages or benefits to feed, clothe, and house themselves.
AJT. London is not different from Glasgow or any other city. Some people earn more than others. So what is your point!