Why We Need Respect... posted by Richard Seymour

Revolting.

Not long ago, a clutch of Labour MPs rebelled against David Blunkett’s plans to cut benefits and circumscribe appeals procedures for asylum seekers. Thirty-five Labour MPs, to be exact. Well, twenty-eight Labour MPs voted against the benefit cuts and thirty-five voted against the limits to appeals procedures. So, there are some Labour MPs who think that asylum seekers should be allowed to starve, but not denied the right to appeal against being starved. I suppose you’d have to be made entirely out of jelly not to emit an enormous yawn at the latest so-called ‘rebellion’. Did anyone really expect better? How many of those Labour MPs who voted with the government genuinely believe it was the right policy? Probably a few deluded themselves sufficiently, but I guess that the bulk considered it a pragmatic policy to temporarily satiate the stirrings of racism in the working class vote. It isn’t going to work, of course. The last time Labour tried acceding to the demands of racists, fascism saw its largest post-war resurgence.


Minister Meets Labour Backbencher.

Still, it would be foolish to imagine that Labour is totally moribund or that it has no imaginative ideas for putting the excitement back into politics. Alan Milburn has announced that he wants to see a manifesto for people power, or rather “the empowerment of consumers and citizens”. His flagship idea is to give people local referenda on whether to ban smoking in pubs. Milburn’s last idea for boosting support for Labour was wider home ownership – but then they lost the Almos and so that idea has been sent back to the makers for repackaging. And what do the Labour grassroots offer? The Respect Coalition’s website highlights a story in The Guardian in which polls showed that two fifths of the Labour membership thought Blair should resign before the next election – to be replaced by Gordon Brown. The same number want to see a return to ‘traditional Labour values’. Not to be snide, but which ‘traditional Labour values’? The strikebreaking, the wage-cutting, the acquiescence to racism, the support for imperialism? Okay, that is snide, and rather unfair. The Labour leadership may be held responsible for these crimes, but the membership were bitterly divided on each of these issues, and it is obvious enough that the appeal to ‘traditional Labour values’ is an aspiration toward socialism, equality, peace and plenty for the workers.

How likely is this? Some people visiting this website, whom I gather are members or at least supporters of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, have strongly criticised my support for the Respect Coalition, arguing that the real strategy should be either to reclaim the Labour Party or to cause a split. They regard the Respect Coalition either as a return to radical liberalism with trade union support (pace Ken McLeod) or as a popular front/cross-class coalition (pace the AWL). I am not at all convinced of their reasons for thinking this, but I’ll come to that later.

Labour Of Left

In order to understand why I think Respect is a good idea (or at least a good start), it is necessary to say a few words about the present situation. First of all, the Labour Party. How likely is it that it can be reclaimed, or at least split into two factions? Is it possible, perhaps, to cleave the membership from the appalling Whigs in charge? I doubt it. For one thing, only two-fifths of the Labour Party want a return to traditional values, and even they think the best way to do this is to have Gordon Brown, the supremo of New Labour idiotology, replace Tony Blair. Blair and his allies have moved with a speed and a ferocity to devour the remainder of the Labour left that noone has so far been able to do a damned thing about it. They have boarded up most democratic vistas in the Labour Party machinery, harried out the best dissidents, evacuated the NEC of reliable left-wingers and quoshed dissent at conference. They have treated the trade unions with such contempt that Mark Dolan of the CWU has reported members asking him “why are we giving money to people who keep shitting on us?” Every elementary principle of the Labour movement has been chewed up and spat out by Blair’s shredder, and what has been done about it? Nothing, nada, fuck all.

I have spent years awaiting the awakening among Labour members, but there just aren’t enough socialists left in it. In a way, when Ken McLeod accuses Respect of resuscitating the idea of radical liberalism with some trade union support, I am tempted to reply that this is exactly what Blair’s project has set out to achieve – and it isn’t too far from that goal. The working class is under-represented in the membership, and the professional middle class is over-represented. It has become a different kind of party. On most key issues, the bulk of Labour members have supported the leadership – including on the war. Even where they haven’t, they have singularly lacked the ability to influence policy. The ever-present emotional blackmail (Blair’s constant appeals to the threat of a resurgent Tory party, made ever more likely by his policies) has apparently been enough to cow the membership, to break any sustained resistance to even a single policy tenet. The small numbers of brave, heroic dissidents in the Labour Party who guard the last flames of parliamentary socialism ought to be out setting the world on fire.

Even the old formula that the Labour Party was a capitalist workers’ party – a party committed to working within the system, but with systematic support from the organised working class – is beginning to crumble. The RMT’s expulsion is indicative of a leadership so committed to aping the US Democrats that it will sacrafice a major source of support and funding rather than stop its privatising, union-bashing policies. With the party base dissolving, and the leadership gradually cutting itself off from the organised working class, the prospects of reclaiming the Labour Party do not look good. It is tempting to simply reduce the problem to the Blair clique, but these processes have repeated themselves in various ways across Europe. It isn’t simply a question of ‘if only these Third Way leftists would be more principled, it would be alright’. The crisis of the left is real, and it really is a question of the alternative. The twin pincers of Stalinism and fascism disabled the revolutionary left for decades and rendered a large portion of both the reformist and revolutionary left dependent on the USSR for its moral and ideological sustenance. The fall of the Berlin Wall disillusioned and disoriented many on the Left, especially as it followed some of the gravest defeats for the working class in Britain since World War II.

The crisis is also one of reformism. Tony Cliff once described the Labour Party as a paper umbrella – very useful except when it rains. In a period of capitalist expansion and high profit rates, Labour can deliver because the bosses don’t mind paying (relatively) high tax levies if it provides a healthy, educated workforce. In an era of periodic contraction, crisis and low profit rates, the pressure is to reduce taxes on profits and taxes in higher incomes. Labour itself has frozen higher income tax at 40%, and any suggestion that it do otherwise has been viewed with suspicion or contempt. It has cut corporation tax and small business tax, and miniaturised even its most welcome policy, the minimum wage.


Tony Cliff: Labour Party is as useful as a paper umbrella.

David Coates makes an interesting point of analysis in Paving The Third Way: The Critique of Parliamentary Socialism (Coates (ed), 2002). He asks the reader to think of New Labour and Old Labour as permanent strands in Labourism, the former representing what he terms bourgeois radicalism, the latter social reformism. Bourgeois radicalism is that wing of Labourism which seeks to modernise industry, to propel new industries into existence and create a sufficient surplus from that to pay for modest reforms. Social reformism is that wing which aims to subordinate capital to the needs of working people through nationalisation, taxation and redistribution. The former has usually, with few exceptions, been the dominant current. It so happens that it has been more self-confident, organised and strident than ever before, and the social reformists have never been more beleaguered and never more in want of a constituency base.

So, even if we could achieve the exalted left turn in the Labour Party, what would be achieved? Doubtless, it would boost morale in the trade unions and the working class movement generally – but it would also repeat the immense error of putting the faith of working people in a Labour government with nominally radical policies. The effect of this in the Seventies was that the trade unions were unable effectively to combat the “social contract”, because the trade union leaders supported it. As inflation soared to 20%, wage rises were kept down to 5% - simply because the return on capital was so pitifully low that some business leaders would have supported a coup if it put those unions back in their place. Instead, Labour did the job for them. The lesson ought to be clear – we cannot rely on a radicalised Labour Party to defend the interests of working people.

What You Need, Baby You Ain't Gettin' It...

So, why not Respect? The arguments so far put that Respect is a cross-class alliance, or a reinvention of the popular front are based on a number of disparate facts. 1) The programme does not explicitly call for a socialist transformation of society. 2) The programme is relatively emaciated compared to the dense and detailed policy proposals of the Socialist Alliance. 3) The word socialism is hidden away in an acronym rather than proudly proclaimed as some component of the name. 4) George Galloway has said in a statement, reported on Al Jazeera, that he wants a coalition including “Christians, Muslims and Jews, socialists, liberals and conservatives”, and moreover he seems to say that this is what the Respect Coalition is. 5) George Monbiot and Salma Yaqoob were the originators of the idea of Respect, and neither of them describe themselves as socialists. 6) The Respect Coalition does not demand of its representatives that they accept no more than an average skilled worker’s wage.


Salma Yaqoob.

If Galloway’s speech is reported accurately, I can only describe it as ill judged and not representative of the politics of the membership or most of the National Executive. Tories would certainly be most unwelcome in Respect, as I suspect would most liberals. Some radical liberals could involve themselves – the Labour Party has had liberal and even downright reactionary members, so why not? The point about the programme is a little premature – it is not the election manifesto, but rather a platform of shared principles, which can be developed and improved upon. As to whether it should specifically state its aim as being the replacement of capitalism by socialism, I am somewhat torn on the matter. In principle it seems elementary, but it just isn’t worldly. The aim of the Socialist Workers’ Party is to overthrow capitalism – the aim of Respect is to repoliticise to the Left. It is a beginning and not an end in itself – it seeks to change the very political coordinates within which we are working. It does not seek to become a new Labour Party, nor a new version of the Socialist Alliance. Nevertheless, I do agree that socialism ought to be a more pronounced and prominent commitment in the programme of Respect.

The claim that Respect represents a cross-class coalition is utterly without foundation – its ideological broadness notwithstanding, it does not seek to compromise the independence of the working class, or import some middle-class ideology into it. No, that’s the job of New Labour. Respect seeks to win the support of the trade unions and if possible to get them to affiliate. But it is also an open-ended project. Depending on how successfully we can unite the Left into a serious challenge against Blair, Respect may take many directions in the future. My assessment is that a series of successes will compel Respect to eschew its temporary vagueness regarding long-term goals, whereas failure will simply push us back to square one, with every minute sect in the country fighting pitch battles over their little fiefdoms while the body politic descends into greater corruption and stench.

Some of the objections to Respect seem to derive from a formalistic way of solving problems. ‘The working class needs independent political representation, Respect has a coalition of middle class and working class people in it, it is therefore a cross-class coalition, and therefore the correct solution is either to reclaim the Labour Party as a workers’ party, or to reconstitute Labour by splitting away the Left and uniting it with other forces.’ Aside from vulgarly imputing middle-class ideologies into middle class people (Frederich Engels, anyone?) this objection involves no pertinent analysis of the present situation. It is grotesquely, disastruously wrong about the Labour Party, and it imposes an abstract answer on a concrete situation.

Bricks and Mortar

What is the concrete situation? I shall offer a brief adumbration. The first and most recognisable fact is that the condition of the working class has steadily declined over the last twenty years. Inequality has grown, as has job insecurity. Trade union membership was in serious decline until a few years ago – indications are that it may yet decline again if serious measures are not taken. A recent clutch of strike victories has been balanced by serious losses – such as the debacle of the FBU leadership’s handling of the fight with the government. At the same time, a wave of victories for the Left in the unions has combined with a resurgence of street protest to produce the most polarised situation in years. There have also been attempts to open the political fund in the trade unions, and break the link to the Labour Party – even though these have in most cases been unsuccessful, it is still significant that such moves are being suggested.

At the same time, the condition of the lowest paid is less hopeful than it has been for years. Union membership among these workers is extremely low, in large measure due to a high turnover of staff at companies employing part-time and temporary labour. As yet, the trade union movement has been unable to adapt itself to this situation, and legislation makes it extremely difficult to unionise workshops in those areas. High unemployment (as always, occluded by official statistics) means that labour is perpetually in much higher supply than there is demand for it, and this acts as a significant downward pressure on wages. In many areas, the insane housing market produced by the dearth of social housing and new house building is pressuring workers’ wages substantially. One study in the 1990s concluded that, on average, London workers forfeited 60% of their wages just to housing costs.


London Housing: Extortionate.

New Labour shows no indication that it is ready to address these problems. It will make the odd, mock attempts at amelioration (for example, offering loans to public sector workers so they can get on the “property ladder”), but the plans for housing actually look set to aggravate this appalling situation by abolishing all council housing and placing as much as possible in the hands of private companies, trusts, housing cooperatives or associations. There will be no further attenuation of the anti-union legislation, and the minimum wage looks set to creep and crawl its way up alongside the inflation line. Benefits for those not in work are being curtailed as far as possible. Insofar as poverty is being addressed at all, it is through piecemeal measures like tax credits which had the wonderful effect of pushing large numbers just above the poverty line who were just beneath it, but of making no substantial difference to the income and condition of the poor. Instead of investing in local councils, local tax rates have been pushed up (thus making residents of poor boroughs shoulder the burden of New Labour’s spending increases).

What Bob Jessop calls the Keynesian Welfare National State is deceased, and its replacement is a much leaner Schumpeterian competition state with only minimal and specific attempts at government activism, targeted reforms and inducements, and localised cost-spreading. Capital, as a class, is both self-confident and threatened – self-confident because of the absence of a challenge from below, threatened because of its own internal weaknesses. This situation makes big business, which in Britain has always been politically conservative and economically liberal, even more ambitious than usual, even more determined to suppress wages and fend off government reforms and taxes. A reformist administration can only do limited work in this situation with the best will in the world.

After decades of defeat, and only a few victories thus far to make up for it, the working class in Britain needs a serious morale boost, among other things. It needs victories. It needs to become self-confident as a class again, and it needs the kind of institutional focus that can give voice to those aspirations. In the longer run, it needs a Socialist party. In the immediate term, it needs a renewed left-wing politics with some demonstrable capacity to inflict serious body blows to New Labour. It needs a political voice that will demand an end to the bloody and costly occupation of Iraq, call for more socially affordable housing, raise the minimum wage, repeal anti-union legislation, and commit itself to a serious fight against the racism which seeks to divide the working class. The Left is not yet in good shape to form a party. Old schisms still matter, and new rivalries are making themselves felt in small ways. But the Left can agree on the fundamental tenets of an immediate programme for change. It can coalesce, and unite on a broader platform than simple single-issue politics.

Given the self-evident need for an alternative, and the opportunities provided to form one, it would be criminal for any organisation calling itself Marxist not to seek to build such a coalition. Especially if for the sake of some dogmas and half-baked formulae which would denounce such attempts as a “cross-class alliance” or a “miniature popular-front”. Respect is receiving more attention now than the Socialist Alliance did even during the obligatory coverage at election time. It has had its first full-page newspaper ad. It has had articles written about it, and generated much heat in discussions and debate. It certainly has the chance to go further and deeper than past attempts at left unity have so far dreamed of. Those pissing and moaning on the sidelines ought to be a part of that.


Let's Turn This Into Something.