SPGB September Events (2024)

Party News from the September 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

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Capitalism’s crisis of legitimacy (2011)

From the February 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Capitalism’s current crisis is not just economic and financial.

The recent worldwide recession has led not only to an economic crisis, but also a crisis of political legitimacy for the global system of capitalism. In Britain the ruling elite and in particular the coalition government are attempting to side-step this fact by claiming that “we’re all in it together.” Of course in some ways we are, the impending state spending cuts and inevitable redundancies and reduction in public services to vulnerable people being imposed by these hard-boiled public schoolboys will obviously affect those of us in the working class far more than the small minority of capitalists. The narrative from central government is that swingeing cuts in borrowing and public spending need to be enacted, in order to restore profitability to UK Capitalism plc.

And so in this allegedly different political landscape, we hear new terminology and concepts such as ‘The Big Society’, ‘The New Localism’, an increased role for ‘Civil Society’, ‘Ethical Consumerism’ and of capitalism’s concern for the ‘The Environment’.

Are these recent, reformist style trends evidence of the state’s attempt to mask the realities of a class-divided society? Over the next few years, what other coping strategies will the capitalist class use to try to find some stability for their system? How can individuals and the working class as a whole respond to this in a way which will best reflect our interests? What sort of future do we want to see?

Possibly the most profound trend that is now emerging and rapidly advancing is not necessarily the recent decline in profitability of the wages system of production, but a decline rather in the confidence of the ruling class to convince us of the validity of their system. It seems the legitimisation crisis transcends the sphere of domestic capitalist politics and extends to the spheres of religion, nationhood and the state, liberal democracy and the most basic tenets of human liberty.

Thatcher’s mantras

When Thatcher was Prime Minister in the 1980s she endlessly repeated the slogan “There is no alternative” (shortened as TINA). In economics, politics and political economy, it came to mean that there was no alternative to the status quo of their economic system and economic liberalism. It is still the main slogan of economic liberalism, arguing that free markets, free trade, and capitalist globalisation are the only way in which modern societies can go, as any deviation from their doctrine is certain to lead to disaster. Thatcher’s affinity for the phrase led to the author Claire Berlinski choosing it as the title for her biography of the former Prime Minister.

In the early nineties, Francis Fukuyama wrote a book named The End of History and the Last Man, which in a similar strain argued that liberal democracy had triumphed over so-called communism, actually authoritarian state capitalism, and the historical struggle between competing political systems within capitalism was over, though apparently there could still be future events. This trend dovetailed into a political fashion for “Rugged Individualism”. Indeed, Thatcher in her third term of office regularly claimed “There is no such thing as society.”

Change of rhetoric

Today, far from Thatcher’s ‘There is No Alternative’ rhetoric, we now get an apologetic, “We’re All in this Together” from our so-called leaders.

We now have an offer from the state for us to be part of the “Big Society”. At first sight this apparently bold initiative at rolling back the state may seem appealing. But strip it to its core and one suspects other motives.

In a speech in Liverpool on 19 July to re-launch what critics say is a vague idea, the still newish Con-Dem Coalition Prime Minister David Cameron insisted that what he terms “the Big Society” is at the heart of his policy agenda:

  “We need to create communities with oomph! Neighbourhoods who are in charge of their own destiny, who feel if they club together and get involved they can shape the world around them.”

And with one eye on the detailed government spending cuts that were to be announced in October, Cameron insisted his attempt to revive community action was driven by “great passion” rather than the need to save money:

  “It is not a cover for anything. This would be a great agenda whether we were having to cut public spending or whether we were increasing public spending.

“This is not about trying to save money, it is about trying to have a bigger, better society.”

I wonder how many people really believe him.

And while all that and far more is going on, we as apparently individual, and certainly individuated, citizens are micro-managed keenly by armies of state officials in terms of our health, personal habits, children and domestic waste disposal. We are implored to consume ethically and to be mindful of our Environmental Impact and Carbon Footprints.

It seems capitalism in the coming decade is likely to be a miserabilist, reactionary affair in which personal responsibility and self-reliance is propounded as the dominant ethos within society. Is this the future we want?

This scenario could be so very different. How can we reach for the sort of world many people long to see, a world in which poverty, hunger, war and ruination of the quality of life for the majority of people can be abolished? That means going beyond capitalism to a society in which things like money, nation states, official government and production for profit are abolished.

“Capitalism is only unbeatable as long as everybody thinks it is. As soon as everybody thinks it is finished, then it will be finished. We therefore need to keep in touch with what other people are really thinking. And we need to explain, tirelessly, where the only viable future for the Human race lies – in that post-capitalist society of common ownership of the world. It is impossible to be neutral in this struggle.” (Ron Cook, Yes, Utopia!)

Andy P Davies

The Crisis: don’t read about it! (2009)

From the May 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Sun newspaper should be no more abhorrent to socialists than any other capitalist propaganda rag. In a spirit of intellectual equanimity I occasionally take the wretched organ along with more sober rags of the ruling elite in order to gainsay and refute the views of supporters of the profit system.

Now, as the world capitalist system moves inexorably towards another catastrophic slump it behoves the class traitor scribblers of the “popular press” to divert our attention from the problems facing us as a consequence of capitalism’s irresolvable internal contradictions.

But don’t worry - the Sun has a “Happy Page”:

“The pound crumbles, the economy tumbles and Gordon Brown finally rumbles that we are heading for the big recession.
So to take your mind off the sad economic tidings there are plenty of cheery stories scattered throughout The Sun.
And for uninterrupted fun turn to Page 20 our new Happy Page.
If you have any stories or photos that will raise British spirits why not send them to us and do your bit in the War against Gloom effort.”

As the “Real Economy” goes into recession and people lose their jobs, homes and belief in the future of their communities we are exhorted by the Sun to turn to page 20 and have a chortle as workers’ lives under capitalism crumble around our ears.

Socialists have long understood the function of the reactionary media in the intellectual conditioning of capitalist society. Workers are bombarded by propaganda on a myriad of fronts. In the last 30 years the Sun has cornered the market in combining “politics”, gambling and tits with criminal and celebrity witch hunts.

Whilst the world working class is entering a period in which there will be a sustained, angry and possibly violent attack upon our meagre living standards and individual rights by the ruling class, we must challenge the “official” media at every turn, the more apparently “learned” daily journals such as the Guardian, Independent or Telegraph as well as the Sun.

At this time the fanciful notion that “taxpayers money” is being used to stave off capitalist crisis is being promulgated by the mainstream media. Whilst, in reality the capitalist class is using State funds generated on the backs of the labour of workers to prop up the profit system and to provide them with a surplus. The capitalist media are also wrestling all their capacity to prepare us for yet another period of belt-tightening.

The reasons for the failings of capitalism, and the potential to resolve the problems caused to people under the grip of the system are often very near to the grasp of workers’ thinking, both individually and collectively. My trajectory towards socialist consciousness began as a very young man witnessing the “shaking out” of staff at R.M. Douglas Construction Ltd of Birmingham in 1992. I saw proud middle-aged, “company” men, some with over 25 years service, cry openly as they were told they were surplus to requirements for the firm.

So, as the reality of capitalist recession imposes itself once more on the already beleaguered working class the last thing we need to do is to read “Happy News” on Page 20 of The Sun newspaper.

Andy P. Davies

Manufactured scarcity (2008)

Book Review from the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Green Capitalism. Manufacturing Scarcity in an Age of Abundance. By James Heartfield. www.heartfield.org .2008

James Heartfield is associated with the former Trotskyist (British) Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) which used to publish Living Marxism (LM) and has moved on considerably since “the collapse of Communism” at the end of the 1980's and the dissolution of the formal RCP organisation in 1997. These days the so-called “LM network” produces the edgy www.spiked-online.com website and organises debates and events under the auspices of the Institute of Ideas and a myriad of propaganda campaigns expedited largely through a robust, sometimes entertaining, and not ineffective style of media entryism.

One area this current has been particularly interested in over the last two decades is in promoting a full-on critique of the reactionary imperatives of the politics of “Environmentalism”. In Green Capitalism James Heartfield reminds us that the profit system is essentially a system of rationing, which is now, in certain circles and in a variety of ways, being dressed up as “greenwashing” by Big Business and Governments – as the contemporary ruling elites reinvent scarcity in an age of abundance.

Heartfield rightly presents the capitalist mode of production as an epoch in which the force of human ingenuity has sought to ameliorate the exigencies of life through technical breakthrough with the result that happiness is the condition for most of us in Western societies. I do, however, take issue with the notion that one out of any of the 300 workers at the Lombe silk works on the Derwent in 1721 or the 5000 wage slaves at Arkwright's Mill in Cromford in 1771 woke up for work every day with a sense of unmitigated joy. Whilst those long deceased exploited workers are no longer “variable Capital”, my modern-day neighbours don't seem to enthuse much about the conditions of their means of living whilst having a sup on a Friday night in the local pub, either. Nevertheless, the material gains we have made in the interim between the first factories and 21st century capitalism are impressive.

In a summation of capitalist economics Heartfield tackles the neo-classical economists and suggests they were in effect “Rationers by Trade“ (my phrase not his) but you get the point. Notwithstanding that, the book opens with a great sense of optimism and opines succinctly upon the gains made by the working class under capitalism. The author explains carefully the concomitant progressive and destructive forces at play within the profit system and hints at transcending towards a more rational form of society founded upon technological progress.

This work sets out to show how modern Environmentalism came about as a consequence of ruling elites ideas about scarcity. Heartfield‘s argument is that, in Western society, the myth of the “fragile” planet emerged as a consequence of the retreat from production in the original heartlands of industrial capitalism.

Much of the Green Capitalism provides an excellent exposition of the fools' errand of “Environmentalism” and the levers of power behind that aspect of the moribund profit system. Meanwhile, at times the prose is poor and plodding, and some of the referencing is both points-scoring and unnecessary to make the more essential issue clear. Do we really need to be lectured about Trotsky's ideas on production? Some of this stuff would leave the general reader all at sea in very short order. Whilst a final extraordinary point is clearly made: the world population grew from 791 million in 1750 to 5.9 billion in 1999, as a consequence of advances in agriculture, transport, sanitation, industry. Many of that number exist at the level of subsistence – and it should not be that way! So, from an editorial perspective the narrative simply peters out – a bang and a whimper! Where is the alternative?

Notwithstanding that, this book has much to recommend it, not least for cocking a timely snook at both the modern-day misanthropes who see mankind as a plague upon the planet and the long-dead 'dismal scientists' of neo-classical economics who could not comprehend a theory of productive growth through collective endeavour. Heartfield puts a well aimed, populist boot into the modern-day Green Capitalists – Branson, Goldsmith, Charles Windsor, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Lord (Peter) Melchett, and makes reasoned argument that Western Capitalism has got to go Green for the sake of exploiting new sources of profit.

There is an argument that modern socialists need to take on the Green catastrophists and promote technology and real democracy to face down the spectre of Austerity Capitalism in the 21st Century - in order to kill the pernicious profit system once and for all.

Andy P. Davies