US elections: capitalism or capitalism? (2020)

From the October 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

America is at the cusp of deciding the nature of its future, or at least it thinks it is. It has two scarcely distinguishable options, Democrat Joe Biden and incumbent Donald Trump. The Trump presidency has already had an effect on America that will long outlast his second term, should he get one. The wildfires sweeping the West Coast have had fuel thrown upon them by the rapid destruction of what little environmental regulation there was before Trump. Nominal wages have gone up steadily over the last four years, but cost of living has been growing faster, far outstripping the growth in wages. This is to make no mention of the coronavirus crisis – the United States has seen an exceptionally high death rate – almost 200,000 cases as of writing. Liberals often wax lyrical about the death of ‘American culture’. While Trump’s campaign has undoubtedly had a palpable effect on the way political issues are discussed, how it is a death of American culture is unclear. Indeed, the liberals’ biggest failure was to miss the fact that the seeds for the Trump victory were sown by the Democrat presidencies. And this is the mistake they are repeating in 2020.

Popular populist

The shock from liberal commentators four years ago has still not worn off. The first term of Donald Trump’s presidency is coming to an end – and liberals are still in such disbelief that he might get a second. There is no attempt to empathise with the many working class Americans who voted for Trump – an immense irony, given editorials in the liberal press such as ‘When A Heart Is Empty’ (New York Times, 10 September). In it, David Brooks, a noted moderate conservative, writes, ‘[Trump’s] is not an intellectual stupidity. I imagine Trump’s I.Q. is fine. It is a moral and emotional stupidity. He blunders so often and so badly because he has a narcissist’s inability to get inside the hearts and minds of other people. It’s a stupidity that in almost pure clinical form, flows out of his inability to feel, a stupidity of the heart.’ How do we square this with the fact that Donald Trump won in 2016? Liberal commentators will struggle to.

The truth, contrary to Brooks’ charge of ‘emotional stupidity’ is that Trump has managed to win the hearts and minds of a huge amount of the American working class. How? By going against the establishment. Trump has criticised Hillary Clinton for being a Wall Street shill and a criminal, the Democrats for throwing America into war after war, and the mainstream media for consistently marginalising swathes of views – particularly those favoured by workers. The thing about these claims is that they are all correct. His Twitter, laughable as it may be, is so obviously not ghostwritten. It is unprofessional, direct, unpretentious – one might even say it is, in a rather odd way, down to earth. Trump has not taken himself to be entitled to votes. On the other hand, Joe Biden said to a black voter who was on the fence that, ‘If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.’ Odd, coming from someone who thought desegregation would lead to his children growing up ‘in a racial jungle’, and that ‘poor kids are just as bright and talented as white kids’. If these comments had come from Trump, they would be plastered on every headline. In this case, the liberal media tries to pass it all off as a joke (Washington Post, 22 May). It is precisely this difference between the Democrats and Trump that has led to the polarisation seen in American politics – the working class has realised that the Democrats have done nothing for them. The elitism and political careerism of the mainstream Democratic party has become an unmissable stain on their campaign.

Liberal elite

Of course, Trump’s greatest success is that he has managed to convince working class Americans that he represents them. Sure, he has pointed out some of their issues, but the policies he has put in place have done nothing to resolve them. Perhaps this just goes to show how out of touch the Democrats are: even lip-service to the American working class is more than they have done. This might be the backbone of the Trump strategy – if you convince enough working people, but also evangelicals, racists, and so on, you can garner enough of the vote to go back to serving your real constituency: the capitalist class. Trump’s policies have been mostly typical rightwing corporate welfare, combined with a sort of protectionism that hasn’t been seen in a while. Trump may be marking the end of the neoliberal world order, replacing it with something that could even more straightforwardly be described as American hegemony.

This is actually not entirely accurate: Trump has been forming close alliances with some of the world’s most ruthless dictators, notably the Brazilian Jair Bolsanaro, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist in Trump’s cabinet, has become somewhat of a left-wing bogeyman, uniting nationalist and right-wing leaders worldwide, including Marine Le Pen in France and Nigel Farage in the UK. Something bigger is at work, and it is keen to captivate ‘the masses’. Populism has become a political slur thrown around by liberals that describes this phenomenon. Socialists understand that there is a political and economic elite, whose interests are opposed to those of the workers. It’s clear why liberals, the elite in question, want to deny that this is the case. The rightwing has managed to capture the same sentiment but their claims about who the elite is differ from ours immensely.

The Democrats had a left-wing populist candidate – indeed, one who was popular with some Trump supporters: Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. Sanders was the most radical mainstream American politician by far, drawing on a tradition that has been left mostly untouched since Eugene V. Debs, one of the founders of the Industrial Workers of the World. American social democracy could have tried to win the election by tapping into the anti-establishment sentiment that has taken hold of the workers. Of course, the mainstream Democratic Party, as a representative of capital (no different to the Republican Party) would rather have Trump than Sanders. Shenanigans in the election process were conducted accordingly. Even Trump pointed out that the alternative left-wing candidate, Elizabeth Warren, was only in the running to split the Sanders vote.

There is clear discontent within the American workers: particularly the youth. The majority of millennial Americans are not afraid of the word ‘socialism’; in fact they prefer it to ‘capitalism’. Liberals are keen to point out that they never lived through the Cold War, and that this might explain their lack of hostility to socialism. Or, it might be that thirty-year olds have lived through four recessions. For a great liberal hero, liberals seem remarkably unkeen to listen to Adam Smith: ’No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable’. Yet, the Democrats, based on nonsensical concerns of ‘electability’ keep advancing centrist candidates, who are just grist to Trump’s mill. The Democrats ran the electability experiment with Clinton. It failed. Yet they are trying it again with Biden. The workers feeling so disenfranchised that ‘did not vote’ makes a significantly higher category than either Trump or Clinton votes in 2016. Perhaps if ‘did not vote’ amounted to a vote for no president at all, the country would be better off.

At any rate, the election draws near. If Trump manages to secure another victory, the consequences for the environment will be disastrous. One would hope that working class Americans will have seen through the ruse, but as long as the mainstream opinions are strictly limited to Democrat and Republican, there is going to be little progress. A socialist might reasonably worry that the age-old choice between socialism and barbarism is being made, and that the people are choosing barbarism.

MP Shah

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

Where is Labour going? (2021)

From the August 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Batley and Spen, a constituency in West Yorkshire, had a by-election on the first of July. There were a number of surprises – most notably, that the seat was held by Labour. The election was taken to be something of a judgment on the Labour Party as a whole, with polling suggesting that it would be a 6 percent lead for the Conservatives (Survation, 18 June). Losing Batley and Spen would have been a particularly painful blow for Labour, as it was the constituency of Jo Cox, the Labour MP who was murdered in 2016 by a neo-fascist, Thomas Mair. Her sister, Kim Leadbeater, won the seat this year by 323 votes (a lead of 0.85 percent of the vote, having won about 35 percent overall). The seat had been Tracy Brabin’s, a Labour and Co-op MP, since the by-election following Cox’s death. Her leads were 16.7 percent (55.5 percent overall) in the 2017 general election, and 8.7 percent (42.7 percent overall) in 2019. While Labour’s holding the seat was unexpected, considering how narrow the victory was, and how the seat has often historically been Labour’s more strongly, this is by no means a turning-of-the-tides.

Workerism

One of the other surprises was that almost 22 percent of the vote went to George Galloway’s ‘Workers Party’, which he describes as ‘the working-class patriotic alternative to fake woke anti-British ‘Labour’’ (Telegraph & Argus, 12 May). The party’s Deputy Leader, Joti Brar, is vice-chair of the CPGB-ML. Whoever they represent it is not the workers. Their website announces that they are a ‘socialist organisation’, but also that they ‘defend the achievements of the USSR, China, Cuba etc’, and that the party ‘believes in the importance of a planned economy, in the directing role of the state. Free-market fundamentalism has gutted Britain of its industries (…) castrating our society and adversely destabilising proud working-class traditions, culture and way of life.’

One would be hard-pressed to find a better example of what one-time leader of the Italian Communist Party Bordiga derided as ‘the typically opportunist conception of the labourist or workerist party to whom all those individuals who are proletarian in terms of their social condition are admitted by right’, to say nothing of the alarming fetishisation of oppressive state-capitalist regimes, past and present.

Socialism’s goal is not to preserve ‘working-class traditions, culture, and way of life’ – on the contrary, in an important sense, it is to abolish those things. We demand the elimination of class, not the extension of the proletarian way of life to the whole of society. Indeed, isn’t it dissatisfaction with the proletarian way of life that gives motivation to socialist sentiment in the first place?

Panic

At any rate, the result was astonishing. Galloway took himself to be ‘standing against Keir Starmer’, and that 22 percent backed the Workers Party, placing it third overall, can reasonably be read as an indictment of the Labour Party as it stands. Indeed, perhaps the only reason Labour didn’t lose is sheer luck. The week before the election, the news broke of then Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s affair and breach of the social-distancing rules he himself set out. This and the Conservative Party’s reaction (or lack thereof) did not reflect well on them, and presumably led to a drop in Tory turnout on the day of the vote. Keir Starmer’s declaration that ‘This by-election is a turning point (…) Labour’s back, and the promise of a better future is back too’ (Guardian, 2 June) is certainly too quick. Indeed, comparing leads over the years, it is not a turning point at all. It is a continuation of the dwindling of victory margins Labour has seen.

Indeed, some of the party’s campaigning tactics showed signs of panic and desperation. Leaflets were distributed showing PM Boris Johnson with the Indian PM Narendra Modi, of the radically Hindu nationalist BJP. This was to appeal to the Muslim vote, especially given continuing human rights abuses in Kashmir, a region disputed by India and Pakistan for generations. The frantic appeal to votes led to some internal division within the party, with Labour Friends of India requesting withdrawal of the leaflets. The vote still remained divided: Kim Leadbeater was heckled and intimidated after being questioned about her stance on LGBT rights, Palestine, and Kashmir (Guardian, 27 June). One man who chased her said he was acting on behalf of Muslim parents concerned about LGBT-inclusive education. Across given demographics, then, Labour has not won many hearts.

Lucky

The victory will, of course, still be welcomed by the Labour party. But it is not a victory that they can take much comfort in. Indeed, looking at it as anything but an immense stroke of luck is probably mistaken. The signs point to a need for change in the Labour Party, if they want to win again – and that change, contrary to what Starmer has suggested, has not already taken place. George Galloway’s Workers Party is an important surprise in the election – Labour would be remiss to not take some note. Handing over 22 percent of the vote to a rival left-leaning party is not a concession they are in any position to make.

Labour’s position is somewhat precarious now, with no signs of a forthcoming reversal in fortunes. The reason they won seems to have as much to do with the Conservatives’ blunders than their own successes. Starmer’s jubilation had better be a mere façade if Labour is to return to serious positions of power in parliament. He writes that ‘Batley and Spen was an important win – in the most difficult of circumstances. But it is only the start.’ Even this might go too far. Perhaps it isn’t the start, but a mere confirmation that Labour is going nowhere fast.

M. P. Shah

How do you like your News? (2021)

From the July 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

A new channel, GB News, brought in 336,000 people for its launch (Guardian, 14 June) – more than three times the number watching BBC News and more than seven times the number watching Sky News at the same time. It has a distinctive brand – as the name suggests, and as its chairman, Andrew Neil, made explicit, ‘We are proud to be British. The clue is in the name. And while we will never hold back from covering our country’s many flaws and problems, we will not come at every story with the conviction that Britain is always at fault, usually to blame when things go wrong, generally useless. We won’t forget what the B stands for in our title.’

There seems to have been a space in the media market for this, given the popularity it enjoyed at launch. What is more interesting is the quite overtly populist tone of the broadcast. Neil insists the channel is ‘dedicated to covering the news that matters to you and giving voice to those who felt sidelined or even silenced in our great national debates – because if it matters to you, it matters to us. GB News will not slavishly follow the existing news agenda.’ To be sure, there are good reasons for people to take that idea seriously. A significant portion of people in the UK do not trust, for instance, the BBC, to tell the truth ‘at all’ – 20 percent in December 2019 (YouGov, 16 December 2019). Contrast that with the 8 percent who took it to tell the truth ‘a great deal’. This will only gain more force since Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC political editor, was singled out by name by the Prime Minister’s ex-adviser, Dominic Cummings, in his criticism of the government’s handling of the pandemic (Daily Telegraph, 26 May). This is all good news for GB News, who want to primarily compete with the BBC.

Popular populism

The liberal press reacted as would be reasonable for them to, when faced with any sort of populist rhetoric: strident derision. The Guardian (12 June) gave the channel a one star out of five review, calling it ‘Utterly deadly stuff’. Stuart Jeffries continues in his review to ask a ‘philosophical question’ – ‘Can GB News change Britain’s news agenda if no one watches it? The answer, incredibly, is yes. […] [It] will be a success if it has reach rather than ratings.’ And it seems that it does have reach. His optimistic conclusion, nevertheless, is ‘A year tops.’ While Jeffries is quite right to point out the technical failures and the poor production quality, there does seem to be something important missed in just straightforwardly slating it. Why, if it is so bad, are people interested? There may be a genuine desire for explicitly political populist reporting in the UK. It would be hardly surprising if that were the case.

The political slant, besides the nationalism noted above, is one of focus on ‘woke’ moves made in mainstream politics and standing in opposition to them: ‘We will puncture the pomposity of our elites and politics, business, media and academia, and expose their growing promotion of cancel culture for the threat to free speech and democracy that it is.’ There is certainly a consistent narrative being spun here, and now there are serious questions arising about who exactly the ‘elites’ in question are. Of course, the narrative is helped by corporate advertisers, including Ikea and Octopus Energy, boycotting the channel (Independent, 16 June). In what might otherwise be described as the free market deciding to allocate funding elsewhere, Tory MP Craig Mackinlay explains that ‘This is all part of the closing down of free speech campaign which I am afraid we are seeing across our society. […] Corporates should do what they do – sell things rather than get involved with political debates’ (Daily Mail, 16 June). Of course, this does raise questions of where the funding does come from. It is a well-documented fact that the media relies on advertising much more heavily than it does on readership/viewership counts, money-wise.

Where’s their money coming from?

As one would expect, it is funded primarily by hedge funds, large conglomerates like Discovery, based in the UK, and investment firms based in the Middle East like Legatum. There seems to be very little that is proudly British vis-à-vis the financing of the programming. As Kevin Rawlinson and Jim Waterson write sharply, ‘Neil lists his main residence as France on official documents’ (Guardian, 14 June). And more or less for those reasons alone, it does not matter that there are voices from a range of political positions, including Gloria De Piero, who was a Shadow Minister under Jeremy Corbyn at one point, and Andrew Doyle, who voiced his support for Corbyn.

The ostensibly anti-establishment tone of the broadcast comes down to little if that is going to be sharply restricted by advertiser and shareholder pressures. As James Curran and Jean Seaton note on their history and analysis of the British press, the work that inspired Manufacturing Consent (Herman & Chomsky, 1988), ‘[The introduction of market forces] did not inaugurate a new era of press freedom and liberty; it established instead a new system of press censorship more effective than anything that had gone before [succeeding] where legal repression had failed in conscripting the press to the social order’ (Curran & Seaton, 2018, p. 5). Left-wing commentators mean nothing when advertiser pressures hold your programming to ransom any time inconvenient views are expressed. In Orwell’s still-insightful summary of the issues in his article on ‘The Freedom of the Press’, ‘Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban […] because of a general tacit agreement that “it wouldn’t do” to mention that particular fact’. And that is quite relevant when considering how much the anti-establishment rhetoric is substance and how much it is just rhetoric. If they are genuinely against business or the establishment generally, where are they getting their money from? Why would business agree to fund them in the first place?

The tone of the broadcast is highly misleading in two respects. One, just elaborated, that it is highly doubtful anything substantively in favour of the working class is going to be expressible on the platform – even if the viewers it draws are overwhelmingly ABC1 (82 percent). The second is the actual quality of the reporting. The channel insists on ‘character, flair, attitudes, opinion, and, yes, a sense of humour. […] Along the way we hope to have fun. […] GB News will aim to inform, inspire, and entertain.’ The blending of entertainment and reporting has complex effects – it cannot be taken as a straightforward good. Any further erosion of rational reflection on political issues, including the explicit introduction of the aim of entertainment into journalism, is likely to do little but distract from the matters at hand. It would be one thing to watch the channel because one agreed with the editorials, it would be another to watch it because it is funny – and be dragged into their narrative on merely that basis.

All of this does still leave the possibility open that the channel is knowingly run without regard to profit, just to introduce the narrative into public discourse. This would sound far-fetched, if it were not for the historical precedent. The incentives to do so are clear: further shift the opinion to the right, with the additional benefit of leading the viewership into a false sense of complacency about what is being said and done against the elite strata of society. Sky News, for instance, operates at a loss (Wired, 13 June). If there is anything to be said, then, against the view of news corporations as pure profit-making machines like any other, it is that the view is not cynical enough. Their existence may be justified by elites for ideological functions alone.

Bluster against the elite

At any rate, this much is clear: for all its bluster against the elites, Andrew Neil, ex-editor of The Times, chairman of The Spectator, BBC regular, and chairman of Press Holdings, is unlikely to say much of substance against them. That isn’t to be put down to his opinions – left-wingers are around in the ‘GB News Family’ too (gbnews.uk). But that doesn’t matter much when advertiser pressures are the same as any other news corporation, radically restricting the views expressible on air. And if it will have to fight for funding, as it looks like it might, there will be little choice but to pander to the elites. However noble your intentions (granting an enormous benefit of the doubt here), it means nothing if the market forces in question operate to reflect the interests of those who have the money. And they do operate in exactly that way, especially in matters of the media. If it is to last, it can only do so with utterly subservient editorials, carrying on restricting the spectrum of opinion, though it might well maintain all the rhetoric of ‘not slavishly [following] the existing news agenda.’ This doesn’t leave room for Stuart Jeffries’s conclusion of ‘A year, tops’. We should be so lucky.

M. P. Shah

What’s left of Labour? (2021)

"Look away, look away."

From the June 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party suffered something of a defeat in the 2021 local elections. The Conservative Party gained 13 councils, 235 councillors, where Labour lost 8 councils, and 327 councillors. That a party which has been in continuous power for over a decade keeps making gains is surprising, to say the least. It seems the last year – despite promises of a new Labour (though, assuredly, not New Labour) – has been more of the same for the party. Why? Certain commentators have offered their speculations. Typically, they’re what you’d expect – Labour is still in the claws of the radical left (viz. trade unions, ‘Corbynistas’, and other public enemies), and unless Keir Starmer steps up and frees it, it faces an existential threat.

In an article about the leadership elections in May last year we wrote that the radicalism Starmer campaigned on seemed even then to be vacuous, but what was hard to foresee was just how harsh the crackdown on the Labour Left would be. The business press weren’t afraid then, and they certainly aren’t afraid now. So, if the explanation that Labour is failing because it’s trying to pander to the radical left is incorrect, what is happening? The facts of the matter seem quite clear: voters believe Labour has nothing to offer them. People have no idea what the party stands for, to say nothing about the leader in particular, and there has been little to no attempt to lay out any concrete policy, beyond flat-footed attempts to get votes, like flag-waving and ‘dressing smartly’ (Guardian, 2 February).

The new leadership

The shadow cabinet has taken a number of stances that represent (and they are keen to emphasise this) a break from what came before. A defining feature of the current opposition was characterised by Starmer himself in his victory speech: ‘Under my leadership, we will engage constructively with the government. Not opposition for opposition’s sake. Not scoring party political points or making impossible demands’ (Independent, 2 April 2020). The campaign slogan was ‘A New Leadership’, another attempt to emphasise that this is no longer the party of Jeremy Corbyn, who has been stripped of the Labour whip since the end of October 2020. Many MPs regarded as on the left of the party, like John McDonnell and Diane Abbott, have not been afforded the sort of positions they were earlier. A lot of that was to be expected. Rebecca Long-Bailey was briefly on the front bench until she was sacked in June. If there has been one thing that defines the Starmer shadow cabinet, it’s the repeated message that it is not a continuation of the Corbyn shadow cabinet.

Quite interesting is how the reshuffles and sackings have been treated. Jeremy Corbyn was often accused of ‘Stalinist’ purges (Times, 22 October 2015; politicshome.com, 24 March 2018), but the media response to Keir Starmer’s responses to the Labour Left does not at all call back to Red Scare smear tactics. On the contrary, one need only look at the sort of line taken by the London Times on the issues: Starmer must ‘face down the left of his party’ (11 May). The leading article goes on to admonish the leader: ‘He ought to have realised by now that the left of the party wants him to fail. That would allow them a perverse sense of vindication in believing that voters yearn for full-blooded socialism.’

Whether the left of the party wants him to fail or not, it seems he is doing so by his own lights. Starmer himself claims Labour has ‘lost the trust of working people’, and that he takes ‘full responsibility’ for the defeats (a day before sacking Angela Rayner). Much of the discussion is about ‘trust’ and ‘reconnecting’; very little is about the actual policies proposed, or the lack thereof.

The case is quite well illustrated by tax policy. Quite different to the Corbyn-era manifesto’s ‘harshest tax regime on business income among large advanced economies’ (FT, 22 November 2019), Labour said it would oppose any raising of corporation tax, and didn’t rule out voting against a windfall tax on supermarkets, though those were proposals by the Conservative Party (Independent, 24 February).

The platform Starmer ran his leadership campaign on was a radical platform – the 10 Pledges, still on his website, promise as the very first priority ‘economic justice’, including a reversal of cuts to corporation tax and ‘No stepping back from our core principles’ (keirstarmer.com/plans/10-pledges).

The about-face is far reaching. New Labour notwithstanding, the party has historically been intimately linked with the trade union movement – indeed, was once regarded as just the extension of the movement into parliament. Starmer refused Unite’s letter demanding an end to fire and rehire tactics (Skwawkbox, 6 May). This extends even to NHS worker demands: the Royal College of Nursing is preparing for a strike over the government’s promise of a 1 percent pay rise. They demand a 12.5 percent pay rise for all nurses, but Starmer has offered support only for a 2.5 percent increase (and promises negotiation ‘up from there’). Polling has reflected this. 32 percent of 1,843 healthcare workers intended to vote Labour in the 2021 local elections, whereas this figure was at 82 percent in polling for the 2019 general election. Other breaks include security policy – unions and campaign groups demanded the party vote against the ‘Spy Cops’ bill, which grants state organisations freedom to commit serious crimes, but the Labour leadership ordered abstentions. As a result, an amendment proposed by Shami Chakrabarti that would have denied undercover agents immunity was defeated 309 to 153 (Guardian, 13 January).

Speculative pieces

Mainstream commentary inverts the issues precisely. The BBC reports that ‘a prominent politician who spent some time campaigning in Hartlepool blamed the hollowing out of the party during the Corbyn era, with strong organisational, as much as political expertise and experience, lost’ (BBC, 7 May). The figureheads of political expertise and experience are speaking up, as it happens – both Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair have written extensive speculative pieces about how they think Labour should have acted and why it has faced yet another defeat. Mandelson criticises the ‘power of hard-left factions that abuse [the trade union link]’, such as Mick Whelan and Len McCluskey, who ‘use Labour as a political plaything to pursue their ultra-leftism, which is completely unrepresentative of both their own members’ and Labour members’ views.’ Blair’s reflections are equal in their force and content. On Good Morning Britain, he emphatically places the ‘Far Left’ seizing the leadership of the party as the cause for its defeat (Independent, 12 May).

To look at the more liberal end of the discussion, for commentators who don’t want to be quite as harsh on the party as Blair and Mandelson, another explanation has to be conjured up to deal with Labour’s defeat. Naturally, a new term is coined: ‘Pasokification’. After the Greek centre-left party, PASOK, haemorrhaged votes from 2009 to 2015, losing them to the left-wing party Syriza, the term was coined to refer to the decline of moderate social democracy. This has supposedly been ‘a continuing problem for Labour’ (Guardian, 8 May). There’s something to this, to be sure – there looks to be less and less room for centrism in politics, contra Blair. Yet it’s not so much the pursuit of centrist policies that voters are sceptical of, in this specific case, it’s more the lack of pursuit of any specific policies, easily confused with centrism. Blair and Mandelson are in a particularly apt position to make the sorts of claims they make, as they don’t have to come up with any concrete policies – none are mentioned or even gestured towards. Starmer’s problem seems to be that he touts this sort of rhetoric without any policies to back it up, and of course, unlike Blair and Mandelson, he can’t get away with that. And this is exactly what voters recognise.

Mandelson and Blair both make the claim that it is being out of touch, or unrepresentative, that led to Labour’s loss. Factual claims should be assessed as such: polling rules that analysis out conclusively. Based on a survey of 775 people, a lack of policies is by far the biggest reason people did not vote Labour in the local elections (jlpartners.co.uk/local-elections), and the biggest reason voters defected is the leadership itself. Unions were mentioned in the former survey but were as significant as the word ‘joke’, and less significant than the word ‘useless’, both quite low in the ranking. The most popular reason for voting Conservative was ‘job’, and one of the most popular reasons people didn’t vote Conservative was corruption. Those are all good indicators of where Labour went wrong.

There has been a lot of criticism of government sleaze, from flouting lockdown restrictions to simply handing over huge amounts of public funding to private power. Sir James Dyson simply needed to ask for no change in tax status for his staff, and Boris Johnson vows to ‘fix it’. Of course, this is nothing new – fresh allegations of lobbying in favour of financial services company Greensill have come out about David Cameron. Yet, what criticism Labour has made of Tory sleaze seems to be too much for establishment journalists. A column in the Times (4 May) warns Labour that ‘Starmer is making a big mistake on sleaze […] It could tarnish Labour, as antipathy rises towards politicians in general rather than the Tories in particular.’ There is an element of truth to that, but as mentioned above, the electorate is much more sensitive to Tory corruption than Labour’s. That may be partly explained by the fact that the Tories happen to be the incumbents, but it hardly amounts to an argument that opposition parties must tread lightly. This being said, the point about disillusionment with politicians and the democratic process as it stands generally is one worth pursuing, even if it is not seriously taken up by the commentators themselves.

As is often the case, none of the liberal discussion has any mention of voter turnout. In England especially, voter turnout for local elections is often low – as low as a third in many cases. The only concern is the ruthless drive for a higher vote share. People do not feel motivated, and especially so in local elections, to vote. And why would they? It’s been a well-recognised fact for a while that local government has been largely incapacitated for the last decade or more, and that this is a serious threat to a well-functioning democracy. To take one example, the LSE Democratic Audit reported in 2018 that ‘The cumulative adverse impacts of austerity [… on …] local government have rapidly increased since 2015. Civil service efficacy has radically declined, the quality of public services has significantly worsened, and local government has been hollowed out’ (democraticaudit.com).

The tack Labour has taken does little to change that. What strategies they have are pursued out of a narrow interest in increasing vote-share by appealing to aesthetics and emotion, viz. ‘patriotism’ and ‘dressing well’. A cynic might easily draw the conclusion that this is really a sort of condescension towards the working class, who are taken to be unable to differentiate substantive positions from mere play-acting. Whether one chooses to follow the cynic in that or not, the problem remains that a campaign that rests solely on the principle of ‘We aren’t Corbynistas,’ can’t work. It still can’t work if you add the principle ‘We aren’t the Tories’, either, especially when the rhetoric of the campaign revolves crucially around co-opting Conservative talking points about patriotism, traditions, so on.

Does Labour face an existential crisis? Perhaps something not quite as strong as that, but an identity crisis, certainly. It may end up turning back to anodyne centrism and wearing that on its sleeve – certainly if Tony Blair’s ideas are followed – and nothing said so far rules that out completely. However, it’s clear the immediate situation is that no one, including the party itself, seems to know what Labour stands for anymore. In some cases, it’s easy to tell what the party leadership opposes, but very little has actually been offered in terms of concrete policy proposals. It is losing funding from unions, and according to Andrew Fisher, the small donations, which poured in during the Corbyn era, ‘have dried up’ (iNews, 11 May). Perhaps the only option left is pandering to business, or turning back to Corbyn-style leadership. A good deal of the most important facts are left out by the commentariat. For instance, it is not that Labour simply is out of touch with its base – they genuinely do not feel like there is anything coherent in the programme as it stands (insofar as a programme exists). Vilification of ‘ultra-leftist’ unions and ‘public ownership of industry’ as outdated reflects a particular political stance more than it reflects public opinion, and claims that ‘All the evidence is that [Labour] can only [find a coalition] by building out from the centre ground’ are all well and good as spirited liberal discussion go, but ultimately amount to speculation from the armchair (despite the mention of evidence). Though the path that the opposition leadership will follow isn’t quite clear yet, it does seem that whatever is going to be left of Labour after this, it won’t be the Left.

M. P. Shah

The Lessons of Charlottesville (2020)

From the August 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are approaching the third anniversary of the Unite the Right rally that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, on 11 and 12 August 2017. These events are particularly noteworthy today as we are seeing something of a repetition. Several white supremacists, neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, Klansmen, self-proclaimed members of the alt-right, etc gathered, supposedly to protest against the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee. What might have been justified under ‘defending American history’ led to a racist and violent demonstration that resulted in the murder of a counter-protester, Heather Heyer. Today, following the Black Lives Matter movement, there is a continuation of the same discussion. In the UK, a statue of Winston Churchill has been defaced with the statement ‘was a racist’ under his name. Debates go on about whether a statue of Lord Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scouts and admirer of fascism, should be left up. Of course, many have come out of the woodwork to defend the statues, with more rationalisations than countable. Perhaps less has been learned from Charlottesville than one might hope.

Jason Kessler, an American neo-Nazi, organised the demonstration against the decision to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee from Charlottesville’s Lee Park. This became a focal point for various white-supremacist movements, with notable members of the ‘alt-right’ like Richard Spencer joining in. Quickly, more and more far-right support for the organisations started pouring in, turning into a broad-church racist movement. Chants such as ‘Jews will not replace us’ and the Nazi slogan ‘Blood and Soil’ began to sound. The Ku Klux Klan began to participate. The ‘Proud Boys’, a fascist group that organises and promotes political violence, also joined. Under freedom of expression and assembly, an extremist demonstration hundreds-strong was enabled.

Of course, this was met with significant resistance. Anti-racist and anti-fascist counter-protestors also organised, despite the lack of police protection that the right wing enjoyed. Ecclesiastical groups, social-democrats, civil rights activists, anarchists, and more gathered in Charlottesville to both oppose the racists and defend those they felt were threatened. Police action often simply ignored violence against counter-protesters (when it was not contributing to it). Violence then erupted between the protesters and counter-protesters. At its height, a white supremacist, James Alex Fields Jr., drove his car into a group of counter-protesters at about 30 mph before reversing into more. He killed a civil rights activist, Heather Heyer.

There is much in this that is frightening, including the fact that similar events are still happening. Something worth dwelling on is how racist sentiment can divide the working class, pitting its fragments against one another.

This is perpetrated most viciously by people like Richard Spencer, who believe themselves to be above the working class. They try to appeal to the white working class, focusing on the ‘race’ divisions which are very prominent in America. This, in turn, makes those captivated deny their identity as members of a class and buy into their supposed identity as a race. They are then more easily tempted to associate with people like Richard Spencer, or even Donald Trump, who hold the working class in utter contempt. The fact that the mainstream right and the fringe are not disconnected is well supported by Trump’s refusal to condemn the white supremacists, claiming that there were ‘very fine people on both sides’: being goaded by ideas like race simply masks the material reality of the class structure of capitalism, obscuring it behind veils of ethnicity and religion.

The white supremacists use the language of ‘degeneracy’, condemning those deemed unworthy by them to service towards the higher classes (which, of course, includes them). Some appeal to an idea of a golden age taken away from these noble few by the corruption of the masses. Some members of the working class might even believe this, thinking themselves or others to be inferior to the elites. If this attitude became widespread, it would be one of the biggest threats to the possibility of socialism. Socialism depends upon the consciousness of the working class of their own potential to liberate themselves.

Marx, early in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, writes that ‘the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionising themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honoured disguise and borrowed language’.

The statues of past figures, supposed heroes, do weigh like a nightmare on our brains. There are so-called great men. This shouldn’t be the case. There are people who have made impacts on history, to be sure, but supported by innumerable others whose names are lost to us. Hero worship is quite close in character to the rhetoric of the extreme right, who want to convince the masses of certain groups’ superiority. Furthermore, the picture of history presented by statues is significantly distorted, as it is one guided principally by the attitudes of the ruling class. This is rarely an accurate picture of events. Which people are chosen to be commemorated and which are not is often quite telling. This will do nothing but lead the working class to tacitly accept class structure.

There are still lessons to be learned from Charlottesville. Besides the point that ‘it could happen here’, there are more general issues about the class struggle. White supremacy and other forms of obscuring the class war will always focus on dividing the working class and trying to convince them of their own inferiority. Of course, the necessity of class oppression is a lie told again and again to maintain power. To draw from the opening of the Eighteenth Brumaire again, hopefully the tragedy has already passed and we only have to deal with the farce. Unfortunately, the reinvigorated debate about statues suggests otherwise. While we are in the thrall of the past, there is limited progress to be made. The mainstream debate is limited between whether we should have a statue of this person or that person or not, but there is a deeper question to be asked about why we have statues at all. We’d be better off realising that there are no singularly great men. Serious change is brought about through massive popular movements acting together, not through the enlightened leadership of the few.

M. P. Shah

Race or Class? (2020)

From the July 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

The killing of George Floyd has contributed hugely to the worldwide consciousness of police brutality, but also to some important points about class.

There has been a spontaneous response to Floyd’s murder, more or less united, organised around principles of solidarity, that has taken the world by storm.

In less than a month, protests tens-of-thousands strong have popped up, making the call for increased consciousness of race issues. Revealingly, it is this aspect of it that is focused on by most left-liberal analysis. Race is undoubtedly an important aspect of the present issues in society. However, it is not the only aspect.

Class plays a fundamental role in capitalist society. With ever increasing talk of ‘identity politics’, we see the class issue being diminished in favour of other problems. The other problems are very real and very important, without question, but they are underpinned by class.

What is espoused by identity politics is that there is no fundamental problem but multiple, overlapping issues: everyone has a unique perspective to offer; a white working-class person cannot understand the issues faced by a bourgeois person of colour, or a female CEO will not know the problems of male workers. There is something to be said for this, but where the issue arises is their view that these are fundamentally distinct issues that simply happen to overlap.

What is not appreciated is that some issues are more basic than others in capitalist society and may be resolved without resolution of the others.

Socialism cannot exist while racism exists, but capitalism can exist even when racial tensions are at an end (the plausibility of this is another matter, it is simply a possibility). This isn’t to denigrate the problems of racism, but simply to understand that they are underpinned by a more deeply rooted issue: class.

The issues are related, of course. The working class cannot achieve its full consciousness unless it recognises that the international working class is its ally and not its competitor. Much of capitalist propaganda revolves around turning the working class against its migrant allies by use of language like ‘the immigrants stealing the jobs’. We can dismiss this as a straightforward case of racism.

A more rigorous inspection leads us to believe that the act of the working class co-operating would be devastating to capitalism, and, consequently, all that can be done to fragment the workers and to pit them against one another must be done. We can see, even in current demonstrations, something of this streak.

To take a concrete example, people in Seattle have declared an autonomous zone, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, with mutual aid systems and community organised demonstrations. Police are not allowed to enter. It has been praised by prominent left-wing institutions (such as the Industrial Workers of the World) and met with great optimism by many leftists.

Donald Trump tweeted that ‘these ugly Anarchists must be stopped IMMEDIATELY [sic]’. Some of the optimism is merited, insofar as it gives us a glimpse of what socialism may look like. Of course, nothing can be planned in any great detail, but the spontaneous actions of workers in times of crisis shows what the natural human instincts for social organisation are. Therein lies the real benefit of crises.

The brilliance of such organisations is that they give a small insight into what a society without class divides might be like, and demonstrate concretely the feasibility of such a society.

They spring up from all sorts of crises: Occupy Wall Street following the crash of 2008 had similar institutions. In this case, it is a crisis prompted by racial tensions that has led to increased consciousness of class tensions. We must appreciate the connection between the two and the fundamental nature of capitalist society if we are to make serious progress.

M. P. Shah

Labour Leader: Faux Radicalism (2020)

From the May 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour Party: normal service is resumed

Keir Starmer has been elected the leader of the Labour Party with 56.2 percent of the vote. His background is a legal one. He became a barrister in 1987, only being elected MP in 2015, following Frank Dobson’s resignation, in Holborn & St. Pancras, a Labour safe seat. He was knighted too, in 2014 (though he still prefers not to go by ‘Sir’). While Starmer is no centrist, he will, according to the BBC, attempt to ‘unite supporters of both Jeremy Corbyn and Tony Blair within the party’. He still describes himself as a socialist, which of course, just means nationalising a few industries and regulation on portions of the private sector. That being said, this is still noteworthy, as the Blairite faction of the Labour Party sees Starmer’s victory as a victory for them despite this. Rebecca Long-Bailey, the left-wing (or as some have put it, Corbyn-continuity) candidate, won only 27.6 percent of the vote – not even half of Starmer’s.

 As some see it, this marks the end of Corbynism and the left-wing policies that the Labour Party has advocated in the last few years. While Jeremy Corbyn’s positions were nowhere near as radical as the press made them out to be, Keir Starmer’s policies will then be a significant shift back to the centre. Starmer has been described by an aide to Corbyn as ‘actually [having] zero politics, which often means he follows the crowd’ (FT, 22 February). Of course, the business class are significantly happier with this: Henry Mance writing for the Financial Times (3 April), a newspaper which, unlike the mainstream press, acknowledges class war, expresses their reaction to Corbyn: ‘It’s been a surreal time. The threat came out of nowhere. It quickly torpedoed things that we once took for granted. But rest assured, it will end. On Saturday, Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure as leader of Britain’s Labour party finally expires. It’s been five years’.

Starmer’s shadow cabinet reflects the shift quite dramatically. Anneliese Dodds, the Shadow Chancellor is no longer interested in ‘overthrowing capitalism’, as her predecessor John McDonnell was (whether his policies would have contributed that overthrow is a separate question altogether), but more Keynesian policies. Ed Miliband, an advocate of ‘responsible capitalism’, returns to the front bench, this time to a position as Shadow Secretary for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy

The spectrum of debate will narrow more, then. Socialism, a word that has had all meaning already evicted, is now thrown about with reference to centre-left policies. One of Jeremy Corbyn’s successes (or failures, if you’re so inclined) in the Labour Party was engaging more extensively with grassroots movements. This at least helped to destigmatise real socialist politics and connect socialism to working class movements and democracy, rather than simply being a synonym for autocratic state-control. What might happen now is that even Corbyn’s trade-unionism and idle class-war rhetoric can be pushed out as ‘going too far’. Socialism à la Starmer doesn’t even touch on the important talking points – it simply means having a strong public sector. Perhaps on that basis the East India Company, nationalised in 1858, would be an example of socialist enterprise.

Keir Starmer’s tenure as leader of the opposition will be many things, but controversial is not one. The faux radicalism is evident. Starmer is keeping some of the policies from the Corbyn-era, including nationalisation of rail, a Green New Deal, scrapping Universal Credit, and so on. However, his support for the EU is notable as a shift back to more neoliberal-friendly politics. The notion of the Labour Party as a ‘people-powered movement’ will be weakened if not eliminated entirely. Momentum, a pro-Corbyn grassroots pressure group, will almost certainly be further derided as radicals trying to cling onto the sinking ship of left-wing politics. The most telling thing is how the business press are no longer afraid. Starmer’s policies will not get in the way of the private sector, or certainly not as much as Corbyn’s policies did.

There isn’t going to be a threat to the business elite from within the Labour Party, it seems. At every opportunity, the party turns on radicals and the left and quells talk of genuine democratic change. With any luck, disillusionment with the establishment will be heightened rather than workers being lulled into passivity. If genuine change is going to happen, it won’t come through an establishment tool like the Labour Party. With the current coronavirus crisis, whispers of a different social order become louder. It is clear that Keir Starmer isn’t offering much in that respect.

M. P. Shah

How the Few Govern the Many (2019)

From the December 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

The time of street revolutions is over. Socialism’s future lies in class-conscious workers expressing themselves through collective action and the ballot. How, then, has the ruling class been able to prevent the working class up to now from achieving this goal? There are two obvious possible answers. The first is to skew the vote against the workers, privileging the elite. The second is to entice the workers into voting against their class interests.

The first was suggested by the radical liberal John Stuart Mill, who suggested in his Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform (1859) that ‘every person should have one vote, but that every well-educated person in the community should have more than one, on a scale corresponding as far as practicable to their amount of education’ . The second was put succinctly by David Hume :

  ‘Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.’ (First Principles of Government)

Both stalwart classical liberals had , then, a deep scepticism when it came to democracy, and sought ways to restrict it.

More recently Jan Fleischhauer wrote in the Guardian (9 April) that: ‘Democracy is overrated anyway. The truth is, it only works reasonably well if the number of voters who have no idea (or perhaps worse: are convinced they do) are not too big on the day.’ We ask ourselves: how might people have an idea? Surely, the answer is the media, reporting on the facts and showing how to criticise the government, along the lines of Jeremy Browne, the then Foreign Office Minister, set out during a speech in April 2011 in Hanoi : ‘In democracies, the media is fundamental to political life. It provides facts to allow us to be better informed about the issues that matter to us. It provides criticism and debate to ensure that that information is tested and examined from all points of view. And it provides investigation and examination to ensure that power is checked and decision-makers are held accountable’ (www.gov.uk/government/news/role-of-media-in-society). Let us, perhaps without justification, take this as true. Why does the situation outlined by Fleischhauer arise then? The answer is clear – the media does not do what it claims to.

Least trusted

In fact, the British press is the least trusted in Europe, according to a 2017 survey conducted by the Pew Research Centre. The British Social Attitudes Survey found in 2014 that a majority did not think the media provided them with adequate tools to criticise the government. This majority has most likely increased in the last five years.

In 2017, BSA found that two-thirds of the population think there is ‘quite a lot of poverty’ in Britain, and 78 percent said that the gap between high earners and low earners is too large. This is strikingly different to what the previous chancellor, Philip Hammond, said on BBC’s Newsnight on 3 June when he rejected ‘the idea that there are vast numbers of people living in poverty in this country.’ He claimed that the suggestion was ‘a nonsense’, and his reasoning for such a bold claim was ‘Look around you, that is not what we see in this country.’ This was in response to Philip Alston, a UN Rapporteur, whose statement in November 2018 following a visit to the UK was damning. He wrote in his conclusion that ‘Thomas Hobbes, […] memorably claimed that without a social contract, life outside society would be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’ The risk is that if current policies do not change, this is the direction in which low-income earners and the poor are headed.’ An even more biting conclusion he drew was that ‘Austerity could easily have spared the poor, if the political will had existed to do so. Resources were available to the Treasury at the last budget that could have transformed the situation of millions of people living in poverty, but the political choice was made to fund tax cuts for the wealthy instead.’

What do these simple facts show? Firstly, that Hume and Mill were both right, simply on the wrong side. Their conclusions were absolutely correct. The rich being more privileged and public opinion being restricted are the most effective mechanisms for restricting democracy. The media, now that it is election season, are diverting their efforts to whichever horse they have in the race. The Guardian remains on the centre-left, and is the closest thing to representation of the left-wing in the mainstream – but that is a far cry from any considerable change to capitalism. The Times has devoted columns and columns to spelling out the disastrous consequences of Labour in power, etc, etc. Public opinion is confined to such narrow boundaries that renationalising the railways seems like something out of Marx’s Capital.

There are a number of reasons for this, the foremost being that the media are profit-seeking corporations and are subject to business interests. It is not in their interest to suggest that there is an alternative to the profit system. The public are not so easily duped, as shown by their dissatisfaction with capitalism above, as well as their scepticism with respect to the media. Melanie Phillips in an article in the Times (12 November) wrote: ‘Few British or American students are told about the evils of communism in the same way as they are told about the evils of Nazism. […] Few are taught that capitalism is the precondition for freedom and prosperity.’ It is hard to see a more ironic statement than an organ of propaganda claiming that freedom cannot exist without capitalism, and socialists are wrong because they do not allow freedom. George Orwell wrote in his essay The Freedom of the Press (1944), ‘the English intelligentsia have plenty of reason for their timidity and dishonesty, indeed I know by heart the arguments by which they justify themselves. But at least let us have no more nonsense about defending liberty against Fascism. If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’

Matthew Goodwin, in another recent article in the Times (3 November), wrote of ‘angry, divisive populism that is eroding everything once considered essential to our culture of consensus.’ By this populism, he meant the ‘belief in a corrupt, self-serving and neglectful elite that undermines the interests of the ‘pure’ people.’ It doesn’t take much to work out why such a view is so quickly disparaged by the capitalist press. Indeed this ‘civic culture’ he extolled might be seen as a society in which the elite do as they will and those below are docile and humble enough to submit to this rule. Though, he isn’t stupid, and he knows that the public is not either. He knows that this view will ‘resonate with voters’, even though ‘Britain will drift further from the civic culture that was considered to be one of its most valuable features.’ But ‘valuable to whom?’ Clearly not valuable to the majority, who are beginning to shake off the neoliberal denial of class altogether.

A genuine alternative is obviously needed. Discontent with the status quo is growing. Of course, the alternative is not, as the capitalist press have it, Jeremy ‘class war’ Corbyn, but socialism. Obviously, this is totally against the interests of the ruling class and therefore not something they want the public to hear. What are the majority then to do? Now seems an appropriate time to make the case for socialism and show that the poverty of many and greed of some is not the only way. The extension of democracy to all aspects of life, including work, is the foundation of socialism, and it is hard to think of something more apt to our times. The challenge is to overcome an anti-democratic media that seeks to restrict opinion and to keep the majority obedient.

M. P. Shah

No Deal Brexit: Parasitical Fisticuffs (2019)

From the October 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who would benefit from a no deal Brexit?

The British state risks subordination like never before to the interests of global capitalism. If the UK were to have a ‘no-deal’ or ‘hard’ Brexit, it would change the face of British capitalism.

But the question does remain an ‘if’. As we go to press attempts are still being made to leave with a deal, especially after the opposition parties got together, just before Boris Johnson’s suspension of parliament/, to pass a law to block no-deal. Even so Michael Gove, the minister in charge of Brexit arrangements, has made it clear that the British government is operating under the assumption that a deal will not be struck.

It is worth asking, then, who actually wants no-deal?

Corbyn, in an article for the Independent (26 August), described no-deal as a ‘bankers’ Brexit’, serving the interests of this powerful group primarily. This isn’t to say that no-deal would benefit the capitalist class as such – no-deal is more likely to be driven by nationalism than simple economic gain. The Daily Telegraph and other mainstream media outlets condemned this as just left-wing ideology, noting that bankers were originally in favour of remaining in the EU. However, other publications, such as the Financial Times, have reported some recent shift of bankers’ views to favour a no-deal Brexit, and more so since Johnson’s premiership.

The potential effects on the economy are worth considering.

No-deal would, if Bank of England reports are to be believed, risk recession. This might, in a way, favour some sections of the capitalist class – regulations could be dismantled and business take the helm more firmly, as is the inevitable to-ing and fro-ing in a capitalist economy.

On the other hand, some businesses have already started asking for handouts from the government, such as the food and finance industries. The food industries are going further, demanding exemption from competition laws so that they may collude. In all likelihood, the capitalist principle of ‘privatise profits, socialise losses’ will prevail.

There are also numerous other consequences to no-deal, leaving aside the domestic affairs. America has been the most forthcoming in stating its willingness to make a deal with the UK: President Trump has repeatedly expressed his enthusiasm about the current government. He has maintained that the UK may have to leave without a deal, saying ‘the European Union is very tough to make a deal with – just ask Theresa May.’ Johnson has said that he looks to make a ‘comprehensive deal with the US’. Other potential trade partners include Brazil, currently the site of major ecological damage. The British government is still, however, vying for the EU’s favour. British-European trade may carry on despite tariffs (most likely dictated by the EU, not the UK).

In this case, the UK would be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. All its trade deals would no longer be made through the EU, but based on World Trade Organisation rules. No-deal is also sometimes called ‘leaving on WTO rules.’. This would mean drawing up individual ‘schedules’ (lists of quotas, tariffs, and concessions for goods and services) for every WTO member the UK trades with. Britain would have to negotiate any trade deals on its own. As Britain would not have the bargaining power of the EU, British capitalism, under these circumstances, would most likely take on a much more American face. The interests of star-spangled industry would be catered to by British government more attentively.

No-deal has, however, been criticised by both right and left. The former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, has said that there was no mandate for leaving the European Union without a deal. The previous Prime Minister, Theresa May, attempted to get a deal approved three times, each attempt ending in failure. Some people argue that leaving the EU without a deal is an expression of the democratic will expressed in 2016. Often, these people are supporters of the party which has stymied parliament.

Global capitalism is strengthening its hold on British society, seemingly subverting systems of democracy to do so. The government will probably drift further into right-wing populism. It is unclear what the precise effects on the electorate will be, but disillusionment with the liberal order is more likely than ever.

Economic and political strife can be the spur to consciousness, if the moment is seized. Marx’s old mole of revolution burrows close to the surface once more. The opportunity to make the case for the socialist alternative is clear.

M. P. Shah