The Passing Labour Show (2021)

From the November 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lord Michael Spencer, a London billionaire and Conservative Party donor, notes that conference speeches are a particularly good time for ‘theatre’, rather than genuine politics (Financial Times, 8 October). He was referring to Boris Johnson’s anti-business rhetoric at his party’s conference, but a similar consideration applies to Keir Starmer’s performance at Labour’s conference a few weeks before. Starmer could not have asked for a better show – there were plenty of opportunities to ridicule hecklers from the Labour Left, demonstrating beyond any doubt that Starmer has decisively moved the party to the centre, in both rhetoric and policy.

No substitute for power

The priorities of the current shadow cabinet are, supposedly, getting ‘serious about winning’, as opposed to ‘thinking protest was a substitute for power’, as shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy put it. This is meant to stand in contrast to whatever frivolities took place under Jeremy Corbyn (whose party took down a Tory majority in 2017 and who beat Margaret Thatcher’s record for most government defeats as opposition leader). In practice, ‘getting serious’ means shedding the ‘democratic socialist’, due to the view that the British electorate is consciously moderate and so more centrist politics amount to being in touch with them. A number of attacks on the left have been affected, with absolute impunity. Rather than the ‘ten pledges’ that Starmer campaigned on, which promised, in essence, the 2017 Corbyn-era manifesto, the Corbyn shadow cabinet has been rejected and Blair-era rhetoric dug out.

One of the most controversial attacks was a change to the election mechanisms, now requiring the support of double the MPs to stand for election, and giving MPs a disproportionate say in leader selection. Before, it was ‘one member, one vote’, but as that led to landslide elections of a left-wing Labour Party leader, the policy cannot be allowed to continue. The surprising aspect is how overt the motivation is – every mainstream journal (often explicitly) recognises the move for what it is: an anti-democratic ploy to beat down the Labour Left. Of course, that means it was roundly praised by the commentariat, with the Observer (3 October) view on the policy being that it ‘indicated that [Starmer] is a leader who will put country before party factionalism’, one among many ‘achievements [that suggest] Labour is not an entirely spent political force and offer a glimmer of hope for the future of the British centre-left’.

Blair, Blair, Blair

There were also a number of overt gestures towards Tony Blair’s (recently mentioned in the Pandora Papers) rhetoric; about the Tories being ‘soft on crime, soft on the causes of crime’, and Starmer’s quip that education is ‘so important that I am tempted to say it three times’. There is something of an oddity in the commentary: the Labour Left are routinely criticised for ‘wanting to return to the 1970s’ or being ‘devoid of fresh thoughts’ (Financial Times, 28 September), but a return to Blair’s rhetoric is ‘serious’ and ‘electable’. Labour Left MP John McDonnell criticised the move as a result of panicking, and as ‘no longer relevant’. He is unlikely to be listened to, as left and centre party unity is not on the agenda anymore.

Starmer also responded to hecklers by saying that Labour is now about ‘changing lives’ and not ‘chanting slogans’ – a memorable slogan itself. Yet the concrete policies needed to change lives are scarcely heard of. It is easier to pin down Starmer’s politics by what he is opposed to than what he is for. The push for a £15 minimum wage has been rejected in favour of £10, and rejection of nationalisation as a way forward. Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband, who have suggested that public ownership may be viable, are causing frustrations.

Pro-business rhetoric

On the other hand, the Party has lurched towards a different attitude to business, leading to a striking contrast between Labour and the Conservatives. Johnson has been explicit on inequality and has blamed businesses for low wages, something which has worried donors, who are ‘nearly universally Thatcherite free-marketeers’ (Financial Times, 8 October), and he has criticised the austerity programmes of previous Conservative governments. Starmer’s position has been pretty much the opposite. Indeed, the business press recognises that Johnson’s own rhetoric might help Starmer position himself as a ‘more serious political figure’, i.e, one that business can take seriously.

Turning to broader issues of foreign policy and the climate, Starmer simply ignored a young activist asking about his opinion on the motion on a Green New Deal, calling for public ownership of energy, bans on fracking, improved and electrified public transport, and unionisation laws. The motion passed at Conference, with 59.2 percent in favour (LabourList, 26 September). The activist later wrote that ‘Keir Starmer’s stonewalling is a fitting metaphor for Labour’s treatment of its young members, whose generation used to be at the core of its voters’ (openDemocracy, 29 September).

This hasn’t been the only divide between members (particularly the youth) and Starmer and his cabinet. Delegates turned on the party line when it came to two important foreign policy issues: the position on Israel, and AUKUS, the Australia, UK, US military alliance. Starmer said that ‘Britain must look after our most important relationships or our influence and security quickly declines. So, Labour welcomes [AUKUS]’, but the alliance was described as ‘a dangerous move that will undermine world peace’ in a motion that passed with 70.4 percent of the vote. Likewise, Conference heard a motion that condemned ‘de facto annexation of Palestinian land’ and an ‘arms trade used to violate Palestinian human rights’, and described Israel as an apartheid state. The motion passed, but Starmer and many shadow cabinet members distanced themselves from it immediately, and doubts were raised about whether it would ever be reflected in party policy.

No Dove

Divisions are becoming clear. The moves to restrict the power of party members have some justification from the perspective of the shadow cabinet – the members, many of whom joined during the Corbyn era, want the party to head in a very different direction to the way Starmer is pulling. Whether a return to Blairite politics will work will depend more on how the Conservatives act than on Starmer’s own merits. It seems the only thing he has been effective at is the quashing of the left. Yet, the movement built up over the last few years still has a say, especially on foreign policy– this will be an important distinction between him and his party members, many of whom are impressed by Corbyn’s credentials on war. This was taken to be a decisive factor against him in the eyes of the electorate (though much of that may have to do with the ‘terrorist sympathiser’ media spin). Starmer seems to be no dove, even if not as hawkish as Blair. This may cost him the support of many of his members, but they will matter less and less to the party’s politics. Foreign policy has been, traditionally, where left-wing politics consistently distinguishes itself from centre-left liberalism. The shadow cabinet, even if not the Labour Party, has, almost across the board, chosen the latter.

M. P. Shah

Editorial: The cracks start to show (1999)

Editorial from the February 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Eighteen months on and the Blair project is looking increasingly hollow. Government resignations, charges of “cronyism” and sleaze plus the apparent feuding between Blair and Brown. It seems like a far cry from the happy days of May 1997.

This is not all. There is the NHS crisis (nothing new about this of course), a looming recession and government plans to join the Euro which could prove tricky.

For our part, we did argue at the General Election that the New Labour project would be a damp squib. Unlike the leftists, we did not feel that the working class should have to experience yet another Labour government to realise that it would be anti-working class. We were arguing that reformist politics is anti-working class before the Labour Party was even properly formed! We feel the current government has not disappointed us—it has demonstrated yet again that capitalism cannot be reformed in the interests of the working class.

The vacuous nature of the Blair project is encapsulated by the much used phrase “the third way” which is associated with Professor Anthony Giddens—the Director of the London School of Economics and one of Blair’s intellectual gurus. The basic idea is that Britain should position itself somewhere between American neo-liberalism and European social democracy.

Quite frankly, if this is the best pro-capitalist intellectuals can come up with then there really is a crisis in capitalist intellectual thought and an obvious need to search for an alternative to capitalism itself.

However, “the third way” does broadly serve the interests of the capitalist class and the implicit message is quite clear: there is no other capitalist option than “Thatcherism with a human face”. As we have argued before in this journal, ideas do not come from nowhere—they have a material basis. The social and political crisis of the 70s never really ended which is why the current government is carrying on with ostensibly the same Thatcherite programme as those preceding it. The post-war period of reformism is dead and there is no going back.

From this point of view it is easier to understand why Blair is forever fiddling with constitutional reform, getting into bed with the Liberals etc. without such things the government would not have a programme. Not only this, Blair is clearly intending to stay in power for at least three terms and he has calculated (rightly or wrongly) that proportional representation and possible coalition government with the Lib-Dems is only probably the only way to achieve it. The Tories may be kept out of power for a generation but the Blair project will inevitably come to a sticky end sooner or later. And who will mourn? Not the working class which elected it in 1997 with such a landslide—that’s for sure.

The Negative Midas Touch (1997)

TV Review from the July 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

BBC1's Panorama (8pm, 9 June) on the night before the first round of the Conservative leadership election went a good deal of the way towards explaining the Conservative Party’s historic and horrendous defeat a month or so earlier. Nick Robinson spent 40 minutes charting the Tory decline over the last five years examining Major's weak leadership, the ERM debacle, the tax rises, splits over Europe, sleaze and the challenge represented by a revitalised Labour Party under Blair.

What he didn't examine was quite how suspicious the majority of voters have demonstrated they are about the great political "project” of the last twenty years, ushered forward in Britain by the Tory right. This is the political project built on the premise that the market knows best, and its application by the Conservatives was one of the key and deciding factors in the huge Tory defeat.

This may, at first sight, seem paradoxical because self-evidently the Blairite Labour Party is in love with the free market too, with small caveats. This is what bamboozled Panorama into ignoring this popular rejection of the free market, but a closer look at the election and the years leading up to it would have demonstrated the truth of this proposition. This is because although New Labour did not campaign on an open programme of state capitalism like in 1983, neither did it campaign for the free market. Beyond the soundbites the Labour Party campaigned on very little at all and its most popular policies were little more than heavily dressed-up anti-free market rhetoric devoid of spending commitments.

It is quite possible that the Labour leadership does not particularly find the schools voucher system. GP fundholding, the NHS internal market and so on to be quite the idiocies they painted them as but they were crucially aware that these market reforms were deeply unpopular among the working class both as workers in those fields and as consumers of services.

Sighting the target

In fact, the Labour Party's position on the free market as conveyed by its leaders and campaigners was a superb example of audience targeting. Its most obvious free-market rhetoric and pro-big business stance was reserved for its growing number of admirers in the capitalist class, the people it is now having to "do business” with now it is in government. For the consumption of the working class, there was a rather different fare—pledges to curb the alleged excesses of the free market Tory years and to build a community of interests, a “one nation" vision of inclusion rather than exclusion. In this way the Labour Party distanced itself from the unfettered free market just enough to convince its target voters to switch to them without at the same time frightening them off with grandiose revenue-raising proposals or suchlike.

The more discerning on 1 May were not seduced by this two-faced posture and turnout was the lowest for years, but then again so was the vote for the unashamed party of the free market.

Of course there are those in the Tory Party who believe (rather like the Bennites did some years ago about their project) that the only problem has been that their medicine for capitalism’s ills has not been administered in great enough quantity. As the Tory leadership contest has shown hardly anybody with brain cells still functioning believes this nonsense.

Instead politics has reached a situation (and Britain is only one example of it) whereby the free market is generally viewed by most people with suspicion bordering on hostility while the overt interventionism and state ownership of the past is distrusted and feared in equal measure. In this scenario there appears to be only one short-term solution and the Labour Party found it just as Clinton's Democrats did—attack everything that has gone before and failed, whether state capitalism or private capitalism and hope that something more substantial than rhetoric will come along to fill the resultant void. In other words, a “new" capitalism where the old private/state and left/right divisions have been left behind. A capitalism where persistent old problems require bright new solutions which must be there in the minds of the great and the good . . .  somewhere.

But these ideas about superseding the old divisions seem remarkably sparse and those that are around tend to cost big money. While the Tory Party fights over the spoils of its defeat everything Blair touches turns to gold at present. But at an ideological level, deep beneath the political spin. Prime Minister Blair has been dealt the hand that capitalism deals all its leaders blessed with momentary popularity out of the popular distaste for the effects of the market, including Thatcher and Major before him, is the negative Midas touch, where sooner or alter, everything the market touches, including its political "masters", turns to shit, no matter what the rhetoric or political dressing.

Dave Perrin

Reformists never learn (1998)

Book Review from the March 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The State to Come by Will Hutton. Vintage Press, 1997. £4.99.

Reformists never learn. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Observer editor Will Hutton still claims that societies can shape capitalism “to meet their wider goals. Different ethical values apart from the market ethic must be protected . . . Human values need to be incorporated into the core of market processes . . . to produce a kinder, more tolerable society . . .” But if this is possible, why has it never happened up to now, at least not for any length of time?

The fact is that capitalism can’t be reshaped so as to put human values before market values. It has to put profits first and its economic mechanisms impose this on any government which may have other thoughts. Since 1973 it has been even worse for reformists. The end of the post-war boom and the period that has followed of slow growth, punctuated by recurring slumps, has meant that capitalist states have been in almost permanent fiscal crisis. They have not had the money to introduce any new social reforms and have been compelled to cut back on existing ones. The Blair government’s action against single mothers and their future plans against the sick and disabled is merely a continuation of this. They are acting as all governments of capitalism are forced to these days.

Hutton, who is a Labour supporter (this short book was written to urge people to vote Labour in the last election), is at the same time an open supporter of capitalism. He wants Britain to “develop its own specific capitalist model” and “to build a capitalist structure that can regulate itself better”. He realises that this is all that Labour aims at too but has his doubts as to whether it wants to go even that far. Labour, he says, “wishes to reshape British capitalism-a little” but the danger is that “Labour will find in office that it governs as a nicer group of Conservatives”. Whether Blair and his band of hypocrites (particularly the one who shopped his son to the police) are nicer than the other arrogant lot is a matter of opinion or remains to be seen but, in any event, is irrelevant in that it is not the personal attitudes of ministers that count but what the workings of the capitalist system forces them to do. It is capitalism that is the enemy and not the particular politicians who run it.

And capitalism can no more be reformed or reshaped so as to serve human rather than market values as Hutton deludedly imagines than a leopard can change its spots.

Adam Buick

Hedgehogs for Blair (1996)

From the November 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

New Labour continues to be attacked by Old Labour. So what's new? Not much. If you run a tight ship, as Blair does, then you must expect some of the crew to harbour thoughts of mutiny. Austin Mitchell, MP for Grimsby, recently got publicity by comparing Blair's leadership with that of Kim II Sung. In an article “The hedgehog’s view" (New Statesman, 30 August) he dismissed his party’s The Road to the Manifesto in the following perceptive, if not very flattering, terms:

  "The new document isn‘t intended for you as party members. Your role is to endorse it, preferably with acclamation. This isn't the Labour Party as we know it. Our leaders are playing a different game from us. It’s a power game in which different rules apply. They can't tell us all this. So I'll break it to you now, because a squashed hedgehog on the road to the manifesto sees what's going on."

So far, so good. A Labour Party member sees what’s going on. likens himself to a squashed hedgehog—and hints at taking action against the juggernaut that did the foul deed. No. wait a minute, that can’t be right. The juggernaut pictured in the article has a large message on its side “Vote Blair". Does this mean that Mitchell and all the other Labour hedgehogs who are worried about being flattened by the roadhog Blair will refuse to vote for him? No. of course it doesn’t.

For a hedgehog, Mitchell is quite junglewise. in a puerile kind of way. He refers to members, trade unions, branches, councillors and the rest as bit-part players in Tony’s power game, and goes on:

"So the new deal, in an age of media campaigning, is that we pretend our work is important. Tony pretends to listen. Then he gets on with his real job of putting forward what he wants, in our name."

You would think, from all this, that Mitchell would be wanting out from a party that is so obviously a democratic sham. Not a bit of it. A hedgehog has remarkably low expectations, especially after it’s been squashed. Mitchell writes of "a Faustian compact with Tony Blair, on a back me or sack me basis.” and concludes "It’s a pretty good bargain for a party that blew it a decade ago."

Squashed hedgehogs are remarkably masochistic. They are not clever enough to know the difference between capitalism and socialism but they do know that "Most people’s votes are up for grabs, and they are choosing as consumers: what’s the best buy? What will this product do for me? New Labour is a product. The Road to the Manifesto . . .  is our glossy sales brochure."

The last section of Mitchell’s article shows clearly his Fabian reformism. His waffle includes the historically disproved delusion that "Labour in office can move the levers of power to the people." And “Influencing the holders of power is more useful work than futile dream-building in opposition." Nowhere does Mitchell say what the Labour power holders are to be influenced to do— certainly nothing as radical as to change the basis of society from production for profit to production solely to meet needs.

Labour Party members and supporters can choose between Blair who will administer capitalism more or less as the previous five Labour governments have done or people like Mitchell who will (however reluctantly) support Blair who will ditto. But they are not forced to make that choice. If they think that it’s time to replace the system, not its administrators, they will realise they are in the wrong party, leave it and join us in the Socialist Party

Stan Parker

Rise and Fall (1998)

From the January 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Part 1 of this article can be read here.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does society. As every political trend or moral code becomes outdated and is abandoned, another fills its place. The recession was a turning point where many of society's preoccupations changed. In the second of a two-part article we examine what's new.

Sociologist Ulrich Beck asserts that we are faced with "manufactured uncertainty" because of the growth of human knowledge. In other words, the more we learn, the more uncertain we become of our achievements. In the past we could rely on social institutions to provide us with some certainty. As these institutions--organised religion, the welfare state, trade unionism, the left/right divide, state capitalism--become increasingly dated or discredited, humanity has had to find a new moral framework.

So much of what we took for granted is in decline, but we are not heading towards anarchy. General government expenditure as a percentage of GDP has continued to increase since the 1950s. (Social Trends, 1996.) The programme of privatisation means the state has been receding in its more direct economic involvement since the 1980s, but at the same time it is increasingly reaching into areas of our lives previously left alone.

Throughout this century the state has played a role in trying to impose a moral code for society to compensate for the decline in institutionalised religion., but while religion offers supernatural explanations involving unknown powers, state-led morality is weaker because it comes directly from those with similar failings to our own trying to work with a system which can't fulfil our needs. We don't need to cast our minds too far back to remember the hypocrisy of the Conservatives espousing "family values" amid continual sex scandals. A stronger example of the state attempting to impose moral authority is the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (1994), which tightened up existing legislation concerning large public gatherings, police powers and the rights of travellers and police powers. More recently we have been introduced to zero tolerance zones, jobseeker contracts, increasing numbers of CCTV cameras and the possibility of identity cards. Since the late 1980s, concentration on individual behaviour and identity has overshadowed many wider issues of government and society.

When Tony Blair said that drug abuse was as important in Britain now as poverty had been in the past he encapsulated the way of thinking which now predominates. Today's assumption is that society itself is uncontrollable, and poverty, homelessness, crime and pollution are permanent, so all we can do is tackle the effects of these problems rather than their causes. In the past, governments have tried to give the impression that they are approaching problems at their source, even though history has proved them impotent. The emphasis today is not on how the individual can affect society, but how society affects the individual.

Increases in disposable income and the expansion of the mass media have meant that individuality is now more likely to be expressed through lifestyle choices than in any wide-ranging ideas, whether trade unionism, Christianity or politics. Any desire for social change has to be expressed through a collective mechanism, otherwise it is ignored or unfocused.

As a result the individualism of the 1980s has turned into the powerlessness of the 1990s. The supposed hallmark of the "Caring Nineties", that greed is no longer good, is only a convenient moral by-product of the recession. When material wealth is viewed as a reward for effort, then the attitude that wealth is destructive is more likely to lead to increased deprivation than a society where wealth is organised equally. Socialism is about wanting access to more and better, not accepting less and worse. In the early years of this decade the justification for reducing consumption was the threat of environmental destruction. But this particular ideology was a victim of the austere social and economic conditions which had created it.

The overriding feeling that society cannot be changed fundamentally has led to a proliferation of single-issue political parties, including the anti-abortion Pro-Life Alliance, the Referendum Party and, most successfully, Martin "anti-sleaze" Bell. Previously, such groups would have tried to influence one or more of the main parties. Now their opinion seems to be that the political system is so worthless it is best used to advertise a moral standpoint. They may be exercising a democratic right to attract support, but they show a dangerous lack of interest in wider political theories, of whatever kind.

The main political parties are leading this trend of simplification. The establishment of a Cabinet Consultative Committee (with Liberal Democrat participation) reflects Tony Blair's desire to "usher in a new era of politics" in which the government co-operates with other parties which share its views. In theory, the dynamic of politics is in the competition between differing parties to attract support. In Labour's new era the movement appears to be towards making the government as dominant as possible in parliament, leaving less room for parties representing opposing views. The first subject this particular unelected committee will discuss is electoral reform.

The possibility of a Lib-Lab pact against the dwindling Conservatives is evidence of a centrist consensus in parliament, rather than a one-party state. No major party now offers a distinct vision of the future, but instead aims to do its best within unambitious limits. The election campaign was based around promoting the "best" people, rather than the "best" political ideology. Since then, we have seen a number of measures concentrating on the image and behaviour of politicians. The ministerial code of conduct published on 31 July highlighted the government's mistrust of its own members. And the day before, the Blairs rubbed shoulders with their most image-friendly supporters, including Noel Gallagher of Oasis, Wallace and Gromit's animator Nick Park and Angus Deayton of Have I Got News For You.

In a way, this reflects an honesty not seen before in mainstream politics. The grip of the economic system is too tight to allow politicians much leeway, and the increasingly widespread perception of parliament as an unworkable technical process is a realisation of this. It is impossible for them to reform the governmental system to work for the benefit of the majority, so they find themselves trying to reform its image.

All the institutions in decline are based on appreciation of some sort of collective activity, while those rising to prominence encourage individualism. Activities or social structures which involve widespread interaction are being perceived as irresponsible or a threat. The Internet is a rare example of something which is both isolating and interactive and, undoubtedly, it is an excellent tool for streamlining global communication, but it has quickly gained a reputation as being an outlet for pornography reserved for computer geeks. While any scientific advance is open to question there is now less optimism about technology compared to the 1950s or late 1970s, despite the advances being made. The scientific developments grabbing the most headlines are those often perceived as amoral or unethical, such as sheep cloning or fertility treatments.

Even as western society moves away from recession, we still live in pessimistic times. The pre-millennial mood is that we have come too far for our own good. We find safety in nostalgia and risks in anything new. The fantastic achievements humanity has made in the realms of communications technology, space exploration, medical science and even in drama, music and the visual arts aren't celebrated enough. Humanity's view of itself has been tainted by a harsh economic and political system unable to keep up with our potential.

Mike Foster

The demands of global capitalism (1996)

Book Review from the September 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

The End of Work. The decline of the global labour force and the dawn of the post-market era by Jeremy Rifkin (G.P. Putnam. New York, 1995)

Rifkin argues that: " . . . for the first time, human labour is being systematically eliminated from the production process. Within less than a century,'mass' work in the market sector is likely to be phased out in virtually all the industrial nations of the world".

His book is thought-provoking and discusses an issue that many economists avoid - that we have entered an era when the traditional work patterns have changed. The consequences that technological unemployment brings reverberate in every aspect of society. Rifkin estimates that in the USA, 90 million workers out of a total 124 million could potentially lose their jobs. Capitalism breeds the alienation in the young who turn to crime and the bleak futures faced by older workers, who in their economic insecurity have fears such as house repossession.

The book can be divided in two. indicated by the subtitle, ‘the decline of the global labour force and the dawn of the post-market era'. The first four parts (fourteen chapters) deal with the background and the decline of the global labour force - the strongest sections of the book. Rifkin’s strength is that the book is historically situated. It has its parallels in Volume I of Capital, where Marx analyses the historical tendency of automation to eliminate labour-power (chapter 15 - Machinery and Modern Industry). The book is well-researched, and although Rifkin is not saying much new, it is presented in an engaging manner.

In chapter I, Rifkin argues that workers are unprepared to meet the demands of global capitalism:

"The idea of a society not based on work is utterly alien to any notion we have about how to organise large numbers of people into a social whole, that we are faced with the prospect of having to rethink the very basis of the social contract."

As a liberal, Rifkin does not give up hope of workers benefitting through piecemeal reforms that would increase pay and improve working conditions, but he has grave doubts:

"The new economic realities of the coming century make it far less likely that either the marketplace or public sector will once again be able to rescue the economy from increasing technological unemployment and weakened consumer demand."

Although not the solution that socialists support. Rifkin proposes what he terms the “social economy", which is discussed in the chapters on “the dawn of the post-market era".

Rifkin proposes two courses of action to make the transition to "the post-market era". Firstly, productivity gains to be shared among workers so as to bring about an equitable re-distribution for an equitable share of the fruits of technological progress. Secondly, that the shrinking of mass employment in the formal market economy and cuts in public expenditure bring a need to focus on the third economy - the social economy - which would, argues Rifkin, meet the needs that are not met by the market and public sectors.

His strategies for dealing with technologically displaced labour are nothing new and include reducing the working week, spreading employment amongst a greater number of workers without sacrificing productivity, an index-linked minimum wage and compensatory welfare payments. What Rifkin argues here has become common in political circles especially among the communitarian movement in America and the "stakeholder society" of Blair's New Labour.

Rifkin, like many who call for what Diane Elson terms the “socialisation of the market" places emphasis on unpaid voluntary work to regenerate the community. The only positive aspect of this for 

socialists is that volunteering shows that there is no need for the capitalist system of buying and selling. However, the reforms that Rifkin proposes would not in the long term be of much benefit to workers. If a Social Democratic “consensus" government was to begin to implement these reforms it would only cut into profits and future investment, thus meeting resistance from the capitalists.

Rifkin ends the book with a warning. "The end of work could spell a death sentence for civilization as we have come to know it. The end of work could also signal the beginning of a great transformation, a rebirth of the human spirit. The future lies in our hands." Indeed it does, and we don't want our futures to go to waste under capitalism. 

Rob Smith