Our Bloc: How We Win. By James Schneider. Verso. 2022. 133pp.
Antonio Gramsci, the Italian political activist and theorist, who spent long years in prison during the 20th century inter-war years for his opposition to Mussolini’s Fascist regime, developed the theory of the historic bloc. According to this theory, in order to spark revolutionary change, a variety of progressive forces must come together in their ideas and across social and political practice to challenge the dominance of the ruling class over society and its institutions. In Our Bloc: How We Win, James Schneider, co-founder of the pro-Corbyn ‘Momentum’ organisation, takes up Gramsci’s idea and seeks to apply it to the contemporary political situation in Britain.
He foresees a situation in which the left of the Labour Party comes together with an alliance of organisations such as trade unions and protest groups (eg, Stop the War, BLM, XR, Make Amazon Pay), referred to as ‘progressive social forces’, to take over the running of the country either via a revitalised Labour Party or a new political grouping outside Labour that espouses what he frequently refers to as ‘socialism’. He is entirely opposed to the current direction of the Labour Party under Keir Starmer, neatly summed up in one of his chapter titles as ‘Capital’s A and B Team’. He deplores Starmer’s attempt to drive from positions of influence all figures that would stand up for the ‘wide-reaching reforms’, which he sees as fundamental to the ‘progressive’ elements within the Party. The bloc that stands for those reforms needs to campaign for them, he argues, and, once it has wide support and is elected to office, to put them into action. So, though referring to such a process as ‘transformational’ and capable of ‘overturning the established order’, it is clear that the writer’s agenda is essentially a reformist one.
Not that this stops him from constantly referring to this agenda as ‘socialism’ and its supporters as ‘socialists’. Needless to say, this does not correspond to the Socialist Party’s vision of socialism – a classless, wageless, moneyless society based on common ownership, democratic control and production for use not profit. We do not of course have any kind of monopoly on the word ‘socialism’, but to use it, as James Schneider does, to mean reforms of the existing system which he deems ‘progressive’, can only sow confusion and serve to obscure the idea’s more far-reaching meaning, of which Schneider shows no sign of having any awareness. Instead, his view of socialism is a collection of various reforms aiming to ‘noticeably improve the lives of the overwhelming majority’. He talks of the need for his ‘left bloc’, once in power, to enact policies like an increase in the minimum wage, a ‘universal basic dividend’, more money spent on health, education and social security, nationalisation of utilities and making the ‘wealthy and big business’ pay for that by ‘increasing taxes on the rich’. He has in fact a whole, somewhat breathless, slew of ideas for reformist change, and, in his final chapter (entitled ‘Ways of Winning’), he proposes four possible scenarios over the 2020s by which his new grouping might, via ‘a progressive surge’, gain influence and support sufficient to win an election, establish a ‘socialist government’ and put its reforms into effect.
In a sense all this is commendable, but it fails to take into account that governments do not control the system they administer, especially the economic side of it. So the potential for reforms depends not just on the will of government – any government – but on wider conditions in the system of the buying and selling of goods and services on the market. And, above all, even if it was possible to implement the reforms envisaged by Schneider via his ‘left bloc’, they would not (nor could they) change the basic premise on which the current (capitalist) system is based, that is the buying and selling of goods and services, production for profit and, above all, the workings of the world market. They would in fact constitute no more than a tinkering at the edges of the problems the vast majority of wage and salary workers face the world over. They could certainly not form the basis for a genuine socialist movement needing to take the step that would be truly ‘transformational’ of abolishing the wages and money system and bringing in a democratic, cooperative world system of free access to all goods and services using the know-how, the technology and the resources that now exist to satisfy all human needs – and of course without trashing the planet.
So this is a book that, while closing with the far-reaching, indeed revolutionary, sentiment of ‘we have a planet to save and a world to win’, in its substance accepts capitalism (even if the word itself does not get a single mention) and chooses rather to propose alternative ways of running its money, wages and buying and selling system.
Howard Moss
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