BTW one technical problem: I see as he quotes my stuff there is no wrap around. Is this something I can correct or he can?
At 01:43 PM 12/27/98 -0500, Jim wrote:
>
>On Sun, 27 Dec 1998 17:35:55 +0000 Chris Burford <cburford at gn.apc.org>
>writes:
<>
>>My prejudices are that in marxist terms it is better that a left wing
>>bourgeois party tries to unite the great majority of the working class
>>(including those who think they are middle class) rather than divide
>>them
>>by supporting the poorest at the expense of better off workers.
>
>This simply shows that the political strategies of New Labour are
>remarkably similar to those being followed by Clinton's New Democrats.
Yes. Consciously so.
>> This
>>provides the opportunity for better consensus about how to manage
>>society
>>reasonably fairly for the great majority of people, and in the long
>>term
>>puts the private ownership of the means of production and
>>unaccountability
>>of capital under pressure.
>
>I find this statement rather confused.
The main point that concerns me here is the possibility of breaking down the bourgeois two party system. That requires a political party not to recruit votes only from the consciously working class half of the working class but from all the working class including those who think they are middle class. Or to have a system of proportional representation with a plurality of parties that work in coalitions by consensus politics that can produce the same effect.
>It is probably true that a
>Labour government, even Blair's, is more likely than a Tory
>government to impose some degree of social control over capital
>rather than blindly following laissez-faire policies. However, Chris
>seems to think that there is necessarily something progressive
>about this in terms of making society more democratic. I would
>submit that this is not necessarily the case. Historically in the US
>much of the impetus for government regulation of the economy
>came from capital itself which had come to recognize the destructive
>effects that cutthroat competition could have on its own interests.
I accept you probably have empirical data supporting this. It is what I would expect and it is in conformity with marxist theory. Capitalism has a tendency to monopoly.
>Thus in the US the so-called progressive of the beginning of this
>century were largely movements of the bourgeoisie and petite
>bourgeoisie who were concerned with regulating capitalism
>for the sake of preserving the system from its own excesses.
Broadly yes. At various times in this century contradictions within the capitalist class have given the opportunity for the working class to extract some progressive reforms which have in fact stabilised the system sometimes only with a small concession to greater democratic control.
But there is one catch about the reforms at the beginning of this century. The anti-monopoly reforms that for example broke up Standard Oil, are highly reformist in nature. Anti-monopoly legislation in all capitalist countries is a reform against the natural tendendy of capitalism, which is essential to keep an appearance of justice and benefit to the people while maintaining the right of the capitalist class to own and control the means of production and to extract surplus value through it from the workers.
>It seems to me that both Clinton's New Democrats and Blair's
>New Labour heark back to that kind of politics.
I do not agree. I think there is something technologically new, independent of the will of any one individual. It is new in the last 10 years, 20 years at the most. It comes from computers. These can now manage focus group data on a regular basis and feed it into government. It can manage the word processing to do it fluently and represent it in numerous different forms, just as we can communicate today at this moment with the aid of computers.
It provides an answer to the dichotomy between command socialism and laissez faire liberalism. For example I referred yesterday in another post to the existence of 20,000 CCTV cameras in London. One of these obligingly flashed me on Boxing Day to tell me I was breaking the speed limit. This will alter my behaviour.
This morning I see that the not so nanny state is claiming that it caught 30,000 TV license dodgers in the 3 weeks up to Christmas in the UK. Now the TV license is a largish sum for an old state monopoly, the BBC, which was often under attack from Thatcher. The news item claims that modern technology allows the inspection vans to use hand held monitors which can even identify the room in the house where the receiving TV is sitting. The BBC is therefore secure and has ridden out laissez faire market fundamentalism, and can develop more as a monopoly company in the international market place for news.
These are two concrete examples about the increasingly sophisticated ability of government to manage society technically. We are not dependent on a model of computer use as argued by Paul Cockshott that assumes one centralised computer capable of managing once again a command socialist economy. The point is the proliferation of computers allows a pluralistic way of managing society in a socially coherent fashion, albeit indeterminate in precise details. But living processes do not have to be mechanically precise to work. They have merely to deal effectively with probabilities with appropriate feedback mechanisms. Competers have now been incorporated into this biological, *not mechanical*, management of society.
>>It would be a considerable gain to break the ability of capital to
>>manage
>>politics through the two party bourgeois electoral system.
>
>Why would that be. I would think just the opposite would be true.
>An embourgeoified Labour Party that could hold onto its traditional
>working class base while at the same time following policies
>friendly to the interests of the bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie
>would greatly strengthen the control that capital has over the
>electoral system. I take it that it is no accident that business
>executives,
>managers, and affluent professionals have suddenly developed a
>fondness for Labour.
Precisely not accident. Quite deliberate on the part of New Labour. But as the survey showed, the consciously working class are losing still further any sense of loyalty to Labour. And a good thing too. It would be better if we had proportional representation with a massive centrist party or coalition of parties representing working people including those who think they are middle class, plus the opportunity for 5 or 10% to vote for a more radical anti-capitalist party which might draw from the conscious section of the working class and the conscious radical strata of the intelligentsia.
>>But I do not think marxists, or would be marxists, should confine
>>their
>>perspectives to such a party or such a left-centre coalition of
>>parties.
>
>I would hope hope not. Yet Chris and many other British leftists
>in fact do seem to confine their perspectives to working within
>the Labour Party. Whether they intend to or not (and Chris I
>think does intend to) this has the effect of shoring up Tony Blair
>and his rightist brand of Labour politics.
I have never been a member of the Labour Party, and I am not intending to join. I think Jim F is here wrestling with an argument relevant for US politics.
I feel on this list about a month ago Nathan adequately answered the challenge that he was tailing behind Clinton.
>Similarly, in the US
>many left groups including the DSA, CPUSA, the Committees
>of Correspondence etc. are all avidly pro-Clinton despite the
>fact that he is the most right-wing Democratic president the
>US has seen in this century. With all these left groups taking
>such a pro-Clinton line this means that Clinton has had little
>opposition to fear from the left. (The most prominent left
>Democrat, Jesse Jackson has proved himself to be a loyal
>Clinton lieutenant). All this has made it easier for the Clinton
>Administration to drift further and further to the right in terms
>of actual policies (i.e. abolishing welfare, proposing to privatize
>social security, pushing through NAFTA and GATT).
Well I agree that the left should not give the impression that there is nothing to fear from it. That is a question of combining struggle with unity on any tactical question. I think Blair and New Labour need to continue to be pressed on constitutional reform.
But nor should the left play fantasy games of would be revolutionaries about how influential it is. If Clinton or Blair caves into the right, that is because that is what represents the balance of actually existing class forces at the time.
Similarly Doug commented:
>>If Clinton is any precedent, Blair will piss on the Labour left - and
should Blair hit a rough patch, the left will be among his strongest
defenders. Of course, Britain is a different country....
<<
Blair has already done this. And on the most important question, the share of surplus value going to the working class, he will do it again, if international competition makes the UK economy uncompetitive. Blair's camaign for jobs is a clever technocratic way of saying that British labour costs must be internationally competitive. Now they will use computers to give people personal interviews, and moral support, but Blair's emphasis on individual responsibility is intended to make sure the stick of market discipline is there. And they now have sophisticated ways of persuading people.
>Traditionally Democratic presidents usually had to be on the
>watch for opposition from the left. Democratic presidents from
>Roosevelt to Truman to Kennedy and John all had to guard their
>left flanks. Therefore, they were under some pressure to support
>reforms that would benefit workers, the elderly, African-Americans,
>women etc. The last two Democratic presidents that we have had,
>Carter and Clinton, have not had to worry about this. Hence their
>administrations in terms of substantive policy have differed little
>from we might expect to see from a moderate Republican administration.
You know the emprical data better than me, but more recently the way Clinton has leant on Afro-American support implies promises and expectations here.
>What Chris Burford seems to be proposing is that British leftists
>follow the same route as their counterparts across the pond.
I do not accept that. I have heard of no movement towards proportional representation in the USA. And no discussion on this list about reform of campaign funds to restrict the ability of the capitalist class to control the political parties. Perhaps I missed it in the volume. But more likely it would be shat upon from a great height as inherently reformist (and certainly it could be either reformist or radical).
>And the results I would expect to be much the same. A Labour
>Party drifting further and further to the right. A rise in
>disenchantment
>among the party's traditional working class constituencies with
>no readily available vehicle to express it. Therefore, like in the
>US voter participation in elections will probably decrease as people
>perceive correctly that there is little difference between Labour
>and the Tories.
Well I think we have to have an analytical perspective that does not focus on one individual or one party as to whether they are an inch or two to the right or left. We should focus on the whole system and ask how well it transmits and amplifies the interests of the working class versus the capitalist class. And what levers it gives to the working class to take control of the state and the means of production.
A New Labour party or New Labour democratic coalition, and a Democratic Party in the US, secure that they had the support of industrial capital, could make consitutional changes to give greater control to the working class as a whole (including all middle class elements).
If the Republicans collapse in 2000 there may be the opportunity to redraw the landscape but that process of redrawing needs to start now!
I agree that as the process of government became more technical, voting will fall still further. It is a good thing because it means the working class has no illusions in any one party. New Labour is very worried about this, and I think this will further accelerate the process of constitutional change. Labour is for example very worried about the possibilities of corruption scandals in towns that it controls overwhelmingly by first past the post elections, and may well introduce PR locally to avoid damage to its national image. And then voting will fall still further.
It is a good result from a marxist perspective if class conscious constituencies have no faith in the Labour Party, but do have to have a sober awareness of the balance of class forces whether the Labour Party successfully wins elections or not. This undermines crass parliamentarism, not reinforces it. That is what we want.
>Well, if Chris wants to come to the US I am sure there will be a place
>for him in Al Gore's Y2K presidential campaign.
I am sure there is. But I do not think Gore needs me, nor Blair. Their job is to win elections, and I hope they do so efficiently, until I am convinced that there is a better alternative in bourgeois politics that can efficiently win an election.
We have to shift perspective from thinking linearly to thinking in terms of systems.
The linear thinking that emerged as the momentum of the third international subsided in capitalist societies this century was as follows: There is a two party system. At least the slightly lefter wing of these is more amenable to influence from trade unions [themselves bourgeois organs but that tended to get forgotten]; let us use the influence of marxists with the trade unions to hope we can pull or push the more left wing party into electoral power and then hope it will remain left wing.
Entrism was a hopeless sub-variety of this linear type of thinking.
I would suggest by contrast that in complex late capitalist societies it is not possible to conceive of one centre of correct Leninist leadership on every matter, capable of deciding one and only one policy towards the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the US Labor Party and all the other entities of civil society in the US. They are all playing their part in an interactive system where everyone affects everything and the resultant depends on the balance of forces.
It is therefore not a logical contradiction to see that one good person may
contribute in Gore's campaign team by trying to make sure that genuine environmental issues do not fall off the agenda yet again (I mean genuine), while another is trying to make sure that a particular union genuinely represents its members. And another is trying to network to ensure that the capitalist economy gets subject to informed criticism even if it cannot be overthrown tomorrow. These three good individuals do not have to know each other or be in communication directly, each to have some slight beneficial effect. They are all playing a role in a complex contradictory civil society. They largely communicate unconsciously by experiencing the balance of forces that each come up against in trying to achieve their short term goals. They will in addition be helped by conscious communication, and that can be fostered.
I am suggesting it needs to be fostered in a pluralist way now and we need a greater understanding of the political system and the class struggle as a process not a mechanical engine that we try to lever onto slightly more left wing tracks for a few miles until the points switch it back to the right again.
So although I find Jim Farmelant's questions challenging I do not feel challenged on the terms he proposes. I do not think in any material sense that I am supporting Blair or supporting Gore. Nor that they need support from one trivial individual like me. I am talking about the system.
Chris Burford
London.